A Strange Discovery
Dake, Charles Romyn
English
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A Strange DISCOVERY
By
Charles Romyn Dake
(1889)
HOW WE FOUND DIRK PETERS
The FIRST Chapter
It was once my good fortune to assist in a discovery of some importance
to lovers of literature, and to searchers after the new and wonderful.
As nearly a quarter of a century has since elapsed, and as two others
shared in the discovery, it may seem to the reader strange that the
general public has been kept in ignorance of an event apparently so full
of interest. Yet this silence is quite explicable; for of the three
participants none has heretofore written for publication; and of my two
associates, one is a quiet, retiring man, the other is erratic and
forgetful.
It is also possible that the discovery did not at the time impress
either my companions or myself as having that importance and widespread
interest which I have at last come to believe it really possesses. In
any view of the case, there are reasons, personal to myself, why it was
less my duty than that of either of the others to place on record the
facts of the discovery. Had either of them, in all these years, in ever
so brief a manner, done so, I should have remained forever silent.
The narrative which it is my purpose now to put in written form, I have
at various times briefly or in part related to one and another of my
intimate friends; but they all mistook my facts for fancies, and
good-naturedly complimented me on my story-telling powers--which was
certainty not flattering to my qualifications as an historian.
With this explanation, and this extenuation of what some persons may
think an inexcusable and almost criminal delay, I shall proceed.
In the year 1877 I was compelled by circumstances to visit the States.
At that time, as at the present, my home was near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
My father, then recently deceased, had left, in course of settlement in
America, business interests involving a considerable pecuniary
investment, of which I hoped a large part might be recovered. My lawyer,
for reasons which seemed to me sufficient, advised that the act of
settlement should not be delegated; and I decided to leave at once for
the United States. Ten days later I reached New York, where I remained
for a day or two and then proceeded westward. In St. Louis I met some of
the persons interested in my business. There the whole transaction took
such form that a final settlement depended wholly upon the agreement
between a certain man and myself; but, fortunately for the fate of this
narrative, the man was not in St. Louis. He was one of those wealthy
so-called "kings" which abound in America--in this case a "coal king." I
was told that he possessed a really palatial residence in St.
Louis--where he _did not_ dwell; and a less pretentious dwelling
directly in the coal-fields, where, for the most of his time, he _did_
reside. I crossed the Mississippi River into Southern Illinois, and very
soon found him. He was a plain, honest business man; we did not split
hairs, and within a week I had in my pocket London exchange for
something like L20,000, he had in his pocket a transfer of my interest
in certain coal-fields and a certain railroad, and we were both
satisfied.
And now, having explained how I came to be in surroundings to me so
strange, any further mention of business, or of money interests, shall
not, in the course of this narrative, again appear.
I had arrived at the town of Bellevue, in Southern Illinois, on a bright
June morning, and housed myself in an old-fashioned, four-story brick
hotel, the Loomis House, in which the proprietor, a portly, ruddy-faced,
trumpet-voiced man, assigned to me an apartment--a spacious corner
room, with three windows looking upon the main thoroughfare and two upon
a side street, and a smaller room adjoining.
[Illustration: _The_ LOOMIS HOUSE.]
Here, even before the time came when I might have returned to England
had I so desired, I acquired quite a home-like feeling. The first two
days of my stay, as I had travelled rapidly and was somewhat wearied, I
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