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THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS SKIN
An “off-beat” Novel
By
HARRY STEPHEN KEELER
Harry S. Keeler is author of
The White Circle
The Street Of A Thousand Eyes
The Crimson Cube
The Case Of The Transparent Woman
“I Killed Lincoln At 10:13!”
Sing Sing Nights
Thieves Nights
Hangman's Nights
and other novels
Note:From Sing Sing Nights were made
three —- 3 —- separate motion
pictures. The Spectacles Of Mr.
Cagliostro is now in the process of
being filmed.
Clark Shellcross, striding fiercely up the steps of the charming little white-painted cottage at 242 Flower Street, wondered what in heaven's name he was going to say to this lovely being inside who had given him the ultimatum of ultimatums!
“Maybe—maybe,” he said, worriedly, as he reached the portico-covered front stoop, “the arguments will come to me—as I try to turn her off of her stand. Only—for every argument I bring—what will she bring? Ow! Yes, what?”
He was reaching up now to jerk on the burnished bronze pull-bell on the front door. Which reflected almost dazzlingly into his eyes a stray beam of the early-April 9 o'clock morning sunlight that had somehow bored its way through the slight mist that hung just now over Boston. But paused—hand in mid air.
“But do I look right now like a million dollars?” he queried himself sagely. “Or like some kind of a—a woebegone—hangdog? Maybe I'd better check—on that!”
And hastily withdrawing his hand, he raised the brown tweed overcoat that shrouded him, thanks to the preternaturally cool wave that had been sweeping in off the sea during last night and this early morning, enough to grope in his right hip pocket and bring up one pocket mirror plus—of all things!—the perfumed note containing that ultimatum of all ultimatums.
Removing his widebrimmed soft brown felt hat as though he were facing the Queen of England instead of a simple white-painted door, and passing the perfumed folded note tenderly to the fingers of the left hand clutching that hat, he surveyed himself critically in the handglass held in his now free remaining hand. Saw therein a young man of 27 or so, with decidedly blond hair, and the bluest of blue eyes, gazing out from regular features which had once been declared to be, by a professor of anthropology, more Anglo-Saxon than Britain and Saxony combined! Whatever inner habiliments were under the face were not in the glass for the simple reason that the brown tweed overcoat was buttoned to the neck. Satisfied now, however, that no hangdog stood at the threshold of 242 Flower Street, Boston, Massachusetts, Clark popped the handmirror into his side coat pocket, thrust his brown felt hat back atop his blond locks, the perfumed note into his lefthand coat pocket, and again raised his right hand toward the pull-bell.
Again, however, he held it aloft.
“Wait!” he said, though of course to nobody but himself. “Maybe—maybe I'd better glance over Vernice's note once more—so's to see where my 24-karat arguments—if any! — lie.”
And flopping down onto a small white-pained bench at the edge of the porticoed stoop, he drew out again that delicately perfumed note he'd received only yesterday, with its handwriting in pale green ink, dainty and small. Including one brief newspaper clipping pasted to it just beyond its opening lines. And signed just “Vernice”. And gloomily, morosely, he read it again. Minus any date on it whatsoever, it ran:
Dear Clark:
Is it true that you have been called to England to solve the mystery of the clock station which—
At least, a certain mutual friend of yours and mine says that you have been, because of your being a “specialist” in—but I won't go into all that. Anyway, when he told me, he gave me this newspaper story from day before yesterday's paper—which I hadn't seen:
Old Royal Death Clock
Is Once More on Time!
*Hampton Court, England (Trans-Oceanic Press Service): Hampton Court Palace, one-time residence of British royalty, contains an ancient time-piece known as the “death clock.”
Tradition says it has stopped whenever the death has occurred of any one resident in the palace for any long period. (News Editor's Note: Our files of this very old paper contain various newstories along this very line.)
Those who believe in this strange legend are now confirmed in their faith. Lady MacDonald, widow of Gen. Sir Charles Roger MacDonald, died recently in a London hospital. She had occupied a suite in Hampton Court Palace for forty years. The clock stopped at the time of her death.
The clock, which was built in 1540, is
said to have stopped the first time the night of March 2, 1619, on the death at the palace of Queen Anne of Denmark, wife of King James I.
But quite aside from the point of whether or not you have really been called to England, Clark, because of being “one of the best-informed persons in America on things and affairs English”—from “Enigmas to Coronations”!—I'm quoting now a one time friend of yours, and not the person who gave me the clipping—quite aside from that mere point, Clark, I do want to say that I appreciate awfully much your offer of marriage of last night. And which I said I'd think about.
But, Clark, I just can't marry a man who's tied—at least for one full year at a time—to one spot. That you should be a mere instructor in English History at Knickerbocker Academy for Boys, I don't hold against you. I mean, Clark, that if, by lifelong study of things and affairs English, you have made yourself able to understand and even teach their weird history, that is your affair. I realize that when you were left alone in the world, when your mother and father died, after at least getting you through upper school—died without leaving you a relative in the world, close or distant, — or a penny either—it just was a sort of floundering toss-up to you to really know exactly what line to try to follow. So willy-nilly, I suppose, you followed that line. Liked it even, I presume. And must have carved yourself out some reputation for English “enigma” if you really have been called over there about that clock.
But all that's not the point, even. The point is that I, Clark, just cannot—and will not!—marry a man who will be tied to one spot. I just am woven of other cloth, I guess, that's all. I've had to stick in one spot, yes, during all the years I grew up—and had Daddy and Mama—but, they being gone now for 3 years, I no longer have to do it. Nor will. Maybe I am a gypsy—though heaven knows, Clark, I couldn't live like such—so far as comforts and luxuries go. I'd have to always have nice, clean, comfortable living, and — But I do wish to live my life a week here—a week there—a week elsewhere—and ever and ever thus—ever meeting new scenes, and new people, and new—but no teacher of English history can ever make that possible. Either from point of view of being able to keep on the move—or finances.
Of course, Clark, if you want to change your profession—”
“Ow!” groaned Clark, letter in hand. “After perfecting myself in a subject 'till I know it backward—can spout it in my sleep—can turn it into actual shekels—I'm 'inwited' to toss it airy-fairily over my shoulder—ah-woo! Drive on, MacDuff, “ he told himself. “Drive—”
Bang!
It was the collision, against the door, off a short way from him, of a rolled-up morning paper being delivered, plainly a couple of hours late. Probably a boy who'd overslept. Indeed, with eyes lowered to letter, he caught a glimpse, from under his right eyelid, of a boy disappearing up the sidewalk—caught also a glimpse, from above lower eyelid of the other, of the paper itself, unrolled out flat from its impact with the door, and carrying headlines that, upended for him, were screaming forth some sort of futile news—headlines which, being upside down, he didn't even try to read. Went on dourly with the closing part of the letter in his hands.
Of course, Clark, if you want to change your profession—though lucratively, of course—in short, with equal or better remuneration—
But what profession is there where you can roam the world and live excitingly a week here, a week there, a week in another place?
Well, first and foremost, precisely such a life is open—and to his wife!—to anybody who has an act he can present. Good acts are always good for a week showing, in any city you come to. That would be delightful. For me, I mean. To mingle with the people—of the theatre.
But actor—and performer—you are not!
Nearest to that would be advance-agent for a theatrical company. One who makes hotel arrangements, and fixes billing, and all, though working ever one city on beyond the troupe. Not so gay for one's wife.
That you could do, I know—though have no experience.
Next is salesman of some kind. One who doesn't flit into a city and out—but remains a full week or so, to show goods to dealers.
Next—
But I guess you have the idea now, Clark.
And so, to answer your question: when, Clark, you have given up this English-History thing, and have a connection which gives you a chance to be ever on the move—a week here, and a week there—with ever new sights, new experiences, new people for you and your wife, I'll become—Mrs. Shellcross. After that is, you put the l'il old diamond 'gagement ring on my finger, to sort of take the place of the engagement we won't have. Then only, Clark, will I marry you.
This is the way it has to be, Clark. I can't—positively won't—rusticate in one spot, when there are hundreds of fascinating spots in America—and England, too—to live in.
Vernice.
Clark, coming to the letter's end again, folded it up, scowling. Spoke again to himself.
“Awful!” was all he said. “Here's me—with a fine and profitable teaching connection at Knickerbocker Academy for Boys—chance to really use my special knowledge of English History that I've spent years digging up and out—and woo!—Vernice demands I toss it all away—right over shoulder—demands—”
He had risen, more or less unseeingly. Turned now again to the door he'd left. Folded the note to, and thrust it stoutly back into his left coat pocket. And now raised his hand once more toward the pull-bell.
“All right, here goes!” he said sepulchrally. “Here's where the in-struct-or in English History becomes—so help me!—a lawyer. A lawyer—with tongue of gold. A-” He pulled fiercely on the lever of the bronze fixture. “Yep, here goes for a ticklish interview with the sweetest and loveliest and prettiest girl in all Boston. Certainly, at least,” he qualified, “in this year of our lord, 1855!”
______
If anyone had told Clark Shellcross, as he waited for the bell of 242 Flower Street to be answered, of the utterly amazing experience he was destined to have this night of April 11, 1855, around 8 p.m. or so, he would have said “Impossible”. As, during the very experience itself, he was destined to say “This is worse than impossible. It's—it's insanity!”
But knowing only that he must make at least one huge, final, and determined try to turn completely from her stand, a girl with whom he realized himself to be hopelessly and helplessly in love, he pulled again fiercely—at the bell. A small boy with widebrimmed straw hat and long hanging blue ribbons, and long navy-blue trousers, rolling a hoop, went by on the flagstone sidewalk, beyond the nearby white picket fence, calling out, “Hear 'bout our new state, Mister?”
Which Clark was more than hearing about! Was seeing about. For, thanks to turning to see the source of this greeting, he was able to see the flat-lying morning paper—its headlines now correct for his vision—and which proclaimed:
NICARAGUA, CENTRAL AMERICA, NOW BECOMES
NEWEST AND LATEST AMERICAN STATE
The American Filibuster, William Walker, Overthrows Government,
Seizes Country, and Claims it for an American State!!
New State Admits Slavery, and Thus Balances
off California
Slavery Now Assured to America For All
Time to Come!
And about this very headline Clark was destined to hear even more! For a bicyclist—if he could be called such!—on clumsy wooden vehicle, his heavy broganed feet flailing against the woodblock pavement of the street, went by, jubilantly waving in air a wide-brimmed grey felt hat that contrasted with his dark blue homespun overalls and short brown jacket, and calling forth, “Hi there, Bell-Puller? Walker sure put a fast one over on us Ab'litionists, didn't he?”
And now the door opened. Revealing a vision, in her black velvet hoopskirt, more than spanning the whole doorway, with its beautiful lace collar and its huge garnet brooch at the white throat. 18 summers in age, no more—and one could not use the “winters” with the being who stood in the doorway!—her blonde hair, coiffured so as to fall low on one shoulder, was in perfect keeping with her so-blue eyes—eyes that some had called calculating-blue—but never, never Clark!
“Why—Clark!” she exclaimed. “What brings you here—at this hour of the morning?”
_______
To the vision in the doorway Clark essayed a smile. Such as it was!
“What else,” he returned dryly, “but no morning class at Knickerbocker A today, plus—your letter?”
“Oh!” Her delicate features grew defiant. “Well, I'm sorry 'bout that—the letter, I mean—but what I said—stands. For—but won't you come in? Grandmother's down cellar scrubbing the kitchen floor. So my rep'tation won't be smirched by your coming in, I guess. Come in, Clark.”
Come in he did. After, that is, stooping over and retrieving the morning paper for her, and after, in turn, her voluminous hoopskirts, with her in them, had moved far enough off from the door opening to give him ingress. Now, hat in one hand, paper in other, he was in a little hall, with brocade-like wallpaper and dappled blue carpeting, and a glazed brown umbrella jar containing two umbrellas off to one side. He laid the paper silently across the umbrella jar top between the two umbrellas, and went straight—as from long practice—into the little parlor adjoining. Unlike the little hallway, it was carpeted with ornately flowered eye-dizzying tan carpeting, made even more eye-dizzying by the light from the two many-paned front windows rightwise of the small room. Light that, because of the absence of usual overshadowing front porch outside, poured relentlessly in despite the heavy ornately-patterned lace curtains that hung primly, decorously across each window. A triangular shelved “whatnot” in the rightmost far corner off the furthest of the two windows, and about equidistant from a fireplace centered in the wall opposite the doorway, held several china gimcracks. A dappled-marble oval stand, with curving spreadlegs standing out from a center support leftwise off the doorway itself, carried a gargantuan blue-velvet-covered brass-hinged photograph album, and a huge and ornate white china-shaded coal-oil lamp. The brown marble shelf that lay over the spotlessly clean open fireplace across the room held two giant conchshells, one at each end, and, in its exact geometrical middle, an evidently exquisitely carved white marble figure of some standing Greek goddess or something, except that black drapes had been carefully sewn all about her from head to feet, to conceal what must have been her nudity. A painted wooden shovel stood against the fireplace itself, below, carrying a snow scene with a few stiffish figures. Several horsehair-upholstered pieces of furniture stood about the walls of the room, oval-backed all, except a short settee which stood midwise against the leftmost wall, opposite the very windows; on the areas of wall not occluded, hung oval wood-framed portraits of various bearded gentlemen. Plus, however, over the doorway itself—did one, entering, look backward and upward!—an embroidered panel reading “God Bless Our Home”.
“Now don't you dare look,” the girl was ordering, queenlike, but still on the other side of the doorway. “Or I shall order you out—immed'tly.”
Weekly, through now well inside, and already turned half about, he turned again so as to bring his back squarely to that doorway.
Knowing that she had to tilt her hoopskirt up a small way to enter.
Though wondering why, with all the petticoats women had beneath those things, she should need to be so finicky! But consoling himself inwardly with the sage observation: “Girls will be girls!” And besides, one with such modesty as hers is truly—precious.”
Now she was inside the parlor with him.
“Won't you be seated, Clark?” she offered.
“We-ell,” he said, a little undecidedly, “I guess I will, yes. Even though I'm really not figuring to stay at all, at all. At least this trip. Because I haven't so awfully much to say, you see. And have much to do today. To argue price with a man who has a rare leatherbound book about Druids. The Druids, you know—that's an awfully pretty dress you've got on. Those new contraptions—hoops—certainly are wider than the old dresses, aren't they? And—I will keep my coat and hat near me, though, on the settee yonder, if you don't mind?”
“As you like,” she said, airy-fairily.
He stepped over to the piece of furniture in question, tossed his widebrimmed brown felt hat on the fireside end of it, divested himself of his coat, and laid it alongside the hat. Looked appraisingly up and down of himself in his wide-lapeled brown frock coat, with its huge silk-cloth covered buttons, that fell clear to his knees, and from below which, tube like, the perfectly tailored stovepipe-legged trousers visibly descended to polished bootlike shoes. While he could at least see that the cuffs of his ruffled white silk shirt peeped the proper number of inches from the correctly long coat sleeves, he had to feel with his fingers for the loosely tied cravat of puckered brown silk, with cameo pin, lying beneath the flaring wing-tip collar carrying one resolute chin.
Now satisfied that he was dressed in proper keeping with one who was in the very mode itself, and free from outer garments besides, he faced her.
“Would you perhaps prefer the settee—or a chair?” he asked.
“Now you know,” she said chidingly, “that with my hoops this particular settee is imposs-”
“Yes, of course,” he hastened to assure her contritely. Dutifully he brought over one of the oval-backed chairs. Set it facing the unoccupied end of the settee from off three or four feet. Attained the settee again, but, still standing, turned his back dutifully till she could tilt her hoopskirt, and drop somehow into or upon the chair. Turned about only when he heard her settle fully upon the latter, till he was again facing windows and her, and dropped down into the waiting space just off from her.
Where now, all requirements of modesty satisfied 100-percent, they faced each other. She demurely, he uncertainly.
He began the conversation.
“Well, Vernice darling,” he commenced, “I—”
“Mister—Shellcross! She cried, and half rose from her chair. “How dare you? I mean, we're not even engaged—and you—”
I'm sorry,” he said humbly. “Please retake your chair. I won't repeat it.” She settled back on it. “But it is all right, though, isn't it, if I call you Vernice?”
“You may do so,” the blonde queenlet granted grandiosely. “Though of course even that should be only—when we're engaged. You should, by right, call me only—Miss Treves. And—however, since I—yes, it will be all right.”
“Good! Well that's what I'm here about. No, not our names. But the matter of our marri—our engagement, that is—that is, our—our engagement-to-be, and then only our marr—Dar —- I mean Vernice—Miss Treves—that is, Vernice, for you did say I could call you—well, dearest Vernice—ah—Vernice—I've come here about your letter—”
“Not, I hope,” she said, though almost reprehendingly, “to confirm for me that you are going 'way across the water—to England—to explain for them about their old—”
“Listen, Vernice,” he said politely. “England has never heard of this fait'ful student of her history, here in Boston—who knows—or, rather, has tried to—all the ins and outs and angles and whatnot—of her strange life story. And some of her enigmas, yes. Some. Though if and when the local British consul ever gets around to deigning to call on yours-truly—”
“You mean—you know the answer—to that clock?”
“Oho,” he laughed, “and right now our little gal wants me to be the Anglo-expert and not the—well—who asks what shall git which—have you got around the house here an old clock?”
“Why, yes. Downstairs.”
“Good! Runs with gears?”
“Why—yes. I guess so. What else do clocks run with?”
“So help me,” he laughed, “I guess nothing else. It has weights then, I take it?”
“Oh yes. And I have the weights.”
“Fine! Now have you got a good corpse—around the house somewhere?”
“A—corpse? Clark! What an—an awful joke.”
“Do you think so?” he said mirthlessly. Even a little sorry. “Well I don't think it any more a joke than Austin—'twas Austin Stonepeter, wasn't it?” — She didn't deny it. “-who gave you that news-story, and told you that I was summoned over there to explain that death-clock? All that was done to emphasize to you that I was a doddering instructor in a fool subject that—I wonder what Austin would say—will say—if and when the British consul, learning about my 'talents' and larnin' does come to me for consultation—hm?”
“He won't,” said the girl promptly. “You're not that well-informed, you know.”
“Ow!” He threw up his hands. “Fair lady believes that in another field he—listen, Vernice, how do you personally know I'm not 'that good'—'well informed' I think you put it? — whatever that is?”
“Why—uh—ah—” She was plainly disconcerted. “Austin—I mean—”
“Ah!” he said. “Austin Stonepeter ag'in, eh? Well—ah—just what did Austin have to say—about my eru- my alleged knowledge in my own field? Come now, give me a sporting chance—for defence.”
“Well,” she said, though a bit reluctantly, “he—he did say—he said that the test of whether a man had even a right to teach English History was—was whether he could answer 3 simple questions relating to his subject, and—”
“-and gave you 3—to put to me, eh?” he said bitterly.
“Well—uh—ah—I didn't put them to you, you know?”
“Right,” he nodded. “Well, here I am—and here I be. In fact,” he said bitterly, “let's find out—here and now—whether I'm taking money daily under false pretenses—ought to be in another field—a field where—will you shoot the quest —- Austin's 25-karat questions?”
“Why, yes—if you want me to. Yes. Indeed, I'd even like to.”
“I'll bet!” he said sepulchrally. “Because, if I can be shown to know nothing about my own field, I plainly belong somewhere el-let 'em fly,” he finished grimly.” Adding: “And I think this is going to be—good!”
_______
The girl looked at him almost perplexedly.
“Well—ah—the first was—was where is Robin Hood buried?”
“That's a meanie!” he said, downright reproachfully.
“Why, what do you mean?”
“I mean that was a trick-question of the first order. For how can a man who is three men—”
“-three—men? Robin—”
“Yep, he's a sort of a hybrid compounded actually out of 3 individuals.** One, the woodspirit 'Robin Goodfellow'. Another, the Earl of Lancaster, in Edward II's time. The third, a follower of one, Simon de Montfort. Named—”
“Then—the question can't be answered?” she said simply.
“Oh it can,” he said wearily. “With respect to all the myths known Robin Hood is buried at Kirklees Park, Yorkshire. Next?”
“We-ell,” she laughed uneasily, “looks as though you won that tussle. Well—” She sighed. “Here's another—”
“Austin's Number II. Fire!”
“Well—ah—the next was how did the early Christians—the ones, Austin specified, martyred by the Romans—pronounce 'England' when they—they discussed the country their persecutors governed?”
He shook his head in amazement. Amazement at the devilish cunning in that question. And its virtual unanswerability. For how does one know how somebody gone 2000 years pronounces—
However, he gave a grim, and satisfied, laugh.
“That one is where the perpetrator did himself in! They didn't pronounce 'England'—in any way. For 'twasn't until the 10th Century that England was even heard of by that name. For—next?”
She appeared staggered.
“Surely Austin—Austin wasn't deliberately trying to—”
“Of course not,” he said with unsmiling joviality. “A man who digs for a week for questions phrased like those doesn't—what's Number III?”
“Well—ah—uh—when was the Norman invasion of England? That is what date?”
Clark shook his head reprehendingly.
“Dirty blow Number III,” he said “At least coming from Austin. Since there were actually two Norman invasions of—”
“Two?” she cried. “In school—”
“Yes,” he said kindly. “But nobody ever heard—of the second one! Because the then-king of England talked the invader into going away—without fighting. But 'twas made, anyway. And—oh the year? 1101.”
The girl had thrown up her hands helplessly.
He spoke. Bitterly.
“Well now that Mr. Stonepeter, Esquire's propaganda around here is demolished, quashed, and squelched—and I've at least halfway established around her that I've something, somewhere in me to toss to the lions—if there is any tossing—yeah, my knowledge of English History—back, then, to that clock in London. Which stops—when folks die under it! No, I'm not going to England about it. I'll at least wait—till I'm asked to—by the Queen or somebody. And then and then only. So now back to even more important things. Your note.”
“Yes?” she said inquiringly. “My note?”
“Ow!” he said, though to himself alone, “this is it! Where the peddygo has to become—the lawyer. What a life—what a life. Well, here goes!”
_______
“Well, Darl- ah—Vernice,” he began, “your note does, you will concede, set up an almost impossible condition?”
“Not impossible at all,” she cried, imperiously. “For a man who has brains and ingenuity, and—” She said no more, but let her meaning—just whatever it might be—sink in.
“Well, hon- I mean , Vernice—I fancy myself to have some sort of brains—and some sort of ingenuity—but brains don't make a v'riety act—nor make a man familiar with a game like—like being advance-agent for a theatrical company—or give him selling ability, which is something unique in itself—now, take your father—”
“Clark!” Her blue eyes shot cold blue fire. “How dare you say my father—had no brains?”
“I—I didn't mean that, Vernice hon- Vernice. I meant that he loped about the country a good deal—but 'twas thanks to a sixth sense he was—was born with—I mean, the 'buying and selling sense' that he inherited from his father, your grandfa- you have told me all about this, you know?—well, I was but referring to his ability to buy the cotton outputs of small plantations—and re-sell them to the jobbers who deal with the spinning mills up here and in Manchester, Eng- ah, what I meant was that what folks do—what you want me to do—is something they have to learn by practice, or being taught by somebody else, or—”
“If a man loves a woman,” she protested, “nothing—nothing, I tell you!—is too imposs'ble an obstacle for him.”
“Maybe not,” he conceded humbly. “But you can't order a man to be a mathematician—who never learned to add a column of figures. Or—but see here—do you realize, Vernice, that for happiness in a family it's necessary, at least, for a husband to love his work; and if he's sunk in work that he—”
“If a husband loves his wife,” she said, almost petulantly, “he loves—to sheer death—the work he's engaged in—to take care of her. 'Specially if it gives her a chance to keep from going crazy by rotting in one—”
“Overruled! Me, I mean—not you. For it's me who's pleading right now, before—before Judge Pretty Girl. Overruled, then. Well, then have you stopped to consider, dear girl, that if I were a v'riety act presenter—which I never could be—or an advance-agent—which maybe I could be—or a sales agent—or any kind of several other people who move about, and how—that I might get definitely sent off to—to England—to—”
“Oh!” she cried, delighted with the picture he was presenting. “How wonderful! London! To be in-”
“-with seasickness for you going—and coming—even on one of those quick boats that take only 30 days.”
“Oh, I know a rem'dy for that,” she said. “Two squills—in water.”
“No sale, ev'dently,” he said dryly, “when it comes to arguing with you against wanting to be in—in London. Well, I don't blame you. I'd like to see it—myself. But all right, we'll take it, then, that with proper selection of vocations, I'd just get dispatched, at most, all over this land only. Well do you realize, darl- Vernice—do you realize what a life that would be? Oh, not the bumpy train-travel and coach-travel from point to point—or, in my case, stage-coach travel only—nor even the dragged out canal-boat travel—nor even the travel, by steamboats, up and down the Mississippi, and along our coast—but the awful hotels we'd confront—rooms without even individual stoves in them—and—”
“We wouldn't ever have to take such kinds of rooms,” she said. “With you earning real money, instead of—of teacher-money. We could always have a luxur'ous hotel room with a stove—and a woman to come in and feed it.”
“But here—here—here,” he said plaintively. “You couldn't be wandering about that way forever with me. Children—babies coming—”
“Mister—Shellcross!” She had risen from her chair. Her blue eyes flashed fierce indignation. “In all my life, I never heard of a gentleman making remarks like—like that, or—I'm sorry, Mr. Shellcross,” she said gelidly, “but since the conversation has now descended, at least on your part, to sheer gutter-talk, I must leave the
room. You—know the way out, I presume? And you may write me your apology when you see fit. And I'll consider it—in all its angles.”
_______
“Wait, Vernice, wait!” Clark cried fiercely. “My apologies right here—and now. All there are in the world. All!” She was resuming her seat. “I was only talking about—about physiological certainties, and—I mean—well, I mean that when people marry, they—now take you father and mother—”
“Mr. Shellcross—” She was rising majestically again. “I tell you once more and for the last time that I refuse to listen to such awful talk! That sort of thing may be all right for barrooms. But not for—what do you mean, to think you can—”
“I apologize com-pletely,” he said hastily. In time moreover, to get her back into her chair. “After all, what I brought up is a little premature—that is—well, assuming then that you want to travel about for—for the rest of your life!—with a husband who has some—any—kind of a connection that will make it possible—what—what did you think to do—with Grandma here? Being 80, she's too old to stay on here all alone, and—”
“Oh,” the girl said, airy-fairily, “I'll put Grandma in a nice old people's home.”
“Oh—Vernice! Oh—Vernice. I know you own this house, and a small competence to keep it up and feed you and her, but she's dependent on you for spiritual—”
“She—she wants to go to an oldster' home,” she cried defiantly. “She—she doesn't like it here. She says that scrubbing the floors is too hard on her—ah—she wants to go.”
“I—see,” he bowed to superior argument. “Well that's that, then. I—listen, darl- Vernice, I mean—can I ask you one more question—without you getting angry?”
“You may,” she granted graciously.
“Well, here it is. You're—you're not by some chance playing Austin Stonepeter—against me, are you?”
“What—do you mean?” She was plainly puzzled.
“I mean—well, you haven't laid him down the same conditions, have you—and are standing by seeking to learn which horse will win the race, and—”
“What would be wrong 'bout that?” she demanded. “Two lovers should vie for a lady's hand. Two men should love to vie. For—what diff'rence would it make to you, Clark, if I had laid the conditions down to him, too? What—”
“Oh,” he sighed, “Austin can do so many parlor feats — of sorts. Magic, I mean. Why, with that bottle and egg trick of his, he could almost get before the pub- oh, I know, a single trick's not likely ever to get one booked in a v'riety nor—”
“Well the answer to your question is,” she said, and downright mockingly—and without, indeed, getting angry—“that Austin is a wonderful boy. And thinks the world—of me. And he's got ambition; he'd—he'd scorn to go through life just as a teacher who—ah—uh—uh—”
“'Nough!” he said bitterly. “Hon- Vernice—we seem to be split on something at the very—base of things. That is—you feel I'm just a 'teacher'. I claim I'm—well—something else. A—a shaper of human beings. For none of those kids who follow English history—any history, to be truthful—from the savage Celts to Lord Beaconsfield of today, but learn truths to apply to their own lives. Each kid is a small England in himself, you see. And—but no use! I can see by your blue gaze that you figure me to be just a teacher—of a useless subject. All right. Then I am. But what difference does it make if I'm to be—according to your wishes—a drummer—or a—a billposter—or a pottery goods exhibitor—a human grasshopper, in short, who—”
“That's right,” she granted, almost gayly. “What diff'rence indeed, if—if you change over—to something else?”
“Yes,” he nodded glumly. “Change over. But—to what?”
“If you loved me,” she protested vehemently, “you'd—”
“Do you doubt that?” he said, downright wonderingly.
She patted her golden hair on one side.
“Well if you loved me,” she said, undecidedly, “you wouldn't even be here now this morning—trying to show me I'm wrong on ever'thing—trying to argue me out of this, that, and the other thing, from putting grandmother where she belong- wants to be—to—you wouldn't be here bringing up even gutter-subjects to convince me—and—No, if a man loves a girl his—his brains are on fire to please her—his thoughts go as fast as—as that single daily fast train to New York called—the Cannonball Express!—18 miles an hour. If a man loves a girl—”
“You've been reading that authoress, haven't you,” he charged, “named—oh, I forget her name, but the one who wrote Love's Flowering, My Knight Comes a-Riding, You May Kiss the Hem of my Hoopskirt, The—”
“Well—ah—those books are beaut'ful reading, and—”
“The day will come,” he said sagely, “when people will derisively mock those same books. On the very v'riety stage you wish I could be on, but can't be. But all right. Anyway, I love you just as much as any of those fool characters in those fool books loved other fool characters in them, and no, in simple language I love you very fiercely, Vernice—I believe that if and after, say, you got a good dose of living in hotel rooms without even individual stoves, you'd be ready to scream—and that after children commenced to come—forgive me, I didn't mean anyth- I mean that after marriage you'll get new ideas and—of course,” he put in dryly, “my profession—trade—call it what you want!—will be gon—the teaching spots all filled up with new men—old connections and everything all changed, and shifted about—well, the point is that I do love you fiercely—think I do, anyway!—and—”
“Think?” she cried, almost angrily. “Don't you—even know?”
“Well—uh—a theatrical producer I called on late last night said, when I detailed to him why I even was calling on him, said that I only thought I loved you—but he did say you were in my blood, and this sure is true, for—oh, I—I don't mean anything wrong by taking about blood—I—well, the producer—”
“What—were you doing—with him?”
Her question was not so peremptory as inquiringly hopeful. She even amplified it.
“I mean, Clark, since you detailed that you were calling on him, well—well, why were you?”
Hopefulness of some sort radiated definitely in her so-pointed query.
“Oh,” he said, “to see whether a chap like me could possibly get a berth as advance-agent—for a show. Knowing nothing about it, or —”
“Oh!” she cried, delightedly. “Then you are—you are trying to—to get a connection, where we can move—move—move!—move—”
“Trying is right!” he said. “But with a fellow like me, knowing only teaching methods, and English History, it's like trying to make fried chicken—with nothing but noodles.”
“You'll succeed,” she said, almost confidently. “Because you have me—as your stim'lus. And now—as result of all the valuable information you got, you're shaping up in mind how to get out on the road—as an advance-agent?”
He regarded her gloomily. And wondered if he dared tell her of the interview he'd had late last night in the Hotel Histrion, Boston.
_______
The producer in question had been one, R. Filewood Cooprider, And he was one of Boston's two chief producers.
Clad in garishly black and white striped clothing worthy of a stage show itself, with huge black handlebar mustache, and seated at his weird new-fangled roll-top desk in comfortable rag-carpeted office, with tree oil lamps profligately going, he had said, on hearing Clark's long story:
“No, m' boy. You abs'lutely couldn't take over as an advance-agent till you'd been luggage toter for a real one, for several years. There's no end of outside angles—and tricks—and what, you have to actually grow up to. But I like you—and would like to see you win your chunk of Dresden China. No offence, m' boy—no offence!”
“Of course not,” Clark, seated on edge of chair, brown hat on knee, had hurriedly assured the other. And opened his ears.
“Now,” the other had gone on, “the little lady, so far as I can see, wants to keep on the move—in life. In short, enjoy living a col'ful life. Pref'rably the theatre—but, whether or no, on the move. And you therefore, 've got to have a connection—that will make 'at poss'ble. So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. There's a man here in Boston who's gotten hold of a marv'lous new plow. I don't know what the principle of it is—maybe it plow the furrow count'clockwise instead of clockwise—don't ask me! But he has money a-plenty to promote it—and's going to do so. All over the country! Till, he says, ever' plow now plowing will be his. So-o-o—he wants several good men to cover the country—putting up a week at each hotel—prefers their wives to be with 'em even, so's they don't run around dancehalls—yes, to put up a week in each place, a'vertising in the local papers about the plow, and showing it, even holding demonstrations on the outskirts with a mule and a hill-billy plower. Quite nothing to do yourself. Not even any plowing. Just to show it. It'll sell itself, he claims. And so I suggest you call on him as soon as he gets back—I happen to know that right now he's in New York—won't be back till day after tomorrow. But call on him the minute he gets back. And tell him you're willing to live all over hell and gone—and places in between!”
“That sounds awfully good to me, Mr. Cooprider,” Clark had replied. “For my purpose, I mean. Like it might be—the answer. But will he see me? A mere teacher who never had any sales exper-”
“He will,” the other had said dryly. “At least with a card of interduction from me. For I put a niece o' his on the boards. And—he will! I promise you he will. And'll listen to your whole story. For he asked only last week, in a letter, how he could ever repay me. He'll—”
“I'll go,” Clark had said eagerly. “The very minute he's back. Day after tomorrow, you say? Yes, I'll go. Unless, perchance, I manage to argue this girl out of—”
“Hah!” R. Filewood Cooprider had said, and significantly. “Your on'y arg'ment, m' boy, will arrive about one—two, maybe—yes, maybe one or two years—after your teaching enthusiasm is gone, your school connections the same—your—but sufficient unto any day is the catastrophy thereof. And—what's that? Your on'y arg'ment? Oh, m' boy, it's the first baby—now don't take offence, m' boy—the first baby is a hell of a change f'r wimmen, and—however, 'twon't be any different in the case o' your piece o' Dresden China, nor—well what you got to do now, so help me, is to get hold of your piece of—”
“I'm glad the promoter,” Clark had stopped the tenor of this biological conversation, “is as—as pleasant a man as you seem to indicate he is. Teachers, you know, are often persona non grat-”
“Well—ah—wait. He's a mite cuckoo. On two subjects. Negroes and England.”
“England?”
“Yes,” said the other warningly “Don't drop a single remark in your conversation that a nigger is good for more than anything than to be lynched—and don't say one single good word about England—or he'll turn red-headed and—”
“Oh,” said Clark, taken momentarily aback. “So that's the way it is—with him?” He took a deep breath. “Well, I'll watch my words then, don't worry. Because—”
“I know you will,” said the other. “So's you don't tip the applecart about getting a connection that'll give you this little queen who makes your blood run hot—your head pulse—your heart to pound—your—ah, heavens, physiology!”
And disgruntledly, R. Filewood Cooprider had turned about, drawn open the top rightmost drawer of the new-fangled desk with the cover which could be drawn down over it, and extracted from it a white card. Which he examined carefully as though to make sure it was the right one. Had then turned it over and laid it flat before himself, hurriedly shoving the open drawer—which had also contained a lightly corked bottle of Chicken Cock, Preferred, Bourbon—to, with his hand. Had reached toward the quill pen protruding from the open bottle of ink in the rear part of the desk. And with it had proceeded to write rapidly on the back of the card.
And then, finishing whatever he had been setting down, had laid down the pen. Had waved the card in air to dry it. And then had turned about in his comfortable armchair, with the card still in his hands.
“Here's all you'll need,” he said amusedly, “to get immed'ate talk with him. He's in the Industr'al Building. As you'll see. And—but there y'are.”'
And he'd extended the card to Clark Shellcross.
Who'd taken it eagerly, and had surveyed it, even more eagerly. At least the side uppermost. And which read:
WATERLOCK PINNEY
Industrial Building
Boston, Massachusetts
Quickly Clark had turned the card over. And had found on the reverse side, and this one in writing, the precious message:
W.P. Please give the bearer a chanct, e. i. use him if you possibly can. He's eeger to both cut loose from on-spot living, and from his prosake game. Thanks.
R.F.C.
Clark had thrust the card quickly into his pocket.
“Thanks a million, Mr. Cooprider,” he'd said gratefully. “I'll see Mr. Pinney, of course. And do everything in my power to avoid saying a single good word about Senegambians or—or England. Yes, I'll be camping on his doorstep, morning after tomorrow. For, unless I can break down my sweetheart's stand completely, I've got to get on the road—any field therein—quick. For—for—”
“Yeah, I know,” had said the producer wryly. Pulling, at same time, gravely, on one side of his huge mustache. “A woman doesn't wait f'rever, eh?”
And Clark, standing by then, and looking down at the man who had truly befriended him, had answered that.
“Yes,” he had said, unsmilingly, “you said it! Specially when pretty—and lovable—and—yes, that's it, Mr. Cooprider. Even a woman—doesn't wait—forever. Thank you no end—and now I'm off—with a bang!”
_______
Vernice was raptly waiting for his answer as to what amazing things he might already be doing, in compliance with her ultimatum.
But he did not try to tell her all, or even much, of what had transpired in the Hotel Histrion last night.
Instead, he said simply:
“The man I saw could give me nothing. Said it was virtually a trade—being advance-agent. But he gave me a lead—to another man. A promoter who's been in New York, but will be back in this town again from day after tomorrow on. A man who may, for all I know, turn out to be valueless, too. At least if by chance I drop a single remark that is warm to England. Or is kindly or sympathetic to—to a—the Negro. In which case, I'll be exactly where I am right now, and—”
“Oh, you'll find the answer to your problem,” she said with supreme confidence. “Because, as I said, you have me for stim'lus, and—this is,” she amended, “because you know completely now that I want my husband-to-be to be one who can live each week—or part of each week—or ten days—doesn't exactly matter—in new spot after new spot—or—or at least not return to old ones before all of a year has passed—
She stopped significantly.
“You won't trade,” he asked wonderingly, “for wifeship to a teacher—teacher of a subject he knows so well he'll always be able to teach it—with a fixed home—place to have child- to have children running in and out,” he amended hastily, “fixed friends—stoves in rooms in winter, and—I mean,” he desisted, “you stand firm—on your ultimatum?”
“Austin didn't try to argue me out of—I mean, Austin would bow to a lady's wishes, not—no, I won't marry you till you've not only made a clean break from that sill- that occupation you now have—and have a man's job of going about the country—booking into hotels—with bellboys running around for you—booking out the same, and—”
Clark was rising. Regaining his coat. Inserting himself into it. And regaining his hat. With it in hand only, he turned to her.
“I'll be going now,” he said quietly.
She had risen too. Hurriedly.
“And when will I be seeing you again, Clark?” she asked, though seemingly in profound politeness.
He regarded her hungrily. This girl whom, just to see—to be with—when the goal of having her lay ever over a distant hill—caused him exquisite pain.
“You'll see me next,” he said firmly—and grimly, “when I've a new connection—with life. And have broken off the dear old—the old one. Yes, a connection where I can come into this parlor and say, 'Clark Shellcross—the one we both knew, anyway—is now gone—out of both of our lives. And the chap who sits here—but you get the idea, I know. So till that moment, Vernice, goodbye—and good luck!”
_______
Striding morosely down Garden Street, around the corner from the white-painted Treves cottage, to get to Van Rensselaer Street where it might be possible to catch a horsedrawn bus for downtown, Clark stopped short where a rutty alley entrance gave out onto the flagstone paved sidewalk, with its fringe of tall graceful trees.
Far down the alley, more than a half block even, a half dozen children, facing an evidently tall wide-spaced picket fence of some kind, were clapping their hands—shouting—two screaming with glee. The deep-rut-eaten strip of dirt constituting the alley, contrasting so with the pretty street outside with its trim green, blue and tan painted cottages, was such that nobody, without some mighty good motive to go down it, would ever have essayed to go down it!
But the children were so glee-stricken that Clark, pausing undecidedly at the alley mouth, could only say:
“This—I'll have to see!”
So down the alley he curiously turned. Resolved, in view of all that commotion going on down it, to find out exactly why those children were clapping their hands and at times giving forth with cries that were sheer ecstasy.
But not in the least dreaming, as he trudged along the rut-eaten passageway that he was going to confront, though through a picket fence, none other than one, Austin Stonepeter, his rival for the hand of the sweetest girl in Boston!
_______
The children, the little boys in long pants with little jackets, the little girls in wide-flung pinafores with little coatees, paid no attention to him as he drew up to the picket-fence with its wide-spaced flat pickets. They were hopelessly entranced by what was inside—and what it was doing!
And which was a strange looking figure, to say the least—for it was in costume of some sort. And wearing makeup—of some kind. It stood but ten feet, no more, from the fence—and faced it. It was a youthful figure, all right—22 or so years of age—in spite of the voluminous genuine blond mustache that thrust itself fiercely out each side of the slightly fattish face—a mustache that looked as though it might have been grown at behest of lady faire! But its “hair” did not match its mustache for the reason that its “hair” consisted of a ragged, jagged fiery red wig drawn down each side of the face, which itself bore a huge bulbous red putty nose, and one eye blacked ludicrously out in an area full 3 inches in diameter. Its loudly checked trousers had been made from gingham; and galluses there were, screaming red—across a hickory shirt.
Standing firmly atop the dead browned turf of last fall, against a background consisting only of the rear of a luxuriously-built 2-story and attic high wooden cottage, the figure was juggling two apples—keeping one ever in air as one fell into its outstretched hand. And doing it neatly!
Ranged on the dead last year's grass in front of the figure were four beerbottles, standing on their bases, and a coverless pasteboard box.
Clark was now one of the audience, a hand clutching one each of two flat pickets, his brown felt hat shoved far back on his head, his face between two adjoining pickets.
“Well, whadda you want?” snarled the figure inside, who could evidently see beyond his rising and falling apples. “Be on your way, or I'll—oh it's you, Teacher, eh?” The voice was banteringly amiable now. “What you doing around here this hour of the day? Calling on Vernie?”
The apples had come to a graceful stop, both now in one hand.
Clark answered. Reproachfully.
“Why, Austin,” he said, “do you calls me—Teacher?”
“Well, Histor'an, then. Still you don't write histories, do you? You just teach other people's works—well, Angle-file—no, Anglo-phile, then.”
“All right. You win! All the names partially fit, I suppose. Well what on earth goes on here, Austin—if a prosaic person like me can ask?”
“We-ell,” said the other, “if you must have it—I've been sort of—well, practically—yes, practically—promised a billing—in v'riety—to fill in between some other acts—40 weeks of it, moreover!—and at much better pay than a fellow'd ever manage to get around this town—renewal of contract, even, at end of year—if—yeah, if I can just manage to get 'nough things into the air at one time to keep the aud'ence from going to sleep—and do it in a different manner, than heretofore, and—”
“Why?”
“What do you mean—why?”
“I mean—why would you even want to go—into variety? With a father whose seed business on Admiral Street is plenty prosperous? And an uncle whose ornamental yard-railing foundry—”
“Oh,” said the other, airy-fairily, “no reason—at all. One has to live, you know. I mean—make one's own way.”
“Yes, one does, doesn't one?” Clark gazed at the two held apples. “I suppose your general idea is to tantalize the audience into thinking you're going to pick up those bottles sometime, and—”
“Thinks you? Hah!”
Austin stooped over. Dropped the apples. Took up two bottles, one in each hand. Stood erect again. Tossed one bottle well up so that it commenced turning slowly in mid-air. Then the next, from the same hand. Then quickly the frontmost in the next hand. Following that with the remaining one in that hand. And in a trice all were weaving in mid air, being caught deftly by their necks only, tossed back—
None, quite none, were falling to turf.
“Good Lord, Austin—where on earth did you ever master—that?”
Austin wasn't carrying his luck too far! He brought the bottles neatly back to quiescence, two in each hand.
“An old juggler,” he revealed, “who works for us around the house here—he's all twisted with rheumatiz today—showed me the trick, completely concealed by all jugglers, of how to keep the bottles from hitting each other in mid air. He's played thousands of beer gardens in his day, the country over. And—”
“It's very neat,” conceded Clark, fairly. “The way you do it. And I can say that with authority, because I've seen it done dozens of times in my life by people who could, of course, do far more, and—but wait!—that's not supposed to be anything against your accomplishment, I meant that—”
“Hold everything,” said Austin patiently. “So you've seen everything, eh, old—old Mist' Professuh? Too bad, too bad!”
He leaned over and set the bottles down on the dead turf. Fished in the pasteboard box. Came erect again with three objects in his hand. And which consisted of—
But he was speaking. But now in a monstrous sort of high-pitched cackle—a cross between cackle and so-called down-East talk.
“Wa-all, lad-ees an' gent'men, they say as haouw they hain't no-boddee kin joggle things what hain't the same—hain't the same size an' same shape, 'at is—so they do, folks!—so they do!—but fling me yer eyes, folks—oh, ye kin each keep one eye fer fuchure use—an' you snorin' down thar in Row 2, wake up—the bloomin' bally British have jest made a sneak landin' at Baltymore, an' have t'uk Wash'nton—will somebody shove somethin' down that cryin' baby's throat—thankee folks—thankee!—got to have gre-e-eat quiet now fer—”
“I now show ye all,” Austin went on, “one ten-dollar gol'piece—don't shove, folks—don't shove—” He held it up—and it was exactly that. The children, by Clark's side, stood in silent, respectful attention. “-an' one cantyloupe, growed in a attic with stove an'—” He showed it, passed it to the coin-holding hand. “Now this—what's 'at—I hain't holdin' nothin' up now,—the he- the deuce I hain't—it's a feather—a feather off'n a goose's behi- hrmph—a feather—now folks watch—all o' ye!”
And Clark, watching, saw what he would have believed not quite possible. The coin—the feather—and the cantaloupe—wreathing in air, Austin had to really work! For the feather, when tossed upwards, refused to go very fast or far, because of the air resistance against it—and took its sweet time coming down—so that the other objects, not only caught differently—for the melon had to be caught only on flat palm of hand—had to be tossed further. Austin was actually puffing.
He brought them to quiet.
The children clapped. And Clark bowed.
“Very good,” he said. “In fact—perfect! But now I've got to go. Got a class this afternoon—covering an episode of 1833 when our benighted friends over there in England did something we've never stooped to do yet—abolished slavery in all their colonies—uncivil sort of an act, don't you think? Anyway, must go. See you again. 'Bye”
And he turned away. Went on down the alley in the same direction by which he'd approached it. Since its further egress seemed somewhat cleaner than the one by which he'd entered it. Also, less mud ruts to cover!
But ruminating as he got away.
“Jugglers,” he said, “are a dime a dozen. As plentiful as fleas—on hounds! But all of 'em I've ever seen—all, bar none!—came out on the stage in dress suits. He's—he's got something new there all right, all right. That get-up! They'll call him—they'll call him—Comedy Juggler. That's what they will. Comedy Juggler. And they'll wind up booking him every where. From New York to—to New Orleans. And give him good salary—to boot. And if I don't do something right fast and quick—he's going to marry—Vernice Treves!”
_______
Unlike the half or more of the alley he'd traversed to get here, the further segment held, at a solid fence quite some distance from its exit, a huge pile of rotting garbage, along a low rear solid fence, and a ragged figure picking or kicking around it.
He came up to the pile and figure—would have circled about both, except that his attention was seized, whether he liked it or not, by the figure itself who now sat on an up-ended dirty box against the low fence.
His attention, to be precise, was seized not by the fact that the figure sat on a box—but by what it was doing.
For the ragged-trousered man, with practically buttonless blue shirt and greasy e-stained torn coat held together by one string-suspended cloth button, unshaven face carrying beard a half-inch long, and cloth cap on one side of shaggy, thinning half-greyed head, was scraping away, with the broken blade of a dullish looking barley knife, the rounded nubbin of what had once been the end of a loaf of bread. A nubbin which had become smeared with sticky excrescence of some kind—if not even ingrained with bits of garbage. Even as Clark reached a point about even with the pile, the figure had gotten the nubbing of bread cleaned—rather, cleared of its layer of surface molecules!—and was taking a vigorous and unrestrained bite out of it.
Clark, riveted in his tracks, was staring at the other.
Who spoke, coolly, almost contemptuously.
“Won't you join me, gent?” were the ragged monstrosity's words. “There's more w'ere this come from.”
Clark moved over closer to him.
“Good God,” he said, “do you have to eat—out of garbage heaps?”
“Whadda you think?” returned the other. “No, I'm a taster—fer the rats.”
“Oh come now,” Clark chided. “Don't be sarcastic with me. I'm for you—not against you. I've seen figures down alleys around garbage heaps, but—”
“But not ever went down 'nough alleys, heh, to see what they was a-doin'? Well, brother, I'm one o' them. Now anything—to say 'bout it?”
“Heavens no, man. No. But it seems to me that this oughtn't to be. Oughtn't—”
“Hah!” The ragged man now used an elbow to clean a bit of area on his bread loaf nubbing. “Well Brother, is is, jest the same. An' will be—long's I live. An' your children—and your children's children—if you ever have any.” Clark winced. “But someday—an' believe this or not, fine gent—someday men like me—too old t' work, or mebbe not old but jest not able to catch no work—but with wrinkles in their bellies—'ll git—now hold on to them stovepipe brown trousers o' your'n—will git, f'm the State of—or the kentry—money to at leas' eat an' sleep on—git it ev'ry month reg'lar, too—git as much as—as all o' $8 a month, an'—you don't b'lieve 'at, do you?”
Clark stroked his chin.
“You're a Utopian-Socialist, aren't you?”
“W'at of it? Can't kill me fer thinkin', kin you?”
“For dreaming, you mean,” said Clark kindly. “For what you describe—well my belief is that so long as our capitalistic syst- well maybe, at that, you've got something there—for something like what you descri- oh, never so much as $8 a month, no—something like that may come about, so that people like you, with barley knives—and even pistols—don't rise up with blood in their eye, and—”
“I—I ain't no an'chist,” the other man said hastily. “If 'at's what you mean. An' don't you try to git me 'rrested, or—”
“What do you think I am?” said Clark. He unbuttoned the lower buttons of his outer garment, fished down in his stovepipe brown trousers, brought up a green oblong of paper big enough to paper a fence with. Thrust it out at the other. “Here,” he said, “take this.”
The other stared at it.
“I've seed magic tricks afore,” he said. “But a'right. It's a shin-plaster. So go 'head with th' trick.”
“No, take it—and keep it—”
“Kee-” The other reached dazedly out. Took the huge oblong of green paper. Blinking old eyes at it. Looked up.
“You mean—you mean you're act'ally givin' me this here dollar?” he said unbelievingly.”
“Right,” nodded Clark, wondering, a bit painedly, what kind of a world he was living in that simple generosity on the part of one should to another should come under such skeptical scrutiny.
“We-ell,” commented the other, utterly helplessly, “you must be 'bout to ask me to rob a bank for you. Or—or to kill a man. Well, which o' them things do you want me to do?”
“Neither,” Clark assured the other. “I don't want anything for it. In short, I need and want nothing in this world. Unless maybe—oh—some advice—an inside tip, I mean—on something that you wouldn't have the least idea about; so—”
“Is it a tip—on horse trottin' racin'? I reckon I wouln't know nothing about that. For—”
“No, no, no, no. Forget I spoke, please. I was only referring to a tip—a possible tip—on something—well something connected with my own life and affairs. With a problem which you couldn't answer under any possibil-”
“Listen, Mister,” retorted the garbage prowler, with an amazing flare-up of some kind of dignity, “I may be so far down in the social scale that I'm sheer on the flat o' my—but 'at don't mean I haven't still got a head on my shoulders, an' brains inside it. An' that I ain't in full touch with this world and all what goes on. Advice—well advice is all I can give now. So name your problem. And I'll give you the s'lution of it.”
“Oh, you will, eh?” retorted Clark, with some slight asperity. And wondering how far down he himself had fallen—to be broaching his own problems—let alone the problems themselves—with men eating garbage in alleys. His asperity kept rising within him because, though he realized it not at the instant, his ego had been lowered. “All right,” he said. “I'll fling it at you, Wise Boy! Here it is: where can I who, in my professional life, is a—never mind what I am now—it has no bearing on things—where can I find a connection—a business connection—oh, in a big hurry, I mean—by which I can travel all over the country—oh, for at least a year—staying here a week, there a week—”
“That's easy.”
“Tis, eh?” said Clark, nettled. He decided to drop the matter. But consumed with curiosity, asked:
“Well what is it?”
Now a garbage diner was on top of the discussional heap. He was handing out information, not asking it.
“Well, first o' all, do you—can you—talk nigger talk?”
“Nigger talk?” Clark surveyed this odd individual, who sat there at this moment the most cocksure man in the entire universe. He wanted to wave a friendly goodbye salute with two fingers and say “Good luck” and be off. But consumed with curiosity because of this under-creature's complete self-assurance, Clark answered the question.
“Nigger talk?” he repeated. “Why sure I can talk it. Why not? I took the part of one, 'Moses Moggs' in a college show for seven weeks—6 and 4/7ths of which were daily rehearsals—and two days of which were actual performances. The name of the play was—now what did we call it?—hm?—oh yes, 'Way Down on De Swannee Ribber'! I read all the Negro dialect stuff on earth to acquire my—my dialect—and frequented all the Negro taverns, clambakes, whatnot. I was practically talking to myself in Negro dialect at the end—talking it in my own sleep, even. Why did you ask?”
“I'll tell you shortly. But talk some. Talk some nigger talk. Then I'll pay off—for this shinplaster.”
Clark looked down at him. This was ridiculous. Feeding facts to a down-and-outer in an alley cleaning off garbage from other garbage with a barley knife. A down-and outer who—still—you never can tell. You never can tell. He went the rest of the way that he had inadvertently laid out for himself. Talked some “nigger talk”. To see what bearing this might have on the problem of his love for Vernice Treves.
_______
With a sigh of self-decryment, Clark began. With a speech from that college play. Which doubtlessly in those days he had reeled off in his very sleep at times.
“Well suh, Marster, yistidday Ah was on de slabe block—today Ah is yo' suhvan'. Now Ah aims t' please yo', Marster. But all Ah asks is dat yo' don' flog me. Ef yo' treats me wid lub—Ah gibs fo'th wid lub. But ef yo' flogs me, Ah gib fo'th wid hate. An' a wu'ld, Marster, whut got Hate in it jes' ain' no kind ob a wu'ld for man o' beas' to lib in.”
“Mm,” said the man on the box judicially, like a critic at the first night of an opera. “I think that will pass. Yeah, I b'lieve it's—it's perfect. Well now, one more thing.”
“More yet? When do we get the solution of my problem?” Clark was being quizzical now, highly so. And quite confident now he wasn't going to get anything.
“Soon. It'll be good—at least I think so. Well now—c'n you sing?”
“Oh my—my friend. What next? This play I was in wasn't an opera. It was just an ordinary play—”
“Judgin' from the lines you jist giv' 'twas writ by some o' your classmates. Clark winced inwardly. For he himself had been one of the writers of it. “But again, can you sing?”
“Heavens no. No. Well, time moves along this morning and so, I fear must I. Well it's been interesting to have—”
“Y' never can tell if you can sing—till you try. Try now. Sing me a song. Oh, in nigger talk. Yep, in that fine nigger talk you spout like oil comin' out of a horn. Then I'll tell you the answer to your problem.”
Clark stared at the other. Wondered what strange fate was putting him in an alley this morning talking Negro talk at a garbage prowler. No, being asked to sing some of same—at same. Decided that Life was Life—and one couldn't change it. And still hopelessly intrigued by the other's self-assurance, he commenced his feat. In a low voice—the melody of which fit some song he'd heard—he didn't remember what—and the words were a cold-turkey on-the-spot transmogrification of a verse from Mother Goose. His song lines went:
“Ma'y she done had a li'l lamb,
Its fleece wuz w'ite as snow,
An' evvywhah Ma'y she done wen',
Dat fool lamb wuz sho' to go.”
“Whew!” he finished.
“Fine, fine, fine,” the other man was saying approbatively. “Well now for your solution. The exack s'lution of the exack problem you give me. Are you ready f'r it?”
“Ready and waiting,” said Clark patiently. Wondering how much a man had to take in order to win the hand of a little blonde lady on Flower Street, named Vernice Treves!
_______
The solution was being given.
Garbage prowler was ladling forth life advice to pedagogue.
“Join a minstrel show,” the advice ran.
“A mins- where would I—”
“One's formin' right now in town here. Downtown. They's a cloth banner acrost th' Drover's Hotel readin': 'Trained Minstrels Wanted to Join Minturn's Minstrel Troup for One Year's Tour, One-week Stands. Apply Here!'“
Clark looked down at the other.
“So that's—the great solution?” he said bitterly. “I—pedagogue—that means instructor in a school—have to out on a stage banked with oil lamps with polished reflectors—spout lingo at Mr. Bones—sing a comical song—ah me, how complicated can one make one's life when one is in love.”
“Oh—love, eh? A woman, eh?”
Clark nodded.
“Well, Mister, if it's somethin' b'en laid down to you by a woman—work on the woman. That's your s'lution.”
Clark faced him sadly. Reflecting on how intensively he, Clark, had worked on the woman this day.
The man on the box appeared to be definitely saddened by something.
“I've failed,” he said, “to give you the s'lution o' somethin'. And here you've give me a whole dollar. Believe me, when somebody gives Jeb Polliver, former whaler—”
“Whaler?”
Clark was, to say the very least, highly intrigued now. Even more than that, indeed. And for the reason, none other, that all his life had been spent on dry land—all his existence within the confines of a shore line—the Eastern shore only of it, moreover.
“Whaler?” he repeated. And almost invitingly this time.
“Yeah,” nodded the other unsmilingly. “But,” he now detailed, “I'm too ol' now to go out any more. Sence I up an' quit 'cause the captain he wasn't catchin' no whales, an' wanted to run a load o' blacks 'crost the ocean, an' I wouldn't play in with it, 'count o' havin' been shanghaied oncet on a slaver, an' havin' to act'ally go to Afriky an' back an'—”
“Slaver—did you say? You mean you've even been to Afri- oh come now.” And Clark, getting hold of his own wander-hunger, came back to common sense. “Come now, how many things have you been in your—here!—you've lived, I suppose, in Nantucket?”
“I said I was a whaler, didn't I?” expostulated Jeb Polliver, though humbly again now.
“That's right. Well then tell me something, will you? What kind of a sleighride, in the good old winter time, is a—a Nantucket sleigh ride?”
“Are you a-tryin' to trap me?” said Jeb Polliver hurtfully. “After givin' me a near heart-'ttack by shovin' at me a whole—Mister, w'en I said I was a whaler, I am a whaler. And when I said I've b'en to Afriky—I've b'en to Afriky. And w'en—but a Nantucket sleigh ride, heh? Well, that ain't even a sleigh ride—though I bet you know that, heh? But if—if you really don't—then it's the bouncin' ride over the waves that us whalin' men git after we've harpooned a whale—from a small boat.”
“You're genuine all right, Polliver, “Clark said mollifyingly. “But I just kind of thought, for a moment, when you sprung that—and then added Africa!—that you were drawing—the old long bow. So just skip it. Nor was I drawing it—or am, I mean—when I said—or am, I mean, when I say—just keep that green bill that's in your fingers there.”
Jeb Polliver seemed still completely unconvinced.
“You really mean,” he said downright plaintively, “'at you're givin' me this shin-plaster—'thout me havin' to kill all your employers for you?”
Clark smiled. “My employers are a kindly set of men. They're directors of—” He didn't bother to explain this. “Answering your question I'll say; 'n your own testy words, 'What do you think?'“
“I beg your pardon, Mister.” The ragged man held up the big green oblong. “D' you re'lize I c'n live on this—fer a week?”
“That's what I want you to do.”
“But you—”
“My friend, I've got troubles of my own—as perhaps you've even suspected because of the odd problem I just posed you—and which I'm sorry to say you haven't solved. As an equation you solved it, yes—your answer conformed to all the conditions set forth. But because of the human angle involved—me—it wasn't solved. Nor—but I'm off the track of what I started to say. Which was that I have got problems of my own—but they don't involve money.”
“Good! I mean—well, d' you mind if I don't start leggin' it, here an' now, all the 3 miles or so fer the water front—an' Greasy Joe's—w'ere a meal wit' 'taters an' horsemeat steak costs a nickel—if—if I sort o' hang on to this, like—an' go on with this fine breakfas' I've dug me up?”
“Fine break-”
“Sure. They's even a melon rind yander, if you look. “And the speaker wagged a head sagely toward the middle of the garbage heap. “B'en et only within a inch of its skin. Growed, that there melon, I bet, in some kind of a attic with a stove goin'. Gentleman fodder, that! An' all mine—fer the takin'. A scrape three sides—an she's vittles de luxy. I'd like fer—”
“You're the diner,” said Clark. “I'm going now. Not that I wouldn't like to say and listen—for all of the next 72 hours or so—to some of your whaling experiences—and which now I believe are—would be—on the level—but that I can't do. Having, as I said once, troubles—of my own. So I'm going. But good luck. And here's hoping that someday when that Utopia will come—with $8 a month for ex-whalers and ex-cla-ex-African voyagers, and down-and-outers, and—good luck.”
“And here's hoping 'at your children's children at leas'll see it.”
Clark had been turning sadly away as the other spoke. But stopped, at the sudden arresting call that came from the other.
“Wait, Mister! Wait! I jest can't let you go 'thout lettin' you know what a prince you are.”
“Thanks,” said Clark, modestly. “But you've already done that. So I will—”
“No, wait!” Clark turned back. Faced the other, curiously. Who drove fiercely on. “Mister, I'm facin' right now one of the few princes they is in th' world—an' by prince I mean—what it sounds like I mean. An' they ain't much in the world I kin give you—for bein' what you b'en to me—an' doin' what you've did—fer me. But there is one thing. Yep, one. So, Mister, hol' back. Don't go. For I'm—I'm a-goin' to give you now somep'n what you couldn't buy nowhere else in the world—if you had a millyun dollars. Fer I'm a-goin' to give you my precious pellet—of Oguva gum!”
_______
“This,” said Clark to himself, “sounds like it's going to be good. 'Oguva'—gum!”
Aloud he said, as he faced the other amusedly—the same thing!
“This sounds like—it might be good?”
“'Tis,” said the other unsmilingly. “An' true. The facts 'bout the gum—I mean. True, from A to Izzardy. W'y didn't I know what Nantucky sleigh ride was?”
“You sure did. And I don't disbelieve anything you say—now.”
“But ya better draw up a chai- box, Mister, till I 'splain this here gift I'm a-goin' to give you. The explanation's worth as much as the gift.”
“A half million dollars, eh?” said Clark tolerantly. “Explanation, a half million. Pellet, a half million. Together, one million. All right.”
Having glimpsed, while turned away, a clean wooden soap box over near the opposite rear fence, he went over and retrieved it. Brought it back. Upended it a half dozen feet from Jeb Polliver. Who meanwhile had carefully rested his unconsumed breakfast atop a huge clinker. Now Clark was part, so it seemed, of the world of garbage pickers.
How Vernice would love this!
“Afore I give you the pellet fer to take 'long with you an' keep—fer as long as you want,” began Mr. Polliver, “may I humbly ast, Mister, if you b'lieve 'at a feller kin learn an'thing—from bein' somebody else?”
“'At's what the tribe o' Jibboboes in Afriky thunk. I tolt you I was shanghaied to there oncet. Though, oncet out on the ocean, I wasn't under no restraint—ner even after we got to Afriky. 'Cause the son-of-a-bitch of a captain, he knowed nobody'd ever jump ship—in mid-ocean o' the Dark Continent. An' nobody ever has—yet. Fac' is, I got way inland a ways with the crew—time we went in, all armed o' course, to make a deal with these here Jibboboes—w'ich was how I got to see 'em, observe 'em, know 'em. The cap'n, you see, had in his fool crooked mind to fix with them to catch him some neighborin' tribesmen—oh, they was fierce fellows, these Jibboboes—but hell!—they wouldn't have no truck with him on that. No truck 'tall! Civ'lized they was, see? Civ'lized as hell. Spite o' dressin' on'y in G-strings, an' usin' bows an' arrers. W'y, they had thoughts an' idees that even w'ite people ain't never thought of or—”
“And how,” asked Clark, reproachfully, “do—did you know—about all this?”
“How?” said Mr. Polliver, quite collected. “'Cause they was a ol' w'ite man—a self-'pp'inted missiary—livin' right with 'em. W'y, so civylized they was, that they hadn't even kilt him—an' boiled him. An' so he interpitied atween them an' us.”
Clark nodded appreciatively.
“All holds together, beautifully,” he said. “I was only wonder- drive on, MacDuff?”
“The name's Polliver,” said Mr. Polliver. “Though I guess you was quotin' Hamlet or som'thin'. But drive on I am. Though I know you think I'm spoutin' moonshine. Or—or damn soon will be.”
He paused.
“But why should I?” he pleaded. “I jest got the forchune you give me. An' I ain't nothin' to sell you. And besides,” he said, “someday you'll find out—when you've took my precious pellet, all unb'lievin'ly—you'll find out a-a-a-all I've tolt you is true—as true's can be.”
“Bring on the Jibboboes,” said Clark helpfully. “I'm patiently—waiting.”
_______
“Well,” recounted Mr. Polliver, “the old Chief—Momgola was his name—he sure liked me. Lord, yes! I give him m' barley knife. All inlaid with mother o' pearl. An' you' think he was my father. He thought 'twas bewitched—”
“Bewitched?”
“Bewitched, yeah. And so, w'en our armed force pulls out—not able to make no deal—what does he do—but give me a whole swad—big as a horsy-ches'nut—of Oguva gum.”
“Was it good chewing?” asked Clark.
“Chewing?” said Mr. Polliver. “'Twas chewed on'y 'nough fer to be swallied. And then on'y in little pellets. Like the las' final one I got now. The last! Oh me, oh my—to think 'at the whole horsy-ches'nut o' gum I oncet had is gone—the tribe is gone—the tree is gone—the—”
“The tribe gone? The tree gone? Wait! What—”
“I sence read,” said Mr. Polliver, “'at them Jibboboes was co'pletely 'sterm'nated. Which don't make much never-mind though, 'bout the gum, do is? Sence it come off'n a lone tree in the forest like as was never see' there afore—”
“Some seed brought there in the wake of a meteor,” nodded Clark helpfully, and completely without a smile.
“E-zackly what I've always maintainied to m'self,” said Jeb Polliver, excitedly. “Sence never afore was they no tree like that, it musta come out'n space. An'—”
“But the tree is gone today too, eh?” said Clark wryly. “Did you read about that, too, in the papers?”
“'Course not,” said Mr. Polliver. “They ain't no stories in the papers 'bout lone trees, growin' all by their lonesome in Afrycan forests, nor—No, them Jibboboes had b'en getting' this here now gum off'n this sacred tree—guardin' the gum plenty—keepin' it all with their chief 'cause they wasn't no other sources—but the mornin' o' the day our party pulled out, that there tree was struck by lightnin', an' it burnt up with a roar an' cracklin' y' could hear fer miles.”
“A sort of a divine warning, don't you think, that they shouldn't have been entertaining—slavers?”
“Sa-ay,” said Jeb Polliver, “you'd think you'd b'en there. 'At's ezackly what the captain said. He said 'We better be kitin' th' hell out o' here. Oncet they start puttin' two an' two together—”
“And getting 5.0934 and 14/15ths,” nodded Clark. “Being savages, I mean, they—”
“Yeah? Savages kin do things an' think things 'at'd s'prise you. I mind how later, after our party had got to a chief fu'ther in, what had a hundered captured black bucks, all bound up with fibre thong, an' ready to sell, an'—”
“Wait! Is this the story of the 100 Black Bucks—or the Pellet of Black Gum?”
“'Taint e-zackly neither,” said Mr. Polliver. “Fer it's the pre-sentation o' said pellet. To one who don't know its powers. An' unless he does, the pre-sentation'll be all wasted. An'—wait.”
He was now feeling in the pocket of his ragged trousers that would have contained a watch, had he had one, and which probably hadn't been the case for 10 years. And bringing forth now a tiny newspaper-wrapped packet no bigger than a postage stamp. He looked at it longingly. Then half arose from his box, stepped forward a step or so, and extended it towards Clark.
“Here 'tis,” he said. “A gift—sech as it be—to one fine man. And now you, my friend, have got the power to be—at leas' fer a little w'ile—to be—somebody else!”
_______
“Oh now, Polliver!” Clark pleaded. “Pul-lease—” He gave it up.
Instead, took the packet. For Jeb Polliver seemed fiercely intent he should, must, accept the strange gift. He opened the postage-stamp like packet in his fingers, as the other man resignedly took up his up-ended-box seat again. And waited with gnarled hands on knees. Clark saw only, however, as he opened out the small square of newsprint which had formed the packet, a little jet-black gummy thing the size of a pea, lying atop the middlemost segment of the paper, and which was now revealing itself to have been rubbed with candle wax or something, on its inside that is, to prevent it sticking to anything like this within it. He sniffed at the pealike thing. It smelled slightly aromatic, no more. He folded it back up again as it should be. Started to hand it back.
But the other was waving it grandiosely away.
“'T's all yours, I'm tellin' you,” he insisted, almost hurtfully. “I ain't no injun giver. You got somep'n there what might maybe do you some little good—fer me, down an' out an' finished, it wouldn't do me no good if—if I was to become, fer a fool useless little w'ile—the Admiryal of our Fleet.”
Clark made a helpless gesture. Put the valueless, or probably so, thing away, in his coat pocket.
“This calls for explanation, though,” he warned. “So carry on?”
“Will do,” nodded Polliver. “Well, as I've b'en a-tryin' to set forth, this here now tribe b'lieved 'at if a man chewed and swallowied a small pellet o' that gum—no bigger'n what you got there—his soul an' his sperrit an' his mind an'—”
“You really mean,” chided Clark, “that a black African tribe believed in souls and spirits and minds and—”
“I say yes,” said Polliver, almost defiant. “The chief he even 'splained it all to me—in pu'sson. Though the ol' missiary he had to interpretty it. They was civylized, I tell you. Yes, they b'lieved 'at 'wile a man who had tooken a chaw an' a swallow o' that gum slep', his soul an' sperrit an' mind'd slide off into the carcass o' somebody else —”
“By forcible entry? Or sneak entry? Which?”
“Both, I'd say,” declared Mr. Polliver unperturbed. “Sence their soul an' sperrit an' mind would slide on'y into somebody's carcass who was either himself sleepin' the sleep o' the seven sleepers—or—or 'uz in a brown study—one o' them brown studies, y' know, w'ere a man don't know if he's 'live or dead?—or was in, say, jest a deep wool-gatherin'—”
“A stage,” nodded Clark, almost sarcastically,”—wool-gathering!—that savages no doubt are often in! And—now don't get huffed. I'm just trying to—to get the thing all clear in my mind before we drive on. All right. Soul, spirit and mind of a sleeper—so they averred!—sailed into the bod- carcass!—of somebody else—somebody who was himself sleeping, wool-gathering, dreaming, gone from the world—but where oh where oh where oh where did the displaced soul, spirit, and mind—of the displaces hang out—meanwhile?”
“W'y,” said Mr. Polliver, almost surprised at such obtuseness, “it had—or so them savages thunk,” he quietly qualified, “'t get t' hell quick to the on'y place open fer it—the carcass of the—”
“Oh, sure, yes—of course—the original sleeper! The one who had taken—the pellet. Why this—this is a Pussy-in-the-Corner affair, if you ask me. It's—though there is one complication,” pointed out Clark, and not unmaliciously, at that, “that could—might—arise—in such a pussy-in, and pussy-out, game—though you wouldn't know the answer, and so—”
“Th' hell I wouldn't!” the ex-whaler or alleged ex-explorer defended his investigations of African psychic life. “I cross-questied the chief, through that there ol' missiary, 20 ways acrost the board 'bout that—”
“Miracle you didn't get yourself fricaseed,” observed Clark grumpily. “For—but all right. S you asked about ever'thing, eh? Well, I'll ask one thing. And which is what—what would have happened—or—or did customarily happen!—during such—such interchange of bodies, if—or when—the one belonging to—well, the original sleeper—yes, the one who'd chewed and swallowed the gum—and was then toting a displaced soul and spirit and mind of its own!—what happened—if it died? Yes, died, I said. For people do die. In sleep and otherwise. And—”
He charitably said no more.
Jeb Polliver looked grave. Very grave!
“That,” he said, “- so's 'at ol' Afrykan chief said—'uz one o' the slight risks—though ver-ee slight—o' usin' the gum. Fer if a man's body died, whilst his mind an' sperrit an' soul all was somew'eres else—well, that there mind an' sperrit an' soul didn't have nowhere then t' come back to—hadda stay right where they was. Fer good—an' all.”
“For life, in short?” pointed out Clark relentlessly, “of the recipient—ah—carcass? Well, the question is answered, I guess. The idea being to not take the gum whilst lying on the tracks of the Boston-New York Railroad—when the Cannonball Express is going by at 18 miles per hour! Lest one have nothing to come back to—but mincemeat. And meanwh- no, no, my friend, I'm not trying to be jocular. It's just all, I guess, getting a little too deep for me. Since—well,” he finished, “it's all quite a concept, their idea—their alleged ideas.”
“Though what I would like to ask here, however,” he pressed firmly, “is what was the inducement for those black aboriginals to even want to spring into other peoples' bod- carcasses—for little whiles? What did they—get out of it? They had all they wanted in the world, didn't they? Unlimited wild game? No fires to gather wood for. No tailors to have to pay $7 to for making 'em a suit. No- “
“Even they,” Jeb Polliver declared, “learnt things by their esperiences with the gum! A thing what any soul an' sperrit an' mind'll do if it 'habits 'nother body. W'y—you even said so yourself, back there. Now take, f'rinstance, the black cook of a tribe w'ich like them, had cooks—couldn't he, if he become fer a little w'ile the cook of a tribe what parboiled 'splorers 'stead o' bilin' 'em—couldn't he l'arn somethin'?—a'right!—take it easy!—well wouldn't the black cook of sech a tribe l'arn somethin' if, say, he was transportied, fer a little w'ile, into the carcass of a jaguar-hunter—”
“Sure—sure—sure! He'd learn, for one thing, what it felt like to see the open round mouth of a jaguar, coming on toward him like an express train at 18 miles the hour, and not knowing how even to throw his spear. For, being in the body of a jaguar hunter—with the knowledge only of how to cook explorers—”
“I jest took a bad 'zample,” protested Polliver plaintively. “Here's a better one. Couldn't you, now, learn somethin' if, say, you was transportied into bein'—a indust'ral naboby? Like say—the Plow King?”
“Right, right, and right! On all scores. Yes, I could learn plenty. Even the inherent weaknesses in current plows—that I could talk up in presenting to the Plowing Public such plows as will be put out by one, W. Pinney, and—just mumbling to myself. I was only trying to comment that it seems ironic that savages, who had the gum, didn't need to be transportied—hrmph—transported into the bodies of careless sleepers and wool-gatherers. While people who might get something out—oh, let's drop it. The story boils down, as I take it, to the fact that the chief gave you a horsechestnut-sized gob of Jibboboguva gum—or whatever you call it—and you people—the armed crew of—of—”
“The Bouncing Betty,” filled in Mr. Polliver, at this late point, “was the name of the slaver.”
“- and your crew of the Bouncing Betty got out of there—and you brought the wad of gum back to civilization. And—well here's the big point. The point. Ever take any of the gum—yourself?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Polliver mildly, “I did. As well's givin' some to plenty others—to take. But you jest won't b'liever me, I know, w'en I tell you what happened—each time.”
“I'll bite,” said Clark. “And why not? Since I'm proud possessor and owner now of one pellet of the stuff, why shouldn't I bite? So tell me all! For something like what happened to you—and your friends—may yet happen to me, who knows? Lead on!”
_______
“Well,” sighed Mr. Polliver, seeing plainly now that he did have a skeptical audience, “oncet, w'en I t'uk it, I become, fer a little w'ile—a priest—no foolin'!—a priest standin' in front of a altar. An' long later, w'en I woke up—”
“One priest came to—in front of an altar—out of a deep fit of wool-gathering—feeling rested as all get-out.”
“Oh now,” complained Mr. Polliver, “you—”
“I'm only,” pointed out Clark, shaking his head reprehendingly, “following the whole—the whole interchange mechanism as you yourself explained it to me.”
“Yes,” granted Polliver, nodding, “so you are—at that. Yes, so you are.” He nodded acknowledgment that all was all right. “Well, 'nother time,” he now described, “I foun' myself—after havin' tooken the gum an' went to sleep—I foun' myself settin' in a loc'motive en-gyne cab—goin' at a deathlike speed o' 'bout 25 miles a hour—a loc'motive en-gyne what I didn't know how to run—ner how to shut the steam off from—ner nothin'—ner—”
“Good thing, I'd say,” said Clark, frowning, “that you popped back into yourself—your own body, I mean—and released the engineer's psyche, or whatever one would call it in such a case, that had got stoppered up in your body, and by you—or there might have been a fine smash—”
“You—tellin' me? I—I had presp'ration all over my face w'en I come to. An' I bet that even that en-gy-neer did, too—w'en he come to. Wonderin' how long he'd b'en out o' th' picture—scootin' past cows 'thout blowin' his w'istle—givin' the rush-act to rig an' teams crossin' the tracks—yes, I bet he was a much better en-gy-neer after that.”
“And you were a better whaler,” said Clark, unsmilingly.
“I—give up!” said Jeb Polliver. “I shouldn't even go on. However, I'd better tell you the one hoom'rous case. Yeah, the hoom'rous one. Well, I t'uk the gum oncet—an' went t' bed—an' w'en I come to, damn if—if my sperrit an' soul an' mind wusn't in the body of a acrybat, who was standin' atop two acrybats what theirselves was standin' atop three—and the whole three atop four!”
“On a theatre stage, of course. Well that was one devil of a place—to come to. Did you know how to get down—when the team-leader shouted 'Allee down!'?”
“Hah! I come down so fas' 'at w'en I kerflumped on the stage on my very shoulders, I—I waked up in my bed w'ere I'd tooken the stuff.”
“Ah—for shame! And let the poor devil who'd been in your body meanwhile—take an awful lecturing?”
“What could I do?” protested Mr. Polliver. “I didn't 'lect, w'en I t'uk the gum, t' be waftied like into the carcass of a acrybat. 'Sides, he shouldn't oughter never to have went wool-gatherin' 'way up there w'ere, if somebody tickled jest one belly button of them below, there was bound to be—”
“And how about your friends?” Clark cut this episode off. “Or passing friends—for I suppose you don't have many permanent ones, eh? Did they do any better than you—priest, engineer, acrobat?—didn't the gum ever select any literary persons—millionaires—”
“Well, a woman I knowed oncet named Moll—nev' mind her other name—she 'us a pore drunken slut what hanged 'round the docks—well, I give her two pellets—not one, but two!—an' in her 'sper'ment with it, she riz much in th'—th' soc'ey scale.
“Any movement, for her,” said Clark, “would have been rising, wouldn't it? And—”
“Poor Moll,” said Mr. Polliver reminiscently, ignoring this remark. “I'd sure like to see you 'gin, ol' gal! But that'll never be now. Nor—w'ere am I? Oh yes, Moll. Well, her 'sper'ance with the gum was very hoom'rous—in a way of speakin'. Fer when she come to—she was in the body of a dow'ger—”
“Society dowager?” Clark grinned, appreciating the humor of whoever had invented this situation.
“Yes, dow'ger. Who was ridin' along in a brougham with sev'ral other sassiety ladies, tor'ds some high-sassiety function—drowsin' in her comf'table seat—well, Moll, comin' awake like—”
“- shot off her mouth,” nodded Clark, knowing exactly how such a story would have to go. “Ah me! And—and of course the dowager probably spent the rest of her days explaining she must have been—have been—well, talking in her sleep. Ah me, Moll! You should have been more selective!”
“The taker of the gum don't s'lect,” said Jeb Polliver. “Seems s'if ever'body in the Unyverse is in diff'ent stages o' unconscynousness—w'en asleep an' so forth—diff'ent in both degree an' kind' if you get me?—an' the exchange appears to be atween two what's in the same or—or very much simylar—stages o' de-tachment o' themselves—their thinkin' selves, I mean—from themselves—their bodies, I now mean—an' having, also, the same kind o' feelin's at the moment like—like bein' jubylant or—or depressed—or hopeless' in love—or—”
“You didn't get that,” reproved Clark, “from any savages?”
“No, I didn't. I got it from the dep's of my own brain—from thinkin' 'bout it all over the years. An' studyin' jest the few cases I had daty on. My own. An', o' course, that o' Moll. F'rinstance, in Moll's case I was able to find out that this here dow'ger who Moll become for a short brief time, had jist inher'ted a big forchune—was onhinged with joy—well, she would be, wouldn't she, under such circumstances?—well anyway, Moll, as I la'rned also, had jist b'en give', by a bartender, a huge free tumblerful o' gin—an' was co'pletely on high. But take my own case. One. The priest whom I become musta b'en fastin' w'en my thinkin' self took over briefly of his body. For oh, how hungry I was—as him! But me—when I took the gum—I was sheer starvin'—on the Bowery, an' thinkin' of nothin' but food, food, food! That's how I come to figger out the gen'all und'lyin' requirement—one, an'way—o' w'y two p'ticler persons come to exchange their bodies—rather, fly into each other's bodies with their—their minds an' souls an' so forth, you know?”
“And what else did you discover in the way of 'requirements' of—of 'soul transposition'? In your laboratory course of introspective thought, I mean? For you did say, just a few seconds ago, 'one, only', in speaking of 'requirements'. You found—another?”
“Yep, a def'nite one! I found,” asserted Jeb Polliver firmly, “that it's a matter o' distance—atween 'em. Distance figgers in, yes. F'rinstance, in the few cases I knew of, none would up in Chiny nor any place like that. The exchanges I know 'bout took place 'cross very short distances. Like—like no more'n a street-width—or a—a half-width or so—at most. F'rinstance, now Moll, w'en her soul an' mind an' sperrit hopped into the dow'ger's body, the dow'ger and her sassiety friends was a-ridin' past outside the very s'loon w'ere Moll was—fer the dow'ger an' them fine ladies was ev'dently tryin' to see how the other half lived! So w'en Moll and her flew into each other's bodies, they was 'bout a street-width apart, see?—or, to be exack, half a street width an' half a bar-room len'th! Again now, me an' that priest. Well, he was doin' his fastin' inside a church on the Bowery, an' me, I was doin' my starvin' outside, lookin' at the church, see? Now take that en-gy-neer business. I was with a fellow bum on a railroad, settin' back 'ginst a dead tree off the track w'en this here train went by like a shot out o' hell—yeah, maybe all o' 25 miles an hour. But I was fas' asleep, havin' tooken the gum like as I told you. I got these here facts later from my bum friend. The engineer, he tells me, of the train what shot past me, was lookin' starey-like ahead like as if he was wool-gatherin'. Me, I was asleep. Well, as the bum tells me, hardly had the train—no, the en-gyne—got past me than I clambored to my feet, walked wildly around in circles shouting 'My train—my engine—my heavens—I—I can't find my throttle'. He figgered I'd be'n dreamin' so'thin. Wondered what to do. W'en suddently I got calm—got calm, you see, because I was there again w'ere I should be. Yes, me, Jeb Polliver. Not the engineer who himself was now w'ere he knowed he ought to be. In the en-gyne cab. So you see how things went? That engineer an' me exchanged our persons—bodies—acrost a distance of 'bout 10 feet, no more, as he was drawin' off an' away from me in a train goin' like hell. So distance come into—the picture—in some way. Short distance, yes. Short distance.” Jeb Polliver paused. “Why,” he asserted, “if a guy could study thousands o' cases, like I did the few I could, he'd be able to figger out, to the exack why, why any p'tcler two persons 'll transpose w'en one takes the gum. Not that nobody could ever work it out fully.”
“No,” nodded Clark. He felt he looked a bit wry. Spoke that way. “Well, you are a pundit, Jeb, as well as a philosopher. Utopian-Socialist—whatnot. And not only that, but you spin a real yarn. But that yarn has repaid me a hundredfold for that fool shinplaster—for it's made me forget, for a little while—serious troubles of my own. I'm going on now.” He was rising from the box. Had risen. Stood looking down at the other.
Who said, plaintively:
“You didn't b'lieve a dam'd word of the whole thing, did you?”
Clark made a gesture with his hands that said, 'No hard feelings, though'.
“A'right,” said Jeb Polliver, almost resignedly. “I'm cheated then, sort o' like, out o' doin' some small thing fer a man what's b'en good to me. An'—but tell me this, will you? Would you like a damned good sleep—nex't time you go to sleep?”
“Would I? I'll say I would! For I sleep o' nights like—well, I've girl-trouble—as I think I mentioned back there. Girl-trouble—and how! Girl-troub-”
“A'right,” Jeb Polliver courteously waved away any elucidation of such a personal thing. “Well then, the black pellet I've give' you 'll give it to you. Yeah, the good sleep. The best ever, in fact, you've ever had—in your life. 'Talways does. An' if you don't, whilst in 'at sleep, git shoved or—or drawed into the warm pulsin' body of somebody else—somebody wu'th while, o' course—then they ain't nothin' lost, is there? A good sleep is wu'th the havin', ain't it? A good—”
“Kee-rect!” said Clark, saluting. “And good luck. And thanks—for ever'thing.”
And he turned away to continue his progress down the alley to its nearest egress.
Smiling a little, even though sadly, to himself, as he moved off and away.
“If that pellet were bonafide,” he was saying to himself, “instead of being a vagrant's dream—and I chewed and swallowed it tonight—what would I find myself—being, I wonder? A whaling captain? Or steam-locomotive engineer—going 25 full miles an hour? A promotor of a new plow, named—named W. Pinney, Esquire? Or—or even Mr. Gladstone himself—working out the financial destinies of the right, tight little Isle?”
He went on a half dozen feet.
“I wonder,” he said.
_______
“The pellet undoubtedly consists of some natural narcotic gum, that makes people sleep well, and, when they wake up, imagine all sorts of idiotic things!”
Clark, speaking aloud—though with himself as sole audience—and seated on the edge of his green-quilted mahogany fourposter bed in his room on Cabot Street, and in his pink-striped white-cotton nightshirt to boot, surveyed quizzically, by the light of the ornamental shaded oil lamp close by him, the black pellet of gum lying in the palm of his hand: the pellet grandiosely given him today, with voluminous wordage, by Jeb Polliver, ex-whaler, ex-African voyager, present garbage searcher—and, probably, all-time liar of all liars.
It was but 10 minutes of 10 o'clock by the plate-sized Dutch china clock ticking loudly away on the wall across the square 12 by 12 room, in the corner of which stood the quilt-covered bed where an occupant therein, while dozing off to sleep, might gaze leftwards toward the single lace-curtain hung window looking out on now wood-block-paved Cabot Street. The green carpet covering the entire floor, with its huge red roses, was by no mean eye-resting; nor was the wall paper, with its huge yellow asters, interspersed with brain-dizzying green whorls, the whole on background of tan; but it was a comfortable room to live in, and costing no mere penny. In corner to the left, off the window, was the single huge oval-backed purple silk upholstered chair, for either sitting or undressing purposes, but not being used right now for the latter, since Clark always meticulously placed his clothing in one of the drawers of the double-width mahogany washstand that stood diagonally in the corner to the right of window, off a distance from the bed front. With its wood-framed mirror above it, its bone-handled razor and china lather mug alongside, on its ledge, and the pitcher in the huge bowl atop it, the dark drawer-studded piece of furniture gave a curious clean-like aspect to the entire room.
He wondered whether, sitting there in the room thus, with the oil lamp burning brightly away—with indeed its globular hand-painted translucent china shade glowing like a ball of fire, on the tiny oval-topped onyx stand by the head of the bed to the right thereof, he could possibly be, 'way up here on the 3rd story, the cynosure of any eyes on the wood-block paved street down below; wondered a little irritably why somebody didn't invent some kind of a window drape that could be moved up and down, instead of pulled at, tugged at, sworn at, sidewise, with results usually none.
Hoped, however, that if he were the cynosure of any eyes—and such were the eyes of some prospective roof-burglar, ladder-burglar, or skeleton-key-provided roominghouse prowler, that such would glimpse the object at the base of the lamp—rather, the projecting of that object slightly over towards the bed: the object, no less, that nobody today, in 1855, white, yellow or black, old or young, went to bed without—namely, the cocked pistol placed in instant readiness for instant picking up—in case of strange sounds at door or window—or strange intruders.
But not knowing even whether anybody—from curiosity-mongers to house prowlers—might be gazing up or in at him, he rose, stepped to the side of the window, and peered out cautiously with one of his eyes to see whether one person down there, or a crowd, were, by some chance, having a free show.
But quite all he could see, of course, was the exceedingly brief stretch of narrow wood-block paved street directly fronting the house where he lived, and that itself only due to the momentary opening of a door in the house opposite, and the pouring forth onto sidewalk and street of bright light from a presumed oil lamp inside its front hallway. It was a square, blockhouse-like house, the old Crowley House, now pre-empted by Negroes—though decent, law-abiding ones—said, even, to be a Negro roominghouse—and the open front door, lighted up, was like a friendly, warm eye.
But it closed. The street, minus street-lights or lantern posts as it was, became black again. He saw no flare of friction matches below, by people lighting pipes. Concluded that people around here, black or white had better things to do than stand gawking at people in upstairs windows.
He went back to the bed he'd left. Resumed his identical position he'd given up, to become a window watcher. Resumed his ruminations about the pellet still clutched in his hand.
“Fellow going to bed at the unearthly hour of 10 to 10, would need a narcotic, thinks I! Or else be darned tired, form a day of hard physical labor.
Narcotic, yes, that's what it undoubtedly was, at most. A nar-
He shrugged his shoulders.
And popped into his mouth the black pellet.
Saying humorously, to himself:
“Here's hoping that when I enter the body of somebody else, in a little while—if, that is!—that it's the body of a millionaire, just ready to sit down to a simple evening repast of terrapin and champagne. Yep, here's hoping!”
_______
The narcotic—for so Clark figured it to be—pellet had a faint aromatic taste all right, something like it smelled, as though containing some kind of spice. There was also the faintest flavor of bitterness, of sweetness, even of sourness.
“Wouldn't I be the ass,” he said, as it went down, “if I was just swallowing some gum taken off the bark of a tree in Lowell Park?”
With which remark, and a quick glance across the room at the Dutch clock, whose hands were now on 8 to 10, he raised the shade mechanism of the lamp, being extremely careful not to dislodge, with his elbow, the cocked pistol from its position of instant readiness for use, turned down the wick, and with a vigorous breath blew the lamp out.
Now by the faintest of faint light coming in the window, if any—for the overcast delivered no light other than a tenuous reflection of distant oil-lamp lighted streets, he pulled up the cover and quilt and climbed in.
Lay in the darkness thinking. Before going to sleep. As always he did.
Well, he sighed, he'd sure laid himself out on the line—with Vernice. Told her bombastically—oh, just bitterly then—that he'd see her again when—yes, when!—he had a new connection with life. Fortunately, he hadn't said what kind of a connection—whether plow demonstrator—cotton buyer—cigar drummer—what!—but he had pinned himself down, all right, to new connection.
And which meant—goodbye to the old. The attentive faces of eager boys as he interpreted for them the real significances of those incidents in that land across the way. And illumined for them for the first time in their young lives that it was not a black, bad ogre who had oppressed a young colony—but that all that had been done by a king with whom even his own parliament disagreed. How—
Yes, it means goodbye—to the thing he knew of. The only thing—he was good in. The History—of England. The History of—
For he'd as good as promised Vernice. “I'll be back,” he had said. “You'll see me again,” he'd added, “when I have a new connection—with life.”
He closed his eyes as though to shut out the very memory of his brashness. Did not attain much darkness by this, for the simple reason that the room had already been virtually lightless. But it felt a little darker, anyway!
“Love,” he observed bitterly, “is a tough thing. Doesn't respect—facts! Out of all the girls in the world—and of which 99-percent would want fixed homes—children—I—I have to be in love with the one who wants to go gallivanting, living in cold hotel rooms—and stand in wings and hear handclaps for her husband—or—or talk with him, over a hotel diningroom table, about how many fat orders he's secured that day—in plows—or cigars—or—wurra, wurra!”
He lay there thinking.
“Too bad folks can't control their love. Direct it. Direct it selectively. To the partner that thinks exactly as they do. And—yes, too bad.”
He felt a blank here, a hiatus, in his thoughts.
Came back to himself on the other side of it. Got hold of the tail of his last thoughts.
“But Old Mother Nature must have in mind to—to mix the breed. To mix it, ever—out of opposite types and kinds of people. To mix it. Yes, to mix it. To—”
He felt himself slide off again dizzyingly. Came back resolutely.
“But why? What's wrong—with the breeds that are already mixing? If each is making a living—or—or living right—doing his or her part—but happens to fall in love with one thinking and feeling differently—why—why obliterate both?—by mating each up to—to the devil with it.”
He was silent now a long time, even in his own thoughts. Felt blissfully the blackness from his own closed eyelids.
“This plow promotor, now, down town? Whom I'm figuring to see—day after tomorrow? How the devil do I even know he'll cotton to me? For if he has such cuckoo ideas in his head as hatred of England, and of Negroes, and of—of God knows what else, to boot, how do I know I won't accidentally touch, in 5 minutes of interview, something that'll send him skyhigh, and—how do I even know, if I get on with him, that I'll get along with him, month in and month out? He's certainly a slender line—to hang on. He's—”
He felt himself go now. Into some sort of drowsy torpor. Brought himself back with a powerful effort. After all, he had all night to sleep. All ni'-”
“Wunner,” he now said—and noticed his own slurring pronunciation of his own English!—“if I woun' that fool clock? As I 'tended to? Still, it hasn't los' any time—yet. It—it was ri' with my watch t'night—at 20 to 10. An' it—it ticks plain' 'nough. Guess it's a'right. No use to get ou' of bed. No use—woops!—'at pill!—narc'tic, a'right—feel's like fee' are act'ally dead—wunner if I c'n move toes?—they fee' like they're moving—hope so!—maybe I on'y think they are!—'twould be funny if they foun' me—foun' me dead tomorra mornin'—poison' from pill—shoulda lef' li'l note sayin' I took pill—black pill—pellet—whatcha call it—callin' self—callin' p'lice—callin' p'lice—fin' one garbage picker—handin' out poison—sleepin' pills—pellets—'at—'at—'at—”
And this was all he remembered, for sleep of the deepest kind—sleep like a huge, black, suffocating quilt itself!—dropped down upon him, and wrapped itself completely about him.
_______
How long he'd slept he did not know—when he did awake. It seemed, however, that it might have been only 5—10—minutes.
At first awakening, he was conscious that he couldn't tack up his thoughts to his earlier thoughts. What—what had he been thinking of—when he'd dropped off? What had—and what the devil even was his nam- oh yes, Clark—Clark Shellcross—who'd been worrying about—about—oh yes, whether he'd wound a cl- oh yes, a Dutch clock!—no, no he wouldn't have worried about such a fool thing—as winding a—but he—he had been worrying about something, all right—something—what was—oh yes—yes, he'd been worrying about—about getting a new connection—yes, new connection!—with life—no, business—no, life—well new connection, anyway—yes—in accordance with the wish—no, demands—of—of a girl named—named Vernice.—oh, all was clear now. Yes, quite clear.
He lay there in the dark wondering why the window, off some distance from the foot of the bed and to the left thereof—and which should be visible as a faint oblong of greyish dark—was so invisible. Concluded quickly that his eye pupils had opened up—in sleep—wouldn't be able to see—for a while. And—
Oh-oh!
The clock—the clock that he hadn't been worrying about—about winding—should have been wound—at that!
For it had stopped.
Wasn't ticking—at all!
Heavens, but the house was quiet. Usually, if one went to bed reasonably early, as had he tonight, there was the sound of women gabbing in the hallway outside—people moving up and down on the stairway—sounds of covert dishes being washed in rooms. All silent now. Silent as the grave. You'd think he was lying in an English tomb, somewheres.
This was ghastly.
Better read—a little.
Anything.
He reached out, from where he lay, rightwise of himself, to where the oval-topped onyx table by his bed wide should be. Moved his hand gropingly, but very gingerly, so as not to dislodge the cocked pistol which had to be kept at human bedsides. Struck, with his fingertips, the very thing he was seeking. A pile of friction matches. At least they were wooden sticks. And not toothpicks.
He seized one.
With it in fingers he moved his hand leftwise, rightwise, of where he'd plucked the match. Found the usual square of scratch paper that was always in the vicinity of all modern matches.
With these safely retrieved from where they'd been nestling, he sat up in the bed. His nightshirt pulled on him at several points, and he loosened it at those points. It felt itself to be of more “scratchy" material than it ordinarily did. Perhaps, he reasoned, his skin had become, meanwhile, due to brief sleep, sensitive to fine hairs of wool or cotton or what.
He felt out now in the dark for the lamp. Rightwise, as always. And gingerly too—so as not to dislodge man's best nocturnal friend these days: one cocked pistol, by beddie! And found—well, it wasn't his globe-shaded lamp at all!
It was a plain, unshaded glass chimney lamp, no more.
And suddenly he knew exactly what had happened. In that respect, anyway.
Mrs. Amanda Jungclaus, the landlady, needing ornamental lamp—she was always short one, it seemed!—had come upstairs and in while he'd slept—tiptoed in, yes—had taken his lamp, and left him this crude and unadorned illuminer.
Awfully nervy of her, he thought, to do such a thing. But she was always doing things like that. And—
However, she had left him a light source. In case of emergency.
So be it!
He struck the match he held on the square of friction paper. The match flared up. Revealing—and now he did get angry—revealing that she'd even taken his oval-topped onyx stand—for an up-ended wooden box stood there. With the lamp on it. And with, of all things, a cocked pistol that—that wasn't his at all, for, though of practically identical shape and size, this one had a pearl handle instead of horn handle—a cocked pistol, yes, lying at the base of the lamp. Projecting handle inward, off the box, exactly after his own method. Or all peoples' methods.
Was the woman—gone insane? She—who wouldn't touch pistols, cocked or uncocked—with a 10-foot pole? Or—or had she had male help to do all this shifting? Or—
Match burning away in fingers of one hand—and giving off acrid sulphureous smell as well—he had tossed away into nowhere the square of scratch paper—was now, with the hand which had held the scratch paper free, raising the chimney. Doing all, really, by feel—for he had to blink, and blink, and blink, because of the so-bright flame of the match, so close to his sleep-ridden eyes. His hands, silhouetted against the swiftly rising flame of the wick to which he had now transferred the match flame, were like shadows thrown upon a sheet in some sort of shadowgraph game.
Weird! Eerie. His silhouetted hands. The intense silence. The—
Now the lamp chimney dropped almost automatically back in place, was blazing friendly. The match he was blowing out. He himself was still blinking, but less now. And ever less and less. Was, in fact, getting up wrathfully up on his bare feet. Was on his feet now. With blood in his eye! To find out what else Mrs. Jungclaus had done to his room—whilst he'd slept here tonight!
He took up the lamp. Held it up. High! Out to one side of himself now, so the light from it couldn't bedazzle him this time.
And doing so—gasped!
As he happened to momentarily glance up at it.
Indeed, at what he saw his blood ran cold within him.
For the hand holding the lamp was now illumined by the direct light thereof—was no longer in silhouette. Could be seen—in all its details and aspects. As could likewise the nightshirt-sleeved arm beneath it—and the goods of which nightshirt were not pink-striped, but were red—were of red flannel.
But the hand! The hand projecting from the sleeve end! The hand—was black as coal!
“My—my God!” Clark's mind and brain spoke tremblingly. But not his lips, for his lips seemed frozen. “My God! I—am somebody—other than who—I was!”
_______
The shock of this dumfounding discovery was so weakening in the region of his knees, that he had to drop squarely back on to the side of the bed from which he'd risen.
Only to discover—now that he held light—that it wasn't a mahogany fourposter bed—nor was the room itself that room with which he was so familiar. For the bed was a crude pine bed, varnished yellow, and badly battered up as to its visible parts. It was topped with a quilt whose outer surface was composed of large cotton squares most of which were blue bandanna handkerchiefs, though it had been pieced out, here and there, where a square had worn through, with red bandanna handkerchiefs. The under sheets showing, due to the throwing back of the upper bedclothing, were, he noticed with some surprise, spotlessly clean. The bed had a single long bolster pillow, instead of two shorter ones. And this, at least as to pillow case, was spotlessly clean, too.
As for the room itself, it was larger than the one in which he'd gone to sleep—but containing, on side opposite, and facing him, though to the left, a single door like that other one. There were absolutely no other points of similarity, however. This room was minus any floor covering whatsoever; had a highly splintered soft-wood floor. And Clark, looking downward automatically to see why he'd even thought he was standing on his own carpeting, saw the reason why. The wood had been covered up just at the bedside only by a short runner of unhemmed rag carpet. And the feet protruding down there from that crimson nightshirt were coal black—like the hands from the sleeves.
“It—it must be a dream,” he said helplessly to himself. “A dream, yes, a dream!”
For what else—could it be? He had gone to bed, some unknown number of seconds or minutes or so ago. Swallowing, as he did so, a ridiculous pellet given him by a romancing garbage picker. Turning down and then blowing out his light. And lying there reflecting on all the sinister things that could come out of swallowing unknown pellets handed out by unknown donors.
And he had waked up in due course as would he, naturally, and in a dream-altered bed—in a dream-altered room—in even, by godfrey, a dream-altered nightshirt and with—with dream-altered skin. To remain a brief while thus before falling off again—and rewaking once more as his original self.
Simple! How wonderful it was when dreaming—to know that you were dreaming. Truly, such was the high art of dreaming. To know that—
But way down in himself was, at this second, a curious dread something—a something that said that this just mi-i-i-ight be one of those instants in life where an apparently dreamed experience was not a dream; as where a man stood on a gallows platform, and tried to assure himself that all was chimera; as where a swimmer, paddling hopelessly alone in mid-ocean after falling unseen off a ship, was babbling to himself the fatuity that it was nothing but a dream, anyway; as where a man, inside a fire-ridden mansion, with all escape cut off, saying: “I'll—I'll wake up—any minute!”
But if it was reality—wasn't a dream—then since he had not gone through a long trial leading to the gallows—or boarded a vessel going to anywhere—had gone through absolutely nothing to lead up to such a moment as this—then—then the fool pill—given him by the garbage picker—must have—must have—must have done its stuff—must have—
And now logic came to Clark Shellcross—else to his dreaming self! Came to him, as it were, to save his sanity. Pure logic! He didn't know how he achieved it, under the circumstances. His logic—such as it was!—ran:
“Relax, Clark. If you're dreaming—you'll wake up shortly. With nothing lost. And if—if—if that crazy pellet—given you by a garbage picker did, by some weird remote chance, have the power of making your mental self change over to a new abode, the thing won't last for any appreciable length of time—it—it never did in any of the cases described by that wild man in the alley—it never lasted more than a few moments—why, in half a shake of a lamb's tail you'll be back in your own self again, wondering if you just did—have a dream. And in either case—this, then, would be a dream. Or—would it?
And to keep from going crazy on sheer philosophical speculation, he dourly proceeded to take in the room where he sat—or—thought he did.
He'd been holding the lamp in one black hand all this time, while trying to digest his surroundings—and his own person, too! Now standing up again, he set it weakly down atop the up-ended box where the cocked, pearl-handled pistol sinistrally lay. So that from some further shock yet possibly to come, he would not drop the lamp and plunge himself into the full terror of lightlessness.
Now, safe from doing anything like that, he could—did—at least tried to—take in the room, from his now standing vantage-point off the bandanna-checker-quilted bed.
Once, in the long ago, the room must have been a very fine room—in a very fine old mansion. For its woodwork—that being chiefly the baseboard along the walls, and the framework about the doorway, was of obviously fine mahogany, fluted by the tools of the millworkers, and studded with handsome rosettes. Today, however, it was splintered and battered, with chunks out of it, and many of the rosettes gone as well.
There may have been damask wallpaper on the room's walls and ceiling in the long ago—but whatever there had been had all been stripped away long ago—or fallen away—for the walls were whitewashed, and obviously not once but many times, for the surface pigment was thick and almost rugose as from many previously applied whitewashings—and the color now uppermost was a dun grey yellow, showing that none had been applied in years.
Directly across from the bed stood a curious thing: a packing box, about 5 feet by 5 feet, and 4 feet across, from which, at least in front, the vertical front, had been sawed a wide semi-circle of wood so that a chair could be shoved under it, and a sitter sit at it. That it was a table, of sorts, was proven by the faded red-gingham tablecloth just covering the top only, and falling a bare half inch over the various edges. Along the wall in back of it, on nails, hung a few pots. A frying pan, too. Also a wire rack, containing a single tinny fork, a single bone-handled knife, several tinny spoons, a jagged-edged saucer and a cracked cup, and one elongated platter with a triangle of its own substance out of one side. Underneath them all, flat against the wall, was a large oblong japanned tin box on which, still visible despite much peeling away, was the work “VICTUALS”.
Off from the pots, and considerably off from the box-table, too—and lined up horizontally with the nails that held the pots, was a powerful iron hook carrying a pail; from the pail protruded the wooden handle of a dipper. The powerfulness of the iron hook, and the protruding dipper, showed that the pail was full of drinking, or washing, water. Or both. The latter was confirmed by the large tin washbasin that hung on a nail directly beneath it.
His gaze swung back to the pots again—then down to the box-table once more. Shoved well back on it, near its leftmost inner corner, was a bright red-painted “Quick Cook-Stove", comprising, as Clark knew from having seen such in stores, of a base containing oil surmounted by a metal mechanism containing concentric rings of wicks laid out with such slight spacing between each ring, and between each wick in ring, that at touch of a match to any wick, the flames of 40 wicks would almost immediately be pouring against the bottom of a pot or frying pan.
Rising slightly on his toes, and peering forward thus even the better, he saw that a row of playing cards laid out on the right-hand side of the box-table were all face up and in some kind of a pattern. Knew that in that vertical side, too, not visible to him now, had been sawed a semi-circular opening so that a sitter could draw up a chair under it.
This was nearly all the barren room contained. For there were but three pieces of actual furniture in it—if one omitted consideration of the box-table and the up-ended box containing the pistol and lamp, and the bed now back of him. For a rocking chair, with the front part of one rocker broken off, and with blue velvet upholstery in tatters insofar as its inside stuffing was leaking out, sat at the right-hand wall. And at left-hand wall, simply a coarse, unpainted—else, no longer painted—kitchen chair, carrying clothing. Perhaps so that any dresser thereat could survey himself as to being properly accoutered for opera or hunt, a large jagged piece of mirror hung upon the whitewashed wall to the doorside of the chair, held in crude unpainted pine cleats so it could never tumble out.
Revolving his gaze from mirror back to straight chair, and back to clothing thereon, he saw that the latter had been most neatly laid out on the chair, and in front of it. For, in front, were two hobnailed, thick-soled, toe-battered bootlike shoes, with a ball of grey woolen sock stuffed in the open top of each. Across the seat of the chair, neatly folded, was a pair of highly faded blue overalls with brighter-blue patches showing here and there. Across these, in opposite direction, folded, was a brown wool shirt, with glaringly white buttons as big as thrippences. That was all so far as clothing went. All. Quite all.
Except that—
For, seeing clothing, his gaze had gone automatically across the room to the far corner rightwise, where, in some stray molecule on one of his retinae he must have earlier glimpsed a flash of more of same. And there it was! For across that corner, six feet from floor, had been nailed, or screwed, to the inner uprights inside the walls, a horizontal unpainted plank, one face outward, and on which had been screwed some iron hooks. And from these hooks hung various highly miscellaneous garments. A crumpled brown soft felt hat. A cap. A short reefer-like coat of some kind. Another wool shirt, this one grey. Two more socks, knotted together to make a loop. And last but not least a huge bath towel, showing that baths could be taken in here—were taken in here!—stand-up ones, that is, in the wash basin!
Due to some sense of symmetry within him, he swung his gaze automatically to the leftmost far corner of the room. And symmetry indeed did he find! For upon a slightly wider plank, nailed or screwed in similar manner as the first across that other corner, but short enough in length to escape complications from the door's opening there had been affixed a clock—but the crudest clock he, Clark, had ever viewed! One could not even see the clock's mechanism container itself. For a large pasteboard face, all of 8 inches in diameter, had been make to take the place of a smaller one that doubtlessly had been lost; numerals there consisted of immense black blobs of paint as made by one unable to delineate Roman numerals. Long tin arms, not unlike arrows in the way they were cut at their tips, had been affixed to the axles of the clock, apparently by blobs of tar. Protruding from the rear side of the clock, projecting beyond the edge of the clock face so that it could be reached by human hand, was a winding key. And enormous winding key, carrying wide flanges, and made plainly out of some hand-hammered metal.
And the clock was going! Though Clark was not to know this with complete definiteness yet—not, indeed, till, later, turning to look at it again, he was to find that its longer hand had inexorably traversed further arc. At present it was but a crude fixed clockface with crude hands. Which one had to presume moved. Hands which said, disregarding some indefiniteness due to blob-like numerals:
1:09
1:09? Did that represent, in this particular pattern of mental conjurings, 1:09 in the morning?—or 1:09—in the afternoon? If this was a “windowless” room, then—
He swung his gaze automatically around in back of him.
Saw a black-painted window frame, minus any side drapes—minus any lace curtain. An opening whose entire lower segment, up to all of 7 feet above floor, and all of 4 feet above sill, was black simply because of being occluded by an opaque panel of black cotton cloth, which, threaded onto a taut length of apparently new cotton string, showing in gaps here and there, had been neatly drawn across the window from side to side. But which did show, above itself, more jet dark—except pierced here and there—by a faint twinkle. The twinkle of a star. A far-off star. A friendly, warm star. A star—
But where—where, Clark asked himself frantically, as he swung his gaze around back from those faint stars—was he supposed to be—in this star—which represented the earth?
For, if he were dreaming, he would have to be on a dreamed earth—or—or would he? Why—even if—posited on a garbage-picker's fanciful and frenetic tale!—his, Clark's, mental self had been transferred, for a few disconcerting moments, into the body of somebody else—idiotic, of course—or—or was it?—well, even then, that somebody else would have to live—on earth. Or—or would he? A strange fantasy crowded his mind at this second. It didn't alarm him, oddly. It only intrigued him. Since he was only dreaming, anyway. The idea was: what if he were—on Mars? Any Mars? Dreamed, real, false or figment? Mars was said, by scientists, to be inhabited. This being so, maybe it had houses just like those on earth. With whitewashed walls, and kitchen chairs, and iron hooks, and bandanna-quilted beds. But—but not—the same kind of people No! The people on Mars were said, by the great experts, to be doubtlessly strange goggle-eyed people—with eyes protruding forth from monstrous heads—on feelers!
He swung across the splintered floor to the cleat-affixed jagged mirror. Peered into it. Saw something that did not bespeak Mars at all!
For the head and shoulders, rising from a red flannel nightshirt, of a Negro of quite human lineaments stared back at him. What was most remarkable about this particular Negro was that he was plainly the jettest black that could exist. He bespoke a Negro in whose strain never had been infected a drop of white blood. He had kinky hair, as might be expected. He seemed about—28—maybe 29, though radiated a peculiar youth in his naove, debonair expression. An expression made by wide, naturally thick, and healthily black lips. Indeed, Clark had to concede, the face looking back at him was quite—handsome. Perhaps because of being the face of one in whom not an iota of white blood existed. Was the classical type, therefore. The whites of his eyes were clear. Clark experimentally drew back his lips—the lips of the reflected Negro in the glass drew back instantly—and the teeth beneath were white, even, perfect, every one!
“I'm not a Martian, in this concept—dream-concept or what you call it,” Clark commented. “No Martian, no. No—”
He turned from the mirror. Strode back to the window he'd earlier viewed. Reached it around the end of the bed. Drew aside the black drape to look out. Did look out. Found the window was not facing a barn's side. Nor a narrow alley, with building across. For he was looking out, though downward, upon a street. A quite unlighted street, however. And invisible, therefore. A street lying just about two stories below him. And how he knew all this was because a pedestrian, on opposite side, was coming along carrying a lantern provided with a reflector. For the reflector caused a bobbing blob of light to fall on the sidewalk.
Now it stopped, the lantern did. The holder held it high. So that the reflected light fell upon a doorway—over there. Clark wondered whether it betokened a later comer coming home, and trying to find where he lived—else somebody looking for somebody else—at his unearthly hour.
And as the held-up light illuminated the doorway across the street, and fully so, even to a number above it, Clark felt, for the first time, an amazing sense of odd relief—of let-down of inner tension—he felt assurance of something—felt like a speck of dust that had blown millions of miles over the earth in the upper reaches of the air—did not know where it was—had suddenly discovered it was swirling directly above—
For the light across the way was illumining a huge polished hand-hammered bronze number reading “222”. And the number, as could be seen by the enlarged illumination from the lamp's reflector, was above a narrow doorway with two beautifully scrubbed white stone steps leading up to a door, and standing between two rounded white-painted wooden pillars, carrying fluted millwork, each. And as the light moved slightly upward, for a brief second, way above the doorway, Clark saw neatly painted green blinds folded back upon a red brick front.
His own house!
The house—where he lived!
Mrs. Amelia Jungclaus' Select Roominghouse for Gentlemen and Ladies.
At 222 Cabot Street, Boston, Massachusetts.
And here he stood—gazing out into blackness—in a house directly across—from where he lived. A house that—why this—this would be the old Crowley House, then. Across the way from Mrs. Jungclaus'. Gone 'way down in the world, exteriorly and interiorly too, so it was claimed. A Negro roominghouse. Yes, a roominghouse for Negroes. But containing only well-behaved Negroes. Law abiding Negroes. Unobtrusive Negroes. Negroes who—
Now the pedestrian across the way, finding evidently he was not at some destination he sought—probably not even near it—maybe, even not on the right street!—swung his light away from the doorway and the number above. And commenced his progress along the sidewalk the same way he had been going. He did not cast his light toward the next doorway—showing he had missed his objective by a considerable distance. Kept right on going. Seemed to finally disappear, chiefly through occlusion by his own being of his own light and such sidewalk as it fell upon. And Clark turned away from the window.
He rounded the bed end.
Faced the dismal room again.
What to do—now?
Yes, what to do—now?
For any minute, doubtlessly—any second, perhaps—he would come to, in a snug mahogany fourposter bed in that very house he'd just been viewing—in the third-floor front room, thereof—would come to in the same dark he'd come to in this room—trying to figure, momentarily, at least, whether the room he was coming to in was that room or this room. Yes, whether he'd been dreaming all this—which, of course, he had. Yes, of course. Dreaming it, of course.
Yes, dreaming it.
And odd something came to him at this second which, for some unexplainable reason, had not come to him thus far. Which, moreover, had never before come to him, at least in a dream. It was something said to the class in Psychology II—in the University in which Clark had worked his way through. It had been said by Professor Maulsby, a then-famous and able psychologist, judging from his degrees, and his standing, and even his standard textbook in the subject.
“It is not possible,” Maulsby had said, “to dream you have another identity. Nor even to dream that your identity is encased or enclosed in other than your own corporeal self. You can dream of yourself being in odd habiliments—and this is a very common dream. But you can never dream of yourself being in odd, or aberrant, body. It is the exterior to self that always changes, fluctuates, in dreams—not the self. The reason for this is too deep to explain in Psychology II. In Psychology III, in case any of you young men take it, which, however, you won't, because it is an elective and you are all carrying too much now—it will be explained.”
Then Maulsby had gone further. “Another thing that is interesting is that you cannot utter your own name in your sleep—in a dream, to be specific—without coming instantly—awake. A fact!* This phenomenon, too, becomes analyzed and rationalized in Psychology III, and I trust I maybe now have induced a few young men to take that course. Or—have I? Anyway,” Maulsby had gone on, “the fact I have just cited provides a marvelous mechanism to vitiate nightmares. To end them, immediately. Nightmares, moreover, of the most frightening and terrifying kind. I have taught the method for years. And pupils have told me, privately, that they were grateful, and would be to their dying day. Yes, for merely giving them this simple secret. And which I now freely give to you. And which is to take into your dream-life—yes, by considerable thinking about it in your leisure awake hours—the pivotal consideration that one cannot utter one's own name in his sleep—without waking. Then using this concept—in the dream itself. If it's a bad one—and not one of the pleasure-giving dreams which we so often have. For one can, in the worst kind of a nightmare, extricate oneself deftly and expeditely. By merely saying—his own name. Remember that, gentlemen. And take Psychology III—to get the reasons therefore.”
That was what Professor Maulsby had said. And here it was, coming almost verbatim to Clark Shellcross in a dream. A dream which the turgid nethermost reaches of his own thinking self had created due to his waking self's experiences with that—that half-convincing raconteur in the alley who'd cited all kinds of colorful examples of how he himself had gotten transposed into other bodies. A dream in which, therefore, Clark had done the same thing—that is, he thought he had. A nightmare, no less. For if this wasn't a nightmare—what was? Sitting in a dismal poverty-stricken room—in a red flannel nightshirt—with black skin—yes, Nightmare, Capital N!
Nightmare, yes, underlined and placed in quotes! The kind of a dream to get out of. Before it got worse. Before it got out of hand. Before, yes, the dreamer himself—forgot what his real waking name was. Before—yep, a dream to vamoose out of.
By using the simple key of—
“Thank you, Professor Maulsby! Thank you—much. For here's where this baby goes back home—to where he belongs. Home sweet home—with mahogany bed—carpeted room—Yes, goodbye, dismal room. Goodbye, jagged mirror. Goodbye, poverty-stricken clothing laid out on dingy chair. Goodbye, packing box table. Goodbye, tin box with “Victuals” stenciled on it. Goodbye—everything.”
And closing his eyes to help himself, the issuer of these sanguine reflections, uttered the words that would snap him back—back—to where he belonged.
“Clark—Shellcross!” he said firmly. Firmly enough, and loud enough, so far as his sleeping self was concerned, that in case he was actually uttering it in sleep, it would smack both of his own sleeping eardrums. “Clark—Shellcross!”
_______
The one thing that shocked him as he uttered his name was—the odd tonal quality of his voice! It held a melodic richness that he was not at all familiar with through having, in the past, heard himself say “Pretty kitty” to stray cats, or to make audible comments to himself. But, having said his name in a dream—and which now, of course, was gone—it would have had to be characteristic, in its tones, of the sayer of the name. Or—wouldn't it?
He gave this speculation up. And, with a sigh of relief, opened his eyes.
And got a shock!
For he was right where he had been! Standing off the side of a bandanna-checker-quilted bed. Gazing at a lamplighted room, minus carpet on floor. Yes, same room. Same objects, all, in it.
“We-ell,” he said inwardly, “when you close your eyes and wake out of a dream in which you've closed your eyes—you naturally find yourself first, in your waking life, with eyes closed—so you'll conform psychologically with the dream itself and—or—or—well, in such case you might fly almost automatically back into the very dream—you're leaving. Closed eyes must be out. Open eyes must be the thing. But since I'm dreaming anyway, open or shut—what does it matt-
He found himself getting confused. Solved it by saying to himself.
“I'll do it over now—with eyes wide open.”
He did. Gazing on the dismal room which now would fly into nothing.
“Clark- Shellcross!”
Nothing happened.
The room was right here.
“Oh my!” he said, a bit worried now. “Oh my.” He moved sidewise and backwards toward the edge of the bed. For he felt a yearning—to sit. He dropped down on the bed edge now.
“That—that,” he observed, “would mean—it isn't a dream. Oh my, oh my.”
He sat, reflecting on this. Found that it was a deep, a very deep question. For his reflections ran:
“Could I—be dreaming right now that I just said 'Clark Shellcross'—and didn't really say it at all—and—but Professor Maulsby said that if, in a dream, you dream you said it, you've said it enough so that it sends you straight awake—”
He stopped.
“Trouble is,” he said to himself, “that I say it too—too venturesomely. Too—too experimentally. I should say it powerfully. Forcibly! Expelling air—ah—dream air—from my—my—ah—dream lungs.”
He shut this somewhat brain-dizzying concept out of his mind like a dog shakes water off himself.
Proceeded to do it right. Said, in loud voice, as though he were talking reprehendingly to a man clear across the room:
“Clark—Shellcross!”
Nothing but the sound of his own voice on his own eardrums happened. He took a deep breath, a breath that was a sort of half-catch of a breath.
“We-ell,” he said, “this will bear—some analysis. Mayhap I'm narcotized—by the drug in that pellet—that I really did take. And so can't hear myself—say my own name in my—that is,” he endeavored to splint himself together, “- if—if that damn pellet—the drug in it, yes—could have done—what Polliver said it would do—that is, however, if by making one dream it had the power to do all that!—then the effect could—would—endure for a certain unalterable length of time that—but—but he did say the 'transposition' never did last long—with him—only a few seconds or so. Always—always, he said—he found himself back again—in status quo—no, status ante—at the very minute he had the shock of his life by finding what had apparently happened, the moment, he implied, that the party he'd presumably transposed with also had the shock of their life, too, and—hm? Well, all this would mean that the minute some poor devil of a Negro across the way—across the way from where my body is sleeping now—a—a dreamed, hypothetical Negro, of course, who doesn't actually exist, but who nevertheless, if he did, would go into a dither if he discovered that—well, the minute this dreamed, hypothetical Negro wakes up and gets the shock of his life—but here, I'm—I'm that dreamed Negro—I've waked up, as it were, got the shock of my life—no, not my life—the shock of Clark Shellcross'—”
He gave it up in disgust. Passed a black hand over his forehead. It was like trying to think about the square root of minus zero, or something. Useless, in short.
He studied a new tack of thought now. Like a space-traveller getting hold of the comfortable horn-tip of a good solid quarter-moon to rest on, a moment.
“Clark,” he told himself, “you're wasting valuable time trying to prove that something is a dream—all is a dream—and none of which may be—a dream! Now see first what you can do—to prove that what you fear might be the Truth—yes, the why of the facts embodied in a fantastic tale told in an alley by a garbage picker—may be that Truth. Or—or could I, maybe, have dreamed that experience in the alley today? Me, an instructor in English History—gabbing to a garbage picker—it sounds like it is something itself dreamed—like—”
“Come back to earth,” he ordered himself brusquely. “That happened. Yes, it happened. So now to figure the why of why this —could happen. Other than dreaming it. Other than fancy. Other than—Logic, suppose you do your stuff—now? Yes, do your stuff now!”
_______
He thought hard, focusing on his ten black toes, feeling plowed furrows in a black forehead.
“Well first,” he demanded sternly, “what shall we call mind and soul and spirit and memory and—and life-force that makes molecules double and—and cells the same and—and free will and free choice—and moral sense—and receptivity and—what else but—Consciousness? Consciousness, that's the word—that's the word. Consciousness, capital C. Partner to Mr. Body.
“Well now,” he drove on, “could it be that Consciousness is held to the material body only by some sort of—of magnetism—operating along a—a beam like?—a beam lying in a dimension not included—in itself—or body? Though how a thing linking matter and mind could lie in a dimension other than those three that matter itself lies in—” He stopped, “Well, it is said, by philosophers and mystics, that there are actually seven dimensions in the Universe to cover every form of activity, physical and mental. It's even said the body must have a short extension in Time—to have any actual existence at all. So—so could Consciousness be held to something lying in 3 dimens- well, 4 then, considering the body lies partly in Time—could Consciousness be held in a dimension not common to both?—well—yes, common to both—Time?—for Consciousness moves in time—or does it?—oh, what does it matter? Let it be that it's held to body in a dimension lying in both, or not lying in both, what difference does it make. Let it be, then.”
He thought on this.
“Well, if it is, it could—would—be held by some sort of magnetism. Why not? But what if the magnetism were suspended? In short, could some narcotic in that pellet permeate the tissues and cells and brain of a being so as to—to dispel that magnetism? For just a moment? Or a second? Or millionth of a second? Or—of a trillionth of a second? What would then—happen? The Consciousness—would fly off! Like as if the gravitational gravitation that held the moon to the earth were suspended. And—
“Well now,” he asked himself, “where would the Consciousness—that had become liberated—literally catapulted off—by the suspension of some holding magnetism of some sort—go? Not precisely and exactly off in Space, no, because it's not being held exactly in the dimension of Space. Nor precisely in Time. Nor—oh, it would just go off. In a dimension—any dimension or dimensional system of its own—maybe containing space ones, and the time on—maybe not. What difference does it make? It would go off. In what direction? Where?
“Well, it would most naturally go towards—to—be drawn into the magnetic orbit of some body whose own Consciousness was, at the moment, hovering loosely around it, too far off from its own body, too—
“A body in profound, deep sleep, for instance? Or—or just wool-gathering? Yes, that kind of a body. A—a body with Consciousness—floating sort of partly free. Like a dog that's strayed too far—from its master's call. And then—what happens? The new Consciousness—the flying intruder—dives in. Takes over! Takes over the body. Holds itself to it in the magnetic beam used originally by the other Consciousness. Just take over. And what does the dispossessed Consciousness do? What can it do? It flies—for the only place on earth—or in 7 dimensions, rather—for it. The body of the—the idiotic pellet-taker who has momentarily suspended his own magnetism holding his own Consciousness to his own body, but which is now roosting where it shouldn't—
“Yes, Clark nodded agreement with himself, “the suspended magnetism would be back now—in full force. Otherwise, the dispossessed Consciousness couldn't—get in. Couldn't even, perhaps, find that body. Yes, the dispossessed Consciousness comes sailing right in—on the beam.
“And then the two Consciousnesses are—sitting there in two nests not their own. One somewhat illegitimately—but the other dispossessed from its rightful abode.”
He thought now.
“But what—what in the devil—makes the Consciousnesses leave their new abodes—be virtually catapulted straight up into the air, so to speak—oh, in dimension 6—or 7 and—and fly back—like doves at dawn—to their own bodies?”
And almost as he uttered this question to himself, he knew that he had posed the deepest scientific question of all time. At least—to Clark Shellcross!
_______
“Yes,” he reflected, “something—something causes the Consciousnesses to suddenly decide to take off and get the hell back—to where they belong. Something so—so powerful that it even gives them the powers to escape the magnetism holding them to their wrong bodies—reluctant magnetism holding them to their wrong bodies—reluctant magnetism, maybe, that really knows it's holding the wrong thing—but a magnetism of some sort, otherwise the Consciousnesses couldn't have sailed in—on the beam. But what happens? What causes this departure of the Consciousnesses, violent or not? What? Yes, what? The transportations never last but a few minutes. So said Jeb Polliver. Based on his own experiences and that of his woman friend Moll. A few seconds—or minute or so. What—what is it that could remain out of existence for a little while—then suddenly come into—existence? It—it isn't the realization of the pellet-taker that he's transferred the nest for his Consciousness. He—he immediately knows that. Or does he? For he may not believe it at first—no. Much less understand it. But he soon does know it. Each soon knows. One probably nearly as soon as the other. Each—
“Ah!”
For it had come to Clark. The full explanation. The mutual realization of each Consciousness—that it was sitting in the wrong body—generated a force—a force that projected both forth again violently from their wrong bodies. A force—operating simultaneously—at each end of the transposition! Yes, a force. A force lying—in shock. Mental shock! And it was in that fateful second that the two Consciousnesses were rocketed forth—each in a rigid arc equal in slant, curve, declivity, and shape to that being followed by the other. So that each fell back into its own body in an arc of travel identical with the arc of travel by which it had left that body. True, this meant that they came head-on in their common total arc travel—but, being abstract things, one could doubtlessly go through the other—each through each other, yes—to attain their mutual final “fly-backs”. And that—but what did it matter, he asked himself, by what arc either returned? For in the second that both Consciousnesses knew—knew with shock and terror, that is—that they were in the wrong bodies—bing!—they catapulted squarely back—into their right bodies.
That—that was it. Yes, that was it, all right.
Well now, explanation of all these things being based now on Truth, the whole thing was simple. And with—assured outcome. Soon-to-be outcome, moreover. For the moment some Negro's Consciousness, lying now in bed across the street, and in his—his Clark's body!—came to—came awake—or what—and felt something wrong in the feel of his nightclothing—lighted the lamp—saw instantly he wasn't even in his own bed, nor his own nightshirt—even in his own black skin—he'd get the shock of his life. He'd almost certainly yell out—till he would wake that whole house. But what difference, Clark asked himself, would that make. For long before they were up on that floor, pounding at the door, and asking if there was anything wrong, the Negro would be back in that bed across the street saying to the knockers, “Nothing wrong”. He and Negro each would be back in their respective beds, yes. One of the two thinking he had had a bad dream. The other knowing definitely—that neither had had an actual dream.
Hm?
“So that is that,” he ruminated to himself. “I'm not dreaming, no. I'm separated—from my rightful bodily self. I'm—but sufficient unto the day is any evil still continuing to lie therein. Sufficient—”
Yes, Clark was completely satisfied now with his explanation of things. It was the only thing that fit—everything. It took in everything. Including even the ridiculous outcome of his trying to pronounce his own name—and getting nowhere thereby. It took in—everything.
And quite all he needed to do now was to sit here exactly where he was—wait for that Negro sleeping across the street—Negro roosting in his body, confound it—to come awake. Wouldn't it be rib-tickling, Clark even asked himself, if the Negro's yell of terror poured out the 3rd story front window across the street—and reverberated across the street here into this room? It would at least give him, Clark, the vital premonitory warning that this little drama—Drama of finding himself in black skin, in red nightshirt—in dismal room—was over. That in but the millionth of a second more—
But here, at this point, in his reassuring reflections, came interruption. Audible interruption. In brief, he heard footsteps outside the room—footsteps upon uncarpeted outer hallway, evidently—footsteps actually approaching the very door of this room.
The footsteps stopped.
The single strike of a tinder match on a square of scratch paper sounded—suggesting that somebody outside wanted to examine some number painted on the other side of that door. Then the sound of a puff as of the match flame being blown out.
Instantly came a sharp rap on the door.
It was followed by two more raps, close together.
Then a call, which came clearly through the panels of the door.
“Sam? Wake up in there, will you? I want to talk to you. It's frightfully important. This is your white friend, Bartholemew Button. Wake up, Sam Brown? And let me in!”
_______
Sam—Brown?
So that's what his name was? As, at least he was, in this particular body? And destined to remain his name, in a manner of speaking, for at least a few minutes yet. Maybe an hour. For who could tell when that just now white-bodied darky across the street would wake up—and yell “Help? In terror that traversed every fibre of his being?
Sam Brown, eh?
And he—Sam Brown—had a white friend? Named Bartholemew Button?
And Bartholemew Button was knocking on the door stoutly—bellowing out his name—a name, anyway—'Sam Brown'?
Well, he, Clark, was in for it! Couldn't very well pretend he was asleep. For in rickety old wooden houses like these, the doors never fitted exactly tight. Right now there must be light filtering through the cracks on three sides, showing the room's occupant was up and around—or dozing, in a chair, with light turned down.
He rose, as majestically and dignifiedly as could a man in a red flannel nightshirt, and swept across the floor. Opened the door.
On the threshold stood a man of about 43. He was clad in a checkered Inverness coat with cape attached to it, and wore equally matching cap with protruding beak. His two green eyes were amazingly close together. He had brown sideburns, on each side of his thin face. No mustache. No beard.
Indeed, the face was the thinnest, most razorlike face, Clark had ever seen.
“I hate to knock you up, Sam,” the newcomer said. “But I need your help. Even at this hour.” He laughed a peculiar self-satisfied, highly self-satisfied, laugh. “Ee-magine! Me—needing the help of an ignorant, illiterate—well, self-confessedly so—ex-native-African ex-slave? But need it—I do!”
Clark Shellcross had just been about to say “Then tell me, please, what you wish,” when it struck him, like a clatter of crockery thrown at a husband by an angry wife, that a colored man living in a dismal den like this would never be talking literately. Even—grammatically. Let alone one who was a “native-African” and an “ex-slave", to boot.
So he gave answer. But not in his own refined “professorial” speech. But in the lingo of the college play he'd helped once to write—and had rehearsed for so many weeks he'd once been talking the lingo in his sleep. And even as he did so he noted how it fit the melodic voice emanating from the vocal cords and sinus channels of another person.
“Den tell me please, suh—what is—Ah kin do?”
“Will do,” said the other commandingly. Coming in, as Clark held the door wide open.
The newcomer, plainly, had never seen this room before. For it was evident from the way he turned and gazed about it, leftwise, rightwise, up and down, half shaking his head, his very nostrils dilated.
Clark knew that as “Sam Brown” he must do the honors.
“Would yo' please, suh, hab seat? Dey is two cheeahs. De one wid mah clo'se on. Dough Ah'd tek dem off. An' de rockah, yandah.”
“The rocker for me,” said the other, as though fearing some stray lice might have crawled out of the clothing and onto the chair in question. He crossed over the room and sat down in the rocker. Sat back, hands on arms of chair. He didn't remove his cap.
Clark went over to the other chair. Swept the clothing off, all with one sweep of his black hand. Drew away from the wall with it to where it could face the other chair closer.
Sat down in it himself now.
“Could Ah tek yo' coat?” he asked.
“I guess not, no. I won't be staying. But how about you? I mean—hadn't you better put something on? Over that—that scarlet nightshirt of yours? I don't want you to catch cold. A native African like you—and ex-slave from the South, besides—wonder you ever adjusted to this up-North climate at all.”
“Ah ain' feel chilleh, no,” said Clark. “Do' it seem lak Ah ought to be. Wuz little nippeh out, dis mawnin'.”
“Yeah, I know. But the promised heat wave has gotten here. Rather, will be here by morning. For it's modified out a lot already. I really didn't need to wear this outfit. But have nothing too much under it. So I'll keep ever'thing on.”
The speaker gazed again all about the room. Pained. Then brought his gaze back to Clark.
“Well, before I get to what I want you to do for me—for us both, really, in one sense—I want to say two things. First, that your tip to me, where I might find clean, nice, respectable lodging, given me when I accosted you on Depot Street day before yesterday, outside the depot, was immediately followed. It, and the meticulous handwritten instructions—rather, directions—on what bus to board, what direction to walk, where to turn off, whom to ask for at the door—where, oh where, did you ever come to be a—well—a phonetic writer?”
“Phoney writah?” asked Clark, knowing mighty well what the other meant. “Whut dat?”
“Oh, I mean writing with the words hopelessly mis-spelled—but still making pronounceable words when one reads it off—sense-bearing words, that is.”
Clark reflected on how an ignorant ex-slave, “recently of Africa" could ever have acquired even such writing. Gave forth with the best guess he could.
“A w'ite lady teeched me dat. She say is too late fo' yo', Sam, now to ebbah la'rn spellin'—let 'lone grammah. But she teeched me how to put de coonsingin's an' de bowels togedd-”
“Coon-singings?—and bowels?—did you—oh, consonants and vowels. Yes, go ahead?”
“Well, she teeched me dat. Den Ah could write. Ah could write so's dat—”
“- so that white man or Negro could read it. Sam, that letter of directions you gave me is some document! In the way it juggles tenses and parts of speech and all it's—it's a—a sheer rib-tickler. A—a side-splitter! But from the point of view of conveying meaning, it definitely signifies—shows that man can communicate with man so long as consonants, anyway, are available. I'm really glad you were on a vital errand crosstown when I stepped out of the Depot, after the New York train got in, and you couldn't fetch me back here yourself. And had to write instructions. I'll prize that note always as a complete proof that no Negro in the U.S.A. needs to have a shred of education in order to get along—to communicate, that is, with—”
For some strange reason Clark, who was no Negro, fell to defence—of the Negro race.
“Wouldn't dat,” he inquired mildly, “prove dat nobody—white or black—needs a education—to comoonycate wid—”
“No, it wouldn't,” sharply said Mr. Button. “The white race is required, by some Cosmic Destiny, to contain and carry the rudiments of all education and learning and to—”
He broke off. Seeing, perhaps, a petulant scowl on Clark's black face.
“Well, as you see,” he took up his original discourse, “I came right out here at once, and succeeded in getting a nice third-story rear room across the way. A rear room, yes, at the sheer back of the house. All the way back. My—what a long house that is! What—well, Mrs. Amelia Jungclaus' place is just fine, say I.”
Clark nodded assent to this. This fellow, then, was a fellow lodger of his—from across the street. But having been here probably only two days—having been in that house only two—it was hardly to be expected that Mr. Button would have been very noticeable, or even seen. Clark, at least, had never viewed him.
He made comment.
“Sho glad yo' liked de place, Mist' Button.”
“Well,” went on 'Mistah Button', “you, having run errands and done various odd jobs for many people in it—and the landlady, too—were able to give me just what I wanted. A place that was the soul of cleanness and neatness. You were a good word-painter, Sam!”
“Ah paints houses, too,” said Clark. Figuring that that was exactly what any odd jobs Negro would say.
“I'll bet you do. Rather, can. For—but enough on that. Now for point Two. Well, Sam, I owe you an apology—of sorts.”
“'Pol'gy? Me? 'Pol'gy, suh? Why?”
“Well,” laughed the other, “because of the fact that I just did not believe your tale about yourself at all, at all, at all. I believed you were a pathological liar. A black pathological liar. Till, of course, I confirmed it this afternoon—two ways across the board.
“You see,” he explained, “slave-running is supposed to have been brought to a stop years ago by international agreements. Though we do know that slavers occasionally slip across, and by up captives from greedy-minded African chiefs, and run 'em back to the States here. And that it's pretty concealed, and covert, and all that. So when you told me, when I got your friendliness and confidence, how your small village in Africa was captured in entirety about 10 years ago, and how you were driven to the coast in chains—piled on your back, with manacles and leg irons on you, on a rack swung under the hot sun-drenched deck, and carried across the sea—”
The newcomer shook his checker-beaked head.
“-I said to myself, Sam, when I reflected about your graphic depiction of that awful journey across the ocean—with virtually no air—the temperature around 110 degrees—and one out of every three dying in that under-air—I said to myself, this Sam has read of older cases of slave-running. Except that—”
“Yassuh? Excep' whut?”
“Well, you proved in our brief meeting that you couldn't read, unless perchance it might be a letter from a fellow black who used the same wild system of combining vowels and consonants together as you do—no, when I couldn't find my glasses, merely because they were in my carpet bag, and asked you to read that advertisement out from the New York Times, containing good hotels available here in Boston—well, you couldn't read it at all.” The other shook his head. “So I knew you couldn't then have read up—all that you spoke. But then, when you described how you all were unloaded at New Orleans in the middle of the night in chains, and, come morning, sold on the block to inland plantation owners who'd come down the river for the 'kill', and how you were sold to the cruelest slave-holder in the south, named Simon LeGrade, I said to myself, 'Boy, but is that black man laying it on—there!'“
Mr. Button laughed, though mirthlessly.
“And I also said to myself, 'I wonder how he's going to take care of the fact that he lives in Boston today, and—as a free man? Yes, this should be good—if he explains it!
“Which,” said Mr. Button, “you did—as far as 'explaining' went. You told me how your cruel negro-hating owner got into bad financial difficulties, and had to sell off all his slaves. And how you were acquired by an elderly planter named, you said, Pontus Waterlock, who, learning he had to die, got religious, and freed all of his slaves. And how, stranded down there in the South, a freedman—but without a nickel—and with no chance whatever to work, against the competition of slavery around you, you were plucked up by Mortimore Biltmore, a traveling millionaire from Boston, whose valet had died down there, and brought back here to Boston. Brought back in time to see him die right as the train—rolled into the depot. And there you were—in the famous City of Abolition. And so I said to myself, said I: 'Sam Brown sure has completed his tale!
“But,” the newcomer went on, with an odd shrug of his shoulders, “I took occasion yesterday to go into the A. Jeffries Private Records Library downtown, and, just for the devil of it, drew out a bound copy of The Abolitionist which carries so many stories relating to the Abolitionist movement and to—the paper which, you said, carried your full story.
“And there you were, Sam! In the very copy you'd stated. There you were. In a story occupying a half page, with a fine hand-cut wood-etching portrayal of your face—your face, unmistakably—and the full facts that you told me, all really down in black and white, even as to your native village there in Africa, Ghorubi, the—”
“Ghorubi?” mumbled Clark. “Ain' ebbah fo'got dat, you bet!”
“And the slave ship—The Vulture—good name for it, say I! And the captain—Captain Smiliwick—the plantation owner who took you over from LeGrade and all. Even a reproduction, at least as to text thereon, of the slavery-freedom form written out by hand by your master when he knew he had to die. And—Sam, tell me one thing, will you? It said that you prize that paper today more than anything on earth. Well, I imagine any freed slave would. But it said you keep it with a man you do odd jobs for, the—the Reverend Calixtus Fearnaught, President of the Baptist College of Theology of this town. Why do you keep it—with a stranger—”
Clark moved his arms vaguely. Answered.
“Wouldn't yo', suh—Mist' Button—keep a papah dat meant yo' wus a free man fo'ebbah—in a place what cain't bu'n up wid fiah?”
“Well, I suppose I would, yes. It's particularly valuable, I hazard. I understand that, without that paper, a writ for you, filed for you down South through error or anger on the part of one of Waterlock's heirs, could result in your being sized up here. And taken back?”
“Da's raght. Mah on'y protection, dat papah.”
“Well, is this man—this President of the Theological School—a safe custodian?”
“Cust- oh, yas, Ah git whut yo' mean. Wall whut yo' t'ink, Mist' Button? A man whut's a cluhgyman an'—”
“I get you. Well in view of his office, he must, at that, be a fine man, I'm sure. I sallied around past his residence at 449 Canterbury Place this afternoon after I came from the library. His mansion there, though too small to really be called a mansion, is really beautiful. The lawn, all about, particularly. Cropped short as if—if goats had done it. But no goats. But you keep it that way—with sickle when it gets high?—and with scissors after you cut down the first growth?” Clark nodded as modestly as he could. “And the small cast-iron hand-painted Negro boys studded about on it are most dramatic. Specially, the iron one dressed as a jockey—at least painted up as one, with his orange shirt and striped cap—out at the curb to tether horses to. And the house itself, on its raised dirt terrace, made of red brick, looks very cool in summer—and warm in winter.”
Clark didn't say anything. The back of his head was, for some reason, registering 449 Canterbury Place, but not too much so. Since it was all of record—in some Abolitionist magazine—which he could read if he wanted to. But never would have to, nor have opportunity even to, since —
“Well, pressed on Mr. Button, “I really know now that all you told me that day—was true. And that you weren't—a pathological liar. And so that—is that.”
“Yassuh,” said Clark humbly. “Dat sho' is dat, ain' it?” He paused politely. “But now whut is, suh, dat yo' wan' me to do so much dat yo' knock me up here—in de middle ob de night!”
_______
Clark, asking this futile question, could but shake his head inwardly—and query himself why he even bothered to ask it—or to even want to listen if answer were given. For he knew that any moment now, Sam Brown, encased in his body across the street, was going to wake up—fumble about in the bedclothing and discover his nightshirt was changed, altered—light the lamp—then let out a screech—
And then—whoops! That would—do it! Not the screech, no. But the panic-stricken realization of Mr. Sam Brown that he was in the body of another man—just as the Consciousness of that man was now realizing it was in the body of another man, and patiently—no, impatiently!—waiting till it could get company in that composure-shattering realization—to fly back—to where it belonged.
After all of which had taken place and was over, there'd be a Mr. Sam Brown—the real one!—sitting here—in Sam Brown's body that belonged to Sam Brown!—talking to Mr. Bartholemew Button—and doubtlessly saying sheepishly, “Pahdon me, Mist' Button, but I eidah ain't huhd yo' say nuffin sence yo' come—else Ah—Ah cain't membah nuffin whut yo've said.”
After which, Button, seated right there now would say—would say—would say—no, would roar wrathfully—wrathfully, beyond doubt:
“Dam' my soul, black boy, but I—I ought to thrash you good—for wool-gathering all the while I've talked.”
After which Mr. Sam Brown would say, probably, and quite chipperly, “Cain't thrash me, Mist' Button. Fo' Ah's a freed man—wid a papah to prove it. If—if man he thrashed me, he go to co'te. At leas' heah—in Boston.”
He stopped functioning as Mr. Sam Brown across the street. Proceeded to function for the person here in Sam's body.
“If kin do somep'n,” he said, “will do same.”
Said to himself:
“Though anything I might promise to do can be forgotten by Mr. Sam Brown, when he gets here. But I'll go carefully—with what I promise for the poor devil.”
Now Mr. Button was about to reveal what he had come here for. In fact, he began:
“Well, I'm coming to that now. What I'm here about. And at this weird hour, in fact. Well, what I want you to do—though first, do you know a man across the street named—I mean, amongst the many people over there at Mrs. Jungclaus' that you do odd jobs for and run errands for—do you happen to know one named Clark Shellcross?”
_______
“Clark—Shellcross?” Clark winced. The fact of his own name coming up in this discussion was far more a shock than the sound of it impinging on his own eardrums. He made haste to answer fully, however. For this was getting interesting.
“Yas, Ah know Mist' Shellcross well. Mo' well'n Ah know mos' an'body.”
“That helps a lot. Though isn't necessary. For—well, what I want you to do is to help me—through a certain act with the police to pick him up somewhere in this city—where he is right now.”
“Whah he is—raght now? Ain'—ain' he obah dah—sleepin'?”
“He's sleeping all right, all right!” declared Mr. Bartholemew Button quite cryptically. “Sleeping the sleep of the seven sleepers, all right. For he's sleep-walking. Sleep-walking, I said—not just merely sleeping. And sleeping across and over the dark city. And in nothing but his nightshirt, too. And has been now, for all of two hours. And unless help is provided to retrieve him quick, there's no telling what will happen to him. So will you help me, Sam—to have him retrieved?”
“Will—Ah he'p—yo'—to r'trieve him? Mah God, yas. Mah God, an' Ah will. Tell me all? What mus' do? Fo' to git Mist' Shellcross safe back. Tell me—quick?”
_______
“Yes,” nodded Mr. Bartholemew Button, “I will. Because—well, because I am very slightly responsible for his being in the peculiar situation he is at this moment—just whatever it may be—am responsible, yes, though with no ill intent, I assure you.” He paused. “Well, it all began tonight as I was sitting in my room reading. After, incidentally, Shellcross had gone to bed. And presumably—to sleep. As if he hadn't gone to sleep, all this wouldn't have happened—”
“Den mus' be—time yo' talk 'bout—mus' be aftah 10 minutes ob 10, wasn' it? Fo'—”
“Why, how could you know when he went to slee-”
“Ah—Ah was watchin' his window f'm out de window ob dis vehy room, an' see his light go out at dat houah.”
“Were, eh? Hm? Well when I came home tonight, I looked up at your window here—you'd evidently just turned in, I take it—and saw your light go out. But that was at 9:30. Now how could you see his light go out at 10 minutes of 10 when yours went out at 9:30?”
“Ah—Ah fo'got to win' mah clock obah dah. So litted dis heah lamp ag'in. An' got up. An' whilst Ah wus up fo' dis, Ah tooked a peek out'n mah window an' see his lights go out.”
“Oh, I see. Well that makes it all quite clear.”
Bartholemew Button took a breath. Resumed.
“Well,” He went on, “I was sitting there in my room with my door open. Hoping some roomer over there would come in and introduce himself. I was very lonely and in a new place, don't you know, Sam? Yes. Well, in did come a man—in a nightshirt—with arms thrust stiffly out in front of him—eyes fixed unseeingly frontwise of himself in a downright glassy stare. Yes, you've guessed it, Sam. Shellcross himself. I knew him immediately. For he'd been pointed out to me earlier that day by another roomer. I was even told about him being a Knickerbocker Academy instructor and all. And that he had a room on my floor—but at the front and clear to the other end, from me, of that long floor. So I did not have to question myself in the least to know who was my uninvited guest.
“Rather idiotically I said to him, 'Could I do anything for you, Mr. Shellcross?'
“But he made no answer. Quite none. He didn't even blink his—his staring, unseeing eyes.”
“He—he was fas' 'sleep—on dat dam' pellet. Oh, dat dam' pellet—”
“Pellet? What do you mean, Sam?”
“Oh—ah—de pellet he say he often tek w'en he got insomy.”
“Well, maybe he was. I wouldn't know about that, of course. For—
“Well, I was too smart, Sam, to try to awaken him. I've heard that people sometimes have fits—and even go crazy when waked suddenly from sleep-walking. It seems you have to let them sleep it off—their sleep-walking sleep, yes. Sort of sleep it off. So I took his hand and led him gently to the couch in my room which—oh, since you've been in that place, and probably all about it, washing windows and whatnot, you'd know about that particular room having a couch as well as a bed and—well, I guided him ever so gently to lie down on that couch.
“He stayed there just as naturally as a sleeping man turns in sleep from one side to another.
“I covered him softly and gently with a blanket so he wouldn't take cold. And there he lay, breathing regularly, his eyes wide open, looking toward ceiling—rather ghastly, don't you think, Sam?”
Button did not wait for comment. Drove inexorably on.
“Well, I watched for a little while. From where I sat with my paper. Then I decided suddenly that I really ought to look up his room and all. Yes, against possible curiosity prowlers—and possibly sneakthieves who might have gotten into the house—against possible theft of anything he had. For chances were he'd have to lie there on my couch all night. And—
“So, locking him in for safety, I went up the hall to the front of the house. And you know how that long house runs? You go frontways a way, covering the rear half, then you are cut off from further progress frontwise by a cross wall which separates the front of that floor from the rear—well, a flight of 7 descending steps, commencing off this barrier a short distance, carries you down, by half a dozen feet or so, to where a short landing of a few feet brings you to the base of equal ascending stairs, 7 in number, and which bring you right back up again—to the front side of that cut-off wall. Strange construction, I must say! Strange—but anyway, I covered all this peregrination. Frontwise—down 7 steps—forward half a dozen—up 7 steps—'twas like being on a roller-coaster, almost. Now I was in the front half of the floor in which I myself lived in the back half. Passing the front stairway of the house. Attaining the front-most room which I desired to lock up. I reached it quickly. The door was, naturally, wide open. The room itself was minus any light. But an occupant was in there! An occupant, yes. Not prowling, however, pulling draw drapes, anything. Just sitting, smoking. For I could smell the aroma of his cheroot. He wasn't doing anything in the dark, either. Rather, in such light as there was. For the room itself was light enough, due to the open door, and a hall-light just outside the door to make it semi-light, like. Dusk like, if you get me? The hall-light consisted of a modest-sized oil-lamp with its base imbedded in a circular declivity in a round ledge forming the terminus of a swinging, bracketed pivoted iron arm which—but I need hardly describe all this to you, Sam, for you're familiar with that place. Well, I reached up to the wall alongside that open door. And turned the pivoted arm carrying that hall-light around so that the light fell reasonably well into the room. And there, indeed, was a man, sitting comfortably in an upholstered chair.
“Quite unafraid—for he was not engaged in prowling in the least—he acted very much at home—I said to him, 'Can I help you, sir?'
“'We-ell,' he said, 'I am waiting for Mr. Shellcross to return. I presume he went to the general washroom. Somebody going out, as I came up to the house here a few minutes back, directed me up here, by the front staircase. So up I came. In I came, when I found the door open. And now am waiting.'
“'Just a minute,' I said. 'I think I can explain things a bit in that respect. But first—' I entered the room, crossed it, and lighted the lamp that sat by the bedside. The lamp glowed into full brilliance as I ignited its wick and set the chimney back over the brass wick-casing. And I turned to the man. And was I—amazed, Sam! My—my jaw fell open. My eyes must have popped out of my head.”
“Wh-wh-why?” asked Clark helplessly, a bit alarmed, too, for some inunderstandable reason.
“Because he was the living, spitting image of Mr. Clark Shellcross—as much as one man can ever be—in this world where all people are really different!”
_______
Clark passed a hand—a black hand—across his forehead—his black forehead.
“De livin' spittin' image o' me?” he asked.
“Of you?” the other man retorted, frowning with every line of his narrow-green-eyed face. “What the hell do you mean? I didn't say—of you. I said—”
“Ah—Ah had li'l tongue-slip, Mist' Button. He—Mist' Shellcross—he often call' himse'f 'Meestah' like de Eyetalians! So sometimes Ah would call him dat, too. Fo' joke. Des 'ow Ah was callin' him dat widout thinking raghtly—an' w'en Ah got so fah in de 'Meester' as 'Mee', Ah rec'llect yo' wouldn't know but den yo' ask' what dat meant an'—”
“Yes, I see. Quite clear, yes. Quite clear. Well, the man was surely and unqualifiedly Shellcross' spitting image. His hat was to one side of his chair, on the floor, and I could see all his features, hair, shape of head, everything. I couldn't help but say to him, 'My godfrey, sir, but you are certainly the spitting image of the man who occupies this room?'
“'So do I know that, sir,' he nodded, chipperly. 'Having heard so from at least three people who—in New York where I live—have come up to me on the street, and called me Clark, or Clark Shellcross. Bostonians they were, in all cases.'“ He paused. “'Actually, sir,' he explained, 'I am a cousin of his through—' Well, he didn't explain, Sam, whether through his father or mother—and he might even have meant he was a cousin via an uncle which would really, in such case, have made him a second-cousin instead of a first, and—but do you know anything about Mr. Shellcross—about, I mean, his father or mother having brothers or sisters who-”
Clark answered truthfully. Quite and completely so. “Yessuh, me, Ah kin answah dat. Now Ah—uh—he—he—he tol' me his fathah was one ob seven brothahs all o'phaned w'en he fathah an' mothah die. All was fahmed out. To diff'ent famblies. Situate' all obah. An' whut even aftah dat wen' futhah all obah. To better deysevves, lak. An' so de brothahs all got brunged up all obah. In diff'ent states an' pahts ob kentry, yas. An'—well dis hea' man mus' b'en de son ob one dem o'phan brothahs ob Mist' Shellcross' fathah. Hence, he cousin.”
“Well,” nodded Button, “one certainly popped up—this night. One, however, that resembles him. There may be more. Resembling him, I mean. Various more. But it doesn't matter now. Only that this one does.
“Well, went on Button, with a sudden look at the clock whose hands were now at 1:49 in the morning, “he proceeded to tell me why—he had come here. Introducing myself, of course, as Bartholemew Button, also of New York. He knew definitely, as I've said, that he was related to Mr. Shellcross, for some family with whom he'd come up had told him the name of the latter, and that he was related to that particular party. Well, he had evolved some fantastic scheme to make oodles of money, Sam—he wouldn't say exactly what it was—but it involved a perpetual motion machine that would work—wouldn't fail, this one!—he believed he had the vital principle, the idiot—and he thought to get his patenting and model-creating help from his cousin, perhaps also some help in establishing a small factory to manufacture the invention in. You see, he'd read some account in the press about Mr. Shellcross, suggesting clearly that he was wealthy—”
“Ah know 'bout dat, Mist' Button. It was fus' in de—de Peddygoggycal Review. Den lif'ed by a newspapah. It say he famous—in de fiel' he in. An' well 'stablished dah.”
“Oh yes, I see. Well, this fellow got it that he was well fixed. Financially, yes. And could finance his—the inventor's—crack-brain idea. I knew quite differently, of course. For, thanks to certain things my informant about Shellcross had retailed to me that day, I knew that Shellcross was just a poor instructor—with absolutely no future.”
“Ouch!” said Clark to himself.
“So, out of kindness to the fellow—perhaps to his cousin Mr. Shellcross, too—I up—and gave him the full low-down on his Boston cousin. That he was poor as Job's turkey, yes—and would probably never have a spare cent as long as he lived. Indeed, I even told him how his poor cousin had just come sleep-walking into my room a few minutes back—and was now being put up by me on a couch so that I wouldn't have to wake him suddenly—and give him an epileptic fit or something. My information to him—oh, not about his cousin having come to my room sleep-walking, but the fact that he was absolutely zero for any possibility of financial help—let alone, God help him, on a perpetual motion machine proposition—seemed to knock the fellow for a row. Oh, he'd been certain he'd come to the one person who was nicely fixed and all—and now—now he'd have to go back to New York and be where he was when he started.
“So I asked him, friendly, if he had quarters downtown perhaps. He said no, none. None whatever.
“'Then,' I told him kindly, 'I suggest that you dig in here. Into Mr. Shellcross' bed, in short, which you see here, with its covers thrown back. And have a good night's sleep. And talk to him in the morning when he's physiologically correctly awake—and you yourself are less weary and nerve-ridden from that godawful ride from New York of nearly 200 miles—15 hours furious travel.' Said I, 'You can hang up your clothes in his closet yonder—pick yourself a nightshirt from the hooks, or from one of the drawers of his bureau, or-'“
“He—he could do dat, a'right,” said Clark hurriedly. “He—Mist' Shellcross—he alwiz keeped a extry nightshuht ready in case some frien' mought come in on him on'spectedly.”
“Well, one did this night all right—not precisely a friend, though. A—a mendicant, you might almost call the fellow. A—oh, mendicant?—that means beggar, Sam. It—
“Well, he liked the idea, anyway. It evidently plainly meant, for him, not having to go to sleep on the curbstone somewhere. Though he was so smashed to learn that Shellcross wasn't in the money that his lip fell down—and his now-long face had turned a sort of sickly green. He said:
“'I—I like the idea. So long as you're holding him safe in your place.' Dousing the cheroot, he rose, taking his hat with him. Went to the closet. Came out minus the hat—and with a nightshirt in his hand.”
“One dat wuz de spittin' image,” said Clark helpfully, “ob de nightshuht whut wuz on yo' guest—on yo' couch. Ah know dem two nightshuhts.”
“No doubt you do, from carrying them back and forth to some laundress.”
Clark did not take issue with this. Button went on.
“Well, looking about I figured I'd better bring him some fresh water. Yes, in the big pitcher standing in the washbowl. So I took it up, said, 'I'll fetch you some water for drinking, washing, or shaving'. I exited from the room—yes, so he could undress by himself—and went to the general wash room on that landing at the bottom of that—that damn roller coaster back midway of the floor. Hung about in there long enough to permit him to undress. Came back. And he was not only undressed, with clothes all placed away in the closet, but he was in the bed, with covers drawn modestly up.
“I put the pitcher of water in the wash bowl. Turned about. Faced him.
“'Well, sir,' I said, 'have a good night's sleep now. You have water here. Also matches and paper on the stand there for a light if necessary. Also—as I note!—Mr. Shellcross' cocked pistol all in readiness and position in case any burglars try to pop you off!'
“'They wouldn't want to pop me off,' he said bitterly. 'For my resources are just about zero, that's all. If that!'
“Well, I looked at the general lay-out—one stand, lamp, matches, pistol—oh I note, by the way, Sam, that you yourself keep a cocked pistol there right by the side of your bed—right side, right hand, eh? Now surely you don't figure some burglar would like to get you, do you? You don't own as much as a mustard plaster, I take it, nor—”
“Dey's bad niggahs as well as good niggahs,” was all Clark could say. “A man he don' hab time, w'en a villum sof'-footin' aroun' on his floor, to eben cock one ob dem modern pistols. It tek too much fumblin' wid fingah on triggah, an' fumb oh hammah. One got to be able to shoot fus'—bang!”
He made a “shot” motion, with black fingers.
Button sadly nodded. “Yes, a bad year, this year of 1855. Crime never has been so rampant. It will go down in History. It—
“However,” he took up his story, “I strode over, raised his lamp chimney enough to extinguish his light, and let it down back in place. Now, in but the light from the open door, I went to the doorway, took the key from inside the door, said a brief friendly 'goodnight', took myself outside the door and drew it shut. Locking it from outside, then shoving the key audibly back under the gap at the bottom so it would be available on the floor there, come morning. I re-adjusted the wall bracketed light so that it no longer fell upon the door or doorway, then went back to my own room. Back, horizontally—down 7 set steps—forward a few—up 7 steps—horizontally further backward—and do you know what, Sam?”
“Whut? Yas, whut? Whut?”
“Well that—that son of a sea-cock of a Clark Shellcross—had gone. No fooling! Not via the door, no, because I'd closed it behind me when I left, as I told you, and locked it. No he was gone by another 'exit'. A painter working on the back of the house that day—the day before, to be exact—had left his inordinately long 3-story ladder standing right alongside the window. Which itself was open. For I'm quite a fresh air fiend, you know. And that sleeping Morpheus—yes, Shellcross—had come awake while sleeping—oh, I don't mean normally come awake—he'd come back to—to his sleepwalking hectic activities—he'd risen off the couch—perhaps come to the door and tried it and found it locked—turned and stridden straight over to that open window—had stepped out on the sill—atop the ladder—was down it and off in the night. Was gone!”
“Mah—goo'ness! Gone? Gone all dat way down dat ladd-”
“Without mishap, yes. For with my heart sick within me, I looked out the window, wondering if I'd see him sprawled at the base of it where he'd fallen off—wondering, though, how I could in the darkness. And it was then that that Miss Divonshire—so the name was given to me by an informant that day—some elderly spinster who has the back room on the first floor—a woman I'd been told who, at the slightest noise outside in the night, would put a downward-reflecting lamp out on her sill, to chase away prowlers or burglars—well, at that moment I heard clatter on the sill far below me and suddenly, around the base of the ladder, all was brightly illumined—yes, Miss Divonshire had had a bad dream or something—had put out her lamp. And the light showed that Mr. Shellcross had not fallen at the base of the ladder—injured himself or anything—had climbed majestically down, the way sleep-walkers can. No, he was gone, gone, gone—”
“Dat mean,” put in Clark impulsively, “dat he walkin' roun' town now. In a night-shuht. Whut yo' wan' me to do, Mist' Button? Git a lantren—wid a reflectah—an' go huntin' 'round an' 'round de block in a cuhcle whut keep gittin' lahgah an' laghah an'—”
“No,” said Button, ever so calmly. “Not that, no. You'd be traveling in a spiral. And he'd be moving across it—in a sort of—of radius. You'd never intersect him that way. Never! But there is a way, Sam, to throw a network—a definite network—over the entire city of Boston—a network that will keep getting bigger and bigger every 15 minutes—a network by which we can—can seine him in.”
“An' Ah—kin he'p?”
“I'll say—you can! Help—is right. Very—much—so, and—how!”
“Will do. Oh, will do. Not 'count dat man who waitin' to see Mist' Shellcross. 'Caze he ain't got no bizness eben pertainin' to Mist' Shellcross. He ain' no buziness to eben be heah in Boston. He—yas, Ah'll he'p an' way Ah kin—so's Mist' Shellcross himse'f don't git hurted. Jist so dat—”
“Well, we don't either of us have to worry about that man who was sleeping in his bed. For that man came awake, after about an hour or less. In the dark, of course. And decided his last chance had failed. Reached out his hand in the dark for the cocked pistol. Found it. Took it up. And—”
“Y-yas—whut?”
“He blew out his brains. And his body right now isn't across the street. It's lying under a sheet in the back room of the Cabot Street Police Station, one mile from here!”
_______
Clark was trying to digest this. Came within an inch, even, of saying “Good Heavens—that's awful.” Caught himself in time to say:
“Good hebbins—da's awful!”
“To considerable extent it is, yes. I regret even urging him to go to bed there. Which put him next to a cocked pistol. While he was in a defected mood. But my intentions in all respects were kindly. And—but kill himself he did. And that—is that.”
To himself Clark said:
“What a ghastly mess—to happen—in my room? What—”
Aloud he said:
“W'en—w'en yo' fus' l'arn—he kill' himse'f?”
“Well, I was sitting back in my own room a half hour later—after leaving him tucked in and all, so to speak—wondering what to do about Shellcross now missing from my own room. My initial fatuous feeling—fatuous is idiotic, silly, see?—my initial fatuous feeling was that he would come back—like—like a homing pigeon. But there was the biggest possibility that he wouldn't, too. I could, I realized, — should, perhaps really, I realized also—go to the police and tell them the real facts. Namely, that Shellcross was afoot in the city—fast asleep—liable to get himself into serious harm, and obtain a city-wide 'alert' that would quickly, efficiently, speedily retrieve him, for—but do you know what I have reference to?”
Clark thought hard. Had good reason to, with his body wandering about Boston with its arms outstretched, its eyes glassy, its—He'd read in news-stories about an 'alert' having been instituted—but never recalled reading how it was done. Perhaps this was something soft-pedaled, more or less, so that watched culprits wouldn't be advised as to how it was done. Out of sheer personal curiosity alone, he asked humbly:
“Whut dat?”
“What's and 'alert'? Well, it's a new system the police have worked out. And often carry out. Any station having vital information that should go out immediately to all the patrolmen in the whole city puts it into the hands, first, of all of its own patrolmen as each reports in. Each of them stops on his respective beats at a point which is made common to the beat of a patrolman from another station—these points are marked in Boston by purple lanterns hung on the corners of buildings so that they face four ways—”
“Oh—dem?” At least Clark had found out what those weird night-burning lanterns were!
“There, at each connecting point, the information is passed on to the man whose beat intersects the first man's beat. For each waits, at last walk, till the other one comes up. The second man takes the information not only back to his own station, but to the extremity of his own beat where he intersects, again, a man on another beat—oh, I can't explain it, Sam, in its full detail—it's—it's all been worked out, Sam, like a—like a mathematical system. It was evolved by some police official in New York. And in due course brought here to Boston. The vital information is passed, passed, passed, passed, traveling ever along the limbs and cross-pieces of this—this reticulated network of 'beats' till it's reached the furthest-out and final beats—clear out as far as they go. When it has, then every patrolman in town is then looking for, say, a thug with a checkered cap—a bi-wheeled bicyclist who is dead drunk and running people down—you know those damned new bicycles that are flooding the city—”
“Dem big i'on ones wid de big fron' w'eels? And wid i'on tires on dem w'eels?”
“Yes, those things are dangerous. When driven by people under the influence of intoxicants. Such persons are known as drunken drivers. They frequently catch up to $100 fine and to several years in jail. And—But now you have the story of the 'alert system'—it's—its rationale—and so I sat there in my room thinking that, really, an alert ought to go out for this sleep-walker—either via the landlady or myself. Of course, if I told her I'd put up a stranger in his room, she'd be furious. And if I went to the police—well, there I sat, stewing and worrying, and pondering, when—
“Bang!”
“The sound,” detailed Button gravely, “came from the front of the house. Seemingly off—my own floor. My heart jumped! My first thought was—was that Shellcross outside had found a ladder elsewhere around the house than the one he'd gone down on, put it up against the wall near some open window—climbed up and tried to get in—and had been shot by some lodger who thought he was a prowler.
“Well, following the shot, there were sounds of great commotion in the house. Frontwise of it. Cries. Men's cries. Women's cries. Talking. All kinds of excitement. Even as I waited, I heard the crash of a shoulder—against a door—the door breaking in. I—I could stand it no longer.
“I came quickly out of my room. And down the hall. To where the cut-off wall is. Down seven steps—across the landing—up seven steps!—into the further hall—and there—heavens!—there, clustering about Shellcross' room were 8 or 9 people. Including Mrs. Jungclaus. Nobody paid any attention to me as I moved up, and looked in. And there over on the bed, the pistol clutched in his hand, lay Shellcross' cousin. A big hole in his head. A Dr. Stickway who lives in the house and who had been one of the first to get up there—do you know him?”
“Yas, yas, Mist' Button. Go on?”
“Well, having heard the shot he'd come up with the rest. Was now on the ground where he belonged. He, when I looked in, holding the hand of the shot man from the side not clutching the pistol. Taking pulse, only. Dropping the hand. Turning now to the rest.
“'He's quite dead,' he was saying. 'As might well be surmised from the position of that hole there in his head. Somebody who's got a bicycle, or say, a horse, get to the Cabot Street Police Station and get policemen over here. And meanwhile,' he cautioned, 'nobody must touch this body. Particularly this gun, or the hand holding it. Notes will have to be taken.'
“Well, somebody who did have a bicycle must have ridden to the station. For the police came back in a galloping wagon before you could say Jack Robinson. The clump of the horses' hooves out there on the wood-block pave- didn't you hear?”
“Ah—Ah wuz sleepin'. Ah—go on, suh?”
“Well, the police came in. Took notes. Many of them. Took down the full name of the deceased. As Mrs. Jungclaus gave it to them, of course, she not knowing that Mr. Shellcross' cousin was the dead man. And then finally they draped him—his body—with a sheet, and took him downstairs, loaded him on the wagon, and drew off.”
“Fo'—fo' inquest—in de mawnin'?”
“Yes, a customary but necessary technicality. To affirm it legally as being suicide.”
“Yo'—yo' tol' de p'licemens—he wasn' Mist' Clark Shellcross?”
“No, I—I didn't. There was so much confusion going on that I'd only have been roughly shoved off and out of the way. People were talking to people who moved off out of hearing range, and shortly were talking to others who'd taken their places. If I had tried to buttonhole somebody around this time—and try to explain the complication, I'd—I'd only have been lugged along by the police, for later questioning. No, I let the police get out of there. And the house subside a bit. A little, anyway. And some degree of calmness come. Before I essayed to do—my part. Which was to officially reveal the strange inside story.
“Indeed, as soon as sufficient time had elapsed for the men to get back to the station, and put the body in the room for tomorrow's inquest, I put on my cap and Inverness cape-coat you see here, and went out into the night. And tramped my way to the station. Which last I had seen by daylight. For I have no bicycle—no horse—no anything. I really trotted. I made it in 8 minutes. Heavens, how I trotted!
“I went up the several steps—and in. Found the captain back of the usual captain's wicket.
“He asked me, rather kindly, I must confess, what I wanted.
“I told him. That is, I gave, first of all, the pivot of what I had to relate. Pivot?—oh pivot, Sam, means—means the heart of it.
“'Captain,' I said, 'I am a lodger at the same house where this suicide took place tonight. However, I am sorry to have to inform you that the dead man is not Mr. Clark Shellcross.'
“'He—isn't?' he said, really amazed. 'You mean he's been living there under false pretenses?'
“'No, I don't mean that either,' I said. 'What I mean is—'
“Well, I up and told him then all I've just told you, Sam—but condensing it considerably more than I've had to, with you. For police captains can be quite busy people in the night.
“He heard me through.
“'Well I'll be damned!' he said. 'This—this is going to—make some stink!' He called for some assistant who was in some other room, and who thrust his head in from a nearby doorway. 'Don't make any more records for that kick-off—under the name we're using. Hold things.'
“He turned to me.
“'Will you be available—at the inquest tomorrow?'
“'Naturally,' I said.
“'Well, I won't hold you as material witness, then. Well give me your name, now. Address is, of course, 222 Cabot Street. So give—'
“So I proceeded to give him my name.
“'My name is Bartholemew Button,' I said.
“And—and there, Sam, I—I had an accident. I—I had an eructation.”
“Whut dat?”
“An—ah—oh—well, I belched. An enormous belch. A terrific—”
“Dat ain' yo' fault. Any man kin eruct—ah—let out a little belly wind f'm his mouf.”
“Yes, Sam,” said Button sadly, “but just before I'd reached the station, I nerved myself up to my task of giving evidence by taking a drink of brandy I had in a bottle on my hip. Yes, out on the dark sidewalk. I swallowed about a third of the flask, to tell you the truth. I am sure my eyes must have been blazing a bit—were glazed, even—indeed now, at this moment, I realize they must have been—from alcohol. For I am not a drinking man, you see. But the point is that at this point I belched. And sent a—a sirocco of alcohol fumes toward the captain enough to have exploded, had it been ignited. How embarrassing. How—
“Arrah! Well, he got choleric, Sam. Face as purple as a boiled lobster painted up with such color. He half rose out of his stool—no, rose all the way. Pointed a finger at me. Yelled:
“'Get out of this station. Now!'
“'But, sir,' I said, 'I have come here to—'
“'Get out—out—of this station!' he half choked, 'or I'll lock you up downstairs for—'
“'But, sir,' I expostulated, 'I've come to—'
“'I won't listen to one word of your—your maunderings,' he shouted. 'I—'“
“Whut is maunderin's?” asked Clark.
“Oh, maunderings are—are the babblings of drunken men.”
“But drunken man kin tell fac's. Drunken man kin—”
“Yes, but he'd evidently heard too many tales out of such in his life. He was just—ah—shriveled up—ah—intellectually. Just stony brained, stupid—
“A bit frightened by his own really wild demeanor, I got out. Got out pronto. Came back on home here. Sad and forlorn. But I didn't come back to the house where I lived. But to here. This house where I knew you lived, and where I knew I could find you. A fat black woman with a lamp let me in, when I knocked. And told me how to reach your room. And up I came. And here I am—needing help now—from you.”
“Whut—whut kin do? If p'lice cap'n he don' b'lieb yo', den he won' b'lieb me ef Ah tell him whut yo' tell me. Whut kin do?”
“Confirm my story!” raged Button. “Confirm it, yes. I'll tell you how to do it. To confirm it—yes. And unless you do—note that well, Sam!— unless you do, there'll be no police action—no network put out and if there's no police action, no network put out, there'll be no retrieval of him—and soon!—he'll reach disaster of some kind, and before we know it. He'll—he'll be shot by some householder whose window he'll be fumbling at. Else run down by one of those Molochs—yes, those iron monsters with the big front wheels. And his head knocked thus against the cobblestones, with consequent fracture of the skull—or concussion of the brain—or both. He may only be run down by some late home-going buggy, with fracture of the tibia of both legs. Or a clear break of either hip. Or—or may be killed outright by the heavy body of the fire-pumping machine, as the horses carrying it are galloping to a fire as directed by the signal fires on the fire-watcher towers. Worst of all—and sleep-walkers, Sam, all seem drawn towards water!—he may walk unseeingly straight to the water front—right off into deep water, water 12 feet deep. All these things may happen. One will happen. But there is one thing you can do to prevent any of them happening. There's one thing you can do to save Clark Shellcross. One thing! Will you do it? Will you?”
“Hebbins yas, Ah will do it. Yah, Ah will. Ah will, Ah will—God, yas. Whut is?”
_______
“Well,” said Button firmly and authoritatively, “you go to the police station. And you tell them your story. Not mine, but yours. Yours, yes, designed to make mine—stick. You tell them simply—it must be simple, remember this—you tell them that you were just coming home here after having been at a card game, or crap game, or something, at some friend's, and there, right out on the street—some street—any street you want to name—you passed a man sleep-walking—in his nightshirt. Yes, describe him as having his arms straight out in front of him—his eyes protruding unseeingly from his face. Say you saw all this because you were carrying one of these lanterns with a reflector on it. Say you pointed your light squarely on him—that he didn't even blink. Kept on majestically trudging. Tell them he proved in this light to be, however, not just a man, but a man you work for, occasionally. Run errands for, do odd jobs for. Press his suits and so forth. In short, he was, tell them, Mr. Clark Shellcross, of 222 Cabot Street.
“Tell them—rather him, the captain,” drove on Button, “you didn't dare try to halt this man—or even waken him—lest he have a fit or something. Tell him you didn't dare to even try to hold him back. You could only tramp along by his side for a moment or two. A thing you didn't want to keep up. For sooner or later, tell him, you'd have to restrain the walking man—and then you'd be responsible if something happened—something serious even perhaps, since—
“Tell the captain you sped away from the chap finally, but came, panic-stricken, to the police station.
“After hearing your story, they'll know then I wasn't drunk or anything when I told mine. Yours will confirm my story, you see. And to the extent of 100 percent—no less than twenty ways across the board. Believe me, they'll be sorry—I mean that son-of-a-bitch of a captain will be sorry for his insulting treatment of me. For if the man you saw sleep-walking along on the street was Shellcross, then the man found in Shellcross' bed tonight wasn't Shellcross at all, as per all the confused identification given it in the Jungclaus house and all, and the whole suicide theory blows up. As appertaining to Shellcross himself, I mean. Well, will you do what I have outlined? Confirm my story?”
Clark with arms waving wildly now, was springing to his feet.
“Ah go raght now dis minut. Quick's Ah kin mek it—quickah Ah go, quickah Mist' Shellcross is sabed f'm walkin' round into dangah—o' death. Soon's Ah co'plete mah story to dem, an' dey puts out dat netwuhh, quickah Mist' Shellcross git plucked afo' he becomes a floatin' co'pse in de hahbor, o' what. An'—”
“You'll confirm my story now, as I've outlined?”
“Not quite 'zackly,” said Clark. “But will confuhm it od'wise. But fully. You see, Mist' Button, dey mought tangle me up on any story dat Ah gib whut de way yo' outline. Dey mought want to know whut st'eet Ah seed Mist' Shellcross on—an' den ef Ah mek up one, dey mought not put out a—a—network at all—dey mought on'y go 'long dat st'eet on'y, an' up an' down de side st'eets givin' out ob it. An' miss him co'pletely. Ag'in, dey mought ask whah is de lantren whut Ah seed him in de light ob. Ah mought git so tangled explainin' dat, dat dey mought sen' a man obah heah to 'quire 'bout me. An' fin' out f'm de landlady, mebbe, dah Ah b'en heah all night. An den Ah'll be made a liah out ob—widout one drap o' brandy on mah breaf. An'—”
“But what—what story can you tell—that will back mine up?”
“Leab dat to me. An' don' wuhhy. Ef Ah tell it to yo', Ah won' be able to do it obah 'g'in—to dem. Ah'll git flustahed den, Ah'll—oh mah story'll confuhm yo' story 100 ways 'crost de board. Ah promise yo'. Fo' Ah has to git a netwuhk put out quick fo' Mis' Clark Shellcross's bod- ah—Mist' Shellcross.”
Button studied on this. The term “Mr. Clark Shellcross' body” didn't apparently seem to him just right, but he obviously let it pass.
“I get your point,” he nodded at Clark's explanation. “The less rehearsal of a story—the more spontaneous it is when rendered. Yes, I get your point. All right, then. I'll go.” He rose suddenly. “And may Heaven smile on your mission—and—and damn the police!”
_______
With the departure of the obviously relieved, and satisfied, Bartholemew Button, Clark lost no time in donning the garments that had been on the straight chair. There was a coarse one-piece under-garment of thin, scratchy wool. He put it on, managing to button it here and there down his black body. Then he drew on the faded, patched overalls. And belted them to his own belly. Then the woolen socks. They were clean, he had to admit. And then the brogans.
This done, he drew on the woolen shirt. Tucking it down in the belt. Then, because the snappily-cool “cool-wave” of this day was only waning, perhaps, and not died out yet, he took from the diagonal plank across the room the short thick reefer. And a crumpled black hat for his kinky head.
Feeling about in the reefer pockets, he found a key which evidently was the key of this room. Feeling about some more, he found another key, which he believed might be the key of the house itself. So, extinguishing the lamp, he let himself out of the room, locking the door behind him by no less than the key he'd thought would be the door key. And guiding himself along a wall, to a stairs, and on down, finally let himself out a front door over which a low lamp burned inside.
Outside here, he turned to lock the door behind him. To try to, that is. For he was quite some time doing this, for it seemed an interminable number of minutes before he discovered that the fool key turned in exactly the opposite direction than any key should! Realized it was a neat locksmith's trick to foil prowlers, who might have acquired duplicate keys. Prowlers who might want to steal faded overalls, smoking lamps, tin boxes marked “Victuals”—whatnot!
When at last he'd solved the puzzle and turned about streetward, it was to find himself facing a bright lantern, with reflector back of it, which beamed against him. And a friendly voice back of it speaking to him.
For the voice said:
“Good heavens, Sam! And I thought I was going to have to knock you up at this unearthly hour. Whereas you're starting out somewhere. Hold everything, Sam. I want a few words with you.”
“Who—who talkin'?” asked Clark helplessly.
“Well, I suppose, Sam, I should have identified myself, before flashing a light full on and in your eyes. Well this, Sam, is the gentleman who safely holds in his safe your precious and valuable paper—which makes you a freed-man—forever!”
_______
And almost to make identification 100-percent complete, instead of 99-percent, the bearer of the lantern held it up turned around—against himself!
Its generously reflected light revealed a man of all of 67, clad in a grey frock coat with grey stovepipe trousers dropping into bootlike shoes. On his head he wore a silk-hat-like hat made, however, of a grey cloth and with its tall sides curving inward all about. His face was a bearded face, and with a most ecclesiastical beard, to say the least, for, shot with grey as it was, it was cut off squarely below his chin—was, in short, the so-called “square beard” worn chiefly by professional men and clergymen. His kindly, wide-set grey eyes were framed by square silver spectacles which were drawn out, for the moment, for greater focusing power, onto the bridge of a large, firm, dominant nose. Crinkly sideburns, also touched with grey, flaring out from each temple, ran down to each side of his resolute chin. The face itself was etched with the deep lines of a man whose countenance worked visibly when he preached. Or even held forth on a subject. His forehead was fine and high, the forehead of a student, for it was exposed because the tall hat was slightly back on his head. All in all, the illumined face was a good face, a kindly face, a strong and powerful face to whose possessor could be trusted a ticklish job, the accomplishment of a difficult objective, even the deepest of secrets.
Through Clark's head, at the moment, was roaring all sorts of names—also an address. And in a trice, came forth with what he sought. Reverend Calixtus Fearnaught. President of the Baptist College of Theology. This city. Home, 449 Canterbury Place. Therefore—if head of a school of divinity—almost certainly “Doctor” instead of just “Reverend.”
Clark made expert answer, at least as to that “Doctor.”
“W'y, Doctah,” he said, “whut on yarth brings yo' out at dis houah?”
“I'm dashing for the Coachline office, Sam, to take an early stage out which will put me into Cambridge tomorrow—rather today, I should say now—at 8 a.m. There I have to see a man on a most awfully vital —terribly vital—matter. Though requiring hardly more than 30 minutes stay for me. Then I aim to get the return stage. And be back here by 4. Even at home by 4. But what brings you out of the house at this unearthly—”
“Ah on mah way fo' to do a se'ious ehhand fo'—fo' a Mist' Button.”
“Yes, I see,” said the ecclesiastic, quite courteously, since obviously he didn't see anything, much less know “Mr. Button”. “Well, what I stopped by for, Sam, is to ask you not to come tomorrow—rather, today—at 8 a.m. to start digging that cellar three feet lower. You see, I want to sort of—of be around you when you dig, so as to give you various instructions here and there, with respect to certain areas. And being a widower, alas—with only servants who can't be trusted with 'engineering' jobs like that!—I want to be on the job myself, so to speak. So, Sam, do you think you could work for me tomorr- I mean today—from, say, 5 to midnight?”
“'Cose, Suh,” said Clark, “'Cose.”
“Then come then, Sam. I've got the spade, and the crowbar, and the shovel, with other tools you'll need for that particular job. You just fetch that brawn and energy of yours. Gadfrey, man, I wish I were young enough to be able to dig a whole cellar three feet lower. What wouldn't I give? What wouldn't I—well you say you're headed forth on some errand? Leftwise of yourself? If so, we'll go along togeth-”
“Raghtwise ob mahse'f, suh,” clarified Clark.
“Oh, I see. Well, I'm going leftwise—of you—to get to the stage landing on Barnstable Street. Well, Sam, see you tomorr- ah—this afternoon then. 5 o'clock, yes?”
“Yassuh, Doctah, yassuh.”
The light turned off of Clark's face and self. For the man holding it turned off. Was off now about five feet, Clark himself some feet in the opposite direction. When the other man, evidently turned about in his steps, halted Clark in his own progression.
“Oh, Sam?”
Clark, turned about by now, came back across the short distance between them.
“Yassuh?”
The other man did not use the lantern now; just spoke with his own face in gloom.
“Sam, I'm awfully nervous and irritable these days, I know. Just forgive it, won't you? You see, Sam, I have two of the most frightful problems I've ever confronted. Not one, Sam, but two. I may find the answer to one—I don't know—this trip I'm taking has something to do with that. But as to the other, I guess I never will find its solution. I've—I've even marked it down as 'unsolvable'.”
“Whut mought it be?” said Clark, who didn't subscribe to such things as “unsolvable”.
“Well, I won't attempt to go into that now. Maybe I'll tell you this evening. Tale of woe to my black friend, Sam, not so? Story of one problem solved—in a way I don't particularly like—and another problem not solved—at all.”
“Ah laks to heah w'ite folks' prob'ems,” said Clark. “'Caze us black folks—well, de prob'ems, suh, whut yo' w'ite folks has don' nebbah seem lak prob'ems to us black—”
“Well, if you stood where I stand, Sam, you'd sure think these were a pair of soul-wearing prob- however, run along on your errand. And I'll see you tonight before sundown.”
And now they turned off from each other again, and each went his own way. Clark, now shrouded by darkness, wondering what on earth could be the two problems confronting such a kindly speaking and intelligent speaking—even, from what he'd gleaned from Button, well-to-do—man, that should send him out on the highways and byways toward the stage coach landing, in this unearthly hour of the night.
“And to think,” he said, “I'll never learn—what they are? Because the real Sam Brown who'll be summoned over there tomorr- rather, late today, and after being given a paternal wigging for forgetting his appointment, will be learning what the two problems are. And I—I'll be sitting in my own room—wondering. Wond-
“Whoa! I'll be sitting in my own room, eh? Comfortably wondering? Well I better be seeing first of all, and here and now, that the real me—my body—doesn't get into trouble. And quick. By getting that city-wide pick-up under way. Feet, do your stuff!”
_______
Past interminable dark blocks Clark tramped, one very much like the other. Houses were but blobs against a sky of blackness, grey-shot. Sometimes his swinging right hand hit against the wooden picket of a front fence. Once even against one of those little iron figures that stand out on lawns. He could tell when he came to a cross-street only by the change of greyness in the lower rightmost or leftmost arc of the sky, and by reaching down gingerly, to the new level, with his foot. Now and then, in the darkness, and out on the street itself, lantern light came into swift being from a distance, whisked up, disappeared in Clark's rear, always to the tune of a horse's neighing or the clop of hoofs on the wooden blocks; in some cases, it represented lanterns held in the hands of horse-riders; in one or two others, an actual vehicle bowling along. Nothing was ever seeable, in any of the cases, but the moving light itself. Now and then lanterns came forth out of the darkness along the sidewalk itself, always bobbingly, weaving well off from Clark's path, receding, and often to the tune of a tremulous call “Hello, sir?” marking a caller who wasn't sure that Clark, lanternless, wasn't a highwayman! Once, at a street corner, he came upon a purple-burning lantern held on a hook affixed about 10 feet up on the exact corner of a building, so that the lantern was visible from four directions; this was, he saw now, one of those posts described by Button where foot policemen came together at the end of their beats, and exchanged or relayed information on to the next beat man—or in reverse direction back to the station. An ingenious system, that! Marvelous to think that a whole city of slogging policemen could be alerted in but a little while.
And now he reached his objective. The police station!
All he could see of it, to be sure, was a set of low steps leading off the sidewalk, with, up above the street-level, and marking a doorway, two highly rotund purple lamps, one each side. And with light coming out on the sidewalk from a lighted interior traversing multipaned windows. Reaching the doorway, he found it to be about five feet wide, and light coming out adequately from it, too.
He turned off quickly, and went up the few steps. Found himself in a large soft-wood floored green painted room lighted by three lamps held in a bronze circular holder hanging from the ceiling by several chains. A big clock ticking on one wall provided time for any and all in the station. A wicket, with wooden railing, cut off the part alongside two of the front windows, and back in, and to the right, was a sturdy door, and a further painted door, closed tight.
A kindly faced, smooth faced and also wide-faced man of about 43, plainly sitting on a tall stool, was in back of the wicket making entries in a cloth-bound book. He wore a grey jacket with red cloth shoulder straps belted with wide tan-colored cloth belt against an undeniable paunch. On his head, tilted back, was a roundish helmet-like grey cloth hat, similar to all Boston policemen wore. Except that this one had a brass insignium riveted to its front with the word “Captain" on it.
He looked up from his book as Clark approached the wicket, troubled.
“Yes, sir, my boy,” he said, friendly, “what can we do—for you?”
This was, Clark saw immediately, going to be an amenable man. He had been certain he was going to strike one of those cantankerous officials. Specially after having heard what the man had said to Bartholemew Button.
Clark, considerably bolstered up, spoke.
“Please, suh,” he said, “Ah've come heah 'bout—'bout Mist' Clahk Shellcross who—who 'spose to've shooted himse'f dis ebenin'.”
“Oh yes. 'Supposed to have' is good! When we collected the remains, there didn't seem to be much 'suppose' about it. Well, what is it you want to talk to me about? He owed you four or six bits, maybe for work done for him? If he did, you'll have to see his executor or—”
“Nossuh. He didn' owe me nuffin'. But is dis way. He—”
“Well now, wait! It's customary around here to get names and addresses! I listened to some 'facts' earlier tonight, and then only asked the identity of the teller. Now I'll reverse the procedure definitely. First, what's your name?”
“Sam, suh. Sam Brown.”
“And where do you live, Sam?”
“Ah lib—ah—Ah lib dee-rec' 'cross de st'eet f'm 222 Cabot St'eet.”
“Well, well, well,” laughed the man in the cloth helmet jovially. “That's sure an new way—of giving your own street number! Well, that'd be the old Crowley House, of course. Which is 221. So you live at 221 Cabot Street. All right. Now your story?”
“Mist' Cap'n, de man whut shooted himse'f wusn' Mist' Shellcross.”
“Was he,” said the officer dryly, “a man who looked exactly like him, who had come there to see him, and gone to bed in his room?”
“Yassuh, yassuh. An' Mist' Shellcross is now fas' asleep, an' walkin' all obah de town. On'y in his nightshu't. He lakely to git huhted—to be knocked down—to mebbe git shooted—”
“Mr. Bartholemew Button told me this story earlier,” nodded the Captain. “But—”
“He say yo' shoo'ed him 'way 'count smellin' his breaf an' finkin' he wuz drunk. So he tell me. An' so Ah've come 'cause Ah kin prove his sto'y.”
“Well, well,” said the Captain, a bit non-plussed. He rose enough on his stool to look over the wicket. “Bickerly?” he called. “Come in here.”
The door across the station floor now back of Clark opened. As Clark saw by looking back of himself. A policeman of some sorts came in. He was higher in rank than the ordinary Boston patrolman, that was certain, because he wore the red cloth shoulder straps which Boston foot-policemen did not. But he did not bear any brass insignium on his helmet. Which made him definitely less than “Captain”.
“Edgar,” asked the Captain quizzically, “how low can a pathological liar—fall?”
“I'll bite, Captain Podewell. How low?”
“When he gets the bum's-rush from the police, and then, frustrated, goes out and gets a poor nigger to come in—and back him up.”
“'S that what Button did, Captain?”
“Yes, Edgar. This nigger here.”
Edgar made helpless motions with his arms, then disappeared from where he came.
The Captain turned his attention back to the “poor nigger” in question.
“Sam,” he said kindly, “the man you talked to tonight is a pathological liar. Know what that is? It's a man who is—is sort of half-cracked, in a way—not insane, no, but—well, he has to tell weird stories to—to bolster up his ego. No, I know you don't know what ego is. It doesn't matter. But the fellow Button has upset police work in New York City for several years, going into police stations with false information after crimes and murders and suicides—making the police waste lots of valuable time on false and misleading clues. He ought, by right, to be locked up. Except that such as he aren't technically crazy. When Captain Homer Milledge of the Cherry Street Police Station in New York, where considerable of Button's shenanigans took place, heard from his beat-policeman—who of course got it from the landlady—that Button was winding up his affairs in New York, and packing to come to Boston here to live, Captain Milledge immediately alerted his brother, Police Captain Cyrus Milledge of this city, who then sent out duplicate memos of the information to all stations including this one—yes, me—instructions to send Button a-flying if ever he came in with any wild stories after a crime, or anything relating to police investigation. And sure enough tonight—in he came— here. Told me quite a convincing story, I must say. I—I was almost about to do something—on it. And lo, I asked him his name. He gave it, knowing I would make him back up his identity with papers of some sort. And did I—give him the bun's-rush!”
Evidently the Captain's elated voice penetrated the premise back of that door across the room. For to the tune of its opening came congratulatory comment:
“Did you, Chief! He really—flew!”
The door closed.
“So, Sam,” said the man back of the wicket, “you're just backing up the story of a pathological liar, see?”
“Cap'n,” said Clark fervently, “he wuz too—too aggytatied—'bout all whut had tookened place—to be lyin'. He wuz a man who wuz tellin' truf. He knew evvah detail—w'en he talked to me. Cap'n, w'y is yo' don' b'lieb his story?”
“He's a known pathological liar, that's why.”
“But, Cap'n, couldn' it happen dat de real t'ing would come up in his life once—an' he would hab to tell it as truf?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But in Button's case, it's a matter of crying 'wolf' too often.”
“Don' true fings happen to evvahbody, Cap'n?”
“Certainly they do. Could, even, to Bartholemew Button. But confound it, Sam, the story he tells is—is—fantastic. It—do you know what fantastic means?”
“Fantaskic? Ah know, yas. Means wil', lak. But even fantaskic fings, Cap'n, is som'times true. Has yo' abbah huhd 'bout dat big clock obah in England whut stops ebbah time somebody in de place whuh it is, dies?”
“Oh, you mean that big tower or—or belfry—clock outside of London?—at Hampton Court Palace, sometimes called the 'Royal Boarding House' because it houses penniless relatives of—Yes, I've read about it. Read about it every now and then, and have, during all the years I've read the papers. How it's stopped, yes, when somebody's died in the place, yes.”
“Well, suh—an' beggin' yo' pahdon, suh, Cap'n—is an'fing mo' fantaskic in de wuhld dan dat?”
“No, nothing. For it's unaccountable, unexplainable, un-”
“W'y is den, Cap'n, dat yo' b'lieb it?”
“Why—because it all appears in newspapers—that deal with facts. And over and over, showing coincidence is not involved. Nor—but it told to me by a pathological liar, I wouldn't accept it a bit. I accept it because it's carried by a truthful medium.”
“Den, Cap'n, ef an'boddah else in dat house at—at Numbah 222 Cabot St'eet—had come heah, an' tol' yo' 'bout de po' man whut come dah fo' to git feenancyal he'p f'm his cousin on a—a—a puputial motion machine, yo' would b'lieb him?”
“Anybody but Button, yes.”
“Well, would yo' b'lieb ef Ah say Mist' Shellcross papa he hab six brothahs whut wuz all scattahed out to oddah peoples w'en dey wuz y'ong? Seven brothahs, Cap'n. All ob w'ich could have chillens. Sons, yas. Whut could look des lak Mist' Shellcross?”
“I believe you absolutely, Sam. For you have an honest face. And an honest voice. And an honest demeanor. Evidently Shellcross told you about that himself. But it's Button I can't believe. Besides, you only know, at most, from Shellcross, that he could have one or more first cousins. You don't even know that one resembles him. Much less identically so.”
“Ah does know, Cap'n. Ah does!”
“How do you know?”
“Ah knows it 'caze it happen Ah kin 'dent'fy de body whut yo' got as not Mist' Shellcross. See? Is simple as dat. Ah kin substantyiaty Mist' Button's stohy two ways 'crost de bo'd. Fo' Ah kin supply fac's 'bout Mist' Shellcross dat'll 'dent'fy de body whut you got heah as not—K—N—O—T!—not Mist' Shellcross. Do dat mean an'fing?”
“That could mean a lot and everything, Sam. Only, the trouble is—but state your case. Your identifying facts, I mean?”
_______
“Well, suh,” began Clark, and more than truthfully, it had to be admitted, “it happen' dat Mist' Shellcross he once wuz acc'dental' cut by de p'int ob a big scythe w'en he wuz a boy. He wuz cut f'm behin', in a w'eatfiel'. De scythe it flashed down he back. An' cut a long awful cut. Whut had to be sewed up by a doctah wid fif'teen stitches.”
“He told you this, of course? For you don't know it. Maybe he was a pathological liar, too. They are always making up tales of how they were gored, stabbed, shot, strangled, burned—”
“Yas suh. But Ah've massagied Mist' Shellcross. An' washed him. De scah is dah! It 'bout twelve inches long, down de back an' crosswise a li'l. An' de stitches dey show w'ite lak do all stitches. Dey is fifteen ob dem, layin' 'cross de scah to 'bout a half inch each side.”
“Are, eh? Well you sure are cooking on hickory wood, I will say. When it comes to down-to-earth data. Button came in here with nothing but a tale. You come in—with facts. Hm?”
The Captain was thoughtfully interested. For audibly he was even saying now, “Scar? Stitches?”
“But wait, Cap'n, dat ain' all. On de upper back ob Mist' Shellcross, 'way f'm de scah, undah his right shouldah, dey's a bu'thmahk. It's purple—not black no' brown. It's—”
“I know. What you mean, I mean. A—a rose mark. Well, what shape is it—if any?”
“It 'zackly lak a th'ee-leaf clovah, suh. Not lak a chil' would draw, but lak a—a ahtist would draw. It got its th'ee roun' leaves p'intin' out lak in a real clovah. He use' to call it, in a—a joke, his 'onlucky clovah'. Use to wish dey wuz a way fo' it to be tookened off.”
The Captain surveyed his interviewer—or perhaps he himself was the interviewer.
“A three-leafed clover birthmark, eh?” he said.
Clark nodded emphatically to what was complete Truth.
“And a long slanting scar with stitchmarks?”
Again Clark nodded to Truth carrying a capital T.
The Captain sighed.
“Sam, if you'd come here first tonight, I'd have accepted your story point-blank. But Button—my god, Button!—anything he says is certain to be the biggest lie ever heard on land or—however, what you said a while back is true. That into every life—some rain must fall! Or in an occasional web of fantasy, some element of truth—might exist. Come, Sam, we'll settle this thing for once and for all.”
“An' if, suh,” pleaded Clark desperately, “yo' fin' de daid man ain' Mist' Shellcross, whut yo' do, den?”
“We-ell—we'll have the damndest search put over and across the whole city for the sleepwalking Shellcross that was ever put across Boston. Every policeman, in the city will be alerted. Long before dawn, we'll have Shellcross in, unhurt and unharmed and—”
“Ah hab won mah case, Cap'n,” said Clark fervently. “T'ank de good Lawd, Ah—Ah hab won!”
_______
The Captain had risen off his stool.
Went off the wicket opening a way, and opened a door in the railing that ran to the adjacent wall.
“Come in, Sam.”
Clark did go in.
The Captain, turning toward a solid door inside the railing, turned back and looked up toward the three-lamp ceiling fixture as though to figure whether the light from that device would give him what he was going to need in some adjoining room. Then shook his head as though finding too much obliquity for the light rays.
From a shelf off the railing-end door he took down a fat candle, held in a tinny holder. Also a tinder match. The tinder match he struck on a square of scratch-paper tacked on the wall. And with it lighted the candle.
It was a thick candle and gave out with a juicy flame.
“Come,” he instructed Clark.
And threw open the door.
“Go on in. If you're not afraid, that is.”
Clark did go on in. Standing off out of the way of the Captain, following. The candle, now being held up by the latter, revealed just a large practically empty room evidently reserved for things like this, else for secret inquisitions, for over at a far wall was a high desk and two chairs. And between the door and the desk, crosswise, were two biers.
One, the furthest of the two, was empty.
On the other, the nearest, was a sheeted form.
The Captain, approaching it, beckoned Clark over.
“You stand here at the foot,” he directed. “And hold this candle. I'll do the undraping.”
Clark did. Holding the candle as close as he dared without interfering in the necessary actions.
The Captain took hold of the sheeted form quite firmly, and about at its waist, evidently knowing it was on its back.
Without much trouble, he rolled it, still under its covering sheet, over on its front. Trying the head, beneath the sheet, to see that it was in new proper position.
Now, having the body as he evidently wanted it, he stripped the sheet deftly from it, all except the head, exposing back shoulders and torso and legs, and palms of hands.
And Clark, looking down, felt his blood suddenly flowing with icicles—heard a thousand Niagara Falls' roaring in his ears.
For, on the upturned and fully exposed back of the corpse was a long slanting scar. Crossed by criss-cross stitch scars. And under the right shoulder lay—a three-leafed “strawberry mark”.
“Satisfied?” said the Captain kindly.
“Ah'll go,” said Clark weakly, before he should fall down.
In a daze he saw the sheet drawn back into place. In a daze he felt the candle being taken from his shaking fingers. In a daze he felt himself being directed out and piloted through the room's one door. Then through the railing gate. In a daze he found himself leaving the station entrance, and going down the steps. Standing down on the sidewalk now in the darkness.
“Dead!” he said. “Clark Shellcross' body—dead! And Sam Brown—soul—mind—spirit—Consciousness—inside it—now gone to where souls and minds and spirits and Consciousnesses go—the Land of No Return. And I—I—Clark Shellcross—am now confined for life—in the body of a nigger!”
He turned off in the dark the way he'd originally come.
“Goodbye, Future!” he said hopelessly. “Goodbye, happiness. Goodbye, life. Goodbye everything—including Vernice—the sweetest and dearest girl in the world!”
_______
How he got back to the place he'd left but 30 minutes or so before, he never knew.
Return to it was but a nightmare of stumbling along dark blocks in a nightmare city, fumbling in reefer pocket for a key where the big blob against the sky proclaimed the Crowley House, stumbling in and up the stairway almost by sense of feel against stair-steps and posts, insertion of other key in door, and home again.
Home!
Lighting the lamp with almost trembling fingers, home sprang back again as it was. Splintered floor, packing box table, whitewashed walls, bucket of water on iron hook, tin box with “Victuals” stenciled on it, rags of clothing hanging on a plank, and a clock now reading—what was it reading?—3:30 in the morning.
He flung himself down on the bed on his back. And tried to think!
Amidst the realization that all—all was gone for him now—from life—one thought kept hammering against the back of his brain: a thought that made matters only more horrible than they already were.
It was the thought—nay, downright realization—that he had killed Sam Brown—whose body he now occupied.
For Sam Brown had never—no, never—gone to bed—in this bed—and then, wakening, just shot himself to death—in the dark. Negroes—Negroes were too happy-go-lucky—so far as employment went, food went, clothes went, lodging went, finances went—another day meant always, for them, a complete new deal of the cards. They never got much. They didn't mind if they hadn't something they hadn't—or had less.
Pounding against his tortured brain was the thought that Sam—in his, Clark's body—had had some kind of an accident with that cocked pistol. Had picked it up, feeling it, wondering why it had a different feel to it—a different weight—and, doing this, the hammer had fallen.
Or—or—could he have been—murdered?
Yes, murdered?
Somebody may have come in the window as he slept—slept in Clark's body, that is. Tiptoed about—felt for the pistol. Put it to the sleeper's head. Pulled the trigger. Then put the pistol in the now dead man's fingers.
Could that somebody even have been—Bartholemew Button, New York pathological liar, at the end of his rope in credibility towards creating disturbances and making himself important—could have been Bartholemew Button finally deciding to make a crime—instead of following up in the wake of one?
Clark could not get that saturnine, narrow eyed knife-faced individual in the Inverness coat and cap out of his mind. If Button had killed the putative Shellcross, then he, Clark Shellcross, had killed Sam by preempting Sam's body and driving Sam—his Consciousness—into Shellcross' body. It was murder—no matter what you called it.
And being murder, it had left him, Clark, isolated here—in the body his Consciousness had preempted.
Why—why had his Consciousness—at the moment the magnetism or whatever it was that had held it to his original body had been dispelled—or extinguished—why in God's name had his Consciousness shot straight through some unknown dimension—and right into the sleeping body—of a Negro? A poor friendless, probably shiftless, ex-slave of a Negro—who had no future?
Of all the people in the Universe who were sleeping at that moment, their Consciousnesses dislocated from their bodies slightly—he—he, Clark!—had to select that—of Sam Brown.
Why? Why? Why?
If he could find why that was, he would have the completion of the rationale, the laws and explanations of transposition of Consciousnesses under some narcotic alkaloid that one could call only “X”. Yes, he would have the full rationale—and explanation of how it worked. He would have the full story—that even Jeb Polliver hadn't been able to fill in.
Yes, why did Clark Shellcross' Consciousness dive into the body of Sam Brown, of all the millions or so of people—in the Universe? Or just of even all the people in that house one street-width from Sam Brown's miserable room?
If he, Clark, had that, he had—the missing piece.
If he knew more about Sam Brown, he might pick up the explanation. And that, he told himself grimly, was what he was going to do, come morning. Find out somehow, somewhere, something—about the private life of Sam Brown—whose body he now had.
For after all he had nothing to do, come tomorrow, till 5 o'clock in the afternoon, when he would have to set to, to dig out a cellar. In order to eat. To live. To live on and on and on, forever and amen!
_______
The minutes crawled along, the quarter hours, the hours. His chaotic thoughts but flew through his head, reformed somewhere in it, or maybe out of it, then returned but reorganized, clarified, yet muddy because of the very clarification, and came back in still altered phalanxes—same thoughts—new patterns—same hopelessness.
Always, however, he came out with two inescapable conclusions.
How could Clark Shellcross, who now belonged—at least so far as his body went—to the ages, accept himself—as Sam Brown?
And what was the unknown factor that made Clark Shellcross' Consciousness dive into the body—of Sam Brown?
As faint dawn commenced to show above the black panel of cotton cloth occluding the lower half of the one front-facing window, he fell asleep. A sleep of sheer exhaustion, from shock and trying to find explanations—for the unexplainable. A sleep of exhaustion, yes, but combined with no less than—and this was a conclusion he came to long afterward—a secondary effect of the narcotic drug that had brought about all this whole affair. A sleep that had lasted many hours. For the lamp by his side had burned out, plainly long ago. And sun was in the room—a late, very late morning sun—indeed, the clock with the enlarged and numeral-dabbed face proclaimed the time to be 11 a.m. So he'd been out of the world all of 5—6—hours. But he was still—Sam Brown! In a dismal bed in a dismal room, in sunfaded overalls and brown wool shirt and reefer.
He realized as he woke that the thing that had awakened him was a stern knocking on the door of his room.
He swung his legs off the bed, and went to the door. And opened it. A fat Negress of general brown coffee color showing she had a bit of white in her, stood there. She was clad in a dirty grey wrapper. He remembered she'd been pointed out to him once as the “proprietress” of the old Crowley House. Must be, therefore, Sam Brown's—now his, Clark's!—landlady.
Almost immediately Clark sensed his financial troubles were beginning. For she said, harshly:
“Well, Mist' Brown, is good dat yo' sleep late w'ile hahd-wuhkin' folks wuhks. Ah des huhd yo' cough, so Ah knocked. Is yo' got dat rent money fo' me?”
He felt in his pockets. Found nothing. Said:
“Well, Ah—Ah isn' got it now. But Ah is goin' t' wuhk. An' Ah'll—”
“Ef yo' goin' fo' wuhk at dis houah ob de day, yo' ain' ebbah goin' to fin' it. So in dat case, Mist' Brown, yo' bettah git out ob mah house—”
“But—but—Miss—ah—Missus—ah—Miss—”
“Missus 'Liza Davis,” she corrected him haughtily.
“Mizzz' Davis, Ah wuz to hab wen' to wuhk dis mawnin' diggin' cellah fo' Rev'n Doctah Feahnaught, but he hab to go to Cambridge an' he stop' by in—in de night an' tell me—yas, fru de window—to come lattah paht ob day. Five 'clock. An' dig twell mi'night.”
“Oh, did, heh, Good t'ing he didn't knock me up in de night lak dat oddah w'ite man whut lookin' fo' yo'—de one wid de Inverny cape. Well how much yo' goin' git fo' dat job?”
“How much yo' fink Ah oughter git?”
“Oughter git fo' bits fo' all dat diggin'. Dough mebbe he won' ebbah gib it to yo', sence—”
“He—he a kin' man! He'll—he'll gib me mo'n Ah should git. 'Cose, out o' whut he gibs, Ah—Ah gotta eat. How much Ah pay—fo' dis room?”
“Oh-ho!” she said sarcastically. “Whut a hot membry—yo's got. No, whut a skulldugger yo' is, Mist' Sam Brown. Finkin' Ah'd fo'git how much. An' tell yo' somep'n lowah dan whut yo' know 'tis. Well, yo' knows yo' pays me two bits a week heah.”
“Yeah, so Ah does. But Ah rilly did—fo'git. Did hab lots—on mah min'. Yas, two bits week. Well, kin—kin yo' wait 'twell Ah git me dat job did? Ah sho' hates to be on de st'eet widout no home no'—”
“Ah'll wait, yas. Ah'll be 'round befo' breakfas' time tomohhow. But lissen heah, Mist' Sam Brown. Don' yo' gib dat fo' bits away, now, fo' —”
“Gib it—'way?”
“Yeah, da's whut Ah said. Ah's huhd all 'bout yo'. Yo' gibs ebbaht'ing yo' gits to oddah people. Ain' ebbah got a cent yo'se'f 'cause yo' gibs it 'way. Yo' ain' all dah, in a sense. Yo' whut dey call happeh-go-luckeh.”
“So happeh-go-luckey dat Ah wouldn' kill mahse'f, heh?”
“Not yo'! Nebbah yo', nebbah! Yo' is a man whut don't keah ef he sleep out on de curb, an' git nuffin' but wrinkles in he belleh. Ain' nuffin' in de whol' wu'ld yo' would ebbah kill yo'se'f 'bout. Yo' is rich ef yo' is gnawin' on nuffin' but a po'k-chop bone whut's tho'wed away by somebuddeh from dey own picnic. Plenny st'ories 'bout yo' is b'en huhd by Missus 'liza Davis, me!”
“Hm? Is so, heh? Wall, kin be, kin be. Well, Ah pay yo' tomooh mawnin'.”
“See's yo' do. Fo' Ah got to mek mah rent money heah today, an' cain' mek it. Ah need dat two bits pow'ful bad. Ah needs eben mo'. If wasn' dat yo' hab borry dat pistol obah dah to shoot some sneakt'ief who you huhd fumlin' 'bout yo' do'—”
“Sneakt'ief—tryin' to—”
“Dat whut yo' tol' me yo' frien' who lended it to yo'. If wasn' fo' dat, Ah'd axe to gib me dat pistol an' le' me chahge it up on yo' rent whut's due an' in a'vance, lak, way, 8 bits fo' de pistol. But yo' cain' gib 'way 'nothah man's pistol.”
“Sho' cain'. Who Ah git dat pistol from?”
“Don' yo' membah? Don' yo' membah w'en yo' wuz showin' it to me? How yo' tell me yo' borried it—dough yo' didn' say who yo' borried it f'm—no' whah—no' w'en—no' how—des dat—”
“Well, Ah—Ah was at a pahty—an' Ah tell ebbahboddah dah Ah sho' did need to borry me a pistol to protec' mahse'f—an' w'en Ah wen' home, Ah' foun' it in mah pocket—de pocket ob dis reefah whut Ah had hunged up—well, Ah'd—Ah'd lak to t'ank de man whut put it dah fo' me.”
“Well den, go to de pawnbrokah whut sol' it to him, an' fin' out de hahd way.”
“Pawnbrokah?”
“Yo' is de sho'test membried man Ah hab ebbah seed, Mist' Sam Brown. Yo' showed me de stickah on de pistol. Yo' say to me, 'Now dah is a r'il frien', Missus Davis. He buy a pistol out o' pawn an' don' pro'bly hab chance fo' to fondle it lak a bebby—not eben time to take de pawnshop stickah off—den Ah ups an' borries it, lak.'“
“Ah see.” Clark tried to make a fusion of the two stories, hers and his. “Well yas. Ah said dat. Meanin' Ah should go to de pawnbrokah an' say Ah 'spressed mahse'f at pahty 'bout needin' a pistol fo' to skeah off a bu'glah. An' den someone put one in pocket ob mah coat whut hangin' up. An' dat now Ah wan's to retuhn it to de frien' whut s'pplied it. An' need he name. Is dat it?”
“Da's way Ah would do. Git de name yo' fool benefactah f'm de pawnbrokah. Eben ef he keep de pistol. Yo' don' need no pistol 'round yo'. Whut bu'glah ebbah hope to fin'—in dis room? Did a bu'ghlah rouse yo' in de night las' night?”
“Well, no. Ah wuz sleep' puhty hahd. At leas' up twell de time—”
“Who wuz dat man who knock yo' up in de night?”
“Oh, he man who gib me ehhan' to do upst'eet. He lib 'crost de st'eet.”
“Oh yas, obah whah w'ite man kilt himse'f las' night. Po' Mis' Jungclaus, dat kink ob hahd on huh. It don' be good w'en a house hab a susumcide in it. One good fing 'bout a niggah house is dat noboddah don' ebbah susumcide in it. Niggahs dey don' mek no truck wid dat. Dey sat'sfy' wid life.”
“Yas? Po'ke-chop bone, huh?—bench in pahk?—wondah mo' niggahs don't kill desevves as does. Wondah—”
“Dey don't kill deysevves at all—no-how—not 'tall. Dey'd druthah lib any ol' louseh way dan be fool daid. Dey—well, Ah'll go on now. But min' yo' now. Ah wan's dat two bits, come mawnin'. An' ef Ah don' git it—”
“Mawnin' yo' gits it,” Clark said dignifiedly. And closed the door on her.
“Come morning?” he said wearily. “After a hard night's back-breaking labor, I'll have—four bits. Of which she'll get—two. And then I'll have two bits—left.”
He shook his head bitterly.
“Clark Shellcross—Instructor in History at the Knickerbocker Academy, Boston—digging out cellars—to keep black body and soul
- no, black body and white soul—together. Yes, black body—and white soul. What a combination! For a lifetime association!”
_______
He lost no time in going over to the upended box and examining the pistol which had held, she said, a sticker.
He found it. A small printed and written sticker glued on the very end of its handle.
It said, the printed part did:
SOL BERG
326 Bay View Street
Pledge No. ______
And inked in, in fine black writing, after the printed words “Pledge No.” was the figure 2162, and below that, in red ink, were the words:
Out of Pawn
.He knew roughly about Bay View Street. Though had never actually been there. It was—at least so he had heard—a sort of cosmopolitan business street down on the water front, paved with cobblestones since otherwise it would never last under the pounding of traffic going to and from the Bay. Well, he would do well to go over there sometime today. For reasons other than what Mrs. Eliza Davis herself had covertly suggested. For this pistol, having been pawned once—and bought once—was pawnable again—or even sellable on the plea that it had been given him, or that he'd accidentally found it—which Lord knew he had! Mr. Sol Berg of 326 Bay View Street was perhaps one who asked no questions. Yes, the pistol would now provide easy capital—limited to be sure—against the moment when a certain cellar on Canterbury Place was excavated, and finished, and—
Clark letting the cocked hammer gently down, pocketed the pistol, and going over to the “Victuals” box raised its lid and peered within. There he found a third of a loaf of bread, a butcher knife, a half open baglet of ground coffee, and an unopened jar of home-made preserves, obviously the gift of some “white lady” for whom Sam Brown had done some work.
He put them all out on the box-table, unscrewing the lid off the homemade preserves, which gave forth with the smell of strawberry. Now, with a tinder match, he lighted the stove, such as it was. The 40 or more wicks were in flame within a few seconds after the first was lighted. Into a sauce pan he poured what he thought might be about a heaping tablespoonful of the coffee grounds, then, from the big pail, dipped onto the grounds what he thought was massive cup of water. Which he now put on to boil—or at least come to a boil.
Setting his “table” with the cracked platter from which a triangle was missing, and a nicked coffee cup and saucer, he waited for his coffee to come to a boil, cut off meanwhile a couple of slices of bread and smeared them, butterless as they were, with the preserves.
Now his coffee was ready, and he decanted it carefully over into the cup, managing to steer clear of decanting the grounds too.
And now, seated on the straight chair drawn up to the box-table, his knees lying within the saw-cut arch, he had breakfast. Breakfast consisting of bitter black coffee, and jam smeared on butterless stale bread.
Miserable as he was, however, he commenced to feel better after he had started to down all this. He did, to be sure, wonder how on earth he was ever going to do 7 or 8 hours of hard physical labor today on nothing but this food, backed by a scant 5 or 6 hours of sleep the night just gone. But decided that the worst that could happen was that he might collapse of exhaustion about midway of the job, and at least get paid off with two bits—25 cents.
Hearing, when he was still not quite through his meal, a boy crying papers down on the street, he rose swiftly and went downstairs to try to buy one. For his fingers, nervously exploring his back pocket in the night, for a non-existing bandanna handkerchief, had encountered a lone big copper 1-cent piece. So he had the wherewithal, at least, for a reading of one day's news! The boy, a white boy in cap and ragged short pants, was just going by the door of the place when Clark came out. The boy, he saw, was “stuck” with a few copies of his morning papers—knew that in some of these houses in the block lived and rested late sleepers—like gambling house employees, and burlesque show dancers—was on the job to clear out his stock if he could. Clark nodded for a paper, the boy handed him a copy of the Morning Globe; Clark passed forth his penny, and each went his own way, the boy up the street, Clark back up to his dismal room.
And there, drinking the rest of his bitter brew, he went through the paper, page by page. There was nothing, however—nothing—nothing, whatever—about the suicide of one, Clark Shellcross, residing at 222 Cabot Street. Nothing! He folded the paper up, and shoved it toward the wall.
Sitting there, chin in hand, with cup of brew now down, he found himself kind of glad that there was no news—of his suicide. The thought of Vernice weeping, broken-heartedly, at the news was not only disquieting—it was completely demoralizing. The lack of any news in the morning paper meant that she would at least have all day in which to be happy.
After which, with the appearance of the evening papers, she too must become as crushed and hurt—as was he. Two souls then they two would be—with almost like grief—two souls with but a single emotion—two souls—but wait!—wait—now could it possibly be that when it came to 'two souls with a single emotion' that he, Clark Shellcross, and Sam Brown, had been themselves two souls with some single emotion?—some single emotion from a single identical problem?—an emotion shaped and—and colored by a single force—and that that was why, as each lay trembling on the edge of sleep, and one was under the influence of a narcotic drug, their Consciousnesses had exchanged positions?
He abandoned all speculation now as to how demoralized—how crushed—Vernice was going to be when she would hear the news later today. Focused his attention now solely upon what had suddenly become his real and practical objective. Not to try to sell the pistol back to from where it had been purchased—pretending he'd found it somewhere—or had been given it anonymously—or what. But to claim he wished to return it to its rightful owner who'd entrusted him with it “at a party”—to seek, in short, from the undoubted records on the pistol, such being in existence because of it being a “firearm", the identity of the person who'd bought it “out of pawn”. For such person, Clark knew, if he'd passed an actual firearm to Sam Brown, must himself be black. A white man would hardly ever have done that. And being black, and having trustingly done such a possibly rash act, that person must know much, much, much about Sam Brown. If not, indeed—all there was to know!
Clark rose swiftly from the box-table and clapped onto his kinky head the battered cloth hat. His act one for the next few hours or so were quite clearly laid out now. And consisted of going straight to Bay View Street, now and immediately, and finding out both the name and whereabouts of the “out of pawn” buyer of the pistol. And then of going straight to the buyer himself, and, as “Sam Brown", finding out some way the why, and what, and whatnot else, of the past and inner and secret life of the black man he was representing himself to be.
And this, Clark half groaned to himself, would likely be a highly ticklish job. But would be, whatever it was, a prime case of sufficient unto the moment—was the ticklishness thereof!
_______
As Clark emerged from the door downstairs, a surrey, carrying a most ragged fringe about its flat top, drawn by a spavined white horse, and disgorging a white male passenger with a beautiful tan leather portmanteau in his hand, rolled about in an arc to go back the way the vehicle had evidently come—but stopped squarely—in the middle of the street.
Its driver, an elderly little weasoned Negro, in a shiny and exceedingly threadbare black full-dress suit and with a battered silk hat on his head, and a black string tie against a white shirt, and so shrunken by age that he looked like a boy on the seat, even to having to have blocks of wood under his feet—he was all of 75!—called out:
“Sam? Sam Brown? How yo' is? Whah yo' goin'? Hop in.”
Clark walked over to him.
“Hope yo' is de saim,” he said cautiously.
“Ob'diah Jenkins alwiz de saim,” said the little old man. “Whah goin? To look fo' wuhk? Reg'lah wuhk, Ah means?”
Clark said nothing.
“Save yo' time,” advised Mr. Obadiah Jenkins. “Ain' no reg'lah wuhk fo' niggah, nowhah. Is on'y odd jobses—w'en called—paperin' rooms—cuttin' lawns—runnin' ehhands—”
“- an' diggin' out a cellah whilst de moon a-shinin'? As one job Ah's got comin' is. Do Ah know it?”
“Well whah, den, is yo' goin' now? Moon ain' shinin' now?”
“Well, whah Ah is goin' now,” said Clark, “is a numbah o' places—at leas' two, Ah reckon. So Ah'll git go—”
“Den hop in. Ah goin' to tek yo' to bof ob dem. Mo', to, ef yo' has mo' callin' to do. Today de sky de limit.”
“Oh, Ob'diah, yo' cain't do dat. Ah ain' got no moneh. Ah cain' pay suhhey fah fo' one block, let 'lone long hawl of mah ca'cass to—”
“Shet yo' fool black mouf, yo'—yo' philanthrypist! Da's whut Ah said: Philanthrypist. Eban do' Ah know yo' on'y 'bout mont' now, an' don't know nuffin' 'bout yo' privike life o' nothin' o' how yo' eben tick inside. Ah does know pahticular f'm mah own 'speh'ance,—an' pahtly whut Ah've heered f'm othahs—dat yo' spen's yo' whole fool life doin'—fo' othahs. An' gibs away to othahs ebbat'ing yo' gits. Yo' is—'codin' to a black passengah Ah had, time yo' got out de suhhey an' he got in—yo' is de most lubbed man in Boston.”
“So?” said Clark. Adding. “An' de brokedest.” For he knew the two must go together.
“Ah reckon yas, de brokedest. F'm whut Ah also heahd. Now see heah, Sam. Time, two week' 'go, Ah didn' hab no med'cine fo' mah sick wife, Livvy, an' yo' pressed on me dat two dollar whut yo' had wuhked half a week to 'arn, an' say yo' lak mos' bes' in de wuhld dan an'fing else to feel dat yo' has sabed one hooman life—well, w'en yo' press' it on me an' say it gif' an' no dam' loan Ol' Ob'diah—Ah say come day some day w'en Ah goin' to dribe dat Sam all 'round town lak he a plum w'ite man. And so, by godfrey, heah yo' is—an' goin' somewhah, 'sum'bly—an' heah Ah is—an' dah Betsy wid de spavins is—an' Ah—Ah goin' to dribe yo' fo' whol' day—fo' Livvy well now, an' goose hang high fo' Ob'diah.”
“Oh, Ob'diah, Ah couldn' do dat. Ah—”
“Git in dah!” roared the little old man. “O' Ah'll slough yo' flat. Yo' is king fo' dis day—o' long as yo' need to ride. An' Ah yo' suhvant. Whah yo' wans to go fus', King Sam?”
Clark, throwing up his hands, climbed into the surrey in back of Obadiah.
“Th'ee twenny six, Bay View St'eet, Ob'diah,” he said.
“Git ap, Betsy,” said the old Negro, clucking at his horse.
And Clark was off. Collecting now for the kindnesses of another man whom he had somehow driven to his death!
_______
Bay View Street was an inferno of noise and confusion. Partly because Boston's usual 11:30 to noonday “lunch hour” was over, and partly because the street was paved with enormous cobblestones that reverberated clickingly and bangingly to everything that struck the round tops of each. It was formed of the highly variegated fronts of miscellaneous stores and buildings facing the bay, the buildings themselves old and with dust stained windows, the stores themselves cheap and tawdry. An overpowering smell of cordage, rope, tar, spices, and whatnot, filled the air. Down at the water front on the bay, two-masters and three-masters, and even one or two four-masters, could be seen moored or anchored, their sails now furled.
Sailors and roustabouts, the latter black for the most part, were trucking goods onto some of the ships. And off other ships.
As for the actual street itself, the actual thoroughfare, it was a beehive of traffic!
Wagons, drawn by prancing snorting horses, rattled by in both directions. Men atop horses too clobbered clatteringly along, most fine appearing men, finely dressed men, who looked as though they owned the ships down on the water. Short carts with long tongues protruding out backward from them, drawn by mules, and carrying bales of cotton either coming from the South, or going to England to be spun into cloth, bowled by, the bales swinging, jouncing up and down rhythmically and visibly on the projecting tongue-like extensions of the carts. Wooden bicycles, with riders paddling themselves along by the aid of their feet flailing on the cobblestones, crawled by. Huge iron bone-breakers, with enormous front wheels, and foot pedals at the axles thereof, wound in and out and around and between traffic, causing, in some instances, horses to rear neighingly and snortingly up on their haunches. Once, twice, thrice, an elegant open brougham went by, in one direction or the other, carrying in every case several men in it all smoking big black cigars, and doubtlessly representing directors of corporations engaged in shipping. Once a blue United States mail wagon went by with tied grey-canvas sacks in its open body—sacks doubtlessly ticketed for various ports, and destined to go out on those waiting ships, and spend days and weeks bouncing on the Atlantic Ocean—later, in some cases, the Pacific.
Number 326, about midway of the long curving one-sided block, being a pawnshop, had, as was to be expected, the usual three gilded balls hanging out and over its narrow and time-beaten, black-painted doorway. A half-window full of fly-specked merchandize on the left of the door carried a sign reading “In Pawn” and a similar half-window on the other side carried the same kind of a sign but reading “Out of Pawn.”
Urging Obadiah to let him, Clark, get out, and for him, Obadiah, to go on—and getting stern and indignant refusal—Clark hopped out. Crossed the sidewalk which, at some points along the block was flagstone, and at other points planks—and which here was rough planks!—and went in.
A tall man with a velvet “weskit” with a gold chain across it big enough to tie a “hawg” with, approached Clark.
“See something that you want to buy, black boy?”
“Not today suh, no,” said Clark. “Ah come dis day fo' to git in-inflammation 'bout who did buy dis pistol f'm yo'.”
He took it out and laid it on the counter.
The other nodded at it, as though it were more than familiar.
“How you got it, black boy?” the other man asked, more curious than accusingly. As one whose transactions, on the pistol, had been more than legitimate.
“Well, Ah was at a pahty las' night. All black folks, yas. Ah say, kinda loud so dat 'bout evv'boddah dah, Ah reckon, huhd me, dat Ah sho' wish' Ah had a pistol so's Ah could skeeah off a prowlah in mah lodgin' house who fumbled at mah do' offen in de night. An' sho' 'nough, w'en ebbaboddah bustlin' 'bout to go home, don' Ah fin' sich a pistol in mah reefah pocket. De reefah had b'en hangin' on de hall tree. Well, w'eddah de kin' an' gen'rous loanah ob it git tangle' up wid a black guhl at de moment—o' had wented 'way an' forgotted to tell me who he wuz—o' didn' know himse'f Ah had wented so he couldn't look me up an' tell me—well, Ah des nevah did git to fin' out who he wuz, let 'lone to ackyknowledgy de pistol. So now Ah wan' to retuhn it. T'anks to yo' stickah bein' on it, an' de facks 'bout de pistol bein' on yo' registah —”
“If you want to return it,” said Mr. Sol Berg, assuming it was he, “You must have shot the prowler—in the night. Is that right?”
“He wuz 'rrested dis mawnin' by de po-lice—tryin' to git in nothah room—an' he co'fess to dem about him tryin' 'gain an' 'gain to git into mah room. Ah won' hab no mo' trubble wid him now. Fo' ebbahboddah else in mah lodgin' house is as hones' as de day is long.”
“Very well, den. Glad you didn't shoot anybody with it. In fact, since you're not a legitymate owner, the sooner it gets out of here and back to the owner, the bett- Wait a minute. I'll look. We never sell firearms to a nigger without having a letter from his white employer and full identification of him—yes, the name and address...”
He brought up from under the counter a heavy cloth-bound ledger. Flipped the pages over. Stopped. Nodded.
“Yes, here 'tis. Number 2162.”
He read off:
“Woo-Woo Jones, 12 Catfish Alley, back of Garboy Street.
Clark was registering this all in his mind.
“Ain' no oddah name dan 'Woo-Woo'?” he begged.
“No. He said he'd b'en called 'Woo-Woo' so long that it was more his name than any other. Don't you know who he is?”
“Trubble is,” pleaded Clark hurriedly, “Ah knows th'ee Woo-Woos.”
“But not three in Catfish Alley?”
“Dat sho' de truf. An' lucky fo' me it say Catfish Alley down dah. Sho, Ah know de man now. Know him well. He good fella. Ah gib him back his pistol.
The gentleman in the “weskit” made no effort of restraint, much less objection or anything when Clark pocketed the pistol again. He was plainly convinced that one Negro wanted to express many thanks to another Negro. And that he, Sol Berg, wasn't going to be in the middle of any pistol transferring from Mr. Yon to Mr. Hither or in reverse.
Clark withdrew and got back to the waiting surrey.
“Ob'diah, does yo' know whah is Gahboy St'eet?”
“Sho' do. Fine st'eet wid fine w'ite people libbin' on it. Nice houses med ob stone. Not brick, no' wood. But fine solid sto-”
“Whut back ob it, Ob'diah?”
“Oh, usual alley fo' niggahs to lib on. It call' Catfish Alley.”
“Well, will yo' tek me dah den, Ob'diah—to Numbah 12—Catfish Alley?”
“Oh—no!” cried the old man. “Any place but dah, Sam”
“Well whut wrong—wid Catfish Alley? If niggahs lib' long it? Yo's a niggah. Whut wrong wid it?”
“Whut wrong? Mah God! Whut wrong? Razah-Flash Smith lib in one de houses in dat alley. Ah had se'ious run-in wid him back 'wile ago. He not pay me fo' hawlin'. Ah' t'reaten Ah git de po-lice aftah him—he hop out an' say if ebbah he see me 'gin, he gonna cut mah th'oat. W'y, if Ah go in dat alley, Sam, an' he catch sight ob me—Sam, he's a bad, bad, bad man. He big. He lak a gorilly. He orn'ry. He stinkin', louseh mean. He kilt a man down in N'Awleans, dey say—a niggah whut wuz biggah dan a house, an'—”
“Ah'll git out de suhhey,” begged Clark, “a way sho't ob Catfish Alley. An' yo' kin go raght on. In fack, ef yo' tell me how to git obah dah, yo' kin go on raght now by yo'se'f an'—”
“Don' be silleh. Yo' mah ridin' gues', dis day. Trubble is, dat dam' alley—no, dat dam' Razah-Flash. He pizen. He—Ah tell yo' whut ah do. Ah tek yo' full block 'roun' co'ner f'm it—to Gahboy St'eet, out in front. Razah-Flash, if he come' 'long out dah, cain't do nuffin' to me on w'ite st'eet whah peoples see him, an' know him, an' git him 'rrested. He do his tough stuff in niggah alley whah ebbahboddah 'fraid to open dey black moufs. He—git in. Ah'll tek yo' close 'nough dat yo' kin walk 'round an' in to de alley.”
“Will do, Ob'diah. Thanks a millyum.”
Clark settled back in the cushions again. The old Negro clicked to Betsy, and off they rolled again. He asked back of himself curiously:
“Yo' don' scem yo'se'f to be skeahed ob goin' into Catfish Alley, does yo'?”
“Whah should Ah be?” said Clark. “Ah ain' had no run-ins wid Razah-Flash. Ain' ebbah done nuffin to him. Don' eben know him. No' him me. In sho't, Ah'm muffin to him. Pos'tively nuffin'.”
Ah Clark—alias Sam Brown—in jet black body, you haven't done anything—to Razor-Flash, no. Except, as Sam Brown, to have called at his home at periods he wasn't there—to have made love to his high-yallow wife with whom you've been madly in love—his
high-yellow wife who, incidentally, has informed her big black baboon who was there last with her—no, nothing at all. Quite—nothing!
_______
Obadiah turned off the water front at the first cross street. The surrey bowled along, to the sound of clickings to Betsy, gees and haws, and “whoas” and “git-aps", as a back-water commercial district set in with tall skyscrapers all of four stories high—even five, in one case!—came thus onto residential streets again, and finally a street of fine mansions, small, to be sure, but all of stone, with generous front lawns and ornamental iron fences out in front.
Here Obadiah drew to a stop in front of one, about midwise of a long block, with several majestic elm trees in its yard, and several little girls inside shrilly playing croquette. Down the sidewalk, this side, from each end of the block, and even now passing each other with jubilant cries, came two small boys rolling hoops—evidently some kind of a game as to which one would get to the other's starting point first—the ribbons in their wide straw hats flew in their own wind—as did their long-trousered legs.
“Catfish Alley,” Obadiah now informed his non-paying fare, “is whut's in back ob dis st'eet, dis p'int, dis side. Yo' go down to co'nah dataway—” He wiggled a black finger. “- oddah way 'round wouldn' git yo' in, 'caze it a blind alley, an' dat is block' so fuh as gittin' in—wall, yo' go down all de way Ah jis' showed—tuhn—go fo'wahd 'bout two hund'ed feet—an' tuhn once mo'—an' yo' plum' in Catfish Alley den. An' yo' kin look fo' numbah ob whah yo' reckon t' stop off. Ah'll wait heah, meanw'ile, outside on Gahboy St'eet heah whah Razah-Flash, in case he come shamblin' 'long, won' dah do nuffin' wid w'ite eyes a-watchin' th'ough windows an'—an' chillen playin' 'round whut would all be witnesses ag'in him in co'te, ef he do an'fing. Go ahaid, Sam.”
So Clark climbed out. Trotted down the block, turned off at a street which marked the side of a particularly impressive house, went clear on to where a square-constructed coach house sat in behind it, and now he stood at the edge of the opening of dirt-paved alley about 12 feet wide.
Peering in, rather around and in, he saw dingy dwellings along each side, those on one side being palpably the rear ends of lots whose houses looked out on the street parallel to Garboy. Some were ramshackle, but others were coach houses. He turned into the alley now, noting numbers scrawled on doors, or painted on, or even nailed on, the various digits obviously cut from old tin or other material.
As he drew near a blockhouse-like coach house which conceivably would bear the number he sought, the door on the alley opened, and a man came tearing out. He was a tall Negro of about 43, with a black torn felt hat shoved down over his head, a short coat, overalled legs in boots, and a bright yellow tieless shirt. He was just taking his hand off the string-tied door as he saw Clark.
“Glohy—be!” he cried. “Sam! T'ank God, Sam—is Ah glad to see yo'.”
This must be Woo-Woo Jones, Clark took a long chance.
“W'y, Woo-Woo?”
He was up to the door now that the putative Woo-Woo had been violently exiting from. He heard the champing of horses inside the coach house, and knew the door led to living quarters up above the horses.
“W'y? Mah God, Sam! Aftah gittin' yo' lettah, Ah was abs'lutleh suhtain yo' wuz daid.”
Clark saw he was getting close to something vital.
“Ain't. But whah wuz yo' goin'—now?”
“Whah? Whah else but to de po-lice to sabe yo' f'm comittin' susumcide.”
“Susumcide? Ah ain' eben daid, let alone susum-”
“T'ank God yo' isn'.”
A bunch of colored children were coming about now. They had materialized from nowhere.
“Git out ob heah,” cried Woo-Woo exasperatedly, “all ob yo'. An' min' yo' bus'ness w'en yo' 'speriors talk. He looked helplessly about him. “Sam, come in heah—inside de do'.” Us got audience out heah.”
He threw open the door. Exposing a splintered wooden staircase going upstairs, with chipped plaster walls showing lathes and a padlocked door at its right evidently leading into the coach house proper. Evidently he—perhaps his family?—had quarters here, but was not the coachman, for it seemed stoutly padlocked against his entry, and he did not say “Le's go in the stable.”
Closing the door on them, they stood now in the light from a pane of dirty glass serving as transom above it.
“Fus, whah dat dam' pistol?” Woo-Woo demanded stoutly. “Yo' fetch dat dam' pistol? O' do we got to go an' git it?”
“Brung it,” said Clark. Withdrew it from his side coat pocket.
Woo-Woo grabbed it. “Woo-woo!” he said relievedly, and revealed clearly now how he'd gotten his name. “Do dat—relieb me! Ah shouldn' oughter nebbah hab lended it to yo' at all, Sam. Not wid de fool idees yo' had in yo' min'.” He was fervently pocketing the pistol.
“Reckon mebbe yo' hadn',” said Clark, for want of anything else to reply.
He looked up the stairway, more curiously than anything. Woo-Woo, however, took this as criticism because he, Clark, wasn't being invited up.
“De ol' lady,” Woo-Woo explained, “don' know nuffin' 'bout all dis, an' Ah'd raddah she didn'. Ah got de lettah down heah at de do', an' min' Ah read it, Ah stahted to teah out fo' de police station.”
“Huccome,” said Clark, “yo' git it so late—in day?”
“Well, yo' know, Sam, dey don' mek delibberies o' way to back alleys like dis. Dey des delibbah de way Ah tol' yo' 'bout. To de numbah out in front—an' if it say 'Reah' on it, de w'ite folks inside sen's it back by one ob dey chillens. De top boy in dat house up fron'—Rollo he name—he on'y now t'inked to bring it out heah, dough wuz prob'ly delibbered dis mawnin' arly. W'en Ah read it, Ah said 'Mah God! Ah'm—too late.'“
This wasn't getting anywhere.
“Kin Ah see mah lettah?” Clark asked hurriedly.
“Well,” said Woo-Woo, sardonically, “ef yo' wanna wallow in yo' grief all obah—a-a-all raght.”
Woo-Woo extracted from his breast pocket a loose envelope and a long tri-folded sheet. He shook the sheet clear of its folds. It was a sheet of foolscap. He handed it to Clark.
By the light from the dirty transom, Clark examined it. It had been done in crudely printed letters, capitals, lower case, and sometimes script—all the words in it were written as though by a child. And in soft pencil. It ran:
Deer Woo-Woo
Wen yo gits dis I am ded. I gess
so anyway.
I ain got nuffin but to git out dis worl, 4 I is got a probem whut I caint solbe—an it do wid lub.
It do Woo-Woo wid Jodie Green dat high
yallow gal whut lib down at de foot yo alley whah it daid ended. Lawd but I lub dat gal Woo-Woo. But she won mahhy me say she twell I steel one thousum dollah fum Doctah Revend Fearnaught an huh an me we tek it on de heel an toe 2 Calyforny or sum fool plaice whah dey caint ketch us.
Woo-Woo I caint do dat. Doctah Revend
Fearnaught he hab bin mah biggest friend ouside yo. He leab money all obah his plaice—I eben knows how to git into his safe whah he keep foldin money an silvah and eben gol. I could steel it easy. But Woo-Woo I caint.
I caint lib widout Jodie. I des crawlin fo huh all de time.
An das wy I borry yo pissel las night ol frien.
I figgah day ain no way out mebbe.
I says mebbe.
Caze sometime wen man go to slepe an wek up lil wile latah fo lil wile, dey is den in his min idee how to solbe somefin whut he coulnd solbe wen he wen to slepe. Do offen an lots times dey Isn any idee tall.
Well Woo-Woo I goin set dat pissel tnight on mah box-stan. All reddy fo use. If mus. I gonna drap off an hab mah fus good slepe anyway.
Wen I wek little latah lak as usal do, if dey is one singel idee in mah haid how to git Jodie widout steelin I gonna let tings drif twell dawn an wuhk out de idee. But if I weks on same ol probem an don know nohow in de whol world how to solbe it I des gonna reech out in de dakniss an tek up dat pissel—an bing—one shot in mah haid—an dat de end fo me an peceful swete peece at lon las.
Don tell nobbodah whut Jodie wanned me
2 do. I wans to perteck huh deah naim. Ain nice to blemmish gals naim.
I hopes yo gits yo pissel back Woo-Woo.
Reckon plice glad to gib it back sence yo boughted it an had lettah of pmisshun fum yo boss. An if I don ebbah see you gin, wan to say I wuz verry luckie dat I ebbah had a frien lak yo.
Hopin yo is fellin fine.
Sam.
Clark was at the end of the letter.
At last—at last he had the answer of why his Consciousness had flown into Sam Brown's body. And Sam Brown's into his. Why those Consciousnesses had exchanged nests—at a moment when both persons were sleeping—and at distance so short as only a street-width or so between them—with even one particular Consciousness liberated entirely from its body, due to a narcotic flowing in the veins of that one.
Both individuals—both!—had the same identical emotional status—at the time this occurred. That of a man in love with a woman—confronting a problem inaugurated by her—by the woman herself!—a problem the victim could not solve. At least not in line with his own conscience, his soul, his mentality—
He and Sam!
Sam and he!
Two men facing the same thing in life!
And now Sam—poor Sam—had solved his problem. He had gone forth into the bourne from which no man returneth.
And he, Clark, had to carry on—in his place. Loving blond Vernice—consorting, if he ever had to have feminine companionship, with girls like Jodie Green. Who wanted only what a man could steal—not the man himself. Consorting with such, yes, if needs be—but not Jodie Green, no. For Jodie Green could now cry her eyes out—as poor Vernice would be doing soon this day—cry her eyes out for the Sam that would be gone for good and all from her, Jodie Green's life!
_______
Clark handed the letter back to Woo-Woo.
“Sence Ah'm alibe,” he said, sheepishly, “whut says we de-stroy dat lettah?”
“Says yas,” retorted Woo-Woo fervently. He tore it down midwise of itself, then putting the long strips together, he tore them widthwise. Put the resultant sections together, and tore them again crosswise. This way, that way. Finally stuffing the resultant hundred or so pieces into his own outer jacket pocket.
“Ah 'stribute dese 'round' de st'eets, piece by piece,” he announced, “twell dey all gone.”
Now he surveyed Clark solicitously.
“Wall now, yo' is alibe. An' raght back to yo' prob'em, ain' yo'?”
“Well,” sighed Clark, “reckon Ah is. Ah des cain't steal thousum dollah f'm Doctah Feahnaught. An' yet cain't mahhy Jodie Green 'thout doin' so.”
“Yo' po', po', black fool!” said Woo-Woo. “Yo' po' blin' fool. Yo' t'ick-haided ijit. Yo'—”
“W'y yo' call me fool an' ijit, Woo-Woo? Ah didn' shoot mahse'f; Ah didn'—”
“Caount ob yo' bein' in lub ob Jodie Green,” Woo-Woo burst out, exasperated. Now he was shaking his head in unbelief of some kind. “Ef Ah'd on'y knowed, Ah could have put yo' wise long 'go. But yo' so thin-skinned yo' don' wan' nobbodah to know yo' callin' on Jodie Green.”
Clark nodded humble assent.
“Well now yo' goin' to git de fac's ob life. Sam, whut yo' t'ink ef Ah tell yo' dat mens comes up de alley nights, an' goes to de yallow house on de fu'thah blin' end—da's whut Ah said—to de end house—de blind end house, de yallow house—yas, Jodie Green's house—an' dat dese same mens comes down de alley mawnin's?”
“Oh no!” said Clark, sensing that this was what he should say. “Oh no?”
“Oh yas. Whut yo' t'ink dem mens doin' all night?”
“Oh, Ah—Ah cain't beah—to t'ink. Ah—”
“Well yo' bettah t'ink. Fo' tain't des one suttin man. No' one sutten' two men. O' th'ee. Dey is plenny mens. How yo' t'ink she git dem pretty clothes to put on huh yallow ca'cass fo' to trap folkses lak yo'?”
“Ah—Ah t'ought—Ah t'ought—ah—some Auntie gib dem to huh.”
“Ho? So dat huh sto'y, huh?” Woo-Woo sighed helplessly. “Sam, she wuzn' plottin' to tek off wid yo' w'en yo' had stealed dat thousum dallah. She aimed fo' to gib it to Razah-Flash Smif.”
“Razah-Flash—Smif? W'y—w'y she gib moneh Ah's stolened to—to puffec' strangah?”
“Puffec' strangah—hah! Sam, she mahhied to Razah-Flash.”
“Mahhied—to Razah-Flash? Mahh-”
“Ah'm sayin'. Mah bruthah he wuz de pahson whut hitched 'em.”
“Oh! Den—den yo' cookin' on hick'ry wood—ef yo' broddah de pahson. Oh my! Mahhied to Razah-Flash. Mahhied to Razah-Flash! Mahh- but wait—w'y—w'y Razah-Flash don' cut de th'oat ob dem mens whut comes to huh place at night, an'—an' stays all night?”
“How kin a man be sich a fool,” said Woo-Woo, utterly at a loss. “Razah-Flash he stay 'way all night at crap games so's she kin hab vis'tahs. Razah-Flash he git de money de men pays huh fo' to shoot craps wid.”
“Oh my! She—she seein' me—an' takin' whut little Ah had to gib—an' gibbin' it to huh husbum. Oh my! An' she say she lub' me—goin' to mahhy me—goin'—”
“- soon's yo' steal one thousum dollah, yeah.”
“Oh my!” said Clark.
“Oh my?” said Woo-Woo. “Yo' mean woo-woo!”
Clark but stood there shaking his head. He was dumfounded even to learn how another man's problem had really and actually stood all the time.
“Well,” Woo-Woo now asked significantly, “is yo' cured now, Sam?”
“Is Ah cured? Ah don' wan' to nebbah see not on'y dat high yallow gal ag'in—Ah don' want to see any kin' ob high yallow gal—Ah don' wan' see any kin' ob a gal, any coloh, ag'in. Ah is b'en a fool. A dam' fool. A—”
“Trubble is,” said Woo-Woo sagely, “it de high yallow whut mek Jodie whut she is. High yallow allus mean w'ite blood. An' fo' some dam' fool reason, de black mens goes fo' de w'ite wimmens. But de mo' w'ite, de mo' badness. Fac'! Now black 'ooman, Sam, full black 'ooman—huh goo'ness an' decency depen' on how much w'ite she ain' got in huh. De less she has de bettah she be. If ooman got one-eighth w'ite in huh, she tetched a bit in de wrong di-rection. Ef she got quatah, she plum orn'ry. If she got half—an' dey say Jodie she full half!—she jist devil—no-good devil.”
“Does Ah know it—now?”
“Well, yo' is alibe—an' yo' is wisah man, an' Mist' Shakeaspeare he say dat all whut en's well is well. So now Ah go on to mah wuhk. At de Fo'th St'eet libery stable. An' yo' sees yo' don' do mo' susumcidin'—'bout no gals o' nuffin.”
“Won' do, Woo-Woo. Had reasum to do it las' night, belieb yo' me. O' t'ought Ah had. Now—but cain't do no susumcidin' now—cause ain' got no pissel.”
“Yeah, an' yo' ain' ebbah goin' git de one whut now in mah pocket 'gin, Ah tell yo' dat. Pe'iod!”
“Reckon Ah sho' ain'. Well, Ah'll go now. Fo' Ah know plum well yo' ain' gonna lug a pissel obah town in yo' jacket pocket whah yo' might git 'rrested—yo' gonna tek it back upstayahs fu'st an' put it whah it come f'm. So Ah'll go on mahse'f now. 'Count a frien' holdin' a rig whut he brung me heah in. It's out on Gahboy St'eet. T'anks fo' tellin' me 'bout Jodie. Ah should have tookened yo' in mah conf'dence long 'go. But lak yo' say, all well whut end well—well, ebbat'ing ain' end so well fo' dis man whut doin' dis talkin'—but an'way, Sam Brown, Exquiah, he now back to—”
“To whut?”
“Samity.”
“Meanin' yo' ain' crazy no mo'?”
“Meanin' same. Well, Ah git out now, Woo-Woo.” Clark saluted, put his hand on the shoulders of the tall Negro, and drawing open the door went back out into the alley, even as the other, nodding satisfiedly, turned back up his own stairs to sequester the pistol.
In a trice Clark was going up the alley to turn off into the sidestreet. Stopping bluntly near the end, however, as a huge Negro of age about 36, weighing all of 300 pounds, wearing a checkered black and white suit, a red turtle-neck sweater and a fuzzy cap, turned into the alley. Came almost into collision with Clark, except that the collision was just barely avoided by both men stopping. The oncoming man's face, if it hadn't been black, would have been purple with rage; it was contorted that way.
“Whut is dis?' he roared. “De stoppin' p'int fo' all de trains an' busses? Git 'round me—”
“Git 'round yo'?” retorted Clark. “Ah wuz tryin' to 'void knockin' yo' plum on yo'—”
“Wuz, heh?” said the newcomer in the turtle-neck sweater. “Look to me lak' yo' lak to talk mo' dan to git out ob de way ob gen'lemens.” He was fumbling in his back pocket. “Mos' peoples whut stan' plum' in front ob Razah-Flash, dey gits out'n his way. Yo' stand dah an' gib long speech lak—”
“Yo'—yo' is—is Razah-Flash?” said Clark.
“Says yes. An' ain' call' dat fo' nuffin. Aim to was'e no time now in cuttin' yo' th'oat, an'—”
“Hol' yo' razah!” said Clark. And jumped aside with alacrity. “Am strangah 'round heah.”
“Bet yo' ain'. Bet yo' tryin' to fin' a 'ooman. Try de yallow house on de end nex' time yo' be around heah. Dam' looscious female lib dah. She tek cah' ob yo'. But don't go back deah now. Ah'm goin' deah mah'sef fo' li'l w'ile. An' don't aim to hab no fool niggah dribblin' at de mouf w'ile Ah dah. Now go on. Go!”
Razor-Flash, being now completely unblocked in his progress, and having given forth profitable commercial bulletin, strode on where he was going, weaving a bit, and showing that the redolent smell about him had been gin. He was undoubtedly bound in specific quest of finding how much his wife, Jodie Green-Smith, had made this night just gone.
Clark traversed the half block that would bring him to Garboy Street, and could see Obadiah and his surrey waiting up the street. Up he went to the surrey. Said, to Obadiah:
“Ah met up wid—Razah-Flash.”
He could feel Obadiah shudder.
“He tu'n in drunk—in de alley,” elaborated Clark, “as Ah comed out.”
“Oh t'ank God Ah wusn' standin' dah at de alley mouf waitin' fo' yo'. He plum' so' at me. He hates me—he—Ah'm lucky.”
“Reckon yo' is. Ah didn' try to cross him. He was breathin' out gin. He big as git-out. He plum' is a gorilly. He no good, Ob'diah. He gonna git hunged.”
“Soonah dey hang him bettah Ah is sot'sfied. Fo' de Swo'd ob Damycles'll be off'n an' 'way f'm mah haid. Wondah whut his wife'll do—w'en he do git hunged?”
“His wife? She git 'long a'raght, Ah bet. She git 'long.”
“Whah to now, Sam?”
Clark climbed into the vehicle.
“Well, Ob'diah,” he said, “yo' kin tek me to 242 Flowah St'eet.”
“Yeah? Flowah St'eet? 242?”
“Yas.”
“Yo' reckon fo' to pick up someboddah dah?”
“No, Ob'diah. Ah hab got to convey some sad, awful news to a w'ite lady. 'Bout death ob someboddah she lubbed. Someboddah whut Ah wuhked fo'. Ah won' eben hol' yo' dah. W'en we gits dah, yo' kin go on.”
“Okay. Dat's Injun langwidge. Mean 'will do'. W'ite lady, eh? Well, Ah don' envy yo'. Niggahs dey kin tek it. No mattah whut de news. But w'ite leddies dey weep dey fool haids off. All yo' gonna hab to do de res' ob de day, Sam, is to wip teahs off'n yo'.”
“Reckon mebbe Ah is,” conceded Clark darkly.
And he settled back on the cushions to steel himself for his interview with the girl he loved most in the world, and would never love other!
_______
“Well, heah yo' is, Sam. Two fo'ty two, Flowah St'eet.”
Yes, 242 Flower Street it was, as Clark could see out the side of the surrey. The charming little grey-painted cottage with its portico over its narrow front stoop held by square-hewed though slender pillars, the intricate spool-turned overhang from the portico roof, the bronze pull-bell in the graceful door, the multi-paned front windows with their rounded, arched tops, heavily lace-curtained and from behind which curtains Vernice was probably even now peeping, wondering what on earth the arrival of a black man at 242 Flower Street—and in a surrey!—could mean!
He climbed out.
“Wan' me to wait, Sam?” pleaded Obadiah. “Will do, glad'y.”
“No, Ob'diah. No. Jes' go on. Somef'n tell me Ah'll be usin' up consid'ble time now. Aftah w'ich dey'll be nuffin' fo' me to do, an' no place to go, twell around fi' 'clock, an'—but t'ank yo' a millyum.”
“T'ank yo'. Fo' shut yo' did time Ah need dat med'cine bad fo' Livvy. Goodbye, den. Goo' luck. Git ap, Betsy.”
And to the tune of a “cluck” which Betsy recognized as her special own language, Obadiah was off.
Clark crossed the sidewalk, went up the steps, and pulled at the bronze pull-bell.
It was answered shortly by Vernice's own grandmother, whom he seldom got to see when calling there as Clark Shellcross, and even less than seldom actually gotten to speak to. She was a wispy, frail looking little old lady weighing 80 or 90 pounds, seemingly, and patently all of 80 years of age. For her hair was snow-white and her gentle face a mass of interlinked wrinkles. She wore a dirty wrapper at this moment, and her old face was quite red as though from some activity too great for her strength. Looking down, sidewise of her, he saw she held an axe in one hand.
“'Scuse me, ma'm,” he said, “but could Ah speak to Mis' Treves?”
The answer came in the peculiar tremulous old-lady voice Vernice's grandmother had.
“She's not here, black boy, just now. I'm her grammaw.”
“Oh yessum, yessum. Glad to meet yo', ma'm. Well how soon yo' reckon she git back?”
“There's no exact telling, black boy. She expected to be the afternoon with some girl friends doing some shopping, in the brougham owned by one of them. After that, they all expected to stop off somewhere, in some hotel dining room, and have tea. And the hostess then to take each home. It could be any minute she'll return—might be an hour—just no telling.”
“Could Ah wait on de fron' steps heah?”
“Certainly, black boy. Just sit down and wait. Anything I can do?”
“No, ma'm. Mus' see Mis' Treves huhse'f.”
“Very well. Sit down out there on the steps, then.”
The door closed. And as he did settle on the steps near the bottom neither at the bottom or at the top, he heard the impact of axe against firewood.
And thus he sat waiting for the appearance of her whom he'd loved so fiercely. So deeply engrossed was he in thinking about the sad task he had in front of him, that he saw only out of the upper part of his lids a spanking trotter go by drawing a phaeton-like carriage. The horse raised his thoroughbred-like legs proudly as though he were a mechanical horse, and wound up. The driver was a well-dressed man with wide handlebar blond-grey mustaches in a driving hat that could not blow off. He wore a professional frock coat. He had a doctor's square black leather bag on the seat beside him.
He'd turned his head casually as he'd passed. Suddenly said “Whoa,” reducing the speed of his horse.
Thus reduced, he guided the animal and vehicle across to the curb. Hopped out. Flung an iron weight down, carrying a long strap, and now attached the strap by a snap catch to the horse's bit. All this accomplished, he walked back to where Clark was sitting.
“Confound you, Sam,” he said, smilingly, “what on earth are you doing over here—in this part of town?”
Clark let his eyes go up and down the dark frock coat, then to the square black leather bag on the phaeton seat. Decided to take a chance in his reply.
“Well, Doctah, Ah has got message fo' a w'ite leddy libbin' heah. She away now, huh grammaw say. So Ah waitin'.”
“Well, that's all right. But when Doctor Phideas Craig agrees to give you a full going-over and a 24-karat report on your present health, you future, your whole life, this is no way to be coming in and getting it.”
He surveyed Clark, downright enviously.
“Move over,” he said, “and let an admiring doctor sit down alongside you. And I'll give you your report!”
_______
He was certainly a most democratic man, Clark had to admit.
He came up the steps a step or two, and plumped down alongside Clark as though they were long lost brothers.
“Well, Sam,” he began, “when you papered my house and did such a good job that I wanted to give you a bonus—and you wouldn't take it—and so I had to give you a complete free physical and medical check-up and going-over—only thing you were willing to accept—I didn't dream I'd find the world's most perfectly healthy man.”
“Puffec'ly healfy man? Yo' mean Ah is c'pleteley healfy?”
“Yes, as I know today, now. After getting Doctor Lladislaw Zinciewicz' report on your blood. Yes, Sam, my findings showed you were heart-perfect, lung-perfect, wind-perfect, muscle-perfect, nerve-perfect, everything. On my own check alone, I'd have given you a hundred years or rather the difference between that and what you are now—to live. But I did want Dr. Zinciewicz to really complete it though.”
“Who he, suh?”
“Well, Sam, he's the foremost diagnostician in the world today—that is, for blood. He's a Russian-Polish-born physician actually brought up in Paris, who's built up quite a science from examination of blood, chemically and of course under a microscope. He's said to be a hundred years in advance of his time, and thus will doubtlessly be quickly forgotten, as will all his writings and findings, once he's dead. For isn't that the way it always goes, Sam, with people who are ahead of their age? I say so, anyway! Since—however, to try to get this discussion down to the level of your linguistic absorption of it, Zinciewicz maintains that no matter how a man looks on the outside—how well, I mean—there are always the premonitory symptoms—signs—showing in his blood, of diseases—certain diseases, anyway, he may be destined to develope in due course. So, Sam, I sent him that sample I took of your blood. Paying for the examination of it myself.”
“Dat sho' wuz good ob yo', Doc—ah—Doctah. An' whut he say? It too raid, mebbe?”
“No, Sam, he said it's perfect. Not a stigmatum in it—not a sign, in your language, of any of the various lurking diseases that he knows about—knows only too well, alas, from doing this sort of work for years. Sam, you pass. With colors flying! I wish I had your report with respect to myself, confound it.”
“Whut Ah do now?”
“Live, man! Enjoy the greatest heritage a man can have. Health! Lose it, man, and nothing in the world—nothing can compensate for it. Lose it, and a million dollars won't suffice to take its place. Lose it—Sam, nurse your perfect health as you would a diamond—the biggest and purest and most valuable diamond in the world.”
Clark thought on all this, though dismally. Spoke.
“Well, reckon ef yo' say Ah should tek keah ob it—dat is mos' val'ablest t'ing in whol' wuhld, reckon Ah sho' will. Ob co'se, man cain't be happy jest an' on'y 'caze he gonna lib a long pesterin' life. He—”
“Oh yes he can. Yes, he can.”
“Says no, Doctah. 'Caze dey is oddah t'ings in life. Lak' followin' de wuhk he lak mos' to do. Habbin' 'ooman who—well—habbin' de lublife he long fo'.”
“Well, the work you like, from all I hear about you, is doing for others. Plus, secondarily, running errands. Papering rooms. Cutting wood. And grass. Clipping hedges. Isn't that so?”
“Yas,” said Clark sepulchrally. “An' diggin' out a cellah now an' den—phooie!”
The doctor shook his head.
“I give up! A man with a clearance from me and Dr. Zinciewicz belittling—his fate. I only wish I had such a clear—I must go on, Sam. I have all my afternoon calls yet to make. See you again. Come in when you can.”
“Will do, suh.”
The doctor was up and off the steps. Back to his rig. Taking up his iron weight, unhooking it from the horse's bit, climbing with it into the rig. Now with a click worthy of Obadiah Jenkins, he was off to his patients.
And now Clark was alone again. To reflect on the curious fact that he had nothing to be sad about. Yes, nothing! Nothing. Nothing. How little a doctor—could know—about life!
_______
And now as he reflected, she came.
She came as one of four ladies riding, with lace-trimmed sun parasols above their heads, in a brougham driven by an old white-haired Negro in coachman's coat and impeccably perfect silk hat. They were laughing and tittering.
Now it drew up at the house. The old coachman hopped out. And helped her out. She wore not a hoopskirt, but a plum-colored velvet street- or shopping-garment, with flounces, and a long train she had to pick up in a gloved hand whose lace fell over her fingers. The sleeves of the neat bodice were mutton-leg sleeves. She wore also an enormously wide-brimmed velvet hat with a feather.
“Ta-ta, girls!” she cried, turning back momentarily, and waving. “See you all again.”
“Ta-ta, Vernie,” they all cried in shrill unison.
“Enjoyed the tea so much, Emmy Lou,” she said.
“Come again, Vernie, and we'll do it all over again.”
The brougham drove off. She turned, crossed the sidewalk like a queen, and came up to the steps.
Stopping curiously as she saw Clark, wondering doubtlessly if he were just a wayfarer, resting.
But evidently not too sure of that, she asked:
“Waiting to see someone, black boy?”
“Yessum. Is yo'—Miss Vuhnice Treves?”
“The same, black boy.”
He rose politely.
“Well, could Ah talk to yo' few minutes privake lak?”
“Is it about work? My grammaw does all the necessary work around here. I have no work for you, none.”
“Well no ma'm, 'taint 'bout wuhk. Dough mebbe at dat—” He didn't know exactly why he said these latter words: perhaps he said them because, knowing women's intuition about dreadful things, he didn't want to start frightening her, out here—making her put her hand to her heart—go white—say 'You have bad news for me, black boy?' Added: “Ah kin do papah hangin', in case yo'—”
She threw back her head so that her white throat was exposed, and laughed heartily.
“Heavens! Grammaw did the last papering job in my house here. The parlor itself. She did it atop a step-ladder, and did the ceiling wonderfully, though she did get a crick in her neck. No available work, black boy, none.”
“A'right, ma'm,” he said. “Jest tried—whilst heah on othah bus'ness. But Ah have got—some info'mation.”
“What's it about?”
He thought on this and harrowedly. The while she faced him. And before she should search for her key, or ring for her “grammaw”. Decided he'd better intrigue her sufficiently so that he could get inside and give her the dreadful news in private—and to find out, too, if she had the remotest idea of anything that had happened in the night in his—well, Clark Shellcross'—rooming house.
“Well, it's 'bout Mist' Shellcross, ma'm. Mist' Clahk Shellcross. But maybe yo' is huhd 'bout it?”
She wasn't apprehensively aroused from intuition, as he felt she might be. She was only a little puzzled. “I've heard nothing,” she said. “Not since I saw him last—which was yesterday morning, when he was here. Do you know Mr. Shell-”
“Ah wuhk fo' him, ma'm. Do mos' ev't'ing. Run ehhan's. Press his suits. Ev't'ing. Know him moughty well.
She frowned a bit.
“I take it, then, that he suggested that you come here to ask for work. Is that right?”
“No, ma'm. He's said plenny nice t'ings 'bout yo'—lak as dat yo' is de purtiest 'ooman in Boston, an' so fo'th. An' whah yo' libbed. An' yo' name an' all. But he nebbah tol' me to come heah an' ask fo' wuhk, no.”
“I think I get it now,” she nodded gelidly. “He owes you money, perhaps? And you want my help in collecting it—from him.”
“Well ah—no, he don' owe me no money—yit Ah has to see yo' 'bout him.”
“Is he acting up? I mean, weeping, and walking the floor, because—”
“Well, he—ah—uh—well if, ma'm, we could talk inside, Ah'd tell yo' 'zackly—”
“You have me curious. And besides, there are too many ears up and down my block. Yes, come inside. Come!”
She went up the steps, holding her train daintily. Extracted a key from some velvet pocket. Turned it in the door.
Threw it open.
The white-haired little old lady was hovering about at the head of the stairs leading down to the usual cellar.
“Go back downstairs!” Vernice Treves cried at her. “I'm old enough to open the door and bring people in. It's only a black man about work or something.”
“Y-yes, Vernice,” quavered the old lady. Disappeared.
Vernice beckoned him curtly, he having trotted along at her heels like a dog, to go into the parlor, lying right off the hallway, almost at the doorway. Which he did, leaving the little hall, with its brocade-like wallpaper, dappled blue carpet and glazed brown umbrella jar behind him. Here, his hat held in his hand, he stood politely off the doorway, the while she evidently was divesting herself of her cumbrous hat, and depositing it somewhere. He looked sadly about the little room with its ornate flowered eye-dizzying tan carpeting, its triangular what-not in one corner with its china gimcracks, its dappled marble oval stand with curving spreadlegs carrying the gargantuan blue-velvet-bound, brass-hinged photograph album. Looked equally sadly at the white-China-shaded oil lamp, the open fireplace with its conch shells above, and also its modestly draped carven nude Greek goddess, the painted wooden shovel showing its stiff-figured snow scene at the base, then the oval-framed etchings of bearded men and crinolined women around the walls, as well as the embroidered panel reading “God Bless Our Home", the horsehair-upholstered pieces of furniture including the short settee.
Now she came in, her cumbrous hat gone, her gloves too, a vision of loveliness with her cerulean eyes in her dainty chiseled face, and her blond hair hanging, as always, low on one shoulder.
She sat down on a chair, flicking her skirts airy-fairily about so as not to lock her limbs in a vise.
He was still standing.
“You make me nervous, black boy,” she snapped, “standing there like a veritable black ape. Sit down over there. Relax! And tell me what you have on your mind.”
He did drop down on the settee but deferentially, though only on its edge. Put his hat gingerly alongside him.
And now he did proceed to do the dreadful thing he had come here to do. Had, indeed, to do. And in the doing, hated this moment with all his soul.
“Mist' Shellcross, ma'm,” he began gravely, “he done kilted himse'f dis mawnin' arly—or mebbe jest befo' mi'night. By—by shootin' a bullet fru his haid. He daid, now.”
He groaned inwardly. Now he was in for it, he knew. Tears. Sobs. Hysteria. An avalanche of unbelieving protestations such as “Oh no, it can't be—it can't be!”
But it would all have to be gone through with, he knew. And he waited, steeled somehow against it.
_______
She stared at him profoundly unbelieving, all right. Not apparently nonplussed, however, by the possibility that what he had just said might, at that, be true—could be true. Spoke, querulously:
“Are you by some chance joking, black boy?” she asked.
“No'm. His body in de p'lice station raght now. De Cabot St'eet Station.”
She shook her xanthous head really unbelievingly now. Then a broad grin spread over her face. An actual grin.
“Well, I'll be—I'll be darned—overlook my swearing, black boy. The—the poor quarter-wit! I knew he was a half-wit always. But didn't know he was a half of even that. Which makes him a quarter-wit, doesn't it?”
Clark was at this second knocked into a cocked hat.
“Yo'—yo' meanin', ma'm, he stammered, “he shouldn' hab oughter did it? Mebbe yo' don' know w'y?”
“I don't give a whoop. I always knew he was a softhead to teach, when he could go into a man's work—but when he goes and blows out his brains—but still, he couldn't blow them out.”
“W-w-W'y not, ma'm? He—”
“Because,” she snapped, “he never really had any. He just had a lot of silly facts all tabulated like in a—a file cabinet. About Druids, and—and whatnot. But brains he had none. N—O—N—E! He had a chance to have me for a wife—for doing no more than giving up his profession and going out on some road job—and still he had to ponder on it, stew and study on it, argue with me about it, and whatnot. Me —he could have had. And yet he had to struggle with the proposition.”
“Mebbe—mebbe he wuz strugglin' wid his futuh, ma'm. He y'ong an' had to lib long time—an' man—man hab to do in Life whut he lak mos' to do.”
“Well, I can so much as tell you, I guess, that he wasn't due to live more than a year. Actively, that is.”
“Wan't due—to lib—no'n a yeah? Whut—whut yo' mean, ma'm?”
“He had a disease, black boy, the commencement of it, destined someday to be called Leukemia. A famous blood specialist here has named it, and—”
Clark leaned forward, mouth agape.
“An' yo'—you know dat d'sease fat-fat-fatal?”
“That's what I'm trying to get through your thick black skull. Fatal, yes. Someday it'll be called Leukemia. Right now it's known as Flanders Disease. It—”
“Is—is—is not cancah?”
“No. That is, it's sort of—of cancer of the blood, like. It seems white blood corpuscles take over, and swamp out the red ones. There's no cure for it—none. Not even treatment. Yes, his personal doctor, a Doctor Gywneth Evans-Madoc, had sent a sample of his blood to a famous blood specialist practising here. A specialist named Dr. Lladislaw Zinciewicz—not too long ago practising in Paris. And Dr. Zinciewicz does blood work for my own doctor, Doctor Edmond Bleasdale. And since they'd discussed me in the field of—well, of beauty!—that was the precise phase in which they discussed me—well, Dr. Zinciewicz knew that the patient represented by this sample was my fiance—rather, intending or wanting to marry me. Oh, Clark Shellcross talked too much, I figure: he needn't have blabbed to his own doctor what hadn't become any certainty yet, nor—but let it pass. Anyway, my doctor told me frankly, a few days ago, that if I married Shellcross, I would have about one full year of marriage with him—after which he'd start to fail, and then go rapidly down hill. And die. Yes, Shellcross had one good full year to live—an active life—not the life-time you're talking about.”
Clark listened to all this in a sort of horror. Horror of—he knew not what. Since he no longer, that was certain, carried within the body he now had any disease known as Leukemia, or Flanders Disease. Or anything else. Perhaps his horror came from the realization that this girl sitting off from him was able to so calmly—
“Den—den,” he burst out, “yo' wanted dat yeah ob life wid de man yo' lubbed—ah—yo' rilly meaned dat—but—but w'y, ma'm, did yo' wan' fo' him to go out on de road an' sell plows o' pas'e up lit'graphs o'—”
“I see he did talk plenty to you,” she smiled wryly. “Well, I might say—to you—'twas to—'twould have been—ahem—to have made him happy. For, having the privilege of serving me—ah—my desires and likes in the matter of—mode of life, he would thus have been made deliriously happy, don't you think, black boy?”
“Hm?” said Clark. “Seem to me, ma'm, lak as dough ef he could have teeched—an' had yo', too—dat would hab b'en de mos' scrumptious yeah he ebbah would hab knowed, an'—but bein' on'y black-boy, Ah ain't got no raght to say nuffin'.” He thought about all this. “Well Ah suppose, Mis', dat w'en de yeah wuz up, an' he stahted t' git symptymaticals—yo' know?—weakness' an' all?—go down hill, lak—yo' wuz goin' to settle down wid him, an' tek keah ob him, an' nuss him—”
“The hell I was!—skip it, black boy—the deuce I was. My uncle—you know, black boy, there's a certain relaxation lies in talking with a nigger that a woman can never get when talking with a white man—a nigger dare never reveal to anybody, white or black, anything he's heard—anything reflecting against the teller, that is—he's one person who has to carry about with him a locked tongue—or else! Do you agree with me?”
Clark thought on this.
“Meanin', ma'm,” he said shrewdly, “dat ef a niggah say an'fing reflectin' on a w'ite leddy in any way, to a w'ite pusson, he git a smack in de face?”
“A hobbled boot in the face, as I understand it.”
“An' if he say same to a black pusson, de black pusson on'y go runnin' to some w'ite pusson—suckin' 'roun' is whut all niggahs always does—den de niggah whut talk—”
“Gets a flogging—at least here in the North—that he'll remember the rest of his life. That's right.”
“Yo' is raght, Mis'. Dough me, Ah'm a tightmouf mahs'ef, an' don' ebah—”
“The hell you are—skip it—the deuce you are. The fear of a boot in your face—and a leaded cat-o'-nine-tails on your black back, is why I can talk with you as freely as I would with my own sister—if I had one. No, as I was about to say back there, my uncle is director of the Home for Incurables on 3rd Street. I was going to then finally put Shellcross in the Home for Incurables.”
“But, Mis', dat—dat would mek him so onhappy—dat—”
“No, he would then be happy thinking of the children he would never be responsible for, since he'd never have them, and—”
“But—but, Mis',” protested Clark, “if he mahhy yo' dey'd be chillen—one, an'way, ef he gonna lib a yeah—dey'd be one, an' one on de way, an'—”
She trilled. “Black boy, if you were a white man, I'd rise up here now in 'righteous wrath' and tell you to 'Begone', because you were using 'gutter talk'. Being a black man, thank the good Lord I can talk freely to you about the facts of life. Yes, I'' taking frankly to one who is plainly so dense he —yes, I truly wonder how dense can a nigger get! Why, there would be no children—neither on hand nor started—for the simple reason that I—ah—I would have pleaded—ah—I—I can't discuss this with you, after all.”
“Well please, Mis', don' try. Ah unnahstan'. 'Twould be a mattah ob yo' healf, yas. Couldn' be a wif 'count ob healf, yas. Ah unnahstan', yes.” He rose. Taking up his tattered hat as he did. “Well, Ah come heah on'y to tell yo' de sad fac' ob Mist' Shellcross' passin'. Ah has done mah duty now; so Ah'll go on. T'ank yo', ma'm, fo' int'view.”
“Thank you, black boy,” she replied, airy-fairily, and rising, “for letting me know that Shellcross, whom I thought was a half-wit all the time, was actually a quarter-wit. Killing himself—for—oh, I don't know what. And don't care.”
She led him, queenlike, to the front door. Opened it and closed it after him as he went down the steps.
Communing with himself, as he turned off, and trudged along the sidewalk.
“Lord, Lord, Lord!” he said. “Am I—lucky! The luckiest man—on the face of the Earth!—”
And he wasn't talking of the cancerous blood he had lost. For his next words explained his word “luckiest”.
“- that I—I never got to marry—that awful, awful, awful—creature!”
_______
Clark, opening the iron gate that led into, or onto, the small grounds occupied by Reverend Callixtus Fearnaught's “mansion” at 5 o'clock—a nearby church bell, somewhere off in the direction of the setting sun, was tolling the hour at that moment—could not help but reflect that it was a mighty pretty place.
A place that, moreover, bespoke servants—bespoke, indeed, that the Reverend Doctor was being taken care of properly by the Directors who had made him Dean of the Baptist College of Theology.
The house, a small red brick one, with gambits, naves, dormers, clerestory, and whatnot else, and with a green tile roof, sat well back on a large slightly raised area covered with last year's grass coming up green again. And suggesting much cutting this year—cutting to be done, that is—perhaps, even, on the part of Clark Shellcross. So he hoped, anyway.
Here and there about the place stood little cast-iron figures, most about 3 feet high, each representing a Negro boy, each painted up brightly as to “shirt” and “cap”.
The place was surrounded by a low brick wall with a coping, going entirely and clear around, and not of “false” construction, as so many walls were, brick in front and cheaper materials, wood or stone, on and around.
A pebbled walk, once he had gotten to the raised level by stepping up a single stone step, ran to the door of the house, where a set of well-scrubbed steps shone whitely in the low reddish-yellow rays of the sun.
He trudged up the walk, and to the door, and rang at a beautiful polished brass pull-bell in whose base he could see his jet black face.
The door opened, and an elderly Negro stood there, in grey livery, and grey gloves which, no doubt, he put on every time the bell rang.
“Ebenin', Sam,” he greeted. “See yo' is come to do de diggin'.”
“Is,” said Clark, with an inward shudder.
“Reckon to dig neah all night, Sam?” he asked, letting Clark in, to where a small hallway richly furnished with rugs on hardwood floor, showed a tall mahogany grandfather's clock ticking away at one corner, and a most magnificent handcarved stairway going upstairs.
“Reckon to dig long's Ah kin hol' out,” said Clark darkly. “If Ah don' git some money, mah lan'lady she gonna put me out on de st'eet come tomorry.”
The elderly liveried houseman had closed the door. Was turning, surveying Clark.
“Ef yo' holted on to yo' money, Sam,” he said chidingly, “yo' wouldn' hab sich-lak trubbles. So it 'peahs to me, an'way. Yo' gibs away often de bread out ob yo' mouf. Yo'—now me, Ah'd druthah be call' Ol' Scrooge dan be call' de mos' lubbed Niggah in all Boston.”
“Is Ah call' dat?” said Clark, willing to learn all he could about himself.
“Yas, yo' is. An' is de saim, too. But yo' cain't lib on—bein' de most lubbed niggah. Fo' yo'll win' up bein' de mos' stahved-to-death lubbed niggah, da's what.”
“Well, Ah ain' stahvin' now,” said Clark, helpfully. And he wasn't, to be sure. Having dined on that end portion of that loaf of bread, and those preserves, and that black coffee with an exhilarating “kick”. And would continue to be so dining, doubtlessly, tomorrow morning.
“Well, Sam, Mastah he is back home. Des got back f'm Cambridge, dough wid a long face. Peah to me he had some bad, bad, bad luck dah!”
Clark looked around, then back at his informant.
“Whut he go dah fo'?”
“Dam' 'f'Ah know, Sam. Kin' ob a deep sekrit, Ah reckon. But he come a croppah on some bus'ness dah, dat's suhtin. He awful dis'pp'inted. Look out tonight dat yo' don' tek it se'ious if he git cross wid yo' w'en yo' diggin' ef yo' don' dig whah he say to dig.”
“He don' look to me lak a man who evah say cross wuhd. He look to me lak he all kin'ness, an' wa'mth, an'—”
“Look lak? Don' yo' know? Isn' yo' foun' out by dis time what Mastah Doctah Reve'n Feahnaught lak? Fine time to come to comclusium 'bout whut yo' alreddy know. Well gib me yo' hat.”
“He—he wouldn' wan' mah hat on he hatrack. He—”
“Yo' sho' don't know nuffin' 'bout de boss yit. Yo' hat hunged dah plenty 'nough times befo'. Come into de liberry. He say to put yo' dah.”
He conducted Clark to a wide door about one room-length—the parlor-length—plainly, down the hallway from the parlor itself, the latter containing damask upholstered furniture and marble statues, all discernible through the gap between the heavy drapes. The door in question proved to be a sliding door, for it slid open to the touch of black fingers. Revealing a large rearwise-of-parlor room with a Persian rug an inch thick, the visible part of the protruding floor being elegant, intricate parquetry work. A huge square hand-carved mahogany table, with spread legs, and brass lion claws on their ends, filled the middle of the room; a handcarved spinet desk and slender chair stood off from the door-holding wall. Windows, with padded windowseats of green velvet, looked out from two intersecting walls onto the surrounding lawn. Two walls of the room were covered with leatherbound books from virtually ceiling to floor; the other two walls showed, at least to eye-height, hardwood paneling with huge rosettes between each panel. The ceiling of the big room was hand-painted and represented some ecclesiastical design, plenteous with angels and harps. The wall-paper visible above the paneling was a delicate lavender brocade-like paper. Showing a man living here who had taste. Not that “taste” which, at present day, seemed to go all out for arsenical roses on top of purple cabbages.
The spinet desk near the wall, Clark could now note, focusing better on everything, carried quill pens in a cut-glass holder. Also, a horn of sand. Pigeonholes with papers in them. And drawer partly open, showing more papers.
Clark sat down by the side of the desk, in a slender chair something like the desk chair itself.
The older man, nodding, departed.
Clark was still looking around at this room which, out of the monstrosities of the '55's, was a room of feeling, and artistry, and even grandeur. Now he heard footsteps.
The door, which had been closed, slid open.
And Doctor Fearnaught, last seen by Clark early this morning on Cabot Street, Number 221, holding up a reflector-lantern, stood there. Smiling. But sadly, wanly. His beard seemed even more square-cut than in the night, his sideburns even lower dropping.
He wore impeccable grey, the grey of a gentleman. His frock coat had even cloth buttons that had just the shade of grey definitely required for such. His square-cut silver spectacles were still on his powerful, dominant nose.
“Evening, Sam,” he said, with the forced cheerfulness of one who knows he has no moral right to radiate his own personal discomfitures, or troubles, even to a lowly person. “So glad you got here—on time.”
Clark had stood up immediately the other had entered.
“Glad to be heah, suh—ah—Doctah Rev'nd.”
“Doctor is sufficient,” the older man said kindly. He turned and shoved to the door. Walked over and sat down at his spinet desk, though turned about to survey Clark. Whom he brought into survey range by nodding him, and gesturing him, back into his chair. Clark dropped immediately back.
Doctor Fearnaught continued to survey him. Now spoke.
“Well, Sam, I'm glad you've got a good strong body, anyway! It sure takes shoulder-muscles to dig. And arm-muscles to toss the dirt out onto the lawn. And back-muscles to later shovel it into wheelbarrows, and take it on back to a wagon.
“Is dat de po'g'am fo' t'night?”
“For tonight? Heavens, Sam, you must have gotten the idea that I wanted only part of my cellar dug out—else, if you did get it right, namely, that I wanted it all dug lower, you must have never been down there—and seen the area of it not being utilized by the—” He didn't go on to explain the geometry of things down below, and it wasn't necessary. “No,” he went on, “that's the program—the one I just cited—for one day, every week, for many weeks. You see, Sam, with you I have to—to spread the work out! So's that dollar I pay you each time —”
“Does yo' pay me whol' dollah?” Clark was about to interpolate, then remained discreetly silent.
“- will at least keep you going,” went on the President of the Baptist Theological School. “It will at least pay your room rent, and buy you some chitlings for a number of days. You see, Sam, if I put you to work steadily, and you got the whole earnings, more or less, or nearly so, in a lump sum, you'd only lend it to some poor devil of your own race—no, you'd give it away. No, we all have to protect—you.”
“So Ah heahs,” nodded Clark morosely. “Ebbaboddah says Ah'm a much-lubbed man! But ebbaboddah seem t' wan' to protec' me f'm mahse'f. Bein' a lubbed man ev'dent' ain' good qual'ty—”
“It's the highest quality a man can have, Sam. A loved man is a loving man. And love always contains sacrifice. Love is the forgetting of self—the actual giving away of self. Love is thinking of another person. Love is—indeed, the penalty for being a man who truly does love his fellow mortals—as do you—would necessarily have to be—having nothing of his own.”
He sat now surveying Clark. With his bespectacled eyes, though it could be seen that, mentally, he was lost in thoughts of something else. The silence became so painful that Clark asked, more out of politeness.
“How did yo' come out, suh, in Cambridge?”
“Zero, Sam. Zero! The—the quintessence of zero. At the climax of a long, long struggle in which I was due to get the plaudits of as fine a bunch of directors as were ever heard of, I—I came a cropper.”
“Wuz dey de directohs ob—ob de Te'logy'cal School, suh?”
“Oh no, no. Directors—of another school. A school not in operation.”
He surveyed Clark forlornly.
“I think it wouldn't hurt to tell you my problem. For you have a sympathetic air about you, Sam. You always did. To be sure, you wouldn't have an answer—but you might have a salient question or so that might illuminate things.”
Clark was all attention.
“However, Sam,” went on Doctor Fearnaught, “keep all this under your kinky head. That's right.” He paused, as Clark nodded gravely, and, he hoped, convincingly. “Well, Sam, one of the most remarkable universities of all time is going to be put up here in Boston soon. The land is already bought. It's out on—but I won't name it, because the fact is not essential here, and because—the material for construction,” Doctor Fearnaught cut his disclosure off, “is bought. Construction is actually ready to begin tomorrow. By several construction firms working in unison. It's a—a—a—
“You know, Sam, that Boston is the home-site—of the Abolitionist Movement in America. Abolitionism hasn't got very far, however. The rich men in the North here—particularly Boston—who are back of the movement to help your people be free have evolved an amazing plan. I myself have been made chief operator in it—dictator, virtually. Even to handling many funds involved. That shows how much they trust me.”
“Kin trust a Rev'n' Doctah any time,” mumbled Clark, as would presumably Sam Brown. “He don' hab to be watched lak a—a—”
“Well, I daresay you're right. That's the way I would reason if I had money to put in individual hands for handling and—and disbursing, and so forth.”
He paused. Then went on.
“Well, Sam, the plan—already under way in many of its phases—that means angles—is to create a modestly sized university designed to break down completely the illusion that stubbornly persists about the Negro. This, the Abolitionist backers of this plan think is the essential step of Abolitionism. To demonstrate that the Negro is a highly intelligent man. Capable of absorbing knowledge—and of transmitting it.
“The idea in short, Sam, is that this University will be made so low in tuition that poor boys—white boys as well as Negro boys—oh, of course it's to be open to Negroes—that poor boys will want to attend it to conserve their pennies—or their parents' pennies. And—but I fear I have failed yet to convey the pivotal point. The point—the catch!—is that these boys, white or black, will have to be taught solely—by Negroes.”
“By—by Neg- ah—niggahs?”
“Yes. The idea is that the University will be small enough in size that a faculty of 10 men will be the teachers, and the deans of their respective courses, as well. That means they cannot be sciolists—that means, Sam, people who've scraped only the surface of a field of knowledge—these men must—must!—know their stuff. Forward and backwards—inward and outward! There must never, later on, when the University is going, be a criticism levelable at it that its teachings are poor, erroneous, directed by and derived from illy-informed and scantly educated men. The teachings must be thorough—impeccable—unassailable by critics—from men who know. Contracts are being given to such at what we feel are good salaries. Money isn't too much of an object here—saving money, I mean. There is a really huge fund back of all this, Sam, to create this amazing monument to—to Colored Intellect. I dare not even tell you how much. I'll bet you even wouldn't believe what they are paying these 10 specialists in knowledge.”
“Well, suh, Mist' Clahk Shellcross, man Ah do odd jobs fo'—reckon Ah ain' ebbah tol' yo' 'bout him, did Ah?—fac' is Ah did odd jobs fo' him, but won' be doin' no mo', for he daid—D—A—I—D, well he say he lib quite comf'bly on whut he git. He—he wuz instructah in somef'n o' oddah in Knick'bockah 'Cad'my fo' Boys. Wuz, bein' lak Ah say, daid now. 'Cose, he had to feed himse'f ou'side—an' sleep himse'f ou'side—but—”
“Neither of those things will our 10 specialists have to do,” said Fearnaught proudly. “The University will have ten sets of faculty quarters capable each of containing a small family—and a community faculty kitchen preparing many main dishes.”
“Mah goo'ness, dat—dat wun'ful. Po' Mist' Shellcross he hab to pay fo' so much as cup o' coffee. He—but an'way, he git—got—$500 a yeah—an' he figgahed he vehy comf'ble, an' eben libbin' in clovah.”
“Well, Sam, the salary of these top men in their fields, in the University-to-be, is to be—$1200 a year.”
Clark, as Clark, as well as Sam, rose half off his chair.
“Twelv'—hun'ed—dollahs—a yeah?”
Fearnaught nodded, though obviously somewhat sadly.
“W'y, suh,” expostulated Clark, and truthfully, and from the bottom of his being, “man an' wife—an' fo' kids eat scrumptious on fifty cen's a day. Dat on'y 180 dollahs a yeah. But yo' say dese mens gits dey main eatin's free? Mah goo'ness. Well fine house kin be rent' fo' $5 a monf—still yo' say dese heah men gits quatahs—meanin' same lak house? Oh my! Do dey fu'nish dey own bu'nin' fuel fo' dey stoves in wint- but what do dat mattah? Up heah in de No'f whah it gits so col', coal cos' on'y two dollahs a ton, hahd, an' 90 cents a ton, sof'. Oh, Mist' Doctah Feahnaught, dat—dat is amazin' money. It—it bref-takin'.”
“Well, amazing money is back of the whole University. A world-beater of an idea the thing really is, you know. It's an idea that will—must—register on the entire world. Will prove the thesis that the Negro is—however—” He sighed.
Paused quite a long while. Looked quite forlorn and downcast.
“Well, Sam, I've been canvassing America for all of a year—to get my men. There is a chair of mathematics in the college. Strange to relate, I got hold of a Negro in New York City who was somewhat uncouth as to speech, but he'd worked for years for a retired mathematician—a professor of such—who lived in a wheel chair, and who, for fun—like a game—had carried this colored chap up through the entire science of mathematics. He proved able to pass the special test with flying colors.”
“Whut tes'?”
“Ten special questions designed to find out if a man is good. Only in his own field—and for his proposed chairship. If he can pass 6, it is deemed he knows his subject. If he can pass 7, he is hirable. None—quite none—have passed the whole test thus far. In any field. For—but I'll pass over part of this story. I found Negroes about the country who did qualify. In their respective fields, you understand. Two from England where, there being no color line, they had had a chance of being educated. One in zoology and botany, which the charter of this University requires to be included in its curriculum. I got three good men who never go far enough to get degrees—but they knew their subjects. They were in psychology, and economics, and—but I won't go into all that.”
“Whut yo' do, suh, w'en yo' fin' man who know his subjec'—but don't hab no de-gree?”
“Oh,” laughed the Doctor, “I take care of that! As head of the Divinity School here, I can issue an honorary degree to any man who is outstanding in his field. Any man I select for this University is outstanding for no other reason than that I've selected him. And he has—or is able—to pass the test. In that case, I—I just issue him one of our honorary doctorships—”
“Doctahships? That, suh, be somef'n, Doctah Feahnaught, Mist' Shellcross he didn' hab—didn' hab nuffin but his instructahship.”
“Well, we do it up right! A man, to earn $1200 a year, must have the background—social and economic, I mean—to sort of justify it. And comport with it. Indeed, that's one of the reasons we pay the $1200. Slavery will go someday, Sam. Thanks partially to our efforts too, we hope. Negro universities and schools catering just to Negroes alone will spring up all over. They will want Negro teachers. Our advance phalanx of such—members of it—will now and then have to wait a certain amount of time to connect with proper jobs. We want them to possess bank accounts, and all, to carry them over. And not bring invidium on the teaching profession—rather, the black teaching profession. Nor—but now you know what I've been, so mysteriously perhaps to you, doing for all of a year. Garnering my faculty—my staff of instructors, nay, professors—”
“An' yo' hab dem all?”
“No, Sam,” sighed Fearnaught heavily. “I have failed—to complete my task. And, alas, on the touchiest and—and most ticklish and delicate one of them all. The professorship of a field of knowledge which a number of the directors, who happen to be themselves of the specific nationality involved, have decreed must be taught in our University. Must be, virtually—the high spot of it. And the field in question is, Sam, English History.”
_______
Clark stared almost helplessly toward the Divinity School Head and now University Director as well. English History! Something once in his life—but now gone with the wind. Something—
He managed to make a query, of sorts.
“Yo' come neah fillin' it—an' mebbe didn'?”
“Yes, Sam. Near—but, alas, too far! Far—too far! So much so that I may say I've failed quite. I half—only half—thought I had the man for that chair of English History at Cambridge. And which was why I went there last night. A private report on him had, it is true, revealed that he had been a drinker, at least at one time—probably was yet, therefore. I felt, however, that should he be the man we—I—sought, I might work the drinking angle out. You know? Wrestle with him spiritually? Bring logic to bear that it just wouldn't pay—against what a life of sobriety and all would? From all he'd told me in his letters—and which were quite literate, and almost erudite—and the things he'd filled out on a questionnaire—it seemed that, intellectually, he was the man. So to Cambridge I went, to gain final assurances. To Cambridge I went, to gain final assurances. To Cambridge I went, not fully at peace even then in my own mind.
“Immediately I got there, I found to my great delight that the drinking problem did not exist. For I first called on a man he'd given as reference. This man was a doctor. He told me frankly that because of a touch of Bright's Disease at one time, the candidate in question had gotten the scare of his life—had signed the pledge. And had never drank since. This doctor assured me fully on that. My, but was I happy to hear that. My chief obstacle had been swept away—was, assuredly, non-existent.
“So I called on the candidate himself. A man of about 42. Not as black as you—he had a touch of white in him. And we do try in the University to keep white, as much as possible, out of the skins of our instructors—our initial batch, anyway. But oh, Sam, when the test—or shall I say tests, in view of the considerable number of test-questions employed—were put to this candidate, he—he just blew up—completely. His specious letters had been, so it seems, very—misleading. Actually, he didn't know his subject at all. He was not just a sciolist, Sam—one who has but scraped the surface only of a field of knowledge—but he was a—a half-scholar—no, almost a charlatan. Do you follow me, though?”
“Mah goo'ness, yas, Doctah. Yo' mek de st'ange wuhds all mean somef'n. An' so yo' had to say 'no' to dis man?”
“Heavens yes, Sam. The directors of the University—three, specifically, who come from England themselves—will not brook anybody in that chair but the very finest of instructors. Which has made it ever so difficult—for me. I've surveyed and appraised many candidates, you know. Tested a number. I've obtained none, as now you know.” The doctor shook his head despairingly. “It would appear that English History is the one subject we can't fill. And lo, it's in the charter that it must be filled. And with a black instructor, only. Dear me—what a contretemps! That proviso of that charter. For one thing, until the chair is filled—well you see, once that chair is filled, we commence, then and there, to pay salaries to all who've been selected and contracted with.”
“Yo'—yo' mean, suh, dat minut' yo' gits man lak dat—black an' wid de propah knowlidge—dat all dem oddah niggah p'ofessahs—ah—colahed gen'lemen—dey c'mmences t' git pay?”
“So it is provided in the charter,” nodded Doctor Callixtus Fearnaught. “So they understand too, it being a condition of their contractorship. So it is, yes.”
Clark was lost in a thousand thoughts—that all suddenly coalesced into a single thought. Spoke, hurriedly. Tensely.
“Could yo' tek a shock, suh? A vehy bad shock?”
“Shock, Sam? Why certainly. After finding my man was n.g. today, when I thought I had the matter just about sewed up, I can take any kind of a shock. What is the shock?”
“The shock is, Doctor,” said Clark calmly, “that I happen myself to speak the best of—so I hope—of English, not the stuff I've been spouting. And that, furthermore, I consider myself as up on English History as any now living in the United States—and even in England. And if you care to give me the 10 questions involved in that test—or 20—or a hundred of them—I'd like to take the test. And maybe—maybe solve the problem—that faces you.”
He paused.
“And—me!” he finished, sadly.
_______
As he'd spoken, the face of Doctor Callixtus Fearnaught had reflected a variety of turbulent emotions. First, belief that he was definitely having a delusion. Then, complete bewilderment—hopeless, utter bewilderment. Then, suddenly, a grasping—a wild grasping—at a hope of some kind. A hope—
“Sam!” he managed at last to ejaculate. “You—you dumfound me, Sam. I—I can't—believe it. I mean, I—I can't understand it, Sam. How—how is it—you talk straight and correct English now—and not Negro lingo?”
Now thanks to Mr. Bartholemew Button—rather, the latter's exposition of certain facts in the night which he himself had read about one, Sam Brown, in a magazine called The Abolitionist—he, Clark, was able to frame a reply to this dumfounded query.
“The answer is very simple, sir. I myself was not of the village in Africa where the raid for captives was made by a neighboring tribe called Ghorubi. I myself belonged, virtually, to a missionary who lived at a distance, but often visited that village. He had found me in the forest when I was a very small boy. My mother had, so he was able to get from me, due to knowing the African language around there, been killed and carried off by a gorilla—though I myself today no longer have any direct memory of that. My father had been shot from behind with an arrow, some time prior to that—the missionary had been able to extract that from me, too—and of that, today, I no longer have memory. The facts of it all were re-conveyed to me, by him, after I had grown up with him a number of years, and —yes, he brought me up. Taught me English—as it should be spoken—as I speak it, here and now.
“Well,” went on Clark, hating to lie, but realizing that there was one human soul, himself, now battling all the problems of Life, “he and I were in the village of Ghorubi the day the slave raid was made. He and I were taken in it. He fell dead, however, of—obviously—a heart-attack. I was thrown into chains with the rest of the captives, and driven with the others to the coast. And loaded onto the awful slaver—The Vulture—under Captain Smiliwick, I—”
“Oh, Sam, don't—don't even tell me more—about that. It hurts me to the death to even think such things as that can be. I've read it all in The Abolitionist, you know—”
“Yes, of course, sir. Well, I was brought to America, as you know, and sold on the block—in New Orleans. And wound up in the South—”
“- under Simon Legrade, one of those sadistic monsters who—”
“Yes. But there was one thing I knew—with all my heart and soul. I knew that if ever I showed any of those cruel overseers in the South, Legrade or anybody else, that I was a well-spoken and erudite Negro, I'd be beaten—flogged—to a frazzle. I'd—”
“Of course—of course you would have. A cruel man who meets a man of another color who is superior to himself and all, will invariably—yes, I quite understand. And so you talked the lingo being picked up all about you?”
“Yes, Doctor. And talked that—always. Even when I was sold to Mr. Pontus Waterlock, and freed, when he died. I was in the South, you know—I had to watch my p's and q's down there. Even when the millionaire, Mortimer Biltmore, down there on a trip, took me over to be a valet in place of his own who had died down there, I remained the humble, typical, ignorant ex-slave—freedman, in this case.
“But,” Clark went on, “when I got up here to the North, and Biltmore fell dead right in the very train coach that brought us—and I came out of the depot—a freedman, yes—owning my precious freedman paper and all—but masterless, friendless, I realized that I had best go on talking the same lingo I'd talked down South. Indeed, the very first Negro who took me under his wing, and old bag-toter in the depot, said 'God he'p any uppity nigger even up heah in de Norf'. He p'isen—p'isen!—an' he 'variably git it whah de chicken got de axe.'
“Well, I didn't want to be poison! Nor get it—where the chicken got the axe. So I continued to talk—and talked always and ever after—the lingo that wouldn't make me poison. Besides, all I could associate with, anyway, were uneducated Negroes—so I had to. They would have resented it highly if I—no, I never talked above their level. Indeed. I never got to even meet intelligent Negroes like the ten you've unearthed. Nine, I guess I should more correctly put it. I didn't have a chance—to be myself. And so here I am—today.”
“But—but Sam, this—this English History business? Do you mean to say that your missionary master had himself studied the subject a bit, and—”
“Studied the subject—sir? He was himself a historian—of and from England. He had written many monographs on the subject, so at least he told me. He had even done a complete 10-volume work on the subject, which he'd never published. For he'd then received a—”
“A call? To enlighten savagedom?”
“Yes, that was it. And had gone out to Africa. Under an assumed name, however. And when he eventually took me over, he decided to make me—a child of the forest, no less—know one subject as perhaps it had never been known before—by anybody—anybody but, say, a historian like himself. And so he taught English History to me—demonstrated it dramatically, with pictures he drew—he was quite and artist!—he taught me the 'why' and 'wherefore' and reasons for all that ever happened in England's history—he taught me and taught at me every day—mornings—afternoons—evenings, when the tropic sun fell swiftly and we were held tight within our netting-draped hut by myriads of insects and the trumpeting of hostile elephants outside—and the roaring of lions and other great felines—believe me, sir, when I was finally captured in that village of Ghorubi, I was not only just au fait with English History—but I was versed in it. Steeped in it—all the way from—from the Druids clear to its present Queen Victoria.”
Doctor Callixtus Fearnaught was passing a hand helplessly over his face. Pulling at his sideburn. Shaking his head in almost a daze.
He looked like a man who had been flung atop a hot plate of some kind.
Suddenly he seemed to find himself—his own thoughts.
“Sam,” he said, “could you—would you—take the test? The single test that determines if a man knows his subject—can teach—in the Abolitionist University? If you could pass that test—oh, if only you could pass that test—”
“Would I take—the test?” said Clark bitterly. “Will I take the test? Bring it on, Doctor! And if you have several sets of questions, please bring on only the hardest set of them all. For this moment right
now is where I stand on the threshold of my whole future life. My—oh make the questions hard. Make them tough. Make them show you that I know the subject of English History, period, comma, quotes and exclamation!”
_______
The doctor swung around to his desk drawer. Opened it. Drew out an iron box from inside. Opened the box with a key he took from his side coat pocket. Took out a set of foolscap sheets. Shuffled them over. Saying, half audibly, as he did: “Mathematics? No. Zoology? No. Economics? No. Ah, here it is. English History!” He swung about with the sheet in his hand.
“Ready, Sam?”
“Ready, sir.”
“All right. Be on your toes. And Sam, please—please—don't fall down, will you? Oh please, Sam—run up an average of at least 5 out of the 10, won't you?—5 out of 10 might do, providing we got some special dispensa- oh Sam, don't fall down, will you?”
“I don't intend to fall down,” said Clark calmly. “That was why I asked—for tough questions. For tough questions in English History are the only ones I'm good at. Waiting, sir!”
_______
LII.
The doctor took a breath.
“We-ell, Sam, first of all, what is the Domesday Book?”
“The Domesday Book,” said Clark easily, “is the first survey of England, carried out by William the Conqueror in 1085, as a basis for the tax system. It's in two great leatherbound volumes, and lists every estate and farm in the country, noting the size, the divisions into pasture, arable and woodland, head of stock, and names of the owners. Churches, mills and salt-works are also listed.”
“Well—well!” said the ecclesiastic. “I—I would have given you 'correct' on just the first 10 or 12 words of your answer. I—but all right. Well, how many wives did Henry the VIII have?”
“Six, Doctor, of which he beheaded two, and divorced two.”
“Well, well, you took me up on that, eh? And kept it—to 10 words? Well, we'll see how short we can get your answers down to. When did England lose ownership of Paris?”
“1436, Doctor.”
“Hm? Well, let's get off of dates, what do you say? Maybe you —you have a mnemonic system taught you, eh? Like—like association of ideas? With sounds of digits, or—Well, who were the first deadly enemies of the England which the Romans deserted by withdrawing their legions? In short, were they the Angles, or the Saxons, or who?”
“If that's an invitation, Doctor, to say 'Angles' or to say 'Saxons', I fear I'll have to decline it! The deadly enemies at that time were their own people, the Celts, who had been driven back by the Romans. Specially, the Picts and the Scots, which at that time were natives of Ireland and not, as today, of Scotland.”
“Man, many, but you are certainly not parsimonious—in your replies! Which latter one really is quite correct, as I see here. Hm? Well, here's one. What division existed in the early parliament of what king?”
“That's a kind of tricky one, Doctor, and I may fall down—on it. Because that 'what king' doesn't say which king. But if it's King Edward III, say, the division was: Prelates, Earls and Barons forming one party. And Knights, Citizens and Burgesses forming the other.”
“Well that's the answer that's here! That's all I know. And good thing I've got the answers here. Well, here's a cute little one. When was insanity in England first handled scientifically?”
“When Bethlehem Asylum was created. This was in 1403. From that word comes Bedlam—meaning Chaos. Incidentally, since we're on the subject of old 'Bedlam', six lunatics only were confined on the opening day.”
“Man, man, but you sure do ladle things out. The answer here is just 1403, Institution of Bethlehem. Nothing whatever about the six lunatics. Oh well. Well, how about a date again? I want to see some more of that—that word association of yours! When did Scotland become a subsidy or tributary to England?”
“In 1292, sir, when John of Balliol received the Scottish crown as vassal of England.”
“You certainly give more than dates! That '1292' alone would have passed you. Well, let's get into some old days, very old days. Who were the four sons of Aethelwulf himself, son of Ecgberht himself was?”
“Well, if you ask me who he was, I'll try to answer. But you ask only who were the four sons of same. Well, they were Aethelbald, Aethelberht, Athelred, and Aelfred.”
“Why, Sam, I'd say you have come out—of Saxon days!”
“Except that I'm not quite blond enough. Right. How about something about statesmen now, sir? Or are you just dealing with savages in the bow and arrow stage?”
“Not at all. Well what English statesman had more happen to him in one year than any other statesman?”
“I'd say Oliver Cromwell himself. And the year in question, 1540. For in that one year he was created Earle of Sussex, arrested, attained—as it's called—without a hearing, and beheaded.”
“And if it hadn't been for the latter event he might be said to have had one more yet, not so?”
“Well, sir, having your head put up atop a pole for the populace to jeer at is a sort of further event in your existence, is it not?”
“Very much so! Well, what was the last successful invasion of England other than, of course, the great invasion of William the Conqueror?”
“Leaving William out, it would be that of the Danes, done in 1013, under Swedgen. Aethelfred was deposed, and took refuge in Normandy: the Danish king was acknowledged as king—actually became a tyrant over all of England.”
The doctor shook his head violently like a poodle shaking water. He seemed to be trying to wake himself from some dream—and not successfully. Went valiantly back to the fray. The fray he had started!
“What English king,” he asked, “sprang through three generations of females? I won't even mark you off on that if you fail it, because I yanked that out of the extra five.”
“Extra five? We haven't had ten yet?”
“Aye! But there are five more to be substituted for 'equivocal answers'. All your answers have been anything but equivocal. Well, your answer now?”
“Henry of Anjou, sir. His last male royal ancestor being Edmund Ironside.”
“That's the answer here, Sam. I wouldn't know. Heavens, no. Well, since we're on England here—”
“Which thank heavens, sir, we are! If we were on mathematics now, I couldn't give the full relation of the circumference of a circle to the diameter. I think it's 3 or something. Or—or—”
“Yes, 'tis. Well, what was England's greatest sea victory?”
“The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.”
“Well these have been too easy, I fear. For you, I mean! Too concrete, eh?” The interlocutor in this case didn't really mean that, however. “Here's one to come a cropper on. What—what was the—the Declaration of Sports?”
“I think you did pose a 'meanie' there, sir. That was one of the last things discussed with my mentor there in Africa. It was a declaration by Charles I that no hindrance should be provided by the Clergy to those who wanted to dance or 'shoot at the Butts' on Sunday afternoons.”
“A too broad declaration, too, if you ask me. Not yours, but Charles I's. People should not dance, and shoot at butts, or anything else on Sundays, any part of the day. What do you do, Sam, on Sunday?”
“Wait for Monday,” said Clark with a faint smile.
“Well, that's what it's for. To wait, to rest, to rest, to wait. But all right. Well now who would you, Sam, say was the most important figure of his own century, the 14th?”
“I'd say John Wyckliffe, a renowned schoolman and doctor of Oxford, and well beneficed secular priest, not unknown to the political world as John Wydkil Wyckliffe.”
“I can't throw you, can I? Well, on of our most solemn problems in life is death. So tell me what you know of the Great Plague. What it was. It's date. How many people died in it? And what form of slavery or peonage existed at that time.”
“Oh, Doctor!”
“Can't do it, eh?”
“It isn't that I can't—but do you realize you posed virtually four questions just now? Not one, but four?”
“Did I? Hm? So I did. Well now I didn't make these questions here up. They were made up by experts. If you feel that way, select any one of the four.”
“No, no. I wasn't protesting. I was only pointing ou- well the Great Plague was known as the Black Death, and presumably was some form of cholera, though medicine today does not know just what it was. Death came swiftly the moment a victim showed the very first symptoms. It—oh, the date of its occurrence? It took place in 1349. Half of England's population perished in it. The form of peonage, or slavery, existing at that time was known as 'Villainage'. 'Villains' were so frequent that, in Shakespeare, a villain is not really a villain at all, as we look at it today in the gallery of the 2, 4 and 6-cent theatre, but just an ordinary run-of-the-mill person.”
The doctor was folding up his sheet. Laying it down on the spinet desk.
Stared at Clark. Just stared and stared.
“Sam,” he managed finally to say “you are the most amazing phenomenon I have ever seen or heard of—in my life.”
“You—think so? Then—”
“I know so! Sam, an expert who looked at these questions day before yesterday said that not a white historian in all the world—historian of affairs English, moreover—could ever answer all 15. For I gave you fifteen, Sam. Not ten. But fifteen. He said the mathematical odds of any one man ever being able to answer all were a million to one. He even maintained they were unfair questions. Sam, a man who could answer these fifteen could answer any list on earth.”
He sat there shaking his head.
“It's so fantastic—I think I'm dreaming. I—”
“Just a minute.” He turned about enough to take out a paper from his desk. Wrote on it in two places, on of which writings evidently constituted a signature. Then he threw sand on it. Drew out a lower-down drawer. Drew carefully from it a black gown, and a square hat.
“Stand up, Sam.”
Clark stood up.
As did the doctor, the garments in his hand.
He now put the loose black robe about Clark. Put the square hat on Clark's head.
Reaching out for the paper he thrust it at Clark.
“You have just been made an honorary doctor of the Boston College of Theology. Here is your degree.”
He thrust out his hand as Clark fumbled uncertainly with the paper. Added:
“May I be the first to congratulate you—Doctor Brown?”
_______
Clark, transferring the paper to his other hand, reached out his free right hand—black as it was. And felt it gripped in the big paw of the other man. It felt good, awfully good, to be somebody—someone of value. He looked down now at the paper. Yes, he was Doctor Samuel Brown, all right. Signed by the Dean, President and Chairman of the Honorary Awards of Boston College of Theology.
He looked up.
“I thank you, sir,” he said, “from the bottom of my heart. This paper is something that all my black life I will treasure, next to my freedman paper you have. It—”
“Sit down, Sam,” the older man cut off his protests. “We're not quite done yet—with papers!”
They sat down in unison, the doctor turned deskwise. From one of the pigeonholes of his desk he now took what appeared to be a rolled up paper. Unrolling it, and plucking at same time at its edge with a fingernail, it became two similarly-sized sheets of paper. Which he laid out on the desk top, side by side. Clark could see the sheets were as long, themselves, as foolscap, held many printed lines, and handwritten emendations thereon; to be exact, at the left half of the bottom, and at the top of the right half of the same bottom.
Doctor Callixtus Fearnaught was now busy writing on the sheets. First on one, then on the other, plainly duplicating, in each case, what he had set down on one. He filled in certain lines at the top—then at the bottom—more precisely, the bottom of the bottom's right half—went back up again to at least the middle of the paper—paused—turned to Clark.
“How many years, Sam, will you contract for—at $1200?”
“You mean—you mean—I am appointed—”
“Yes, Professor of English History in the new Abolitionist University. This paper carries at the bottom all the signatures of the employing committee—four!—the lastmost appended being that I just set down—yes, my own. Actually, my word is final, on all these matters. The men back of this are too far up in the business world to be bothered with the details such as I've had to handle. I've been entrusted with the signed contracts, even as you see. Yes, you're appointed. Head of and sole professor of the Division of English History. For you can pass any test ever devised in English History, that's plain. The only question now is, how long can we count on you?”
“But the directors won't want a slave, captured in an African raid by savag-”
“Ah, Sam! That's the very thing—we were all talking about. Oh, we said, if only we could get one faculty member who had been a native-African—who had been brought over recently—who even had been a slave in the South. That, we agreed, would be a million-dollar advertisement for the University. Make it known all over the world. We never dared to hope, however, that we—but here—you tumble right into our laps. They'll welcome you with open arms, my boy! The big question therefore is—how long will you contract for—at $1200?”
“For life,” said Clark humbly. “For I am Sam Brown—for life. And so—And $1200 per year is more than I ever expected to earn in all my days, even as—as—”
“As—what?”
“As odd jobs man—of course, sir. But you mean what did I mean by the word 'even'? Well—well, even if I now were what poor Mr. Shellcross was when he—he passed away — $1200 would be a sum that would be utterly unanticipatable for the duration of my whole life. I mean—I mean that he said $500 was about tops — $600 at most—for a teacher, even in the highest echelons of such. But $1200—my goodness —”
The doctor was turned about again. Was writing on both of his sheets. Blotting now, with sand, all that he'd written, on such of it as was still wet.
Now he swung the papers about in unison. And so that they faced Clark. Extended the pen, with wet ink still on it, to Clark.
“Sign here, Sam,” he said quietly. “Both copies. It sets recompense definitely at $1200 a year—but sets it at 10 years for duration. We hope we can hold you for even that length of time. And that we can renew your services then, before some other too-ambitious black university gets you. Sign, yes.”
Clark, taking the pen, and leaning forward, wrote out on one of the pages the name he had never written before.
Sam Brown
.“Add,” wryly warned the other, “Doctor of Literature. That's what my honorary degree covers. Doctor of Literature, yes.”
Clark added those words. It felt strange to do so. For never, as Clark Shellcross, had he remotely expected to be able to put that after his name.
He did the same thing on the other page, as he had on the first.
The other man swung them about to face himself. Blotted both signatures with sand. Folded one up, and held it out to Clark. “There's your contract, Sam, with an educational outfit whose funds, pledged and already donated, comes to several million dollars.”
He sat back confronting Clark, as Clark gingerly stowed the precious and unbelievable paper in the breast pocket of his reefer under the black gown.
Trying, trying, trying to take it all in. Trying—
Now the elderly man spoke.
“Sam, you just don't see the full implications of this. I know you don't, yet. Any man who puts this university to the front so that—that it impresses itself upon mankind's appraising and often skeptical mind the logic and the freeability—because of the equitability thereof—yes, because of the equitablility—of the slave, is doing—will be doing—more than anybody in the world to free that slave. All slaves, in short. You will be the—the dramatic highspot as well as the intellectual highspot. You will cause the school to have publicity, more than any of us can now dream. You stand today, Sam, in a strange position. You, more than anybody on earth, probably, will be the man who will, eventually, have caused the whole black race to be free from frightful slavery. I envy you, Sam. I truly do. From the innermost depths of my whole being, I envy you!”
_______
Clark sat studying on this. It constituted a brand new concept for him. Presented things he couldn't digest at this particular second. Maybe later—
He did interpose an objection to the other's statement.
“But don't you think, Doctor, that the things a certain young Illinois politician is saying—and which may later become translated into deeds, if he goes high in politics—will have more to do with freeing the slaves than anything else? I mean the young politician, Abraham Lincoln?”
“Lincoln can't do anything himself, ever, about actually freeing the slaves, Sam. He could issue, if he were president, all sorts of proclamations thereto. But the Supreme Court would declare them null and void. And the South, where the slavery is, would contemptuously pay no attention to them. And go on considering their blacks cattle—and using them thus, too. No, Sam, the slave can never be freed until he has, first of all, demonstrated—rather, there has been made manifest for him, by his white brethren—the fact that the black man can be educated—yes, is highly educatable—that he can, moreover, educate others—can—only then, Sam, has the first unsurmountable obstacle been overcome that holds the slave to the present social order of 'savage'. All this destroying ruthlessly the false belief that the black is mentally deficient—proving that he even has a mind equal to the white man—is what you are now doing. Will be doing, that is. You and others with you. And will be doing even more as your black students go forth. Yes, knocking out the huge and unsurmountable obstacle for the slave to being freed.”
They were silent. Both men. For a long time.
Clark spoke at last, with a sigh.
“But this isn't getting your cellar dug, Doctor, and so—”
“Sam! Don't shame me! I was going to put you to digging out a cellar. Why, Sam, you have to go to work tomorrow. With 9 other men like yourself. Black and educated. Yes, at the temporary offices of the University. Yes, working out courses, curricula, writing maybe special textbook pages which we'll have printed up. Oh you have daily work to do which will keep you plenty busy. And—and my goodness, how those 9 gentlemen will be grateful—to you!”
“To me? Why?”
“Because, when I get the 10th, salary begins for all automatically, and instantly.”
“Meaning, sir—that the second I signed that contract?—as Number 10?—and—and closed the polls, so to speak?—that all 10 of us automatically commence drawing—our pay?”
“Right and correct! At $1200 a year—which happens to be one hundred a month. Yes.”
Doctor Fearnaught turned about to the desk again. Drew forth what was manifestly a cheque-book. Wrote on the top line, then on the bottom, then in the middle of the uppermost cheque. Dried it. Tore it off. Turned about and handed it to Clark.
“Here's your first monthly salary in advance. We'll equalize this out later, with respect to what turns out to be the regular official monthly payday.”
Clark took the oblong of paper gingerly. Stared at it. Shook his head helplessly.
“My goodness—Doctor! One—hundred—dollars! It's—it's a fortune. My—my friend Mr. Shellcross used to get paid each month. He used to say his check was a 'fortune'. Yet it was for only $44. Why, I am a rich man—with this. I could even go to England on this, and return, and—”
“If you wanted to spend $20 of it for passage on a four-master, you could. But you'd better leave that all for later—when you won't be swamped with preparing details for a new teaching course, and other allied tasks. And when vacation time for the school is arrived. Then you can—hm?—now I wonder where I might get me a black man to dig out my cell-”
“I'll—I'll do it!” cried Clark gratefully. “For as—as long as my muscles will hold out. I'll—I'll be glad to try to—”
“No, that wouldn't be fitting,” Dr. Fearnaught shook his grizzled head firmly. “I mean, that Doctor Brown should be digging out a cellar. No, not fitting at all, at all, at all. Such a beginning —for our wonderful school! Such a—no, that's purely a minor problem of mine now, no more. Don't worry about it.” He craned his head about, and peeked into one of his pigeonholes in which a small clock or up-ended watch must have been standing. “Hm? Nearly six o'clock, I see? Hm? Well now I have only one problem. But a real one. For the one I just had—concerning the school—just beautifully evaporated into thin air. Is gone! But I still have the other, heaven help me, and—”
“Is—is there some other problem, sir—that I might be able to help you on? Maybe? I owe everything—everything to you. Is there a problem—any kind of problem no matter what—that I could help you out—on?”
“There's a problem, Sam, yes,” the other man almost groaned. Like one to whom realities, forgotten for a little while, had rolled hopelessly back on his head like the waters of Niagara themselves. “But whether you could help out on it, I—I don't know. In fact, I could hardly ask you, since—In fact, I'd say definitely 'no'. Because—well, for one thing, I could hardly ask you. And, for another thing, there's the particularly individual emotional point-of-view of—of another party who is involved; and who I know mighty, mighty well would refuse the slightest help in that way, due to the unhappy fact that—But I—I could hardly ask you to even essay to offer to help me—because you are so grateful to me right now that you'd rashly undertake something that you might be sorry for, for the rest of your life, and—but besides, the whole thing then would be un-Christian and—oh dear!” He sighed heavily. So heavily. “Oh dear! What an awful thing—what an awful thing!”
“What—what is it, Doctor Fearnaught?” begged Clark. “What is—the problem?”
“Well,” the elderly ecclesiastical school president said helplessly, “the problem—to render it quite simple—is Miranda.”
“Miranda?”
“Yes, Miranda. And about this problem, Sam, which concerns her as well as myself, my heart is veritably breaking!”
_______
Clark knew that he was supposed to know who “Miranda” was. But hadn't the remotest idea.
He remained discreetly, cautiously silent.
Doctor Fearnaught, too, remained silent, but morosely so, lugubriously so, despondently so. For a long moment. Then took up an explanation the necessity for whose presentation he realized he'd precipitated.
“Sam,” he said, “you doubtlessly always believed as did all of the other servants around here—that Miranda, my house-girl, was a freed slave—or a born-free girl. But she isn't, Sam. She's an escaped slave.”
“Escaped slave?” said Clark. “It—it seems difficult, sir, to think that you would harbor an esca-”
“Right, Sam. I wouldn't. It's against the law of the land. But when the Underground brought her to me and asked me to give her succor, I took her in. Because they promised to buy her from her master in the South, from whom she escaped.”
Callixtus Fearnaught was morosely, dejectedly silent again.
Clark asked a safe question: one that would not reveal in the least that he hadn't the remotest idea of “Miranda”—other than what he had just learned, namely that she was “house-girl” here. He said: “I—I thought, sir, that escape in these days was impossible—from the South? At least for a woman slave—a girl slave! I—”
“Not impossible, Sam, but highly difficult now. With their own highly integrated organization down there—their bloodhounds—the State and United States laws that retrieve their fleeing slaves for them—and their horrible penalties to a slave who has made escape—yes, the Southerners have things pretty well tied up now when it comes to 'escape'. But she, Miranda, did. Despite the fact that she was an Alabama slave. It is thought to be almost impossible for a slave to get out of that state of the deep South. It—but her master and mistress, you see, brought her with them to Memphis. For she acted as a sort of lady's maid to her master's wife. A northern river-boat captain who was down there making his last trip on the Mississippi, was about to retire—to retire, yes, on his return to the North—to Minneapolis, yes, where he lived—and which made him immune therefore to the threat of any Southern mob waiting for his vessel later at a Memphis or other Southern dock—well, he was 'fixed' without too much trouble. Not so much, I guess, because he was a Northerner, and personally hated the slave trade, but because he would be out of reach of the South once he should get north of St. Louis, Missouri—even north of Cairo, Illinois. Yes, the Underground arranged the whole affair. Not she, Miranda, no. She was an almost unparticipating element, really, in the escape. In the arranging for it, at least. She did as they told her—wished her to do. She—
“Anyway, to jump over countless details, she was smuggled aboard this river boat, The Queen of the North. And when it pulled out, it pulled out—with her aboard. And hidden. Her trail was almost instantly picked up by her master and mistress, and the Memphis police. There was no way to stop the Queen of the North, once it was out in the river—to stop it in the South, that is. It ignored one fast boat that went out after it—and overtook it, trying to serve a paper on the captain. The Queen of the North just put on excess steam, like the boats do in the great river races—you know?—wherein the deck hands hang on to the safety-valve lever and hold it down?—and, turned thus into a fast boat, steamed out of range of the pursuing vessel. It could not be interrupted at towns along the river. For there were, in general, no facilities for—true, a gunboat, apparently alerted by telegraph, came out at Cudkins, Kentucky, and attempted to intercept the Queen of the North. The Queen halted—drew back—yes, reversed its paddle—the gunboat turned sharply to hem it in—got stuck on a mud bar—and then the big Queen, reversing again, steamed boldly and around it, and escaped again.
“The girl,” continued Callixtus Fearnaught,” wasn't put off at St. Louis. For she'd have been grabbed there immediately on a writ. She was transferred to a Minneapolis-bound boat, just about to pull out—as it was pulling out, in fact—turned to go up the river—but she wasn't carried to Minneapolis, where a writ would again have gotten her. For she was put down at a lonely river-town called Burlington, Iowa, where covered wagons, drawn by oxen, all ferried across the river from the east bank, were streaming, with presumed settlers in them, for all over the West. She was put with a family who were heading for the land of the Mormons. Yes, the Underground had worked out details very thoroughly, you see. It was thought to get her clear to Utah where, of course, she could never be brought back through being made subject of writs of various kinds. For Brigham Young wouldn't himself have gone there except to have one unassailable stronghold where Polygamy could always reign.
“Well, the family that took her with them had a run-in—with the Indians. Somewhere around Kansas, if I'm not mistaken. Three of the family were killed. Two children—and one adult. Sadly, they turned back—their plans to go west shattered. All the way back they came—to where they'd originally started out from. Boston here, yes. And here Miranda was—in Boston—where the South can reach.
“The Underground here, as I told you, asked me to take her in. The while arrangements were made to buy her. I even contributed $100 to the purchase money. But lo, Sam, her master—wouldn't sell her! He was—is—I gather, furious about the escape. Takes it—took it—as a personal affront more—more on the part of the Underground than of the girl herself, who really did the natural thing any untutored black girl, in slavery, would do. He's too well to do, I now learn, to be simply 'bought off'. We—well, the Underground—offered a huge price for her, too. $2000. Unbelievable, isn't it, that he won't sell. But believable quite—when you realize emotion of anger is in the picture. Indeed, I venture to say he's bitter because they tried to force him to sell—but also, as I said, he's not susceptible to money as so many of us are, and—”
“Maybe,” ventured Clark, helpfully—and he really was trying to be helpful now, “she would like—to be back? Leaving her father and mother, you know, down there? And—”
“No, Sam. She has no father and mother. She's a slave direct from Africa, on one of the last bootleg loads of blacks carried in latter days. She was captured there in Africa, like you. With her mother. She was about 5 at the time. Her mother died on the way over. She—Miranda—was sold into the hands of an owner who, with his wife, treated her—so she says—fairly decently. She'd not been actually ever flogged nor whipped, she says. Nor made particularly bitter by her enslavement. Being a free soul at heart, she resents fiercely being made a chattel—at being considered an animal. But she was at least not beaten, nor whipped, nor mistreated. She—anyway, she escaped, as I've detailed, while at Memphis there with her master and mistress, and due more or less to the urgencies of the Underground who reached her through other Negroes—she was pliable, you see!—you might almost say, indeed, she was compelled to escape instead of 'induced' to. And—
“But now, Sam, her owner—or owners if you want to include her mistress as well as her master—have located her through agents who do that sort of work. Her owner, the actual titular holder of title to her—his name is Colonel Selwyn Yorke, by the way—has filed a writ of attachment for her—in Federal Court. And which is returnable—today.”
“Today? No wond-”
“Tonight! In about an hour and a half from now, yes. The Federal Court is open tonight, you know, till 8? Under absolute certitude of being in contempt of court if I don't produce her, I have to produce her. And turn her over. To her master's agents. To be brought back to Alabama. And become a slave—all over again.”
“And nothing—nothing can be done?” asked Clark, his feelings aroused by the plight of another black person. “The man being unwilling—to take a purchase price for her? Couldn't she be—be smuggled away—and —”
“It's too late, Sam. The writ obtained by Colonel Yorke has been served on me. Evidence has been put in that I have the girl—illegally, you might even call it. I'm in contempt of court if she runs away now. I've warned her about that, of course. But she's too honorable to get me jailed.”
Doctor Callixtus Fearnaught paused. Threw up his hands helplessly, palms half outward.
“And so,” he said simply, “I have to see this unspoiled child of the forest—she's only 18, Sam—go back to what you and I are now trying, in the Abolitionist University, to destroy. Slavery!”
“What can I do, sir? Anything? If I—”
“Well, no—or yes—oh, I don't know, Sam. Her owner, it seems, is a religious man. An ethical man, in some certain respects. Oh, he's an out-and-out Southerner—has all the beliefs in the moral right of slave-holding—the whole institution of slavery—all that sort of thing. He manifestly believes, with all his heart and soul, that a black is a chattel. Is a—however, he did make his writ returnable, or void, if—”
“Void—if? If what, sir?”
“He relinquishes, in the very writ itself, all claim, of all kind, to Miranda, if, when produced in court, she is already married to a free man or freedman. And will swear—yes, Negroes' oaths, you know, are legal evidence here in the North—and will swear she married said free man or freedman from love, and not expediency. He manifestly knows Miranda's inner mental workings, that he would take her oath on that. And—but you know the Biblical saying? Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder? This man won't, evidently, violate that precept of the Scriptures.”
Callixtus Fearnaught was silent.
So was Clark.
Who did, however, now speak.
“You want me to marry her, of course?”
“I—I don't ask you to, Sam. No! If it had only come about that you had liked this girl in the past, or something—Sam, what has been the matter—with you? You've never seen her. Nor even talked with her. I mean, you've looked right through her—with blind eyes. And talked casually and briefly with her—but with unhearing ears. Why, Sam, she's been in love with you—for months. And you've been, with her, as though you were a Martian—and she an Earthling—and—why was this, Sam? Have you been in love—with another woman?”
Clark was silent.
Had he been in love—with another woman! Not he, Sam Brown as now he was—who had, it was more than true, been in love—infatuated with—one, Jodie Green. But he, Clark Shellcross, who he was yet, in mind and soul. Had he been in love—with another woman?
He answered truthfully, so truthfully.
“I have been in love, sir, with another woman, yes. But today—this afternoon—the blinders fell off—of my eyes. Fell off—completely. It's a long story—or maybe, at that, but a short one—but I won't reveal it. Sufficient is it for me to say that it was given to me, by Destiny, and heaven knows what else, to see her—as she really was. Minus ideals. Minus loyalty. Minus common decency. Minus everything that makes a woman worth while. The scales fell off my eyes. I was—out of love!”
“You weren't in love with her at all, Sam. If you had been, it couldn't have died. You were just lusting for her—and never even knew it. I'm glad you were just lusting for her—and never even knew it. I'm glad you were saved from a misalliance. And that—However, now you have my story. It breaks my heart to let Miranda go back to slavery. But I have to play in with the law. I am, after all, the Reverend Doctor Callixtus Fearnaught, Head of the Baptist School of Theology. And a leading director of this new University. I cannot desecrate my calling by being a law-breaker. I—I have to comply—with the laws. But I am torn between a thousand emotions.”
“Well, I am so indebted to you, sir, that no matter what you'd ask me to do, I'd do it for you. I'd even—”
“No, no, no! I'd never let you do that. I'd never—but, Sam, you say the scales fell off your eyes today? Let me call in Miranda. Gaze on Miranda again—with the scales—of your eyes. And talk to her. And see if then maybe you haven't been—ah—”
“What, sir?”
“Blind. Blind—blind—blind, to the interest and well-being—of Sam Brown.”
“Call her in,” said Clark with a sigh. “And I'll look at her with, as you say, the scales—off my eyes.”
“'Nough said.”
The doctor got up. Went to the sliding door. Opened it. The elderly servant who had let Clark in was plainly within hearing distance.
“Nememiah, get Miranda and bring her up here—yes, to the library here. Tell her to knock. Send her right up, yes.”
“Yassuh!” came an answer.
The doctor left the sliding door open a foot. Came back to his chair. Sat down.
“I feel like some kind of cur, Sam. To bring this problem on you—when I have just been your benefactor, so to speak. There is nothing so crass as to make bargains. Believe me, my boy, you are not obligated to me in any way. The Abolitionist University is obligated to you. For being willing to—”
“Don't feel that way,” said Clark. “I was saved, this day, sir, from hell. Yes, from hell itself. Now if I can save somebody else from hell—I—I should pass it on. Shouldn't I?”
“No, Sam. No. You must never marry any woman whom you don't feel that you want to be with always—and to lean on—and need—and to do for—and—”
There was a timid knock on the partly drawn library door.
He called out:
“Come in, Miranda?”
The door opened quietly.
And Miranda stood there—before them both!
_______
She was lissome and slender as a reed. A true child of the African forest. Her jet-skinned face was a conglomeration of truly classical features—features seen, that is, painted on the walls of tombs of Ancient North Africa, Egypt, whatnot. Palpably no more than 18. In her garb she suggested, somehow, a curious flower, or even sun-spattered, shade-dappled foliage at the rim of some hidden tropical pool, for her dress, though slender-made, perhaps by some local mammy-seamstress, else bought at the “Colored Shop” in North Boston, was of highly flowered cretonne, and, tying her shoulder-length hair in back, was a brilliant scarlet ribbon holding a scarlet cloth flower resembling a hibiscus. Her eyes were sad, as she entered; though they lighted up a bare bit at seeing Clark sitting there. Then narrowed puzzledly.
“Come in, Miranda,” instructed Dr. Fearnaught. “And close the door full to, behind you.”
She turned and did so. Gently, adroitly, and firmly. Turned about and came over, dubiously, almost like a child.
“Miranda,” the elderly man said, “I have just learned some surprising things—about Sam here. It seems, Miranda, he was reared in your and his Africa by a missionary who taught him good English—not at all the kind of English he's been speaking to you—”
“Sam nevah has spoken to me,” she said, using uncommonly correct speech, though slurred definitely with her African accent. “That is, he's really spoken—at me. I—I reckon he has nevah even really seen me.”
“Oh yes I have, Miranda,” interpolated Clark. And with sudden caught-up courtesy, rising instantly, a bit shamefacedly, even, from his chair, as he would have done with any white woman, for this girl, it was plain, had been gently reared by her owners, down there in the South, and—besides, between him and her things were now, if not socially, at least racialogically equal. “I've had considerable trouble on my mind, though, while I've been about you. And—” He turned to the man at the desk. “But pardon me, sir?”
“Well, Miranda,” went on the man at the desk, “Sam has been taught enough about English History by that missionary-foster-father of his, to become a professor—the professor in that very subject!—in the new Abolitionist University of which you've heard a little, just a little, from me. He's really got an amazing knowledge of the subject, Miranda. Amazing! And he's going to receive the—well, he thinks it stupendous!—the sum of $1200 a year salary.”
“Twelve—hundred—dollahs—a yeah? Oh, sir, there isn' that much money in the—”
“Oh yes there is, Miranda,” the speaker smiled. “There's millions where it comes from. Well, Sam is now Doctor Sam! That's why he stands there now clad in a black robe and with a black square hat on his head. And an honorary degree from the Baptist College of Theology in his breast pocket. He's Doctor Sam, now. No, not medical doctor, but—”
“I know! A Doctah of—of Lit'ture or—or Philos'phy?”
“Of Literature, yes. More and more I realize how much your master and mistress down there in Alabama brought you up to have familiarity with certain factors of our white civilization. “He turned to Clark. “Her master and mistress used to read the daily paper every day to their children, and painstakingly explain everything in it. And Miranda was in on it.”
Clark nodded. “I see. Yes, I see.”
“And so, Miranda,” the ecclesiastical school head turned back to her, “you musn't expect any more to hear Sam talk in the talk you've heard him use with Nememiah and the others. He but took that mode of speech to comport with his up-to-now lowly station. From now on, however, you will have to call him Doctor—”
“Yes, Doctah Sam,” she said, turning to Clark. “I undahstand fully.”
“Just Sam, Miranda,” Clark laughed uneasily. “That doctor stuff can go for my students. We'll go on as we were, yes?”
“Yes, Sam.”
“I've just been telling Sam,” the ecclesiastical doctor went on, “about your unhappy situation. And the writ filed for you. He wonders if he can't do something for you. Something, oh—”
“I understand, Miranda,” Clark put in, “that if you are married to a free man or freedman when brought into court, the writ is void. And forever. Oh, there is some qualification, I believe Doctor Fearnaught said, wherein you have to give technical, routine evidence—in the form of testimony—that you—you loved the man you'd married—didn't marry him as a subterfuge—purely technical, I suppose we can call that? Anyway, under the circumstances there is nothing any man in my position—my tremendous obligation to Doctor Fearnaught here especially—nothing I could do but to tell you I want to save you from the writ.”
“You mean,” she said facing him gravely, “you are askin' me—to mahhy you?”
“Well—ah—put it that way. Strange kind of a proposal, isn't it? But time is of the essence, and—”
He stopped. For she was looking at him strangely. She spoke.
“Sam,” she shook her hibiscus-adorned head, “you don't love me. For months you haven't even seen me at all. You looked always—right th'ough me. You're in love of anothah woman, Sam.”
He gazed at her truth-compelling black eyes helplessly. Gave in, so far as facts went.
“Well, yes—I was. But am no longer, believe—you—me! I—I think now she was a terrible creature. She was a—a—a—”
“She was a high-yallow guhl named Jodie Green?”
“Why—yes—how did you learn—”
“We heah many things, Sam, in suvhants' quatahs.”
“Well, I—I found out today that—”
“That she was mahhied to Razah-Flash Smith? And livin' on men? And all?”
“Why—yes. Did you know that—all the time?”
“Yes, Sam.”
“Why—why didn't you—tell me?”
“Couldn't get you that way, Sam. It wasn't honoh'ble. I felt you loved her. And maybe Razah-Flash would get a divorce and all. And then you and she could—”
“But you loved me yoursel- I mean—I mean maybe you did?—that is, Doctor Fearnaught here told me awfully frankly that—”
“I loved you yourself, Sam, yes. Not maybe. I loved you.”
“But why—”
“I couldn't get you, Sam, by cuttin' the th'oat of anothah woman.”
“Well blow me—down!” said Clark, passing a hand over his forehead.
Now he stroked his chin troubledly. Went on.
“Well, everything then, Miranda, has come out—quite simple. The fact that you—you did love me—makes it possible for you to qualify fully on any oath in court that you did—I mean that—that if you are in court and already married to a freedman like me—what I mean is—well, I meant what I said at the beginning. I want to marry you. And save you—from going back to slavery.”
She came over to him. Put a hand on his arm. Looked up toward him.
“Sam, I couldn't take any man thataway. Much, much more would I go back into slav'ry than be married to a man who didn't—love me. Much, much more so! Much—” She took her hand away. Turned toward the older man. “Reve'nd Doctah Feahnaught, when shall we start—for the court? I want to go home—to Alabama.”
Clark looked at her helplessly.
The sheer decency and idealism of her was pouring over his battered, torn, bleeding psyche like a rush of cool, healing waters. And comparisons—comparisons odious!—comparisons enlightening, however—were rearing themselves like impenetrable granite ghosts lined starkly along the fence of reason. Vernice—Child of Civilization—hard, scheming, self-seeking, pretending creature, without an ounce of love within her for anybody but herself—not worthy to be of the Civilization she pretended to represent. And this—this child of the forest—brought up originally amidst spears and bows and arrows and tribal cruelty—but with a heart in her—with ethics in her—a soul—And now—now some strange magnetic beam was starting up in the room—he felt himself definitely within it—knew that wherever it ran, she was in it—that it enveloped them both. He, black man. With black body. She, black girl, with lissome body and sad eyes. He felt unseen but unresistable pressures from countless generations back of his body, and her body, clear to the primeval gorillas from which both had sprung, whirling about him, at him, entangling him, engulfing him now completely. Knew—knew of a sudden—knew he'd been blind—blind—bli- no, not he—Sam Brown!—Sam Brown had been blind—blind—blind—
Everybody had been blind. He. Sam Brown. All. Everybody. All but—
He strode from where he stood to where she stood. Put both of his hands on her shoulders.
“Miranda, you're not going back to slavery. Because I—I need you—awfully—very much. Terribly much. I—I can't explain it all—everything—I can only say how frightfully much right now I—Miranda, I—I need a girl—with ideals. I need a girl—with honesty in her soul. I—I need you—very, very much, Miranda. Please tell me—you won't go back. Please? Please!”
She looked up at him.
Smiled quaintly.
“I won't go back now, Sam. For your vehy eyes tell me you are tellin' the truth. No, I won't go back. For suddenly the heavens have opened for me—and I am happy now only—where you are—where you will be. Yes, Sam, I need you—as you need me.”
Doctor Fearnaught, watching all this thunderstruck from where he sat, suddenly stood up.
“I've heard enough!” he cried, but jovially. “I saw it all happen just now—right in front of me. The looks—in both your eyes—the words you both spoke—tell me all. Now join hands.” He swung about, pulled open that drawer from which he'd extracted the black gown and the academic hat, and drew out a worn Bible. Swung about, with it. Flipping it open at a bookmark-marked place, as he did. Stood now with it open on his two hands.
“Join hands now, my black children,” he instructed. “For I'm going to make you—man and wife. Then we'll all go to court. And tonight, Sam, you shall have your wife!”
_______
Lying in the dark alongside Miranda, Clark was curiously reflecting that when lights went away—the finest of rooms ceased to be anything but a blob of black! Here was the guest room of Dr. Fearnaught, with thick Persian rug, mahogany bed, beautiful hand-leaded glass lamp—loaned them for the night. Here was himself in absurd green-striped nightshirt—here was Miranda in white lace-trimmed nightgown once belonging to a daughter of Doctor Fearnaught—here was utter engulfing blackness where people could speak from their hearts.
He essayed conversation, for he felt her heart beating nervously, where she lay.
“Well now you see, Miranda,” he said, “it was all pretty simple—that court action—after all. And when the Federal judge wrote 'Void' over that paper, it killed it so far as any possible use of it went. Further use, I mean. And when he annotated it as 'quitclaim of ownership' to you, under its own stated terms, that meant that you can never be sold, given away, or anything. The court's records on that are complete, and Doctor Fearnaught has the paper, just as he has mine. You are a—a freedwoman now—just as I am a—a freedman.”
He fell silent. Spoke again ruminatively.
“That master of yours must have had some sort of decent, fair instincts. To not be willing to take you back if you'd become married. He must have been not a really bad man to let you be always present on the morning newspaper reading to the children, and the explanations of everything.”
Miranda replied in the darkness.
“He was, in many ways, Sam, a good man. A ha'sh man only in his beliefs. He b'lieved people such as you an' me ah still savages—a—a step above an'mals—and belong rightful' to the white man. But he was religious. He was even a sci'ntist, Sam: he teeched in Al'bama Mil'tary School—ah—taughted—ah—I mean taught—in Al'bama Mil'tary School—yes, taught a subjec' call' Nat'ral Phil-o-sophy.”
“Did, eh? That deals with matter, and force, and energy, and the laws of reactions between them all and—'scuse me for interrupting you.”
“Tha's all right, Sam. Yes, he teech- taught this—and did often explain things to us all that nev' would we have und'stood. Oh, one could really do wu'se than to have him for a mastah.”
He thought on this. Decided that, in view of the implacable pursuit this Colonel Selwyn Yorke had instituted against his wife's flown maid, one could hardly have done worse! But he attempted no argument on this point. The Alabaman's religious belief had been in his favor, anyway, even if his scientific soul hadn't particularly been.
She spoke again.
“Whut was made you want to marry me, Sam?” she asked pointedly. “Instead of—of just—just feelin' you ought to?”
“Well, to be frank, it was the moment I saw you had ideals. And—and nobility of soul. I'd—I'd had a quite awful experience in that sort of thing earlier in the—oh, I won't try to go into that now—it's—it's all water over the mill—but it seems that, in that second during which I saw what you had—rather, were—I—I changed from feeling mere sense of duty—feeling, I mean, that I should marry you to help you—changed to wanting to marry you. That's—that's about how it was.”
“I 'spose, Sam, that you did wish, though, that I was an intell'gent guhl, too, did you not?”
“Intelligent? Well now that's a strange word. Intelligent can mean so many things. Intelligent? It can signify—” He found himself suddenly unable to define it.
“I'm supposed to be intelligent,” he said consolingly. “Because I know all about English History. And everything appertaining to English History. And yet, do you know?—I am like a baby when it comes to one event—rather, set of events—even more, series of events—taking place over the years—over the centuries, even—in England.”
“What ah they, Sam?”
“Well,” he laughed uneasily, “they deal with—grow out of—a big clock that presides—looks benignly down upon, you might call it, from a tower or cupola—over a structure in England built in 1540—at least the clock itself was completed then, so we may presume the building itself which houses the clock was completed just prior to that—well, this building is called Hampton Court Pal-”
“And ev'time the clock stops—somebody in the buildin' dies?”
“Yes. You have indeed, I see, been made an auditor to the Yorke family circle newspaper reading there in Alabama! Yes, you have stated it about right, Miranda. Though you can put it just as well that every time somebody in the place dies—the clock stops. Which is cause—and which is effect—nobody knows. Or ever has. For nobody can figure—at least ever has figured—out the 'why': even if they assumed that either was cause, and the other effect, and—am I over your head? If so—”
“Well no, Sam. I do know 'bout that great clock. Ov' the years that my mist'ess read the papers to the child'en—and me, stories 'bout that clock 'ppeahed ever' now and then in them. Sometimes a yeah—sometimes two or th'ee yeahs—apaht—but they did appeah. Most pointed out that it—the clock, yes—stopped the fu'st time on the night that—that—”
“-that Queen Anne of Denmark, wife of King James I, died in the very structure beneath it. Yes, on March 3, 1619.”
“I could nev' 'membah all those details, Sam, but I do 'membah all the stories 'bout the people dyin' in ol' Hampton Co'te Palace—and the clock stoppin' above it—and—” She stopped. “Of co'se, I—I know why all that was.”
“You—do?” he said, though a little amused. “You mean you maybe guess? Is it Voodoo?—Spirits?—Witchcraft?—”
“Oh no, no, Sam. No! I don' b'lieve any of those things aftah livin' with the Yo'kes. I—”
“Well did you hear a fancied explanation from your mist-”
“No, Sam. She huhself was so puzzled that when she asked huh husband—well he said, fuhm an' fathahlike, that she shouldn't nev ' b'lieve fantastic stories appeahin' in the newspapahs—only the true ones.”
“Did?” he half groaned in the darkness. “Well I wonder how he figured a sheltered and protected woman could discern between the fantastic and the true—well, he disposed of the matters quite easily, didn't he? Then you—well where did you get your explanation—such as 'twas?”
“I—I had to wuhk it out, Sam, in my mind.”
He was about to say, playfully, “Has a forest child like you even got a mind?” but refrained, believing that, being a virtual forest child, the very jocular words would hurt her. So he did not make the comment. Said instead, kindly: “Well what is your explanation?”
“Well, Sam, it's—it's awful simple lak—ah—like. You know, Sam, that whenev' two bodies—any kind of bodies in the whole wuhld—rub against each othah—a thing takes place call' friction—somethin' tendin' to make 'em not rub?”
“Well yes, there is. That's right. There is, invariably. But where did you pick that concept up?”
“Well you know, Sam, I told you Cunn'el Yo'ke teeched—ah taughted—ah taught Nat'ral Philos'phy. An' 'splained to me, one day when I was polishin' the table top with a too-dry rag—'splained why the rag didn't want to go over the su'face—and how, hahdah I press', hahdah was to—he 'splained friction from—”
“-from A to Izzard, eh? Well that was starting you off in life, in a way! But go ahead?”
“But do you know, Sam, that friction atween two bodies is ezackly an'—an' percisely acco'din' to pressuah atween 'em?—an' pressuah, in tuhn, in case one is jes' restin' on the othah—is exacly acco'din to th' weight—o' the one on top?”
“Well, no. I never thought of that—because if I ever learned it I guess I forgot it as soon as I did. You got a penny-lecture on the subject, however—and retained it. Good girl! But what's all this to do with the clock, anyway?”
“Well did you ev' think, Sam, that a clock—any clock—is got hund'eds of pieces movin' against each othah?—rubbin', yes. It isn' lak a li'l block ovah a table top. Ev' place wheh is a geah w'eel—evah place wheh is a levah—evah place wheh one paht moves 'ginst 'nothah—even wheh the little teef—ah—toofs on the edge of a geah-w'eels rubs on othah toofs in anothah geah w'eel—ev'wheh is friction.”
“No I never thought of it quite that way, I'll confess. It's friction stepped up, isn't it?—multiplied at a dozen—scores—hundreds of points? Yes, I see. But—”
“But,” she went on, “a big clock like a towah clock isn't like a little teeny clock. It got weight. Ev'thing in it is big—an' so weigh heavy. Such a clock made up of nothin' but heavy pahts, all movin' 'ginst each othah; an' so theh is goin' be awful lot of friction in it. It boun' to stop often. When, like, is run down a bit. An' w'en dust blow in. And w'en English fog and soot mek it sticky. And—oh, many many time it got to stop.”
“Hm? Well yes, I concede all that. The parts of a clock like that would, every one, be heavy enough to even have to be hoisted up, originally, by ropes and pulleys, and put together right up at rooftop. Would contain friction with a capital F! Yes, I see your point. ' Twould be bound to stop often. But what about—”
“But, Sam,” she derailed him, “Hampton Co'te Palace is full all the time of—”
“- yes, of indigent relatives of royalty, and relatives of relatives of royalty, and—it's even been called, because of its obvious function, the 'Royal Boarding House'. It even has to take reservations long in advance. Since—but go ahead?”
“Well, Sam, it isn' young peoples goin' to be livin' in a place like that. It's—it's oldah people—who can't make livin'—people who a'most really come theh—to die. Is that right?”
“Well yes, that's right. The general life expectancy of such as live there certainly, certainly, is not to be particularly envied—in short, for the particular entourage who camp there, the undertaker gets called in quite frequently. But I don't see—”
“Well, theh it is, Sam! Raght theh it is, see? All the stoppin's of the clock goin' on all the time, and all the dyin's of the people beneath it all the time—mek it that now and then—
“Sam,” she cut in on herself, “did you evah watch four chillen swingin' two ropes?—two long jump' ropes?—like in a game or somethin'?—like as to see w'ich paih does it bettah—or—is you evah?”
“Well, I fear not. Have you?”
“Oh my yes! The Yo'ke chillen. But Sam, take four chillen swingin' two ropes—yes, two chillen at ends of each rope. Nat'ral', neithah paih swings they ropes at the same—”
“- speed?” he broke in. “Or rate?”
“Yes.” She selected neither word but emphasized her “Yes”.
“They hardly could,” he helped out. “It would be a one in a billion chance that both swingings would be at the same rate.”
“Guess it would be, Sam, if you say so. For yo're my man. But Sam, if you've ev' watched two ropes like that bein' turned, out of—of—of—”
“Synchronism?” he helped out dryly.
“Yes,” she again sidetracked herself of that big word. “Though you'll see, ev' li'l w'ile, that sudden the ropes ah—for jest a minute—at the same point in theh swings.”
“Quite logical at that, yes,” he made haste to acknowledge. “The rate of one has made it sort of—of sap up on the other—catch up, yes—but momentarily only—for the difference in the rates instantly causes—”
“Yes, Sam. For next swing 'round, ropes not ag'in togethah—in same spot. Like—like at top—or bottom—or left middle side—or right middle side. Not till both goes th'ough a number of swings does it happen ag'in. But always, Sam, when it does happen—when the ropes ah at same point in theh swing—do the chillen set up a cry. Like 'Look!' or “Ropes ah same'. Or—theh's wheh they cry out—take note—take—“ She paused a moment as though to let some vagrant thought, illy expressed, sink in to her hearer.
“Well, Sam,” she drove on impulsively, “the stoppin's of the clock atop the big buildin' in London—an' the dyin's of the peoples in the buildin' beneath—is like—like two sep'rate ropes bein' swinged, like. Ev' now and then, a clock-stoppin'—an' a dyin'—happen same time—togethah—then the newspapahs—”
“Ah me!” he cried. “Say no more! I know what you're driving at. When the two trains of phenomena—repetitive phenomena—give, each, a phenomenon at a common time-point, or nearly and roughly so, of course, then it's—it's no longer a mundane matter of a clock stopping—or an equally mundane thing of somebody dying. It's—it's then a case of somebody dying as a clock stops—in short, becomes a news-story, worthy of being put out on the telegraph wires and fast ships—that's where the 'chillen' 'cry out' and 'take note', isn't it?—with citements of many previous instances, that Old Death Clock has stopped because somebody in Hampton Court Palace beneath it has died—or vice versa. Coinci- no, not coincidence, but—but momentary synchronization of two sets of utterly unrelated phenomena. With resultant false—”
Now he sheepishly stopped thinking about what a great setter into speech he was of the thoughts of an ignorant black girl from the Afric forest. Amazement and sheepish contrition both filled him.
“Miranda,” he said humbly, “I was so carried away trying to put the amazing analysis of things you gave into words that I—Miranda, you were wonderful—to work that all out by your own mind and your own observation of things and your—Miranda, I haven't just got an intelligent wife—I've got a wife with a deep and penetrating mind—a—an intellectual wife. I—I think I'm going to have a real life companion in you, Miranda—yes I do!”
“I am glad fo' that, Sam,” was all she said, and simply.
He said nothing. Just thought.
“Well,” his thoughts ran, and not unbitterly, either, “- this—is it—I guess! The moment when I have to make an appraisal and see what I can save—of comfort—from the wreckage of my life. Clark Shellcross' life, that is. For the cards are all dealt out now—the ballots are in—the—”
And make grim, unrelenting appraisal he did!
“Black man now, me—for life! As jet black as they make 'em! Yesterday, a white man—with blue eyes, blond hair, as fair as the most ancient Saxon in Ancient England. And with a life, and a career, and a future that—but wait! Wait! What—what did I have—as that white man? An undistinguished post—in an obscure academy—not even a college or university. Remuneration ungenerous—fixed—and never to be higher, there, or anywhere else. A woman for wife—at least as soon as I should jettison the only work I loved—who would have made my life a hell with her petty demands—would have denied me even the pleasures of love—and, at the end—in one year—when I commenced to succumb to the inroads of the fatal and uncurable illness I had—would have thrown me into the Home—for Incurables. To die!
“And what have I now?” he demanded ruthlessly of himself. “A black skin, as I've said already. A skin that's black—B—L—A—C—K. Black, meaning—meaning—well, what does 'black' mean, anyway?—just 'black'—it's—it's really a series of letters—just letters—strung out, one after another, to make—to make a sound. Black? Something rhyming with rack and slack. And—and clack. And knack. And—But the owner of this black skin isn't destined to die—now! Is destined to live—for many years, if not many decades. According to all the tests made on his body. The owner of this black skin is distinguished now. Doctor of Letters. Due, even, to quite likely be in the Encyclopedia someday as the man—one, of a certain few, anyway—who helped in his and their way—to free the slaves. And—but, whether or no, able to continue now the work he loves—loves better than life itself. Teaching! Teaching the young—clarifying for them the murky web of the Past. Free to continue that—for as long as he wishes. And with remuneration—positively astronomical! Enough to enable him to do all he wishes—and to do for others, too. To—to follow the seven seas—when he wishes—and see all—taste all—experience all. And the wife he has here—no, I have here—I!—the wife who will sail the seas with me, or go wherever I go—what—what of her? Well, she's young, and strong, and sturdy—for she has an inheritance straight from the forests—she—indeed—” And with a strange shock he suddenly realized that he was, at this instant, for the first time, seeing the being who lay beside him in the dark through the mental eyes of a body which itself had been born in an Afric forest. “-she's beautiful!—Miranda's beautiful!—yes, beautiful—beau- but she's not just that—alone. She has ideals—and loyalty—and squareness—and honesty of soul—and—but even more, she has intelligence—profound intelligence—supreme intelligence—she—why she has everything I ever dreamed of having in a wife—any wife. Why—why—why—”
He felt Miranda's hand reach out timorously and touch his in the darkness.
“Did you say somethin', Sam?”
“No,” he said. “I was just thinking, that's all.”
“What were you thinkin' about, Sam?”
“Oh—I was just making a black man's appraisal of life—no, a general appraisement and—and analysis, really—of my life. Using, as it were, x's and y's and z's—and curves, and angles called—called alpha, and beta, and gamma, and—using also comparisons—with other lives—and deep reflections, and weighings up, and—oh, all that sort of thing.”
“That's whut's call' math'matics, Sam, acco'din' to my one-time mastah, Cunnel Yo'ke—though, acco'din' to Mis' Yo'ke, log-ick. But I reckon you know all that, for you know evahthing. And—but whut 'clusion did you come to, Sam?”
“Well,” he laughed, though a bit uneasily, “I learned, considerably to my own bewilderment, that, instead of being—and for reasons various I won't go into—an unhappy man—which I was certain I was—well, I learned, to my own utter dumbfoundment that—ah—”
“Whut did you learn, Sam? Whut did you learn?”
“That I am—and am at this very moment, too—the happiest man in the whole, entire, limitless Universe. Yes, the happiest, Miranda—bar none!”
THE END.