Part 6

“You will not go to East Gloucester again, Richard. That ends it.” Aunt Charlotte swept from the room.

“Gee!” Buster’s wide eyes filled. He slumped into the nearest chair. “Say, Cousin Edie! Ain’t I got one friend left on earth?”

“Now, Richard—”

“Can’t you see what I’m tryin’ to put over? I don’t expect Aunt Charlotte to see. She’s a pippin, all right, but that solid-ivory dome of hers—”

“_Richard!_”

“But you’re different. You aren’t so awful old. You ought to understand that a fellow just has to know about things—cars, ships, aeroplanes, motors, everything!”

“But—”

“Now, Cousin Edith, I’m not stringin’ you. I’m dead in earnest. I’m not tryin’ to bother anybody; I’m just tryin’ to learn what I’ve got to learn.” He leaped up, gripped my arm; his passionate boy voice shrilled; he was droll and pitiful and insolent all in a breath. “No, sirree, I ain’t bluffin’, not for a cent. Believe me, Cousin Edith, us fellows have got to learn how everything works, and learn it quick. I tell you, we’ve _got_ to know!”

――――

Well.... All this was the summer of 1914. Three years ago. Three years and eight months ago, to be exact. Nowadays, I don’t wear tea-rose crêpe frocks nor slim French slippers. Our government’s daily Hints for Paris run more to coarse blue denim and dour woollen hose and clumping rubber boots. My once-lily hands clasp a scrubbing-brush far oftener than a hand at bridge. And I rise at five-thirty and gulp my scalding coffee in the hot, tight galley of Field Hospital 64, then set to work. For long before the dawn they come, that endless string of ambulances, with their terrible and precious freight. Then it’s baths and food and swift, tense minutes in the tiny “theatre,” and swifter, tenser seconds when we and the orderlies hurry through dressings and bandagings, while the senior nurse toils like a Turk alongside and bosses us meanwhile like a slave-driver. Every day my heart is torn open in my breast for the pain of my children, my poor, big, helpless, broken children. Every night, when I slip by to take a last peep at their sleepy, contented faces, my heart is healed for me again. Then I stumble off to our half-partitioned slit and throw myself on my bunk, tired to my last bone, happy to the core of my soul. But day by day the work heaps up. Every cot is full, every tent overflowing. We’re short of everything, beds, carbolic, dressings, food. And yesterday, at dusk, when we were all fagged to exhaustion, there streamed down a very flood of wounded, eight ambulance-loads, harvest of a bombed munitions depot.

“We haven’t an inch of room.”

“We’ve got to make room.” Doctor Lake, sweating, dog-tired, swaying on his feet from nine unbroken hours at the operating-table, took command. “Take my hut; it’ll hold four at a pinch. You nurses will give up your cubby-hole? Thought so. Plenty hot water, Octave? Bring ’em along.”

They brought them along. Every stretcher, every bunk, every crack was crowded now. Then came the whir of a racing motor. One more ambulance plunged up the sodden road.

“Ah! _Grand blessé!_” murmured old Octave.

“_Grand blessé!_ And not a blanket left, even. Put him in the coal-hole,” groaned the head nurse.

“Nix on the coal-hole.” Thus the muddy young driver, hauling out the stretcher with its long, moveless shape. “This is the candy kid—hear me? Our crack scout. Escadrille 32.”

“Escadrille 32?” The number held no meaning for me. Yet I pushed nearer. _Grand blessé_, indeed, that lax, pulseless body, that shattered flesh, that blood and mire. I bent closer. Red hair, shining and thick, the red that always goes with cinnamon freckles. A clean-cut, ashen young face, a square jaw, a stubborn, boyish chin with a deep-cleft dimple.

Then my heart stopped short. The room whirled round me.

“Buster!” I cried out. “You naughty, darling little scamp! So you got your way, after all. You ran off from school, and joined the escadrille—oh, sonny-boy, don’t you hear me? Listen! Listen!”

The gaunt face did not stir. Only that ashy whiteness seemed to grow yet whiter.

“We’ll do our best, Miss Preston. Go away now, dear.” The head nurse put me gently back. I knew too well what her gentleness meant.

“But Doctor Lake can save him! Doctor Lake can pull him through!”

“Doctor Lake is worn out. We’ll have to manage without him.”

“Don’t you believe it!” I flamed. Then I, the greenest, meekest slavey in the service, dashed straight to the operating-room, and gripped Doctor Lake by both wrists and jerked him bodily off the bench where he crouched, a sick, lubberly heap, blind with fatigue.

“No, you sha’n’t stop to rest. Not yet!” I stormed at him. Somehow I dragged him down the ward, to my boy’s side. At sight of that deathlike face, the limp, shivering man pulled himself together with all his weary might.

“I’ll do my level best, Miss Edith. Go away, now, that’s a good girl.”

I went away and listened to the ambulance-driver. He was having an ugly bullet scratch on his arm tied up. He was not a regular field-service man, but a young Y. M. C. A. helper who had taken the place of a driver shot down that noon.

“Well, you see, that kid took the air two hours ago to locate the battery that’s been spilling shells into our munitions station. He spotted it, and two others besides. Naturally, they spotted him. He scooted for home, with a shrapnel wound in his shoulder, and made a bad landing three miles back of the lines, and broke his leg and whacked his head. Luckily I wasn’t a hundred yards away. I got him aboard my car and gave him first aid and started to bring him straight over here. Would he stand for that? Not Buddy. ‘You’ll take me to headquarters first, to report,’ says he. ‘So let her out.’

“No use arguing. I let her out. We reported at headquarters, three miles out of our way, then started here. Two miles back, a shell struck just ahead and sent a rock the size of a paving-brick smack against our engine. The car stopped, dead. Did that faze the kid? Not so you could notice it. ‘You hoist me on the seat and let me get one hand on the wheel,’ says he, cool’s a cucumber. ‘There isn’t a car made but will jump through hoops for me.’ Go she did. With her engine knocked galley west, mind you, and him propped up, chirk as a cherub, with his broken leg and his smashed shoulder, and a knock on his head that would ’a’ stopped his clock if he’d had any brains to jolt. Skill? He drove that car like a racer. She only hit the high places. Pluck? He wrote it.

“We weren’t fifty yards from the hospital when he crumpled down, and I grabbed him. Hemorrhage, I guess. I sure do hope they pull him through. But—I don’t believe—”

Soon a very dirty-faced brigadier-general, whom I used to meet at dances long ago, came and sat down on a soap-box and held my hands and tried to comfort me, so gently and so patiently, the poor, kind, blundering dear. Most of his words just buzzed and glimmered round me. But one thought stuck in my dull brain.

“This isn’t your boy’s first service to his country, Miss Edith. He has been with the escadrille only a month, but he has brought down three enemy planes, and his scouting has been invaluable. He’s a wonder, anyhow. So are all our flying boys. They tell me that the German youngsters make such good soldiers because they’re trained to follow orders blindfold. All very well when it comes to following a bayonet charge over the top. But the escadrille—that’s another story. Take our boys, brought up to sail their own boats and run their own cars and chance any fool risk in sight. Couple up that impudence, that fearlessness, that splendid curiosity, and you’ve got a fighting-machine that not only fights but wins. All the drilled, stolid forces in creation can’t beat back that headlong young spirit. If—”

He halted, stammering.

“If—we can’t keep him with us, you must remember that he gave his best to his country, and his best was a noble gift. Be very glad that you could help your boy prepare himself to bestow it. You and his parents gave him his outdoor life and his daring sports and his fearless outlook, and his uncurbed initiative. You helped him build himself, mind and body, to flawless powers and to instant decisions. To-day came his chance to give his greatest service. No matter what comes now, you—you have your royal memory.”

But I could not hear any more. I cried out that I didn’t want any royal memories, I wanted my dear, bad, self-willed little boy. The general got up then and limped away and stood and looked out of the window.

I sat and waited. I kept on waiting—minutes on gray minutes, hours on hours.

Then a nurse grasped my shoulders, and tried to tell me something. I heard her clearly, but I couldn’t string her words together to make meaning. Finally, she drew me to my feet and led me back to the operating-room.

There stood Doctor Lake. He was leaning against the wall and wiping his face on a piece of gauze. He came straight to me and put out both big, kind hands.

“Tell me. You needn’t try to make it easy—”

“There, there, Miss Edith. There’s nothing to tell. Look for yourself.”

Gray-lipped, whiter than ashes, straight and moveless as a young knight in marble effigy, lay my boy. But a shadow pulse flickered in that bound temple, the cheek I kissed was warm.

“No,” said Doctor Lake very softly. “He won’t die. He’s steel and whipcord, that youngster. Heaven be praised, you can’t kill his sort with a hatchet.”

He leaned down, gave Buster a long, searching look. His puffy, fagged face twisted with bewilderment, then broke into chuckles of astonishment and delight.

“Well, on my word and honor! I’ve just this moment recognized him. This _blessé_ is the imp of Satan who used to steal my car up the North Shore. He’s the chap who steered that confounded aeroplane into the garden-party.... I’ve always sworn that, let me once lay hands on that young scalawag, I’d lick the tar out of him!”

“Well, here’s your chance,” snivelled I.

He did not hear me. He had stooped again over Buster. Again he was peering into that still face. Over his own face came a strange look, mirthful, then deep with question, profoundly tender; then, flashing through, a gleam of amazing and most piteous jealousy, the bitter, comic jealousy of the most famous of all middle-aged American surgeons for insolent, fool-hardy, glorious youth.

Then he turned and went away, a big, dead-tired, shambling figure. And in that instant my boy’s heavy eyes lifted and stared at me. Slowly in them awoke a drowsy sparkle.

“Hello, Cousin Edith. When did you blow in?”

I didn’t try to speak. I looked past him at Doctor Lake, now plodding from the room. Buster’s eyes followed mine. Over his face came a smile of heaven’s own light.

“Old stuffed shirt,” sighed Buster with exquisite content. He turned his gaunt young head on the pillow; he tucked a brawny fist under his cheek. Before I could speak he had slipped away, far on a sea of dreams.

THE OPEN WINDOW

_By_ CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE From _Harper’s Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers._ _Copyright, 1919, by Charles Caldwell Dobie._

“It happened just as I have said,” Fernet reiterated, tossing the wine-dregs from his glass.

The company at the table looked instinctively toward the kitchen. Berthe was bringing a fresh pot of coffee. They all followed Fernet’s example, lifting their empty glasses for her to serve them in their turn.

The regular boarders of the Hôtel de France, after the fashion of folks who find their meal a duty to be promptly despatched, had departed, but the transients still lingered over their _café noir_ and cognac in the hope that something exciting might materialize.

As the sound of Fernet’s voice died away, a man who had been sitting in an extreme corner of the room scraped back his chair and rose. Fernet looked up. The man was a hunchback, and, instead of paying for his meal and leaving, he crossed over and said to Fernet, in the most perfect French imaginable:

“I see, my young fellow, that you are discussing something of interest with your friends here. Would it be impertinent for me to inquire into the subject?”

Fernet drew out a chair for the newcomer, who seated himself.

“By no means. We were discussing a murder and suicide. The murdered man was an Italian fisherman who lodged at the Hôtel des Alpes Maritimes, the suicide was a musician named Suvaroff.”

“Ah,” said the hunchback, cracking his fingers. “Why a murder and suicide? Why not two murders?”

“Because,” returned Fernet, pompously, “it was abundantly proved to the contrary. This man Suvaroff suffered from neuralgia; the Italian fisherman was given to playing the accordion at all hours of the night. Suvaroff was, in addition, a musician—a high-strung person. The Italian’s playing was abominable—even his landlady says as much. In short, Suvaroff deliberately killed this simple-minded peasant because of his music. Then, in a fit of remorse, he killed himself. I leave it to any one here to dispute the fact. Besides, I was on the coroner’s jury. I should know what I am talking about.”

“Oh, without doubt,” agreed the hunchback, smiling amiably. “But, as I remember, the knives in both cases were plunged hilt-deep into the backs of the victims. One does not usually commit suicide in this fashion.”

Fernet coldly eyed the curiously handsome face of his antagonist. “It seems you know more about this thing than a coroner’s jury,” he sneered.

“It seems I do—granting that such an important item was left out of the evidence.”

“Then, my good sir, will you be good enough to tell me who _did_ kill Suvaroff, since you do not admit that he died by his own hand?”

The hunchback cracked his fingers again. “That is simple enough. Suvaroff was killed by the same person who stabbed the Italian.”

“And who might that be, pray?”

The hunchback rose with a malignant smile. “Ah, if I told you that you would know as much as I do, my friend.”

And with that he walked calmly over to the proprietor, put down thirty-five cents for his meal upon the counter, and without another word left the room.

A silence fell upon the group. Everybody stared straight ahead, avoiding the eye of his neighbor. It was as if something too terrifying to be remarked had passed them.

Finally, a thick-set man at Fernet’s right, with a purple wart on his cheek, said, uneasily, “Come, I must be going.”

The others rose; only Fernet remained seated.

“What,” said another, “haven’t you finished?”

“Yes,” returned Fernet, gloomily, “but I am in no hurry.”

He sat there for an hour, alone, holding his head between his hands. Berthe cleared off the soiled plates, wiped the oilcloth-covered tables, began noisily to lay the pewter knives and forks for the morning meal. At this Fernet stirred himself and, looking up at her, said:

“Tell me who was the hunchback who came and sat with us? Does he live here—in San Francisco?”

“His name is Flavio Minetti,” she replied, setting the lid back upon an uncovered sugar-bowl. “Beyond that I know nothing. But they tell me that he is quite mad.”

“Ah, that accounts for many things,” said Fernet, smiling with recovered assurance. “I must say he is strangely fascinating.”

Berthe looked at him sharply and shrugged. “For my part, he makes me shiver every time I see him come in the door. When I serve him my hand shakes. And he continually cracks his fingers and says to me: ‘Come, Berthe, what can I do to make you smile? Would you laugh if I were to dance for you? I would give half my life only to see you laughing. Why are you so sad?’ ... No, I wish he would never come again.”

“Nevertheless, I should like to see him once more.”

“He comes always on Thursdays for chicken.”

“Thanks,” said Fernet, as he put on his hat.

――――

Fernet walked directly to his lodgings that night. He had a room in an old-fashioned house on the east side of Telegraph Hill. The room was shabby enough, but it caught glimpses of the bay and there was a gnarled pepper-tree that came almost to its windows and gave Fernet a sense of eternal, though grotesque, spring. Even his landlord was unusual—a professional beggar who sat upon the curb, with a ridiculous French poodle for company, and sold red and green pencils.

This landlord was sitting out by the front gate as Fernet entered.

“Ah, Pollitto,” said Fernet, halting before the old man and snapping his fingers at the poodle who lay crouched before his master, “I see you are enjoying this fine warm night.”

“You are wrong,” replied the beggar. “I am merely sitting here hoping that some one will come along and rent my front room.”

“Then it is vacant?”

“Naturally,” replied the old man, with disagreeable brevity, and Fernet walked quickly up to his room.

“Why do I live in such a place?” he asked himself, surveying the four bare walls. “Everything about it is abominable, and that beggar, Pollitto, is a scoundrel. I shall move next week.”

He crossed over to the window and flung it open. The pepper-tree lay before him, crouching in the moonlight. He thought at once of Flavio Minetti.

“He is like this pepper-tree,” he said, aloud, “beautiful even in his deformity. No, I would not trade this pepper-tree for a dozen of the straightest trees in the world.” He stepped back from the window, and, lighting a lamp, set it upon a tottering walnut table. “Ah, André Fernet,” he mused, chidingly, “you are always snared by what is unusual. You should pray to God that such folly does not lead you to disaster.”

He went to the window and looked out again. The pepper-tree seemed to be bending close to the ground, as if seeking to hide something. Presently the wind parted its branches and the moonlight fell at its feet like a silver moth before a blackened candle.

André Fernet shivered and sighed. “Yes,” he repeated, again and again, “they are alike. They both are at once beautiful and hideous and they have strange secrets.... Well, I shall go on Thursday again, and maybe I shall see him. Who knows, if I am discreet he may tell me who killed this ridiculous musician Suvaroff.”

And with that he suddenly blew out the light.

On the next Thursday night, when Fernet entered the dining-room of the Hôtel de France his glance rested immediately upon Flavio Minetti. To his surprise the hunchback rose, drawing a chair out as he did so, and beckoning Fernet to be seated next him. For a moment Fernet hesitated, Berthe was just bringing on the soup.

“What! Are you afraid?” she said, mockingly, as she passed.

This decided Fernet. He went and sat beside Minetti without further ado.

“Ah, I was expecting you!” cried the hunchback, genially, as he passed the radishes.

“Expecting _me_?” returned Fernet. His voice trembled, though he tried to speak boldly.

“Yes. Women are not the only inquisitive animals in the world. What will you have—some wine?”

Fernet allowed Minetti to fill his glass.

Other boarders began to drift in. Minetti turned his back upon Fernet, speaking to a new-comer at his left. He did not say another word all evening.

Fernet ate and drank in silence. “What did I come for and why am I staying?” he kept asking himself. “This man is mocking me. First of all, he greets me as if I were his boon companion, and next he insults me openly and before everybody in the room. Even Berthe has noticed it and is smiling. As a matter of fact, he knows no more than I do about Suvaroff’s death.”

But he continued to sit beside the hunchback all through the meal, and as fruit was put on the table he touched Minetti on the arm and said, “Will you join me in a _café royal_?”

“Not here ... a little later. I can show you a place where they really know how to make them. And, besides, there are tables for just two. It is much more private.”

Fernet’s heart bounded and sank almost in one leap. “Let us go now, then,” he said, eagerly.

“As you wish,” replied Minetti.

Fernet paid for two dinners, and they reached for their hats.

“Where are you going?” asked Berthe, as she opened the door.

Fernet shrugged. “I am in his hands,” he answered, sweeping his arm toward Minetti.

“You mean you will be,” muttered the hunchback, in an undertone.

Fernet heard him distinctly.

“Perhaps I had better leave him while there is yet time!” flashed through his mind. But the next instant he thought, contemptuously: “What harm can he do me? Why, his wrist is no bigger than a pullet’s wing. Bah! You are a fool, André Fernet!”

――――

They stepped out into the street. A languorous note was in the air; the usual cool wind from the sea had not risen. A waning moon silvered the roof-tops, making a pretense of hiding its face in the thin line of smoke above Telegraph Hill.

The hunchback led the way, trotting along in a fashion almost Oriental. At the end of the second block he turned abruptly into a wine-shop; Fernet followed. They found seats in a far corner, away from the billiard-tables. A waiter came forward. They gave their orders.

“Be sure,” said Minetti to the waiter, “that we have plenty of anisette and cognac in the coffee.”

The man flicked a towel rather contemptuously and made no answer.

“Now,” Minetti continued, turning a mocking face toward Fernet, “what can I do for you, my friend?”

Fernet was filled with confusion. “I ... you ...” he stammered. “Really, there is nothing. Believe me—”

“Nonsense,” interrupted Minetti. “You wish to know who killed Suvaroff. But I warn you, my friend, it is a dreadful thing to share such a secret.”

He looked at Fernet intently. The younger man shuddered. “Nevertheless, I should like to know,” Fernet said, distinctly.

“Well, then, since you are so determined—it was I who killed him.”

Fernet stared, looked again at the hunchback’s puny wrists, and began to laugh. “_You!_ Do you take me for a fool?” And as he said this he threw back his head and laughed until even the billiard-players stopped their game and looked around at him.

“What are you laughing at?” asked the hunchback, narrowing his eyes.

Fernet stopped. He felt a sudden chill as if some one had opened a door. “I am laughing at you,” he answered.

“I am sorry for that,” said Minetti, dryly.

“Why?”

The hunchback leaned forward confidentially. “Because I kill every one who laughs at me. It—it is a little weakness I have.”

The waiter came with two glasses of steaming coffee. He put them down on the table, together with a bottle of cognac and a bottle of anisette.

“Ah, that is good!” cried the hunchback, rubbing his hands together. “The proprietor is my friend. He is going to let us prepare our own poison!”

Fernet felt himself shivering. “Come,” he thought, “this will never do! The man is either mad or jesting.” He reached for the anisette.