Merriwether Buck had lost all his money. Also his sisters', and his cousins', and his aunts'.
“At two o'clock sharp I will shoot myself,” said Merriwether Buck.
He caressed a ten-shot automatic pistol in the right-hand pocket of his coat as he loitered up Broadway. He was light-headed. He had had nothing to eat for forty-eight hours.
“How I hate you!” said Merriwether Buck, comprehensively to the city in general. “If nine pistol shots would blot you out, I'd do it!”
Very melodramatic language, this, for a well-brought-up young man; and thus indicating that he was light-headed, indeed. And as for the city, it continued to roar and rattle and honk and rumble and squeak and bawl and shuffle and thunder and grate in the same old way—supreme in its confidence that nine pistol shots could not, by any possibility, blot it out. That is one of the most disconcerting things about a city; you become enraged at it, and the city doesn't even know it. Unless you happen to be Nero it is very difficult to blot them out satisfactorily.
It was one o'clock. Merriwether Buck crossed the street at Herald Square and went over and stood in front of the big newspaper office. A portly young fellow with leaden eyes came out of the building and stood meditatively on the curb with his hands in the pockets of clothing that clamored shrilly of expense.
“Excuse me,” said Merriwether Buck, approaching him, “but are you, by any chance, a reporter?”
“Uh,” grunted the young man, frigidly affirmative.
“I can put you in the way of a good story,” said Merriwether Buck, obeying an impulse: We may live anonymously but most of us like to feel that it will make a little stir when we die.
“Huh,” remarked the reporter.
“At two o'clock,” persisted Merriwether Buck, “I am going to shoot myself.”
The reporter looked bored; his specialty was politics.
“Are you anybody in particular?” he asked, discouragingly.
“No,” confessed Merriwether Buck. It didn't seem to be worth while to mention that he was one of the Bucks of Bucktown, Merriwether County, Georgia.
“I thought,” said the reporter, with an air of rebuke, “that you said it was agoodstory.”
“I am, at least, a human being,” said Merriwether Buck, on the defensive.
“They're cheap, hereabout,” returned the other, in the manner of a person who has estimated a good many assorted lots.
“You are callous,” said Merriwether Buck. “Callous to the soul! What are you, but—but—Why, you are New York incarnate! That is what you are! And I think I will shoot you first!”
“I don't want to be a spoil sport,” said the reporter, “but I'm afraid I can't allow it. I have a rather important assignment.”
Merriwether played with the little automatic pistol in his pocket. It was not any regard for the consequences that deterred him from shooting the portly young man. But in his somewhat dizzy brain a fancy was taking shape; a whim worked in him. He drew his hand empty from the pocket, and that reporter came up out of the grave.
“I am hungry,” said Merriwether Buck, in obedience to the whim.
“Now that you remind me of it,” said the other, his lack-luster eyes lighting up a little, “so am I!” And he crossed the street and disappeared through the swinging doors of a café.
Callous, leaden-eyed young man! epitome of this hard town! So cried the spirit of Merriwether Buck; and then he spoke aloud, formulating his idea:
“New York, you are on trial. You are in the balances. I give you an hour. If I'm asked to lunch by two o'clock, all right. If not, I will kill myself, first carefully shooting down the most prosperous citizens, and as many of 'em as I can reach. New York, it's up to you!”
The idea of playing it out that way tickled him to the heart; he had always loved games of chance. One man or woman out of all the prosperous thousands in the streets might save another prosperous half-dozen; might save as many as he could otherwise reach with nine shots from his pistol, for he would reserve the tenth for himself. Otherwise, there should be a sacrifice; he would offer up a blood atonement for the pagan city's selfishness. Giddy and feverish, and drunk with the sense of his power to slay, he beheld himself as a kind of grotesque priest—and he threw back his head and laughed at the maniac conceit.
A woman who was passing turned at the sound, and their eyes met. She smiled. Merriwether Buck was good to look at. So was she. She was of that type of which men are certain at once, without quite knowing why; while women are often puzzled, saying to themselves: “After all, it may be only her rings.”
“Pardon me,” said Merriwether Buck, overtaking her, “but you and I are to lunch together, aren't we?”
“I like your nerve!” said she. And she laughed. It was evident that she did like it. “Where?” she asked briefly, falling into step beside him.
“Wherever you like,” said Merriwether. “I leave that to you, as I'm depending on you to pay the check.”
She began a doubtful laugh, and then, seeing that it wasn't a joke, repeated:
“I like your nerve!” And it was now evident that she didn't like it.
“See here,” he said, speaking rapidly, “my clothes look all right yet, but I'm broke. I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat since day before yesterday. I'm not kidding you; it's true. You looked like a good fellow to me, and I took a chance. Hunger” (as he spoke it he seemed to remember having heard the remark before), “hunger makes one a judge of faces; I gambled on yours.”
She wasn't complimented; she regarded him with a manner in which scorn and incredulity were blended; Merriwether Buck perceived that, for some reason or other, she was insulted.
“Don't,” she said, “don't pull any of that sentimental stuff on me. I thought you was a gentleman!”
And she turned away from him. He took a step in pursuit and started to renew his plea; for he was determined to play his game square and give the directing deities of the city a fair chance to soften whatsoever random heart they would.
“Beat it!” she shrilled, “beat it, you cheap grafter, or I'll call a cop!”
And Merriwether beat it; nor' by nor'west he beat it, as the street beats it; as the tides beat. The clock on the Times building marked 1.20 as he paused by the subway station there. In forty minutes—just the time it takes to hook your wife's dress or put a girdle round the world—Merri-wether Buck would be beating it toward eternity, shooing before him a flock of astonished ghosts of his own making. Twenty minutes had gone by and whatever gods they be that rule New York had made no sign; perhaps said gods were out at lunch or gone to Coney Island. Twice twenty minutes more, and——
But no. It is all over now. It must be. There emerges from the subway station one who is unmistakably a preacher. The creases of his face attest a smiling habit; no doubt long years of doing good have given it that stamp; the puffs of white hair above the temples add distinction to benignity.
“I beg your pardon,” said Merriwether Buck, “but are you a minister?”
“Eh?” said the reverend gentleman, adjusting a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses. “Yes,” he said pleasantly, “I am,” and he removed the glasses and put them back on once again, as he spoke. Somehow, the way he did it was a benediction.
“I am hungry,” said Merriwether.
“Dear me!” said the reverend gentleman. “I shouldn't have thought it.”
“Will you ask me to lunch?”
“Eh?” It was an embarrassing question; but the gentleman was all good nature. His air indicated that he did not intend to let his own embarrassment embarrass Merriwether too much. “My dear man, you know—really——” He placed a shapely hand upon Merriwether's shoulder, rallyingly, almost affectionately, and completed the sentence with a laugh.
“It's charity I'm asking for,” said Merriwether.
“Oh!” For some reason he seemed vastly relieved. “Have you been—but, dear me, are you sure you aren't joking?”
“Yes; sure.”
“And have you—ahem!—have you sought aid from any institution; any charitable organization, you know?”
“But no,” said Merriwether, who had instinctively eliminated charitable organizations, free lunches and police stations from the terms of his wager, “I thought——”
“My, my, my,” hummed the reverend gentleman, interrupting him. He produced his card case and took a card therefrom. “I am going,” he said, writing on the card with a pencil, “to give you my card to the secretary of the Combined Charities. Excellent system they have there. You'll be investigated, you know,” he said brightly, as if that were an especial boon he was conferring, “your record looked into—character and antecedents and all that sort of thing!”
“And fed?” asked Merriwether.
“Oh, indeed!” And he handed over the card as if he were giving Merriwether the keys to the city—but not too gross and material a city either; Merriwether felt almost as if he were being baptized.
“But,” said Merriwether Buck, “I wantedyouto feed me!”
“Oh, my dear man!” smiled the minister, “Iamdoing it, you know. I'm a subscriber—doallmy charitable work this way. Saves time. Well, good-by.” And he nodded cheerily.
“But,” said Merriwether Buck, “aren't you interested in me personally? Don't you want to hear my story?”
“Story? Story?” hummed the other. “Indeed, but they'll learn your story there! They have the most excellent system there; card system; cases and case numbers, you know—Stories, bless you! Hundreds and hundreds of stories! Big file cases! You'll be number so-and-so. Really,” he said, with a beaming enthusiasm, “they have awonderfulsystem. Well, good-by!” There was a touch of finality in his pleasant tone, but Merriwether caught him by the sleeve.
“See here,” he said, “haven't you even got anycuriosityabout me? Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find timeyourselfto listen to the tale?”
“Time,” said the reverend gentleman, “timeis just what I feel the lack of—feel it sadly, at moments like these, sadly.” He sighed, but it was an optimistic, good-humored sort of sigh. “But I tell you what you do.” He drew forth another card and scribbled on it. “If you want to tell me your story so very badly—(dear me, what remarkable situations the clerical life lets one in for!)—soverybadly, take this card to my study about 3.30. You'll find my stenographer there and you can dictate it to her; she'll type it out. Yes, indeed, she'll type it out! Well,good-by!”
And with a bright backward nod he was off.
It was 1.25. There were thirty-five minutes more of life. Merriwether Buck gave the reverend gentleman's cards to a seedy individual who begged from him, with the injunction to go and get himself charitably Bertilloned like a gentleman and stop whining, and turned eastward on Forty-second Street. If you have but thirty-five minutes of life, why not spend them on Fifth Avenue, where sightly things abound?—indeed if you happen to be a homicidal maniac of some hours standing, like Merriwether Buck, Fifth Avenue should be good hunting ground; the very place to mark the fat and greasy citizens of your sacrifice.
Time, the only patrician, will not step lively for the pert subway guards of human need, nor yet slacken pace for any bawling traffic cop of man's desire; he comes of an old family too proud to rush, too proud to wait; a fine old fellow with a sense of his own value. Time walked with Merriwether Buck as he loitered up Fifth Avenue, for the old gentleman loves to assist personally at these little comedies, sometimes; with Death a hang-dog third. Not even a fly-cop took note of the trio, although several, if they robbed a jewelry store or anything like that, would tell the reporters later that they had noticed something suspicious at the time. And the patron deities of New York City might have been over in Hoboken playing pinochle for all the heedtheytook.
Which brings us to Sixty-fifth Street and 1.58 o'clock and the presence of the great man, all at once.
When Merriwether Buck first saw him, Meriwether Buck gasped. He couldn't believe it. And, indeed, it was a thing that might not happen again this year or next year or in five years—J. Dupont Evans, minus bulwark or attendant, even minus his habitual grouch, walking leisurely toward him like any approachable and common mortal. Merriwether Buck might well be incredulous. But it was he; the presentment of that remarkable face has been printed a hundred thousand times; it is as well known to the world at large as Uncle Pete Watson's cork leg is on the streets of Prairie Centre, Ill.; it is unmistakable.
To have J. Dupont Evans at the point of a pistol might almost intoxicate some sane and well-fed men, and Merriwether Buck was neither. J. Dupont Evans—the wealth of Croesus would be just one cracked white chip in the game he plays. But at this moment his power and his importance had been extraordinarily multiplied by circumstances. The chances of the street had tumbled down a half dozen banks—(well did Merriwether Buck know that, since it had ruined him)—and financial panic was in the air; an epochal and staggering disaster threatened; and at this juncture a president in no wise humble had publicly confessed his own impotence and put it up to J. Dupont Evans to avert, to save, to reassure.
Merriwether Buck had not dreamed of this; in the crook of his trigger finger lay, not merely the life of a man, but the immediate destiny of a nation.
He grasped the pistol in his pocket, and aimed it through the cloth.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked J. Dupont Evans, politely enough.
It was only a second before the man answered. But in that second Merriwether Buck, crazily exalted, and avid of the sensation he was about to create, had a swift vision. He saw bank after bank come crashing down; great railroad systems ruined; factories closed and markets stagnant; mines shut and crops ungathered in the fields; ships idle at the wharves; pandemonium and ruin everywhere.
“Huh?” said J. Dupont Evans, gruffly, removing an unlighted cigar from his mouth. He looked at Merriwether Buck suspiciously, and made as if to move on. But he thought better of it the next instant, evidently, for he pulled out a plain silver watch and said grudgingly: “Two minutes of two.” And then, in a tone less unpleasant, he asked: “Have you got a match, young man?”
Merriwether fumbled in his vest pocket. In a minute and a half he would perfunctorily ask this man for lunch, and then he would kill him. But he would give him a match first—for Merriwether Buck was a well-brought-up young man. As he fumbled he picked out the exact spot on the other's waistcoat where he would plant the bullet. But the idea of a man on the edge of the grave lighting a cigar tickled him so that he laughed aloud as he held out the matches.
“What can I do with these?” snorted J. Dupont Evans. “They are the sort that light only on their own box.” From his glance one might have gained the impression that he thought Merriwether Buck a fool.
“Great principle that,” said Merriwether Buck, cackling with hysteria. It was so funny that a dead man should want to smoke a cigar! He would let him play he was alive for fifty seconds longer.
“Principle?” said Evans. “Principle? What Principle?”
“Well,” said Merriwether, with the random argumentativeness of insanity, “itisa great principle. Apply that principle to some high explosive, for instance, and you have no more battleship flare-backs—no premature mine blasts——”
“Say,” the other suddenly interrupted, “are you an inventor?”
“Yes,” lied Merriwether Buck, glibly, although he had never given five seconds' thought to the subject of high explosives in his life. “That's how I know. I've invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite. But it won't explode by contact with fire, like powder. Won't explode with a jar, like dynamite. Won't freeze, like dynamite. Only one way to explode it—you've got to bring it into contact with a certain other chemical the same as scratching one of these matches on its own box.”
“The deuce, young man!” said the other. “There's a fortune in it! Is it on the market at all?”
“No,” said Merriwether Buck, raising his pistol hand slightly and thrusting it a bit forward, under the mask of his coat pocket, “no money to start it going.”
“Hum,” mused the other. “I tell you what you do, young man. You come along to lunch with me and we'll talk the thing over—money and all.”
And the directing deities of New York struck twice on all the city clocks, and striking, winked.
How I ever come to hit such a swell-looking house for a handout I never knew. Not that there was anything so gaudy about it, neither, as far as putting up a bluff at being a millionaire's mansion went, which I found out afterwards it was, or pretty near that at any rate. But it was just about the biggest house in that Illinois town, and it's mostly that kind o' place with them naked iron heathens in the front yard and a brick stable behind that it ain't no use to go up against unless you're looking for a lemon. If you need real food and need it sudden and ain't prospecting around town for no other kind of an opening you better make for the nearest public works like a canal being dug, or a railroad gang. Hit the little tin dinner buckets, men that does the unskilled labor on jobs like that, except Swedes and Dagos, knowing what it is to be up against it themselves now and then and not inclined to ask no fool questions.
Well, I went around to the back door, and Biddy Malone she lets me in. I found out that was her name afterwards, but as soon as I seen her face I guessed if her name wasn't Bridget it was Nora. It's all in the first look they give you after they open the door. If that look's right they're coming across and you'll get some kind of a surprise for your digestive ornaments and you don't need to make no fool breaks about sawing wood neither. I makes my little talk and Biddy she says come in; and into the kitchen I went.
“It's Minnesota you're working towards,” says Biddy, pouring me out a cup of coffee.
She was thinking of the wheat harvest where there's thousands makes for every fall. But not for me, I never did like to work for none of them Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians that gets into the field before daylight and stays at it so long the hired men got to milk the cows by moonlight. They got no sense of proportion, them Gusses and Oles ain't.
“I been across the river into I'way,” I says, “working at my trade, and I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more.”
“And what may your trade be?” says Biddy, sizing me up careful. I seen I made a hit somehow or she wouldn't of asked me in the first place was I going to the wheat harvest, but would of just supposed I was a hobo, which I ain't. I got a lot of trades when I want to use one, and as a regular thing I rather work at one of them for a while, too, but can't stand it very long on account of not feeling right to stay in one place too long, especially in the summer. When I seen I made a hit with Biddy I thinks I'll hand her a good one she never heard tell of before.
“I'm an agnostic by trade,” I says. I spotted that one in a Carnegie library one time and that was the first chance I ever had to spring it.
“I see,” says Biddy. And she opened her eyes and mouth to once. I seen she didn't see, but I didn't help her none. She would of rather killed herself than let on she didn't see. Most of the Irish is like that whether they is kitchen mechanics or what. After a while she says, pouring me out some more coffee and handing me a little glass jar full of watermelon rinds boiled in with molasses and things, she says:
“And ain't that the dangerous thing to work at, though!”
“It is,” I says, and says nothing further.
She sets down and folds her arms like she was thinking about it, watching my hands all the time as if she was looking for scars where something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Finally she says with a sigh:
“Sure, and it's dangerous! Me brother Patrick was kilt at it in the old country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!”
She was putting up a stiff front, and for a minute I don't know whether she's stringing me or I'm stringing her. The Irish is like that. So being through eating I says:
“Did it fly up and hit him?”
She looks at me scornful and tosses her chin up and says:
“No. He fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what one of them is, after!”
“What is it, then?” says I.
“Then youdon'tknow,” says she; and the next thing I knew I'd been eased out the back door and she was grinning at me through the crack of it with superiousness all over her face.
So I was walking slow around towards the front thinking to myself how the Irish was a great people; and shall I go to Chicago and maybe get a job sailing on the lakes till navigation closes, or shall I go back to Omaha and work in the railroad yards again, which I don't like much, or shall I go on down to Saint Looey just to see what's doing. And then I thinks: “Billy, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave you asleep with nothing over you but a barb wire fence this morning, and what are you going to do now? First thing you know you'll be a regular hobo, which some folks can't distinguish you ain't now.” And then I thinks I'll go down to the river and take a swim and lazy around in the grass a while and think things over and maybe something will happen. Anyways, you can always join the army. And just when I was thinking that I got by one of them naked stone heathens that was squirting water out of a sea shell and a guy comes down the front steps on the jump and nabs me by the coat collar. I seen he was a doctor or else a piano tuner by the satchel he dropped when he grabbed me.
“Did you come out of this house?” he says.
“I did,” I says, wondering what next.
“Back in you goes,” he says, marching me towards the front steps. “They've got smallpox in there.”
I liked to a-jumped loose when he said that, but he twisted my coat collar and dug his thumbs into my neck and I seen they wasn't no use pulling back. If a guy that's knocking around mixes up with one of the solid citizens the magistrate's going to give him the worst of it on principle. I ain't no hobo and never was, and never traveled much with none of them professional bums, but there has been times I had hard work making some people believe it. I seen I couldn't jerk away and I seen I couldn't fight and so I went along. He rung the door bell, and I says:
“Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, doc.”
“No?” says he. And the door opened, and in we went. The girl that opened it, she drew back when she seen me.
“Tell Professor Booth that Dr. Wilkins wants to see him,” says the doc, not letting loose of me.
And we stood there saying nothing till the per-fessor come in, which he did slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he stopped and took off a pair of thick glasses that was split in two like a mended show case, so he could see me better, and he says:
“What is that you have there, Dr. Wilkins?”
“A guest for you,” says Dr. Wilkins, grinning all over himself. “I caught him leaving the house, and you being under quarantine and me being secretary to the board of health, I'll have to ask you to keep him here until we can get Miss Margery on her feet again,” he says. Or they was words to that effect, as the lawyers asks you.
“Dear me,” says Perfessor Booth, kind o' helplesslike.
And he put his glasses on and took them off again, and come up close and looked at me like I was one of them amphimissourian specimens in a free museum. “Dear me,” he says, looking worrieder and worrieder all the time. And then he went to the foot of the stairs and pipes out in a voice that was so flat-chested and bleached-out it would a-looked just like him if you could a-saw it—“Estelle,” he says, “O Estelle!”
I thinks the perfessor is one of them folks that can maybe do a lot of high-class thinking, but has got to have some one tell 'em what the answer is. But I doped him out wrong as I seen later on.
Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me shiver, while the doctor and the per-fessor jaws about whose fault it is the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening she says to the perfessor: “You had better go back to your laboratory.” And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him.
“What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?” the kid asks her.
“What wouldyousuggest, William Dear?” asks his aunt. I ain't feeling very comfortable, and I was getting all ready just to natcherally bolt out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't be no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox. Fur I had ricolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsory medical advice, me being temporary engaged in repair work on the city pavements through a mistake in the police court.
William Dear looks at me when his aunt put it up to him just as solemn as if it was the day of judgment and his job was separating the fatted calves from the goats and the prodigals, and he says:
“Don't you think, Aunt Estelle, we better cut his hair and bathe him and get him some clothes the first thing?”
“William is my friend,” thinks I, and I seen right off he was one of them serious kids that you can't tell what is going on inside their heads.
So she calls James, which was the butler, and James he buttled me into a bathroom the like of which I never see before; and he buttled me into a suit of somebody's clothes and into a room at the top of the house next to his'n, and then he come back and buttled a razor and a comb and brush at me; him being the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he informs me that me not being respectable I will eat alone in the kitchen after the servants is done. People has made them errors about me before. And I looks around the room and I thinks to myself that this is all right so far as it has went. But is these four walls, disregarding the rest of the house, to be my home, and them only? Not, thinks I, if little Billy knows it. It was not me that invited myself to become the guest of this family; and if I got to be a guest I be damned if I don't be one according to Hoyle's rules of etiquette or I'll quit the job. Will I stay in this one room? Not me. Suppose the perfessor takes it next? And then William Dear? And suppose when William Dear gets through with it he gives it to Aunt Estelle? Am I to waste the golden hours when, maybe, my country needs me, just for accommodation? But I thinks it's all right for a day or two and then I'll leave my regrets and go on down to Saint Looey or somewheres. And then James he buttles back into the room like a funeral procession and says the perfessor says he wants to see me in the laboratory.
That was a big room and the darndest looking room I ever see, and it smelt strong enough to chase a Hungarian pig sticker out of a Chicago slaughter house. It smelt like a drug store had died of old age and got buried in a glue factory. I never seen so much scientific effusions and the things to hold 'em in mixed up in one place before. They must of been several brands of science being mixed up there all to once. They was dinky little stoves, they was glass jars of all shapes and sizes labeled with Dago names standing around on shelves like in one of them Dutch delicatessen stores; they was straight glass tubes and they was glass tubes that had the spinal contortions; they was bones and they was whole skeletons, and they was things that looked like whisky stills; they was a bookcase full of bugs and butterflies against one wall; they was chunks of things that might have been human for all I know floating around in vats like pickled pork in a barrel; they was beer schooners with twisted spouts to them; they was microscopes and telescopes and twenty-seven shapes and sizes of knives; they was crates of stuff that was unpacked and crates that wasn't; and they was tables with things just piled and spilled over 'em, every which way, and the looks of everything was dirty on account of the perfessor not allowing any one in there but himself and Miss Estelle and William. And whether you knowed anything about them different brands of science or not you could see the perfessor was one of them nuts that's always starting to do things and then leaving them go and starting something else. It looked as if the operating room of an emergency hospital and a blacksmith shop and a people's free museum and a side show full of freaks, snakes and oneeyed calves had all gone out and got drunk together, all four of them, and wandered into a cremation plant to sleep off that souse; and when they woke up they couldn't tell which was which nor nothing else except they had a bad taste in their mouth and was sentenced to stay there unseparated and unhappy and unsociable in each other's company for evermore. And every time you turned around you stepped on something new, and if you saw a rat or a lizard or a spider you better let him alone for how was you going to tell he was dead or alive till he crawled up you?
The perfessor, he was setting over by a window, and he pushed out another chair for me and he says sit down.
“You are a gentleman of leisure?” he says, with a grin; or words to that effect.
“I work at that sometimes,” I told him, “although it ain't rightly my trade.”
“Biddy Malone says you're an agnostic,” he says, looking at me close. It won't do, I thinks, to spring none of them agnostic gags on him, so I says nothing.
“I'm one myself,” he says.
“Regular,” I asks him, “or just occasional?” He kind o' grins again, and I thinks: “Billy, you're making a hit somehow.”
Then he says, like he was apologizing to someone about something: “Being interested in sociology and the lower classes in general, I sent for you to get some first-hand observations on your train of mind,” he says. Or it was words like them. “I'm a sociologist,” he says.
I seen I made a hit before and I thinks I'll push my luck, so I swells up and says:
“I'm a kind of sociologist myself.”
“Hum,” he says, thoughtful-like. “Indeed? And your itinerant mode of subsistence is persecuted in pursuit of your desire to study knowledge of the human specimen and to observe wisdom as to the ways they live in the underworld,” he says. Or it was words to that effect. I wish I'd a-had him wrote them words down. Then I'd a-had 'em just right now. I seen a bunch of good words help a man out of a hole before this. Words has always been more or less my admiration; you can never tell what one of them long gazaboos is going to do till you spring it on somebody. So I says:
“That's me, perfessor. I likes to float around and see what's doing.”
Then he tells me that sociology was how the criminal classes and the lower classes in general was regarded by the scientific classes, only it's a difficult brand of science to get next to, he says, on account of the lower classes like me being mostly broke out with environment he says, unbeknownst even to theirselves. He's not what you would call a practicing sociologist all the time, being afraid, I suppose, he would catch it if he got too close to it; he's just one of the boys that writes about it, so as both the lower classes and the scientific classes won't make no bad breaks, he says.
But what he wants of me just now ain't got nothing to do with that, he says. He's been making experiments with all kinds of canned victuals, that is put up with acid that eats holes in your stomach, he says, and so long as I'm going to be a guest he's going to mix some of them acids in my chuck and weigh me after each meal. He says I'll start slow and easy and there won't be nothing dangerous about it. He's been practicing on William Dear and Miss Estelle, which I suppose it was the acids got into her smile, but he's going to give them a rest, them being naturally delicate. I ain't got no kick, I thinks, and I'm going to leave this place in a day or two anyhow. Besides, I always was intrusted in scientific things and games of chance of all kinds.
But I didn't leave in a few days, and the first thing I knew I'd been there a week. I had pretty much the run of the house, and I eat my meals with Biddy Malone, the only uncomfortable feature of being a guest being that Miss Estelle, soon as she found out I was an agnostic (whatever brand of science that is, which I never found out to this day, just having come across the word accidental), she begun to take charge of my religion and intellectuals and things like that. She used to try to cure the perfessor, too, but she had to give it up for a bad job, Biddy says.
Biddy, she says Mrs. Booth's been over to her mother's while this smallpox has been going on; which I hadn't knowed they was a Mrs. Booth before. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. They's been a lot of talk, anyhow, Biddy says, about Mrs. Booth and some musician fellow around town. But Biddy she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if it was so who could blame her?
Things ain't right around that house since Miss Estelle's been there, which the perfessor's science, though worrying to the nerves, ain't cut much ice till about four years ago when Miss Estelle come.
But Mrs. Booth she's getting where she can't stand it much longer, Biddy says. I didn't blame her none for feeling sore about things.
You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes and chemical profusions, notallthe time. And maybe when she'd ask the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her did she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it was a mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when they are scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a coal mine ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor had just picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could a-got used to any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this week the perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing sparrows all over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology and he'd be trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get worried about the nigger problem in the south, and settle it all up scientific and explain how ethnology done the whole damn thing, lynchings and all, and it never could be straightened out till it was done scientific. Every new gag that come out the perfessor took up with it, Biddy says; one time he'd be fussing around with gastronomy through a telescope and the next he'd be putting astrology into William's breakfast food.
They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own selves if they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say what went into William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him brought up scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes on William, which was how William come to take so little interest in life after a while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he didn't have no sense about his money, which had been left to him when he was a sure enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts and everything begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss Estelle she took to running his money herself; but she seen likewise that when it come to writing articles about William's insides and intellectuals the perfessor he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but Biddy wouldn't let him try none of them laboratory gags on her though she just as soon be hypnotized and telepathed as not just to humor him. Miss Estelle, she eat what the perfessor give her, and after a while she says she'll take charge of the children's education herself, their mother being a frivolous young thing, and it was too bad, she says, a genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a noble woman who would a-understood his great work for humanity and sympathized with it. So while the perfessor filled William and Miss Margery up on new discovered food and weighed 'em and probed 'em and sterilized 'em and did everything else but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss Estelle she laid out courses of reading matter for them and tended to their religion and intellectuals and things like that. I reckon they never was two kids more completely educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked much on Miss Margery yet, her being younger than William. But William took it hard and serious, being more like his father's family, and it made bumps all over his head. I reckon by the time William was ten years old he knew more than a whole high school, and every time that boy cut his finger he just naturally bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and whenever the perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change treatment. But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to his aunt, I says:
“Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too much bringin' up to the square inch.”
She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I seen she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of scientific sort of a way, and she says in a minute:
“What do you suggest?”
“Why,” says I, “what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in the dirt now and then, and yell and holler.”
She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss Estelle was there.
“We have decided that there is something in what you say,” says the perfessor. “Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now and then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take a suggestion,” he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole lot more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more human.
But what do you think—I never was so jarred in my life as I was the next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and then the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt on to it. And then she sent for William.
“William Dear,” she says, “we have decided that what you need is more recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth of your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like a child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic.” Or it was words to that effect.
But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just looked at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen William come; and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen William come. And then he says very serious:
“Aunt Estelle,” he says, “I shallnotfrolic. I have come to that place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that refuses to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology lesson and the Euclid lesson with sand.” Those was not William's exact words, which he always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he meant. William was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had no idea of. And he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean dirt had to be throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt again.
That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't blame her none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own children, too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and they hardly daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room because of germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all right, he's just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, but Miss Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself the boss of that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been boss and never let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so bad. Which shows that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't so much difference if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation.
The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks.
So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: “Where is my dinky clothes to eat dinner in?” I says.
James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all right, I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he goes and asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, but looking, too, like I done something to please her.
“Is it true,” she says, “that already the effects of a refined environment has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune in ancestral hereditary?” she says. Or they was words to that effect.
“It is true,” I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel kind of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect of them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of them open-face vests over it.
So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, and most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got hold of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest book! It was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in real talk down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what it was about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's never been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been going against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there ain't nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli stories I read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart movie or a Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man of that story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross circling around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It wasn't for nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on everybody gets as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands when another savings bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. And the snakes wiggles all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one time when they cleaned out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns gets its drinking water from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die and can't make it; and their ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and they go by him in the moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a frosty morning out of an engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to that story, too. I bet the fellow that doped that out had been on an awful bat. I like to of talked with that nut. They was a fellow named Looney Hogan use to have them phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what he saw after he had 'em. Looney was awful good company and I use to like to hear him tell what he seen and what he thinks he seen, but he walked off of a grain barge up to Duluth when he was asleep one night and he never did wake up.
Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the nuts that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two guys can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has seen different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long time there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I wakes up sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room that opens right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors like is on to a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, and she says like she was choked up:
“But Imustsee them before we go, Henry.”
And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house.
“But, my God!” he says, “suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!”
I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.
“You mean supposeyouget it,” she says. I like to of seen the look she must of give him to fit in with the way she says thatyou. He didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, and she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if Ididget it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?”
“Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way I feel.Youknow that.” He said it quick enough, all right, just the way they do in a show, but it soundedtoo muchlike it does on the stage to of suited me ifI'dbeen her. I seen folks overdo them little talks before this.
I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? And even if she tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it.”
And then I thinks, suppose sheisketched at it? What of it? Ain't a woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?
Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated me purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's coming to him, nohow. And as furher, you got to let some people find out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where doIcome in at?”
But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, and she's begging off fur more time ginerally.
Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She was a peach.
And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and years world without end.
Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it, and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that, too. And just about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me.
They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the room, with their back to it.
Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair does. Will she squeak, I wonders?
“Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller.
Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.
“A fool?” asks Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going with you at all, then?”
That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and part of a crumpled-up coat tail.
“But Iamgoing with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up just like she is going to put her arms around him.
But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes like he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.
“Excuse me,” says the perfessor.
They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and having a fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at them.
But after a while Jane, she says:
“Well, now youknow!What are you going to do about it?”
Henry, he starts to say something, too. But——
“Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “Youaren't going to do anything.” Or they was words to that effect.
“Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else Jane will think the worse of him, “I am——”
“Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute or two.Youdon't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and my wife.”
When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised herself. But she says nothing, except:
“What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a little more, and says: “Whatcanyou do, Frederick?”
Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:
“There's quite a number of things Icoulddo that would look bad when they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you forces it on to me.” Then he says:
“Youdidwant to see the children, Jane?”
She nodded.
“Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?”
The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and he didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the feller with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.”
Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:
“Youa better man?You?You think you've been a model husband just because you've never beaten me, don't you?”
“No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been a worse fool, maybe, than if Ihadbeaten you.” Then he turns to Henry and he says:
“Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory.
Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when thesearch us the femmcomes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to come back.
“Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly: “Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to working well—which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.”
Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek on the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was.
“Butyouknow which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not fair!”
“That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him and one for me.Youdon't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no talk.” Or they was words to that effect.
He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's between them three.” Beside, I want to see which one is going to get that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I been misjudging him all this time.
Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.
“I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of that kind.”
“Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. You're really themainparty to it.
“But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out these pills, one to him and then one to me.Youmust kill one or the other of us, or elseI'llkillhimthe other way. Andyouhad better pick one out for him, becauseIknow which is which. Or else let him pick one out for himself,” he says.
Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry inside.
Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: “Fur God's sake, spunk up some, and take one if itdoeskill you!” Then she says out loud: “Henry, if you die I will die, too!”
And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor. What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: “Mebby I better jump in now and stop this thing.” And then I thinks agin: “No, it is between them three and Providence.” Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's place I would of let them all off kind o' easy.
Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking.
The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he reaches over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the table. “A quarter past one,” he says. “Mr. Murray, are you going to make me shoot you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal,” he says. “It's up to you,” he says, “whether you want to take that pill and get your even chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way is sure, but looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any one,” he says. “Which?” And he pulls a gun.
Henry he looks at the gun.
Then he looks at the pill.
Then he swallows the pill.
The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He looks at the watch, and he looks at Henry. “Sixteen minutes past one,” he says. “Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two. I got the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals.”
And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his digestive ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em and swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops.
Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa.
“This is murder,” he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint.
“It's a dern short fifteen minutes,” I thinks to myself. “That perfessor must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes.”
When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He ketches her. “Sit up, Jane,” he says, with that Estelle look on to his face, “and let us have a talk.”
She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty has got. But she can't look away from him.
And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I justneededto fetch a yell. But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like he'dalwaysbeen there, and I'dalwaysbeen staring into that room, and the last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
“You're a murderer,” says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in that stare-eyed way. “You're amurderer,” she says, saying it like she was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one.
“Murder!” says the perfessor. “Did you think I was going to run any chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine woman like you, Jane,” he says.
Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her voice clucking like a hen does, and she says:
“It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was,” she says. Or they was words to that effect.
And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry. Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is foolish about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal better than to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. They will still be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't never forgive the lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be most any thing else and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's all off even if you can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never even looks at him.