A BROKEN TOOL
“A plague o’ both your houses! They have made worms’ meat of me.”
--SHAKESPEARE.
It had been close upon half-past two when Harney had left the house in
Bush Street. Essex at the window had heard the sound of his retreating
feet soon lost in the rush of the rain, and had then returned to the
fire. He had made a close calculation of the time Harney should take.
To go and come ought not to occupy more than a half-hour. The theft,
itself, if no mischances occurred, should be accomplished in ten or
fifteen minutes.
As the hands of the clock on the table drew near three, the man rose
from his post by the fire and began to move restlessly about the room.
The house was wrapped in the dead stillness of sleep, round which the
turmoil of the storm circled and upon which it seemed to press. Pausing
to listen he could hear the creaks and groan of the old walls, as the
wind buffeted them. Once, thinking he heard a furtive step, he went
to the door, opened it and peered out into the blackness of the hall.
The stairs still creaked as if to a light ascending foot, but his eyes
encountered nothing but the impenetrable darkness, charged with the
familiar smell of stale smoke.
Back in his room he went to the window and throwing it wide, leaned
out listening. The rain fell with a continuous drumming rustle,
through which the chinks and gurgles of water caught in small channels
penetrated with a near-by clearness. Here and there the darkness broke
away in splinters from a sputtering lamp, and where its light touched,
everything gleamed and glistened. Gusts of wind rose and fell, tore the
wet bushes in the garden below, and banged a shutter on an adjacent
house.
Essex left the window, drawing the curtain to shut its light from the
street. It was a quarter past three. If at four Harney had not returned
he would go after him. The thief might easily have missed his footing
in the tree and have fallen, and be lying beneath it, stunned, dead
perhaps, the papers in his hand.
The clock hands moved on toward twenty--twenty-five minutes past. The
creaking came from the stairs again, exactly, to the listening ear,
like the soft sound of a cautiously-mounting step. From the cupboard
came a curious loud tick and then a series of rending cracks. It made
Essex start guiltily, and swearing under his breath, he again turned
toward the window and, as he did so, caught the sound of hurrying feet.
He drew the curtain and leaned out. Above the uproar of the night he
heard the quick, regular thud of the feet of a runner, rushing onward
through the storm, and then, across the gleam of a lamp, a dark figure
shot, with head down, flying.
He dropped the curtain and waited, immense relief at his heart. In a
moment he heard the footsteps stop at the gate, furtively ascend the
stairs of the two terraces, and then the stealthy grating of the door.
He silently pushed his own door open that the light might guide the
ascending man, and he heard Harney’s loud breathing as he crept up.
The thief rose up out of the gulf of darkness like an apparition of
terror. He dropped into a chair, his face gray, white and pinched, the
sound of his rasping breaths, drawn with pain from the bottom of his
lungs, filling the room. He was incapable of speech, and Essex, pouring
him out whisky, was forced to take the glass from his shaking hand and
hold it to his lips. From his soaked clothes and the cap that crowned
his head, like a saturated woolen rag, water streamed. But the rain had
not been able to efface from his coat a caking of mud that half-covered
one arm and shoulder, and there was blood on one of his hands. He had
evidently fallen.
“Have you got it?” said Essex, putting the glass down.
The other nodded and let his head sink on the chair-back.
“I’m dead,” he gasped, “but I done it.”
“Where is it? Give it to me.”
The man made a faint movement of assent, but evidently had not force
enough to produce the paper and lay limp in the chair, Essex watching
him impatiently. Presently he put his feeble hand out for the glass and
drank again. The rattling loudness of his breathing moderated. Without
moving his head he turned his eyes on Essex and said:
“I’m most killed--I’m all shook up. I fell coming down the tree, some
way--I don’t know how far--but I got it all right. She fought like a
wildcat, tried to burn it--but I got it. Then she hollered and a man
answered. I knew it was a man’s voice, and I made a dash for the winder
only jest in time. I’m cut somewheres--”
He raised the hand with the blood on it and fumbled at his coat-sleeve.
The other hand was smeared with blood from the contact.
“Like a pig,” he said in a low voice, and pulled out a rag of
handkerchief which he tried to push up his sleeve; “I’m cut somewheres
all right, but I don’t know where.”
“Give me the paper and take your things off. You’re dripping all over
everything,” said Essex, extending his hand.
Harney sat up.
“I dunno how I done it,” he said; “how I got down. The man was right on
my heels. When I fell I saw him, pullin’ her up on her feet--I saw that
through the winder. Then I riz up and I went--God, how I went!”
He had stuffed his handkerchief up his sleeve by this time, and now put
his bloody tremulous hand into the outer breast-pocket of his coat. As
the hand fumbled about the opening he said:
“I didn’t stop to look no more nor take no risks. I wanted to git away
from thar and I tell you I lit out, and--”
He stopped, his jaw dropped, his nerveless figure stiffened, a look of
animal terror came into his eyes.
“Where is it?” he almost yelled, staring at Essex.
“How the devil should I know! Where did you put it? Isn’t it there?”
Essex himself had suddenly paled. He stood erect before the crouched
and trembling figure of his partner, his eyes fiercely intense.
“It ain’t here,” cried Harney, his hand clawing about in the pocket.
“It ain’t there. Oh Lordy, Lordy! I’ve lost it! It’s gone. It fell out
when I came off the tree. I fell. I told you I fell. Didn’t I tell you
I fell?” he shouted, as if he had been contradicted.
He rose up, his face pasty white, wringing his hands like a woman.
There was something grotesque and almost overdone in his terror, but
his pallor and the fear in his eyes were real.
“Lost it!” cried Essex. “No more of those lies! Give me the paper, you
dog.”
“Don’t you hear me say I ain’t got it? Ain’t I told you I fell? When
I jumped for the tree I jest smashed it down into my pocket. I had to
have both hands to climb. And I suppose I ain’t pressed it in tight
enough. God, man, it was ten years in San Quentin for me if I’d lost
two minutes.”
Essex drew closer, his mouth tight, his eyes fixed with a fiercely
compelling gaze on the wretch before him.
“Don’t think you can make anything by stealing that paper. Give it up;
give it up now; I’ve got you here, and I’ll know what you’ve done with
it before you leave or you’ll never leave at all.”
“I lost it, and that’s what I done with it. If you want it, come on
with me now and look round under that tree. Ain’t you understood I fell
sideways from the branch to the ground? Look at my hand--” he held up
his arm, pulling the muddy sleeve back from the blood-stained wrist.
“Where is it?” said Essex, without moving. “You were gone nearly an
hour. Where have you hidden it?”
“Nowheres. It took time. I had to clim’ up careful, ’cause she had a
light burning, and I thought she was awake. Why can’t you believe me?
What can I do with it alone?”
“You can blackmail Mrs. Shackleton well enough alone. Give me that
paper, or tell me where you put it, or, by God, I’ll kill you!”
Fear of the man that owned him gave Harney the air of guilt. He backed
away in an access of pallid terror, shouting:
“I ain’t lying. Why can’t yer believe me? It took time--it took time!
Ain’t I told you I fell? Look at the mud; and feel, feel in every
pocket.” He seized on them and tore the insides outward. “I’m tellin’
you the whole truth. I ain’t got it.”
“Where is it, then? You’ll tell me where you’ve hidden it, or--”
Essex made a sudden leap forward and caught the man by his neck-cloth
and collar. In his blind alarm Harney was given fictitious strength,
and he tore himself loose and rushed for the door. Essex’s hat, coat
and stick lay on the table. Without thought or premeditation their
owner seized the cane--a heavy malacca--by the end, flew round the
table, and as Harney turned the door-handle, brought the knob of the
loaded cane down on the crown of his head.
It struck with a thud and sent the water squirting from the saturated
cap. The thief, without cry or word, spun round, waving his hands in
the air, and then fell heavily face downward. For a moment he quivered,
and once or twice made a convulsive movement, then lay still, the water
running from his clothes along the floor.
With the cane still in his hand, Essex came around the table and looked
at him. For a space he stood staring, his hand resting on the edge of
the table, his neck craned forward, his face set in a rigid intensity
of observation. The sudden silence that had succeeded to the loud tones
of Harney’s voice was singularly deep and solemn. The room seemed held
in a spell of stillness, almost awful in its suddenness and isolation.
“Get up,” he said in a low voice. “Harney, get up.”
There was no response, and he leaned forward and pushed at the
motionless figure with the cane.
“Damn!” he said under his breath, “he’s fainted.”
And throwing the cane away, he approached the man and bent over him.
There was no sound of breathing or pulse of life about the sodden
figure with its hidden face. Drops formed on Essex’s forehead as he
turned it over. Then, as it confronted him, livid with fallen jaw and a
gleam of white between the wrinkled eyelid, the drops ran down his face.
With a hand that shook as Harney’s had a few moments before he felt the
pulse and then tore the shirt open and tried the heart. His face was
white as the man’s on the floor as he poured whisky down the throat
that refused to swallow. Finally, tearing off his coat, he knelt beside
his victim and tried every means in his power to bring back life into
the miserable body in which he had only recognized a tool of his own.
But there was no response. The minutes ticked on, and there was no
glimmer of intelligence in the cold indifference of the eyes, no warmth
round the stilled heart, no flutter of breath at the slack, gray lips.
The night was still dark, the rain in his ears, when he rose to his
feet. A horror unlike anything he had even imagined was on him. All
the things in life he had struggled for seemed shriveled to nothing.
The whole worth of his existence was contained in the unlovely body on
the floor. To bring life back to it he would have given his dearest
ambition--sacrificed love, money, happiness--all for which he had held
life valuable, and thought himself blessed. What a few hours before
were ends to struggle and sin for seemed now of no moment to him.
Mariposa had faded to a dim, undesired shadow; the millions she stood
for to dross he would have passed without a thought. How readily would
he have given it all to bring back the breath to the creature he had
held as a worm beneath his foot!
He seized the table-cloth and threw it over the face whose solemn,
tragic calm filled him with a sick dread. Then with breathless haste he
flung some clothes into a valise and made the fire burn high with the
letters and papers he threw on it at intervals. The first carts of the
morning had begun their rattling course through the stirred darkness
when he crept out, a haggard, hunted man.
He had to hide himself in unfrequented corners, cower beneath the
shadow of trees on park benches till the light strengthened and
morning shook the city into life. Then, as its reawakening tides began
to surge round him, he made a furtive way--for the first time in his
life fearful of his fellow men--to the railway station, and there took
the earliest south-bound train for the Mexican border.
The fire had died down, the leaden light of coming day was filtering in
through the crack between the half-drawn curtains, when the shrouded
shape on the floor moved and a deep groan broke upon the stillness.
Another followed it, groans of physical anguish beating on awakening
consciousness. An early riser from the floor above heard them as he
stole downward, stopped, listened, knocked, then receiving no reply,
opened the door and peered fearfully in. In the dim room, cut with
a sword of faint light, he saw the covered shape, and, as he stood
terrified, heard the groan repeated and saw the drapery twitched.
Shouting his fears over the balustrade, he rushed in, flung the
curtains wide, tore off the table-cloth, and in the rush of pallid
light, saw Harney, leaden eyed, withered to a waxen pallor, smeared
with the blood of the cut wrist which he feebly moved, struggling back
to existence.