Chapter V (1)

But sometimes in this ironical world it happens that we have already beaten a man to death with a butterfly's wing, slain him with a bubble, sent him whirling into the hereafter on a puff of smoke, even as we are saying that such a thing is foreign to our thoughts.

The old party in the room next to Tommy's at the hotel had arrived the day before, with an umbrella, a straw suitcase and a worried eye on either side his long, white, chalkish, pitted nose. He seemed chilly in spite of his large plum-colored overcoat, of a cut that has survived only in the rural districts. He wore a salient, assertive beard, that had once been sandy and was now almost white, but it was the only assertive thing about him. His manner was far from aggressive.

An hour after he had been shown to his room he appeared at the desk again and inquired timidly of the clerk, “There's a fire near here?”

“Little blaze in the next block. Doesn't amount to anything,” said the clerk.

“I heard the--the engines,” said the guest apologetically.

“Doesn't amount to anything,” said the clerk again. And then, “Nervous about fire?”

The old party seemed startled.

“Who? Me? Why should I be nervous about fire? No! No! No!” He beat a sudden retreat. “I was just asking--just asking,” he threw back over his shoulder.

“Old duck's scared of fire and ashamed to own it,” mused the clerk, watching him out of the lobby.

The old party went back to his room, and there one of the first things he saw was a copy of the Bible lying on the bureau. There is an organization which professes for its object the placing of a Bible in every hotel room in the land. The old party had his own Bible with him. As if reminded of it by the one on the bureau, he took it out of his suitcase and sat down and began to turn the leaves like a person familiar with the book--and like a person in need of comfort, as indeed he was.

There was a text in Matthew that he sought--where was it? Somewhere in the first part of Matthew's gospel--ah, here it is: The twelfth chapter and the thirty-first verse:

“All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men....”

There is a terrible reservation in the same verse. He kept his eyes from it, and read the first part over and over, forming the syllables with his lips, but not speaking aloud.

“All manner of sin--all manner of sin-------”

And then, as if no longer able to avoid it, he yielded his consciousness to the latter clause of the verse:

“But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.”

What was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Could what he had done be construed as that? Probably if one lied to God in his prayers, that was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost--one form of it. And had he been lying to God these last two weeks when he had said over and over again in his prayers that it was all a mistake? It hadn't been all a mistake, but the worst part of it had been a mistake.

He went out for his dinner that evening, but he was in again before ten o'clock. He could not have slept well. At two o'clock in the morning he appeared in front of the desk.

He had heard fire engines again.

“See here,” said the night clerk, appraising him, as the day clerk had done, as a rube who had been seldom to the city and was nervous about fire, “you don't need to be worried. If anything should happen near here we'd get all the guests out in a jiffy.”

The old party returned to his room. He was up early the next morning and down to breakfast before the dining room was open.

He did not look as if he had had much rest. The morning hours he devoted to reading his Bible in his room. Perhaps he found comfort in it. At noon he seemed a bit more cheerful. He asked the clerk the way to the Eden Musee, and was surprised to learn that that place of amusement had been closed for a year or two. The clerk recommended a moving-picture house round the corner. But it had begun to rain and snow and sleet all together; the sky was dark and the wind was rising; the old party elected not to go out after all.

He went back to his room once more, and his black fear and melancholy descended upon him again, and the old debate began to weave through his brain anew. For two weeks he had been fleeing from the debate and from himself. He had come to New York to get away from it, but it was no good. Just when he had made up his mind that God had forgiven him, and was experiencing a momentary respite, some new doubt would assail him and the agony would begin again.

The old debate--he had burned the store, with the living quarters over it, to get the insurance money, after having removed a part of the insured goods, but he did not regard that as an overwhelming sin. It wasn't right, of course, in one way. And yet in another way it was merely sharp business practice, so he told himself. For a year before that, when one of his buildings had burned through accident, he had been forced to accept from the same insurance company less than was actually due him as a matter of equity. Therefore, to make money out of that company by a shrewd trick was in a way merely to get back his own again. It wasn't the sort of thing that a deacon in the church would care to have found out on him, of course. It was wrong in a sense. But it was the wrong that it had led to that worried him.

It was the old woman's death that worried him. He hadn't meant to burn her to death, God knows! He hadn't known she was in the building.

He had sent her on a week's visit to another town, to see a surprised cousin of his own, and it had been distinctly understood that she was not to return until Saturday. But some time on Friday evening she must have crept back home and gone to bed in her room. He had not known she was there.

“I didn't know! I didn't know!”

There were times when he gibbered the words to himself by the hour.

It was at midnight that he had set fire to the place. The old woman was deaf. Even when the flames began to crackle she could not have heard them. She had had no more chance than a rat in a trap. The old fool! It was her own fault! Why had she not obeyed him? Why had she come creeping back, like a deaf old half-blind tabby cat, to die in the flames? It was her own fault! When he thought of the way she had returned to kill herself there were moments when he cursed and hated her.

But had she killed herself? Back and forth swung the inner argument. At times he saw clearly enough that this incident joined on without a break to the texture of his whole miserable life; when he recognized that, though it might be an accident in a strictly literal sense that the old woman was dead, yet it was the sort of accident for which his previous existence had been a preparation. Even while he fiercely denied his guilt, or talked of it in a seizure of whining prayer that was essentially a lying denial, he knew that guilt there was.

Would he be forgiven? There were comforting passages in the Bible. He switched on the rather insufficient electric light, which was all the old hotel provided, for the day was too dark to read without that help, and turned the pages of the New Testament through and through again.

At three o'clock in the afternoon he was sitting on the edge of his bed, with the book open in front of him and his head bowed, almost dozing. His pipe, with which he had filled the room with the fumes of tobacco, had fallen to the floor. Perhaps it was weariness, but for a brief period his sharper sense of fear had been somewhat stilled again. Maybe it was going to be like this--a gradual easing off of the strain in answer to his prayers. He had asked God for an answer as to whether he should be forgiven, and God was answering in this way, so he told himself. God was going to let him get some sleep, and maybe when he woke everything would be all right again--bearable at least.

So he mused, half asleep.

And then all at once he sprang wide awake again, and his terror wakened with him. For suddenly in front of his half-shut eyes, coming from nowhere in particular, there passed a puff of smoke!

What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled for a moment almost into something like peace, and--now--this puff of smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer?

He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid that he would see--something--if he looked behind him. He was afraid that he would in another moment hear something--a voice!

He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, he scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable cause, and not meant for him.

He greatly dared. He opened his eyes. And drifting lazily above the white pillow at the head of the bed was another puff of smoke.

He rocked back and forth upon the bed, with his arms up as if to shield his head from a physical blow, and then he passed in a moment from the quakings of fear to a kind of still certainty of doom. God was angry at him. God was telling him so. God would send the devil for him. There was no further doubt. He would go to hell--to hell! To burn forever! Forever--even as the old woman had burned for a quarter of an hour. He began to search through the pages of the Bible again, not for words of comfort this time, but in a morbid ecstasy of despair, for phrases about hell, for verses that mentioned fire and flames.

He did not need the concordance. He knew his Bible well, and his fear helped him. Consciousness and subconsciousness joined to guide his fingers and eyes in the quest.

“Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming,” he read in Isaiah, and he took it to himself.

“Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof,” he read in Ezekiel.

He had a literal imagination, and he had a literal belief, and at every repetition of the word “fire” the flesh cringed and crawled on his bones. God! To burn! How it must hurt!

“And the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God,” met his eyes in the first book of Kings.

And it all meant him. Now and then over his shoulder would float another little puff of smoke; and once, lifting his head suddenly from poring over the book, he thought he saw something that moved and glinted like a traveling spark, and was gone.

He began to feel himself in hell already. This was the foretaste, that was all. Would he begin to burn even before he died? Did this smoke presage something of that kind? Would flames physically seize upon him, and would he burn, even as the old woman had burned?

Suddenly in his hysteria there came a revulsion--a revolt. Having reached the nethermost depths of despair, he began to move upward a little. His soul stirred and took a step and tried to climb. He began to pray once more. After all, the Good Book did promise mercy! He began to dare to pray again. And he prayed in a whisper that now and then broke into a whine--a strange prayer, characteristic of the man.

“Oh, God,” he cried, “you promise forgiveness in that book there, and I'm gonna hold you to it! I'm gonna hold you to it! It's down there in black and white, your own words, God, and I'm gonna hold you to it! It's a contract, God, and you ain't the kind of a man, God, to go back on a contract that's down in black and white!”

Thus he prayed, with a naïve, unconscious blasphemy. And after long minutes of this sort of thing his soul dared take another step. A faint, far glimmering of hope came to him where he groveled. For he was groveling on the bed now, with the covers pulled up to his head and his hand upon the open Bible. He found the courage to peer from beneath the covers at intervals as he prayed and muttered, and minutes passed with no more smoke. Had the smoke ceased? The sound of his own murmuring voice began to reassure him. The smoke had certainly ceased! It had been twenty minutes since he had seen it--half an hour!

What could it mean? That God was hearkening to his prayer?

An hour went by, and still there was no more sign of smoke. He prayed feverishly, he gabbled, as if by the rapidity of his utterance and the repeated strokes of his words he were beating back and holding at bay the smoke that was God's warning and the symbol of his displeasure. And the smoke had ceased to come! He was to be forgiven! He was winning! His prayers were winning for him! At least God was listening!

Yes, that must be it. God was listening now. The smoke had come as a warning; and he had, upon receiving this warning, repented. God had not meant, after all, that he was doomed irrevocably. God had meant that, to be forgiven, his repentance must be genuine, must be thorough--and it was thorough now. Now it was genuine! And the smoke had ceased! The smoke had been a sign, and he had heeded the sign, and now if he kept up his prayers and lived a good life in the future he was to be forgiven. He would not have to burn in hell after all.

The minutes passed, and he prayed steadily, and every minute that went by and brought no further sign of the smoke built up in him a little more hope, another grain of confidence.

An hour and a quarter, and he almost dared be sure that he was forgiven--but he was not quite sure. If he could only be quite sure! He wallowed on the bed, and his hand turned idly the pages of the Bible, lying outside on the coverlet.

More than an hour had gone by. Could he accept it as an indication that God had indeed heard him? He shifted himself upon the bed, and stared up at the ceiling through a chink in the covers as if through and beyond the ceiling he were interrogating heaven.

And lying so, there came a damp touch upon his hand, soft and chill and silent, as if it were delicately and ironically brushed by the kiss of Death. A sudden agony numbed his hand and arm. With the compulsion of hysteria, not to be resisted, his head lifted and he sat up and looked. Over the Bible and his hand that lay upon the open page there floated again a puff of smoke, and faintly staining his Angers and the paper itself was something moist and red. It stained his Angers and it marked with red for his straining sight this passage of Isaiah:

“The earth also shall disclose her blood.”

It was then he cried out, “Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! You meant it.”

It was nearly midnight when Tommy and his friend Dobson returned to the hotel. “Your paper's been trying to get you for an hour, Mr. Hawkins,” said the night clerk when they came in. “Story right in the next room to yours. Old party in there hanged himself.”

“So?” said Tommy. “Ungrateful old guy, he is! I put in the afternoon trying to cheer him up a little.”

“Did you know him?” asked the clerk.

“Nope,” said Tommy, moving toward the elevator.

But a few moments later, confronted with the grotesque spectacle in the room upstairs, he said, “Yes--I--I know him. Jack! Jack! Get me out of here, Jack! It's Uncle Ezra, Jack! He's--he's come for me!”

As has been remarked before, sometimes even a bubble may be a mordant weapon.

VIII.--The Chances of the Street

|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 a _good_ story.”

“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 wanted _you_ to feed me!”

“Oh, my dear man!” smiled the minister, “I _am_ doing it, you know. I'm a subscriber--do _all_ my 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 a _wonderful_ system. 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 any _curiosity_ about me? Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find time _yourself_ to listen to the tale?”

“Time,” said the reverend gentleman, “_time_ is 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!)--so _very_ badly, 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 heed _they_ took.

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, “it _is_ a 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.

IX.--The Professor's Awakening

|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 you _don't_ know,” 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 would _you_ suggest, 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.