Chapter V: Introduction (3)

Well, we went. All of us. Even to Madam Hallowell, in lilac chiffon and white fox fur, looking like the Wicked Fairy done by Drian; even to Aunt Charlotte, wearing the Curtice emeralds, her sainted nose held at an angle that suggested burnt flannel. I’ll say for Mrs. Connable that she did it extremely well. The great, beautiful house was thrown open from turret to foundation-stone. Fortune-tellers lurked in gilded tents; gay contadinas sang and sold their laces—the prettiest girls from the Folies at that; Carli’s band, brought from New York to play fox-trots; cleverest surprise of all, the arrival, at five o’clock, of a lordly limousine conveying three heavenborn “principals,” a haughty young director in puttees, a large camera. Would Mrs. Connable’s guests consent to group themselves upon the beach as background for the garden-party scene of “The Princess Patricia”—with Angela Meadow, from the Metropolitan, as the Princess, if you please, and Lou-Galuppi himself as the villain?

Mrs. Connable’s guests would. All the world loves a camera, I reflected, as I observed Madam Hallowell drift languidly to the centre-front, the chill Cadwalladers from Westchester drape themselves unwittingly but firmly in the foreground, the D’Arcy Joneses stand laughingly holding hands in the very jaws of the machine. But Doctor Lake was the strategist of the hour. Chuckling in innocent mirth, he chatted with the radiant Angela until the director’s signal brought the villain swaggering from the side-lines; then, gracefully dismayed, he stepped back at least six inches. If the camera caught Angela at all, the doctor would be there—every eminent inch of him.

“Ready—camera!”

The joyous chatter stilled. On every face fell smug sweetness, as a chrism. Clickety-click, click-click—

Then, amazingly, another sound mingled with that magic tick, rose, drowned it to silence—the high, snarling whine of a swift-coming aeroplane.

“Keep your places, please! Eyes right!”

Nobody heard him. Swung as on one pivot, the garden-party turned toward the harbor, mazed, agape. Across that silver water, flying so low its propeller flashed through diamond spray, straight toward the crowd on the beach it came—the aeroplane from East Gloucester.

“There, I _knew_ he’d butt in just at the wrong minute! I ordered him for six, sharp!” Mrs. Connable’s voice rang hotly through the silence. “Hi, there! Land farther down the beach; we ain’t ready for you. Go on, I tell you! Oh, oh, my gracious goodness me! He’s a-headin’ right on top of us—”

That was all anybody heard. For in that second, pandemonium broke. The great, screaming bird drove down upon us with the speed of light, the blast of a howitzer shell. Whir-r-rip! The big marquee collapsed like a burst balloon. Crash! One landing-wheel grazed the band-stand; it tipped over like a fruit-basket, spilling out shrieking men. Through a dizzy mist I saw the garden-party, all its pose forgot, scuttle like terrified ants. I saw the scornful Cadwalladers leap behind an infant pine. I saw D’Arcy Jones seize his wedded wife by her buxom shoulders and fling her in front of him, a living shield. I saw—can I believe?—the august Doctor Lake, pop-eyed and shrieking, gallop headlong across the beach and burrow madly in the low-tide sands. I saw—but how could my spinning brain set down those thousand spectacles?

However, one eye saw it all—and set it down in cold, relentless truth—the camera. True to his faith, that camera-man kept on grinding, even when the monster all but grazed his head.

Then, swifter even than that goblin flight, it was all over. With a deafening thud, the aeroplane grounded on a bed of early asters. Out of the observer’s seat straddled a lean, tall shape—the aviator. From the pilot’s sheath leaped a white-faced, stammering boy. White to his lips; but it was the pallor of a white flame, the light of a glory past all words.

“H’lo, Cousin Edie! See me bring her across the harbor? Some little pilot!” Then, as if he saw for the first that gurgling multitude, the wrecked tent, the over-turned band-stand: “Gee, that last puff of wind was more than I’d counted on. But she landed like thistledown, just the same. Just thistledown!”

I’ll pass over the next few hours. And why attempt to chronicle the day that followed? Bright and early, I set forth to scatter olive-branches like leaves of Vallombrosa. Vain to portray the icy calm of the Misses Cadwallader, the smiling masks which hid the rage of the D’Arcy Joneses. Hopeless to depict the bland, amused aplomb of Doctor Lake. To hear him graciously disclaim all chagrin was to doubt the word of one’s own vision. Could I have dreamed the swoop of that mighty bird, the screech of a panic-stricken fat man galloping like a mad hippopotamus for the shelter of the surf?

As for Mrs. John B. Connable—hell hath no fury like the woman who has fought and bled for years to mount that treacherous flight; who, gaining the last giddy step, feels, in one sick heartbeat, the ladder give way from under. I went from that tearful and belligerent empress feeling as one who has gazed into the dusk fires of the Seventh Ledge.

“We’ll have to give a dinner for her, and ask the Cadwalladers and Cousin Sue Curtice and the Salem Bronsons. That will pacify her, if anything can.” Thus Aunt Charlotte, with irate gloom. There are times when Aunt Charlotte’s deep spiritual nature betrays a surprising grasp of mundane things.

“Especially if we can get that French secretary, and Madam Hallowell. Now I’m off to soothe the aviator. Where did I put my check-book?”

The aviator stood at his hangar door, winding a coil of wire. His lean body looked feather-light in its taut khaki; under the leathern helmet, his narrow, dark eyes glinted like the eyes of a falcon hooded against the sun. Blank, unsmiling, he heard my maunder of explanation. Somehow his cool aloofness daunted me a bit. But when I fumbled for my checkbook, he flashed alive.

“Money? What for? Because the kid scraped an aileron? Forget it. I ain’t puttin’ up any holler. He’s fetched an’ carried for me all summer. I’m owin’ him, if it comes down to that.”

“But Richard had no right to damage your machine—”

“Well, he never meant to. That squally gust put him off tack, else he’d ’a’ brought her down smooth’s a whistle. For, take it from me, he’s a flier born. Hand, eye, balance, feel, he’s got ’em all. And he’s patient and speedy and cautious and reckless all at once. And he knows more about engines than I do, this minute. There’s not a motor made that can faze him. Say, he’s one whale of a kid, all right. If his folks would let me, I’d take him on as flyin’ partner. Fifty-fifty at that.”

I stiffened a trifle.

“You are very kind. But such a position would hardly be fitting—”

“For a swell kid like him?” Under his helmet those keen eyes narrowed to twin points of light. “Likely not. You rich hill folks can’t be expected to know your own kids. You’ll send him to Harvard, then chain him up in a solid-mahogany office, with a gang of solid-mahogany clerks to kowtow to him, and teach him to make money. When he might be flyin’ with me. Flyin’—with me!” His voice shook on a hoarse, exultant note. He threw back his head; from under the leathern casque his eyes flamed out over the world of sea and sky, his conquered province. “When he might be a flier, the biggest flier the world has ever seen. Say, can you beat it? _Can_ you beat it?”

His rudeness was past excuse. Yet I stood before him in the oddest guilty silence. Finally—

“But please let me pay you. That broken strut—”

“Nothing doing, sister. Forget it.” He bent to his work. “Pay me? No matter if my plane did get a knock, it was worth it. Just to see that fat guy in white pants hot-foot it for deep water! Yes, I’m paid. Good-by.”

Then, to that day of shards and ashes, add one more recollection—Buster’s face when Aunt Charlotte laid it upon him that he should never again enter that hangar door.

“Aunt Charlotte! For Pete’s sake, have a heart! I’ve got that plane eatin’ out of my hand. If that plaguy cat’s-paw hadn’t sprung up—”

“You will not go to East Gloucester again, Richard. That ends it.” Aunt Charlotte swept from the room.

“Gee!” Buster’s wide eyes filled. He slumped into the nearest chair. “Say, Cousin Edie! Ain’t I got one friend left on earth?”

“Now, Richard—”

“Can’t you see what I’m tryin’ to put over? I don’t expect Aunt Charlotte to see. She’s a pippin, all right, but that solid-ivory dome of hers—”

“_Richard!_”

“But you’re different. You aren’t so awful old. You ought to understand that a fellow just has to know about things—cars, ships, aeroplanes, motors, everything!”

“But—”

“Now, Cousin Edith, I’m not stringin’ you. I’m dead in earnest. I’m not tryin’ to bother anybody; I’m just tryin’ to learn what I’ve got to learn.” He leaped up, gripped my arm; his passionate boy voice shrilled; he was droll and pitiful and insolent all in a breath. “No, sirree, I ain’t bluffin’, not for a cent. Believe me, Cousin Edith, us fellows have got to learn how everything works, and learn it quick. I tell you, we’ve _got_ to know!”

――――

Well.... All this was the summer of 1914. Three years ago. Three years and eight months ago, to be exact. Nowadays, I don’t wear tea-rose crêpe frocks nor slim French slippers. Our government’s daily Hints for Paris run more to coarse blue denim and dour woollen hose and clumping rubber boots. My once-lily hands clasp a scrubbing-brush far oftener than a hand at bridge. And I rise at five-thirty and gulp my scalding coffee in the hot, tight galley of Field Hospital 64, then set to work. For long before the dawn they come, that endless string of ambulances, with their terrible and precious freight. Then it’s baths and food and swift, tense minutes in the tiny “theatre,” and swifter, tenser seconds when we and the orderlies hurry through dressings and bandagings, while the senior nurse toils like a Turk alongside and bosses us meanwhile like a slave-driver. Every day my heart is torn open in my breast for the pain of my children, my poor, big, helpless, broken children. Every night, when I slip by to take a last peep at their sleepy, contented faces, my heart is healed for me again. Then I stumble off to our half-partitioned slit and throw myself on my bunk, tired to my last bone, happy to the core of my soul. But day by day the work heaps up. Every cot is full, every tent overflowing. We’re short of everything, beds, carbolic, dressings, food. And yesterday, at dusk, when we were all fagged to exhaustion, there streamed down a very flood of wounded, eight ambulance-loads, harvest of a bombed munitions depot.

“We haven’t an inch of room.”

“We’ve got to make room.” Doctor Lake, sweating, dog-tired, swaying on his feet from nine unbroken hours at the operating-table, took command. “Take my hut; it’ll hold four at a pinch. You nurses will give up your cubby-hole? Thought so. Plenty hot water, Octave? Bring ’em along.”

They brought them along. Every stretcher, every bunk, every crack was crowded now. Then came the whir of a racing motor. One more ambulance plunged up the sodden road.

“Ah! _Grand blessé!_” murmured old Octave.

“_Grand blessé!_ And not a blanket left, even. Put him in the coal-hole,” groaned the head nurse.

“Nix on the coal-hole.” Thus the muddy young driver, hauling out the stretcher with its long, moveless shape. “This is the candy kid—hear me? Our crack scout. Escadrille 32.”

“Escadrille 32?” The number held no meaning for me. Yet I pushed nearer. _Grand blessé_, indeed, that lax, pulseless body, that shattered flesh, that blood and mire. I bent closer. Red hair, shining and thick, the red that always goes with cinnamon freckles. A clean-cut, ashen young face, a square jaw, a stubborn, boyish chin with a deep-cleft dimple.

Then my heart stopped short. The room whirled round me.

“Buster!” I cried out. “You naughty, darling little scamp! So you got your way, after all. You ran off from school, and joined the escadrille—oh, sonny-boy, don’t you hear me? Listen! Listen!”

The gaunt face did not stir. Only that ashy whiteness seemed to grow yet whiter.

“We’ll do our best, Miss Preston. Go away now, dear.” The head nurse put me gently back. I knew too well what her gentleness meant.

“But Doctor Lake can save him! Doctor Lake can pull him through!”

“Doctor Lake is worn out. We’ll have to manage without him.”

“Don’t you believe it!” I flamed. Then I, the greenest, meekest slavey in the service, dashed straight to the operating-room, and gripped Doctor Lake by both wrists and jerked him bodily off the bench where he crouched, a sick, lubberly heap, blind with fatigue.

“No, you sha’n’t stop to rest. Not yet!” I stormed at him. Somehow I dragged him down the ward, to my boy’s side. At sight of that deathlike face, the limp, shivering man pulled himself together with all his weary might.

“I’ll do my level best, Miss Edith. Go away, now, that’s a good girl.”

I went away and listened to the ambulance-driver. He was having an ugly bullet scratch on his arm tied up. He was not a regular field-service man, but a young Y. M. C. A. helper who had taken the place of a driver shot down that noon.

“Well, you see, that kid took the air two hours ago to locate the battery that’s been spilling shells into our munitions station. He spotted it, and two others besides. Naturally, they spotted him. He scooted for home, with a shrapnel wound in his shoulder, and made a bad landing three miles back of the lines, and broke his leg and whacked his head. Luckily I wasn’t a hundred yards away. I got him aboard my car and gave him first aid and started to bring him straight over here. Would he stand for that? Not Buddy. ‘You’ll take me to headquarters first, to report,’ says he. ‘So let her out.’

“No use arguing. I let her out. We reported at headquarters, three miles out of our way, then started here. Two miles back, a shell struck just ahead and sent a rock the size of a paving-brick smack against our engine. The car stopped, dead. Did that faze the kid? Not so you could notice it. ‘You hoist me on the seat and let me get one hand on the wheel,’ says he, cool’s a cucumber. ‘There isn’t a car made but will jump through hoops for me.’ Go she did. With her engine knocked galley west, mind you, and him propped up, chirk as a cherub, with his broken leg and his smashed shoulder, and a knock on his head that would ’a’ stopped his clock if he’d had any brains to jolt. Skill? He drove that car like a racer. She only hit the high places. Pluck? He wrote it.

“We weren’t fifty yards from the hospital when he crumpled down, and I grabbed him. Hemorrhage, I guess. I sure do hope they pull him through. But—I don’t believe—”

Soon a very dirty-faced brigadier-general, whom I used to meet at dances long ago, came and sat down on a soap-box and held my hands and tried to comfort me, so gently and so patiently, the poor, kind, blundering dear. Most of his words just buzzed and glimmered round me. But one thought stuck in my dull brain.

“This isn’t your boy’s first service to his country, Miss Edith. He has been with the escadrille only a month, but he has brought down three enemy planes, and his scouting has been invaluable. He’s a wonder, anyhow. So are all our flying boys. They tell me that the German youngsters make such good soldiers because they’re trained to follow orders blindfold. All very well when it comes to following a bayonet charge over the top. But the escadrille—that’s another story. Take our boys, brought up to sail their own boats and run their own cars and chance any fool risk in sight. Couple up that impudence, that fearlessness, that splendid curiosity, and you’ve got a fighting-machine that not only fights but wins. All the drilled, stolid forces in creation can’t beat back that headlong young spirit. If—”

He halted, stammering.

“If—we can’t keep him with us, you must remember that he gave his best to his country, and his best was a noble gift. Be very glad that you could help your boy prepare himself to bestow it. You and his parents gave him his outdoor life and his daring sports and his fearless outlook, and his uncurbed initiative. You helped him build himself, mind and body, to flawless powers and to instant decisions. To-day came his chance to give his greatest service. No matter what comes now, you—you have your royal memory.”

But I could not hear any more. I cried out that I didn’t want any royal memories, I wanted my dear, bad, self-willed little boy. The general got up then and limped away and stood and looked out of the window.

I sat and waited. I kept on waiting—minutes on gray minutes, hours on hours.

Then a nurse grasped my shoulders, and tried to tell me something. I heard her clearly, but I couldn’t string her words together to make meaning. Finally, she drew me to my feet and led me back to the operating-room.

There stood Doctor Lake. He was leaning against the wall and wiping his face on a piece of gauze. He came straight to me and put out both big, kind hands.

“Tell me. You needn’t try to make it easy—”

“There, there, Miss Edith. There’s nothing to tell. Look for yourself.”

Gray-lipped, whiter than ashes, straight and moveless as a young knight in marble effigy, lay my boy. But a shadow pulse flickered in that bound temple, the cheek I kissed was warm.

“No,” said Doctor Lake very softly. “He won’t die. He’s steel and whipcord, that youngster. Heaven be praised, you can’t kill his sort with a hatchet.”

He leaned down, gave Buster a long, searching look. His puffy, fagged face twisted with bewilderment, then broke into chuckles of astonishment and delight.

“Well, on my word and honor! I’ve just this moment recognized him. This _blessé_ is the imp of Satan who used to steal my car up the North Shore. He’s the chap who steered that confounded aeroplane into the garden-party.... I’ve always sworn that, let me once lay hands on that young scalawag, I’d lick the tar out of him!”

“Well, here’s your chance,” snivelled I.

He did not hear me. He had stooped again over Buster. Again he was peering into that still face. Over his own face came a strange look, mirthful, then deep with question, profoundly tender; then, flashing through, a gleam of amazing and most piteous jealousy, the bitter, comic jealousy of the most famous of all middle-aged American surgeons for insolent, fool-hardy, glorious youth.

Then he turned and went away, a big, dead-tired, shambling figure. And in that instant my boy’s heavy eyes lifted and stared at me. Slowly in them awoke a drowsy sparkle.

“Hello, Cousin Edith. When did you blow in?”

I didn’t try to speak. I looked past him at Doctor Lake, now plodding from the room. Buster’s eyes followed mine. Over his face came a smile of heaven’s own light.

“Old stuffed shirt,” sighed Buster with exquisite content. He turned his gaunt young head on the pillow; he tucked a brawny fist under his cheek. Before I could speak he had slipped away, far on a sea of dreams.

THE OPEN WINDOW

_By_ CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE From _Harper’s Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers._ _Copyright, 1919, by Charles Caldwell Dobie._

“It happened just as I have said,” Fernet reiterated, tossing the wine-dregs from his glass.

The company at the table looked instinctively toward the kitchen. Berthe was bringing a fresh pot of coffee. They all followed Fernet’s example, lifting their empty glasses for her to serve them in their turn.

The regular boarders of the Hôtel de France, after the fashion of folks who find their meal a duty to be promptly despatched, had departed, but the transients still lingered over their _café noir_ and cognac in the hope that something exciting might materialize.

As the sound of Fernet’s voice died away, a man who had been sitting in an extreme corner of the room scraped back his chair and rose. Fernet looked up. The man was a hunchback, and, instead of paying for his meal and leaving, he crossed over and said to Fernet, in the most perfect French imaginable:

“I see, my young fellow, that you are discussing something of interest with your friends here. Would it be impertinent for me to inquire into the subject?”

Fernet drew out a chair for the newcomer, who seated himself.

“By no means. We were discussing a murder and suicide. The murdered man was an Italian fisherman who lodged at the Hôtel des Alpes Maritimes, the suicide was a musician named Suvaroff.”

“Ah,” said the hunchback, cracking his fingers. “Why a murder and suicide? Why not two murders?”

“Because,” returned Fernet, pompously, “it was abundantly proved to the contrary. This man Suvaroff suffered from neuralgia; the Italian fisherman was given to playing the accordion at all hours of the night. Suvaroff was, in addition, a musician—a high-strung person. The Italian’s playing was abominable—even his landlady says as much. In short, Suvaroff deliberately killed this simple-minded peasant because of his music. Then, in a fit of remorse, he killed himself. I leave it to any one here to dispute the fact. Besides, I was on the coroner’s jury. I should know what I am talking about.”

“Oh, without doubt,” agreed the hunchback, smiling amiably. “But, as I remember, the knives in both cases were plunged hilt-deep into the backs of the victims. One does not usually commit suicide in this fashion.”

Fernet coldly eyed the curiously handsome face of his antagonist. “It seems you know more about this thing than a coroner’s jury,” he sneered.

“It seems I do—granting that such an important item was left out of the evidence.”

“Then, my good sir, will you be good enough to tell me who _did_ kill Suvaroff, since you do not admit that he died by his own hand?”

The hunchback cracked his fingers again. “That is simple enough. Suvaroff was killed by the same person who stabbed the Italian.”

“And who might that be, pray?”

The hunchback rose with a malignant smile. “Ah, if I told you that you would know as much as I do, my friend.”

And with that he walked calmly over to the proprietor, put down thirty-five cents for his meal upon the counter, and without another word left the room.

A silence fell upon the group. Everybody stared straight ahead, avoiding the eye of his neighbor. It was as if something too terrifying to be remarked had passed them.

Finally, a thick-set man at Fernet’s right, with a purple wart on his cheek, said, uneasily, “Come, I must be going.”

The others rose; only Fernet remained seated.

“What,” said another, “haven’t you finished?”

“Yes,” returned Fernet, gloomily, “but I am in no hurry.”

He sat there for an hour, alone, holding his head between his hands. Berthe cleared off the soiled plates, wiped the oilcloth-covered tables, began noisily to lay the pewter knives and forks for the morning meal. At this Fernet stirred himself and, looking up at her, said:

“Tell me who was the hunchback who came and sat with us? Does he live here—in San Francisco?”

“His name is Flavio Minetti,” she replied, setting the lid back upon an uncovered sugar-bowl. “Beyond that I know nothing. But they tell me that he is quite mad.”

“Ah, that accounts for many things,” said Fernet, smiling with recovered assurance. “I must say he is strangely fascinating.”

Berthe looked at him sharply and shrugged. “For my part, he makes me shiver every time I see him come in the door. When I serve him my hand shakes. And he continually cracks his fingers and says to me: ‘Come, Berthe, what can I do to make you smile? Would you laugh if I were to dance for you? I would give half my life only to see you laughing. Why are you so sad?’ ... No, I wish he would never come again.”

“Nevertheless, I should like to see him once more.”

“He comes always on Thursdays for chicken.”

“Thanks,” said Fernet, as he put on his hat.

――――

Fernet walked directly to his lodgings that night. He had a room in an old-fashioned house on the east side of Telegraph Hill. The room was shabby enough, but it caught glimpses of the bay and there was a gnarled pepper-tree that came almost to its windows and gave Fernet a sense of eternal, though grotesque, spring. Even his landlord was unusual—a professional beggar who sat upon the curb, with a ridiculous French poodle for company, and sold red and green pencils.

This landlord was sitting out by the front gate as Fernet entered.

“Ah, Pollitto,” said Fernet, halting before the old man and snapping his fingers at the poodle who lay crouched before his master, “I see you are enjoying this fine warm night.”

“You are wrong,” replied the beggar. “I am merely sitting here hoping that some one will come along and rent my front room.”

“Then it is vacant?”

“Naturally,” replied the old man, with disagreeable brevity, and Fernet walked quickly up to his room.

“Why do I live in such a place?” he asked himself, surveying the four bare walls. “Everything about it is abominable, and that beggar, Pollitto, is a scoundrel. I shall move next week.”

He crossed over to the window and flung it open. The pepper-tree lay before him, crouching in the moonlight. He thought at once of Flavio Minetti.

“He is like this pepper-tree,” he said, aloud, “beautiful even in his deformity. No, I would not trade this pepper-tree for a dozen of the straightest trees in the world.” He stepped back from the window, and, lighting a lamp, set it upon a tottering walnut table. “Ah, André Fernet,” he mused, chidingly, “you are always snared by what is unusual. You should pray to God that such folly does not lead you to disaster.”

He went to the window and looked out again. The pepper-tree seemed to be bending close to the ground, as if seeking to hide something. Presently the wind parted its branches and the moonlight fell at its feet like a silver moth before a blackened candle.

André Fernet shivered and sighed. “Yes,” he repeated, again and again, “they are alike. They both are at once beautiful and hideous and they have strange secrets.... Well, I shall go on Thursday again, and maybe I shall see him. Who knows, if I am discreet he may tell me who killed this ridiculous musician Suvaroff.”

And with that he suddenly blew out the light.

On the next Thursday night, when Fernet entered the dining-room of the Hôtel de France his glance rested immediately upon Flavio Minetti. To his surprise the hunchback rose, drawing a chair out as he did so, and beckoning Fernet to be seated next him. For a moment Fernet hesitated, Berthe was just bringing on the soup.

“What! Are you afraid?” she said, mockingly, as she passed.

This decided Fernet. He went and sat beside Minetti without further ado.

“Ah, I was expecting you!” cried the hunchback, genially, as he passed the radishes.

“Expecting _me_?” returned Fernet. His voice trembled, though he tried to speak boldly.

“Yes. Women are not the only inquisitive animals in the world. What will you have—some wine?”

Fernet allowed Minetti to fill his glass.

Other boarders began to drift in. Minetti turned his back upon Fernet, speaking to a new-comer at his left. He did not say another word all evening.

Fernet ate and drank in silence. “What did I come for and why am I staying?” he kept asking himself. “This man is mocking me. First of all, he greets me as if I were his boon companion, and next he insults me openly and before everybody in the room. Even Berthe has noticed it and is smiling. As a matter of fact, he knows no more than I do about Suvaroff’s death.”

But he continued to sit beside the hunchback all through the meal, and as fruit was put on the table he touched Minetti on the arm and said, “Will you join me in a _café royal_?”

“Not here ... a little later. I can show you a place where they really know how to make them. And, besides, there are tables for just two. It is much more private.”

Fernet’s heart bounded and sank almost in one leap. “Let us go now, then,” he said, eagerly.

“As you wish,” replied Minetti.

Fernet paid for two dinners, and they reached for their hats.

“Where are you going?” asked Berthe, as she opened the door.

Fernet shrugged. “I am in his hands,” he answered, sweeping his arm toward Minetti.

“You mean you will be,” muttered the hunchback, in an undertone.

Fernet heard him distinctly.

“Perhaps I had better leave him while there is yet time!” flashed through his mind. But the next instant he thought, contemptuously: “What harm can he do me? Why, his wrist is no bigger than a pullet’s wing. Bah! You are a fool, André Fernet!”

――――

They stepped out into the street. A languorous note was in the air; the usual cool wind from the sea had not risen. A waning moon silvered the roof-tops, making a pretense of hiding its face in the thin line of smoke above Telegraph Hill.

The hunchback led the way, trotting along in a fashion almost Oriental. At the end of the second block he turned abruptly into a wine-shop; Fernet followed. They found seats in a far corner, away from the billiard-tables. A waiter came forward. They gave their orders.

“Be sure,” said Minetti to the waiter, “that we have plenty of anisette and cognac in the coffee.”

The man flicked a towel rather contemptuously and made no answer.

“Now,” Minetti continued, turning a mocking face toward Fernet, “what can I do for you, my friend?”

Fernet was filled with confusion. “I ... you ...” he stammered. “Really, there is nothing. Believe me—”

“Nonsense,” interrupted Minetti. “You wish to know who killed Suvaroff. But I warn you, my friend, it is a dreadful thing to share such a secret.”

He looked at Fernet intently. The younger man shuddered. “Nevertheless, I should like to know,” Fernet said, distinctly.

“Well, then, since you are so determined—it was I who killed him.”

Fernet stared, looked again at the hunchback’s puny wrists, and began to laugh. “_You!_ Do you take me for a fool?” And as he said this he threw back his head and laughed until even the billiard-players stopped their game and looked around at him.

“What are you laughing at?” asked the hunchback, narrowing his eyes.

Fernet stopped. He felt a sudden chill as if some one had opened a door. “I am laughing at you,” he answered.

“I am sorry for that,” said Minetti, dryly.

“Why?”

The hunchback leaned forward confidentially. “Because I kill every one who laughs at me. It—it is a little weakness I have.”

The waiter came with two glasses of steaming coffee. He put them down on the table, together with a bottle of cognac and a bottle of anisette.

“Ah, that is good!” cried the hunchback, rubbing his hands together. “The proprietor is my friend. He is going to let us prepare our own poison!”

Fernet felt himself shivering. “Come,” he thought, “this will never do! The man is either mad or jesting.” He reached for the anisette.

“Let me pour it for you,” suggested Flavio Minetti. “Your hand is shaking so that you will spill half of it on the floor.”

The hunchback’s voice had a note of pity in it. Fernet relinquished his hold upon the bottle.

“Don’t look so frightened,” continued Minetti. “I shall not kill you here. The proprietor is a friend of mine, and, besides—”

“What nonsense!” cried Fernet, with a ghastly smile. “But I must confess, you did make my blood run cold for a minute.”

Minetti stirred some cognac into his glass. “And, besides,” he finished, coldly, “I give everybody a sporting chance. It adds to the game.”

――――

That night André Fernet was restless. He lay on his bed looking out at the blinking lights of the harbor. “I must stop drinking coffee,” he muttered to himself.

Finally he fell asleep, and when he did he had a strange dream. It seemed that the pepper-tree outside his window suddenly began to move in the night breeze and its long green boughs became alive, twisting like the relentless tentacles of a devil-fish. Its long green boughs became alive, crawling along the ground, flinging themselves into the air, creeping in at André Fernet’s open window. He lay upon the bed as he had done earlier in the evening, watching the harbor lights. Slowly the green boughs writhed over the faded carpet, scaled the bedpost and fell upon the bed. André Fernet waited, motionless. He felt the green tentacles close about his legs, clasp his hands, slide shudderingly across his throat. Yet he made no move to free himself. It was only when he felt a breath upon his cheek that he turned slightly, and instead of the tentacle-like boughs of the pepper-tree he fancied himself staring down at the hands of Flavio Minetti.... He awoke with a start. The sun was pouring in at the open window. He got up quickly. A noisy clatter issued from the passageway. Fernet opened his door. Two men were carrying a trunk up the stairs. Pollitto, the beggar, walked behind.

“Ah, I see you have rented your front room,” said Fernet, stepping out.

“Yes,” returned the other. “It was taken as early as six o’clock this morning—by a hunchback.”

Fernet stopped breathing. “A hunchback? Was his name Flavio Minetti?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

Fernet tried to smile. “He is a friend of mine,” he answered, as he walked back into his room. “Perhaps it would be better if I moved away,” he thought. “I do not like this room. Heaven knows why I have stayed this long. Is this fellow Minetti really mad or merely making sport of me? I should not like to have him think that I am afraid of him. As for his story about Suvaroff, that is, of course, ridiculous. If I thought otherwise I should go at once to the.... No, it is all a joke! I shall stay where I am. I shall not have it said that a little, mad, puny, twisted fellow frightened André Fernet out of his lodgings. Besides, it will be curious to watch his little game. What a beautiful morning it is, after all! And the pepper-tree—how it glistens in the sun! I should miss that pepper-tree if I moved away. But I must stop drinking _cafés royal_. They upset one. I do not know whether it is the coffee, or the cognac, or the anisette, or all three. Of course, that dream I had toward morning means nothing—but such dreams are unpleasant. I hate this place. But I shall not move now. No, I shall wait and see what happens.”

――――

Fernet did not see Minetti for some days. Indeed, he had dismissed the whole thing from his mind, when, one night, returning home early to get out of a drizzle, who should stop him on the stairway but the hunchback.

“Ah, so here you are!” called out Fernet, gaily, in spite of his rapidly beating heart. “I have been waiting for you to call on me ever since I heard that you were lodging under the same roof.”

“I have been busy,” replied the hunchback, laconically.

Fernet threw open his bedroom door and waved Minetti in.

“Busy?” he echoed, as he struck a light. “And what do you find that is so absorbing, pray?”

“You know my specialty,” replied Minetti, flinging off his cap.

Fernet looked up sharply. A malignant look had crept into the hunchback’s face.

“Oh, there is no doubt of it, he is quite mad!” said Fernet to himself. Then aloud: “Yes, I have been wanting to talk to you more about this. Take a seat and I shall make some coffee. For instance, do you always employ the knife in despatching your—”

“Scarcely,” interrupted Minetti, quickly. “Slow poison has its fascinations. There is a very delicate joy in watching a gradual decline. It is like watching a green leaf fading before the breath of autumn. First a sickly pallor, then a yellowing, finally the sap dries completely, a sharp wind, a fluttering in the air, and it is all over. I have tried nearly every slow way—except mental murder. I fancy that, too, would be exquisite.”

“Mental murder.... I do not understand.”

Minetti stretched himself out and yawned. “Accomplishing the thing without any weapon save the mind.”

Fernet picked up the coffee-pot and laughed. “Why, my dear fellow, it is too absurd! The thing cannot be done. You see I am laughing at you again, but no matter.”

“No, as you say, it is no matter. You can die only once.”

Fernet’s laughter stopped instantly. He went on with his preparation for coffee. Minetti changed the subject.

It turned out that there was no sugar in the cracked bowl. Fernet was putting on his hat to go out for some, when the hunchback stopped him.

“Sugar will not be necessary,” he said. And as he spoke he drew a vial from his vest pocket and laid it upon the table beside the cups. “You know what these are, of course.”

“Saccharine pellets?” inquired Fernet as he threw aside his hat.

Minetti replied with a grunt. Fernet poured out the coffee, set a spoon in each saucer, laid three French rolls upon a blue plate. Then he sat down.

“Permit me!” said Minetti, reaching for the vial and rolling a tiny pellet into his palm.

Fernet held up his cup; the hunchback dropped the pellet into it. Then he corked the vial tightly and laid it aside.

“You forgot to serve yourself,” said Fernet.

“So I did!” answered Minetti, nonchalantly. “Well, no matter. I very often drink my coffee so—without sweetening.”

Fernet drew back suddenly. Could it be possible that.... The hunchback was staring at him, an ironical smile was on his lips. Fernet shuddered.

“Drink your coffee!” Minetti commanded, sneeringly. “You are on the verge of a chill.”

Fernet obeyed meekly. He felt for all the world like an animal caught in a trap. He tried to collect his thoughts. What had the hunchback been talking about?

“Slow poison!” muttered Fernet, inaudibly to himself.

“What is that you are saying?” demanded the other.

“You were speaking of slow poison. How do you go about it?”

“Oh, that is easy! For instance, once in London I lodged next door to my victim. We became capital friends. And he was always calling me in for a bite of something to eat. Nothing elaborate—a bun and a cup of tea, or coffee and cake. Very much as we are doing now. He died in six months. It is no trick, you know, to poison a man who eats and drinks with you—especially drinks!”

As he said this the hunchback reached for the coffee-pot and poured Fernet another cupful. Then he uncorked the vial again and dropped a pellet into the steaming liquid.

“I do not think that I wish any more,” protested Fernet.

“Nonsense! You are still shivering like an old woman with the palsy. Hot coffee will do you good.”

“No,” said Fernet, desperately, “I never drink more than one cup at a sitting. It keeps me awake, and next morning my hand shakes and I am fit for nothing. I need a steady hand in my business.”

“And what may that be, pray?”

“At present I am a draftsman. Some day, if I live long enough, I hope to be an architect.”

“If you live long enough? You forget that you have laughed at _me_, my friend.”

Fernet tried to appear indifferent. “What a droll fellow you are!” he cried, with sudden gaiety, rubbing his hands together. And without thinking, he reached for his coffee-cup and downed the contents in almost one gulp. He laid the cup aside quickly. He could feel the sweat starting out upon his forehead.

“There, you see,” said Minetti, “the coffee has done you good already. You are perspiring, and that is a good sign. A hot drink at the right moment works wonders.”

――――

The next morning Pollitto stopped Fernet as he swung out the front gate to his work.

“What is the matter with you?” exclaimed the beggar, in a surprised tone.

“Why ... what?” demanded Fernet, in a trembling voice. “Do I look so ...? Pray, tell me, is there anything unusual about me?”

“Why, your face.... Have you looked at yourself in the glass? Your skin is the color of stale pastry.”

Fernet tried to laugh. “It is nothing. I have been drinking too much coffee lately. I must stop it.”

It was a fine morning. The sun was shining and the air was brisk and full of little rippling breezes. The bay lay like a blue-green peacock ruffling its gilded feathers. The city had a genial, smiling countenance. But Fernet was out of humor with all this full-blown content. He had spent a wretched night—not sleepless, but full of disturbing dreams. Dreams about Minetti and his London neighbor and the empty sugar-bowl. All night he had dreamed about this empty sugar-bowl. It seemed that as soon as he had it filled Minetti would slyly empty it again. He tried stowing sugar away in his pockets, but when he put his hand in to draw out a lump a score or more of pellets spilled over the floor. Then he remembered saying:

“I shall call on Minetti’s London neighbor. Maybe he will have some sugar.”

He walked miles and miles, and finally beat upon a strange door. A man wrapped in a black coat up to his eyebrows opened to his knock.

“Are you Flavio Minetti’s London neighbor?” he demanded, boldly.

The figure bowed. Fernet drew the cracked sugar-bowl from under his arm.

“Will you oblige me with a little sugar?” he asked, more politely.

The black-cloaked figure bowed and disappeared. Presently he came back. Fernet took the sugar-bowl from him. It struck him that the bowl felt very light. He looked down at his hands. The bowl had disappeared; only a glass vial lay in his palm. He removed the cork—a dozen or more tiny round pellets fell out. He glanced up quickly at Minetti’s London neighbor; a dreadful smile glowed through the black cloak. Fernet gave a cry and hurled the vial in the face of his tormentor. Minetti’s London neighbor let the black cloak fall, and André Fernet discovered that he was staring at himself.... He awakened soon after that and found that it was morning.

When he brushed his hair his hand had shaken so that the brush fell clattering to the floor. And he had spilled the cream for his morning coffee over the faded strip of carpet before the bureau. It had ended by his eating no breakfast at all. But he had drunk glass after glass of cold water.

After Pollitto’s words he trembled more and more like a man with the ague, and before every saloon-door mirror he halted and took a brief survey of his face. Pollitto was right—his skin was dead and full of unhealthy pallor. It was plain that he could not work in his present condition. His trembling fingers could scarcely hold a pencil, much less guide it through the precise demands of a drafting-board. He decided to go to the library and read. But the books on architecture which always enthralled him could not hold his shifting attention. Finally in despair he went up to the librarian and said:

“Have you any books on poison?”

The woman eyed him with a cold, incurious glance.

“Historical or medical?” she snapped out, as she went on stamping mysterious numbers in the pile of books before her.

“Both!”

She consulted a catalogue and made a list for him.

He sat all day devouring books which the librarian had recommended. He did not even go out for lunch. He read historical and romantic instances with a keen, morbid relish; but when it came to the medical books his heart quickened and he followed causes and effects breathlessly. By nightfall he had a relentless knowledge of every poison in the calendar. He knew what to expect from arsenic or strychnine or vitriol. He learned which poisons destroyed tissues, which acted as narcotics, which were irritants. He identified the hemlock, the horse-chestnut, the deadly toadstools. In short, he absorbed and retained everything on the subject. It seemed that the world teemed with poisons; one could be sure of nothing. Even beautiful flowers were not to be trusted.

He was so upset by all he had read that he could scarcely eat dinner. He went to an obscure _pension_ in a wretched basement, where he was sure he would be unknown, and, after two or three mouthfuls of soup and a spoonful of rice boiled with tomato, he rose, paid for his meal, and went out to tramp up and down past the tawdry shops of middle Kearny Street. He was trotting aimlessly in the direction of Market Street when he felt a tug at his coat-sleeve. He turned. Minetti was smiling genially up at him.

“Come,” said the hunchback, “what is your hurry? Have you had coffee yet? I was thinking that—”

Fernet’s heart sank at once. And yet he managed to say boldly: “I have given up drinking coffee. You can see for yourself what a wretched complexion I have. And to-day I have scarcely eaten.”

“Pooh!” cried Minetti. “A cup of coffee will do you good.”

Fernet began to draw away in futile terror. “No!” he protested, with frightened vehemence. “No, I tell you! I won’t drink the stuff! It is useless for you to—”

Minetti began to laugh with scornful good-humor. “What has come over you?” he drawled, half-closing his eyes. “Are you afraid?”

And as he said this Fernet glanced instinctively at the puny wrists, no bigger than a pullet’s wing, and replied, boldly:

“Afraid? Of what? I told you last night I need a steady hand in my business, and to-day I have not been able to do any work.”

Minetti’s mirth softened into genial acquiescence. “Well, maybe you are right. But I must say you are not very companionable. Perhaps the coffee you have been drinking has not been made properly. You should take _something_. You do look badly. A glass of brandy?... No?... Ah, I have it—coffee made in the Turkish fashion. Have you ever drunk that?”

“No,” replied Fernet, helplessly, wondering all the time why he was foolish enough to tell the truth.

“Well, then,” announced the hunchback, confidently, “we shall cross over to Third Street and have some Turkish coffee. I know a Greek café where they brew a cup that would tempt the Sultan himself. Have you ever seen it made? They use coffee pounded to a fine powder—a teaspoonful to a cup, and sugar in the same proportion. It is all put in together and brought to a boil. The result is indescribable! Really, you are in for a treat.”

“If it is sweetened in the making,” flashed through Fernet’s mind, “at least we shall have no more of that pellet business.”

“Yes—the result is quite indescribable,” Minetti was repeating, “and positively no bad effects.”

And as he said this he slipped his arm into Fernet’s and guided him with gentle firmness toward the Greek café in question. Fernet felt suddenly helpless and incapable of offering the slightest objection.

A girl took their orders. She had a freckled nose and was frankly Irish. Naturally, she did not fit the picture, and Fernet could see that she was scornful of the whole business.

“Two coffees ... medium,” Minetti repeated, decisively. “And will you have a sweet with it? They sell taffy made of sesame seeds and honey. Or you can have Turkish delight or a pastry dusted with powdered sugar. Really they are all quite delicious.”

Fernet merely shrugged. Minetti ordered Turkish delight. The girl wiped some moisture from the marble table-top and walked toward the coffee-shelf.

“So you were not able to work to-day?” Minetti began, affably. “How did you put in the time?”

“At the library, reading.”

“Something droll? A French novel or—”

“Books on _poison_!” Fernet shot out with venomous triumph. “I know more than I did yesterday.”

“How distressing!” purred Minetti. “Ignorance is more invulnerable than one fancies. Of course we are taught otherwise, but knowledge, you remember, was the beginning of all trouble. But you choose a fascinating, subject. Some day when we get better acquainted I shall tell you all I know about it. Poison is such a subtle thing. It is everywhere—in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the food we eat. And it is at once swift and sluggish, painful and stupefying, obvious and incapable of analysis. It is like a beautiful woman, or a great joy, or love itself.”

Fernet glanced up sharply. The hunchback had slid forward in his seat and his eyes glowed like two shaded pools catching greedily at the yellow sunlight of midday. Fernet shuddered and looked about the room. Groups of swarthy men were drinking coffee, or sipping faintly red draughts of cherry syrup and sweet soda. At a near-by table a group of six shuffled cards and marked their scores upon a slate. And, of course, there were those who played backgammon, rattling the dice and making exaggerated gestures as they spurred on their adversaries with genial taunts.

The girl came back carrying cups of thick steaming coffee and soft lemon-colored sweetmeats speared with two tiny silver forks. She set the tray down. Minetti reached for his coffee greedily, but Fernet sat back in his seat and allowed the waitress to place the second cup before him. As she did so the table shook suddenly and half of the hot liquid spilled over on the marble tabletop. Fernet jumped up to escape the scalding trickle; the girl gave an apologetic scream; Minetti laughed strangely.

“It is all my fault!” cried the hunchback. “What stupidity! Pray be seated. My young woman, will you give the gentleman this coffee of mine? And get me another.”

“Pardon me,” Fernet protested, “but I cannot think of such a thing!” And with that he attempted to pass the coffee in question back to Minetti. But the hunchback would have none of it. Fernet broke into a terrified sweat.

“He has dropped poison into it!” he thought, in sudden panic. “Otherwise why should he be so anxious to have me drink it? He kicked the table deliberately, too. And this cup of his—why was it not spilled also? No, he was prepared—it is all a trick!”

“Come, come, my friend,” broke in Minetti, briskly, “drink your coffee while it is still hot! Do not wait for me. I shall be served presently. And try the sweetmeats; they are delicious.”

“I am not hungry,” replied Fernet, sullenly.

“No? Well, what of that? Sweetmeats and coffee are not matters of hunger. Really, you are more droll than you imagine!” Minetti burst into a terrifying laugh.

“He thinks I am afraid!” muttered Fernet.

And out of sheer bravado he lifted the cup to his lips. Minetti stopped laughing, but a wide smile replaced his diabolical mirth. The girl brought fresh coffee to the hunchback. He sipped it with frank enjoyment, but he did not once take his gaze from Fernet’s pale face.

“Well,” thought Fernet, “one cup of poison more or less will not kill me.... It is not as if he has made up his mind to finish me at once. He is counting on the exquisite joys of a prolonged agony.” And he remembered Minetti’s words: “It is like watching a green leaf fading before the breath of autumn. First a sickly pallor, then a yellowing, a sharp wind, a fluttering in the air....” He tossed off the coffee in one defiant gulp. “He thinks that he has me in his power. But André Fernet is not quite a fool. I shall go away to-morrow!”

――――

They went home as soon as Minetti finished his coffee. Fernet felt a sudden nausea; by the time he reached his lodgings his steps were unsteady and his head reeled. Minetti was kindness itself.

“Let me help you into bed,” he insisted. “You must have a congestion. Presently I shall heat some water and give you a hot gin.”