The Billings gazette., 1899-03-17
VILLAINS IN NOVELS.
HOW SOME or ThE FAMOUS AUTHORS
DISPOSE OF THEM.

3l@.s& DISPOSE Of IHEM.
Examples OF the GrewsOme Fate,
That Have Been Devised by the
writers of Fiction For Their Men
and Women of Crime.
Dickens is responsible for most en-
Pertaining gallery of rogues. Quilp (the
distorted dwarf) and Rogue Riderhoo6
(the rufian) alike terminate their ex.
istence in watery grave Ralph
Nickleby, Gashford and Jonas ChuzEle-
wit take their own lives, while Uriah
Heep, Squeers and Littimer leave their
country for their country's good in
garbs gratuitously provided by govern
ment and freely embossed with ''broad
arrows.
Perhaps the most grewsome of Dick
ems death scenes is that provided by
the face of the ever smiling Carker, into
which the irresistible locomotive is inn
pressed, probably for the first time in
the history Of fiction.
Scott g villains most frequently meet
with violent deaths at the hands of 9TH
suicide on the eve Of discovery and dis
grace. But the sensation lover has
nevertheless been catered for in the
death of Anthony Foster, the accom-
plice of the poisoner Richard Varney.
This miserable wretch is depicted as
hiding from his pursuers in secret
cell The entrance to this is fastened
by means of spring lock, Of which,
however, he omits TO retain the key,
with the consequence that he eventually
perishes miserably Of mingled fear and
famine
Lytton's Might and Morning" gives
us the coiner Gawtrey, who meets his
fate at the hands of the Paris police,
from whom he is attempting to escape
side Of house to perish miserably.
This idea of falling from height is by
no means confined to Lytton. 1t is util-
lied by Anthony Hope in "Phroso'
and by Stanley Weyman in Under the
Red Robe, where the villain and his
victim fall from a lofty bridge into a
seething torrent below. In this way,
too, Conan Doyle killed the immortal
Sherlock Holmes, who. fast locked in a
struggle with ''the greatest villain Of
them all, falls over an Alpine preci-
pice.
Wilkie Collins brings his principal
villain, the double faced, calculating
Count Fcsco, to an ignoble end. he dis
appearing for time, only to reappear
upon the CHASTITY shelves of the Paris
morgue. A still more CHASTITY fate is
that Of the she fiend, Gagool, immortal
lied by Rider Haggard in king Solo
mons Mines. Having conducted
Quatermain, Curtis and party into
that celebrated monarch's rock hewn
treasury, which is guarded by pom
derous rising door of living rock. she
touches a secret spring, by means of
which the door begins once more to de-
scend with a slow but irresistible mo-
tion.
While the Englishmen are sizing up
the jewelry she makes off through the
rapidly lessening aperture. Her progress
is temporarily arrested by the unfortu-
nate girl Foulata, whom she stabs in
order to free herself. Hurriedly scram-
bling over the threshold. she is caught
by the inexorable force which she has
herself put in motion, and realistic
ally dramatic 'scrunch'' puts an end
forever to the Vaccinations of this
truly horrible old woman.
Svengali, like Scott's Templar in
'Ivanhoe, dies from an excessive
mental strain acting upon the heart,
while, to hark back to the days of the
bluff Doctor of Fleet Street, the gentle,
genial hearted Goldsmith is contented
to reform the rakish Squire Thornhill
in order that he may at last become the
exemplary spouse Of the gentle Olivia
around whom he wove that entrancing-
ly simple narrative. ''The Vicar of
Wakefield.
Finally. the palm for writing lurid'
may fairly be accorded Harrison Aims
worth for his thrilling disposal of the
two ghoulish wretches who haunt the
pages of his celebrated novel, .Old
Saint Paul's.' The creatures who bat
tened upon the spoils of the dead and
dying during the great plague were
wont to stow their i'll gotten gains in
one of the cathedral vaults. The cathe-
dral taking fire, they hasten thither in
order to rescue their precious hoard.
The greed of gain, however, misleads
them into eojourning just moment
too long.
AS they turn to leave the now sitting
vault they see that a thin silvery
L. H.
stairs, by which alone they can gain
an exit. Even as they look it thickens
perceptibly, and before they can escape
the whole stairway is blocked, and the
vault about them begins to fill with the
silvery liquid. When it is added that
the harmless looking fluid is nothing
more or less than the molten lead from
the roof and windows of the cathedral,
it will become apparent that even Mr..
Gilbert's sssOmething with boiling oil