: A Master Hand: The Story of a Crime by Dallas Richard - New York (N.Y.) Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Murder Fiction

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A MASTER HAND

A SOLILOQUY

On a Monday evening in January, 1883, I had returned comparatively late from work in the District Attorney's office in New York, and was in my rooms at the Crescent Club on Madison Square, corner of Twenty-sixth Street, making a leisurely toilet for dinner, when a note was brought me from Arthur White. In it he asked me to join a few mutual friends at his rooms on West Nineteenth Street off Fifth Avenue later in the evening for supper. He named the men--Gilbert Littell, Ned Davis, and Oscar Van Bult--who were to join him at euchre before supper. This was a favorite pastime with them, and I was bidden to come early, if I wished, and look on.

I did not play cards myself; not because of any scruples on the subject,--I had knocked about, a bachelor, long enough to take most things in a man's life as they come,--but because I did not care for games of any sort. I was, however, by my friends considered an unobjectionable onlooker--rather a rare reputation to enjoy, I may mention,--probably mine because I did not take sufficient interest in the play to either advise or criticise. It was not unpleasant, however, to sit by in White's attractive quarters and drink and smoke from his excellent sideboard. So having nothing better to do, I sent back word I would come, and getting into my evening clothes, went down to my dinner. It was not often I dined alone, as dinner to me was the occasion of the day and I deemed it incomplete, no matter how excellent the meal, without some congenial companion; but this evening I was later than usual, and so found no one available. Even the habitual acceptors who can always be depended upon in a club to give their society in return for a good dinner had all been engaged.

As I entered the dining-room, I saw my usual table reserved for me and my customary waiter on the outlook.

"You dine alone, sir, to-night?" he asked, as I took my seat, and then having suggested the outline of a light dinner, went off to give the order and bring my usual substitute for a companion, a magazine. To-night, however, I was not in the humor to read, but rather inclined to thoughts of the men brought to mind by White's invitation.

They were all intimate friends, and it is as well I should tell something about them here as another time, for they are destined to play more or less conspicuous parts in the miserable affair which is the occasion of this book.

To begin with my host--Arthur White was an attractive, lovable fellow when in his brighter moods, but weak and variable. A man of good impulses, I think, but so fond of luxury and idleness that he was often selfish in his self-indulgence; of that sort of men that other men feel something akin to affection for, such as for a younger brother or a woman, so easily led and dependent do they seem. He was still young, not yet out of his twenties, and, living in extravagant idleness and dissipation, was spending pretty rapidly a bequest of a hundred thousand dollars he had inherited, about two years before, from an uncle.

The bequest had created some little comment at the time, because thereby the only son of the testator, who was named in the will as residuary legatee, was reported to have inherited little or nothing.

However, the son had always been a "bad lot" and neglected the old man, whereas Arthur had lived with him, and, after his lazy fashion, cared for and helped him in his affairs. So the busy world shrugged its shoulders and passed the episode by, and only prosy moralists dwelt upon it to point the Fifth Commandment.

How Arthur reconciled it with his conscience to keep all the money, I never heard him say, but any sacrifice, I fancy, would have seemed hard to one so self-indulgent. In any event, whatever may have been the right or wrong of it, he was making the most of his fortune while it lasted, and his friends were incidentally getting some benefit therefrom too, as our invitation for the evening testified.

While White was the youngest of the quartette I was to join, Gilbert Littell was the oldest--old enough and worldly-wise enough, too, to have been a valuable friend and adviser to the young man, if the latter would have listened to, or been by any one diverted from the rapid pace he was going. He did try, I thought, to steady him sometimes, but would always abandon the effort and say in his quiet way that he guessed the boy would have to sow his wild oats and waste his dollars before he could be brought up; which was also the general opinion among us.

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