Part 13
There, a few doors away, was the apartment house. He slipped along to the tradesmen’s entrance and stepped into its sheltering gloom. He didn’t feel exactly comfortable. He had pictured himself going boldly up to the door and ringing the bell. Now he decided to wait a while—to reconnoiter.
People came and went—elderly people; children; occasionally a girl whose half perceived figure brought him forward, tense and breathless. Then as he was starting toward the entrance of the apartment, the girl he was hoping yet fearing to see came down the street from the opposite direction, passed within five feet of him, and went into the house. She had not seen him, but he had seen her.
Burke realized that the impression of that pale, sorrowful face would be with him till he died.
He left his retreat a few minutes later and walked slowly away. He could feel the perspiration trickling down his forehead into his eyes. His heart pounded steadily at his ribs.
Burke decided, without thinking much about the matter, to walk the two miles back to his hotel. He struck off down a street lit with old-fashioned gas lamps, whose straw-colored flames gleamed green and witchlike in the eddying fog. He had steadied down to his habitual pace, and had no premonition to look behind him. If he had only had one of his hunches now....
But he didn’t. Perhaps it would have made little difference, in any case; for the lithe figure, which had detached itself from the shadows of a vacant lot across from the apartment house as Burke departed, blended easily with the gloom of the late evening.
He returned to his hotel, somewhat reassured by his walk. His blood tingled and he felt thoroughly alive. He even grinned to himself as he took his key from the night clerk and went up to his room on the second floor. He had had a case of “nerves,” that was all.
“Damned if I don’t think I’ve got kind of out of the habit of breathing this fishy night air,” he told himself, with heavy jocularity. “Well, something give me the creeps, for sure!”
He closed his window and latched it securely. He had already locked his door, and now he braced a chair under the knob. There was no transom—no other opening through which a breath of night air could come, except a rather wide crack beneath the door.
He ignored this.
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes after Burke had locked himself into his room, the figure of a young Chinaman might have been seen journeying up Clay Street.
The face of this Chinaman was not an ordinary one. The lips were thin and passionless. The eyes were inscrutable. There was something imposing—something of impersonal power—in the serene and almost pitying expression of that yellow, mask-like face.
The Chinaman wore a loose-fitting silk blouse and silk trousers, and thick-soled felt slippers and a black silk cap. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his hands were concealed in the wide sleeves. He walked with his head bowed, evidently in deep thought.
Instinctively, he followed his rather devious way until it brought him to a basement door, opening off from an obscure alley. Here he let himself in with a great brass key.
Once inside the room, he paused to shut and lock and finally to bar the door before turning on a light. It was a low-ceiled apartment of unusual extent, so that its farther walls were lost in obscurity. It was warm, almost steamy; and there was a pungent smell as of seaweed, and the salt wind from the ocean.
A bench with a white-enameled top was built against one wall. This bench was covered with racks for test tubes and culture bottles, and with bell-jars, reagents, stains, a compound microscope with a revolving stand and other apparatus of various sorts.
The newcomer crossed over to this bench and selected a wide-mouthed vial, into whose neck he fitted loosely a pledget of absorbent cotton. He placed the bottle on the bench, convenient to a high stool on which he evidently intended to seat himself.
Next he selected a surgeon’s forceps with long, thin points, and, with this in his hand he crossed over to a keg placed on a wooden bench in a corner of the room. The light, though dim here, sufficed to enable him to peer down through the netting that covered the keg and to perceive a myriad of filmy creatures which clung to the under side of the netting.
Deftly he raised the netting at one side, thrust his hand, armed with the forceps, underneath, and clipped one of the captives by its black-veined wings. Replacing the netting, he crossed over to the bench and seated himself on the stool.
With the precision of one accustomed to the handling of minute objects, he selected from a rack in front of him a tube, plugged with cotton and partly filled with a milky, clouded fluid. Still holding the little creature he had taken from the keg by its captured wings, he removed the cotton stopper from this culture tube, dipped a tiny glass rod into the turbid fluid within, and applied the rod to the head of the captive. He then placed the latter in the wide-mouthed vial, replaced the cotton stopper, and returned to the miniature rain-barrel for a new specimen.
It was slow work, but the man at the bench performed every action with a machinelike regularity and an unrelaxing attention that showed the importance he attached to it. At the end of half an hour he had two dozen prisoners in the vial. He held them up toward the light and crooned gently to them:
“Little friends—little angels of justice! Justice? But how may I be sure—”
He laid the vial gently down and stood looking at it. His lips moved. Then his eyes lighted, and hastily he turned and selected another vial, the exact counterpart of the one he had filled with the “little friends.”
Equipped with this second vial and the forceps, he returned to the keg and presently he had placed in it a score or so of untreated insects. He placed the two vials side by side, arranged the cotton which filled the necks so that it furnished no clew to the identity of the bottle containing the original captives, and finally he closed his eyes and shuffled the vials swiftly about.
When he had finished this queer juggling of the bottles, the Chinaman betook himself to a distant part of the basement, and from behind a piece of striped ticking, hanging against the wall he took a bundle of clothing. Quickly divesting himself of the garb he wore, he changed into this new costume. It was a dilapidated suit, such as might have been worn by a Chinese laundryman in indigent circumstances.
Next he secured some newspapers, which he folded in such a way as to approximate the size of laundered shirts. He placed six of these dummy shirts on a sheet of wrapping paper, folded the latter neatly, and tied it. Returning with this package to the bench, he wrote the name “Burke” clumsily on it with a soft leaded pencil, and, after it, some Chinese characters.
All this time he had resolutely refrained from glancing at the two vials, but when the package was ready he moved backward along the bench, fumbling behind him till his slim hand encountered one of the bottles.
Without glancing at it, he placed it carefully in an inner pocket of his ragged blouse, tucked the bundle under his arm, crossed to the door, and turned off the light and went out.
* * * * *
The night clerk of the Great Eastern Hotel, many of whose patrons were sea-faring men, was accustomed to seeing Chinese laundrymen delivering special orders of shirts and underwear at all hours of the day and night. He therefore glanced negligently over his shoulder when a meek voice hailed him from the counter:
“I say, Bossy Man—you sabe Captain Buck? Him come all same today?”
“Captain Burke? All right, John—you’ll find him up in two-one-seven, street side, back of the hall. He’s in his room now.”
The Chinaman shuffled away, went padding up the stairs and down the long hall, and found the door of two-one-seven. Here he paused and considered. He must make no mistake.
He tried the door softly. It was locked, of course. Then he knocked and raised his voice, speaking English in a way that would have startled the night clerk:
“Is this Mr. Peter Fitzgerald’s room?”
A rumbling growl ended in a curse.
“No, damn your silly eyes, it ain’t! Get away from that door!”
The Chinaman muttered an apology and retreated audibly. Half way down the hall he stopped, took the vial from his pocket, and returned to two-one-seven.
Noiselessly he approached the door and knelt down. He removed the pledget of cotton from the neck of the bottle and by the light of the hall lamp gently blew each tiny insect under the door as it was shaken clear of its glass prison.
* * * * *
Half an hour later, Lee Hin undressed and climbed into bed in the little chamber adjoining the basement laboratory.
Just before he snapped off the light, he took a pledget of cotton out of the neck of a wide-mouthed bottle and shook from the latter a score or so of buzzing insects.
“Little friends!” he said gently. “May the spirit of justice which rules all things—which holds the suns in their appointed orbits as they swing through infinite space, and which guides the destinies of the tiniest insect—may the God of all good men, of Moses and Confucius, decide—and strike through you!”
Then he turned out the light and went placidly to bed.
* * * * *
Burke slept but poorly that first night after his return.
He was just dropping into a doze when some blundering fool knocked at his door by mistake; and after Burke recovered from the rage which this incident occasioned, a mosquito buzzed down out of the ceiling and bit him on the neck. He killed the insect with the first slap; but a few minutes later, just as he was again becoming drowsy, another bit him under the eye.
After that it seemed to him that the room was full of mosquitoes. He made up his mind that his nerves were playing him tricks. There couldn’t be so many of the tormenting insects in one room! He had seen none during the evening. He must be imagining half of it—but there were the bites!
It was nearly three o’clock before he finally fell asleep. And he slept like a drugged man till late in the morning.
When he got up and looked at himself in the glass, he was furious to find his face disfigured by three great purple bites. There were at least a dozen others on his body, but those he didn’t mind. He was thinking of the effect of these disfigurements on the girl, whom he had resolved to see tonight.
He killed half a dozen blood filled mosquitoes, perched heavily in the window, and tramped downstairs to berate the clerk.
The clerk listened to him with gathering wrath.
“Mosquitoes your grandmother!” he snarled. “We never have no mosquitoes in this house! I shouldn’t wonder if you had the itch. You better find a room somewhere else!”
Burke looked ferociously at him, but the clerk returned the glare with interest. Not for nothing had he run a water-side hotel for ten years. He knew how to meet threat with threat. Burke went out and ate breakfast, for which he discovered he had little appetite.
He put in most of the day walking the streets, thinking of his grievances, and treating his mosquito bites. He bought a bottle of lotion from a druggist. The latter eyed the bites dubiously.
“Those mosquitoes must have been some snapping turtles, friend!” he commented. “They look more like tick bites. You’d better take something for your blood—some of this compound—”
Burke seized the lotion he had paid for and dashed from the store. His head ached. Plainly, everyone was mad—everyone but himself.
For a time, during the middle of the day, the mosquito bites seemed to be getting better; but Burke continued to apply the lotion, and to inspect himself in the glass.
He would be fairly presentable by night, at this rate.
It was about four o’clock when he became aware of a shooting pain radiating from the bite he had first received—the one on his neck. He jumped up and ran to the looking-glass. The thing had puffed up like a walnut, and had turned an angry purplish color.
Feverishly, Burke applied more lotion. He made a compress with a wet towel and wrapped it around his neck. Hardly had he accomplished this when he perceived that another of the bites was swelling and growing painful. Within an hour and a half, he had a dozen of these inflamed places.
Burke realized that he would have to put off his visit to the girl until next day. Probably the druggist was right—his blood was too thick. He must buy a bottle of that stuff—that compound. He had been drinking too much bootleg whisky.
He went to bed early. The thought of food nauseated him. He sank into a heavy slumber, from which he was aroused by a voice in the room.
It was a thick voice, repeating long, meaningless strings of words. Burke tried to sit up to listen, and the voice ceased. He was not able to raise himself, however. Something was wrong inside his head....
It was some time later that Burke discovered that the flat, babbling voice was his own! It rose to a scream, then shifted into a screechy laugh....
Strange faces were bending over him. There was a man with a pointed beard, who looked at him with pursed lips. This man was speaking:
“I never encountered a case of the kind before. I would call it anthrax, but for the number of the primary lesions. The interest is purely academic, of course. He’ll be dead within twelve hours. Has he had any visitors? Any way you can find out if he has any relatives or friends?”
With a strange detachment, as if he were already a spirit, Burke listened. The night clerk was speaking:
“There has been no mail for him, and no visitors—except a Chinaman, who brought him a package of laundry. I guess he’s a stranger—”
Burke’s face became purple, and his body drew itself into a great knot. _A Chinaman to see him!_ Laundry—he had had no laundry!
Suddenly he understood. Perception shone through him like a searchlight.
_A Chinaman never forgets! Lee Hin_—
He tried to shout the name. He must get his accusation into writing—
In the act of sitting up to demand paper and pen, he was caught up into a great darkness. He fell heavily back upon the bed.
“Syncope!” said the man with the pointed beard. “I must write up this case for the National Medical Journal.”
* * * * *
Lee Hin, looking upon the last scene in the drama, meditated deeply.
“No man can escape his destiny,” he mused.
The last shovel of dirt was thrown over the mound, and the man who threw it deftly patted it into place with the rounded back of his spade.
Lee Hin walked gravely away. He passed along a graveled path and approached a distant part of the cemetery. In the shade of a hawthorne he paused and stood gently regarding the figure of a girl, kneeling beside a grave.
“Poor little Irene!” he murmured.
And then he strode silently down the path and out at the cemetery gate.
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AN EYE FOR AN EYE
_By_ G. W. Crane
[Illustration]
“But mother is too sick to be moved!” the girl said imploringly. She was rather slim, and a trifle taller than average. Her face was beautiful despite the paleness of her cheeks and the slightly dark circles beneath her eyes. She taught the first grade pupils in the little community, and they literally worshipped her.
“If you will give me only a little more time, I am sure that I can get the money,” she continued, and then waited anxiously for the wizen-faced man to reply.
“No, sir!” the latter answered roughly, as he rubbed his hands together and frowned upon the girl. “Business is business! I’ve been wanting that house of yours for several years, and now I’m going to have it, unless,” he smiled grimly, “you bring in the money to pay off the mortgage by tomorrow morning.”
“But please, Mr. Seaman, I have no money! Mother’s illness has taken everything I had and more, too, but if you will wait just a little longer....”
“That will do! That will do!” the old man spoke in a rasping voice. “I’ve been too good to you already. And, then, there’s that little shack at the other edge of the village. You can move into that. It won’t hurt ye.”
“But I tell you that mother is too ill to be moved!” the girl spoke desperately.
The shriveled old man waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal.
“Haven’t you any sympathy at all?” the young woman asked in one last appeal.
“_Sympathy?_ Bosh! That’s all foolishness! It leads to bankruptcy. That’s what I always used to tell your father before he died, but no, he could not see it that way,” the old man spoke with infinite sarcasm. “Now don’t disturb me any longer. There’s the door!” and he waved a claw-like hand in its direction.