“Who,” he asked, “who is yon gentle stranger with the telescopic eye and the self-folding figure? I failed to catch the name.”
“Miss Teasdale—a Miss Henny Teasdale.”
“Did you say Henny—or do my ears deceive me?”
“Yes; it’s short for Henrietta, I think.”
“And long for Hen. I’ll think that, if you don’t mind. If I’m not too inquisitive, might I make so bold as to inquire what brought her hither?”
“She came to tell me some—well, some things. She said she felt it to be her Christian duty to walk up here and tell me these things.”
“For example, what?”
“For one thing she thinks we make a mistake in——” Mrs. Bugbee, who appeared slightly flustered, left this sentence uncompleted and built a second one of fresh materials: “Clem, why is it that people have to be so narrow and so critical of other people’s motives and so everything?”
“I give it up. But to return to the lady whose fighting name is Henny?”
“Oh, yes! Well, she told me that quite a good many of the members of one of the congregations here rather resent the fact that the pastor of the other congregation is the chairman of my committee that’s getting up the Christmas entertainment. And they aren’t going to cooperate or let their children come either. There are two cliques, it seems, and they’re both awfully cliquey.”
“A common fault of cliques, I believe. And what else?”
“And she says some of the young people think our celebration is going to be too tame for them. So they’re planning to import special music from over at the junction and throw a jazz party, as they put it, on the same night. It seems there’s a barber over at the junction who plays the saxophone and he has an orchestra of four pieces; that’s the one they’re going to hire.”
“Every junction has a barber who plays the saxophone. But formerly the favored instrument was the guitar, though in exceptional cases the harmonica or mouth-organ might be preferred. Proceed, please; you interest me deeply.”
“And she says that there’s a good deal of curiosity—curiositywas the word she used—about our private lives. There actually seems to be a suspicion that we’re some sort of refugees or fugitives or something, and that we’re trying to ingratiate ourselves with the residents here in order to work some scheme on them later. At least she hinted that much. But this Miss Teasdale doesn’t share in this sentiment at all. She said so several times. She said she only came up as a friend tolet me know what was going on. She hasn’t any ax to grind herself, she says. She doesn’t believe in all this envy and jealousy, she says.”
“I don’t believe the ax is her favorite weapon. I seem to picture her in the privacy of the home circle brewing a great jorum of poison-ivy tea. Perchance she revealed more?”
“Quite a lot more. She says we’re being imposed on shamefully in regard to the prices we’re paying for things. She says we picked the wrong people to deal with and that if we’d just come to her first she could have saved us money. She says that Anna is charging us about three times what she’d expect from a neighbor for the same services. Still, I gather that there’s a sort of feud between her and Anna, so she may be biased. And she says that this man Talbot—”
“All of which reminds me. I had to order more firewood this morning. Due, I take it, to post-war conditions in Europe the price is now twelve dollars a cord. The egg market also shows an advance, influenced no doubt by disquieting advices from Morocco. Well, if we will meddle in world affairs we must pay the price.”
“I believe that practically was about all she said,” wound up Mrs. Bugbee. “Where’s my fur coat and muffler? I’ve got to hurry down to the Masonic Hall. I called a rehearsal for three o’clock and I’ll probably be late as it is.” Mrs. Bugbee lost her worried look. “I’m certain of one thing: I’m not going to bedisappointed in my Christmas carols. Not that they have such good voices. But such enthusiasm as all eight of them show! And how they’re looking forward to midnight of Christmas Eve! And how willing they are to practice!”
As the festival drew nearer, unforeseen complications ensued. Inspired by an affection which the holiday spirit had quickened, various persons back in New York chose to disregard the advertised views of the Bugbees touching on the overworked custom of exchanging gifts. Their hiding-place was known too, as now developed. By express and by parcel-post came packages done up in gay wrappings and bearing cards and sprigs of holly and inevitably containing the conventional remembrances, the customary loving messages. The opening of each box served to enhance an atmosphere of homesickness which was beginning to fill the Rousseau bungalow.
“Well, I’ve done the best I could,” wailed Mrs. Bugbee despairingly. “Of course we have to make some return for all this.” She indicated a litter of brilliant paper and parti-colored ribbon bindings on the floor about her.
“Why do we?” he countered, he having just returned from the settlement. “Those darned fools knew how we felt about this business.”
“Because we just do, that’s why! They’d never forgive us. So while you were gone I wrote out a telegram to Aunt Bessie and telephoned it down to thejunction. I gave Aunt Bessie the names of everybody who’d sent us something and told her what stores we have charge accounts at and begged her as a tremendous favor to get each one of them something, no matter what, and send it around to them. It wouldn’t have done any good to wire the stores direct—they’re too rushed to pay any attention. And poor Aunt Bessie will be up to her ears in her own Christmas shopping and of course it’s a dreadful imposition on her and of course she won’t have time to pick out suitable presents or anything. But what could I do?”
“I’ll tell you what you could have done,” said Mr. Bugbee, fixing an accusing eye upon his wife. “You could have dissuaded me from this mad folly, this wild impulse to flee to the wildwood for Christmas. Back there in October had you but done this our associates might even now be saying: ‘Poor Bugbee had a brain-storm but what did Bugbee’s little woman do? She saved him from himself, that’s what Bugbee’s little woman did!’ But no, woman-like, you fed the flames of my delusion. And now it’s too late to turn back. Madam, you have but yourself to blame, I refuse to offer you my pity. Anyhow, I need it all for personal use.”
“What else has happened now?” she asked in the resigned tone of one who is prepared for any tidings however grievous and hard to bear.
“I decline to furnish the harrowing details,” he replied. “Suffice it to say that one rift shows in theencompassing clouds. In certain local quarters our intentions may be misinterpreted, that I grant you; it would be wasting words to claim otherwise. But today, mark you, I struck the trail of at least one prospective beneficiary who’ll surely respond to our overtures with gratitude. He’s going to be our reward—perhaps our only one—for making this trip.”
“After certain recent experiences I’d love to meet him.”
“Your desire shall be gratified. Let me tell you about him: You remember that starved-looking shabby chap that we’ve seen several times plowing past here through the drifts on his way to the village or back again? And always alone?”
“Yes, I do. We were speaking of him yesterday, saying how forlorn he seemed and how solitary.”
“That’s our candidate. The name is Sisson. He came into the post-office an hour ago and I got a good look at him—at close range he’s even more melancholy than he is viewed from a distance—and after he was gone I asked a few discreet questions about him. He’s a mystery. About six weeks ago he moved into a tumble-down cabin about a mile up the mountain behind this clearing and he leads a sort of solitary hermit existence up there. Nobody ever goes to see him and he never comes to see anybody and nobody knows anything about him except that occasionally he gets an official-looking letter from Washington. The postmistress told me that much.”
“I believe I can guess.” Mrs. Bugbee’s voice warmed sympathetically. “He’s probably a poor shell-shocked veteran that has hid himself away on account of his nervous condition. And he’s been writing to the Government trying to get it to do something about his pension or his disability allowance or something—poor neglected hero! I just feel it that I’m right about him. You know yourself, Clem, how my intuition works sometimes?”
“Well, in a way I rather jumped at that conclusion too,” said Mr. Bugbee. “So I dusted out and overtook the nominee and introduced myself and walked along with him. As a matter of fact I just left him. I invited him in but he declined. He behaved as though he distrusted me, but before I quit I succeeded in getting him to promise faithfully that he’d drop in on us late on Christmas Eve. I realized that he wouldn’t care to show himself among the crowd down at the hall.”
“I think that’s a splendid arrangement,” applauded Mrs. Bugbee. “Just perfectly splendid! And the next thing is, what are we going to give him?”
“Not too much. We don’t want him to get the idea that we look on him as an object of charity. Just one timely, suitable small present—a token, if you get what I mean; that would be my notion.”
“Mine, too,” chorused Mrs. Bugbee. “But the question is, what?”
They had quite a little dispute over it. She votedfirst for a pair of military hair-brushes, the Herbert Ryders, of East Sixty-ninth Street, having sent Mr. Bugbee a pair and he being already the possessor of two other pairs. But as Mr. Bugbee pointed out, an offering even remotely suggestive of the military life possibly might recall unpleasant memories in the mind of one who had suffered in the Great War. So then she suggested that a box containing one-half dozen cakes of imported and scented violet soap might be acceptable; there was such a box among the gifts accumulating about the room. But, as Mr. Bugbee said, suppose he was sensitive? Suppose he took it as a personal reflection? They argued back and forth. Eventually Mr. Bugbee found an answer to the problem.
“I’m going to hand him my last full quart of old Scotch,” he announced with a gesture of broad generosity. “He’ll appreciate that, or I miss my guess.”
He had the comforting feeling of having made a self-sacrifice for the sake of a stranger. He had the redeemed feeling of one who means to go the absolute limit on behalf of his fellow man. For Mr. Bugbee had brought with him but three bottles of his treasured pre-Prohibition Scotch. And the first bottle was emptied and the second had been broached and half emptied and only the third precious survivor remained intact.
It was a lovely yet a poignant feeling to have.
On the night before Christmas it was raining. By morning probably the underfooting would be all one nice icy slickery glare but now everything was melting and running. As the Bugbees, man and wife, slopped along up the gentle slope leading from the highway to their front door they were exchanging remarks which had been uttered several times already on the homeward journey but each, with variations, was still repeating his, or as the case was, her contributions to the dialogue, just as persons will do when a subject for conversation happens to be one that lies close to the speakers’ heart.
“The little ones,” she was saying, “they almost repaid me for all the trouble we’ve been to and all the pains we’ve taken. Their glee was genuine. Sometimes, Clem, I think there ought to be a law against anybody celebrating Christmas who’s more than twelve years old—I mean celebrating it with gifts.”
“Second the motion!” His tone was grim. One might even say it was bitter.
“But some of these older ones—turning up their noses right before our eyes at the little presents that we’d bought for them. What did they expect—diamond bracelets? Do they think we’re made out of money?”
“Well, I’m not, for one. I settled Brother Talbot’s account for the past two weeks this afternoon. That man’s talents are wasted here. He ought to be operating a fleet of pirate ships.”
“There was one thing that I haven’t had the courage to tell you about yet.” She blurted the rest in a gulped staccato: “With me it was absolutely the last straw. And I’m ashamed of myself. But my heart was so set on the singing! That’s my only excuse for being so weak.”
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“Well, you know yourself, Clem, how hard I’ve worked at drilling those eight men and boys for my Christmas carols? And how I’ve explained to them over and over again about the meanings of all those beautiful Old World customs such as the English have? And I thought they’d caught the spirit—from the very first they seemed so inspired. But tonight—just a little while ago when you were busy with the tree—they took me aside. They said they wanted to tell me something. And Clem—they—they struck!”
“Struck for what?”
“For money. Said they wouldn’t sing a note unless I paid them for their back time.”
“And what did you do?”
“I paid them,” she confessed. “Five dollars apiece. That is, all but the leader. He—he got ten.”
Mr. Bugbee made no comment on this disclosure. But his silence fairly screamed at her. “Wipe your feet before you come into the house,” he said. He kicked the muddied snow off his boots and opened the door.
They entered where efforts had been made to createa showing of holiday cheer. There were greens about and a sprig of synthetic mistletoe dangled above the lintel, and on the mantel was a composition statuette of good Saint Nicholas, rotund and rosy and smiling a painted smile. In the act of crossing the threshold they were aware of the presence of a visitor. Very rigidly and rather with the air of being peevish for some reason, a lantern-jawed person stood in the middle of the floor.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Bugbee advancing to make the stranger welcome. “How do you do? It’s Mr. Sisson, isn’t it? My husband told me you were coming.”
“He said eleven o’clock.” Mr. Sisson’s voice was condemnatory. “It’s nearly twenty past.”
“I’m so sorry—we are a trifle late, aren’t we? Detained down in the Cove, you know.”
“Personally I alluz make it a point to be on time, myself.” Mr. Sisson accepted the outstretched hand of his hostess and shook it stiffly but he did not unbend. He aimed a sternly interrogative glance at Mr. Bugbee: “Whut business did you want to have with me?”
“No business,” explained that gentleman. “Pleasure, I hope. We asked you here so that we might wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”
“And to offer you a small remembrance,” supplemented Mrs. Bugbee. “And here it is—with our very best compliments.” She took from a side table a longish, roundish parcel enclosed in white tissue with ribbon bindings and a bit of imitation holly caught in thebow-knot at the top. She put it in his somewhat limp grasp.
Immediately though, his clutch on the object tightened. He fingered its contours. “Feels to me sort of like a bottle,” he opined.
“It is,” said the jovial Mr. Bugbee. “Open it and see.”
The recipient opened it. He tore away the festal wrappings, and held the contents to the light. His eye seemed to kindle. “Looks to me sort of like licker,” he said.
“That’s what it is.”
Mrs. Bugbee was hovering alongside awaiting the expected outburst of gratitude, puzzled though that it should be so long delayed.
“Mind ef I taste it right here?”
“Not at all.”
“Got a corkscrew handy?”
“I think I can locate one.”
“And a glass?”
Mrs. Bugbee brought a tumbler. Mr. Bugbee found a corkscrew.
Deftly Mr. Sisson unstoppered the bottle. Into the glass he poured a taste of the liquid. He did not invite them to share with him. There was about him no suggestion that he meant to make a loving-cup of it. He sipped briefly. “That’s sufficient—I jest wanted to make sure,” he stated. “This here is a stimilent containing’ more’n one-half of one percent alcohol by volume.”
“I should say it is. That Scotch was made back in—” He checked, for Mr. Sisson was behaving very peculiarly indeed.
Mr. Sisson was recorking the bottle and sliding it carefully into a side pocket of his overcoat. From other pockets he brought forth a revolver, a folded document of an official and formidable appearance, it having a seal upon its outermost side, and finally a clanking pair of very new looking, very shiny handcuffs. He laid these one by one upon a convenient table-top and next he cast a determined and confounding stare upon the startled faces of Mr. and Mrs. Bugbee.
The lady’s fascinated eyes were fixed for the moment upon the horrifying steeliness of those glinting cuffs, and spasmodically she thrust her hands wrist deep in her ulster pockets. It was evident that, be this daunting intruder’s purposes what they might, Mrs. Bugbee did not mean to be manacled without a struggle. But Mr. Bugbee stood unresistingly and blinked like a man coming out of a distressful trance and not sure yet that he is out.
“You’re both under arrest,” expounded Mr. Sisson. “Fur endeavorin’ to ply a third party with alcoholic stimilents.”
“But—but we gave it to you—of our own free will!” faltered Mrs. Bugbee.
“Givin’, sellin’ outright or barterin’, the law don’t recognize no difference. Anything you say further kinbe used ag’inst you. Still, I guess there’s evidence aplenty to convict. Prob’ly it’ll go the worse with you fur offerin’ it to an officer of the law. That’s whut I am—an officer of the law. Here’s my credentials to prove it. And ef you don’t believe me, here’s my badge.” He flipped back a lapel to display a large and silverish decoration pinned under the flap.
“You can’t do this outrageous thing to us,” declaimed Mr. Bugbee, now fully emerging from coma. His cheeks were blazing. “It’s incredible!”
“It’s done done,” said their accuser calmly. His manner became more menacing, his tone more emphatic. “Don’t think, young man, jest because I’m kind of a new hand at this line that you kin work any bluff on me. I’ve been studyin’ to go into the detective business fur quite some time, havin’ took a full course in the Unsleepin’ Eye Correspondence Detective College, Dayton, Ohio. After I got my diplomy I came on up here to perfect myself in my callin’. Then a new notion come over me and I took it up with the Government about gittin’ onto the revenue enforcement department.” He spoke on in the proud yet unboastful way of one who is sure his hearers will be interested in following the successive steps of a brilliant career. “I been writin’ back and forth fur quite a spell with them Washington authorities.”
“Oh!” The understanding exclamation popped from Mrs. Bugbee of its own accord.
“Whut’s that?” demanded Mr. Sisson.
“I—I only just said ‘oh,’” explained Mrs. Bugbee weakly.
“I thought so.” It was as though Mr. Sisson made a mental note of this admission to be incorporated into the testimony. “But it seems like the Government force is all full up at present. So only last week I got a commission from the county to do shadderin’ and hunt down these here Prohibition violators and I been workin’ on hidden clues ever since. I’m whut they call an independent secret operative. Ez it happens, though, you’re my first case—my first two cases I should say.
“Point is that now I’ve got you I don’t know whut to do with you. Can’t git you over to the county-seat tonight, late as ’tis and the roads the way they are. And tomorrer bein’ Christmas the judge won’t want to set to hold you fur trial. Prob’ly”—he caressed the handcuffs tentatively—“prob’ly I’ll have to keep you ez prisoners right here under guard fur the next forty-eight hours or so. Prob’ly that would be the best way. Whut do you think?”
Mr. Bugbee made a sign to Mrs. Bugbee that she should withdraw. She did so with backward apprehensive glances.
“My wife’s not trying to escape,” explained Mr. Bugbee. “She’s only going into the next room for a few minutes. She’s had a shock—in fact she’s had several shocks this evening.”
He waited until the latch clicked, then to their captor he said simply: “How much?”
“Which?”
“I think you got my meaning the first time. How much?”
“Looky here,” cried Mr. Sisson indignantly, “ef you’re aimin’ to question my honor lemme tell you I got a sacred reputation at stake.”
“That is exactly my aim. What is the current quotation on honor in this vicinity?”
“Oh, well, if you’re willin’ to talk reasonable, come on over here closer so’s nobody can’t overhear us.”
Five minutes later Mr. Bugbee went over and opened the hall door. “You can come out now,” he said. “Our Christmas guest has gone. And all is well.”
Mrs. Bugbee came out. She still was pale. “What—what did you do with him?” She asked it tremulously.
“I have just corrupted the noble soul of the only truly unselfish individual we have met to date in these mountains. I might add that corruption comes high hereabouts. City prices prevail.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Let us now give thanks for deliverance from a great peril. We ought to do more than just give thanks. How about a little Christmas gift from each to the other?”
“But we decided that this year we’d spend that money up here.” She winced.
“Circumstances warrant a redecision. Besides, I’m thinking of useful presents—presents which will bringjoy to both of us. A couple of those lovely light green railroad tickets back to New York! You give me one; I’ll give you one.”
“Oh, Clem!” She hugged him.
“Oh, Felice!” He hugged her. “Where’s that time-table? I saw a folder around here the other day. If we caught a morning train out of the junction tomorrow we might get in in time for the Baxters’ party tomorrow night. Everybody we know—and like—will be there.”
“But you know it’s a costume party—fancy dress. And we haven’t any costumes.”
Airily he gestured away her quavering objections. “Say, do you know one thing?” he said. “This place is incomplete. It needs a motto. If I had time to spare I’d write one out and stick it up as a souvenir of our visit. I’d write on it the words ‘E Pluribus Your’n,’ meaning: ‘It’s all for you, dear Rousseau, the Bugbees have had enough.’... Now then, if I could just find that time card? Oh, there it is, yonder behind the clock. We can put in the rest of the night packing, and bright and early tomor—”
He broke off, listening. From without came the advancing sound of slushy foot-treads in a considerable number.
The tramping drew nearer and ended just outside. Masculine voices were uplifted in song:
“Hark-k, the herald angels sing,Glor-y to the—”
“Hark-k, the herald angels sing,Glor-y to the—”
“Hark-k, the herald angels sing,Glor-y to the—”
“That ain’t right—wrong key!” they heard a dominating voice cutting in to check the vocal flow. “Git set fur a fresh start.”
“My Christmas minstrels,” said Mrs. Bugbee.
“Our little band of strikers,” murmured Mr. Bugbee. He hurried to the mantel, plucked something from it, then leaped nimbly thence to a front window and crouched behind its curtains, his posture tense. “Here’s where I also join the last-straw club,” said Mr. Bugbee softly to nobody in particular.
Once again the unseen troubadours essayed the opening measures of their serenade:
“Hark-k the herald angels sing,Glor-y to the new-born king,Peace on earth—”
“Hark-k the herald angels sing,Glor-y to the new-born king,Peace on earth—”
“Hark-k the herald angels sing,Glor-y to the new-born king,Peace on earth—”
Mr. Bugbee snatched a sash up and made a movement as of hurling a heavy object into the drizzling night. It was a heavy object, too, judging by the yelp of pain which followed its outward flight. “I’ll peace-on-earth you!” he said, closing the window.
A confusion of noises betokening a retreat died away in the distance.
“Did you throw something?” asked Mrs. Bugbee.
“I did,” said Mr. Bugbee. “What’s more, I hit something—something in the nature of a solid ivory dome. My darling, congratulate me not only on my accuracy but on my choice of a missile. I am pleased to inform you that I have just beaned the inspiredleader of your coterie of private Christmas choristers with a heavy plaster image of dear old Santa Claus.... Let me have a look at this schedule.... Ah, here it is. We can catch a through train at ten-five and—by Jove, look, that’s luck!—it will put us into Grand Central in ample time to make the Baxters’ Christmas party.”
“But we’ve nothing to go in—it’s fancy dress. I told you that five minutes ago,” protested Mrs. Bugbee.
“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Bugbee. “We’ll go just as we are—as a couple of All-Day Suckers!”
Whilehe was in the death-house Tony Scarra did a lot of thinking. You couldn’t imagine a better place for thinking; it goes on practically all the time there and intensively. But no matter where the thoughts range and no matter what elements enter into them—hope or despair, rebellion or resignation, or whatever—sooner or later they fly back, like dark homing pigeons, to a small iron door opening upon a room in which, bolted to the floor, there is a chair with straps dangling from its arms and from its legs and its head-rest—in short, the Chair. This picture is the beginning and the end of all the thinking that is done in the death-house.
Such were the facts with regard to Tony Scarra. As nearly as might be judged, he felt no remorse for the murdering which had brought him to his present trapped estate. But he did have a deep regret for the entanglement of circumstances responsible for his capture and conviction. And constantly he had a profound sense of injustice. It seemed to him that in his case the law had been most terribly unreasonable. Statisticsshowed that for every seventy-four homicides committed in this state only one person actually went to the Chair. He’d read that in a paper during the trial. It had been of some comfort to him. Now he brooded on these figures. Over and over and over again, brooding on them, he asked himself about it.
Why should he have to be the unlucky one of seventy-four? Was it fair to let seventy-three other guys go free or let them off with prison sentences and then shoot the whole works to him? Was that a square deal? Why did it have to be that way, anyhow? What was the sense of it? Why pick on him? Why must he go through with it? Why—that was just it—why? The question-marks were so many sharp fishhooks all pricking down into his brain and hanging on.
His calling had made a sort of fatalist out of Tony Scarra. His present position was in a fair way to make a sort of anarchist out of him.
All the way through, his lawyer kept trying to explain to him touching on the lamentable rule of averages. He was not concerned with averages though. He was concerned with the great central idea of saving his life. To that extent his mind had become a lop-sided mind. Its slants all ran the same way, like shingles on a roof that slopes.
At length there came a morning when the death-house seemed to close in on him, tighter and tighter. It no longer was a steel box to enclose him; it became a steel vise and pinched him. This Scarra was notwhat you would call an emotional animal, nor a particularly imaginative one. Even so, and suddenly, he saw those bolt-heads in the ironwork as staring unmerciful eyes all vigilantly cocked to see how he took the news. And his thinking, instead of being scattered, now came to a focus upon a contingency which through weeks past he had carried in the back lobe.
“I’m just as sore about this as you are, Tony,” the lawyer said. “It hurts me almost as much as it hurts you. Why, look here, yours is the first case I ever lost—the first capital case, I mean. All the others, I got ’em off somehow—acquittal or a hung jury or a mistrial or a retrial or, if it looked bad, we took a plea in the second degree and the fellow went up the road for a stretch. It’s my reputation that’s at stake in this thing; this thing is bound to hurt my record—the conviction standing and all. So naturally, not only on my own account but on yours, I’ve done everything I could—claiming reversible errors and taking an appeal and now this last scheme of asking the judges to reopen the case on the ground of newly discovered evidence. We’ve fought it along with stays and delays for nearly eight months now, going all the way up to the highest court in the state, and here today I have to come and tell you we’ve been turned down there. It’s hard on me, don’t forget that, Tony. It’ll hurt me in New York. You know what your crowd call me there—the Technicality Kid?”
“You was recommended to me as one swell mouthpiece and I sent for you and you came up and I hired you,” answered Scarra in a recapitulation of vain grievances, “and you took my jack and you kept on taking it till you milked me clean, pretty near it, and now you stand there and tell me you’re through!”
“No, I’m not through either,” the lawyer made haste to say. “There’s still the chance the governor might commute the sentence. You know how often that happens—men being reprieved right at the very last minute, as you might say. Oh, I’m going to the governor next. We’ve still got nearly a month left, Tony, and a lot could happen in a month.”
“Swell chance I’ve got with this governor, and you know it. He’s a politician, ain’t he? Can’t you see these here rube papers riding him if he should let off the ‘Big City Gunman’? Ain’t that their gentlest name for me? No, you quit stalling and listen to me a minute.”
There was a tight iron grille between them; they talked with each other through the meshes, and as they talked a keeper watched them, keeping beyond earshot, though. Even in the death-house the sanctity of the professional relation as between a convicted man and his legal adviser was preserved. So the sentry must watch but he might not listen; the meeting partook of the nature of a confessional. All the same, Scarra followed the quite unnecessary precaution of sinking his voice before saying what next he had to say. Saying it, he kept shifting his eyes away from Attorney Finburg’s face to look this way and that—first this way, toward the heedful but unhearing keeper, then that way toward the part of the building where, behind soundproof walls, the Chair stood.
“Finburg,” he whispered, “I ain’t going to let these guys cook me. I’m going to beat their game yet—and you’re going to help me.” He twisted his mouth into the stiffened shape of a grin; the embalmed corpse of a grin. “Get that? You’re going to help me.”
Counselor Finburg had eloquent shoulders. Often in debate he used those shoulders of his to help out his pleading hands. He lifted both of them in a shrug of confessed helplessness. Nevertheless his expression invited further confidences. It was as much as to say that this was a poor unfortunate friend who, having a delusion, must be humored in it.
“Don’t start that stuff with me,” went on Scarra, correctly interpreting the look; “not till you’ve heard what I got to tell you. Finburg, if I got to croak, I got to croak, that’s all. I took plenty chances in my time on getting bumped off and I’ve seen more’n one guy getting his—what I mean, more’n one besides that hick cop that I fixed his clock for him. If it hadn’t been for him I wouldn’t been here. But that ain’t the thing. The thing is that I ain’t going to let ’em make cold meat out of me in that kitchen of theirs out there. They ain’t going to fry me on one side like an egg. I’ll beat ’em to it, that’s all. I couldn’t stand it, that’s all.”
“They say it’s absolutely—you know”—Mr. Finburg’s lips were reluctant to form the word—“well, painless—and, of course, instantaneous.”
“Who says so? A bunch of wise-cracking doctors, that’s who. What do they know about it? Any of them ever try it to find out? Finburg, I had a brother and he knew about electricity—was a lineman for a high-tension power company. I’ve heard him tell about being caught in them currents, heard him tell what other guys went through that took a big jolt of the juice. The first shock don’t always put a guy out. He may look to be dead but he ain’t—he’s stuck there waiting for the next shot—waiting, waiting. Well, not for me—I’m going to do my own croaking—with a little help from outside. That’s where you figure in.”
Involuntarily, Finburg made as if to back away. His body shrank back but his feet rooted him fast. A fascination held him.
“You ain’t going to lose anything by it,” maintained the caged man, pressing his point. “You’re going to make by it.”
“No, no, no!” Finburg strove to make his dissent emphatic. “Oh, no, Scarra, I’d like to do you any favor in my power but I couldn’t do that. Why, man, it’s against the law. It’s conniving at a suicide. It makes the man who does it an accessory.”
“Swell law that wants to croak a poor guy and yet calls it a crime if somebody helps him croak himself!” commented Scarra. “Still, I know about that part of it already. What if I tell you you ain’t running anyrisk? And what if you clean up on the deal yourself? You’ve been knocking holes in the law ever since you got your license. Why’re you weakening now?”
“But—but if you’re determined to go this way, why not use something in your cell—some utensil, say?” suggested the nervous Finburg. Already he felt guilty. His cautious voice had a guilty quaver in it.
“With them bringing me my grub already cut up and only a spoon to eat it with—huh!” The murderer grunted. “Why, even the tooth-brush they gave me has got a limber handle on it. And if they let me have a lead-pencil to write with, there’s a keeper standing alongside to see I don’t try to shove the sharp end of it down my throat. Don’t they search my coop every little while? You know they do. Anyhow, I ain’t craving to make a messy job of it and probably be caught before it’s done, besides. I’m going clean and I’m going quick. What I want is just a nice little jolt of this here cyanide of potassium. You know about that stuff? You swallow it and it’s all over in a minute. That’s what I want—one little shot of that cyanide stuff. I ain’t going to take it till the last hope’s gone—a miracle might happen with that governor yet. But when they come to take me out to be juiced in that chair, why, down goes the little pill and out goes Tony, laughing in their foolish faces. I ain’t scared to go my way, you understand, but”—he sucked in his breath—“but I’m scared to go their way and I might as well admit it.”
Still on the defensive and the negative, Finburg had been shaking his head through this, but his next speech belied his attitude. Being rent between two crossed emotions—a sinking fear for his own safety and a climbing, growing avarice, he said in a soft, wheedling tone: “You mentioned just now about my making something out of—this? Not that I’d even consider such a dangerous proposition,” he added hastily. “I—I just wanted to know what you had on your mind, that’s all?”
“I thought that’d interest you! Listen, Finburg. All along, I’ve been holding out on you. I been keeping an ace in the hole in case we should lose out on the appeal. You thought you’d taken the last cent of fall-money I could dig up for fighting my case for me, didn’t you? Well, kid, you guessed wrong there. You remember the big Bergen Trust Company hold-up down in New Jersey early last spring, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Finburg’s jaws relaxed the least bit to let a greedy tongue lick out.
“Then you remember, probably, that quite a chunk of negotiable securities—bonds and things—wasn’t never recovered?”
“Yes, I recall.” Finburg suggested a furtive jackal, tense with a mounting hunger and smelling afar off a bait of rich but forbidden food.
“And that the trust company people offered a reward of ten thousand for the return of that stuff and no questions asked?”
“Yes, go on.”
“Well, Finburg, you’re smart but here’s something you never knew before. I was in on that hold-up—I engineered it. And inside of three weeks afterwards, while I was waiting for the squawk over that job to die down, I came up here and got in this jam and had to plug this cop and they nailed me. But, Finburg, I’ve got a safe-deposit box in a bank on Third Avenue and I’ve got a key to it stuck away in another place where a pal’s keeping it for me—a pal I can trust. I’ll leave you guess what’s in that safe-deposit box. Or, if you want me to, I’ll tell—”
“No, don’t tell me—that would be illegal,” said the lawyer very uneasily and yet very eagerly. “It would be more regular, you understand, if I didn’t actually have knowledge of what the contents were—that is, beforehand. I’ve been double-crossed before by some of you hard-boiled people. There was the time when I almost worked my head off defending Roxie McGill and her mob for shoving phony money, and every time I think of how that McGill skirt slipped it over on me, when it came time to settle up”—he winced on what plainly was a most painful recollection—“well, it’s made me careful, Tony, awfully careful. Not that I’m doubting you, understand. If a man can’t trust a—” He broke off, looking, for him, a trifle embarrassed.
“Say it!” prompted Scarra grimly. “If you can’t trust a dying man you can’t trust nobody—that’s whatyou had in your mind, wasn’t it? Well, I’m as good as dead right now and you won’t never regret it, playing my game. It could be fixed up, according to law, couldn’t it, like a will, that me not having any kinfolks, I was leaving you what was in that safe-deposit box on account of you having been my lawyer and having worked so hard for me?”
“Oh, yes, I’d know how to phrase the instrument properly. There’d be no trouble about that, none whatever, Tony.”
“All right, then, you fix up the paper and I’ll sign it right here any day it’s ready. And I’ll give you a written order on that pal of mine for the key, telling him to hand it over to you the day after I’m gone. You ain’t got a thing to worry about. And in payment all you got to do for me is just the one little favor of getting that little pill made up and—”
“I’m telling you there’s entirely too much risk,” interrupted Finburg, in a timorous sweat of almost over-powering temptation, but still clinging to safety. “I wouldn’t dare risk trying to slip you poison, Tony—I couldn’t.”
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
“What? What’s that you’re saying, Tony?” The lawyer shoved his peaked nose between two wattles of the steel.
“I say, nobody’s asking you to. Knowing you, I’ve doped out that part of it so you won’t have to take a chance. Listen, Finburg—there’s a guard here namedIsgrid—a Swede or something. And he comes from down on the East Side, the same as you and me. I’ve been working on him. We’ve got friendly. Maybe him and me both having been born on the same block over there beyond the Bowery was what made him sort of mushy towards me—he’s one of those big thick slobs. But it ain’t for friendship only that he’s willing to help. He wants his bit out of it. He’s aiming to quit this job he’s got here and he wants to take a piece of money with him when he quits. Now, here’s what he tells me: He’ll be on the death-watch on me. That last night he’ll slip me the pill, see? Nobody ain’t going to suspect him, he says, and even if anybody does, they ain’t going to be able to hang it on him, let alone get you mixed in with the plant.”
“I suppose I’ll have to see this man,” conceded Finburg; “not that that means I’m committing myself to this undertaking.”
“I thought of that too. Day after tomorrow is Sunday, and Sunday is his day off. He’ll run down to New York and meet you in your office or at your flat, and you can size him up and talk it over with him.”
“It can’t do any harm to see the man, I suppose.” It was plain that the lawyer was convincing himself. “Tell him—only, mind you, this is just an accommodation to you—tell him the address of my rooms and tell him to be there at ten o’clock.”
“One thing more,” stated the killer. “Isgrid wants one grand for his cut.”
“One grand—a thousand dollars!”
“That’s his lowest price. I had to work on him to cut it down to that. And, Finburg, you’ll have to dig up the thou’. He wants it in advance, see? You can pay yourself back—afterwards. That’s up to you.”
“That makes it still more complicated,” lamented the wavering Finburg. “I don’t know—I don’t know.” Figuratively he wrung his hands in an anguish born of desire and doubt.
“Well, I’ll give you till over Sunday to make up your mind, then,” said Scarra, he secretly being well content with the progress that had been made. “If by Monday you’ve decided to go through with your share of the deal, you can come back here and bring that will with you and I’ll sign it. If you don’t show up on Monday I’ll know you’re too chicken-hearted for your own good. Remember this, though, Finburg—one way or another I’m going to get that pill. If you don’t want to help, that’s your lookout—you’ll only be kissing good-by to what’s down in them safe-deposit vaults on Third Avenue. And if you do—well, I guess you’re wise enough to protect yourself at every angle. It’s easy pickings for you, Finburg—easy pickings. So think it over before you decide to say no. Well, so long, see you Monday.”
He fell back from the grating and to the keeper at the farther end of the corridor motioned to indicate that his interview with his counsel was ended and that he was ready to be returned to his cell.
Monday morning, good and early, Mr. Finburg was back again. His mind had been made up for many hours. In fact it was made up before he left on Friday afternoon. Only, at the time, he had not cared to say so or to look so. To wear a mask was one part of Mr. Finburg’s professional attitude. To do things deviously was another. For him always, the longest way round was the shortest way across. His mind was a maze of detours, excepting when he was collecting his retainers or pressing for his principal fees. Then he could be straightforward enough to satisfy anybody. The practice of the criminal law does this to some of its practitioners.
It was because of this trait of Mr. Finburg’s that certain preliminary steps in the working-out of his share in the plot were elaborated and made intricate. Since Friday evening when his train landed him at the Grand Central, he had been a reasonably busy young man. From the station he went directly to the Public Library and there, at a table well apart from any other reader, he consulted a work on toxicology, with particular reference to the effects of the more deadly poisons. Before midnight he was in touch with a chemist of his acquaintance who served as laboratory sharp and chief mixer for a bootlegging combine specializing in synthetic goods with bogus labels on them. His real purpose in this inquiry was, of course, carefully cloaked; the explanation he gave—it referred to experiments which a purely supposititious client was making with precious metals—apparently satisfied the expert, who gave information fully.
By virtue of a finely involved ramification of underworld connections, Mr. Finburg was enabled next to operate through agents. Three separate individuals figured in the transaction. But no one of the three beheld more than his particular link in a winding chain and only one of the three had direct dealings with the principal, and this one remained in complete ignorance of what really was afoot. All he knew, all he cared to know, was that, having been dispatched on a mission which seemed to start nowhere and lead nowhere, he had performed what was expected of him and had been paid for it and was through. By such deft windings in and out, Mr. Finburg satisfied himself the trail was so broken that no investigator ever could piece it together. There were too many footprints in the trace; and too many of them pointing in seemingly opposite and contrary directions.
He was quite ready for the man Isgrid when that person came to his apartment on Sunday morning. Whether Isgrid studied Finburg is of no consequence to this narrative, but we may be quite assured that Finburg studied Isgrid, seeing the latter as a stolid, dull person, probably of Scandinavian ancestry and undoubtedly of a cheap order of mentality. About Isgrid as interpreted by Finburg, there was nothing to suggest any personal initiative. He appeared close-mouthed and secretive, though—in short, a man whobeing committed to a venture would go through it with a sort of intent and whole-hearted determination. This greatly pleased the little lawyer. For the rôle of an unthinking middleman Isgrid seemed an admirable choice. He had such a dependable dumb look about him. Nevertheless it suited Mr. Finburg’s book that his conspirings with this man should be marked by crafty play-acting. There sat the two of them, entirely alone, yet Mr. Finburg behaved as though a cloud of witnesses hovered to menace him.
He asked Isgrid various questions—leading questions, they would be called in court—but so phrased that they might pass for the most unsuspicious of inquiries. Then, being well satisfied by the results of such cross-examination, the lawyer came to business.
“Look here,” he said, pointing, “on this table is a little box with the lid off. See it? Well, in it are twelve five-grain capsules same as you’d get from any drug-store if you had a touch of grippe and the doctor gave you a prescription to be filled. Between ourselves we’ll just say it is a grippe cure that we’ve got here. Well, one of these capsules is stronger than the others are. If I’m not mistaken, it’s this one here”—his finger pointed again—“the last one in the bottom row, the one with a little spot of red ink on it. It’s marked that way so a fellow will be wised up to handling it pretty carefully.
“Now then, I’m going into the next room. I’ve got a wall safe there where I keep some of my private papers and other valuables, including money. I’m going to get a bill—a nice new United States Treasury certificate for one thousand dollars—out of my safe. It may take me two or three minutes to work the combination and find the bill. When I come back, if one or two of those capsules should happen to be missing, why I’ll just say to myself that somebody with a touch of grippe, or somebody who’s got a friend laid up somewhere with the grippe, saw this medicine here and helped himself to a dose or so without saying anything about it. It won’t stick in my mind; what difference does a measly little drug-store pill or two mean to me or to anybody else, for that matter? Inside of ten minutes I’ll have forgotten all about it.
“Make yourself at home, please—I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
He entered the inner room of the two-room flat, closing and snapping shut the connecting door behind him. When he came back, which was quite soon, he glanced at the open box. The twelfth capsule, that one which was red-dotted, and one neighboring capsule had disappeared. Isgrid was sitting where he had been seated before Finburg’s temporary withdrawal.
“See this?” resumed Finburg, and he held up what he was holding in his hands. “It’s a nice slick new one that’s never been in circulation. Well, I’ve about made up my mind to slip this bill to you. You’ve been kind to a party that’s in trouble—a party that I’ve had considerable dealings with. He’s grateful and naturallyI’m grateful, too. As I understand it, you’re going to keep on being good to this party. He’s in a bad way—may not live very long, in fact—and we’ll both appreciate any little attentions you might continue to show him. But this is a hard world—people get careless sometimes; you can’t always depend on them. Not knocking you or anything, but still I’d like to make certain that you won’t go back on any little promise you might have made to him lately. You get me, I think—just a precaution on my part. See what I’m going to do next?”
From his desk he took up a pair of scissors and with one swift clip of their blades sheared the yellow-back squarely in two across the middle. Isgrid said nothing to this but kept eying him intently.
“Now, then, I put one-half of this bill into my pocket,” proceeded Finburg; “and the other half I’m handing over to you”—doing so. “Separated this way, these halves are no use to anybody—none to me, none to you. But paste them together again and you’ve got a thousand-dollar bill that’s just as good as it ever was. For the time being, you keep your half and I’ll keep my half. I’ll have it right here handy on my person and ready to slip it over to you when the contract that I’ve been speaking of is completed.
“Now, I expect to be seeing our sick friend tomorrow. Tonight I’ll be fixing up a document or two for him to sign and I’m going to take them up to where he is in the morning. I’ll tell him of this little arrangement between us and I’m certain he’ll endorse it. I may not see him again until the twenty-seventh of this month.” He dwelt meaningly upon the date. “It looks as though he couldn’t last much longer than that—not more than a few hours. And on the twenty-seventh, if the prospects are that he’ll pass out within the next twenty-four hours—which, as I say, is the present outlook—I’ll pay him a farewell visit. If everything has worked out right—if you’ve done him any little last favor that he’s counting on—why, he’ll tip me the word while we’re alone together. You won’t have to wait much longer than that for what’s coming to you. Just as soon as he gives me the word I’ll meet you in some private corner that we’ll decide on, and hand you over the other half of your bill. Is everything understood—everything agreeable to you?”
Still mute, Isgrid nodded. They shook hands on it after Isgrid had named a suitable place for their rendezvous on the twenty-seventh; then the silent caller took himself away. All told, he had not contributed a hundred words, counting in grunts as words, to the dialogue.
Being left alone, Mr. Finburg mentally hugged himself before he set to the task of drawing up the papers for his client’s signature. This same Sunday he decided not to go to the governor of that near-by state with any futile plea for executive clemency. He’d tell Scarra, of course, that he was going; would pretend he had gone. But what was the use of a man wastinghis breath on a quest so absolutely hopeless? He salved his conscience—or the place where his conscience had been before he wore it out—with this reflection, and by an effort of the will put from him any prolonged consideration of the real underlying reason. It resolved itself into this: Why should a man trifle with his luck? With Scarra wiped out—and certainly Scarra deserved wiping out, if ever a red-handed brute did—the ends of justice would be satisfied and the case might serve as a warning to other criminals. But if that governor should turn mush-headed and withhold from Scarra his just punishment, where would Scarra’s lawyer be? He’d be missing a delectable chunk of jack by a hair—that’s where he would be.
Let the law take its course!
The law did. It took its racking course at quarter past one o’clock on the morning of the twenty-eighth.
Those who kept ward on Tony Scarra, considering him as scientists might consider an inoculated guinea-pig waiting patiently for this or that expected symptom of organic disorder to show itself, marveled more and more as the night wore on at the bearing of the condemned man. His, they dispassionately decided among themselves, was not the rehearsed but transparent bravado of the ordinary thug. That sort of thing they had observed before; they could bear testimony that very often toward the finish this make-believe fortitude melted beneath the lifting floods of a mortal terror and a mortal anguish, so that the subject lost the use of his members and the smoothness of his tongue, and babbled wild meaningless prayers and flapped with his legs and must be half-dragged, half-borne along on that first, last, short journey of his through the painted iron door to what awaited him beyond.
Or, fifty-fifty, it might be that imminent dread acted upon him as a merciful drug which soothed him into a sort of obedient coma wherein he yielded with a pitiful docility to the wishes of his executioners and mechanically did as they bid him, and went forth from his cell meek as a lamb, thereby simplifying and easing for them their not altogether agreeable duties. These experienced observers had come to count on one or the other of these manifestations. In Scarra neither of them was developed.
He seemed defiantly insulated against collapse by some indefinable power derived from within; it was as though a hidden secret reservoir of strength sustained him. He gibed the death-watch and he made a joke of the prison chaplain coming in the face of repeated rebuffs to offer the sustaining comfort of his Gospels. He betrayed no signs whatsoever of weakening—and this, to those who officiated at those offices, seemed most remarkable of all—when they clipped the hair off the top of his skull for the pad of the electrodes and again, later in the evening, when they brought him the black trousers with the left leg split up the inside seam.
All at once though, at the beginning of the second hour after midnight, when the witnesses were assembled and waiting in the lethal chamber, his jaunty confidence—if so, for lack of a better description, it might be termed—drained from him in a single gush. He had called, a minute or two before, for a drink of water, complaining of a parched throat. A filled cup was brought to him. Sitting on a stool in his cell he turned his back upon the bringer and took the draught down at a gulp, then rose and stood looking through the bars at the keepers, with a mocking, puzzling grin on his lips and over all his face and in his eyes a look of expectancy. The grin vanished, the look changed to one of enormous bewilderment, then to one of the intensest chagrin, and next he was mouthing with shocking vile words toward the eternity waiting for him. He resisted them when they went in then to fetch him out, and fought with them and screamed out and altogether upset the decorum of the death-house, so that the surviving inmates became excessively nervous and unhappy.
He did not curse those whose task it was now to subdue and, if possible, to calm him. He cursed somebody or other—person or persons unknown—for having deceived him in a vital matter, crying out that he had been imposed on, that he had been double-crossed. He raved of a pill—whatever that might mean—but so frightful a state was he in, so nearly incoherent in his frenzy of rage and distress and disappointment,that the meaning of what he spoke was swallowed up and lost.
Anyhow, his sweating handlers had no time to listen. Their task was to muffle his blasphemy and get him to the chair, which they did. Practically, they had to gag him with their hands, and one of the men had a finger bitten to the bone.
Since he continued to struggle in the presence of the audience, the proceedings from this point on were hurried along more than is common. His last understandable words, coming from beneath the mask clamped over the upper part of his distorted face, had reference to this mysterious double-crossing of which plainly, even in that extremity, he regarded himself the victim, and on which, as was equally plain, his final bitter thoughts dwelt. The jolt of the current cut him off in a panted, choking mid-speech, and the jaw dropped and the body strained up against the stout breast-harness, and the breath wheezed and rasped out across the teeth and past the lips, which instantly had turned purple, and there was a lesser sound, a curious hissing, whispering, slightly unpleasant sound as though the life were so eager to escape from this flesh that it came bursting through the pores of the darkening skin. Also, there was a wisp of rising blue smoke and a faint, a very faint smell of something burning. There nearly always is; a feature which apparently cannot be avoided. Still, after all, that’s but a detail.
For absolute certainty of result, they gave Scarra’s body a second shock, and the physicians present observed with interest how certain of the muscles, notably certain of the neck muscles, twitched in response to the throb and flow of the fluid through the tissues. But of course the man was dead. It merely was a simple galvanic reaction—like eel-meat twisting on a hot griddle, or severed frogs’ legs jumping when you sprinkle salt on them—interesting, perhaps, but without significance. Except for Scarra’s unseemly behavior immediately after drinking the water, this execution, as executions go, and they nearly always go so, was an entire success.
Conceded that as to its chief purpose, the plan unaccountably had gone amiss, Mr. Finburg nevertheless felt no concern over the outcome. Privately he preferred that it should have been thus—there being no reason for any official inquiry, naturally there would be no official inquiry. Happy anticipations uplifted him as, sundry legal formulas having been complied with, he went as Scarra’s heir to Scarra’s bank on Third Avenue and opened Scarra’s safe-deposit box.
It would seem that he, also, had been double-crossed. All the box contained was a neat small kit of burglars’ tools. It was indeed a severe disappointment to Mr. Finburg, a blow to his faith in human nature. We may well feel for Mr. Finburg.
Of that triumvirate of East Side connivers, there remains the third and least important member, Isgrid,he who, scheming on his own account and in his own protection, had played for safety by smuggling to the late Scarra not number twelve, the poisonous capsule, but number eleven, the harmless one. Let us not spend all our sympathy upon Mr. Finburg but rather let us reserve some portion of it for Isgrid. For this one, he too suffered a grievous disappointment. It befell when, having patched the parted halves of his thousand-dollar bill, he undertook to pass it. It was refused, not because it was pasted together but because it was counterfeit.