"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make
a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you
will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my
books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark
in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no
awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has
to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his
usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, "You can give,
as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the
object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable
collector, sir!"
And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite
pity, and a touch of horror.
"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to
buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the
wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand
to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he
continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had
prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you
upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must
produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a
rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be
it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady, now," he
went on, "this hand glass--fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a
good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my
customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole
heir of a remarkable collector."
The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a
shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a
sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the
hand that now received the glass.
"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not."
"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
me why not?" he said. "Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself! Do
you like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man."
The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted
him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on
hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favored,"
said he.
"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me
this--this damned reminder of years and sins and follies--this
hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I
hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe
to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"
"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness, and
then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love match of
yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."
"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. "Ah, have you been in
love? Tell me about that."
"I!" cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the
time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
away from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it--a cliff a
mile high--high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of
humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows,
we might become friends?"
"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make your
purchase, or walk out of my shop."
"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
something else."
The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim
moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he
drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different
emotions were depicted together on his face--terror, horror, and
resolve, fascination, and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard
lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began to
re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
skewer-like dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen,
striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a
heap.
Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow
as was becoming to their great age, others garrulous and hurried. All
these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the
passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon
these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of his
surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the
counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that
inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle
and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots
of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the
portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water.
The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with
a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small
and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in
that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim
had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed,
this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent
voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or
direct the miracle of locomotion--there it must lie till it was found.
Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that
would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit.
Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy. "Time was that when the
brains were out," he thought; and the first word struck into his mind.
Time, now that the deed was accomplished--time, which had closed for the
victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.
The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with
every variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a cathedral
turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz--the
clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from
Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were
an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of
his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And
still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a
sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should
have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he
should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and
only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have
been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all
things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind
to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the
architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this
activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted
attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand
of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would
jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock,
the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin. Terror of the people in
the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was
impossible, he thought, but that some rumor of the struggle must have
reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the
neighboring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted
ear--solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on
memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender
exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the
mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humor, but
all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope
that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too
softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a
bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop
the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the
very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to
strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and
bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate
bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.
But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the
brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on
his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside his
window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
pavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through
the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the
servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the day"
written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and
yet, in the bulk of empty house about him, he could surely hear a stir
of delicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious, of
some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his
imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had
eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again
behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.
At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
did there not hang wavering a shadow?
Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat
with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts and
railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name.
Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay
quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and
shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which
would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had
become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from
his knocking and departed.
Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
from this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London
multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety
and apparent innocence--his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment
another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and
yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money,
that was now Markheim's concern; and as a means to that, the keys.
He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the
mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed
with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and
yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the
eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the
body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light
and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the
oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as
pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That
was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him
back, upon the instant, to a certain fair day in a fishers' village: a
gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses,
the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy
going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between
interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse,
he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed,
garishly colored: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their
murdered guest; Weare in the death grip of Thurtell; and a score besides
of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once
again that little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same
sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned
by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon
his memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a
breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must
instantly resist and conquer.
He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while
ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth
had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies; and
now, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the
horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock.
So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful
consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the painted
effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a
gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those
faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had
never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.
With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he
seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
muscles, and drew back the door.
The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs;
on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing;
and on the dark wood carvings and framed pictures that hung against the
yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain
through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be
distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread
of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to
the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he
heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great
effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed
stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he
would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever fresh
attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the
outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned
continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their
orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half rewarded as
with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty steps
to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
On that first story the doors stood ajar, three of them like three
ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never
again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror,
some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful
illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules,
calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated
tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould of their
succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the
winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall
Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings
like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under
his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and there
were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the
house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the
house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all
sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be
called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God himself
he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his
excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he felt
sure of justice.
When he got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he
was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled,
uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous
furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at
various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and
unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton
sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry
hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune the
lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from
the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the
cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for
there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there
might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the
closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw
the door--even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged
commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But in
truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded natural
and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were
wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up
the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! How
fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he
sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and
images; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ;
children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly
common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at
another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of
summer Sundays, and the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he
smiled a little to recall), and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim
lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the
stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob,
and the lock clicked, and the door opened. Fear held Markheim in a vice.
What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man walking, or the
official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly
stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was thrust
into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and
smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the
door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse
cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned.
"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the
room and closed the door behind him.
Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change
and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the
shop: and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
earth and not of God.
And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking
for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
Markheim made no answer.
"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be
found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."
"You know me?" cried the murderer.
The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said;
"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."
"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
propose to render you."
"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by
you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."