Did you know him?’
‘I knew him.’
‘And his sweetheart, Aline?’
‘Aline,’ she repeated softly, ‘—she is dead. I come to thank you in her name.’
‘For what? – for his death?’
‘Ah, yes, for that.’
‘Where did you get those letters?’ I asked her, suddenly.
She did not answer, but stood fingering the wet letters.
Before I could speak again she moved away into the shadows of the trees, lightly, silently, and far down the dark walk I saw her diamond flashing.
Grimly brooding, I rose and passed through the Battery to the steps of the Elevated Road. These I climbed, bought my ticket, and stepped out to the damp platform. When a train came I crowded in with the rest, still pondering on my vengeance, feeling and believing that I was to scourge the conscience of the man who speculated on death.
At last the train stopped at 28th Street, and I hurried out and down the steps and away to the Morgue.
When I entered the Morgue, Skelton, the keeper, was standing before a slab that glistened faintly under the wretched gas jets. He heard my footsteps, and turned around to see who was coming. Then he nodded, saying, ‘Mr Hilton, just take a look at this here stiff – I’ll be back in a moment – this is the one that all the papers take to be Miss Tufft – but they’re all off, because this stiff has been here now for two weeks.’
I drew out my sketching-block and pencils.
‘Which is it, Skelton?’ I asked, fumbling for my rubber.
‘This one, Mr Hilton, the girl what’s smilin’. Picked up off Sandy Hook, too. Looks as if she was asleep, eh?’
‘What’s she got in her hand – clenched tight? Oh, a letter. Turn up the gas, Skelton, I want to see her face.’
The old man turned up the gas jet, and the flame blazed and whistled in the damp, fetid air. Then suddenly my eyes fell on the dead.
Rigid, scarcely breathing, I stared at the ring, made of two twisted serpents set with a great diamond – I saw the wet letters crushed in her slender hand – I looked, and – God help me! – I looked upon the dead face of the girl with whom I had been speaking on the Battery!
‘Dead for a month at least,’ said Skelton, calmly.
Then, as I felt my senses leaving me, I screamed out, and at the same instant somebody from behind seized my shoulder and shook me savagely – shook me until I opened my eyes again and gasped and coughed.
‘Now then, young feller!’ said a Park policeman bending over me, ‘if you go to sleep on a bench, somebody’ll lift your watch!’
I turned, rubbing my eyes desperately.
Then it was all a dream – and no shrinking girl had come to me with damp letters – I had not gone to the office – there was no such person as Miss Tufft – Jamison was not an unfeeling villain – no, indeed! – he treated us all much better than we deserved, and he was kind and generous too. And the ghastly suicide! Thank God that also was a myth – and the Morgue and the Battery at night where that pale-faced girl had – ugh!
I felt for my sketch-block, found it; turned the pages of all the animals that I had sketched, the hippopotami, the buffalo, the tigers – ah! where was that sketch in which I had made the woman in shabby black the principal figure, with the brooding vultures all around and the crowd in the sunshine—? It was gone.
I hunted everywhere, in every pocket. It was gone.
At last I rose and moved along the narrow asphalt path in the falling twilight.
And as I turned into the broader walk, I was aware of a group, a policeman holding a lantern, some gardeners, and a knot of loungers gathered about something – a dark mass on the ground.
‘Found ’em just so,’ one of the gardeners was saying, ‘better not touch ’em until the coroner comes.’
The policeman shifted his bull’s-eye a little; the rays fell on two faces, on two bodies, half supported against a park bench. On the finger of the girl glittered a splendid diamond, set between the fangs of two gold serpents. The man had shot himself; he clasped two wet letters in his hand. The girl’s clothing and hair were wringing wet, and her face was the face of a drowned person.
‘Well, sir,’ said the policeman, looking at me; ‘you seem to know these two people – by your looks—’
‘I never saw them before,’ I gasped, and walked on, trembling in every nerve.
For among the folds of her shabby black dress I had noticed the end of a paper – my sketch that I had missed!
When he had finished his pipe he tapped the brier bowl against the chimney until the ashes powdered the charred log smouldering across the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair, absently touched the hot pipe-bowl with the tip of each finger until it grew cool enough to be dropped into his coat pocket.
Twice he raised his eyes to the little American clock ticking upon the mantel. He had half an hour to wait.
The three candles that lighted the room might be trimmed to advantage; this would give him something to do. A pair of scissors lay open upon the bureau, and he rose and picked them up. For a while he stood dreamily shutting and opening the scissors, his eyes roaming about the room. There was an easel in the corner, and a pile of dusty canvases behind it; behind the canvases there was a shadow – that gray, menacing shadow that never moved.
When he had trimmed each candle he wiped the smoky scissors on a paint rag and flung them on the bureau again. The clock pointed to ten; he had been occupied exactly three minutes.
The bureau was littered with neckties, pipes, combs and brushes, matches, reels and fly-books, collars, shirt studs, a new pair of Scotch shooting stockings, and a woman’s work-basket.
He picked out all the neckties, folded them once, and hung them over a bit of twine that stretched across the looking-glass; the shirt studs he shovelled into the top drawer along with brushes, combs, and stockings; the reels and fly-books he dusted with his handkerchief and placed methodically along the mantelshelf. Twice he stretched out his hand towards the woman’s work-basket, but his hand fell to his side again, and he turned away into the room staring at the dying fire.
Outside the snow-sealed window a shutter broke loose and banged monotonously, until he flung open the panes and fastened it. The soft, wet snow, that had choked the window-panes all day, was frozen hard now, and he had to break the polished crust before he could find the rusty shutter hinge.
He leaned out for a moment, his numbed hands resting on the snow, the roar of a rising snow-squall in his ears; and out across the desolate garden and stark hedgerow he saw the flat black river spreading through the gloom.
