equivalent for the dollars of the white man's marriage settlement. Oh, I
know. There's an eternal wall between the races. If I could do it, Jeff,
I'd put a torch to every white college that a redman has ever set foot
inside. Why don't you leave us alone,' he says, 'to our own ghost-dances
and dog-feasts, and our dingy squaws to cook our grasshopper soup and
darn our moccasins?'
"'Now, you sure don't mean disrespect to the perennial blossom entitled
education?' says I, scandalized, 'because I wear it in the bosom of my
own intellectual shirt-waist. I've had education,' says I, 'and never
took any harm from it.'
"'You lasso us,' goes on Little Bear, not noticing my prose insertions,
'and teach us what is beautiful in literature and in life, and how to
appreciate what is fine in men and women. What have you done to me?'
says he. 'You've made me a Cherokee Moses. You've taught me to hate the
wigwams and love the white man's ways. I can look over into the promised
land and see Mrs. Conyers, but my place is - on the reservation.'
"Little Bear stands up in his chief's dress, and laughs again. 'But,
white man Jeff,' he goes on, 'the paleface provides a recourse. 'Tis a
temporary one, but it gives a respite and the name of it is whiskey.'
And straight off he walks up the path to town again. 'Now,' says I in my
mind, 'may the Manitou move him to do only bailable things this night!'
For I perceive that John Tom is about to avail himself of the white
man's solace.
"Maybe it was 10:30, as I sat smoking, when I hear pit-a-pats on
the path, and here comes Mrs. Conyers running, her hair twisted up
any way, and a look on her face that says burglars and mice and the
flour's-all-out rolled in one. 'Oh, Mr. Peters,' she calls out, as they
will, 'oh, oh!' I made a quick think, and I spoke the gist of it out
loud. 'Now,' says I, 'we've been brothers, me and that Indian, but I'll
make a good one of him in two minutes if - '
"'No, no,' she says, wild and cracking her knuckles, 'I haven't seen Mr.
Little Bear. 'Tis my - husband. He's stolen my boy. Oh,' she says, 'just
when I had him back in my arms again! That heartless villain! Every
bitterness life knows,' she says, 'he's made me drink. My poor little
lamb, that ought to be warm in his bed, carried of by that fiend!'
"'How did all this happen?' I ask. 'Let's have the facts.'
"'I was fixing his bed,' she explains, 'and Roy was playing on the hotel
porch and he drives up to the steps. I heard Roy scream, and ran out. My
husband had him in the buggy then. I begged him for my child. This is
what he gave me.' She turns her face to the light. There is a crimson
streak running across her cheek and mouth. 'He did that with his whip,'
she says.
"'Come back to the hotel,' says I, 'and we'll see what can be done.'
"On the way she tells me some of the wherefores. When he slashed her
with the whip he told her he found out she was coming for the kid, and
he was on the same train. Mrs. Conyers had been living with her brother,
and they'd watched the boy always, as her husband had tried to steal him
before. I judge that man was worse than a street railway promoter. It
seems he had spent her money and slugged her and killed her canary bird,
and told it around that she had cold feet.
"At the hotel we found a mass meeting of five infuriated citizens
chewing tobacco and denouncing the outrage. Most of the town was asleep
by ten o'clock. I talks the lady some quiet, and tells her I will take
the one o'clock train for the next town, forty miles east, for it is
likely that the esteemed Mr. Conyers will drive there to take the cars.
'I don't know,' I tells her, 'but what he has legal rights; but if I
find him I can give him an illegal left in the eye, and tie him up for
a day or two, anyhow, on a disturbal of the peace proposition.'
"Mrs. Conyers goes inside and cries with the landlord's wife, who is
fixing some catnip tea that will make everything all right for the poor
dear. The landlord comes out on the porch, thumbing his one suspender,
and says to me:
"'Ain't had so much excitements in town since Bedford Steegall's wife
swallered a spring lizard. I seen him through the winder hit her with
the buggy whip, and everything. What's that suit of clothes cost you you
got on? 'Pears like we'd have some rain, don't it? Say, doc, that Indian
of yorn's on a kind of a whizz to-night, ain't he? He comes along just
before you did, and I told him about this here occurrence. He gives a
cur'us kind of a hoot, and trotted off. I guess our constable 'll have
him in the lock-up 'fore morning.'
"I thought I'd sit on the porch and wait for the one o'clock train. I
wasn't feeling saturated with mirth. Here was John Tom on one of his
sprees, and this kidnapping business losing sleep for me. But then, I'm
always having trouble with other people's troubles. Every few minutes
Mrs. Conyers would come out on the porch and look down the road the way
the buggy went, like she expected to see that kid coming back on a white
pony with a red apple in his hand. Now, wasn't that like a woman? And
that brings up cats. 'I saw a mouse go in this hole,' says Mrs. Cat;
'you can go prize up a plank over there if you like; I'll watch this
hole.'
"About a quarter to one o'clock the lady comes out again, restless,
crying easy, as females do for their own amusement, and she looks
down that road again and listens. 'Now, ma'am,' says I, 'there's no
use watching cold wheel-tracks. By this time they're halfway to - '
'Hush,' she says, holding up her hand. And I do hear something coming
'flip-flap' in the dark; and then there is the awfulest war-whoop ever
heard outside of Madison Square Garden at a Buffalo Bill matinée. And up
the steps and on to the porch jumps the disrespectable Indian. The lamp
in the hall shines on him, and I fail to recognize Mr. J. T. Little
Bear, alumnus of the class of '91. What I see is a Cherokee brave, and
the warpath is what he has been travelling. Firewater and other things
have got him going. His buckskin is hanging in strings, and his
feathers are mixed up like a frizzly hen's. The dust of miles is on his
moccasins, and the light in his eye is the kind the aborigines wear. But
in his arms he brings that kid, his eyes half closed, with his little
shoes dangling and one hand fast around the Indian's collar.
"'Pappoose!' says John Tom, and I notice that the flowers of the white
man's syntax have left his tongue. He is the original proposition in
bear's claws and copper color. 'Me bring,' says he, and he lays the kid
in his mother's arms. 'Run fifteen mile,' says John Tom - 'Ugh! Catch
white man. Bring pappoose.'
"The little woman is in extremities of gladness. She must wake up that
stir-up trouble youngster and hug him and make proclamation that he is
his mamma's own precious treasure. I was about to ask questions, but I
looked at Mr. Little Bear, and my eye caught the sight of something in
his belt. 'Now go to bed, ma'am,' says I, 'and this gadabout youngster
likewise, for there's no more danger, and the kidnapping business is not
what it was earlier in the night.'
"I inveigled John Tom down to camp quick, and when he tumbled over
asleep I got that thing out of his belt and disposed of it where the eye
of education can't see it. For even the football colleges disapprove of
the art of scalp-taking in their curriculums.
"It is ten o'clock next day when John Tom wakes up and looks around. I
am glad to see the nineteenth century in his eyes again.
"'What was it, Jeff?' he asks.
"'Heap firewater,' says I.
"John Tom frowns, and thinks a little. 'Combined,' says he directly,
'with the interesting little physiological shake-up known as reversion
to type. I remember now. Have they gone yet?'
"'On the 7:30 train,' I answers.
"'Ugh!' says John Tom; 'better so. Paleface, bring big Chief
Wish-Heap-Dough a little bromo-seltzer, and then he'll take up the
redman's burden again.'"
[Illustration: Emigrants' Camp (An early drawing by O. Henry)]
HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW
[Originally published in _Munsey's Magazine_, December,
1908.]
"But can thim that helps others help thimselves!"
- Mulvaney.
This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas
Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer
_Andador_ which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the
Land of Always Afternoon. William was remaining, and he favored me with
a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade cast
by the Bodega Nacional.
As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already written
the story; but as he had compressed it to an eight-word sentence, I have
become an expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with apologies
to him and best regards to _Terence_.
II
"Don't you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats and
starched collars?" I asked him. "You seem to be a handy man and a man of
action," I continued, "and I am sure I could find you a comfortable job
somewhere in the States."
Ragged, shiftless, barefooted, a confirmed eater of the lotos, William
Trotter had pleased me much, and I hated to see him gobbled up by the
tropics.
"I've no doubt you could," he said, idly splitting the bark from a
section of sugar-cane. "I've no doubt you could do much for me. If every
man could do as much for himself as he can for others, every country in
the world would be holding millenniums instead of centennials."
There seemed to be pabulum in W. T.'s words. And then another idea came
to me.
I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories - cotton, or
sugar, or A. A. sheetings, or something in the commercial line. He was
vulgarly rich, and therefore reverenced art. The artistic temperament of
the family was monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother James would
honor my slightest wish. I would demand from him a position in cotton,
sugar, or sheetings for William Trotter - something, say, at two hundred
a month or thereabouts. I confided my beliefs and made my large
propositions to William. He had pleased me much, and he was ragged.
While we were talking, there was a sound of firing guns - four or five,
rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction
of the cuartel, which is a kind of makeshift barracks for the soldiers
of the republic.
"Hear that?" said William Trotter. "Let me tell you about it.
"A year ago I landed on this coast with one solitary dollar. I have the
same sum in my pocket to-day. I was second cook on a tramp fruiter; and
they marooned me here early one morning, without benefit of clergy, just
because I poulticed the face of the first mate with cheese omelette at
dinner. The fellow had kicked because I'd put horseradish in it instead
of cheese.
"When they threw me out of the yawl into three feet of surf, I waded
ashore and sat down under a palm-tree. By and by a fine-looking white
man with a red face and white clothes, genteel as possible, but somewhat
under the influence, came and sat down beside me.
"I had noticed there was a kind of a village back of the beach, and
enough scenery to outfit a dozen moving-picture shows. But I thought, of
course, it was a cannibal suburb, and I was wondering whether I was to
be served with carrots or mushrooms. And, as I say, this dressed-up man
sits beside me, and we become friends in the space of a minute or two.
For an hour we talked, and he told me all about it.
"It seems that he was a man of parts, conscientiousness, and
plausibility, besides being educated and a wreck to his appetites. He
told me all about it. Colleges had turned him out, and distilleries had
taken him in. Did I tell you his name? It was Clifford Wainwright. I
didn't exactly catch the cause of his being cast away on that particular
stretch of South America; but I reckon it was his own business. I asked
him if he'd ever been second cook on a tramp fruiter, and he said no; so
that concluded my line of surmises. But he talked like the encyclopedia
from 'A - Berlin' to 'Trilo - Zyria.' And he carried a watch - a silver
arrangement with works, and up to date within twenty-four hours, anyhow.
"'I'm pleased to have met you,' says Wainwright. 'I'm a devotee to the
great joss Booze; but my ruminating facilities are unrepaired,' says
he - or words to that effect. 'And I hate,' says he, 'to see fools trying
to run the world.'
"'I never touch a drop,' says I, 'and there are many kinds of fools; and
the world runs on its own apex, according to science, with no meddling
from me.'
"'I was referring,' says he, 'to the president of this republic. His
country is in a desperate condition. Its treasury is empty, it's on the
verge of war with Nicamala, and if it wasn't for the hot weather the
people would be starting revolutions in every town. Here is a nation,'
goes on Wainwright, 'on the brink of destruction. A man of intelligence
could rescue it from its impending doom in one day by issuing the
necessary edicts and orders. President Gomez knows nothing of
statesmanship or policy. Do you know Adam Smith?'
"'Lemme see,' says I. 'There was a one-eared man named Smith in Fort
Worth, Texas, but I think his first name was - '
"'I am referring to the political economist,' says Wainwright.
"'S'mother Smith, then,' says I. 'The one I speak of never was
arrested.'
"So Wainwright boils some more with indignation at the insensibility of
people who are not corpulent to fill public positions; and then he tells
me he is going out to the president's summer palace, which is four miles
from Aguas Frescas, to instruct him in the art of running steam-heated
republics.
"'Come along with me, Trotter,' says he, 'and I'll show you what brains
can do.'
"'Anything in it?' I asks.
"'The satisfaction,' says he, 'of redeeming a country of two hundred
thousand population from ruin back to prosperity and peace.'
"'Great,' says I. 'I'll go with you. I'd prefer to eat a live broiled
lobster just now; but give me liberty as second choice if I can't be in
at the death.'
"Wainwright and me permeates through the town, and he halts at a
rum-dispensary.
"'Have you any money?' he asks.
"'I have,' says I, fishing out my silver dollar. 'I always go about with
adequate sums of money.'
"'Then we'll drink,' says Wainwright.
"'Not me,' says I. 'Not any demon rum or any of its ramifications for
mine. It's one of my non-weaknesses.'
"'It's my failing,' says he. 'What's your particular soft point?'
"'Industry,' says I, promptly. 'I'm hard-working, diligent, industrious,
and energetic.'
"'My dear Mr. Trotter,' says he, 'surely I've known you long enough
to tell you you are a liar. Every man must have his own particular
weakness, and his own particular strength in other things. Now, you will
buy me a drink of rum, and we will call on President Gomez.'"
III
"Well, sir," Trotter went on, "we walks the four miles out, through a
virgin conservatory of palms and ferns and other roof-garden products,
to the president's summer White House. It was blue, and reminded you of
what you see on the stage in the third act, which they describe as 'same
as the first' on the programs.
"There was more than fifty people waiting outside the iron fence that
surrounded the house and grounds. There was generals and agitators and
épergnes in gold-laced uniforms, and citizens in diamonds and Panama
hats - all waiting to get an audience with the Royal Five-Card Draw.
And in a kind of a summer-house in front of the mansion we could see
a burnt-sienna man eating breakfast out of gold dishes and taking his
time. I judged that the crowd outside had come out for their morning
orders and requests, and was afraid to intrude.
"But C. Wainwright wasn't. The gate was open, and he walked inside and
up to the president's table as confident as a man who knows the head
waiter in a fifteen-cent restaurant. And I went with him, because I had
only seventy-five cents, and there was nothing else to do.
"The Gomez man rises from his chair, and looks, colored man as he was,
like he was about to call out for corporal of the guard, post number
one. But Wainwright says some phrases to him in a peculiarly lubricating
manner; and the first thing you know we was all three of us seated at
the table, with coffee and rolls and iguana cutlets coming as fast as
about ninety peons could rustle 'em.
"And then Wainwright begins to talk; but the president interrupts him.
"'You Yankees,' says he, polite, 'assuredly take the cake for assurance,
I assure you' - or words to that effect. He spoke English better than you
or me. 'You've had a long walk,' says he, 'but it's nicer in the cool
morning to walk than to ride. May I suggest some refreshments?' says he.
"'Rum,' says Wainwright.
"'Gimme a cigar,' says I.
"Well, sir, the two talked an hour, keeping the generals and equities
all in their good uniforms waiting outside the fence. And while I
smoked, silent, I listened to Clifford Wainwright making a solid
republic out of the wreck of one. I didn't follow his arguments with
any special collocation of international intelligibility; but he had Mr.
Gomez's attention glued and riveted. He takes out a pencil and marks
the white linen tablecloth all over with figures and estimates and
deductions. He speaks more or less disrespectfully of import and export
duties and custom-house receipts and taxes and treaties and budgets and
concessions and such truck that politics and government require; and
when he gets through the Gomez man hops up and shakes his hand and says
he's saved the country and the people.
"'You shall be rewarded,' says the president.
"'Might I suggest another - rum?' says Wainwright.
"'Cigar for me - darker brand,' says I.
"Well, sir, the president sent me and Wainwright back to the town in a
victoria hitched to two flea-bitten selling-platers - but the best the
country afforded.
"I found out afterward that Wainwright was a regular beachcomber - the
smartest man on the whole coast, but kept down by rum. I liked him.
"One day I inveigled him into a walk out a couple of miles from the
village, where there was an old grass hut on the bank of a little river.
While he was sitting on the grass, talking beautiful of the wisdom of
the world that he had learned in books, I took hold of him easy and tied
his hands and feet together with leather thongs that I had in my pocket.
"'Lie still,' says I, 'and meditate on the exigencies and irregularities
of life till I get back.'
"I went to a shack in Aguas Frescas where a mighty wise girl named
Timotea Carrizo lived with her mother. The girl was just about as nice
as you ever saw. In the States she would have been called a brunette;
but she was better than a brunette - I should say she was what you might
term an écru shade. I knew her pretty well. I told her about my friend
Wainwright. She gave me a double handful of bark - calisaya, I think it
was - and some more herbs that I was to mix with it, and told me what
to do. I was to make tea of it and give it to him, and keep him from
rum for a certain time. And for two weeks I did it. You know, I liked
Wainwright. Both of us was broke; but Timotea sent us goat-meat and
plantains and tortillas every day; and at last I got the curse of drink
lifted from Clifford Wainwright. He lost his taste for it. And in the
cool of the evening him and me would sit on the roof of Timotea's
mother's hut, eating harmless truck like coffee and rice and stewed
crabs, and playing the accordion.
"About that time President Gomez found out that the advice of C.
Wainwright was the stuff he had been looking for. The country was
pulling out of debt, and the treasury had enough boodle in it for him
to amuse himself occasionally with the night-latch. The people were
beginning to take their two-hour siestas again every day - which was the
surest sign of prosperity.
"So down from the regular capital he sends for Clifford Wainwright and
makes him his private secretary at twenty thousand Peru dollars a year.
Yes, sir - so much. Wainwright was on the water-wagon - thanks to me and
Timotea - and he was soon in clover with the government gang. Don't
forget what done it - calisaya bark with them other herbs mixed - make a
tea of it, and give a cupful every two hours. Try it yourself. It takes
away the desire.
"As I said, a man can do a lot more for another party than he can for
himself. Wainwright, with his brains, got a whole country out of trouble
and on its feet; but what could he do for himself? And without any
special brains, but with some nerve and common sense, I put him on his
feet because I never had the weakness that he did - nothing but a cigar
for mine, thanks. And - "
Trotter paused. I looked at his tattered clothes and at his deeply
sunburnt, hard, thoughtful face.
"Didn't Cartright ever offer to do anything for you?" I asked.
"Wainwright," corrected Trotter. "Yes, he offered me some pretty good
jobs. But I'd have had to leave Aguas Frescas; so I didn't take any of
'em up. Say, I didn't tell you much about that girl - Timotea. We rather
hit it off together. She was as good as you find 'em anywhere - Spanish,
mostly, with just a twist of lemon-peel on top. What if they did live in
a grass hut and went bare-armed?
"A month ago," went on Trotter, "she went away. I don't know where to.
But - "
"You'd better come back to the States," I insisted. "I can promise you
positively that my brother will give you a position in cotton, sugar, or
sheetings - I am not certain which."
"I think she went back with her mother," said Trotter, "to the village
in the mountains that they come from. Tell me, what would this job you
speak of pay?"
"Why," said I, hesitating over commerce, "I should say fifty or a
hundred dollars a month - maybe two hundred."
"Ain't it funny," said Trotter, digging his toes in the sand, "what a
chump a man is when it comes to paddling his own canoe? I don't know. Of
course, I'm not making a living here. I'm on the bum. But - well, I wish
you could have seen that Timotea. Every man has his own weak spot."
The gig from the _Andador_ was coming ashore to take out the captain,
purser, and myself, the lone passenger.
"I'll guarantee," said I confidently, "that my brother will pay you
seventy-five dollars a month."
"All right, then," said William Trotter. "I'll - "
But a soft voice called across the blazing sands. A girl, faintly
lemon-tinted, stood in the Calle Real and called. She was
bare-armed - but what of that?
"It's her!" said William Trotter, looking. "She's come back! I'm
obliged; but I can't take the job. Thanks, just the same. Ain't it funny
how we can't do nothing for ourselves, but we can do wonders for the
other fellow? You was about to get me with your financial proposition;
but we've all got our weak points. Timotea's mine. And, say!" Trotter
had turned to leave, but he retraced the step or two that he had taken.
"I like to have left you without saying good-bye," said he. "It kind of
rattles you when they go away unexpected for a month and come back the
same way. Shake hands. So long! Say, do you remember them gunshots we
heard a while ago up at the cuartel? Well, I knew what they was, but I
didn't mention it. It was Clifford Wainwright being shot by a squad of
soldiers against a stone wall for giving away secrets of state to that
Nicamala republic. Oh, yes, it was rum that did it. He backslided and
got his. I guess we all have our weak points, and can't do much toward
helping ourselves. Mine's waiting for me. I'd have liked to have that
job with your brother, but - we've all got our weak points. So long!"
IV
A big black Carib carried me on his back through the surf to the ship's
boat. On the way the purser handed me a letter that he had brought for
me at the last moment from the post-office in Aguas Frescas. It was from
my brother. He requested me to meet him at the St. Charles Hotel in New
Orleans and accept a position with his house - in either cotton, sugar,
or sheetings, and with five thousand dollars a year as my salary.
When I arrived at the Crescent City I hurried away - far away from the
St. Charles to a dim _chambre garnie_ in Bienville Street. And there,
looking down from my attic window from time to time at the old, yellow,
absinthe house across the street, I wrote this story to buy my bread and
butter.
"Can thim that helps others help thimselves?"
[Illustration: "Can the horse run?" (cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)]
THE MARIONETTES
[Originally published in _The Black Cat_ for April, 1902,
The Short Story Publishing Co.]
The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a
prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the
street. The time was two o'clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch
of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.
A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and
carrying something in one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the
black alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured
air that is linked with conscious authority. The hour, the alley's musty
reputation, the pedestrian's haste, the burden he carried - these easily
combined into the "suspicious circumstances" that required illumination
at the officer's hands.
The "suspect" halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the
flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with
a rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into
a side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the
policeman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the
name "Charles Spencer James, M. D." The street and number of the address
were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even
curiosity. The policeman's downward glance at the article carried in the
doctor's hand - a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small
silver mountings - further endorsed the guarantee of the card.
"All right, doctor," said the officer, stepping aside, with an air of
bulky affability. "Orders are to be extra careful. Good many burglars
and hold-ups lately. Bad night to be out. Not so cold, but - clammy."
With a formal inclination of his head, and a word or two corroborative
of the officer's estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his
somewhat rapid progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted
his professional card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case
as vouchers for his honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those
officers seen fit, on the morrow, to test the evidence of that card
he would have found it borne out by the doctor's name on a handsome
doorplate, his presence, calm and well dressed, in his well-equipped
office - provided it were not too early, Doctor James being a late
riser - and the testimony of the neighborhood to his good citizenship,
his devotion to his family, and his success as a practitioner the two
years he had lived among them.
Therefore, it would have much surprised any one of those zealous
guardians of the peace could they have taken a peep into that immaculate
medicine case. Upon opening it, the first article to be seen would have
been an elegant set of the latest conceived tools used by the "box
man," as the ingenious safe burglar now denominates himself. Specially
designed and constructed were the implements - the short but powerful
"jimmy," the collection of curiously fashioned keys, the blued drills
and punches of the finest temper - capable of eating their way into
chilled steel as a mouse eats into a cheese, and the clamps that fasten
like a leech to the polished door of a safe and pull out the combination
knob as a dentist extracts a tooth. In a little pouch in the inner side
of the "medicine" case was a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now half
empty. Underneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few
handfuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred
and thirty dollars.
To a very limited circle of friends Doctor James was known as "The Swell
'Greek.'" Half of the mysterious term was a tribute to his cool and
gentlemanlike manners; the other half denoted, in the argot of the
brotherhood, the leader, the planner, the one who, by the power and
prestige of his address and position, secured the information upon which
they based their plans and desperate enterprises.
Of this elect circle the other members were Skitsie Morgan and Gum
Decker, expert "box men," and Leopold Pretzfelder, a jeweller downtown,
who manipulated the "sparklers" and other ornaments collected by the
working trio. All good and loyal men, as loose-tongued as Memnon and as
fickle as the North Star.
That night's work had not been considered by the firm to have yielded
more than a moderate repayal for their pains. An old-style two-story
side-bolt safe in the dingy office of a very wealthy old-style dry-goods
firm on a Saturday night should have excreted more than twenty-five
hundred dollars. But that was all they found, and they had divided
it, the three of them, into equal shares upon the spot, as was their
custom. Ten or twelve thousand was what they expected. But one of the
proprietors had proved to be just a trifle too old-style. Just after
dark he had carried home in a shirt box most of the funds on hand.
Doctor James proceeded up Twenty-fourth Street, which was, to all
appearance, depopulated. Even the theatrical folk, who affect this
district as a place of residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had
accumulated upon the street; puddles of it among the stones received the
fire of the arc lights, and returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid
spangles. A captious wind, shower-soaked and chilling, coughed from the
laryngeal flues between the houses.
As the practitioner's foot struck even with the corner of a tall brick
residence of more pretension than its fellows the front door popped
open, and a bawling negress clattered down the steps to the pavement.
Some medley of words came from her mouth, addressed, like as not, to
herself - the recourse of her race when alone and beset by evil. She
looked to be one of that old vassal class of the South - voluble,
familiar, loyal, irrepressible; her person pictured it - fat, neat,
aproned, kerchiefed.
This sudden apparition, spewed from the silent house, reached the bottom
of the steps as Doctor James came opposite. Her brain transferring
its energies from sound to sight, she ceased her clamor and fixed her
pop-eyes upon the case the doctor carried.
"Bress de Lawd!" was the benison the sight drew from her. "Is you a
doctor, suh?"
"Yes, I am a physician," said Doctor James, pausing.
"Den fo' God's sake come and see Mister Chandler, suh. He done had a fit
or sump'n. He layin' jist like he wuz dead. Miss Amy sont me to git a
doctor. Lawd knows whar old Cindy'd a skeared one up from, if you, suh,
hadn't come along. Ef old Mars' knowed one ten-hundredth part of dese
doin's dey'd be shootin' gwine on, suh - pistol shootin' - leb'm feet
marked off on de ground, and ev'ybody a-duellin'. And dat po' lamb, Miss
Amy - "
"Lead the way," said Doctor James, setting his foot upon the step, "if
you want me as a doctor. As an auditor I'm not open to engagements."
The negress preceded him into the house and up a flight of thickly
carpeted stairs. Twice they came to dimly lighted branching hallways. At
the second one the now panting conductress turned down a hall, stopping
at a door and opening it.
"I done brought de doctor, Miss Amy."
Doctor James entered the room, and bowed slightly to a young lady
standing by the side of a bed. He set his medicine case upon a chair,
removed his overcoat, throwing it over the case and the back of the
chair, and advanced with quiet self-possession to the bedside.
There lay a man, sprawling as he had fallen - a man dressed richly in the
prevailing mode, with only his shoe removed; lying relaxed, and as still
as the dead.
There emanated from Doctor James an aura of calm force and reserve
strength that was as manna in the desert to the weak and desolate among
his patrons. Always had women, especially, been attracted by something
in his sick-room manner. It was not the indulgent suavity of the
fashionable healer, but a manner of poise, of sureness, of ability to
overcome fate, of deference and protection and devotion. There was an
exploring magnetism in his steadfast, luminous brown eves; a latent
authority in the impassive, even priestly, tranquillity of his smooth
countenance that outwardly fitted him for the part of confidant and
consoler. Sometimes, at his first professional visit, women would tell
him where they hid their diamonds at night from the burglars.
With the ease of much practice, Doctor James's unroving eyes estimated
the order and quality of the room's furnishings. The appointments were
rich and costly. The same glance had secured cognizance of the lady's
appearance. She was small and scarcely past twenty. Her face possessed
the title to a winsome prettiness, now obscured by (you would say)
rather a fixed melancholy than the more violent imprint of a sudden
sorrow. Upon her forehead, above one eyebrow, was a livid bruise,
suffered, the physician's eye told him, within the past six hours.
Doctor James's fingers went to the man's wrist. His almost vocal eyes
questioned the lady.
"I am Mrs. Chandler," she responded, speaking with the plaintive
Southern slur and intonation. "My husband was taken suddenly ill about
ten minutes before you came. He has had attacks of heart trouble
before - some of them were very bad." His clothed state and the late hour
seemed to prompt her to further explanation. "He had been out late;
to - a supper, I believe."
Doctor James now turned his attention to his patient. In whichever of
his "professions" he happened to be engaged he was wont to honor the
"case" or the "job" with his whole interest.
The sick man appeared to be about thirty. His countenance bore a look of
boldness and dissipation, but was not without a symmetry of feature and
the fine lines drawn by a taste and indulgence in humor that gave the
redeeming touch. There was an odor of spilled wine about his clothes.
The physician laid back his outer garments, and then, with a penknife,
slit the shirt-front from collar to waist. The obstacles cleared, he
laid his ear to the heart and listened intently.
"Mitral regurgitation?" he said, softly, when he rose. The words ended
with the rising inflection of uncertainty. Again he listened long; and
this time he said, "Mitral insufficiency," with the accent of an assured
diagnosis.
"Madam," he began, in the reassuring tones that had so often allayed
anxiety, "there is a probability - " As he slowly turned his head to face
the lady, he saw her fall, white and swooning, into the arms of the old
negress.
"Po' lamb! po' lamb! Has dey done killed Aunt Cindy's own blessed child?
May de Lawd' stroy wid his wrath dem what stole her away; what break dat
angel heart; what left - "
"Lift her feet," said Doctor James, assisting to support the drooping
form. "Where is her room? She must be put to bed."
"In here, suh." The woman nodded her kerchiefed head toward a door.
"Dat's Miss Amy's room."
They carried her in there, and laid her on the bed. Her pulse was faint,
but regular. She passed from the swoon, without recovering
consciousness, into a profound slumber.
"She is quite exhausted," said the physician. "Sleep is a good remedy.
When she wakes, give her a toddy - with an egg in it, if she can take it.
How did she get that bruise upon her forehead?"
"She done got a lick there, suh. De po' lamb fell - No, suh" - the old
woman's racial mutability swept her into a sudden flare of indignation
- "old Cindy ain't gwineter lie for dat debble. He done it, suh. May
de Lawd wither de hand what - dar now! Cindy promise her sweet lamb she
ain't gwine tell. Miss Amy got hurt, suh, on de head."
Doctor James stepped to a stand where a handsome lamp burned, and turned
the flame low.
"Stay here with your mistress," he ordered, "and keep quiet so she will
sleep. If she wakes, give her the toddy. If she grows any weaker, let me
know. There is something strange about it."
"Dar's mo' strange t'ings dan dat 'round here," began the negress, but
the physician hushed her in a seldom employed peremptory, concentrated
voice with which he had often allayed hysteria itself. He returned to
the other room, closing the door softly behind him. The man on the bed
had not moved, but his eyes were open. His lips seemed to form words.
Doctor James bent his head to listen. "The money! the money!" was what
they were whispering.
"Can you understand what I say?" asked the doctor, speaking low, but
distinctly.
The head nodded slightly.
"I am a physician, sent for by your wife. You are Mr. Chandler, I am
told. You are quite ill. You must not excite or distress yourself at
all."
The patient's eyes seemed to beckon to him. The doctor stooped to catch
the same faint words.
"The money - the twenty thousand dollars."
"Where is this money? - in the bank?"
The eyes expressed a negative. "Tell her" - the whisper was growing
fainter - "the twenty thousand dollars - her money" - his eyes wandered
about the room.
"You have placed this money somewhere?" - Doctor James's voice was
toiling like a siren's to conjure the secret from the man's failing
intelligence - "Is it in this room?"
He thought he saw a fluttering assent in the dimming eyes. The pulse
under his fingers was as fine and small as a silk thread.
There arose in Doctor James's brain and heart the instincts of his other
profession. Promptly, as he acted in everything, he decided to learn the
whereabouts of this money, and at the calculated and certain cost of a
human life.
Drawing from his pocket a little pad of prescription blanks, he
scribbled upon one of them a formula suited, according to the best
practice, to the needs of the sufferer. Going to the door of the inner
room, he softly called the old woman, gave her the prescription, and
bade her take it to some drug store and fetch the medicine.
When she had gone, muttering to herself, the doctor stepped to the
bedside of the lady. She still slept soundly; her pulse was a little
stronger; her forehead was cool, save where the inflammation of the
bruise extended, and a slight moisture covered it. Unless disturbed, she
would yet sleep for hours. He found the key in the door, and locked it
after him when he returned.
Doctor James looked at his watch. He could call half an hour his own,
since before that time the old woman could scarcely return from her
mission. Then he sought and found water in a pitcher and a glass
tumbler. Opening his medicine case he took out the vial containing the
nitroglycerine - "the oil," as his brethren of the brace-and-bit term it.
One drop of the faint yellow, thickish liquid he let fall in the
tumbler. He took out his silver hypodermic syringe case, and screwed
the needle into its place, Carefully measuring each modicum of water in
the graduated glass barrel of the syringe, he diluted the one drop with
nearly half a tumbler of water.
Two hours earlier that night Doctor James had, with that syringe,