“You were — just a shade — too — anxious — about that money. But it never was — in any danger — from you, dear Doctor. It’s safe. Perfectly safe. It’s all — in the hands — of the bookmakers. Twenty — thousand — Amy’s money. I played it at the races — lost every — cent of it. I’ve been a pretty bad boy, Burglar — excuse me — Doctor, but I’ve been a square sport. I don’t think — I ever met — such an — eighteen-carat rascal as you are, Doctor — excuse me — Burglar, in all my rounds. Is it contrary — to the ethics — of your — gang, Burglar, to give a victim — excuse me — patient, a drink of water?”
Doctor James brought him a drink. He could scarcely swallow it. The reaction from the powerful drug was coming in regular, intensifying waves. But his moribund fancy must have one more grating fling.
“Gambler — drunkard — spendthrift — I’ve been those, but — a doctor-burglar!”
The physician indulged himself to but one reply to the other’s caustic taunts. Bending low to catch Chandler’s fast crystallizing gaze, he pointed to the sleeping lady’s door with a gesture so stern and significant that the prostrate man half-lifted his head, with his remaining strength, to see. He saw nothing; but he caught the cold words of the doctor — the last sounds he was to hear:
“I never yet — struck a woman.”
It were vain to attempt to con such men. There is no curriculum that can reckon with them in its ken. They are offshoots from the types whereof men say, “He will do this,” or “He will do that.” We only know that they exist; and that we can observe them, and tell one another of their bare performances, as children watch and speak of the marionettes.
Yet it were a droll study in egoism to consider these two — one an assassin and a robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his offences, if a lesser lawbreaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the wife he had persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other a dog-wolf — to consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the other; and each flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his own immaculate standard — of conduct, if not of honor.
The one retort of Doctor James must have struck home to the other’s remaining shreds of shame and manhood, for it proved the coup de grâce. A deep blush suffused his face — an ignominious rosa mortis; the respiration ceased, and, with scarcely a tremor, Chandler expired.
Close following upon his last breath came the Negress, bringing the medicine. With a hand gently pressing upon the closed eyelids, Doctor James told her of the end. Not grief, but a hereditary rapprochement with death in the abstract, moved her to a dismal, watery snuffling, accompanied by her usual jeremiad.
“Dar now! It’s in de Lawd’s hands. He am de jedge ob de transgressor, and de suppo’t of dem in distresss. He gwine hab suppo’t us now. Cindy done paid out de last quarter fer dis bottle of physic, and it nebber come to no use.”
“Do I understand,” asked Doctor James, “that Mrs. Chandler has no money?”
“Money, suh? You know what make Miss Amy fall down and so weak? Stahvation, suh. Nothin’ to eat in dis house but some crumbly crackers in three days. Dat angel sell her finger rings and watch mont’s ago. Dis fine house, suh, wid de red cyarpets and shiny bureaus, it’s all hired; and de man talkin’ scan’lous about de rent. Dat debble — ’scuse me, Lawd — he done in Yo’ hands fer jedgment, now — he made way wid everything.”
The physician’s silence encouraged her to continue. The history that he gleaned from Cindy’s disordered monologue was an old one, of illusion, wilfulness, disaster, cruelty and pride. Standing out from the blurred panorama of her gabble were little clear pictures — an ideal home in the far South; a quickly repented marriage; an unhappy season, full of wrongs and abuse, and, of late, an inheritance of money that promised deliverance; its seizure and waste by the dog-wolf during a two months’ absence, and his return in the midst of a scandalous carouse. Unobtruded, but visible between every line, ran a pure white thread through the smudged warp of the story — the simple, all-enduring, sublime love of the old Negress, following her mistress unswervingly through everything to the end.
When at last she paused, the physician spoke, asking if the house contained whiskey or liquor of any sort. There was, the old woman informed him, half a bottle of brandy left in the sideboard by the dog-wolf.
“Prepare a toddy as I told you,” said Doctor James. “Wake your mistress; have her drink it, and tell her what has happened.”
Some ten minutes afterward, Mrs. Chandler entered, supported by old Cindy’s arm. She appeared to be a little stronger since her sleep and the stimulant she had taken. Doctor James had covered, with a sheet, the form upon the bed.
The lady turned her mournful eyes once, with a half-frightened look, toward it, and pressed closer to her loyal protector. Her eyes were dry and bright. Sorrow seemed to have done its utmost with her. The fount of tears was dried; feeling itself paralyzed.
Doctor James was standing near the table, his overcoat donned, his hat and medicine case in his hand. His face was calm and impassive — practice had inured him to the sight of human suffering. His lambent brown eyes alone expressed a discreet professional sympathy.
He spoke kindly and briefly, stating that, as the hour was late, and assistance, no doubt, difficult to procure, he would himself send the proper persons to attend to the necessary finalities.
“One matter, in conclusion,” said the doctor, pointing to the safe with its still wide-open door. “Your husband, Mrs. Chandler, toward the end, felt that he could not live; and directed me to open that safe, giving me the number upon which the combination is set. In case you may need to use it, you will remember that the number is forty-one. Turn several times to the right; then to the left once; stop at forty-one. He would not permit me to waken you, though he knew the end was near.
“In that safe he said he had placed a sum of money — not large — but enough to enable you to carry out his last request. That was that you should return to your old home, and, in after days, when time shall have made it easier, forgive his many sins against you.”
He pointed to the table, where lay an orderly pile of banknotes, surmounted by two stacks of gold coins.
“The money is there — as he described it — eight hundred and thirty dollars. I beg to leave my card with you, in case I can be of any service later on.”
So, he had thought of her — and kindly — at the last! So late! And yet the lie fanned into life one last spark of tenderness where she had thought all was turned to ashes and dust. She cried aloud “Rob! Rob!” She turned, and, upon the ready bosom of her true servitor, diluted her grief in relieving tears. It is well to think, also, that in the years to follow, the murderer’s falsehood shone like a little star above the grave of love, comforting her, and gaining the forgiveness that is good in itself, whether asked for or no.
Hushed and soothed upon the dark bosom, like a child, by a crooning, babbling sympathy, at last she raised her head — but the doctor was gone.
His Heart Could Break
by Craig Rice
The creator of Jake Justus and Helene Brand — and who doesn’t love that delightfully wacky detectival duo? — wrote this hauntingly nostalgic tale especially for “Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.” We are proud to print it — an engrossing story of the modern school, about that hard-living, hard-drinking little criminal lawyer, John J. Malone, who investigates a murder committed in the strangest place imaginable — in the death house of a State Prison!