IN THE MATTER OF BATEMAN.

I have hesitated to tell this story because it involves confidential relations between lawyer and client which are, of course, absolutely sacred to all who love and honour their profession as I do—and there are many such, thank God.

But I’m—well, I’m old enough to be sensitive about my age, and not old enough to be proud of it. Almost all my companions are dead—Bateman and his enemies have passed away, and I think there ought to be a Statute of Limitations for the relief of old lawyers who must live on memories. Then, too, if a man has had the lessons which a matter like this teaches, I think his experiences belong to his profession.

But when I think of it again, there is little in what I have to tell that will serve either as instruction or warning, because there never was, and never will be, another case like Bateman’s.

I am satisfied, however, that there is no impropriety in disclosing the facts after all these years, and of this I trust my professional record is sufficient guaranty.

At the time of which I write I was junior partner in the firm of Paulding & Wainwright, and our offices were on Front Street, in the heart of the shipping business.

Josiah Bateman had been a client of Mr. Paulding long before I was admitted to a partnership. His Will had been in our safe for fifteen years, but neither my partner nor I knew its terms, for the old man had drawn it up himself. “He guessed he knew enough law to give away his property,” he told us as we witnessed the instrument.

Mr. Bateman ought to have known some law. Certainly he had expended enough money in litigation to pay for a hundred legal educations. Indeed his genius for disputes would have made him an ideal client save for one fact—he seldom took the advice of his lawyers. It naturally followed that his success in the Courts was by no means encouraging. Whenever he won a suit he claimed all the credit, and if he lost, our responsibility was voiced by the loser in a tone only a little more offensive than his self-gratulation. People used to wonder how we got on with the man, but we were accustomed to his vagaries, and despite his declamations he paid handsomely and promptly for every service rendered.

As he grew older Mr. Bateman’s tendency to litigate increased tremendously and the Office Register coupled his name with every kind of law suit from a dispossess proceeding to a knotty problem in the law of nations.

Mr. Bateman had never married, and he never spoke of his relatives to anyone. Down-town New York knew him as a clear-headed, obstinate, hard-working, irascible merchant who had made a great deal of money. But there information stopped. His fortune was variously estimated from a million up to five millions—one guess being as good as another in the absence of any known facts.

So when the news came that Josiah Bateman was dead I think everybody connected with our firm, from the senior partner to the office boy, was curious to learn how the old man had left his money.

The news of his death did not reach us until a week after he had been buried. We were then advised by letter that he had been on a hunting trip in the Adirondacks and had become ill and died when far away from any town. The guides seem to have known nothing about him and he was buried at the nearest cemetery. No papers or documents were found upon the body, and it was not until a week after his funeral that a crumpled piece of paper was discovered in his game bag. This proved to be one of our letters to him and we were at once put in possession of the facts. At the same time we were informed that the body had been exhumed and positively identified by an old friend of our client. Mr. Paulding was away from Town on his vacation when the news came and in his absence the responsibility for proper action devolved upon me.

The letter announcing Mr. Bateman’s death arrived in the morning mail, but I was engaged in Court all day and it was nearly seven o’clock in the evening before I returned to the office. Letters and papers had accumulated on my desk during my absence, but I was too tired and hungry to attack the work they suggested, so dismissing the clerks for the night I sought out the nearest restaurant.

All thought of Bateman’s affairs had been crowded out by the events of the day, and it was not until I had finished my after-dinner cigar that they were recalled to me by seeing Mr. Bateman’s obituary printed in an evening paper.

It was the usual “boneyard” article which had doubtless been set up in the newspaper office years before. Any way, after reading three quarters of a column I learned nothing about the man I did not already know, and what I knew could have been condensed into a dozen lines. It set me thinking, however, about our queer old client. Perhaps his Will contained some directions for the disposition of his body which should govern my immediate instructions to the people in the Adirondacks. His end would have been lonely enough anywhere, but up there in the silent mountains, away from the city’s bustle and battle which he loved, death must have seemed fearful to that lonesome old man. Late as it was I determined to return to the office and look at Mr. Bateman’s Will.

I always carried a key to the front door of our office building, for no one slept on the premises and sometimes it was important to gain admission after the closing hour.

The streets were absolutely deserted as I left the restaurant and my footsteps echoed upon the flagstones.

Surely down-town New York is the most dismal spot in the world at night—a veritable city of the dead. The silent, empty streets have an atmosphere of utter gloom—the buildings dark and forbidding stand in gruesome solemnity or huddle together in hideous attitudes of fear—the deserted offices here and there show a shaded light in some rear room, but the ghastly glow only intensifies the darkness, and over all is the silence—the awful silence—of the night. It is not the restful quiet of sleep—it is not the peaceful stillness of death—it is the horrid, breathing, staring silence of the trance. It is the silence that makes you stop and listen—hush and whisper, or gently motion with your finger on your lips.

The feeling of all this was upon me as I turned toward my office. The unaccustomed stillness filled me with absurd apprehension, and tricked me into starting at every shadow. My footsteps echoed more and more rapidly upon the sidewalk, and louder and louder until I found myself actually running along deserted Front Street.

I had been in the offices at night before, but I stumbled and tripped up the familiar stairway as though the steps and the very walls themselves had changed positions in the darkness.

I lit a lamp in our front room, but the big black shadows transformed the well-known surroundings so that nothing seemed the same.

The globe on the corner shelf took the shape of some great bird sitting gorged and sombre on its ample perch—the document cases with their white letterings suggested dark heads and shining rows of teeth, and the green baize doors studded with brass-nails seemed like monster coffins set on end, each staring silently through an oval eye of glass.

I carried the lamp into my private room, but the draught from the hall blew it out, so I closed the door before lighting it again.

In those days my private room in the rear of our office suite was connected with the main rooms by a short hall, from which it was separated by a green baize and glass-panelled door. In this room was the firm safe, a cavern-like affair built into and occupying the entire rear wall. The interior was lined with sheet iron, and the huge doors of the same material were opened and locked with a key weighing perhaps half a pound.

Sitting down at my desk I touched the secret spring of the drawer containing this key. I am not a nervous man, but I had been under more or less tension all day, and the stillness of the streets and the ugly suggestions of the dark shadows in the outer offices had had their effect upon my nerves, making me start as the spring snapped and the drawer shot out. Holding the lamp in my left hand close to the safe directly behind my chair, I fitted the huge key into the keyhole, and unfastened the lock. The bolts turned easily, and placing the lamp upon the desk again I pulled at the handle of the safe door. For a moment it resisted and then swung open with a sound like a sob, emitting a breath of cold air that chilled me and set the flame of the lamp flaring above the chimney. It was like the damp breath of some underground tomb. Moreover, it seemed to circle around me, blowing upon my neck and making the papers on my desk rustle and whisper. So strong was this impression that I swung about in my chair and stared into the blackness at the other end of the room, and even as I did so, one of the papers before me was silently wafted off the desk. I watched it as it floated slowly and noiselessly towards the doorway, and when at last it settled gently on the floor, I felt the beads of perspiration trickling down my face. For fully a minute I must have sat peering into the darkness as though fascinated by the gigantic shadows on the walls.

Then I laughed nervously, mopped my forehead, turned again to the safe, and hastily took from the inner compartment a bundle of wills. Bateman’s testament was the third in the bundle. It was sealed up in a plain envelope and the endorsement was in his own handwriting.

“Will of Josiah Bateman. Dated June 10, 1855.”

The papers had that musty smell peculiar to old documents, and to which I was entirely accustomed, but that night the odor had a sickening effect upon me. It seemed to dry up the very air and make it suffocating with the horrible stench of decay. I stood up and stretched my neck to get an upper stratum of air, but the whole room seemed tainted with the foul cloying breath.

I sat down at the desk again and turned my back upon the lamp so that the light would fall over my shoulder. With a shudder I picked up the envelope, which seemed to reek with the unendurable odor, and as I did so, noticed the window close beside me. Why had I not thought of that before? I dropped the paper and rose to open the sash.

The darkness outside and the light within had turned the window pane into a mirror reflecting the room behind me with perfect clearness. The whole effect was fearfully weird, and for an instant it held me spellbound. In the foreground was my own ghastly white face—the eyes apparently gazing not into mine, but at something behind me. In the background the lamp, the desk, the papers, and the brass-nailed green baize door, jet black in the night light, stood out clearly.

As I stared into this reflected room, I noted a peculiar dark spot on the oval glass panel of the door. Was it at this my mirrored eyes seemed to look?

I knew I was in no fit condition to withstand the tricks of imagination, so I turned, not without an effort, to ascertain what really caused this strange reflection. But my imagination would have served my over-wrought nerves better than the fact, for the dark spot was unquestionably something pressed against the glass from outside the room. Steadily I gazed at this object, and endeavored with all the power I possessed to reason myself out of the nameless dread that had settled down upon me.

It could not be what it seemed.—Hair against the panel of that coffin-like door was too full of horrible suggestions! It must be a mop which had fallen against the glass.—Of course it must be that. A mop, too, would account for those damp breath stains on the glass.

Thus I reasoned, never taking my eyes off that oval pane in the door. But as I gazed my theory fell to pieces and my reasoning stopped. The moist spots on the glass began to expand and contract, vanish and reappear slowly and regularly as to some heavy breathing. Every exhalation seemed to blow that fearful odor of death toward my nostrils!

After a few moments however I could no longer deceive myself, for my eyes, accustomed to the light, made out too plainly for doubt a face pressed close against the glass watching my every movement.

With that discovery my reason and coolness seemed to return instantly. Without taking my eyes off the face framed in the door panel, I slid open the drawer immediately beneath my hand, groped for, and at last grasped, the revolver I always kept there.

At last the face withdrew from the glass, but so sure was I that no illusion had deceived me that I waited without moving a muscle. At length the handle turned and the door was pulled open slowly. As slowly I turned the chamber of my revolver, touching each cartridge with my finger. The door continued to swing cautiously, and with my elbow still in the drawer I raised my forearm, covering the widening slit with the muzzle of my weapon.

The door opened outward into the hall, and at first I could see nothing of the person pulling it. Then suddenly a hand darted out and grasped the inside knob, and at the same moment the figure of a man, his back turned toward me, blocked the opening. Had I fired then I could not have missed my aim, but the opportunity was so complete it seemed murderous. The fellow paused in the doorway and seemed to listen or look for something in the hall or rooms beyond.

I tried to speak, but my throat only responded with a dry click. When at last I controlled my voice its utterance was a harsh whisper,

“Stop where you are, or I’ll fire! Don’t turn or move a muscle! I have you covered with a revolver.”

The figure in the doorway started convulsively, but made no other motion, and for a moment everything was so still I could hear my watch ticking. Then I heard the man say,

“Don’t shoot, Mr. Wainwright. I’m going to face you.”

My heart almost stopped beating as I recognised the voice, but the horror of the situation did not burst upon me until Josiah Bateman turned and stood before me under the glare of the flaring lamp.

For a moment neither of us spoke, but I noticed the haggard look of the man, the unkempt condition of his grey hair, and his soiled and tattered clothing.

There was no doubt that the living man stood before me, but everything about him breathed a horrid suggestiveness. At last I motioned to a seat and addressed him.

“What does this mean?”

The old man smiled wearily, but his voice was much the same as usual.

“I’m afraid I’ve given you a scare, without intending it, Mr. Wainwright. I owe you an apology. But you were plucky, Sir, and I—well, I took some risks too.”

“What does all this mean?” I repeated, with some annoyance in my tone.

“It’s hard to tell in a few words, Mr. Wainwright, but I haven’t risen from the dead. Yes, I see you looking at my clothes, but I haven’t been inside a grave, and no undertaker has handled me yet.”

“Don’t you think we’ve had enough of mysteries, Mr. Bateman?” I inquired impatiently.

“Surely—surely,” replied the old man, “but I want to give you time to recover yourself and——”

“I have quite recovered, thank you.”

“Everything but your temper, Mr. Wainwright, everything but your temper. You need to have that in hand before giving me advice.”

“You seek a strange hour for consultation, Mr. Bateman. Allow me to suggest an appointment for to-morrow morning.”

“No time like the present, Mr. Wainwright. I might say no time except the present. But while we are talking of time we waste it.”

Mr. Bateman’s manner was usually abrupt, almost brusque, and his present oily tone had a peculiar menace to my ears.

“I cannot listen very long to-night, Mr. Bateman, so I must ask you to explain your business at once,” I answered shortly.

“Certainly my dear Sir,—though you can have no business more important than this.—Do you mind if I close the door? The draught is annoying and makes your miserable lamp sputter continually.”

I felt I would rather not have that door closed again, but could give no reason, so I simply nodded.

Mr. Bateman rose and closed the door. He even slipped the bolt, but upon this I made no comment. Then he resumed his seat, ran his hands through his long hair once or twice, and fixing his eyes on my face began speaking rapidly in an entirely different tone.

“This is no time for details. You see I am alive, therefore the report of my death is false. It is no case of mistaken identity. I arranged it all. An unknown man did die in the Adirondacks. No, I did not kill him. It was a natural death for him—an opportunity for me. I merely supplied the evidence for his identification. No need of asking how I did it. Enough that it’s done and done with practically no confederates. The question now I suppose is—why?”

I nodded.

“I will tell you, Mr. Wainwright. It was the only way to avoid failure—the one chance to save me from utter financial ruin. You look at me as though I were crazy.—Well, I’m not. You think you know a good deal of my business affairs, but you know precious little and I tell you now, without discussing it, I had to die to make life worth living. If I had failed—well, there’s no use talking ‘ifs.’ The point is this. I’ve been carrying a load that’s pretty nearly done for me, but which’ll give me the biggest harvest I’ve ever reaped. The devils think they’ve got me down, but I’ll teach ’em who Josiah Bateman is!”

The old man’s eyes glittered and he struck the desk with his fist, but his manner was no more extravagant than usual, so I only said, “We are still dealing in mysteries, Mr. Bateman.”

“I’m explaining as fast as I can, Sir! When I first entered upon the deal I’m now carrying through I thought I had plenty of money for it. But the unexpected happened again and again, and last month I began to turn things into cash. Since then I’ve needed more and more money, needed it so badly I dare not ask for it, needed it cruelly, horribly. I’ve borrowed in every place where it would not ruin me to negotiate a loan—I’m at the end of my rope and I must have more money by Tuesday next.”

“By Tuesday next?” I queried.

“Yes. Do you know how much life insurance I carry and where?”

“A hundred thousand in the Equitable and a hundred thousand in the Mutual,” I replied.

“Quite so—” he answered. “Well then—I’ve got to have that money.”

I looked at the stern, haggard face before me. Anxiety and sleeplessness had wrought great havoc with the man.—What if it had touched his brain? He interpreted my thought instantly.

“Leave your revolver alone, Mr. Wainwright! I’m quite as sane as you are and a good bit smarter if you don’t yet see my scheme.”

“I think I prefer not to see it or hear it either,” I answered.

“Nonsense, you’ve got to do both, and in the shortest possible time too, for I’ve had to waste a week already. I observe you were about to open my old Will. Well, it’s no good. I’ve made another and here it is, signed, sealed, published, declared, witnessed and all the rest of the rot. This you will probate to-morrow morning. It appoints you my sole executor, gives you absolute power for five years to continue and conduct my business just as it is, leaves the bulk of my property to clerks and charities (for I haven’t got as much as a second cousin living in the world), and it provides that my executor have one hundred thousand dollars in lieu of his fees.”

“That is generous,” I observed.

“I think it just,” he replied, taking no notice of my smile. “Now listen,” he continued. “By Tuesday morning you will be able to collect on my life insurance. The proofs are complete. Yes, and genuine too. The doctor, the undertaker, the guides, all honestly believe I’m the corpse, and it does resemble me wonderfully. Lord, but I’ve sweated in working it out! By Tuesday, I say, those Insurance Companies will be satisfied, and they pay promptly, for the bigger the claim the better the advertisement. But if they delay, the fact of my death will tie up those devils who are trying to down me, for a few days at least. When you get the cash, pay it out under my directions and we’ll roast the whole gang of them and Josiah Bateman will return to life ten times a millionaire, for I tell you, Wainwright, this is the biggest thing you’ve ever been in!”

“It is unique in more respects than one,” I answered.

“It is simplicity itself. Only the details were difficult. Even getting here, disguised as I am, was not easy without attracting too much notice, and——”

“You might have saved yourself that trouble,” I interrupted.

“No, I had to see you to-night. To-morrow you would have probated that old Will instead of——”

“Writing out our resignations.”

“What do you mean?” he gasped.

“Am I not clear enough?”

“You don’t mean to say you won’t carry this thing through?”

“I hoped you would come to your senses, Mr. Bateman, before a declination was necessary,” I observed, keeping my eyes steadily upon the twitching face of my client.

He stared at me for a moment in silence, and then burst out,

“Nonsense, Wainwright, nonsense! You don’t understand! What’s the matter with you, anyway? I have desperate need of money and cannot get it from any ordinary channel without ruin. I so arrange that I shall be thought dead. I have absolutely no relations. You collect my life insurance and pay the money where I direct, and I am saved financially. I can then return and the amount paid by the life Insurance Companies will be refunded, and who, in God’s name, is hurt?”

“I have heard,” I began, smiling, “that emergency evolves ethics, but——”

“O don’t go sermonizing about ethics, and stop that silly smiling! Either I’m crazy, in which case you ought to humour me, or sane, and entitled to an intelligent hearing. I understand the proposition is a new one. It is made for new facts. But that does not argue it a crime. The only possible wrong in it is involved in the probate affidavits, but you know in nine out of ten cases you don’t comply with the statutes in making affidavits, so there’s no perjury. I only ask you to tell a lie—a lie which cannot possibly hurt anybody, but which will save me.”

“And incidentally help to perpetrate a fraud on the Insurance Companies.”

“An innocent fraud!—We will return the money with interest the moment it goes through.”

“And if it does not go through?”

“It will.—It cannot fail, I tell you! But if it does,” Mr. Bateman looked me steadily in the eyes, “if it does fail, no harm will be done. I shall be dead. Before God, I swear it.”

There was tragedy written on the man’s earnest face, and a note of pathos sounded in his voice. For a moment neither of us spoke.

“Mr. Bateman,” I said at last. “Because I have listened to you, you must not suppose I have for one instant countenanced your scheme. It is impossible from beginning to end. Suppose we terminate this interview——”

“I see it!” he exclaimed suddenly—“I see it! You think the plan will fail and you take some risk for no gain in case my estate is bankrupt. I have said that if I do not get money I am ruined. I would not be, strictly speaking, a bankrupt. With my plans gone wrong my estate would still amount to $75,000. Your fee is safe. I have provided for that in the Will. Read it and see if I am not right. I cannot prove to-night the accuracy of my figures. To that extent you must trust me.”

It was pathetic to hear this rough old man pleading in such a manner. I suddenly felt more sorry than indignant and answered him quite gently.

“I’m not practicing law, Mr. Bateman, merely for fees, or for only one case. I am following it as a career.”

“What in hell’s name has that got to do with it?” he burst forth angrily. “I’m sick and tired of your hypocrisy and that of your whole legal crew. You take cases you don’t believe in, argue to prove what you know is false, defeat the laws, shield the dishonest, help criminals to escape, bully and insult honest men, tell lies, act lies, live lies,—do anything and everything that’s safe and disgusting—and yet you prate to me about your career! Your career indeed! God save me from the smirch and smirk of it all!”

“Have you quite finished, Mr. Bateman?”

The old man’s face was purple with rage and his hands trembled as they clutched the arms of his chair. It was not until the look of hate faded from his eyes that he spoke again.

“No, Sir, I’ve not finished—but I apologise for what I said. It was childish—foolish. I was at the end of my patience for it seems so unjust that you should take such a stand. I ask you to save me from what would be ruin to me, for what should be a fortune to you. I ask you to do no wrong to any man, woman or child in the world. I have toiled years and years in my business. I have suffered to get what I have, and I made every dollar honestly, by my brains alone. I have only one ambition—have had only one thought for years—to die a rich man—the successful merchant of my time. A poor ambition you think? Well, it’s my heart’s desire. Take it away and I am dead. I have no wife, no children, no relatives of any sort. Examine my Will and see what I propose to do with my money. What have I to live for save the joy of making? Oh, man, man, can’t you understand? Don’t you see what this means to me?”

I could not at once find an answer for the poor wretch, almost frantic with anxiety. He interpreted my silence hopefully, for he continued,

“I ask you to take but little upon faith. If my plan succeeds, as it must, no one will lose save those who in commercial venture have staked upon my failure, and who have no idea to-day how near I am to it. The Insurance Companies will regain their money and more advertisement than they could get elsewhere in twenty years. If I fail, they will only have paid the money a few days too soon. You believe that? You must know I could not survive failure. But you need not rely on this, for you are safe in the fact that I cannot return without facing a prison for my few remaining years. When first I came here to-night, Mr. Wainwright, it was to open your safe and substitute the Wills and let you do unknowingly what I now ask and implore you to do knowingly.—You will do it, will you not?”

“Mr. Bateman,—once and for all,—I will not.”

“You won’t help me? Then, by God, you shan’t hinder me!”

I sprang to my feet, but before I understood what was taking place I saw a flash, and one of the window panes behind me shattered. Almost at the same instant I launched myself upon the old man with such force that we both crashed to the floor, I upon his prostrate body. The struggle was brief, for I was young and powerfully built, and the man beneath me well advanced in years. Pinning his arms with my knees I tore the revolver from his hand and hurled it across the room. Then he ceased struggling and I turned him over easily, tying his arms with my handkerchief. But there was little need of this precaution, for his strength was gone, and it was necessary to help him into a chair. Some moments passed before he said anything. When he spoke there were tears in his voice.

“Forgive me, Mr. Wainwright. I don’t know what possessed me. The disappointment—the disappointment of a life’s work must have suddenly crazed me. But I am sane now and I was before. Everything I told you is true.—I know it is impossible now to hope for anything.—Will you take me to a hospital? I am a sick man, Mr. Wainwright—a very sick man, but I do not wish to live. Everything—I told you—is true.”

Ten days later Josiah Bateman died at the hospital where I took him that night.

“It is a singular case,” the House Physician told me, “but not unheard of. He simply lacked the zest for living.”

Mr. Bateman’s second Will was never probated. A few days before he died he sent for it.

“What is to-day?” he asked as I gave him the document.

“Wednesday,” I answered.

“It is too late now,” he whispered. “I have lived too long. I revoke this.” He tore the paper as he spoke.

We proved the old Will, but he had perfected his plans only too well. It was difficult to make out a case of mistaken identity for the body in the Adirondacks, and it was months before we established our rights to the insurance moneys. His estate did not realise quite $100,000, but after a close examination into his affairs I am persuaded all Josiah Bateman claimed he could accomplish was possible, and that everything he told me that night was absolutely true.