In a mean, miserable, two-dollar-a-week bedroom in a Chicago
lodging-house a young man was calmly and deliberately preparing to kill
himself.
He possessed youth, health, affluence and comeliness--and yet he was
preparing to kill himself. Calmly and deliberately. In the shabby room
of a shabby hovel.
With a penknife, he was ripping the bedclothes to ribbons and wedging
them into chinks and crannies. At last satisfied that the room was as
near gas-tight as he could make it, he stripped to his underclothing
and sat down at the battered bureau and began to write:
“_As soon as my dead body is found the newspapers will want to know
why I did it. I’ll tell them. And they may scarehead it as much as
they like. I don’t care. I’ve destroyed every clue to my identity, and
though I am wealthy enough to be pointed to and stared at, there is
not one in this vast city whom I know, not one who cares whether I am
alive tomorrow morning, or dead._
“_A love motive? Yes. But there is also something else--something
equally potent to me, however weak and flimsy it may appear to others.
I loved and do still love a girl whom I have known from childhood, but
always there has been this thing that stood between us, and which is
chiefly accountable for what I am about to do. It is not drink--nor
gambling, nor hereditary disease._
“_It is a Curiosity. An awful, overwhelming, unconquerable Curiosity.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a terrible desire to know
what follows death. As I grew up, this craving increased until it
was a positive mania. I devoured every book on theosophy and kindred
subjects I could lay hands on; I attended meetings of psychic
societies; at college my avidity for psychology was remarked by
everybody. At length I had reached the point where I yearned to tear
aside the black veil of death and discover her secret. Why wait? I
asked myself. Since you are bound to go some day, why not go now?_
“_One day I half-playfully voiced some such sentiment to her. It led
to a dispute, which led to a violent quarrel; and that night she left
the town where we both lived._
“_I traced her as far as Chicago, and here I have lost her. For three
years now I have searched the city for her, but not a trace have I
found. And so I have given it up. It is hopeless. I shall never see
her again._
“_Like myself, she is alone in the world, but, unlike me, she is
very poor. And somewhere in this great, monstrous city she is living
even as I write these words--perhaps miles away--perhaps in the next
block--perhaps ... God alone knows, and God protect her!_”
He stopped, put down his pencil, and placed his hand before his eyes.
Thus he sat for several minutes. The yellow gas flames flickered
weirdly at either side of the shoddy bureau; the clangor of a distant
street car reached him faintly; a motor-truck rumbled heavily in the
street below; a bickering couple jawed and wrangled ceaselessly in the
next room.
After awhile he picked up the pencil and went on:
“_Well anyway, I’m going to gratify that Curiosity. In a few hours I
shall be in an unknown country I have always longed to explore. I’ve
an idea I’ll find a happiness there I have never known on this earth._
“_In any event, I shall leave some good front page stuff for the
newspapers. It ought to make an interesting story: ‘Rich young man,
seeking his lost sweetheart in the great city, gives way to despair
and kills himself.’ If the girl is found next door, without money to
buy food or pay her room rent--_”
He arose abruptly with a sharp curse, and tore up what he had written.
Then he turned off both gas jets, then turned them on full, and then
lay down upon the cot in a corner of the room....
It was perhaps some twenty minutes before his body began to twitch
convulsively.
“Lily May!” he murmured huskily. Then more hoarsely still, “Lily
May--forgive--Lily May!”
... His body was writhing and twisting horribly now. His hands were
clutching at the air, at his clothing, at the mattress; his legs were
contracting and relaxing spasmodically. His face turned purple; he
choked and gasped.
“Lily May!” he cried in a stifling whisper, and attempted to lift his
arms.
But he could not, and his lips ceased moving and his head fell back,
and he lay very still.