Seldom has a young man spent a more desolate afternoon
than Aubrey
on that Sunday. His only consolation was that twenty
minutes after
he had left the bookshop he saw a taxi drive up (he was
then sitting
gloomily at his bedroom window) and Titania enter it
and drive away.
He supposed that she had gone to join the party in Larchmont,
and was
glad to know that she was out of what he now called the
war zone.
For the first time on record, O. Henry failed to solace
him.
His pipe tasted bitter and brackish. He was eager to
know what
Weintraub was doing, but did not dare make any investigations
in broad daylight. His idea was to wait until dark.
Observing the Sabbath calm of the streets, and the pageant
of baby
carriages wheeling toward Thackeray Boulevard, he wondered
again
whether he had thrown away this girl's friendship for
a merely
imaginary suspicion.
At last he could endure his cramped bedroom no longer.
Downstairs someone was dolefully playing a flute, most
horrible
of all tortures to tightened nerves. While her lodgers
were at
church the tireless Mrs. Schiller was doing a little
housecleaning:
he could hear the monotonous rasp of a carpet-sweeper
passing back
and forth in an adjoining room. He creaked irritably
downstairs,
and heard the usual splashing behind the bathroom door.
In the frame of the hall mirror he saw a pencilled note:
Will Mrs. Smith please call Tarkington 1565, it said.
Unreasonably annoyed, he tore a piece of paper out of
his notebook
and wrote on it Will Mrs. Smith please call Bath 4200.
Mounting to
the second floor he tapped on the bathroom door. "Don't
come in!"
cried an agitated female voice. He thrust the memorandum
under the door, and left the house.
Walking the windy paths of Prospect Park he condemned
himself
to relentless self-scrutiny. "I've damned myself forever
with her,"
he groaned, "unless I can prove something." The vision
of Titania's face
silhouetted against the shelves of books came maddeningly
to his mind.
"I was going to have such a good time, and you've spoilt
it all!"
With what angry conviction she had said: "I never saw
a man like
you before--and I've seen a good many!"
Even in his disturbance of soul the familiar jargon of
his profession
came naturally to utterance. "At least she admits I'm
DIFFERENT,"
he said dolefully. He remembered the first item in the
Grey-Matter Code,
a neat little booklet issued by his employers for the
information
of their representatives:
Business is built upon CONFIDENCE. Before you can sell
Grey-Matter
Service to a Client, you must sell YOURSELF.
"How am I going to sell myself to her?" he wondered. "I've
simply got
to deliver, that's all. I've got to give her service
that's DIFFERENT.
If I fall down on this, she'll never speak to me again.
Not only that, the firm will lose the old man's account.
It's simply unthinkable."
Nevertheless, he thought about it a good deal, stimulated
from time
to time as in the course of his walk (which led him out
toward
the faubourgs of Flatbush) he passed long vistas of signboards,
which he imagined placarded with vivid lithographs in
behalf of
the Chapman prunes. "Adam and Eve Ate Prunes On Their
Honeymoon"
was a slogan that flashed into his head, and he imagined
a magnificent painting illustrating this text. Thus,
in hours
of stress, do all men turn for comfort to their chosen
art.
The poet, battered by fate, heals himself in the niceties
of rhyme.
The prohibitionist can weather the blackest melancholia
by meditating
the contortions of other people's abstinence. The most
embittered
citizen of Detroit will never perish by his own hand
while he has an
automobile to tinker.
Aubrey walked many miles, gradually throwing his despair
to the winds.
The bright spirits of Orison Swett Marden and Ralph Waldo
Trine,
Dioscuri of Good Cheer, seemed to be with him reminding
him that
nothing is impossible. In a small restaurant he found
sausages,
griddle cakes and syrup. When he got back to Gissing
Street it was dark,
and he girded his soul for further endeavour.
About nine o'clock he walked up the alley. He had left
his overcoat
in his room at Mrs. Schiller's and also the Cromwell
bookcover--
having taken the precaution, however, to copy the inscriptions
into his
pocket memorandum-book. He noticed lights in the rear
of the bookshop,
and concluded that the Mifflins and their employee had
got home safely.
Arrived at the back of Weintraub's pharmacy, he studied
the contours
of the building carefully.
The drug store lay, as we have explained before, at the
corner of Gissing
Street and Wordsworth Avenue, just where the Elevated
railway swings
in a long curve. The course of this curve brought the
scaffolding
of the viaduct out over the back roof of the building,
and this fact
had impressed itself on Aubrey's observant eye the day
before.
The front of the drug store stood three storeys, but in
the rear
it dropped to two, with a flat roof over the hinder portion.
Two windows looked out upon this roof. Weintraub's back
yard
opened onto the alley, but the gate, he found, was locked.
The fence would not be hard to scale, but he hesitated
to make so direct
an approach.
He ascended the stairs of the "L" station, on the near
side,
and paying a nickel passed through a turnstile onto the
platform.
Waiting until just after a train had left, and the long,
windy sweep
of planking was solitary, he dropped onto the narrow
footway that runs
beside the track. This required watchful walking, for
the charged
third rail was very near, but hugging the outer side
of the path
he proceeded without trouble. Every fifteen feet or so
a girder ran
sideways from the track, resting upon an upright from
the street below.
The fourth of these overhung the back corner of Weintraub's
house,
and he crawled cautiously along it. People were passing
on
the pavement underneath, and he greatly feared being
discovered.
But he reached the end of the beam without mishap. From
here a drop
of about twelve feet would bring him onto Weintraub's
back roof.
For a moment he reflected that, once down there, it would
be impossible
to return the same way. However, he decided to risk it.
Where he was,
with his legs swinging astride the girder, he was in
serious danger of
attracting attention.
He would have given a great deal, just then, to have his
overcoat
with him, for by lowering it first he could have jumped
onto it
and muffled the noise of his fall. He took off his coat
and carefully
dropped it on the corner of the roof. Then cannily waiting
until
a train passed overhead, drowning all other sounds with
its roar,
he lowered himself as far as he could hang by his hands,
and let go.
For some minutes he lay prone on the tin roof, and during
that time a number of distressing ideas occurred to him.
If he really expected to get into Weintraub's house,
why had
he not laid his plans more carefully? Why (for instance)
had he not made some attempt to find out how many there
were
in the household? Why had he not arranged with one of
his
friends to call Weintraub to the telephone at a given
moment,
so that he could be more sure of making an entry unnoticed?
And what did he expect to see or do if he got inside
the house?
He found no answer to any of these questions.
It was unpleasantly cold, and he was glad to slip his
coat
on again. The small revolver was still in his hip pocket.
Another thought occurred to him--that he should have
provided
himself with tennis shoes. However, it was some comfort
to know
that rubber heels of a nationally advertised brand were
under him.
He crawled quietly up to the sill of one of the windows.
It was closed, and the room inside was dark. A blind
was pulled
most of the way down, leaving a gap of about four inches.
Peeping cautiously over the sill, he could see farther
inside
the house a brightly lit door and a passageway.
"One thing I've got to look out for," he thought, "is
children.
There are bound to be some--who ever heard of a German
without offspring?
If I wake them, they'll bawl. This room is very likely
a nursery,
as it's on the southeastern side. Also, the window is
shut tight,
which is probably the German idea of bedroom ventilation."
His guess may not have been a bad one, for after his eyes
became
accustomed to the dimness of the room he thought he could
perceive
two cot beds. He then crawled over to the other window.
Here the blind was pulled down flush with the bottom
of the sash.
Trying the window very cautiously, he found it locked.
Not knowing just
what to do, he returned to the first window, and lay
there peering in.
The sill was just high enough above the roof level to
make it
necessary to raise himself a little on his hands to see
inside,
and the position was very trying. Moreover, the tin roof
had a
tendency to crumple noisily when he moved. He lay for
some time,
shivering in the chill, and wondering whether it would
be safe to light
a pipe.
"There's another thing I'd better look out for," he thought,
"and that's a dog. Who ever heard of a German without
a dachshund?"
He had watched the lighted doorway for a long while without
seeing
anything, and was beginning to think he was losing time
to no profit
when a stout and not ill-natured looking woman appeared
in the hallway.
She came into the room he was studying, and closed the
door.
She switched on the light, and to his horror began to
disrobe.
This was not what he had counted on at all, and he retreated
rapidly.
It was plain that nothing was to be gained where he was.
He sat timidly at one edge of the roof and wondered what
to
do next.
As he sat there, the back door opened almost directly
below him,
and he heard the clang of a garbage can set out by the
stoop.
The door stood open for perhaps half a minute, and he
heard a male voice-- Weintraub's, he thought--speaking in German. For the
first time
in his life he yearned for the society of his German
instructor
at college, and also wondered--in the rapid irrelevance
of thought--
what that worthy man was now doing to earn a living.
In a rather
long and poorly lubricated sentence, heavily verbed at
the end,
he distinguished one phrase that seemed important. "Nach
Philadelphia
gehen"--"Go to Philadelphia."
Did that refer to Mifflin? he wondered.
The door closed again. Leaning over the rain-gutter, he
saw the light
go out in the kitchen. He tried to look through the upper
portion
of the window just below him, but leaning out too far,
the tin
spout gave beneath his hands. Without knowing just how
he did it,
he slithered down the side of the wall, and found his
feet on
a window-sill. His hands still clung to the tin gutter
above.
He made haste to climb down from his position, and found
himself
outside the back door. He had managed the descent rather
more quietly
than if it had been carefully planned. But he was badly
startled,
and retreated to the bottom of the yard to see if he
had aroused notice.
A wait of several minutes brought no alarm, and he plucked
up courage.
On the inner side of the house--away from Wordsworth
Avenue--
a narrow paved passage led to an outside cellar-way with
old-fashioned slanting doors. He reconnoitred this warily.
A bright light was shining from a window in this alley.
He crept below it on hands and knees fearing to look
in until he had
investigated a little. He found that one flap of the
cellar door
was open, and poked his nose into the aperture. All was
dark below,
but a strong, damp stench of paints and chemicals arose.
He sniffed gingerly. "I suppose he stores drugs down
there,"
he thought.
Very carefully he crawled back, on hands and knees, toward
the
lighted window. Lifting his head a few inches at a time,
finally he got
his eyes above the level of the sill. To his disappointment
he found
the lower half of the window frosted. As he knelt there,
a pipe set
in the wall suddenly vomited liquid which gushed out
upon his knees.
He sniffed it, and again smelled a strong aroma of acids.
With great care, leaning against the brick wall of the
house,
he rose to his feet and peeped through the upper half
of the pane.
It seemed to be the room where prescriptions were compounded.
As it was empty, he allowed himself a hasty survey. All
manner
of bottles were ranged along the walls; there was a high
counter
with scales, a desk, and a sink. At the back he could
see the bamboo
curtain which he remembered having noticed from the shop.
The whole place was in the utmost disorder: mortars,
glass beakers,
a typewriter, cabinets of labels, dusty piles of old
prescriptions
strung on filing hooks, papers of pills and capsules,
all strewn
in an indescribable litter. Some infusion was heating
in a glass
bowl propped on a tripod over a blue gas flame. Aubrey
noticed
particularly a heap of old books several feet high piled
carelessly
at one end of the counter.
Looking more carefully, he saw that what he had taken
for a mirror
over the prescription counter was an aperture looking
into the shop.
Through this he could see Weintraub, behind the cigar
case,
waiting upon some belated customer with his shop-worn
air of affability.
The visitor departed, and Weintraub locked the door after
him and pulled
down the blinds. Then he returned toward the prescription
room,
and Aubrey ducked out of view.
Presently he risked looking again, and was just in time
to see
a curious sight. The druggist was bending over the counter,
pouring some liquid into a glass vessel. His face was
directly
under a hanging bulb, and Aubrey was amazed at the transformation.
The apparently genial apothecary of cigarstand and soda
fountain was gone. He saw instead a heavy, cruel, jowlish face, with eyelids
hooded
down over the eyes, and a square thrusting chin buttressed
on a mass
of jaw and suetty cheek that glistened with an oily shimmer.
The jaw quivered a little as though with some intense
suppressed emotion.
The man was completely absorbed in his task. The thick
lower lip
lapped upward over the mouth. On the cheekbone was a
deep red scar.
Aubrey felt a pang of fascinated amazement at the gross
energy and power of that abominable relentless mask.
"So this is the harmless old thing!" he thought.
Just then the bamboo curtain parted, and the woman whom
he had seen
upstairs appeared. Forgetting his own situation, Aubrey
still stared.
She wore a faded dressing gown and her hair was braided
as though
for the night. She looked frightened, and must have spoken,
for Aubrey saw her lips move. The man remained bent over
his counter
until the last drops of liquid had run out. His jaw tightened,
he straightened suddenly and took one step toward her,
with outstretched
hand imperiously pointed. Aubrey could see his face plainly:
it had a savagery more than bestial. The woman's face,
which had borne a timid, pleading expression, appealed
in vain
against that fierce gesture. She turned and vanished.
Aubrey saw
the druggist's pointing finger tremble. Again he ducked
out of sight.
"That man's face would be lonely in a crowd," he said
to himself.
"And I used to think the movies exaggerated things. Say,
he ought to play
opposite Theda Bara."
He lay at full length in the paved alley and thought that
a little acquaintance with Weintraub would go a long
way.
Then the light in the window above him went out, and
he gathered
himself together for quick motion if necessary. Perhaps
the man
would come out to close the cellar door----
The thought was in his mind when a light flashed on farther
down
the passage, between him and the kitchen. It came from
a small
barred window on the ground level. Evidently the druggist
had gone
down into the cellar. Aubrey crawled silently along toward
the yard.
Reaching the lit pane he lay against the wall and looked
in.
The window was too grimed for him to see clearly, but
what he could
make out had the appearance of a chemical laboratory
and machine
shop combined. A long work bench was lit by several electrics.
On it he saw glass vials of odd shapes, and a medley
of tools.
Sheets of tin, lengths of lead pipe, gas burners, a vise,
boilers and cylinders, tall jars of coloured fluids.
He could
hear a dull humming sound, which he surmised came from
some sort
of revolving tool which he could see was run by a belt
from a motor.
On trying to spy more clearly he found that what he had
taken for
dirt was a coat of whitewash which had been applied to
the window
on the inside, but the coating had worn away in one spot
which gave
him a loophole. What surprised him most was to spy the
covers
of a number of books strewn about the work table. One,
he was ready
to swear, was the Cromwell. He knew that bright blue
cloth by
this time.
For the second time that evening Aubrey wished for the
presence
of one of his former instructors. "I wish I had my old
chemistry
professor here," he thought. "I'd like to know what this
bird is up to.
I'd hate to swallow one of his prescriptions."
His teeth were chattering after the long exposure and
he was wet
through from lying in the little gutter that apparently
drained
off from the sink in Weintraub's prescription laboratory.
He could not see what the druggist was doing in the cellar,
for the man's broad back was turned toward him. He felt
as though
he had had quite enough thrills for one evening. Creeping
along
he found his way back to the yard, and stepped cautiously
among
the empty boxes with which it was strewn. An elevated
train
rumbled overhead, and he watched the brightly lighted
cars swing by.
While the train roared above him, he scrambled up the
fence and dropped
down into the alley.
"Well," he thought, "I'd give full-page space, preferred
position,
in the magazine Ben Franklin founded to the guy that'd
tell me
what's going on at this grand bolshevik headquarters.
It looks
to me as though they're getting ready to blow the Octagon
Hotel off
the map."
He found a little confectionery shop on Wordsworth Avenue
that was
still open, and went in for a cup of hot chocolate to
warm himself.
"The expense account on this business is going to be
rather heavy,"
he said to himself. "I think I'll have to charge it up
to the
Daintybits account. Say, old Grey Matter gives service
that's DIFFERENT, don't she! We not only keep Chapman's goods in the public
eye, but we face all the horrors of Brooklyn to preserve his family from
unlawful occasions. No, I don't like the company that
bookseller
runs with. If `nach Philadelphia' is the word, I think
I'll tag along.
I guess it's off for Philadelphia in the morning!" |
