grudgingly.
If he had expected melodrama he was doomed to disappointment.
"Same old trouble," she said quietly. "I was workin' for some swell
folks up on the North Side--real swells _they_ was, believe me.
They thought I was bad. Maybe I am. I don't know. He promised. What
more could a girl expect? When they found out, the lady she says to
me, 'Of course, I can't keep you here, Molly. It wouldn't be right
with me with two daughters of my own, but I'm awful sorry, and I
hope it'll be a lesson to you. There's plenty of chances for you to
start again. It ain't never too late to turn over a new leaf. Don't
tumble down them stairs,' she says when I kind of stumbled. Like it
would make any difference! Then she shut the door on me. 'There's
plenty of chances for you to begin over again.' That's what she
said. Lord, ain't it funny?" cried the girl. Her laugh rang out high
and shrill, seeming to cut into the clear darkness.
Tough agreed that it was funny. Having, perhaps, less sense of
humour than Molly, he qualified the statement by adding that it was
kind of tough also.
"How about the fella?" he asked casually.
"Ditched me," replied the girl. "After I come out the horspittle I
never seen hide nor hair of him. Gee," she concluded bitterly, "I
was crazy about that lad."
"Must 'a' been a kind of a mean skunk, though," judged Tough. "How
about the kid?"
The girl's eyes sought the glittering river. "I give it away," she
told him finally.
"Oh!" ejaculated Tough.
The girl seemed to feel a tentative rebuke in this. "What could I
do?" she asked. "I tried to get another job before--and I couldn't.
I don't know's I'll try again. There's easier ways"--the sentence
hung suspended for a moment--"you know."
There was no polite veil of assumed ignorance thrown over such
situations in the circle in which Tough moved. He knew, of course.
Still----
"There's better ways," he ventured.
Tough was startled at the flash of anger that lit up the girl's
shrunken face. For a moment she looked as if she would strike him.
Then, with a sharp, quick movement, she buried her face in the
covering of the bundle which she had been holding lightly on the
railing of the bridge. The next instant Tough heard a soft splash as
something struck the water.
"There's that way," a voice shrieked in his ear.
Tough sprang to the railing and looked down.
"Gawd a'mighty, girl!" he panted.
"I seen--seen--Gawd, woman!" he moistened his dry lips. "Was
it--say, it wasn't the kid?"
Molly burst into a blood-curdling laugh.
"Sure it was," she cried. "I doped it a-purpose. I been trying to
get up the nerve to do it ever since this morning. Do you think I
was going to let her grow up into a thing like her mother? Man,
you're crazy."
Tough's coat had been already flung off. "Don't be a quitter, girl,"
he gasped. "Run for the cop and tell him to put out a boat, and then
you wait for me. We'll save her and she'll be an all-right one and
like her mother, too."
Just how near Tough came to seeing his finish there in the rays of
the moon which he loved nobody but Tough ever knew. It was easy
enough to swim with the current and overtake and seize the tiny
bundle held up for the moment on the surface of the water by the
expanding draperies. It was when he turned and tried to swim back to
the bridge that the waves pushed and beat at him like cruel hands.
He thought somebody was trying to strangle him. What were they
hanging to his feet for? Why did they push him and strike him? He
wouldn't go that way. He had to go the other way. He must make them
quit twisting him. And then through the awful pounding at his brain
came a cheery voice: "Ketch a hold, bo. Ketch a hold."
Sputtering, gasping, sick, exhausted, Tough hitched his elbows
weakly over the side and let the unconscious thing he had so nearly
lost his life for slip gently into the bottom of the boat.
"Why, it's Tough Muggins," said the officer, looking down into his
face. "For the lova Mike, what was you doin'?"
Through the dank drip of his hair Tough winked.
"I just dropped in to get a drink," he said. "I belong to the cop
family and I got the habit."
It was not until the boat had ground itself gratingly up against the
rough stone ledge that served for a landing that Tough openly
acknowledged Policeman Connelley's right to an explanation of a
sort. He jerked his head toward Molly, who stood, wild-eyed and
trembling, on the narrow ledge above.
"My girl," he said succinctly. "We was scrappin', and she pitched my
bundle of clothes that I was fetchin' home overboard. There was
money in the pants," he added by way of gracious explanation. "That
was why I jumped in after 'em."
"Didn't know you had a girl, Tough." Big Jim Connelley may have had
his suspicions, but his tone was of the most conventional.
"That so?" inquired Tough as he scrambled up the ledge. "Say, Jim,
the things you don't know would fill a city directory right up to
the limit."
Then he turned to Molly. "Guess you're cooled off, now, old girl,
what?" he said. "Come on, then. Let's beat it home."
Gathering her unconscious baby to her with trembling, passionate
hands, the girl went with him trustingly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BLACK PATCH
By Randolph Hartley
I wear a black patch over my left eye. It has aroused the curiosity
of many; no one has suspected the horror that it hides.
Twenty years ago Bernard Vroom and I, fellow students at the
University of Jena, were devotees at the feet of Professor
Malhausen, the foremost optical surgeon of his time. Living,
working, dreaming together, Vroom and I became almost as one
intelligence in our passionate study of the anatomy of the eye.
Vroom it was who advanced the theory that a living eye-ball might be
transferred from the head of one man to the head of another. It was
I who suggested, and arranged for, the operation, performed by
Professor Malhausen, through which Vroom's left eye became mine and
my left eye became Vroom's. Professor Malhausen's monograph,
published shortly afterward, describes the delicate operation in
detail. The ultimate effects of the operation are my own story.
Very distinctly do I remember the final struggle for breath when the
anesthetic was administered; and quite as vividly do I recall my
return to consciousness, in a hospital cot, weakened by a six weeks'
illness with brain fever, which had followed the operation. Slowly
but clearly my mind advanced through the process of
self-identification, and memory brought me to the moment of my last
conscious thought. With a mingled feeling of curiosity and dread I
opened my eyes.
I opened my eyes and beheld two distinct and strongly contrasting
scenes. One, which was visible most clearly when I employed only my
right eye, was the bare hospital room in which I lay. The other,
distinct to the left eye alone, was the deck of a ship, a stretch of
blue sea, and in the distance a low, tropical coast that was to me
totally unfamiliar.
Perplexed and vaguely afraid, I begged the nurse to send at once for
Vroom. She explained gently that Vroom had recovered quickly, and
that, although deeply distressed over leaving me, he had sailed for
Egypt, a fortnight since, on a scientific mission. In a flash the
truth came to me overwhelmingly. The severing of the optic nerve had
not destroyed the sympathy between Vroom's two eyes. With Vroom's
left eye, now physically mine, I was beholding that which Vroom
beheld with his right. The magnitude of the discovery and its
potentialities stunned me. I dared not tell Professor Malhausen for
fear of being thought insane. For the same reason I have held the
secret until now.
On the second day of double-vision my left eye revealed a gorgeous
picture of the port and city of Alexandria--and of a woman.
Evidently she and Vroom were standing close together at the ship's
rail. I saw on her face an expression that I had never seen on
woman's before. I thrilled with exultation. Then suddenly I went
cold. The look was for Vroom, not for me. I had found a love that
was not mine, a love to which every atom of my being responded, and
it was to be my portion to behold on my loved one's face, by day and
by night, the manifestation of her love for another man.
From that moment on I lived in the world that was revealed to me by
my left eye. My right was employed only when I set down in my diary
the impressions and experiences of this other life. The record was
chiefly of the woman, whose name I never knew. The final entry,
unfinished, describes the evidences that I saw of her marriage to
Vroom in the English Garrison Church at Cairo. I could write no
more. A jealousy so sane and so well founded, so amply fed by new
fuel every new moment that it was the acme of torture, possessed me.
I was truly insane, but with a true vision, and to me was given the
weapon of extreme cunning that insanity provides. I convinced
Professor Malhausen that my left eye was sightless, and by
simulating calmness and strength I gained my discharge from the
hospital. The next day I sailed from Bremen for Port Said.
Upon reaching Cairo I had, naturally, no difficulty in finding my
way through the already familiar streets, to the Eden Palace Hotel,
and to the very door of Vroom's apartment, overlooking the Esbekieh
Gardens. Without plan, save for the instant sight of her I loved, I
opened the door. Vroom stood there facing me, a revolver in his
hand.
"You did not consider," he said calmly, "that my left eye also is
sympathetic; that I have followed every movement of yours; that I am
acquainted with your errand through the entries in your diary, which
I read line by line as you wrote. You shall not see her. I have sent
her far away."
I rushed upon him in a frenzy. His revolver clicked but missed fire.
I bore him backward over a divan, my hands at his throat. His eyes
grew big as I strangled him. And into my left eye came a vision of
my own face, as Vroom saw it, distorted by the lust of murder. He
died with that picture fixed in his own eye, and upon the retina of
the eye that once was his, and is now mine, that fearful picture of
my face was fixed, to remain until my death.
I wear a black patch over my left eye. I dare not look upon the
horror that it hides.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A SHIPBOARD ROMANCE
By Lewis Allen
"Isn't that young Griggs and Miss Deering?" asked the captain,
peering down from the bridge at a dark spot silhouetted against the
moonlit sea.
"Yes, sir," replied the second officer.
"It's the speediest shipboard romance I've ever seen in all my
thirty years aboard a liner," remarked the captain, smiling.
"I understand they never saw or heard of each other until they met
at dinner, Tuesday. Have you talked much with them, sir? I see they
sit next you at table."
"Oh, yes, that's true. Why, on the second dinner out he complained
because there was no jewellery shop aboard. She looked as happy as a
kid with a lollypop, and blushed."
"Whew! Engaged within forty-eight hours! Going some! I suppose
they'll be married by the American consul before they've been ashore
an hour."
"Not a bit of doubt of it," grinned the captain. "True love at sight
in this case, all right. Well, they have my blessings. I fell in
love with my Missus the same way, but we waited three months. I'll
go below. What's she making?"
"Nineteen, sir. Good-night."
* * * * *
Two hours later there came a terrific explosion away down in the
hold amongst the cargo. The ship trembled and listed.
"Women and children first! No danger! Time enough for all!" shouted
the officers, as the frantic passengers surged about the life-boats.
She was going down rapidly by her stern. There came another
explosion, this from the boilers.
"All women and children off?" bellowed the captain.
"Aye, aye, sir," answered the second officer.
"Married men next!" shouted the captain as the men began scrambling
into the boats. A score of men paused, bowed, and stepped back.
Young Griggs tore his way through and started to clamber into the
boat.
"Damn you, for a coward!" cursed the second officer, dragging him
back.
Young Griggs yanked away and again clutched at the boat. This time
the second officer struck him square in the face and he went down.
The boatload of married men was merely cut away, so low was the ship
in the water. Then came a lurch, and the waves closed over the great
ship.
* * * * *
The next evening the Associated Press sent out, from its St. Louis
office, this paragraph:
"Among those lost was H. G. Griggs, junior partner of the Wells &
Griggs Steel Co. He leaves a wife and infant son in this city. It is
feared Mrs. Griggs will not recover from the shock."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COWARD
By Philip Francis Cook
Johnson stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked carefully at
the hut. A few yards back, where the spring crossed the trail, there
were tracks of a woman's shoe-pack. It was country where one didn't
live long without the habit of noticing things. The tracks were
light, mostly toes, and far apart for so small a foot. Johnson knew
no woman travelled north so fast, into the wilderness, and without a
pack, at that, for diversion, so he had sidestepped from the trail,
silently slipped off his tump-line, and circled to the edge of the
clearing, about a dozen yards from where the trail struck it. There
in the shadow of the pines he searched the clearing with his eyes.
No sign of life.
The door of the hut was shut, but a couple of boards had been
knocked off one of the window openings. The tall grass was trampled
toward the spring. Over to the right was a wreck of a birch, where
some one had been cutting firewood. Nothing especially alarming, but
Johnson was not popular and a few early experiences had made him
cautious. He stood there, silent, for perhaps fifteen minutes,
before he started for the door. There was still no sound, and he
stepped inside, gun in hand.
A rusty little yacht stove, a few shelves, and a rude table were all
the cookroom contained. Beyond was the bunkroom with a large
double-decked bunk against one wall, and opposite it the window.
Johnson went on in.
In the lower bunk lay the body of a man with a hunting knife
sticking in his breast. He lay staring at the ceiling with a rather
silly smile, as though he had been grinning, and death had come too
quickly for it to fade.
"MacNamara---- My God!"
Johnson was unnerved. It was not often that men die by the knife in
the North country. Then a great load seemed to leave his shoulders,
for this dead man had sworn, not three weeks before, to shoot him at
sight--and Johnson was known to be a coward. No more need he sleep
with an eye open, or slip into towns at night. MacNamara, thank God,
was dead.
The dead man's pack was in the other bunk, and scattered around the
room were hairpins, a small rhinestone ring, and a few other
feminine trinkets. "Woman!" said Johnson--and then he saw the note.
It was scrawled on the cover torn from an old magazine. It read:
"Ed, you'll find this sure. Mac was going to lay for you and pot you
at the White Rocks. I couldn't find you, so I promised to come here
to Carmels with him. When he climbed in the bunk I give it to
him--the damned fool!"
It was unsigned.
The sun was very near the western hilltop. Johnson went to the woods
and returned with his pack; he dropped it near the stove in the
cookroom. Then he burned the note. Next he took a small bag of
parched corn out of his pack and concealed in it the woman's little
things, and put the bag in his shirt. There remained only one thing
to do. Without looking at the dead man's face he drew the knife out
of his breast and forced his own into the wound. The woman's knife
he took to the door and hurled far out into the woods.
There wasn't much daylight left. He closed the door quietly and
started for the trail, north.
"I'll have to hurry," said Johnson.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HEART OF A BURGLAR
By Jane Dahl
Noiselessly the burglar drew his great bulk through the window,
deposited his kit of tools on the floor, and lowered the sash behind
him. Then he stopped to listen. No sound broke the midnight
stillness. Stealthily he flashed his lantern around the room in
search of objects of value. His quick ear caught the sound of a door
opening and hurried footsteps in the upper hall. Instantly he
adjusted a black mask and sprang behind an open door. Pistol in
hand, every faculty alert, he waited. He heard the soft thud of bare
feet on the padded stairs, then laboured breathing nearby.
As the electric light was switched on, brilliantly illuminating the
room, he gripped his revolver and stepped from behind the door.
"Hands up!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. Then he fell back with a
short, raucous laugh. He was pointing the revolver at a frightened
little mite of a girl shivering before him in her thin, white
nightgown. The small, terrified face touched him strangely, and,
placing his pistol in his pocket, he said, not unkindly:
"There, little girl, don't be so scared--I'm not going to hurt you.
Just you be real still so as not to disturb the others until I get
through and get away, and you shan't be hurt."
The child looked at him much as she would an obstacle in her path,
and attempted to rush past him. He grabbed her and held her tight.
"You little vixen!" he exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you to keep still?"
"But I've got to telephone," gasped the child, struggling to free
herself. "Just let me telephone and then you can do what you like
with me--but I can't wait--I've got to telephone right away." And
she made another effort to reach the telephone on the wall.
Again the burglar laughed. "It's very likely I'll let you telephone
for the police. No, missy, you can't work that on me. I guess I'll
have to tie and gag you after all."
Fresh terror found its way into the child's face, and, for the first
time the burglar realized that he was not the cause of it. She was
not afraid of him. She fought and scratched him like a young
tigress, striving to free herself, and when she realized how
powerless she was in his strong arms she burst into tears.
"Oh! My brother is dying," she cried, "and I want to telephone the
doctor. He has convulsions and mamma doesn't know what to do--and
you won't let me telephone the doctor!"
At the word "convulsions" the burglar went white--his hands fell
nervelessly to his sides--the child was free.
"Call the doctor, quick," he said, placing the child on the chair in
front of the telephone. "What room are they in?"
"End of the hall, upstairs," responded the child, with the receiver
already off the hook.
In three bounds the burglar was up the steps. He made for the light
which shone through a half-open door down the hall, striving to
formulate some explanation to offer the mother for his presence in
the house. When he gently pushed open the door he saw that none was
needed--the woman before him was oblivious to all the world.
Dishevelled and distracted, she sat rocking to and fro, clutching to
her breast the twitching body of a wee boy. Piteously she begged him
not to die--not to leave his poor mummy.
Quietly the burglar came to her side and gently loosened her clasp.
"Give me the baby," he said in a low voice. "He will be better on
the bed."
Dumbly, with unseeing eyes, she looked at him, and surrendered the
child.
"He is dying," she moaned--"dying--oh, my little, little man!"
"No, he's not," said the burglar. But as he looked at the wide-open,
glassy eyes and blue, pinched face of the child he had little faith
in his own words.
He placed the baby upon the bed, and turning to the mother, said in
an authoritative voice:
"You must brace up now and save your child--do you understand? I
can save him, but you must help me, and we must be quick--quick, do
you understand?"
A glimmer of comprehension seemed to penetrate her palsied brain.
"Yes, yes!" she said. "What shall I do?"
"Heat a kettle of water, quick. Bring it in his bathtub--and bring
some mustard, too. Hurry."
Impatiently the mother was off before the last "hurry" was hurled at
her. Now that a ray of hope was offered, and something definite to
do, she was all action.
Reverently the burglar removed the baby's nightrobe, and, covering
the little body with a blanket, he rubbed the legs and arms and back
with his huge hands--very, very gently, for fear their roughness
would irritate the delicate skin.
In a short time the mother was back with the hot mustard bath.
Together they placed the baby in the tub. His little body
relaxed--the glassy eyes closed--he breathed regularly--he was
asleep.
"Thank God," breathed the burglar, fervently, though awkwardly, as
though such words were strange to his lips.
"He is sleeping," cried the mother rapturously. "He will live!"
As the mother was drying the little body with soft towels the
burglar said brokenly:
"I had a little boy once--about his size--two years old. He died
in convulsions because his mother didn't know what to do and the
doctor didn't get there in time."
A sob of ready sympathy came from the heart of the woman.
"And his poor mother?" she asked. "Where is she?"
"She soon followed--she seemed to think the little fellow would
need her over there," he replied in a tear-choked voice.
Half ashamed, he ran his sleeve across his eyes to remove the
moisture there. The woman's tears splashed on the quietly sleeping
infant in her lap.
Both were startled by the clamorous ringing of the doorbell.
"The doctor!" cried the man, suddenly brought to a realization of
his position.
The woman looked at him, and for the first time she really saw him;
for the first time the strangeness of an unknown man in the house in
the middle of the night was apparent to her. From his face her
glance wandered to the chair where the burglar had thrown his mask
and tools.
"Yes," he said, answering her look, "I'm a burglar. I heard your
husband was out of town, and I came to rob you. You can call the
police, now."
"No," the woman interrupted. "Go into the next room and wait until
the doctor leaves. I want to help you to a better way of living than
this, if I can."
After the doctor had departed the woman went into the next room. The
burglar was not there. Going downstairs she found the drawers
ransacked and all her valuables gone. On the table was a scrap of
paper. On it was written:
"Thank you, madam, for your offer, but I'm used to this life now
and don't want to change."
The woman thought of the sleeping baby upstairs, and a tender smile
came to her lips. That robbery was not reported to the police.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE REWARD
By Herbert Heron
No one knew just how popular Cobbe was till Dick Walling shot him.
It was Cobbe's fault, but Walling didn't wait to explain. Like
others, he didn't know the degree of the deceased's popularity but
he had a fair idea, and left Monterey as fast as his horse could
take him. The animal was the speediest in the county.
He stopped at Parl's on his way up the valley. Parl greeted him
cordially. For half an hour they talked. The 'phone rang.
"That's for me. I told Cobbe I'd stop here," and with that Walling
took down the receiver.
"Hello! This Mr. Parl's. Oh, yes, you want me. What? Well, I'm
damned! Not a sign. I'll watch. Sure. What? How much? Whew!" He
ended in a long whistle, and hung up.
"I'll be sliding along now." He shook hands, mounted, and rode
toward Monterey till Parl shut the door. Then he circled, and went
on up the valley. A thousand dollars reward, dead or alive! He knew
now how popular Cobbe was.
They hadn't even waited till the sheriff had failed to get him.
There are few ranches above Parl's, and these have no telephones, so
he rode by, unconcerned. Toward midnight he came to a place owned by
a girl and her brother. He had loved the girl, but decided that she
didn't care for him. The brother liked him, though, and he could get
some food for his stay in the mountains till things quieted down and
he could leave the country.
The brother came to the door, pale and troubled. "He can't have
heard----" The thought was dispelled by the sudden relief on the
boy's face.