IN WHICH I CAN NOT BELIEVE HALF I HEAR
We were all upon our feet, and now Reid, with a curt nod of farewell,
turned away with his companion. I stepped to his other side.
"One moment," I said. "I want to know a little more about this before I
drop it; and right here is as good a place as any."
"Can't just now, Crosby." He motioned me away nervously. "Not possible.
See you up in the country any time, and tell you all you want. Not
here," and he moved toward the door.
"You can't help yourself," said I, "and I won't keep you long. Sit down
again, please." He had lugged out his watch. "You'll have to miss your
train, but there are plenty more."
The giant scowled at me with obvious willingness to begin a disturbance
then and there; and Reid glanced hesitatingly from the one to the other
of us, his impulse printed plain upon his face.
"Certainly," I put in, "you can get rid of me in that way, for the
moment, if it's worth your while. Make up your mind--you're the doctor."
He started angrily, flushing to the roots of his close-cropped hair; and
I thought for an instant that I had mistaken my man. Then the melodrama
oozed out of him. He dismissed the unwilling bully with a whispered word
or two, and sat sullenly down across the table.
"I'll make it as short as you please," I retorted. "Carucci's wife is
sent down to see that he sails. I'm sent down to see that she makes
good. Now you come down and have him shanghaied. Was this your own idea,
or were you--"
"No. My own initiative entirely. Only practical way of making sure that
he went. Best to see to it personally. Always better to do the thing
yourself, and then you know it's done."
"I understand, then, that Mr. Tabor didn't suggest this to you?"
"Exactly. Tabor knows nothing about it. My own idea altogether." His
triumph in his own efficiency was overriding his annoyance. "Better say
nothing to him whatever. He has enough to think of. Always best to avoid
trouble. The man's gone, and there's an end to it. Is that all?"
So Reid's own fear of Carucci had been intense enough to drive him to
this dirty alternative rather than trust to our sending the man safely
away. There was something unnatural here.
"Not quite," I said. "Of course, you know the exact nature of the
fellow's blackmailing story?"
"Certainly. Pack of lies. Won't discuss it. Utterly absurd, the whole
thing, but we can't have it go any further."
"Precisely, and it won't go any further, now. What I want to know is the
foundation for it. You must see the reason for my knowing that much of
the facts, and for trusting me with them. If there is any
entanglement--"
"Look here, Crosby," Reid leaned forward across the table, his face
scarlet and working, "that'll do. I don't propose to sift over my life
with you. Not for a minute. What's more, if we could afford a row, I'd
punch your head for having the assurance to repeat that infernal slander
to my face. That's all, you understand? That's all."
"There's plenty of time for that," I said, lowering my voice
instinctively, as I felt my own temper slipping. "I'll ask you just one
more question. On your word, is Miriam Tabor alive, or not?"
I never saw a man so broken by a word. He turned from red to greenish
white, the perspiration shining on his forehead; and for a moment it
seemed that he could not speak. Then he dragged the words out hoarsely
and unnaturally.
"You've taken a damned cowardly advantage--Miriam Tabor was my wife, and
she's dead. Now are you satisfied? Because I'm not."
There was nothing to add. I rose in silence, and we made our way to the
door. On the sidewalk, he waited for me to choose my direction; then
without a word, turned pointedly in the opposite one, and walked quickly
away.
I set out for the Carucci tenement in a state of no great comfort. By
forcing a scene I had gained nothing; and I had made an overt enemy of
Doctor Reid. Not that I was particularly concerned over that
development; I had never liked the man from the first; and I was
impressed not so much by what he had said as by his open and
disproportionate confusion. Think what I might of my own side of the
affair, Reid had confessed to a personal concern with Carucci; he had
flown into a rage upon my asking for an explanation; and the name of
Miriam had stricken him like a blow. He had told me nothing, after all,
and had made me the more anxious over what he refused to tell. If he had
been absolutely in the right, I had done nothing worse than to touch
upon a grief brutally; and he would have said precisely what he did say
if I had been justified and he had been lying. Well, Carucci was out of
reach, and Reid worse than silenced. What chance remained to me of an
answer to my problem depended upon Sheila.
I had no time to doubt if I should find her; for her window was lighted
up, and she herself plainly to be seen, leaning far out to watch the
street below as I turned the corner. When I was still half way up the
block, she called to me by name, bidding me come up at once; and I
answered as I picked my way along, trying to reassure her. The scene for
a moment resembled a ludicrous burlesque of a serenade; nor did the
street miss anything of its humor. With one accord the women in the
doorways, the lounging men about the lamps and the scurrying screaming
groups of youngsters underfoot caught up the implication, and began a
babel of jocose advice and criticism in a dozen languages. And although
I understood but little of it, and was somewhat preoccupied with graver
matters, yet I was fain to dive hurriedly into the doorway with a
heated and tingling countenance. The little room was itself again, save
for a dull spot upon the clean-scrubbed boards; and the canary in the
window paused in a burst of singing as I entered.
"Sheila," I said, "I am very much afraid you won't like my news."
"Well, sir, what's happened him?" she asked briefly.
"You're right," I answered. "It's your husband, but it's nothing to be
alarmed about, nothing at all dangerous. You must--"
"For the love av God, don't thry to break things to me, sir. Speak right
out. He's not hurt, ye say; well, he's pinched then, I suppose."
"No, it's not the police. He's been shanghaied, if you know what that
means."
"Crimped? It's thrue for ye, I know; 'tis twice before he's been, but
who done it I never could tell. Av I thought anny av my folk that's
afraid av his silly tongue wud do that dhirty thrick--" she stopped
short, her strong face working.
I was rather angry myself. "Well, Sheila, I don't believe they had
anything to do with it before; but it was Doctor Reid who had it done
to-day. I was there, but it was over before I understood what was going
on."
"Reid? I shud ha' known 'twas Reid, the shamblin' scun he is, an' small
good them that loved him best ever had av him! Now, the divil hould his
dhirty little pinch av a soul! For why shud he harm my man?"
"That's what I want to know," I said. "He's afraid of what Antonio says
about him, and you know--"
"As far as his story ever goes it'll harm no man," she burst out, "they
know well he's all bark an' no bite, if they weren't all crazy-afraid
together, an' a truer man anny day than that blagyard body-snatchin'
pill-roller. His own guilty heart it is, whisperin' over his shoulder,
an' me poor lamb that he married an' murthered, and the child av his own
body on the one day! An' the poor mother they're callin' crazy, with the
soul av the daughter she cudn't let free standin' between her an' the
sunshine. Crazy she'll never be until they make her so, with their
doctors an' questions an' whispers, an' that death-fetch Reid grinnin'
before her face, with the blood not dhry on him!" She paused for breath,
walking up and down the room and twisting her hands.
"Sit down, Sheila," I said, "you know this is absurd. I'm trying to get
a little truth about people we both care for; and if you say things like
that, how can you expect me to believe anything?" But my knees were
trembling as I spoke.
"Mudhered it was all the same," she said sullenly, dropping back into a
chair nevertheless. "When a docthor with all the learnin' that goes
beyond the knowledge av a woman lets his wife die an' an innocent mite
av a new-born baby go down to the grave with her, 'tis black murder it
is, no less. How could she rest quiet after that, an' half her life
callin' to her, an' the mother that wouldn't let her go, an' had the
power to see? 'Tis no docthor she wants, but a priest, an' no medicine
but a handful av holy wather, like my own sister's cousin Nora that used
to sit an' talk with her lad that was dead evenin's by the byre wall,
an' Father Tracy came behind an' sprinkled the two av thim, the one he
could see an' the one he could not see."
"Who was it that died?" I asked sharply. "Was it Miriam? Did Reid lie to
me when he said so, or did Carucci lie when he said that Reid was
married to Lady?"
She grew suddenly quiet and cautious, as if she had said too much
already, and must weigh her words.
"Reid told ye the truth for once," she muttered. "'Twas Antonio lied."
"Then Miriam was his wife, and Lady--"
"Yes," she answered, "it was Miriam," but she did not meet my eyes. Then
she went on hastily, before I could speak again.
"Ye see, sir, 'twas like this: When Miriam died, her mother's heart
nearly went with her, an' so because the poor dear loved her more than
enough, she did not go quite away. 'Tis so some whiles, when the livin'
holds too close by the dead. She used to talk to her, an' when the
villain that let her die got doctors an' looked like judgment, an' said
my poor soul was wrong in her head, an' ought to be taken away, an' they
moved her out there in the counthry where they had no friends, an' kept
her hidden as if there was a shame upon her, sure the lovin' soul of the
dead girl followed her mother. They said she was crazy when she made
them move her daughter's room, an' keep it up in the new house as it had
been in the old, an' would sit an' talk to her there. Sure, 'twas no
sign at all, an' a black lie in Reid's black heart to set the husband
an' the daughter again' her. Some folks are that way, that can see the
fairy folk an' the goblins, an' speak with the wandherin' dead. A good
priest Mrs. Tabor should have when the power tires her, an' not a lyin'
schemin' brute av a docthor that wants to put her away. 'Twas not much
at first anyhow. But he turned their heads with his talk av asylums an'
horrors to lead them away from his own wickedness."
"Is that the secret, then?" I asked. "Is the trouble no more than their
fear that Mrs. Tabor is insane?"
"Secret? What secret? There's no secret they have at all, only a wicked
lie." She was growing careful again. "'Tis all that docthor that's never
happy but doin' harm. She's no more crazy than meself, an' no one thinks
nor fears it, not even him. They only say so, because--" She stopped
herself again.
"Sheila," I said, "tell me just one thing. How much truth is there in
what your husband says?"
"How do I know what he says?" She was watching me closely, as if to see
that I followed her words. "He's dhrunk half the time, poor divil, an'
he says one thing to-day an' one to-morrow. Never ye mind him, sir."
"But there must have been something for him to go on," I persisted.
"Did Reid have some affair abroad before his marriage, or not?"
She hesitated, her apparent hatred of Reid struggling with her loyalty
to the family and her recovered caution.
"There was some matther av a woman in Germany," she said at last,
reluctantly, "but I never rightly knew about it, nor Antonio either."
Then more rapidly: "An' it's angry I've been, Mr. Crosby, an' 'tis like
I've said more meself than I mean." She paused.
"Has that nothing to do with the trouble in the family? Sheila, you know
I'm their good friend, and I'm not merely gossiping. You must have
seen--" for the life of me I could not go on.
"I'll say no more," she answered obstinately. "It's weary I am for you,
an' the poor darlin' that's bewitched ye, but--" her eyes filled, and
she shut her mouth with a snap. Say what I would after that, I could not
move her. She had said enough already, and she trusted a gentleman like
me that it should go no further. That was all.
"Sheila," I said, as I rose to go, "is all you have told me true?"
"Thrue?" she started as if I had struck her. "Yes, it's thrue--an'
sorrow fell them that made it so."
I took up my hat and stick from the table.
"We will have another talk about this some day, Sheila," I said. And I
closed the door behind me.