She pressed his knees to her breast. The red burned-out tear-ducts
yawned. The tortured body stiffened and relaxed.
"Poor wretch!" he thought. "But what is the physical agony of a night to
the mental anguish of a lifetime?"
"Once! once!" she gasped; "or kill me." Then, as he stood implacable,
"Kill me! Kill me!"
He picked her up, put a fresh night-gown on her, and laid her on the
bed. She remained as he placed her, too weak to move, her eyes staring
at the ceiling above the big four-posted bed.
He returned to his chair and looked at his watch. "She may live two
hours," he thought. "Possibly three. It is only twelve. There is plenty
of time."
The room grew as still as the mountain-top whence he had that day
returned. He attempted to read, but could not. The sense of supreme
power filled his brain. He was the gigantic factor in the fates of four.
Then Circumstance, the outwardly wayward, the ruthlessly sequential,
played him an ugly trick. His eyes, glancing idly about the room, were
arrested by a big old-fashioned rocking-chair. There was something
familiar about it. Soon he remembered that it resembled one in which his
mother used to sit. She had been an invalid, and the most sinless and
unworldly woman he had ever known. He recalled, with a touch of the old
impatience, how she had irritated his active, aspiring, essentially
modern mind with her cast-iron precepts of right and wrong. Her
conscience flagellated her, and she had striven to develop her son's to
the goodly proportion of her own. As he was naturally a truthful and
upright boy, he resented her homilies mightily. "Conscience," he once
broke out impatiently, "has made more women bores, more men failures,
than any ten vices in the rogues' calendar."
She had looked in pale horror, and taken refuge in an axiom: "Conscience
makes cowards of us all."
He moved his head with involuntary pride. The greatest achievement of
civilization was the triumph of the intellect over inherited
impressions. Every normal man was conscientious by instinct, however he
might outrage the sturdy little judge clinging tenaciously to his bench
in the victim's brain. It was only when the brain grew big with
knowledge and the will clasped it with fingers of steel that the little
judge was throttled, then cast out.
Conscience. What was it like? The doctor had forgotten. He had never
committed a murder nor a dishonorable act. Had the impulse of either
been in him, his cleverness would have put it aside with a smile of
scorn. He had never scrupled to thrust from his path whoever or whatever
stood in his way, and had stridden on without a backward glance. His
profession had involved many experiments that would have made quick
havoc of even the ordinary man's conscience.
Conscience. An awkward guest for an unsuspected murderer; for the
groundling whose heredity had not been conquered by brain. Fancy being
pursued by the spectre of the victim!
The woman on the bed gave a start and groan that recalled him to the
case in hand. He rose and walked quickly to her side. Her eyes were
closed, her face was black with congested blood. He laid his finger on
her pulse. It was feeble.
"It will not be long now," he thought.
He went toward his chair. He felt a sudden distaste for it, a desire for
motion. He walked up and down the room rather more rapidly than before.
"If I were an ordinary man," he thought, "I suppose that tortured
creature on the bed would haunt me to my death. Rot! A murderer I should
be called if the facts were known, I suppose. Well, she is worse. Did I
permit her to live she would make the living hell of four people."
The woman gave a sudden awful cry, the cry of a lost soul shot into the
night of eternity. The stillness had been so absolute, the cry broke
that stillness so abruptly and so horridly, that the doctor,
strong-brained, strong-nerved as he was, gave a violent start, and the
sweat started from his body.
"I am a fool," he exclaimed angrily, welcoming the sound of his voice;
"but I wish to God it were day and there were noises outside."
He strode hurriedly up and down the room, casting furtive glances at the
bed. The night was quiet again, but still that cry rang through it and
lashed his brain. He recalled the theory that sound never dies. The
waves of space had yielded this to him.
"Good God!" he thought. "Am I going to pieces? If I let this wretch,
this criminal die, I save four people. If I let her live, I ruin their
lives. The life of a man of brain and pride and heart; the life of a
woman of beauty and intellect and honor; the lives of two children of
unknown potentialities, for whom the world has now a warm heart. 'The
greatest good of the greatest number'--the principle that governs civil
law. Has not even the worthy individual been sacrificed to it again and
again? Does it not hang the criminal dangerous to the community? And is
that called murder? What am I at this moment but law epitomized? Shall I
hesitate? My God, am I hesitating? Conscience--is it that? A superfluous
instinct transmitted by my ancestors and coddled by a woman--is it that
which has sprung from its grave, rattling its bones? '_Conscience
makes_'--oh, shame that I should succumb when so much is at stake--that
I should hesitate when the welfare of four human beings trembles in the
balance! '_Conscience_'--that in the moment of my supreme power I should
falter!"
He returned to the woman. He reached his finger toward her pulse, then
hurriedly withdrew it and resumed his restless march.
"This is only a nightmare, born of the night and the horrible stillness.
To-morrow in the world of men it will be forgotten, and I shall
rejoice.... But there will be recurring hours of stillness, of solitude.
Will this night repeat itself? Will that thing on the bed haunt me? Will
that cry shriek in my ears? Oh, shame on my selfishness! What am I
thinking of? To let that base, degraded wretch exist, that I may live
peaceably with my conscience? To let four others go to their ruin, that
I may escape a few hours of torment? That I--_I_--should come to this!
'The greatest good of the greatest number. The greatest' ... 'Conscience
makes cowards of us all!'"
To his unutterable self-contempt and terror, he found his will for once
powerless to control the work of the generations that had preceded him.
His iron jaw worked spasmodically, his gray eyes looked frozen. The
marble pallor of his face was suffused with a tinge of green.
"I despise myself!" he exclaimed, with fierce emphasis. "I loathe
myself! I will not yield! '_Conscience_'--they shall be saved, and by
me. '_The greatest_'--I will maintain my intellectual supremacy--that,
if nothing else. She shall die!"
He halted abruptly. Perhaps she was already dead. Then he could reach
the door in a bound and run down-stairs and out of the house. To be
followed...
He ran to the bed. The woman still breathed faintly, her mouth was
twisted into a sardonic and pertinent expression. His hand sought his
pocket and brought forth a case. He opened it and stared at the
hypodermic syringe. His trembling fingers closed about it and moved
toward the woman. Then, with an effort so violent he fancied he could
hear his tense muscles creak, he straightened himself and turned his
back upon the bed. At the same moment he dropped the instrument to the
floor and set his heel upon it.
V