Part 9

“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.