Part 9

The doctor finished his examination of the man on the floor, and then he answered, as he rose to his feet: "Yes, he's dead. How did it happen?"

The delivery of the young druggist was hesitating and broken. "Well, it was this way, you see. The boss was out, and I was in charge here, and there wasn't anything doing except at the fountain. Then this man came in; he was in a hurry, and he told me he was feeling faint--kind of suffocated, so he said--and couldn't I give him something. Well, I'm a graduate in pharmacy, you know, and so I fixed him up a little aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass of soda-water. You know that won't hurt anybody. But just as he took the glass out of my hand his knees gave way and he squashed down on the floor there. The glass broke, and he hadn't paid for the spirits of ammonia, either; and when I got round to him he was dead--at least I thought so, but I rang you up to make sure."

"Yes," the doctor returned, "apparently he died at once--heart failure. Probably he had fatty degeneration, and this heat has been too much for him."

"I don't think any man has a right to come in here and die like that without warning, heart failure or no heart failure, do you?" asked the red-headed assistant. "I don't know what the boss will say. That's the kind of thing that spoils trade, and it ain't any too good here, anyway, with a drug-store 'most every block."

"Do you know who he is?" the doctor inquired.

"I went through his pockets, but he hadn't any watch nor any letters," the druggist answered; "but he's got about a dollar in change in his pants."

The doctor looked around the shop. The policeman was still in the doorway, and a group of boys and girls blocked the entrance.

"Does anybody here know this man?" asked the surgeon.

A small boy twisted himself under the policeman's arm and slipped into the store. "I know him," he cried, eagerly. "I see him come in. I was here all the time, and I see it all. He's Tim McEcchran."

"Where does he live?" the doctor asked, only to correct himself swiftly--"where did he live?"

"I thought he was dead when I saw him go down like he was sandbagged," said the boy. "He lives just around the corner in Amsterdam Avenue--at least his wife lives there."

The doctor took the address, and with the aid of the policeman he put the body on the stretcher and lifted it into the ambulance. The driver protested against this as unprecedented.

"Sure it's none of our business to take a stiff home!" he declared. "That's no work at all, at all, for an ambulance. Dr. Chandler never done the like in all the months him an' me was together. Begob, I never contracted to drive hearses."

The young Southerner explained that this procedure might not be regular, but it revolted him to leave the body of a fellow-mortal lying where it had fallen on the floor of a shop. The least he could do, so it seemed to him, was to take it to the dead man's widow, especially since this was scarcely a block out of their way as they returned to the hospital.

The driver kept on grumbling as they drove off. "Sure he give ye no chance at all, at all, Doctor, to go and croak afore iver ye got at him, and you only beginnin' yer work! Dr. Chandler, now, he'd get 'em into the wagon ennyway, an' take chances of there bein' breath in 'em. Three times, divil a less, they died on us on the stretcher there, an' me whippin' like the divil to get 'em into the hospital ennyhow, where it was their own consarn whether they lived or died. That's the place for 'em to die in, an' not in the wagon; but the wagon's better than dyin' before we can get to 'em, an' the divil thank the begrudgers! It's unlucky, so it is; an' by the same token, to-day's Friday, so it is!"

The small boy who had identified the dead man ran alongside of them, accompanied by his admiring mates; and when the ambulance backed up again before a pretentious tenement-house with a brownstone front and beveled plate-glass doors, the small boy rang Mrs. McEcchran's bell.

"It's the third floor she lives on," he declared.

The janitor came up from the basement and he and the driver carried the stretcher up to Mrs. McEcchran's landing.

The doctor went up before them, and found an insignificant little old woman waiting for him on the landing.

"Is this Mrs. McEcchran?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered; then, as she saw the burden the men were carrying, she cried: "My God! What's that? What are they bringing it here for?"

The young Southerner managed to withdraw her into the front room of the flat, and he noticed that it was very clean and very tidy.

"I am a doctor," he began, soothingly, "and I am sorry to say that there has been an accident--"

"An accident?" she repeated. "Oh, my God! And is it Tim?"

"You must summon all your courage, Mrs. McEcchran," the doctor returned. "This is a serious matter--a very serious matter."

"Is he hurt very bad?" she cried. "Is it dangerous?"

"I may as well tell you the truth, Mrs. McEcchran," said the physician. "I cannot say that your husband will ever be able to be out again."

By that time the stretcher had been brought into the room, with the body on it entirely covered by a blanket.

"You don't mean to tell me that he is going to die?" she shrieked, wringing her hands. "Don't say that, Doctor! don't say that!"

The bearers set the stretcher down, and the woman threw herself on her knees beside it.

"Tim!" she cried. "Speak to me, Tim!"

Getting no response, she got to her feet and turned to the surgeon. "You don't mean he's dead?" And the last word died away in a wail.

"I'm afraid there is no hope for him," the doctor replied.

"He's dead! Tim's dead! Oh, my God!" she said, and then she dropped into a chair and threw her apron over her head and rocked to and fro, sobbing and mourning.

The young Southerner was not yet hardened to such sights, and his heart was sore with sympathy. Yet it seemed to him that the woman's emotion was so violent that it would not last long.

While he was getting ready to have the body removed from the stretcher to a bed in one of the other rooms, Mrs. McEcchran unexpectedly pulled the apron from her head.

"Can I look at him?" she asked, as she slipped to the side of the body and stealthily lifted a corner of the covering to peek in. Suddenly she pulled it back abruptly. "Why, this ain't Tim!" she cried.

"That is not your husband?" asked the doctor, in astonishment. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" she answered, laughing hysterically. "Of course I'm sure! As if I didn't know Tim, the father of my children! Why, this ain't even like him!"

The doctor did not know what to say. "Allow me to congratulate you, madam," he began. "No doubt Mr. McEcchran is still alive and well; no doubt he will return to you. But if this is not your husband, whose husband is he?"

The room had filled with the neighbors, and in the crowd the small boy who had brought them there made his escape.

"Can any one tell me who this is?" the surgeon asked.

"I knew that weren't Mr. McEcchran as soon as I see him," said another boy. "That's Mr. Carroll."

"And where does--did Mr. Carroll live?" the doctor pursued, repenting already of his zeal as he foresaw a repetition of the same painful scene in some other tenement-house.

"It's only two blocks off--on the Boulevard," explained the second boy. "It's over a saloon on the corner. I'll show you if I can ride on the wagon."

"Very well," agreed the doctor; and the body was carried down and placed again in the ambulance.

As the ambulance started he overheard one little girl say to another: "He was killed in a blast! My! ain't it awful? It blew his legs off!"

To which the other little girl answered, "But I saw both his boots as they carried him out."

And the first little girl then explained: "Oh, I guess they put his legs back in place so as not to hurt his wife's feelings. Turrible, ain't it?"

When the ambulance started, the driver began grumbling again: "It's not Dr. Chandler that 'ud have a thing like this happen to him. Him an' me never went traipsing round wid a corp that didn't belong to nobody. We knew enough to take it where the wake was waitin'."

The boy on the box with the driver guided the ambulance to a two-story wooden shanty with a rickety stairway outside leading up to the second floor.

He sprang down as the ambulance backed up, and he pointed out to the doctor the sign at the foot of these external steps--"Martin Carroll, Photographer."

"That's where he belongs," the boy explained. "He sleeps in the gallery up there. The saloon belongs to a Dutchman that married his sister. This is the place all right, if it really is Mr. Carroll."

"What do you mean by that?" shouted the doctor. "Are you not sure about it?"

"I ain't certain sure," the fellow replied. "I ain't as sure as I was first off. But I think it's Mr. Carroll. Leastways, if it ain't, it looks like him!"

It was with much dissatisfaction at this doubtfulness of his guide that the doctor helped the driver slide out the stretcher.

Then the side door of the saloon under the landing of the outside stairs opened and a stocky little German came out.

"What's this? What's this?" he asked.

The young surgeon began his explanation again. "This is where Mr. Carroll lived, isn't it? Well, I am sorry to say there has been an accident, and--"

"Is that Martin there?" interrupted the German.

"Yes," the Southerner replied, "and I'm afraid it is a serious case--a pretty serious case--"

"Is he dead?" broke in the saloon-keeper again.

"He is dead," the doctor answered.

"Then why didn't you say so?" asked the short man harshly. "Why waste all that time talking if he's dead?"

The Southerner was inclined to resent this rudeness, but he checked himself.

"I understand that you are Mr. Carroll's brother-in-law," he began again, "so I suppose I can leave the body in your charge--"

The German went over to the stretcher and turned down the blanket.

"No, you don't leave him here," he declared. "I'm not going to take him. This ain't my sister's husband!"

"This is not Mr. Carroll?" and this time the doctor looked around for the boy who had misinformed him. "I was told it was."

"The man who told you was a liar, that's all. This ain't Martin Carroll, and the sooner you take him away the better. That's what I say," declared the saloon-keeper, going back to his work.

The doctor looked around in disgust. What he had to do now was to take the body to the morgue, and that revolted him. It seemed to him an insult to the dead and an outrage toward the dead man's family. Yet he had no other course of action open to him, and he was beginning to be impatient to have done with the thing. The week of hot weather had worn on his nerves also, and he wanted to be back again in the cool hospital out of the oven of the streets.

As he and the driver were about to lift up the stretcher again, a man in overalls stepped up to the body and looked at it attentively.

"It's Dick O'Donough!" he said at once. "Poor old Dick! It's a sad day for her--and her that excitable!"

"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.

"Don't I?" returned the man in overalls, a thin, elderly man, with wisps of hair beneath his chin and a shrewd, weazened face. "It's Dick O'Donough!"

"But are you sure of it?" the young surgeon insisted. "We've had two mistakes already."

"Sure of it?" repeated the other. "Of course I'm sure of it! Didn't I work alongside of him for five years? And isn't that the scar on him he got when the wheel broke?" And he lifted the dead man's hair and showed a cicatrix on the temple.

"Very well," said the doctor. "If you are sure, where did he live?"

"It's only a little way."

"I'm glad of that. Can you show us?"

"I can that," replied the man in overalls.

"Then jump in front," said the doctor.

As they started again, the driver grumbled once more. "Begorra, April Day's a fool to ye," he began. "Them parvarse gossoons, now, if I got howld of 'em, they'd know what it was hurt 'em, I'm thinkin'."

The man in overalls directed them to a shabby double tenement in a side street swarming with children. There was a Chinese laundry on one side of the doorway, and on the other side a bakery. The door stood open, and the hallway was dark and dirty.

"It's a sad day it'll be for Mrs. O'Donough," sighed the man in overalls. "I don't know what it is she's got, but she's very queer, now, very queer."

He went into the bakery and got a man to help the driver carry up the stretcher. Women came out of the shops on both sides of the street, and leaned out of their windows with babies in their arms, and stepped out on the fire-escapes. There were banana peelings and crumpled newspapers and rubbish of one sort or another scattered in the street, and the savor of it all was unpleasant even to a man who was no stranger to the casual ward of a hospital.

The man in overalls went up-stairs with the doctor, warning him where a step was broken or where a bit of the hand-rail was missing. They groped their way along the passage on the first floor and knocked.

The door opened suddenly, and they saw an ill-furnished room, glaring with the sun reflected from its white walls. Two women stood just within the door. One was tall and spare, with gray streaks in her coal-black hair, and with piercing black eyes; the other was a comfortable body with a cheerful smile.

"That's Mrs. O'Donough," said the doctor's guide--"the tall one. See the eyes of her now! The other's a neighbor woman, who's with her a good deal, she's that excitable."

The doctor stepped into the room, and began once more to break the news. "This is Mrs. O'Donough, is it not?" he said. "I'm a doctor, and I am sorry to have to say there has been an accident, and Mr. O'Donough is--is under treatment."

Here the driver and the man from the bakery brought in the stretcher.

When the tall woman saw this she gripped the arm of the other and hissed out, "Is it _it_?" Then she turned her back on the body and sank her head on her friend's shoulder.

The other woman made signs to the doctor to say little or nothing.

The driver and the baker took a thin counterpane off the bed, which stood against the wall. Then they lifted the body from the stretcher to the bed, and covered it with the counterpane.

The doctor did not know what to say in the face of the signals he was receiving from the widow's friend.

"In case I can be of any assistance at any time," he suggested--and then Mrs. O'Donough lifted her head and looked at him with her burning eyes--"if I can be of service, do not hesitate to call on me. Here is my card."

As he felt his way down-stairs again he heard a hand-organ break out suddenly into a strident waltz.

When he came out into the street a few little children were dancing in couples, although most of them stood around the ambulance, gazing with morbid curiosity at the driver as he replaced the stretcher. At the door of the baker's shop stood a knot of women talking it over; but in the Chinese laundry the irons went back and forth steadily, with no interest in what might happen in the street outside.

As the doctor took his seat in the vehicle a shriek came from the room he had just left--a shuddering, heartrending wail--then another--and then there was silence.

The ambulance started forward, the bell clanged to clear the way, the horse broke into a trot, and in a minute or two they turned into the broad avenue.

Then the driver looked at the doctor. "The widdy's takin' it harrd, I'm thinkin', but she'll get over it before the wake," he said. "An' it's good lungs she has, ennyhow."

(1898)

It was about noon of a dark day late in September, and a long-threatened drizzle of hail chilled the air, as Harry Brackett came out of the Apollo House and stood on the corner of Fourth Avenue, waiting for a cross-town car. He was going down-town to the office of the _Gotham Gazette_ to write up an interview he had just had with the latest British invader of these United States, Lady Smith-Smith, the fair authoress of the very popular novel _Smile and be a Villain Still_, five rival editions of which were then for sale everywhere in New York. Harry Brackett intended to ride past Union Square to Sixth Avenue in the cross-town car, and then to go to the _Gotham Gazette_ by the elevated railway, so he transferred ten cents for the fare of the latter and five cents for the fare of the former from his waistcoat pocket to a little pocket in his overcoat. Then he buttoned the overcoat tightly about him, as the raw wind blew harshly across the city from river to river. He looked down the street for the car; it was afar off, on the other side of Third Avenue, and he was standing on the corner of Fourth Avenue.

"A bob-tail car," said Harry Brackett to himself, "is like a policeman: it is never here just when it is wanted. And yet it is a necessary evil--like the policeman again. Perhaps there is here a philosophical thought that might be worked up as a comic editorial article for the fifth column. 'The Bob-tail Car'--why, the very name is humorous. And there are lots of things to be said about it. For instance, I can get something out of the suggestion that the heart of a coquette is like a bob-tail car, there is always room for one more; but I suppose I must not venture on any pun about 'ringing the belle.' Then I can say that the bob-tail car is a one-horse concern, and is therefore a victim of the healthy American hatred of one-horse concerns. It has no past; no gentleman of the road ever robbed its passengers; no road-agent nowadays would think of 'holding it up.' Perhaps that's why there is no poetry about a bob-tail car, as there is about a stage-coach. Even Rudolph Vernon, the most modern of professional poets, wouldn't dream of writing verses on 'Riding in a Bob-tail Car.' Wasn't it Heine who said that the monks of the Middle Ages thought that Greek was a personal invention of the devil, and that he agreed with them? That's what the bob-tail car is--a personal invention of the devil. The stove-pipe hat, the frying-pan, the tenement-house, and the bob-tail car--these are the choicest and the chief of the devil's gifts to New York. Why doesn't that car come? confound it! Although it cannot swear itself, it is the cause of much swearing!"

Just then the car came lumbering along and bumping with a repeated jar as its track crossed the tracks on Fourth Avenue. Harry Brackett jumped on it as it passed the corner where he stood. His example was followed by a stranger, who took the seat opposite to him.

As the car sped along toward Broadway, Harry Brackett mechanically read, as he had read a dozen times before, the printed request to place the exact fare in the box. "Suppose I don't put it in?" he mused; "what will happen? The driver will ask for it--if he has time and happens to think of it. This is very tempting to a man who wants to try the Virginian plan of readjusting his debts. Here is just the opportunity for any one addicted to petty larceny. I think I shall call that article 'The Bob-tail Car as a Demoralizer.' It is most demoralizing for a man to feel that he can probably evade the payment of his fare, since there is no conductor to ask for it. However, I suppose the main reliance of the company is on the honesty of the individual citizen who would rather pay his debts than not. I doubt if there is any need to dun the average American for five cents."

Harry Brackett lowered his eyes from the printed notice at which he had been staring unconsciously for a minute, and they fell on the man sitting opposite to him--the man who had entered the car as he did.

"I wonder if he is the average American?" thought Brackett. "He hasn't paid his fare yet. I wonder if he will? It isn't my business to dun him for it, and yet I'd like to know whether his intentions are honorable or not."

The car turned sharply into Broadway, and then came to a halt to allow two young ladies to enter. A third young lady escorted them to the car, and kissed them affectionately, and said:

"Good-by! You will be _sure_ to come again! I have enjoyed your visit so much."

Then the two young ladies kissed her, and they said, both speaking at once, and very rapidly:

"Oh yes. We've had _such_ a good time! We'll write you! And you _must_ come out to Orange and see us soon! Good-by! Good-by! Remember us to your mother! _Good-by!_"

At last the sweet sorrow of this parting was over; the third young lady withdrew to the sidewalk; the two young ladies came inside the car; the other passengers breathed more freely; the man opposite to Harry Brackett winked at him slyly, and the car went on again.

There was a vacant seat on the side of the car opposite to Harry Brackett--or, at least, there would have been one if the ladies on that side had not, with characteristic coolness, spread out their skirts so as to occupy the whole space. The two young ladies stood for a moment after they had entered the car; they looked for a seat, but no one of the other ladies made a sign of moving to make room for them. The man opposite to Harry Brackett rose and proffered his seat. They did not thank him, or even so much as look at him.

"_You_ take it, Nelly," said one.

"I sha'n't do anything of the sort. I'm not a bit tired!" returned the other. "I _insist_ on your sitting down!"

"But I'm not tired _now_."

"Louise Valeria Munson," her friend declared, with humorous emphasis, "if you don't sit right down, I'll call a _policeman!_"

"Well, I guess there's room for us both," said Louise Valeria Munson; "I'm sure there ought to be."

By this time some of the other ladies on the seat had discovered that they were perhaps taking up a little more than their fair share of space, and there was a readjustment of frontier. The vacancy was slightly broadened, and both young ladies sat down.

The man who had got in just after Harry Brackett and who had given up his seat stood in the center of the car with his hand through a strap. But he made no effort to pay his fare. The driver rang his bell, the passengers looked at each other inquiringly, and one of the two young ladies who had just seated themselves produced a dime, which was passed along and dropped into the fare-box in accordance with the printed instructions of the company.

Three ladies left the car just before it turned into Fourteenth Street; and after it had rounded the curve two elderly gentlemen entered and sat down by the side of Harry Brackett. The man who had not paid his fare kindly volunteered to drop their money into the box, but did not put in any of his own. Harry Brackett was certain of this, for he had watched him closely.

The two elderly gentlemen continued a conversation began before they entered the car. "I'll tell you," said one of them, so loudly that Harry Brackett could not help overhearing, "the most remarkable thing that man Skinner ever did. One day he got caught in one of his amusing little swindles; by some slip-up of his ingenuity he did not allow himself quite rope enough, and so he was brought up with a round turn in the Tombs. He got two years in Sing Sing, but he never went up at all--he served his time by substitute!"

"What?" cried his companion, in surprise.

"He did!" answered the first speaker. "That's just what he did! He had a substitute to go to State's Prison for him, while he went up to Albany to work for his own pardon!"

"How did he manage that?" asked the other, in involuntary admiration before so splendid an audacity.