Complete weird tales of.., p.1260
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1260
Her dog entered.
Lynde held out his hand as the brute passed, and Penlow flung a bone on the floor. The dog noticed neither the caress nor the bone, but lay down under the bar and stretched his great limbs across the floor, sighing heavily.
“There is one thing certain,” said Lynde, looking at the dog: “the man who killed the girl was in the habit of visiting her, — and that dog knew him.”
“I also believe the murderer was known to the dog,” said Penlow.”
“The murderer,” said Caithness, “was her lover.”
“It is strange,” said I, “that none of us suspects anybody except Wah-Wo.”
“Why strange?” asked Caithness, then he added impatiently, “yes, it is strange! Do you think she would have looked at a Chinaman?”
“The Chinaman looked at her; I saw him,” I replied.
“After all, she was a common girl of the street,” said Penlow unaffectedly, “and I guess pride cut no figure with her.”
“That is where you lie,” said Caithness in a low voice.
There was a dead silence. Then Penlow said: “Did I understand you, Caithness?”
I rose and laid my hand on Penlow’s arm, which was twitching though his face was calm.
“Are you crazy?” I said to Caithness.
“I think I am,” said Caithness slowly, “I beg your pardon, Penlow.”
Lynde turned his puzzled eyes from Penlow to Caithness and lifted his mug mechanically. Penlow straightened in his chair but said nothing, and I leaned back motioning McManus to remove the covers.
After a few moments the constraint became irksome. “Red,” the tortoise-shell cat, mascotte of McManus and exterminator of mice by special appointment, had cornered a vicious rat in the backyard, and now came marching in to display the game for our benefit.
“Git!” said McManus with pardonable pride, “the gents here don’t give a damn fur to see rats.”
Charley hustled the cat out again and McManus assured us for the hundredth time that “Red” was the only cross-eyed cat in New York.
None of us had ever before seen a cross-eyed cat, so we did not deny it, although I remonstrated with McManus concerning his pride in “Red’s” ocular misfortune.
“What’s that?” demanded McManus.
“I don’t see why,” said I, “a cat should be the more valuable because it happens to be afflicted with strabismus.”
“Sure!” said McManus doggedly.
“No, I don’t,” I repeated.
“It’s a mascot,” said McManus.
“How do you know?”
“Did youse gents ever see another cross-eyed cat?” demanded McManus hotly.
We all said no.
“Then what t’hell do youse gents know about mascots?” he exclaimed triumphantly.
The constraint still weighed upon us, however, for Caithness had neither spoken nor smiled, and Penlow, it was easy to see, had not forgotten.
Lynde picked up a paper and ran it through, unaffectedly searching for his own matter; after a while Penlow did the same.
I looked at Caithness, and he felt my eyes, for presently he moved a little and passed his hand over his sunken cheeks.
“What’s up?” I asked, dropping my voice and bending toward him.
“Nothing — why?”
“You look like the last rose of summer, — you’ve got a beastly cough.”
He smiled faintly. “It’s consumption,” he said, “I found out to-day.”
I stared at him stupidly.
“I don’t mind,” he said; “I’m dead sick of the whole business.”
“How do you know it’s consumption?” I asked at length.
“I went to three doctors to make sure; I tell you I don’t care.”
Little Penlow was listening now; before I could speak again he leaned over and took Caithness’s hand affectionately.
“Brace up, old boy,” he said, “go to California and get well.”
“Of course,” I cried, “you’re a fool to stay in this cursed climate, Caithness!”
I spoke harshly for I was more affected than I cared to show.
“Chuck up your job! Let the Consolidated Press go to the devil!” urged Lynde.
“I have resigned,” said Caithness quietly. A fit of coughing shook him, and he raised his napkin to his lips. He continued, “I thought I’d come around to-night and say good-bye.”
The dog shifted his position under the bar and sighed again. One of the gas jets behind the bar blazed up suddenly; McManus turned it lower, cursing the gas company.
“Do you fellows know that I have scooped?” said Caithness abruptly.
“Not — not the fellow who shot Lil,” faltered Penlow, who had thrown his whole soul into solving the mystery.
“Yes — the murderer of Lily White,” said Caithness. In the silence I could hear McManus grinding his toothpick in his yellow teeth.
“I’m out of the Consolidated now,” continued Caithness calmly,—” the scoop is yours if you want it, Penlow.”
“But — but you” — began Penlow.
“I?” said Caithness fiercely, “what do I care for newspapers? What do I care who knows it now, — what paper prints it first?”
Lynde leaned over the table, his head in his hand; Penlow’s pipe went out; he did not relight it.
“Did you never know,” said Caithness with a touch of scorn in his voice, “that I also loved the girl? Do you think I am ashamed to confess it? Do you know what I have been through since she died? Hell? Oh, yes, that’s what they say in books. It doesn’t matter; — Penlow, when you are ready—”
Penlow started, then groped in his pocket for pencil and pad.
“I am ready, Jack,” he said.
“This is the story,” said Caithness, almost eagerly. “On the 13th of last November, Lily White, a girl living next door, was shot through the heart by a man who was jealous of her. He knew that she came into McManus’s and gossiped with the newspaper men, and he knew that Wah-Wo had offered her all his money, which was a great deal. When she was chatting with us here, this man was not jealous, — have you got that, Penlow?”
“Yes,” said Penlow, scratching away on his pad.
“He was not jealous when Lily chatted with us, but when he saw Wah-Wo talking to her one night under the electric light by the Joss-house, he watched the girl night and day. She said that she loved him — she laughed at him when he offered her marriage, — so he watched her. Have you got that, Penlow?”
“Yes.”
“Then a day came when Lily was to go to the country to see her sister, — that is what she said, — to see her sister, and this man went with her to the train and saw her off on her journey. But something told him to watch the next in-coming train, and he did. And Lily was on it.
“He followed her. She came straight to Doyers Street, heavily veiled, and entered a house that you all know, — the house with the paper lanterns and red signs. Wah-Wo lives there. A week later she returned to the man who had followed her. He was waiting for her, — have you written that?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“He was waiting in her room, — alone with that dog there. He accused her, and she denied it. She called Heaven to witness her innocence. He offered her marriage again; she laughed at him. Then he shot her through the heart.”
Penlow ceased writing and looked up expectantly.
“The murderer’s name? Have patience,” said Caithness grimly smiling. “The man called to the dog, — her dog there, and, because he was the only living soul who knew the brute’s name, the dog answered and followed him out into the street.
“All day long he wandered about the city, and at night he went back to look upon the dead. He did not care who saw him, — he courted discovery, but no one paid him any attention, and, as it now appears, nobody even saw him. About midnight he went away, leaving the dog crouched at the dead girl’s feet, and since then he has moved like a living death among the people of the city, unsuspected, unnoticed by any, — except me.” He paused and looked at us. Tears had quenched the pale flame in his eyes, and the hair clung to his damp forehead.
“That man killed the woman I loved,” he said, “and now I am going to give him up!” Then he rose trembling. The sleeping dog sighed heavily; his hind legs quivered.
Caithness bent and touched the massive head, muttering, “Come!”
At his touch the dog raised its head and looked at him with grave eyes.
Then, moving toward the door, he whispered again, calling the dog by name; and the great brute rose stiffly, yawned, and slowly followed him out into the night.
The iron door slammed behind them; the damp odour of fog came from the black street. Lynde buried his head in his hands; McManus leaned heavily on the bar, pale as a corpse. Presently I heard the sound of rustling paper.
It was Penlow, tearing up his pad.
THE LITTLE MISERY
IF YOU BE dead also and are come hither to join us, I pity your lot, for you will be stunned with the noise of the dwarfs and the storks.
VATHEK.
I.
THERE was a river-driver beyond the Northwest Carry who respected neither moose nor man. Because he was the best river-driver on the West Branch they let him alone until he struck an Indian with a pick-pole.
The Indian’s head was damaged and while he waited for it to heal, he selected his revenge. His revenge was simple and effective. He hunted up the moose-warden and told many lies. Deftly concealed among these lies, however, was a truth that infuriated the warden.
The river-driver, whose name was Skeene, sat on his haunches and sneered when the moose-warden glided into camp. But when he dug out a head and antlers behind a shanty, Skeene picked up his rifle, looked obliquely at the moose-warden, tied his blanket and fry-pan, hoisted his canoe onto his head, and walked away to the southward, still sneering.
I don’t know what they said about it in Foxcroft, but Hale, who owned the timber, and who thought he owned Skeene, hunted him up and sent him to work on the new cut-off, hoping the affair might blow over in time for Skeene to drive logs again. But Skeene turned lazy and lined the dead water with traps and set-lines, and when Hale remonstrated, Skeene laughed. Then Hale threatened him and hinted about moose-wardens, and $500 fines, but Skeene thrashed Hale before the whole camp, packed his kit and canoe, and paddled serenely away down the West Branch.
That really began the trouble, for Hale never forgave him. When Skeene started to guide for Henderson on the upper Portage, Hale heard of it and ran him out. That, of course, marked him among the guides in the lake-country, and Skeene perhaps felt the ostracism, for he quietly went to work for Colby on the new sluice that ran from the carry-pond to the lake. Possibly, if they had let him alone, he might have turned out as tame as a moose-bird, — he was only twenty-three, — but Hale remembered, and the Indian remembered, and one day a man came in to the Carry Camp with a forty-four bullet in his wrist and an unserved warrant in his pocket. The man was a moose-warden, and the warrant was for Skeene.
When the news spread that Skeene had shot a warden, the guides from Portage to Lily-Bay condemned him. Down at Greenville a sheriff and posse boarded the “Katahdin,” and spent several weeks cruising about at public expense. The lake steamboat was comfortable, the food good, and the sheriff and posse were in no hurry to quit. Possibly they expected Skeene to come down to the shore and sit on the rocks; perhaps they fancied he might paddle across their bows in his sleep. Naturally he did neither. When at length somebody suggested that the sheriff and posse take to their canoes, that official steamed back to the foot of the lake in a huff, and presently the rumours of Skeene’s misdoings became scarcely more definite than campfire gossip.
Perhaps even then, if they had given him a chance, he might have surrendered and taken his punishment, but they didn’t give him the chance. A warden saw him building a lean-to, on the island that divides the West Branch. The warden waited until dark, crawled in outside the fire, and caught Skeene asleep. That is all the warden recollects, merely that he caught Skeene asleep. What Skeene did to the warden when he awoke, the official cannot remember distinctly.
Three weeks after that, Skeene walked into Kineo store, handling his rifle in a most alarming fashion. He suggested that they place certain provisions and ammunition in his canoe, which lay on the beach below. The three clerks complied with an enthusiasm borne of fright. Twenty minutes later Skeene, in his canoe, was seen making for Moose River. Two guides, just from Lily Bay, refused to fire at him, arguing it was not right to drown a man for stealing pork and powder. The hotel had not yet opened, and the people at the annex objected to a man-hunting trip, so they only notified the sheriff again and secretly wished Skeene in hell.
Of course, at the hotels they denied the very existence of Skeene; but the Bangor “News” printed the story, and people fought shy of Moose River and the lake beyond which is called Red Lake. In vain the guides declared the region safe. It was safe as far as they were concerned. It is not the nature of a guide — that is, a white guide — to inform on or interfere with any man. Skeene let them alone. The Indians, too, paddled about Red Lake when they wanted to. The Indian log-driver, however, stayed away after Skeene had shot a hole in his canoe. The canoe being bark, it was through Providence and a patch of gum that the log-driving half-breed ever paddled out of the mouth of Moose River.
Now if they had not started to hunt Skeene from the Lakes, he would never have troubled anybody, except possibly Hale and the half-breed. He went to Canada for a year, worked at anything that came along, and sent money to Kineo store to pay for his pork and powder. That, of course, won him the guides again. So when home-sickness drove him back to Red Lake, he expected to be let alone. Hale, sluicing at the Northwest Carry, heard he had returned, and started for Red Lake with the log-driving half-breed and six men. Two days later they returned; Hale had a bullet in his leg above the knee and the half-breed carried a similar gift in his forearm.
This incident, while relieving the conversational monotony at camp and landing, bothered the sheriff cruelly. He went to Foxcroft where they said unpleasant things to him; he went back to the Landing and they made fun of him.
There was a captain on the lake named Snow, — a white-bearded, mild-eyed giant. When the local paper wanted an item it filled in with, “Extraordinary weather on the Lake in July! Steamboat ‘Red-Deer’ in port with six feet two inches of Snow in her pilot house!”
The sheriff went to see Snow, and, after a long confab, summoned his posse, boarded the Red-Deer, and left Greenville, as the local paper expressed it, “under sealed orders, bound for Moose River.” Naturally, half a dozen canoes were aboard, some lying bottom upward on the superstructure, some lashed to the rail. The posse carried Winchesters, although no game was in season.
Off the Grey Gull, an island, the little steamboat slowed down and stopped, the canoes were hoisted over the rail and dropped; the posse embarked. The sheriff said good-bye in a voice made loud by nervousness, and the Red-Deer swung about and steamed back to the foot of the lake with six feet two inches of Snow in her pilot-house.
At the mouth of Moose River two more canoes were waiting; Hale sat in one, paddle glistening in the pale spring sunshine; in the other sat the Indian log-driver, nursing the hammer of a rifle.
Below the long ridge the water is nearly dead, although a canoe might drift to the point in twenty-four hours. It was paddling for a mile to the first wing-dam, and there, the sheriff, who led, flung his stern-paddle into the bottom of the canoe, flourished the setting-pole, and stood up. At the same moment a jet of flame leaped from the edge of the wing-dam and a bullet passed through the sheriff’s hat. The amazed official promptly fell overboard, sank, rose, grasped the edge of the canoe, and swamped it, turning the bow-paddler into the river. The swift current landed them on a shoal before the sheriff could shriek more than twice, and they crawled up on a rock, sleek and wet as half drowned flies in a sap-pan.
The other canoes had halted; some of the posse waved their rifles, but nobody fired at the wing-dam except Hale. He banged away as fast as he could pump the breach-lever, and Billy Sebato, the Indian, took to the bushes and lay patiently waiting for a mark, purring with eagerness.
“Jim Skeene, you darned thief!” shouted Hale, “come out from them stones! Jest you come out on to that there wing-dam once!”
Above the rush and gurgle of the river they heard Skeene’s voice: “You let me be or I’ll shoot to kill!”
“Thief! Thief!” yelled Hale, dancing in his seat with anger, until the canoe heeled and almost swamped.
“I ain’t no more thief than you be, Josh Hale!” bawled Skeene, “I paid for them rations and cartridges and you know damn well I did!” Before he could add anything, the Indian, Sebato, fired twice.
“If that nigger Sebato don’t quit shootin’ I’ll let loose on all o’ ye!” called Skeene, shaking his rifle above the wing-darn edge. “Git back to your dreen, Josh Hale, I tell you.”
Hale had reloaded his magazine, and now, swinging his setting-pole with one hand, started to push his canoe among the rocks where he could hold it and fire under cover. Skeene evidently saw him for he slid suddenly to the corner of the wing-dam and fired three shots through the canoe, cutting a swale lengthwise at the water’s edge.
“Oh, you sneaky bob-cat!” yelled Hale, white with rage. In another moment he was working cup and sponge to bail his canoe, which swung away on the current and drifted broadside across the sandbar below, where it settled in two feet of limpid water.
“Now’ll you let me be?” called Skeene. “I hain’t done nothin’ to you. If that there moosewarden wants me let him come and get me. Ain’t you ashamed to go huntin’ a man like a Lucivee? I tell ye I’ll shoot to kill, b’ God I will, at the next man that fires!”
“You dasn’t,” shouted the sheriff from behind his rock; “you ain’t half a man, Jim Skeene!”
“I be,” said Skeene calmly, “but I don’t want no fuss. You keep off’n this river, and you keep off’n this here wing-dam. And you stop sneakin’ along the woods there, Billy Sebato! Git back there! Git back, or I’ll shoot to kill!”
