Part 14

Tough Muggins wasn't particularly strong on the conventionalities, but he had stopped on the bridge to look at the river coquetting under the moon's rays, not to listen to idle talk from strange girls. It listened like a touch, too, so he slid an indifferent eye around in the girl's direction and advised her to chop it. Something, however, about the tense look of her as she gazed fiercely down into the rippling water compelled him, in spite of his natural inclination, to carry the matter slightly farther.

"What's got you sore on the livin' proposition?" he asked grudgingly.

If he had expected melodrama he was doomed to disappointment.

"Same old trouble," she said quietly. "I was workin' for some swell folks up on the North Side--real swells _they_ was, believe me. They thought I was bad. Maybe I am. I don't know. He promised. What more could a girl expect? When they found out, the lady she says to me, 'Of course, I can't keep you here, Molly. It wouldn't be right with me with two daughters of my own, but I'm awful sorry, and I hope it'll be a lesson to you. There's plenty of chances for you to start again. It ain't never too late to turn over a new leaf. Don't tumble down them stairs,' she says when I kind of stumbled. Like it would make any difference! Then she shut the door on me. 'There's plenty of chances for you to begin over again.' That's what she said. Lord, ain't it funny?" cried the girl. Her laugh rang out high and shrill, seeming to cut into the clear darkness.

Tough agreed that it was funny. Having, perhaps, less sense of humour than Molly, he qualified the statement by adding that it was kind of tough also.

"How about the fella?" he asked casually.

"Ditched me," replied the girl. "After I come out the horspittle I never seen hide nor hair of him. Gee," she concluded bitterly, "I was crazy about that lad."

"Must 'a' been a kind of a mean skunk, though," judged Tough. "How about the kid?"

The girl's eyes sought the glittering river. "I give it away," she told him finally.

"Oh!" ejaculated Tough.

The girl seemed to feel a tentative rebuke in this. "What could I do?" she asked. "I tried to get another job before--and I couldn't. I don't know's I'll try again. There's easier ways"--the sentence hung suspended for a moment--"you know."

There was no polite veil of assumed ignorance thrown over such situations in the circle in which Tough moved. He knew, of course. Still----

"There's better ways," he ventured.

Tough was startled at the flash of anger that lit up the girl's shrunken face. For a moment she looked as if she would strike him. Then, with a sharp, quick movement, she buried her face in the covering of the bundle which she had been holding lightly on the railing of the bridge. The next instant Tough heard a soft splash as something struck the water.

"There's that way," a voice shrieked in his ear.

Tough sprang to the railing and looked down.

"Gawd a'mighty, girl!" he panted.

"I seen--seen--Gawd, woman!" he moistened his dry lips. "Was it--say, it wasn't the kid?"

Molly burst into a blood-curdling laugh.

"Sure it was," she cried. "I doped it a-purpose. I been trying to get up the nerve to do it ever since this morning. Do you think I was going to let her grow up into a thing like her mother? Man, you're crazy."

Tough's coat had been already flung off. "Don't be a quitter, girl," he gasped. "Run for the cop and tell him to put out a boat, and then you wait for me. We'll save her and she'll be an all-right one and like her mother, too."

Just how near Tough came to seeing his finish there in the rays of the moon which he loved nobody but Tough ever knew. It was easy enough to swim with the current and overtake and seize the tiny bundle held up for the moment on the surface of the water by the expanding draperies. It was when he turned and tried to swim back to the bridge that the waves pushed and beat at him like cruel hands. He thought somebody was trying to strangle him. What were they hanging to his feet for? Why did they push him and strike him? He wouldn't go that way. He had to go the other way. He must make them quit twisting him. And then through the awful pounding at his brain came a cheery voice: "Ketch a hold, bo. Ketch a hold."

Sputtering, gasping, sick, exhausted, Tough hitched his elbows weakly over the side and let the unconscious thing he had so nearly lost his life for slip gently into the bottom of the boat.

"Why, it's Tough Muggins," said the officer, looking down into his face. "For the lova Mike, what was you doin'?"

Through the dank drip of his hair Tough winked.

"I just dropped in to get a drink," he said. "I belong to the cop family and I got the habit."

It was not until the boat had ground itself gratingly up against the rough stone ledge that served for a landing that Tough openly acknowledged Policeman Connelley's right to an explanation of a sort. He jerked his head toward Molly, who stood, wild-eyed and trembling, on the narrow ledge above.

"My girl," he said succinctly. "We was scrappin', and she pitched my bundle of clothes that I was fetchin' home overboard. There was money in the pants," he added by way of gracious explanation. "That was why I jumped in after 'em."

"Didn't know you had a girl, Tough." Big Jim Connelley may have had his suspicions, but his tone was of the most conventional.

"That so?" inquired Tough as he scrambled up the ledge. "Say, Jim, the things you don't know would fill a city directory right up to the limit."

Then he turned to Molly. "Guess you're cooled off, now, old girl, what?" he said. "Come on, then. Let's beat it home."

Gathering her unconscious baby to her with trembling, passionate hands, the girl went with him trustingly.

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THE BLACK PATCH

By Randolph Hartley

I wear a black patch over my left eye. It has aroused the curiosity of many; no one has suspected the horror that it hides.

Twenty years ago Bernard Vroom and I, fellow students at the University of Jena, were devotees at the feet of Professor Malhausen, the foremost optical surgeon of his time. Living, working, dreaming together, Vroom and I became almost as one intelligence in our passionate study of the anatomy of the eye. Vroom it was who advanced the theory that a living eye-ball might be transferred from the head of one man to the head of another. It was I who suggested, and arranged for, the operation, performed by Professor Malhausen, through which Vroom's left eye became mine and my left eye became Vroom's. Professor Malhausen's monograph, published shortly afterward, describes the delicate operation in detail. The ultimate effects of the operation are my own story.

Very distinctly do I remember the final struggle for breath when the anesthetic was administered; and quite as vividly do I recall my return to consciousness, in a hospital cot, weakened by a six weeks' illness with brain fever, which had followed the operation. Slowly but clearly my mind advanced through the process of self-identification, and memory brought me to the moment of my last conscious thought. With a mingled feeling of curiosity and dread I opened my eyes.

I opened my eyes and beheld two distinct and strongly contrasting scenes. One, which was visible most clearly when I employed only my right eye, was the bare hospital room in which I lay. The other, distinct to the left eye alone, was the deck of a ship, a stretch of blue sea, and in the distance a low, tropical coast that was to me totally unfamiliar.

Perplexed and vaguely afraid, I begged the nurse to send at once for Vroom. She explained gently that Vroom had recovered quickly, and that, although deeply distressed over leaving me, he had sailed for Egypt, a fortnight since, on a scientific mission. In a flash the truth came to me overwhelmingly. The severing of the optic nerve had not destroyed the sympathy between Vroom's two eyes. With Vroom's left eye, now physically mine, I was beholding that which Vroom beheld with his right. The magnitude of the discovery and its potentialities stunned me. I dared not tell Professor Malhausen for fear of being thought insane. For the same reason I have held the secret until now.

On the second day of double-vision my left eye revealed a gorgeous picture of the port and city of Alexandria--and of a woman. Evidently she and Vroom were standing close together at the ship's rail. I saw on her face an expression that I had never seen on woman's before. I thrilled with exultation. Then suddenly I went cold. The look was for Vroom, not for me. I had found a love that was not mine, a love to which every atom of my being responded, and it was to be my portion to behold on my loved one's face, by day and by night, the manifestation of her love for another man.

From that moment on I lived in the world that was revealed to me by my left eye. My right was employed only when I set down in my diary the impressions and experiences of this other life. The record was chiefly of the woman, whose name I never knew. The final entry, unfinished, describes the evidences that I saw of her marriage to Vroom in the English Garrison Church at Cairo. I could write no more. A jealousy so sane and so well founded, so amply fed by new fuel every new moment that it was the acme of torture, possessed me. I was truly insane, but with a true vision, and to me was given the weapon of extreme cunning that insanity provides. I convinced Professor Malhausen that my left eye was sightless, and by simulating calmness and strength I gained my discharge from the hospital. The next day I sailed from Bremen for Port Said.

Upon reaching Cairo I had, naturally, no difficulty in finding my way through the already familiar streets, to the Eden Palace Hotel, and to the very door of Vroom's apartment, overlooking the Esbekieh Gardens. Without plan, save for the instant sight of her I loved, I opened the door. Vroom stood there facing me, a revolver in his hand.

"You did not consider," he said calmly, "that my left eye also is sympathetic; that I have followed every movement of yours; that I am acquainted with your errand through the entries in your diary, which I read line by line as you wrote. You shall not see her. I have sent her far away."

I rushed upon him in a frenzy. His revolver clicked but missed fire. I bore him backward over a divan, my hands at his throat. His eyes grew big as I strangled him. And into my left eye came a vision of my own face, as Vroom saw it, distorted by the lust of murder. He died with that picture fixed in his own eye, and upon the retina of the eye that once was his, and is now mine, that fearful picture of my face was fixed, to remain until my death.

I wear a black patch over my left eye. I dare not look upon the horror that it hides.

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A SHIPBOARD ROMANCE

By Lewis Allen

"Isn't that young Griggs and Miss Deering?" asked the captain, peering down from the bridge at a dark spot silhouetted against the moonlit sea.

"Yes, sir," replied the second officer.

"It's the speediest shipboard romance I've ever seen in all my thirty years aboard a liner," remarked the captain, smiling.

"I understand they never saw or heard of each other until they met at dinner, Tuesday. Have you talked much with them, sir? I see they sit next you at table."

"Oh, yes, that's true. Why, on the second dinner out he complained because there was no jewellery shop aboard. She looked as happy as a kid with a lollypop, and blushed."

"Whew! Engaged within forty-eight hours! Going some! I suppose they'll be married by the American consul before they've been ashore an hour."

"Not a bit of doubt of it," grinned the captain. "True love at sight in this case, all right. Well, they have my blessings. I fell in love with my Missus the same way, but we waited three months. I'll go below. What's she making?"

"Nineteen, sir. Good-night."

* * * * *

Two hours later there came a terrific explosion away down in the hold amongst the cargo. The ship trembled and listed.

"Women and children first! No danger! Time enough for all!" shouted the officers, as the frantic passengers surged about the life-boats.

She was going down rapidly by her stern. There came another explosion, this from the boilers.

"All women and children off?" bellowed the captain.

"Aye, aye, sir," answered the second officer.

"Married men next!" shouted the captain as the men began scrambling into the boats. A score of men paused, bowed, and stepped back. Young Griggs tore his way through and started to clamber into the boat.

"Damn you, for a coward!" cursed the second officer, dragging him back.

Young Griggs yanked away and again clutched at the boat. This time the second officer struck him square in the face and he went down.

The boatload of married men was merely cut away, so low was the ship in the water. Then came a lurch, and the waves closed over the great ship.

* * * * *

The next evening the Associated Press sent out, from its St. Louis office, this paragraph:

"Among those lost was H. G. Griggs, junior partner of the Wells & Griggs Steel Co. He leaves a wife and infant son in this city. It is feared Mrs. Griggs will not recover from the shock."

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THE COWARD

By Philip Francis Cook

Johnson stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked carefully at the hut. A few yards back, where the spring crossed the trail, there were tracks of a woman's shoe-pack. It was country where one didn't live long without the habit of noticing things. The tracks were light, mostly toes, and far apart for so small a foot. Johnson knew no woman travelled north so fast, into the wilderness, and without a pack, at that, for diversion, so he had sidestepped from the trail, silently slipped off his tump-line, and circled to the edge of the clearing, about a dozen yards from where the trail struck it. There in the shadow of the pines he searched the clearing with his eyes. No sign of life.

The door of the hut was shut, but a couple of boards had been knocked off one of the window openings. The tall grass was trampled toward the spring. Over to the right was a wreck of a birch, where some one had been cutting firewood. Nothing especially alarming, but Johnson was not popular and a few early experiences had made him cautious. He stood there, silent, for perhaps fifteen minutes, before he started for the door. There was still no sound, and he stepped inside, gun in hand.

A rusty little yacht stove, a few shelves, and a rude table were all the cookroom contained. Beyond was the bunkroom with a large double-decked bunk against one wall, and opposite it the window. Johnson went on in.

In the lower bunk lay the body of a man with a hunting knife sticking in his breast. He lay staring at the ceiling with a rather silly smile, as though he had been grinning, and death had come too quickly for it to fade.

"MacNamara---- My God!"

Johnson was unnerved. It was not often that men die by the knife in the North country. Then a great load seemed to leave his shoulders, for this dead man had sworn, not three weeks before, to shoot him at sight--and Johnson was known to be a coward. No more need he sleep with an eye open, or slip into towns at night. MacNamara, thank God, was dead.

The dead man's pack was in the other bunk, and scattered around the room were hairpins, a small rhinestone ring, and a few other feminine trinkets. "Woman!" said Johnson--and then he saw the note. It was scrawled on the cover torn from an old magazine. It read:

"Ed, you'll find this sure. Mac was going to lay for you and pot you at the White Rocks. I couldn't find you, so I promised to come here to Carmels with him. When he climbed in the bunk I give it to him--the damned fool!"

It was unsigned.

The sun was very near the western hilltop. Johnson went to the woods and returned with his pack; he dropped it near the stove in the cookroom. Then he burned the note. Next he took a small bag of parched corn out of his pack and concealed in it the woman's little things, and put the bag in his shirt. There remained only one thing to do. Without looking at the dead man's face he drew the knife out of his breast and forced his own into the wound. The woman's knife he took to the door and hurled far out into the woods.

There wasn't much daylight left. He closed the door quietly and started for the trail, north.

"I'll have to hurry," said Johnson.

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THE HEART OF A BURGLAR

By Jane Dahl

Noiselessly the burglar drew his great bulk through the window, deposited his kit of tools on the floor, and lowered the sash behind him. Then he stopped to listen. No sound broke the midnight stillness. Stealthily he flashed his lantern around the room in search of objects of value. His quick ear caught the sound of a door opening and hurried footsteps in the upper hall. Instantly he adjusted a black mask and sprang behind an open door. Pistol in hand, every faculty alert, he waited. He heard the soft thud of bare feet on the padded stairs, then laboured breathing nearby.

As the electric light was switched on, brilliantly illuminating the room, he gripped his revolver and stepped from behind the door.

"Hands up!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. Then he fell back with a short, raucous laugh. He was pointing the revolver at a frightened little mite of a girl shivering before him in her thin, white nightgown. The small, terrified face touched him strangely, and, placing his pistol in his pocket, he said, not unkindly:

"There, little girl, don't be so scared--I'm not going to hurt you. Just you be real still so as not to disturb the others until I get through and get away, and you shan't be hurt."

The child looked at him much as she would an obstacle in her path, and attempted to rush past him. He grabbed her and held her tight.

"You little vixen!" he exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you to keep still?"

"But I've got to telephone," gasped the child, struggling to free herself. "Just let me telephone and then you can do what you like with me--but I can't wait--I've got to telephone right away." And she made another effort to reach the telephone on the wall.

Again the burglar laughed. "It's very likely I'll let you telephone for the police. No, missy, you can't work that on me. I guess I'll have to tie and gag you after all."

Fresh terror found its way into the child's face, and, for the first time the burglar realized that he was not the cause of it. She was not afraid of him. She fought and scratched him like a young tigress, striving to free herself, and when she realized how powerless she was in his strong arms she burst into tears.

"Oh! My brother is dying," she cried, "and I want to telephone the doctor. He has convulsions and mamma doesn't know what to do--and you won't let me telephone the doctor!"

At the word "convulsions" the burglar went white--his hands fell nervelessly to his sides--the child was free.

"Call the doctor, quick," he said, placing the child on the chair in front of the telephone. "What room are they in?"

"End of the hall, upstairs," responded the child, with the receiver already off the hook.

In three bounds the burglar was up the steps. He made for the light which shone through a half-open door down the hall, striving to formulate some explanation to offer the mother for his presence in the house. When he gently pushed open the door he saw that none was needed--the woman before him was oblivious to all the world. Dishevelled and distracted, she sat rocking to and fro, clutching to her breast the twitching body of a wee boy. Piteously she begged him not to die--not to leave his poor mummy.

Quietly the burglar came to her side and gently loosened her clasp.

"Give me the baby," he said in a low voice. "He will be better on the bed."

Dumbly, with unseeing eyes, she looked at him, and surrendered the child.

"He is dying," she moaned--"dying--oh, my little, little man!"

"No, he's not," said the burglar. But as he looked at the wide-open, glassy eyes and blue, pinched face of the child he had little faith in his own words.

He placed the baby upon the bed, and turning to the mother, said in an authoritative voice:

"You must brace up now and save your child--do you understand? I can save him, but you must help me, and we must be quick--quick, do you understand?"

A glimmer of comprehension seemed to penetrate her palsied brain.

"Yes, yes!" she said. "What shall I do?"

"Heat a kettle of water, quick. Bring it in his bathtub--and bring some mustard, too. Hurry."

Impatiently the mother was off before the last "hurry" was hurled at her. Now that a ray of hope was offered, and something definite to do, she was all action.

Reverently the burglar removed the baby's nightrobe, and, covering the little body with a blanket, he rubbed the legs and arms and back with his huge hands--very, very gently, for fear their roughness would irritate the delicate skin.

In a short time the mother was back with the hot mustard bath. Together they placed the baby in the tub. His little body relaxed--the glassy eyes closed--he breathed regularly--he was asleep.

"Thank God," breathed the burglar, fervently, though awkwardly, as though such words were strange to his lips.

"He is sleeping," cried the mother rapturously. "He will live!"

As the mother was drying the little body with soft towels the burglar said brokenly:

"I had a little boy once--about his size--two years old. He died in convulsions because his mother didn't know what to do and the doctor didn't get there in time."

A sob of ready sympathy came from the heart of the woman.

"And his poor mother?" she asked. "Where is she?"

"She soon followed--she seemed to think the little fellow would need her over there," he replied in a tear-choked voice.

Half ashamed, he ran his sleeve across his eyes to remove the moisture there. The woman's tears splashed on the quietly sleeping infant in her lap.

Both were startled by the clamorous ringing of the doorbell.

"The doctor!" cried the man, suddenly brought to a realization of his position.