The Red Book Magazine/Volume 19/Number 6/The Shackles of Fate

Being the adventures of an embryo “Handcuff King”

GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

EMUEL GLADSTONE BOTTS, of Bucyrusville, Illinois, measured more than six feet, three inches from one end to the other; and when he meated up in winter, and wore his overcoat and rubbers and mittens and knitted tippet around his mobile Adam's-apple, he sometimes depressed the depot scales to the extent of one hundred and forty pounds.

When aroused, he became as strong as Roquefort, or even stronger—almost as strong as Limburger or very well-ripened Gorgonzola, because his muscles were, like my own, of the whip-cord variety. Get him good and mad, and he could throw a barrel of sugar clean over the graveyard fence, or maybe even higher. It had taken a man 'way from Elgin to put both his bony shoulders on the Y.M.C.A. mat at one and the same time. And nobody ever fought him twice, because his fist was like a bag full of scrap-iron and his arm was so long that he could reach out and deliver a knock-out wallop at a distance ranging from nine to eleven feet. But by nature he was mild, with unsatisfied yearnings toward the mandolin, and a marked fondness for prunes.

If he had been born a Trust Magnate's daughter, his hair would have been called Titian, or auburn, or something along those lines. When thirteen, he had once inadvertently stepped into an empty wooden pail left by accident upon some cellar stairs. About half an hour later, a medical student set his nose. The student was only a first-year one, so Lemuel's nose still curved around to westward. His eyes were as blue as the well-worn trope of the Mediterranean, his brows principally conspicuous by absence. Yet his toothy smile was bright and sunny; and ideas lurked around, unsuspectedly, in the crinkles of his cortex. Some of the best citizens said, at times, that he had a future ahead of him. Which, though a serious handicap, still indicates that even before Roudini, the Handcuff King, exhibited at the Bucyrusville Opera House, Fate was brewing a potion or at least a demi-tasse for Lem.

The late autumn, when Lemuel comes into the limelight of this story, he had just cut his twenty-second notch on the tally-stick of age. For six years he had been assisting one Mr. Gibbins, in the cash grocery line. This he called “being engaged in commercial pursuits,” There seemed to be more pursuit than fruition in his vocation. His hebdomadal emoluments, beginning at four dollars, had hunched upward with snailish movements to nine-fifty per.

I guess this will be about all, in the way of introducing our protagonist. So let us now get along with the plot and the heart-interest as explained in all courses on short-story writing.

The heart-interest develops from the fact that, along near Labor Day, Lemuel had become deeply enamored of Miss Laurena Higgins, a saleslady in the Chicago Store. Laurena was still almost pretty—at night, in her parlor with her peau de soie dress on and a pink in her hair and not too much light. Her age I don't know, and it's nobody's business. She had once smiled at, but now smiled on Lemuel, for she was getting anxious. So—they began discussing a ring.

Concomitantly and coëvally, the divine discontent got under Lem's wishbone. Nine-fifty divided by two makes only four seventy-five, and is therefore an improper fraction from the matrimonial viewpoint. Lem pondered.

“Gee!” he reflected. “It aint much use tryin' to start in on that. And if I ask Grib for a raise, it's the G. B. for mine, all right. An' if I ask Rena to wait on a spell, like as not I'll lose her. Gal like that's mighty apt to be snapped up, any time, if a feller aint watchin' mighty smart. What the dickens?”

Moral: Love is myopic, yet a great stimulant to cerebral activities.

Enter, now, the Deux ex Machina, in the person of Roudini, the aforesaid Handcuff King, who claimed to have made all the crowned heads of Europe scratch themselves with wonder. Roudini, of a cold mid-October afternoon, billed himself and acted as his own manager and delivered his own public lecture and gave an exhibition on the Square, in front of Moore's drug-store. Lemuel and Rena attended this, and Lem got a great deal of satisfaction from being able to shove a way so easily through the crowd for her.

They also attended Roudini's other exhibition that night, not on the square, in the Opera House.

There Lemuel did a little mental arithmetic, and discovered that as much as twelve dollars—twelve, count 'em—can be earned per night by letting a committee of intelligent leading citizens bind you, hand and foot, then allowing the police-force to snap his manacles over your wrists, and finally, permitting yourself to be tied in a packing-box in a cabinet—whence you emerge in five minutes and shirt-sleeves, picturesquely tousled and heroic.

“Whee-oo!” whistled Lem as he undressed that night and went to bed. “Slick, what? Say!....”

A week later, he began burning the midnight Welsbach in Mrs. Crawe's boarding-establishment, where he resided. Yes, I will tell you the secret reason. He had. after consulting the Police and Sporting Journal, sent a quarter to a certain address in Cleveland and had received the yellow-covered “Knot and Handcuff Workers' Complete Manual; or, Rope and Manacle Tricks Made Plain.” 'This masterpiece he attacked avidly, scorning sleep or such-like luxuries. And, after a reasonable time, he transferred its entire contents to his seething, love-and-lucre-coveting brain.

Presently, he knew all that the Manual did, concerning the work of Ira and William Davenport, and Messrs. Fay, Maskelyne and other eminent performers; he learned how to tie and how to force the tying of reef and running knots and scores of others; he discovered how to avoid the tying of the fatal “tomfool” knot, and how to conceal an open pocket-knife and a padlock master-key about his person, so fastened by a string that they can be got at and used, no matter how the hands are secured. A wealth of information he absorbed, about tensing the muscles while being tied or shackled, manipulating the slack, jerking handcuffs open, and abundant other details. And, providing himself with clothesline and locks, he practised nightly behind bolted doors.

Loss of sleep reddened his eyes a bit and trained him down a trifle thinner than usual. It also paled him somewhat. Laurena marked this, and marveled. His unexplained, because inexplicable, absence from her best-room sofa excited first surprise, then jealousy, then protests and foolishnesses, then finally a high-nosed intimation in re mittens. But Lemuel smiled a little wanly, and formulated cryptic remarks. Mr. Gribbins, at the store, noted errors; but he only winked to himself and remained indulgent. Grib had once been twenty-two, himself, and still remembered some of the symptoms.

Thus a fortnight passed. And there came a night when, after successful practice of the last trick in the Manual, Lem knew himself an adept.

“Gosh!” he breathed, as he slammed the book down, and ruffled his hair with nervous hands. “Here's where I break into the game, with a big noise!”

Full of courage and a great resolve, he blew a kiss at Rena's cabinet photo on his bureau. Then, inconsequentially enough, he thought of Gribbins; and a vision of himself, stalking into the store with diamonds in his shirt and a fur-lined overcoat upon his back, thrilled him with perfectly intoxicating joy.

Now as you well understand—especially if you are a writer of stories—it is one thing to become an adept in skill, another to win remunerative recognition. This Lemuel G: Botts was wise enough to recognize at once. He understood particularly the almost insuperable difficulty in the way of a prophet making good in the old home town. So he took counsel unto himself, and reached a bold decision.

“If,” thought he, “I try to pull over this stunt here in Bucyrusville, I shall merely get laughed at. Nobody in these diggings will cleave away from two bits, or even one, to witness Grib's grocery assistant in the Opera House be hog-tied, braceleted, lashed into a box and conveyed to a cabinet, whencefrom to issue free again, in shirt-sleeves. My career would be untimelily frosted in the bud.

“Therefore, I must make my début elsewhere, by unusual and spectacular methods, after which the papers will give me two-column heads, with cut, and offers will begin to drop in from variety-stage impresarios. All I shall have to do will be to accept the swellest booking, sever my connection with salt, sugar and canned shrimps, and withdraw from the commercial world. After some weeks of success, I can then return, pack the Opera House to capacity—including the aisles—and, rotten with money, claim Rena. It's open-and-shut!”

Once his mind made up, Lem was no man to let any herbage bloom beneath his number tens. So, two mornings later, he failed to show up at Gribbins'. Reason: The previous midnight he had quietly and  unobservedly walked out of  town, to Mechanicville Junction, one station down the line, and there had taken the early milk-train to Liberty Falls. He was not known at Liberty; also the county jail and other official buildings were located there. These plain statements ought to clarify the plot sufficiently, without, of course, discounting the climax, which is bad form.

Lemuel arrived at 6:10, breakfasted at a lunch cart, and then took a stroll about the town. He squinted at the office of the Liberty Falls Eagle, which was destined to blazon his fame, noted with satisfaction that there were uniformed policemen, and loitered with keen interest in the vicinity of the big brick court-house, jail and asylum on the hill. Then he came back into the business section, three blocks long, and once more assured himself that his knife, key and other apparatus were O.K.

“I guess,” decided he, “we might as well get down to business about now. No use delaying the game.” His heart began to thud a trifle thickly, and his lips felt just the least bit dry, but his purpose never faltered. On the lookout for a cop, he ambled down Main Street with that graceful camel-stride of his.

Right at the corner of Main and Congress Streets, in front of a barber shop, he came upon the desired official. The official was supporting a telegraph-pole with his back and picking his teeth with a brassy pin. Lem walked up to him.

“Say!” he remarked earnestly, and slapped the Law's shoulder. “I want to be pinched.”

In the air the pin poised itself, while the Law stared.

“Huh?”

“Pinched, run in, arrested.”

“Aw, chase along!”

“You wont pull me in?”

“Beat it, beat it!”

Lem pondered. Then he changed his tactics.

“Say, come on, now—be a sport!” he pleaded. “I'm cold an' hungry, an' I aint got no home. Chuck me in a cell, wont you, please?”

“Roll along, you!” commanded the minion, a rising inflection in his voice.

Lemuel considered again. Already two or three loafers had drawn anigh. The nucleus of the desired crowd was beginning to take form. The time grew critical. Should he lose his nerve now?

“Looky here,” he remarked, earnestly. “You come inta that alley, over there, an' I'll take you right down! I can lick any three your size!”

He of the club and helmet began to scent reality in the wind. Uneasily he surveyed this gaunt, blue-eyed, towering individual with the big hands. The three loafers had increased to a ragged ring, and some jostling developed. Being replete with coffee and canned beans, and by nature a man of peaceful, retiring disposition, the officer hedged. He didn't like the way the windows were filling up and a team or two stopping in the street.

“Say, if all you want is grub,” confided he, “'I can give you a ticket to the Charities Wood-yard. All you hafta do is saw—”

Lem's arm, lightning-quick, cut a conic section through the air. The official helmet parabola'd onto the board sidewalk. Out shot Lem's boot. The helmet did a conchoid against the barber-shop, rolled in a cycloid, and came to inertia in the gutter.

“Now,” remarked Lem, folding his arms, “now you gotta pinch me. I've assaulted an officer, and there's a cell comin' to me! Your move!”

So he achieved arrest. Unfortunately, there was no patrol-wagon in Liberty Falls, so he lost a small section of publicity; but, after all, the walk with the policeman up the hill was fairly well escorted.

As the jail door closed behind him, he thought of Rena, and Grib, and cash, and a few other things, including his utensils and the Manacle-workers' Manual, and smiled.

He stood up, presently, before the magistrate's desk, and was duly charged. The officer and two witnesses appeared against him. But their testimony was supererogatory, for he admitted everything, including his identity.

“Well, whadje do it for, anyhow?” demanded the magistrate. “Don't you know I've got to hold you fer trial?”

Lem smiled again.

“All right, put me in a cell,” said he. “Put your best handcuffs on me, and shackle my feet, too. Lock me in tight. You can tie me too, if you want. I'm going to give you people some fun!”

The magistrate bent puzzled, angry brows on Lem. Then he pushed a button, and pretty soon the jail doctor came in. Magistrate and doctor conferred while, in low tones, looking often at the prisoner.

After a few minutes the doctor left the court-room. He came back, after a certain time, with another gentleman, bearded and wise-looking. These two, and the magistrate, all foregathered around Lem, as he sat—“serene, indifferent to fate”—in the dock.

Then the jail M. D. discoursed.

“No symptoms of alcoholism, you see,” he remarked. “Perfectly sober. The disturbance must be mental, rather than physical. Note the expression of the eye, Doctor, the contraction of the pupil, marked asymetry [sic] of the facial contours and of the features, especially the nose; low cephalic index, brachycephalic skull, deficient cranial capacity, malformation of ears, and lack of correlation of height and weight.”

“H'm, h'm!” commented the bearded person. “Very significant, I'm sure.”

“Judging by all available data and all somatic indices here present,” continued the doctor, while Lem thought of Future, Fame and Fortune, “and bearing in mind the conclusions of Lombroso, Ferri and Enteneier-Eselschwanz, also taking into consideration the lack of motivity for the attack, the strong egomania of the subject and the obviously faulty reflexes he exhibits, I think you will agree with me that we have here a typical case of parapyroditic megalomanumaxytis.”

“Yes, yes, quite so, quite so! We will put him under observation, in the Pavilion. Quite so!”

“Very well, then,” concluded the M. D. Then he addressed Lem.

“Will you please step into the next room with us?” requested he, in a wheedling, saccharine tone, such as people use in assuring a doubtfully-disposed dog that it is “a nice dog, so it is; there, there!”

Lem, a bit suspicious now, stood up. He eyed the magistrate.

“What you goin' to do with me?” he demanded. “Lock me up? I don't want no funny-business! I want to be put in a cell, that's all! Savvy?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly!” the Doctor conceded. “A nice big cell, the best we've got. Right at your disposal, now. Just step this way, please.” To the magistrate he added, in an undertone: “Better keep back; we can handle him, all right. He trusts us, but not you. I advise you to keep out of the way.”

The magistrate, a little precipitately, withdrew behind his bench. Then the doctors gently but resolutely urged Lem toward a door at the left of the court-room.

Beyond the door, Lem found himself in a medical office. Uneasily he sniffed the scents of druggery and eyed the shiny instruments in cases, the scales and operating-table.

“Wha—what you goin' to do with me?” he blurted, backing away. “I aint sick! All I want is—”

“There, there, don't get excited!” cautioned the M. D., while the bearded man closed in a trifle. “You'll get your nice cell, all right. But first, you know, you've got to change your clothes. That's a rule of this place. Nobody gets a cell who doesn't wear—”

“Naw you don't!” Lem interrupted. “I aint convicted of nothing, yet. No stripes for mine! I'm only bein' held for trial, an' you don't put no convict duds onta me, see? The first one o' you that lays a hand on me, I'll paste him! Get that?”

“Ring for Toole,” commanded the M. D. The bearded man pressed a button. Lem backed into a corner, anxious yet very grim, and folded his eleven-foot arms. Nobody was going to take his raiment, his string and key and knife away from him, without getting badly hurt. And a taut silence developed in the office.

All at once another door opened, and a large-jawed person appeared, clad in blue, with a vizored cap whereon gold letters said “Guard.”

“A new arrival,” remarked the M. D., nodding at Lem. “I guess we need your help. Stand by.”

Then he approached Lem,

“Now, are you going to be reasonable and submit to the rules, here? If we give you the best cell in the place, will you accommodate us by—”

“You go to the dickens!” roared Lem. “I aint sick, nor I aint bughouse, neither! All I want is—”

“But”?

“You think I'm nutty? What?”

“No, no. Certainly not! Only—”

“Don't you come a-near me! Don't you dast!”

“I guess we'll have to throw him,” put in the bearded person, “You're only wasting time, arguing, Benson.” And, with a hard, calculating look on his face, he took a step toward Lemuel.

“Git back, you!”

A two-quart bottle of ammonia stood on a table, close at hand. Lemuel emphasized his command by snatching this up and delicately balancing it.

“Consarn you!” he gulped, his natural mildness now submerged in the foaming torrent of rage. “First one tetches me, gits this, top o' the conk!”

“Take him, Toole!” snapped the M. D.

With astonishing agility, Toole tackled, bending low, aiming at the legs. Lem swung the bottle. Toole grunted as the weapon crashed on his elbow.

But he got his grip. Blinded, strangled by the fumes, he and Lem went down in a fighting knot. And Lemuel's long arms flailed as he bucked, kicked, bit, howled, choked and frothed—in vain.

The M. D. and the bearded man, holding their breath, pounced in and dragged the pair free of the broken glass.

Over crashed a chair. The operating-table slid, Smash! through the glass front of the instrument-cabinet. Tumult and vapors and bad blue words filled the place.

In the far corner, the three in authority finally undressed Lem. Then, while the Guard and the bearded person trussed him down, with highly painful jiu-jitsu twists, the M. D. hastily prepared a “sub-cute.”

The jab of the little needle stimulated the failing Lem. Lashed to and fro, like ferrets on a lively rat, the three with difficulty kept their holds. More than once Lem's fists broke loose; and more than once they landed.

But now other individuals arrived. And all who could find space to sit on Lem, sat. So he became relatively quiet; and after a while the hypodermic got its work in.

Then at length came lassitude, and drowsiness—and peace, and rest.

An hour after Lem had awakened to a realization of the fact that he was laced into a strait-jacket, and that he had been cast into a windowless cell with canvas-covered walls all nicely stuffed, and that this cell had a door which bolted on the outside and presented a smooth, unbroken, quilted surface inside, and that he now had neither key nor knife nor even the use of his hands—an hour after all this had percolated his consciousness, I say, he was still running about the apartment, butting the pads.

If a haggard, bruised and dirty face, disheveled locks, bloodshot eyes, a wounded mouth and loud yells indicate mental unbalance, especially when joined to a fervently-voiced hankering to eat the hearts of two practicing physicians and an asylum guard, then possibly we may pardon the opinions of the gentlemen who peeked through a peephole and made notes in little books.

Even old Doc Willetts, of Bucyrusville, who came down on the first train in response to an urgent wire, thought so too, at first. But after a certain time, Lemuel listed to Willetts' voice and made a statement.

Following this, he wept.

Why linger o'er anticlimactic details?

Why give the minutiae of explanations, of paying the fine, getting clothes, release from durance, returning home?

Why protract things by telling what the Eagle and many friends and Laurena all said?

Let this pass.

For, really, Gribbins' remark is more important. Grib, salt of the earth, had once been young; he remembered. And he slapped Lem on the shoulder and said: “Forget it! I raise you to twelve per, and you can come back any old time you want to. Are you on?”

So Fame stepped down and out; dreams evanished, as all dreams must, even including Love and Life itself; and Reality—guised as salt, sugar and canned shrimp-wiggle—came back.

And Laurena forgave him, for the twelve looked good to her. She figures on being able to hold her job in the Chicago Store, even after the wedding-bells have tolled the knell of parting spinsterhood. And Lem's twelve, joined to her six-fifty, make eighteen and a half. Very fair indeed, for Bucyrusville.

Lem is ready, any old time, to snap on certain shackles so binding that they make the steel kind look like wisps of moonshine. But Dr. D. Cupid has given him the subcardiac needle-jab, so he's insensible to all this.

He is now dickering for a gold-rolled ring, on the installment-plan. He has even looked at a tray of bracelets.

But on that occasion, the jeweler—wise as serpents—did NOT show him any of those $5.75 designs with padlock clasps.