“A plague o’ both your houses!
They have made worms’ meat of me.”
—SHAKESPEARE.
It had been close upon half-past two when Harney had left the house in Bush Street. Essex at the window had heard the sound of his retreating feet soon lost in the rush of the rain, and had then returned to the fire. He had made a close calculation of the time Harney should take. To go and come ought not to occupy more than a half-hour. The theft, itself, if no mischances occurred, should be accomplished in ten or fifteen minutes.
As the hands of the clock on the table drew near three, the man rose from his post by the fire and began to move restlessly about the room. The house was wrapped in the dead stillness of sleep, round which the turmoil of the storm circled and upon which it seemed to press. Pausing to listen he could hear the creaks and groan of the old walls, as the wind buffeted them. Once, thinking he heard a furtive step, he went to the door, opened it and peered out into the blackness of the hall. The stairs still creaked as if to a light ascending foot, but his eyes encountered nothing but the impenetrable darkness, charged with the familiar smell of stale smoke.
Back in his room he went to the window and throwing it wide, leaned out listening. The rain fell with a continuous drumming rustle, through which the chinks and gurgles of water caught in small channels penetrated with a near-by clearness. Here and there the darkness broke away in splinters from a sputtering lamp, and where its light touched, everything gleamed and glistened. Gusts of wind rose and fell, tore the wet bushes in the garden below, and banged a shutter on an adjacent house.
Essex left the window, drawing the curtain to shut its light from the street. It was a quarter past three. If at four Harney had not returned he would go after him. The thief might easily have missed his footing in the tree and have fallen, and be lying beneath it, stunned, dead perhaps, the papers in his hand.
The clock hands moved on toward twenty—twenty-five minutes past. The creaking came from the stairs again, exactly, to the listening ear, like the soft sound of a cautiously-mounting step. From the cupboard came a curious loud tick and then a series of rending cracks. It made Essex start guiltily, and swearing under his breath, he again turned toward the window and, as he did so, caught the sound of hurrying feet. He drew the curtain and leaned out. Above the uproar of the night he heard the quick, regular thud of the feet of a runner, rushing onward through the storm, and then, across the gleam of a lamp, a dark figure shot, with head down, flying.
He dropped the curtain and waited, immense relief at his heart. In a moment he heard the footsteps stop at the gate, furtively ascend the stairs of the two terraces, and then the stealthy grating of the door. He silently pushed his own door open that the light might guide the ascending man, and he heard Harney’s loud breathing as he crept up.
The thief rose up out of the gulf of darkness like an apparition of terror. He dropped into a chair, his face gray, white and pinched, the sound of his rasping breaths, drawn with pain from the bottom of his lungs, filling the room. He was incapable of speech, and Essex, pouring him out whisky, was forced to take the glass from his shaking hand and hold it to his lips. From his soaked clothes and the cap that crowned his head, like a saturated woolen rag, water streamed. But the rain had not been able to efface from his coat a caking of mud that half-covered one arm and shoulder, and there was blood on one of his hands. He had evidently fallen.
“Have you got it?” said Essex, putting the glass down.
The other nodded and let his head sink on the chair-back.
“I’m dead,” he gasped, “but I done it.”
“Where is it? Give it to me.”
The man made a faint movement of assent, but evidently had not force enough to produce the paper and lay limp in the chair, Essex watching him impatiently. Presently he put his feeble hand out for the glass and drank again. The rattling loudness of his breathing moderated. Without moving his head he turned his eyes on Essex and said:
“I’m most killed—I’m all shook up. I fell coming down the tree, some way—I don’t know how far—but I got it all right. She fought like a wildcat, tried to burn it—but I got it. Then she hollered and a man answered. I knew it was a man’s voice, and I made a dash for the winder only jest in time. I’m cut somewheres—”
He raised the hand with the blood on it and fumbled at his coat-sleeve. The other hand was smeared with blood from the contact.
“Like a pig,” he said in a low voice, and pulled out a rag of handkerchief which he tried to push up his sleeve; “I’m cut somewheres all right, but I don’t know where.”
“Give me the paper and take your things off. You’re dripping all over everything,” said Essex, extending his hand.
Harney sat up.
“I dunno how I done it,” he said; “how I got down. The man was right on my heels. When I fell I saw him, pullin’ her up on her feet—I saw that through the winder. Then I riz up and I went—God, how I went!”
He had stuffed his handkerchief up his sleeve by this time, and now put his bloody tremulous hand into the outer breast-pocket of his coat. As the hand fumbled about the opening he said:
“I didn’t stop to look no more nor take no risks. I wanted to git away from thar and I tell you I lit out, and—”
He stopped, his jaw dropped, his nerveless figure stiffened, a look of animal terror came into his eyes.
“Where is it?” he almost yelled, staring at Essex.
“How the devil should I know! Where did you put it? Isn’t it there?”
Essex himself had suddenly paled. He stood erect before the crouched and trembling figure of his partner, his eyes fiercely intense.
“It ain’t here,” cried Harney, his hand clawing about in the pocket. “It ain’t there. Oh Lordy, Lordy! I’ve lost it! It’s gone. It fell out when I came off the tree. I fell. I told you I fell. Didn’t I tell you I fell?” he shouted, as if he had been contradicted.
He rose up, his face pasty white, wringing his hands like a woman. There was something grotesque and almost overdone in his terror, but his pallor and the fear in his eyes were real.
“Lost it!” cried Essex. “No more of those lies! Give me the paper, you dog.”
“Don’t you hear me say I ain’t got it? Ain’t I told you I fell? When I jumped for the tree I jest smashed it down into my pocket. I had to have both hands to climb. And I suppose I ain’t pressed it in tight enough. God, man, it was ten years in San Quentin for me if I’d lost two minutes.”
Essex drew closer, his mouth tight, his eyes fixed with a fiercely compelling gaze on the wretch before him.
“Don’t think you can make anything by stealing that paper. Give it up; give it up now; I’ve got you here, and I’ll know what you’ve done with it before you leave or you’ll never leave at all.”
“I lost it, and that’s what I done with it. If you want it, come on with me now and look round under that tree. Ain’t you understood I fell sideways from the branch to the ground? Look at my hand—” he held up his arm, pulling the muddy sleeve back from the blood-stained wrist.
“Where is it?” said Essex, without moving. “You were gone nearly an hour. Where have you hidden it?”
“Nowheres. It took time. I had to clim’ up careful, ’cause she had a light burning, and I thought she was awake. Why can’t you believe me? What can I do with it alone?”
“You can blackmail Mrs. Shackleton well enough alone. Give me that paper, or tell me where you put it, or, by God, I’ll kill you!”
Fear of the man that owned him gave Harney the air of guilt. He backed away in an access of pallid terror, shouting:
“I ain’t lying. Why can’t yer believe me? It took time—it took time! Ain’t I told you I fell? Look at the mud; and feel, feel in every pocket.” He seized on them and tore the insides outward. “I’m tellin’ you the whole truth. I ain’t got it.”
“Where is it, then? You’ll tell me where you’ve hidden it, or—”
Essex made a sudden leap forward and caught the man by his neck-cloth and collar. In his blind alarm Harney was given fictitious strength, and he tore himself loose and rushed for the door. Essex’s hat, coat and stick lay on the table. Without thought or premeditation their owner seized the cane—a heavy malacca—by the end, flew round the table, and as Harney turned the door-handle, brought the knob of the loaded cane down on the crown of his head.
It struck with a thud and sent the water squirting from the saturated cap. The thief, without cry or word, spun round, waving his hands in the air, and then fell heavily face downward. For a moment he quivered, and once or twice made a convulsive movement, then lay still, the water running from his clothes along the floor.
With the cane still in his hand, Essex came around the table and looked at him. For a space he stood staring, his hand resting on the edge of the table, his neck craned forward, his face set in a rigid intensity of observation. The sudden silence that had succeeded to the loud tones of Harney’s voice was singularly deep and solemn. The room seemed held in a spell of stillness, almost awful in its suddenness and isolation.
“Get up,” he said in a low voice. “Harney, get up.”
There was no response, and he leaned forward and pushed at the motionless figure with the cane.
“Damn!” he said under his breath, “he’s fainted.”
And throwing the cane away, he approached the man and bent over him. There was no sound of breathing or pulse of life about the sodden figure with its hidden face. Drops formed on Essex’s forehead as he turned it over. Then, as it confronted him, livid with fallen jaw and a gleam of white between the wrinkled eyelid, the drops ran down his face.
With a hand that shook as Harney’s had a few moments before he felt the pulse and then tore the shirt open and tried the heart. His face was white as the man’s on the floor as he poured whisky down the throat that refused to swallow. Finally, tearing off his coat, he knelt beside his victim and tried every means in his power to bring back life into the miserable body in which he had only recognized a tool of his own. But there was no response. The minutes ticked on, and there was no glimmer of intelligence in the cold indifference of the eyes, no warmth round the stilled heart, no flutter of breath at the slack, gray lips.
The night was still dark, the rain in his ears, when he rose to his feet. A horror unlike anything he had even imagined was on him. All the things in life he had struggled for seemed shriveled to nothing. The whole worth of his existence was contained in the unlovely body on the floor. To bring life back to it he would have given his dearest ambition—sacrificed love, money, happiness—all for which he had held life valuable, and thought himself blessed. What a few hours before were ends to struggle and sin for seemed now of no moment to him. Mariposa had faded to a dim, undesired shadow; the millions she stood for to dross he would have passed without a thought. How readily would he have given it all to bring back the breath to the creature he had held as a worm beneath his foot!
He seized the table-cloth and threw it over the face whose solemn, tragic calm filled him with a sick dread. Then with breathless haste he flung some clothes into a valise and made the fire burn high with the letters and papers he threw on it at intervals. The first carts of the morning had begun their rattling course through the stirred darkness when he crept out, a haggard, hunted man.
He had to hide himself in unfrequented corners, cower beneath the shadow of trees on park benches till the light strengthened and morning shook the city into life. Then, as its reawakening tides began to surge round him, he made a furtive way—for the first time in his life fearful of his fellow men—to the railway station, and there took the earliest south-bound train for the Mexican border.
The fire had died down, the leaden light of coming day was filtering in through the crack between the half-drawn curtains, when the shrouded shape on the floor moved and a deep groan broke upon the stillness. Another followed it, groans of physical anguish beating on awakening consciousness. An early riser from the floor above heard them as he stole downward, stopped, listened, knocked, then receiving no reply, opened the door and peered fearfully in. In the dim room, cut with a sword of faint light, he saw the covered shape, and, as he stood terrified, heard the groan repeated and saw the drapery twitched. Shouting his fears over the balustrade, he rushed in, flung the curtains wide, tore off the table-cloth, and in the rush of pallid light, saw Harney, leaden eyed, withered to a waxen pallor, smeared with the blood of the cut wrist which he feebly moved, struggling back to existence.