Part 23 (1/2)

”Oh, is that you, Watson?” I answered. ”I was going on an errand which concerns myself. I was going alone.”

”If you're looking for any one,” he said, trotting along beside me, ”I can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there's news in it, I'll get it anyhow; and I'll naturally know it more from your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don't you think so?”

”See here, Watson,” said I, ”you may help if you wish. But if you print a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the _Times_ every day, from this on, with every item of business news coming through our office. Do you understand, and do you promise?”

”Why, certainly,” said he. ”You've got the thing in your own hands. What is it, anyhow?”

I told him, and found that Trescott's dipsomania was as well known to him as myself.

”He's been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two,” he remarked.

”It's better than two to one you don't find him at the Club: the atmosphere won't be congenial for him there.”

At the Club we found Watson's forecast verified. At O'Brien's our knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they talked together for a few minutes.

”All right,” said the reporter, turning away from him, ”much obliged, Hank; I believe you've struck it.”

Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had been in his saloon about nine o'clock, drinking heavily; and from the company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into a joint down on the river front. We pa.s.sed through an alley, and down a back bas.e.m.e.nt stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate dragon-folds--and I in quest of a lost soul.

”He wouldn't go with his pal, boss,” I heard the negro say. ”Ah tried to send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted on stayin'.”

As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him, and that he was referring to the man we sought.

”Show me where he is,” I commanded.

”Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!”

In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing.

But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, ”My G.o.d! He's dead!”

As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, ”He done said he hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble foh me, boss--!”

”Send for a doctor!” said I. ”Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!”

Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to s.n.a.t.c.h up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a _Herald_ man and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad taste to die on the morning paper's time.

And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the Something for which she had peered past me the other night.

The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding, broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The s.h.i.+mmering silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms across the still breast, and her head went down on his.

”Oh, pa! Oh, pa!” she moaned, ”you never did any one any harm!... You were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!”

Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie up, and supported her from the room.

Again it was morning, when we--Alice, Jim, and I--sat face to face in our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.

”Come,” said I, ”we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face it!”

”G.o.d!” said he, ”it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!”