It was right, wasn’t it, to kill the man who had killed your brother? Especially when the law wouldn’t do it. There was a higher law wasn’t there, blood-law? I am the law, thought Grawson, the law that you can’t write down but you know, the law before the books, the right before there was the earth or people or animals or Adam or Abel or Cain.
Grawson looked down through the window and saw the men in the cold meadow, and saw Barlow’s oak in the background, the two white shirts.
“He won’t fire,” Grawson had said.
And Frank had smiled and said, “I know,” and didn’t run from that field but stayed there, and was going to shoot a man that wouldn’t fire!
Grawson pressed his forehead to the window. He blinked and all he saw below was the dark street, and the pools of light on the sidewalk, spilled by the burning lamps.
Chance made his way to the cloakroom, moving without feeling the floor, seeming to move through a dark corridor. The lamps seemed dim, the conversation of groups he passed as meaningless as the click of the cues and spheres of the room behind him.
He wondered idly if he should have spent the last years differently, and decided he should not have.
He was more now than he had been and he felt that it might have been somehow worth it, and wondered whether they used the black hood still in Charleston, and if the knot were tied so as to break the neck when one pitched to the end of the rope. Faster. More merciful. Or if it would be suffocation, twisting at the end of the rope, bound, his tongue inside the hood thrusting out of the mouth, the eyes moving from their sockets.
He hoped the knot would be thick and tied below the right ear.
He wondered if he could ask the hangman for that favor.
His coat and bag were placed on the counter before him, and pushed towards him.
He took his coat and drew it on, and lifted the bag, heavier than a general practitioner’s bag, from the weight of the pistol.
He placed a silver quarter in the shallow wooden bowl. He noticed the arrows in the claws of the eagle, and then the coin was gone.
“Good-night, Sir,” he heard.
“Yes,” said Chance. “Good-night.”
Edward Chance, physician, returned to the gaming salon, where he was joined by a large, red-mustached man who accompanied him down the three flights of stairs until they emerged together on brick-paved Madison Avenue.
“Cigar?” asked Grawson.
“No,” said Chance.
A cab clattered past, like a high black box on four wheels, the cabby sitting behind with a long whip, touching the flanks of his team.
Grawson made no move to light himself a cigar. Chance had expected that he would, and was surprised when he did not. Grawson folded his arms, holding each in the hand of the other. Chance noted that the fingers of his right hand had trembled a bit. Then Grawson was calm. Grawson unfolded his arms.
“You’ll want to stop by your rooms, or whatever,” said Grawson, “pick up some things-maybe settle the bill with your landlady.”
“Yes,” said Chance, absently. “Thank you.”
Somewhere across the street a girl was laughing.
“Then,” said Grawson, “we’ll stop by the hotel for my things-and then go to the station.”
“Tomorrow night at this time,” said Chance, not really thinking about it, “I’ll be in Charleston again.”
Grawson said nothing. His left eye and the left side of his face moved once, uncontrollably.
“I’ll hail a cab,” said Chance.
“No,” said Grawson. “We’ll walk.”
It would be a long walk, but not more than two or three miles. Chance did not care. Let that walk be as long as it could. Let it last as long as it might.
Grawson looked up and down the street, which was not crowded now, the hour being well past midnight. Yet there were couples here and there. And an occasional cab.
The left side of his face twitched again.
“This way,” said Chance, turning left and crossing 45th Street.
They walked on in silence.
To Chance it seemed their footsteps were very loud.
Inadvertently he noticed that Grawson’s hands moved against the sides of his trousers, wiping sweat from the palms.
“Hot,” said Chance.
Grawson said nothing.
I am the law, Lester Grawson told himself, I am the law, and I do not swerve, I do not yield.
He looked at the slighter man beside him, the pale, rather homely face, the deep eyes, the shoulders that seemed somehow crushed with whatever weight it was they bore.
How could he, Grawson asked himself, have managed to fire before Frank?
Dashing, swift Frank, splendid figure on a horse, laughing, supple as a whip, booted, debonair, gallant Frank-my brother. Frank is my choice, had said Clare. I have always watched out for Frank, said Lester Grawson to himself. He was what I should have been. I loved Frank, said Grawson. I loved Frank. Grawson’s fists clenched and unclenched. I love him! Grawson could feel the side of his face move. He didn’t like that. His face did that sometimes. And I loved Clare, said Grawson. So I must do this. For Frank, who would have wanted it. For Clare, who wants it. For-and Grawson looked at the slender, solemn Edward Chance, young but old-and he wants it, said Grawson to himself. He wants it! He won’t run. A lamb. Blood on the hoofs. This lamb who shot my brother dead. He wants it.
“Are you all right?”
The voice came from far away.
It was Chance’s voice.
“It’s damn hot tonight,” said Grawson.
“Yes,” said Chance.
They had walked for some time when Chance turned left again.
Halfway down the street, between two four-story brick buildings, Grawson saw the alley. The yellow light of a street lamp flickered like a moth’s wing on the bricks.
There, said Grawson to himself, there.
Like an avenging eagle with arrows in its claws.
As they passed the alley Grawson’s hands seized the collar of Chance’s coat and hurled him into the darkness against the bricks, and Chance struck the wall and reeled along the wall, turning twice, kicking over a garbage can and sending a startled cat screeching down the dark corridor.
Grawson cursed at the noise.
Chance moaned, his hands going to his head, and slipped to the surface of the alley, and Grawson sent a kick into the stomach of the huddled coat slumped at his feet; then he jerked it to a sitting position and hand in its hair struck the head once against the bricks. Then again. Chance shook his head, his hands groping out.
“I am the law,” whispered Grawson. “The law!”
Grawson’s heavy hands closed on the throat of the stunned man. Chance’s fingers tried to pry apart the massive hands that clutched his throat.
Chance tried to slip down, his hands grasping for a weapon, a brick, stone, piece of glass, and closed on the handle of his bag.
The light of the street lamp became only a pinpoint in surging blackness.
Chance’s hand thrust into the bag and closed on the handle of the weapon.
Grawson, drunk with the kill as he might have been, heard the hammer click and felt the pressure of the steel barrel on his adam’s apple.
Sweat sprang out of every pore on the large man’s body and his hands released Chance’s throat. Chance struggled to his feet, not moving the pistol. His eyes were wild, bewildered.
“There is no warrant for my arrest,” said Chance.
Grawson held his hands out from his body, and backed away a step.
“No warrant,” said Chance. “No arrest.” Chance’s voice was no more than a tight whisper. His neck could still feel the talons of Grawson locked on it. The hangman’s noose, thought Chance. The hangman’s noose. “No arrest,” said Chance.
“You’re under arrest for murder,” said Grawson.