T.S. Arthur - "Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing"

John Richardson - "Wacousta"

John Greenleaf Whittier - "Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent"

Thomas H. Huxley - "On the Study of Zoology"

Tales Of Men And Ghosts

E >> Edith Wharton >> Tales Of Men And Ghosts




"The old man's rage was fearful in its impotence--he shook,
spluttered and strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up and
had sacked him on the spot, without wages or character--had
threatened to have him arrested if he was ever caught prowling about
Wrenfield. 'By God, and I'll do it--I'll write to Washington--I'll
have the pauper scoundrel deported! I'll show him what money can
do!' As likely as not there was some murderous Black-hand business
under it--it would be found that the fellow was a member of a
'gang.' Those Italians would murder you for a quarter. He meant to
have the police look into it... And then he grew frightened at his
own excitement. 'But I must calm myself,' he said. He took his
temperature, rang for his drops, and turned to the _Churchman_. He
had been reading an article on Nestorianism when the melon was
brought in. He asked me to go on with it, and I read to him for an
hour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about
the fallen melon.

"All the while one phrase of the old man's buzzed in my brain like
the fly about the melon. '_I'll show him what money can do!_' Good
heaven! If _I_ could but show the old man! If I could make him see
his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous
egotism! I tried to tell him something about my situation and
Kate's--spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing
to write, to make myself a name--I stammered out an entreaty for a
loan. 'I can guarantee to repay you, sir--I've a half-written play
as security...'

"I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as smooth
as an egg-shell again--his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like
sentinels over a slippery rampart.

"'A half-written play--a play of _yours_ as security?' He looked at
me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity.
'Do you understand anything of business?' he enquired mildly. I
laughed and answered: 'No, not much.'

"He leaned back with closed lids. 'All this excitement has been too
much for me,' he said. 'If you'll excuse me, I'll prepare for my
nap.' And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian."

Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to the
tray set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured himself a tall
glass of soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham's dead cigar.

"Better light another," he suggested.

The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He
told of his mounting obsession--how the murderous impulse had waked
in him on the instant of his cousin's refusal, and he had muttered
to himself: "By God, if you won't, I'll make you." He spoke more
tranquilly as the narrative proceeded, as though his rage had died
down once the resolve to act on it was taken. He applied his whole
mind to the question of how the old man was to be "disposed of."
Suddenly he remembered the outcry: "Those Italians will murder you
for a quarter!" But no definite project presented itself: he simply
waited for an inspiration.

Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the incident
of the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept them informed
of the old man's condition. One day, about three weeks later,
Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a report from
Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again--had somehow slipped
into the house, made his way up to the library, and "used
threatening language." The house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping,
the whites of his eyes showing "something awful." The doctor was
sent for, and the attack warded off; and the police had ordered the
Italian from the neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had "nerves," and lost
his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a
colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man--he
became once more an important figure. The medical men reassured the
family--too completely!--and to the patient they recommended a more
varied diet: advised him to take whatever "tempted him." And so one
day, tremulously, prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It
was brought up with ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the
house-keeper and a hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was
dead...

"But you remember the circumstances," Granice went on; "how
suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the
police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house since
'the scene.' It was said that he had tender relations with the
kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when they
looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone--gone clean
out of sight. He had been 'warned' to leave Wrenfield, and he had
taken the warning so to heart that no one ever laid eyes on him
again."

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer's,
and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the
familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and
each strange insistent object seemed craning forward from its place
to hear him.

"It was I who put the stuff in the melon," he said. "And I don't
want you to think I'm sorry for it. This isn't 'remorse,'
understand. I'm glad the old skin-flint is dead--I'm glad the others
have their money. But mine's no use to me any more. My sister
married miserably, and died. And I've never had what I wanted."

Ascham continued to stare; then he said: "What on earth was your
object, then?"

"Why, to _get_ what I wanted--what I fancied was in reach! I wanted
change, rest, _life_, for both of us--wanted, above all, for myself,
the chance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came home
to tie myself up to my work. And I've slaved at it steadily for ten
years without reward--without the most distant hope of success!
Nobody will look at my stuff. And now I'm fifty, and I'm beaten, and
I know it." His chin dropped forward on his breast. "I want to chuck
the whole business," he ended.






III





IT was after midnight when Ascham left.

His hand on Granice's shoulder, as he turned to go--"District
Attorney be hanged; see a doctor, see a doctor!" he had cried; and
so, with an exaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and departed.

Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to him
that Ascham would not believe his story. For three hours he had
explained, elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over every
detail--but without once breaking down the iron incredulity of the
lawyer's eye.

At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced--but that, as Granice
now perceived, was simply to get him to expose himself, to entrap
him into contradictions. And when the attempt failed, when Granice
triumphantly met and refuted each disconcerting question, the lawyer
dropped the mask suddenly, and said with a good-humoured laugh: "By
Jove, Granice you'll write a successful play yet. The way you've
worked this all out is a marvel."

Granice swung about furiously--that last sneer about the play
inflamed him. Was all the world in a conspiracy to deride his
failure?

"I did it, I did it," he muttered sullenly, his rage spending itself
against the impenetrable surface of the other's mockery; and Ascham
answered with a smile: "Ever read any of those books on
hallucination? I've got a fairly good medico-legal library. I could
send you one or two if you like..."

Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his
writing-table. He understood that Ascham thought him off his head.

"Good God--what if they all think me crazy?"

The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat--he sat there
and shook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as he
began to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw again
how incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any criminal lawyer
would believe him.

"That's the trouble--Ascham's not a criminal lawyer. And then he's a
friend. What a fool I was to talk to a friend! Even if he did
believe me, he'd never let me see it--his instinct would be to cover
the whole thing up... But in that case--if he _did_ believe me--he
might think it a kindness to get me shut up in an asylum..."
Granice began to tremble again. "Good heaven! If he should bring in
an expert--one of those damned alienists! Ascham and Pettilow can do
anything--their word always goes. If Ascham drops a hint that I'd
better be shut up, I'll be in a strait-jacket by to-morrow! And he'd
do it from the kindest motives--be quite right to do it if he thinks
I'm a murderer!"

The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his
bursting temples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped
that Ascham had not believed his story.

"But he did--he did! I can see it now--I noticed what a queer eye he
cocked at me. Good God, what shall I do--what shall I do?"

He started up and looked at the clock. Half-past one. What if Ascham
should think the case urgent, rout out an alienist, and come back
with him? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden gesture brushed
the morning paper from the table. Mechanically he stooped to pick it
up, and the movement started a new train of association.

He sat down again, and reached for the telephone book in the rack by
his chair.

"Give me three-o-ten ... yes."

The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He would
act--act at once. It was only by thus planning ahead, committing
himself to some unavoidable line of conduct, that he could pull
himself through the meaningless days. Each time he reached a fresh
decision it was like coming out of a foggy weltering sea into a calm
harbour with lights. One of the queerest phases of his long agony
was the intense relief produced by these momentary lulls.

"That the office of the _Investigator?_ Yes? Give me Mr. Denver,
please... Hallo, Denver... Yes, Hubert Granice. ... Just
caught you? Going straight home? Can I come and see you ... yes,
now ... have a talk? It's rather urgent ... yes, might give you
some first-rate 'copy.' ... All right!" He hung up the receiver
with a laugh. It had been a happy thought to call up the editor of
the _Investigator_--Robert Denver was the very man he needed...

Granice put out the lights in the library--it was odd how the
automatic gestures persisted!--went into the hall, put on his hat
and overcoat, and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a sleepy
elevator boy blinked at him and then dropped his head on his folded
arms. Granice passed out into the street. At the corner of Fifth
Avenue he hailed a crawling cab, and called out an up-town address.
The long thoroughfare stretched before him, dim and deserted, like
an ancient avenue of tombs. But from Denver's house a friendly beam
fell on the pavement; and as Granice sprang from his cab the
editor's electric turned the corner.

The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latch-key,
ushered Granice into the brightly-lit hall.

"Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten to-morrow morning ...
but this is my liveliest hour ... you know my habits of old."

Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years--watched his rise
through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian pinnacle of the
_Investigator's_ editorial office. In the thick-set man with
grizzling hair there were few traces left of the hungry-eyed young
reporter who, on his way home in the small hours, used to "bob in"
on Granice, while the latter sat grinding at his plays. Denver had
to pass Granice's flat on the way to his own, and it became a habit,
if he saw a light in the window, and Granice's shadow against the
blind, to go in, smoke a pipe, and discuss the universe.

"Well--this is like old times--a good old habit reversed." The
editor smote his visitor genially on the shoulder. "Reminds me of
the nights when I used to rout you out... How's the play, by the
way? There _is_ a play, I suppose? It's as safe to ask you that as to
say to some men: 'How's the baby?'"

Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and
heavy he had grown. It was evident, even to Granice's tortured
nerves, that the words had not been uttered in malice--and the fact
gave him a new measure of his insignificance. Denver did not even
know that he had been a failure! The fact hurt more than Ascham's
irony.

"Come in--come in." The editor led the way into a small cheerful
room, where there were cigars and decanters. He pushed an arm-chair
toward his visitor, and dropped into another with a comfortable
groan.

"Now, then--help yourself. And let's hear all about it."

He beamed at Granice over his pipe-bowl, and the latter, lighting
his cigar, said to himself: "Success makes men comfortable, but it
makes them stupid."

Then he turned, and began: "Denver, I want to tell you--"

The clock ticked rhythmically on the mantel-piece. The room was
gradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and through
them the editor's face came and went like the moon through a moving
sky. Once the hour struck--then the rhythmical ticking began again.
The atmosphere grew denser and heavier, and beads of perspiration
began to roll from Granice's forehead.

"Do you mind if I open the window?"

"No. It _is_ stuffy in here. Wait--I'll do it myself." Denver pushed
down the upper sash, and returned to his chair. "Well--go on," he
said, filling another pipe. His composure exasperated Granice.

"There's no use in my going on if you don't believe me."

The editor remained unmoved. "Who says I don't believe you? And how
can I tell till you've finished?"

Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. "It was simple enough, as
you'll see. From the day the old man said to me, 'Those Italians
would murder you for a quarter,' I dropped everything and just
worked at my scheme. It struck me at once that I must find a way of
getting to Wrenfield and back in a night--and that led to the idea
of a motor. A motor--that never occurred to you? You wonder where I
got the money, I suppose. Well, I had a thousand or so put by, and I
nosed around till I found what I wanted--a second-hand racer. I knew
how to drive a car, and I tried the thing and found it was all
right. Times were bad, and I bought it for my price, and stored it
away. Where? Why, in one of those no-questions-asked garages where
they keep motors that are not for family use. I had a lively cousin
who had put me up to that dodge, and I looked about till I found a
queer hole where they took in my car like a baby in a foundling
asylum... Then I practiced running to Wrenfield and back in a
night. I knew the way pretty well, for I'd done it often with the
same lively cousin--and in the small hours, too. The distance is
over ninety miles, and on the third trial I did it under two hours.
But my arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next
morning...

"Well, then came the report about the Italian's threats, and I saw I
must act at once... I meant to break into the old man's room,
shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I
could manage it. Then we heard that he was ill--that there'd been a
consultation. Perhaps the fates were going to do it for me! Good
Lord, if that could only be! ..."

Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not seem
to have cooled the room.

"Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came
up from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that he was
to try a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just telephoned her--all
Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the
melon, one of the little French ones that are hardly bigger than a
large tomato--and the patient was to eat it at his breakfast the
next morning.

"In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I
knew the ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be brought in
over night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there were only one
melon in the ice-box I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted.
Melons didn't lie around loose in that house--every one was known,
numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the
servants would eat them, and he took a hundred mean precautions to
prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure of my melon ... and poisoning
was much safer than shooting. It would have been the devil and all
to get into the old man's bedroom without his rousing the house; but
I ought to be able to break into the pantry without much trouble.

"It was a cloudy night, too--everything served me. I dined quietly,
and sat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual headaches, and
went to bed early. As soon as she was gone I slipped out. I had got
together a sort of disguise--red beard and queer-looking ulster. I
shoved them into a bag, and went round to the garage. There was no
one there but a half-drunken machinist whom I'd never seen before.
That served me, too. They were always changing machinists, and this
new fellow didn't even bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It
was a very easy-going place...

"Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon as I
was out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to strike a
sharp pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second and got into
the beard and ulster. Then away again--it was just eleven-thirty
when I got to Wrenfield.

"I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and slipped
through the kitchen-garden. The melon-houses winked at me through
the dark--I remember thinking that they knew what I wanted to know. ...
By the stable a dog came out growling--but he nosed me out,
jumped on me, and went back... The house was as dark as the grave.
I knew everybody went to bed by ten. But there might be a prowling
servant--the kitchen-maid might have come down to let in her
Italian. I had to risk that, of course. I crept around by the back
door and hid in the shrubbery. Then I listened. It was all as silent
as death. I crossed over to the house, pried open the pantry window
and climbed in. I had a little electric lamp in my pocket, and
shielding it with my cap I groped my way to the ice-box, opened
it--and there was the little French melon ... only one.

"I stopped to listen--I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my bottle
of stuff and my syringe, and gave each section of the melon a
hypodermic. It was all done inside of three minutes--at ten minutes
to twelve I was back in the car. I got out of the lane as quietly as
I could, struck a back road that skirted the village, and let the
car out as soon as I was beyond the last houses. I only stopped once
on the way in, to drop the beard and ulster into a pond. I had a big
stone ready to weight them with and they went down plump, like a
dead body--and at two o'clock I was back at my desk."

Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his
listener; but Denver's face remained inscrutable.

At length he said: "Why did you want to tell me this?"

The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he had
explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his
motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much
less weight with Denver. Both were successful men, and success does
not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice cast about for
another reason.

"Why, I--the thing haunts me ... remorse, I suppose you'd call it..."

Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe.

"Remorse? Bosh!" he said energetically.

Granice's heart sank. "You don't believe in--_remorse?_"

"Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your talking of
remorse proves to me that you're not the man to have planned and put
through such a job."

Granice groaned. "Well--I lied to you about remorse. I've never felt
any."

Denver's lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled pipe.
"What was your motive, then? You must have had one."

"I'll tell you--" And Granice began again to rehearse the story of
his failure, of his loathing for life. "Don't say you don't believe
me this time ... that this isn't a real reason!" he stammered out
piteously as he ended.

Denver meditated. "No, I won't say that. I've seen too many queer
things. There's always a reason for wanting to get out of life--the
wonder is that we find so many for staying in!"

Granice's heart grew light. "Then you _do_ believe me?" he faltered.

"Believe that you're sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven't the
nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes--that's easy enough, too. But all
that doesn't make you a murderer--though I don't say it proves you
could never have been one."

"I _have_ been one, Denver--I swear to you."

"Perhaps." He meditated. "Just tell me one or two things."

"Oh, go ahead. You won't stump me!" Granice heard himself say with a
laugh.

"Well--how did you make all those trial trips without exciting your
sister's curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at that
time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn't the change in
your ways surprise her?"

"No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several
visits in the country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and
was only in town for a night or two before--before I did the job."

"And that night she went to bed early with a headache?"

"Yes--blinding. She didn't know anything when she had that kind. And
her room was at the back of the flat."

Denver again meditated. "And when you got back--she didn't hear you?
You got in without her knowing it?"

"Yes. I went straight to my work--took it up at the word where I'd
left off--_why, Denver, don't you remember?_" Granice suddenly,
passionately interjected.

"Remember--?"

"Yes; how you found me--when you looked in that morning, between two
and three ... your usual hour ...?"

"Yes," the editor nodded.

Granice gave a short laugh. "In my old coat--with my pipe: looked as
if I'd been working all night, didn't I? Well, I hadn't been in my
chair ten minutes!"

Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. "I didn't
know whether _you_ remembered that."

"What?"

"My coming in that particular night--or morning."

Granice swung round in his chair. "Why, man alive! That's why I'm
here now. Because it was you who spoke for me at the inquest, when
they looked round to see what all the old man's heirs had been doing
that night--you who testified to having dropped in and found me at
my desk as usual. ... I thought _that_ would appeal to your
journalistic sense if nothing else would!"

Denver smiled. "Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptible
enough--and the idea's picturesque, I grant you: asking the man who
proved your alibi to establish your guilt."

"That's it--that's it!" Granice's laugh had a ring of triumph.

"Well, but how about the other chap's testimony--I mean that young
doctor: what was his name? Ned Ranney. Don't you remember my
testifying that I'd met him at the elevated station, and told him I
was on my way to smoke a pipe with you, and his saying: 'All right;
you'll find him in. I passed the house two hours ago, and saw his
shadow against the blind, as usual.' And the lady with the toothache
in the flat across the way: she corroborated his statement, you
remember."

"Yes; I remember."

Well, then?"

"Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin with
old coats and a cushion--something to cast a shadow on the blind.
All you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small
hours--I counted on that, and knew you'd take any vague outline as
mine."

"Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw the
shadow move--you remember she said she saw you sink forward, as if
you'd fallen asleep."

"Yes; and she was right. It _did_ move. I suppose some extra-heavy
dray must have jolted by the flimsy building--at any rate, something
gave my mannikin a jar, and when I came back he had sunk forward,
half over the table."

There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a
throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at any
rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a
deeper insight than the law into the fantastic possibilities of
life, prepared one better to allow for the incalculableness of human
impulses.

"Well?" Granice faltered out.

Denver stood up with a shrug. "Look here, man--what's wrong with
you? Make a clean breast of it! Nerves gone to smash? I'd like to
take you to see a chap I know--an ex-prize-fighter--who's a wonder
at pulling fellows in your state out of their hole--"

"Oh, oh--" Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men eyed
each other. "You don't believe me, then?"

"This yarn--how can I? There wasn't a flaw in your alibi."

"But haven't I filled it full of them now?"

Denver shook his head. "I might think so if I hadn't happened to
know that you _wanted_ to. There's the hitch, don't you see?"

Granice groaned. "No, I didn't. You mean my wanting to be found
guilty--?"

"Of course! If somebody else had accused you, the story might have
been worth looking into. As it is, a child could have invented it.
It doesn't do much credit to your ingenuity."

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.