Part 15

“Alex,” he said huskily.

There was a cry of amazement. Alex called for a light. Someone else, evidently startled by the voice coming from what all had thought to be a dead man, started to run, kicked over a lantern, and was cursed roundly by the others, who were crowding up.

When the wagon arrived, he was so far recovered that, with the assistance of the others, he was able to clamber painfully in and sink to the blankets on the bottom, every joint in his body aching.

The two Buntlys had called the younger men to one side and they were whispering excitedly together. Presently the riding-horses all were tied at the side of the road, and when the wagon creaked its way homeward, Ed was accompanied only by Alex, who had refused to leave him, and by old Arner. Rensie had gone with the others.

Two days later, he was able to creep out to the front porch of Arner’s little home and sit in the cool of a breeze that swept up from the bayou. After a space of silence, he asked:

“Arn, what’d them fellers do the yuther night? I can’t git er peep outen ’em.”

“They foun’ right smart of stuff in boxes, what Rensie said was some sorter dope, bein’ unloaded from the schooner. But they th’owed hit in the water.”

“I ain’t intrusted in no dope, Arn. I say what’d they do?”

“The leader of the gang confessed, after he’d been questioned by Rensie, an’ when he saw the jig was up, anyhow. They had sot Jonas ter keep folks skeerd off the swamp road at night, by killin’ whosomever come there. They was goin’ ter git er truck an’ haul that stuff off somewheres.”

“Well, what’d the boys do?”

Reflectively, Arner stroked his short, heavy beard. He spat into the yard. Then he turned to the deputy:

“Ed,” he said slowly, “yo’ comin’ down here, an’, single-handed an’ alone, huntin’ out the critter what was killin’ us off will be remembered an’ talked about in generations ter come--when these here swamps is cleared off an’ drained an’ producin’ corn an’ taters. But sich er little matter as er schooner lyin’ at the bottom of the bayou gatherin’ barnacles is soon forgot, an’ let’s you an’ me fergit that part of hit, too.”

The Basket

_An Odd Little Tale_

_By_ HERBERT J. MANGHAM

Mrs. Buhler told him at first that she had no vacancies, but as he started away she thought of the little room in the basement.

He turned back at her call.

“I have got a room, too,” she said, “but it’s a very small one and in the basement. I can make you a reasonable price, though, if you’d care to look at it.”

The room was a problem. She always hesitated to show it to people, because so often they seemed insulted at her suggestion that they would be satisfied with such humble surroundings. If she gave it to the first applicant, he would likely be a disreputable character who might detract from the respectability of her house, and she would have to face the embarrassment of getting rid of him. So she was content for weeks at a time to do without the pittance the room brought her.

“How much is it?” asked the man.

“Seven dollars a month.”

“Let me see it.”

She called her husband to take her place at the desk, picked up a bunch of keys and led the way to the rear of the basement. The room was a narrow cell, whose one window was slightly below the level of a tiny, bare back yard, closed in by a board fence.

A tottering oak dresser was pushed up close to the window, and a small square table, holding a pitcher and washbowl, was standing beside it. An iron single-bed against the opposite wall left barely enough space for one straight-backed chair and a narrow path from the door to the window. A curtain, hanging across one corner, and a couple of hooks in the wall provided a substitute for a closet.

“You can have the use of the bathroom on the first floor,” said Mrs. Buhler. “There is no steam heat in the basement, but I will give you an oil stove to use if you want it. The oil won’t cost you very much. Of course, it never gets real cold in San Francisco, but when the fogs come in off the bay you ought to have something to take the chill off the room.”

“I’ll take it.”

The man pulled out a small roll of money and counted off seven one-dollar bills.

“You must be from the East,” remarked Mrs. Buhler, smiling at the paper money.

“Yes.”

Mrs. Buhler, looking at his pale hair and eyes and wan mustache, never thought of asking for references. He seemed as incapable of mischief as a retired fire horse, munching his grass and dreaming of past adventures.

He told her that his name was Dave Scannon.

And that was all the information he ever volunteered to anybody in the rooming-house.

* * * * *

An hour later he moved in. By carrying in one suitcase and transferring its contents to the dresser drawers he was installed.

The other roomers scarcely noticed his advent. He always walked straight across the little lobby without looking directly at anyone, never stopping except to pay his rent, which he did promptly on the fifth of every month.

He did not leave his key at the desk when he went out, as was the custom of the house, but carried it in his pocket. The chambermaid never touched his room. At his request she gave him a broom, and every Sunday morning she left towels, sheets and a pillowcase hanging on his doorknob. When she returned, she would find his soiled towels and linen lying in a neat pile beside his door.

Impelled by curiosity, Mrs. Buhler once entered the room with her master key. There was not so much as a hair to mar the bare tidiness. A comb and brush on the dresser and a pile of newspapers were the only visible evidences of occupancy. The oil stove was gathering dust in the corner: it had never been used. She carried it out with her: it would be just the thing for that old lady in the north room who always complained of the cold in the afternoons, when the rest of the hotel was not uncomfortable enough to justify turning on the steam.

The old lady was sitting in the lobby one afternoon when he came home from work.

“Is that your basement roomer?” she asked.

She watched him until he disappeared at the end of the hall.

“Oh. I couldn’t think where I’d seen him. But I remember now--he’s a sort of porter and general helper at that large bakery on lower Market Street.”

“I really didn’t know where he worked,” admitted Mrs. Buhler. “I had thought of asking him several times, but he’s an awfully hard man to carry on a conversation with.”

He had been at the rooming-house four months when he received his first letter. Its envelope proclaimed it a hay-fever cure advertisement.

As he was not in the habit of leaving his key at the desk, the letter remained in his box for three days. Finally Mr. Buhler handed it to him as he was passing the desk on the way to his room.

He paused to read the inscription.

“You never receive any mail,” remarked Mr. Buhler. “Haven’t you any family?”

“No.”

“Where is your home?”

“Catawissa, Pennsylvania.”

“That’s a funny name. How do you spell it?”

Scannon spelled it, and went on down the hall.

“C-a-t-a-w-i-double-s-a,” repeated Mr. Buhler to his wife. “Ain’t that a funny name?”

* * * * *

In his room, Scannon removed the advertisement from its envelope and read it soberly from beginning to end.

Finished, he folded it and placed it on his pile of newspapers. Then he brushed his hair and went out again.

He ate supper at one of the little lunch counters near the Civic Center. The rest of the evening he spent in the newspaper room at the public library. He picked up eastern and western papers with impartial interest, reading the whole of each page, religiously and without a change of expression, until the closing bell sounded.

He never ascended to the reference, circulation or magazine rooms. Sometimes he would take the local papers home with him and read stretched out on his bed, not seeming to notice that his hands were blue with the penetrating chill that nightly drifts in from the ocean.

On Sundays he would put on a red-striped silk shirt and a blue serge suit and take a car to Golden Gate Park. There he would sit for hours in the sun, impassively watching the hundreds of picnic parties, the squirrels, or a piece of paper retreating before the breeze. Or perhaps he would walk west to the ocean, stopping for a few minutes at each of the animal pens, and take a car home from the Cliff House.

For two years the days came and passed on in monotonous reduplication, the casual hay-fever cure circulars supplying the only touches of novelty.

Then one afternoon as he was brushing his hair, he gasped and put his hand to his throat. A sharp nausea pitched him to the floor.

Inch by inch, he dragged himself to the little table and upset it, crashing the bowl and pitcher into a dozen pieces.

His energy was spent in the effort, and he lay inert.

* * * * *

Mrs. Buhler consented to accompany her friend to the spiritualist’s only after repeated urging, and she repented her decision as soon as she arrived there.

The fusty parlor was a north room to which the sun never penetrated, and in consequence was cold and damp. The medium, a fat, untidy woman whose movements were murmurous with the rustle of silk and the tinkle of tawdry ornaments, sat facing her with one hand pressed to forehead, and delivered mysteriously-acquired information about relatives and friends.

“Who is Dave?” she asked finally.

Mrs. Buhler hastily recalled all of her husband’s and her own living relatives.

“I don’t know any Dave,” she said.

“Yes, yes, you know him,” insisted the medium. “He’s in the spirit land now. There’s death right at your very door!”

She put her hand to her throat and coughed in gruesome simulation of internal strangulation.

“But I don’t know any Dave,” reiterated Mrs. Buhler.

She regained the street with a feeling of vast relief.

“I’ll never go to one of those places again!” she asserted, as she said good-by to her friend. “It’s too creepy!”

A great fog bank was rolling in majestically from the west, blotting out the sun and dripping a fine drizzle on the pavements. Drawing her coat collar closer about her neck, Mrs. Buhler plunged into the enveloping dampness and started to climb the long hill that led to her rooming-house.

Her husband’s distended eyes and pale face warned her of bad news.

“Dave Scannon’s dead!” he whispered hoarsely.

_Dave Scannon!_ So that was “Dave!”

“He’s been dead two or three days,” continued Mr. Buhler. “I was beating a rug in the back yard a while ago when I noticed a swarm of big blue flies buzzing about his window. It flashed over me right away that I hadn’t seen him for several days. I couldn’t unlock his door, because his key was on the inside, so I called the coroner and a policeman, and we broke it in. He was lying between the bed and the dresser, and the bowl and pitcher lay broken on the floor, where he had knocked it over when he fell. They’re taking him out now.”

Mrs. Buhler hurried to the back stairway and descended to the lower hall. Two men were carrying a long wicker basket up the little flight of steps between the back entrance and the yard. She remained straining over the banister until the basket had disappeared.

The coroner had found nothing in his room but clothing, about five dollars in change, and a faded picture in a tarnished silver frame of an anemic looking woman who might have been a mother, wife or sister.

Mrs. Buhler answered his questions nervously. Yes, the dead man had been with them about two years. They knew little of him, for he was very peculiar and never talked, and wouldn’t even allow the maid to come in and clean up his room. He had said though that he had no family and that his home was in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. She remembered the town because it had such an odd name.

The coroner wrote to authorities in Catawissa, who replied that they could find no traces of anyone by the name of Scannon. No more mail ever came for the man except the occasional hay-fever cure circulars.

The manager of the bakery telephoned to ask if the death notice in the paper referred to the same Dave Scannon who had been working for him. He knew nothing of the man except that he had been very punctual in his duties until that final day when he did not appear.

* * * * *

Several weeks later, little Mrs. Varnes, who occupied a room at the rear of the second floor, stopped at the desk to leave her key. She hovered there for a few minutes of indecision, then impulsively leaned forward.

“Mrs. Buhler, I just want to ask you something,” she said, lowering her voice. “One afternoon several weeks ago I saw some men carrying a long basket out of the back door, and I’ve been wondering what it was.”

“Probably laundry,” hazarded Mrs. Buhler.

“No, it was one of those long baskets such as the undertakers use to carry the dead in. I’ve often thought about it, but I couldn’t figure out who could have died in this house, so I decided I would ask you. I told my husband about it, and he said I was dreaming.”

“You must have been,” said Mrs. Buhler.

_The_ ACCUSING VOICE _A Strange Tale_

_By_ MEREDITH DAVIS

“We, the jury, find the defendant, Richard Bland, guilty of murder in the first degree, in manner and form as charged.”

Allen Defoe, foreman of the twelve men, listened with impassive face as the judge read away the life of the prisoner in the dock--the man whose death warrant Defoe had signed only a few minutes before. As the judge finished, Defoe glanced warily toward the prisoner. Somehow, he preferred to avoid catching his eye.

Bland, a slight, rather uninteresting type of man, stood with bowed head; Defoe now turned his gaze full upon him.

“Has the prisoner anything to say why judgment should not be pronounced?”

The judge’s voice, coming after the short pause, sent a strange chill into the heart of Allen Defoe, juror. He hoped the prisoner’s counsel would make the customary motions for a new trial or for time in which to file an appeal. He did neither: evidently Bland believed the verdict inescapable--or else he was out of funds.

Now the judge arose in his place, donning with nervous gesture the black cap that accompanies the most tragic moment in the performance of a court’s duties. The judge seemed ill at ease in the cap. It was the first time he had worn it. The grotesque thought flitted through Defoe’s mind that perhaps the judge had borrowed the cap from one of his fellow jurists for the occasion.

The almost level rays of the western sun diffused a sombre, aureate glow athwart the judge’s bench, so that the dark figure of the standing man was in mystic indistinctness beyond the shaft of light from the window. A fly now and then craved the spotlight for a moment and lazily floated from the growing dusk of the room to the avenue of ebbing day, streaming in from the west. And always there was a constant turmoil of dust particles, visible only when they moved into the bright relief of the sun-shaft.

The handful of spectators stirred restlessly while the judge was making his preparations. The droning noises of approaching summer evening in a rural county-seat were smothered by the buzz of ill-hushed voices. Perhaps that was why the judge, in the midst of adjusting his headgear, rapped sharply thrice with his gavel--or, it may have been only his excess of nervousness.

Defoe thought the judge never would stop fumbling with his cap. And finally the judge lost track of the jury’s verdict and had to mess through the scattered papers before him until he found it. He didn’t really require it to pronounce sentence of death upon the man in the dock. Hunting it, though, delayed the inevitable a few seconds; and Defoe wondered, since he himself was near to screaming out with impatience, how the prisoner could stand it without going suddenly mad.

“For God’s sake, read the death sentence!” exclaimed Defoe under his breath, but loud enough to arouse a nod of approval from the two jurors nearest him.

A moment later the judge found his voice:

“The prisoner will face the court.”

Slowly, deliberately, the prisoner stepped forward in the dock, leaning slightly against the railing and letting one hand rest upon it. He looked squarely at the judge now, although he barely could distinguish his features in the dimness.

Again the judge spoke, and this time his voice was hurried and strained:

“The sentence of the court is that the prisoner be taken, between the hours of seven a.m. and six p.m. on Tuesday, in the week beginning October 22 next, from the place of confinement to the place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead--dead--dead!... And may God, in His infinite wisdom, have mercy on your soul!”

The judge sank back heavily into the safety of his chair. His hand swept up to brush his forehead and with the same motion it whisked off the detestable little black cap.

The prisoner remained staring at the judge as one who is puzzled at a strange sight. Perhaps he would have stood there untold minutes if a woman’s hysterical laugh, half-choked by a sudden upraised hand, had not broken the tension of the entire room. A bailiff tiptoed to the woman, and, as if revived to duty by the same cause, a prison guard strode forward to lead the condemned man away.

Defoe could have reached out and touched Bland as he passed the jury on his way to the cell across the street. But Defoe had no desire even to look at Bland; indeed, he did not, until Bland’s back was passing out of sight through the door on the other side of the jury box. Mechanically, then, Defoe filed out with the other jurors as the judge announced adjournment.

And the black cap lay forgotten on the rim of the judge’s wastebasket, where the janitor found it that evening and crossed himself fervently as he timidly salvaged it from ignoble oblivion.

_II._

Defoe awoke with a shudder.

There was a moment or two, as is always the case when one arouses from heavy, dream-burdened slumber, during which Defoe could not tell where his dream ended and realities began. He blinked experimentally into the smouldering fire in the open grate before him; yes, he was conscious. For further verification of this he drew forth his watch and noted the hour. The glow from the fire was scarcely sufficient for reading the dial and Defoe leaned forward the better to see. He was still too drowsy even to reach around and turn on the electric lamp on the table behind him.

Still he was not certain whether he was yet dreaming, until--

“Don’t budge, Defoe! I’ve got you covered!”

The Voice was close to his left ear. Its commanding acerbity quelled Defoe’s impulse to spring to his feet; and as he gripped the arms of the chair tensely he managed to challenge his unseen intruder:

“Who are you? What do you want here?”

The Voice moved a little upward and back before it answered:

“You’ve just had a nasty dream, Defoe. Perhaps I--”

“How do you know I did!” interrupted Defoe.

“You did, though, didn’t you?” the Voice insisted.

“Yes, but how did you know?” repeated Defoe.

“Never mind how,” said the Voice. “I’ll wager you’ve had the same dream pretty often in the last dozen years, too. It must be hell to have a scene like that forever before your mind, so that you’re always in dread of dreaming about it--”

“What scene?” demanded Defoe. “Are you a mind reader--a wizard--_what_ are you?”

The Voice chuckled.

“None of those,” it said. “As I was saying, you must be afraid, almost, to go to bed at night. _I_ would be, if I thought I might dream of sending an innocent man to the gallows--”

“Stop!” Defoe fairly shouted. “Damn it all, come around here where I can see you!” and he made an instinctive move to turn about and confront his tormentor.

The firm pressure of an automatic barrel against his temple halted him.

“Don’t make the mistake of turning around!” again warned the Voice incisively.

Then, in a lighter tone, it went on:

“If I were in your place, Mr. Defoe, do you know what I’d do?”

A pause. Defoe mumbled a faint “No.”

“Well, I either would confess my whole knowledge of the affair--or--I’d commit suicide!”

Defoe started. It was uncanny, eerie, the way this mysterious Voice put into words the one gnawing thought that had plagued him the last dozen years of his life.

“Of course, you probably have contemplated those alternatives very often,” the Voice continued. “But have you ever considered doing both? That is, did you ever think that you might confess first, thereby clearing an innocent man’s name of murder, and then cheat the law yourself by committing sui--”

“For God’s sake, stop that infernal suicide talk!” Defoe snapped. “In the first place, I don’t know what ‘affair’ or what ‘innocent man’ you’re talking about.”

The Voice chuckled again. Defoe was beginning to hate that chuckle more than the feel of the automatic against his head. If the Voice kept on chuckling it might drive him to desperation to grapple with his armed inquisitor, even though he would court certain death in doing it.

“Why, there’s no need to explain the obvious,” the Voice replied, its chuckle rippling through the words. “Your dream ought to tell you that. Speaking of your dream again, Mr. Defoe, reminds me of a question I often wished to ask you: Did you see Bland at all after his conviction?”

“No, of course--” Defoe’s guard had been down. He was fairly tricked, so he tried to run to cover again. “What--who is this Bland you’re talking about?”

“Come, come, Mr. Defoe,” said the Voice. “Think over your dream a moment. Surely you remember the man in the prisoner’s dock--the man who took his sentence with head up, facing the judge like a Spartan! Surely you remember Richard Bland. But did you happen to see him again after that day?”

“No,” Defoe said. “Why should I have seen him after my connection with his case ended?”

“But didn’t you even write him a note expressing your regret at having had to perform the duty of--”

“Certainly not!” interrupted Defoe. “Who ever heard of a foreman of a jury doing such a thing? Besides, he deserved his punishment.”

The Voice was silent a moment or two before it replied:

“We’ll discuss the merits of the case later.... And you didn’t even go to see him hanged?”

“What manner of man do you think I am?” exclaimed Defoe. “Of course I didn’t! I wasn’t even in Chicago where he was hanged.”

“No?” said the Voice. “Where were you?”

“A few weeks after the trial I had to go to Europe on a long business trip. I was gone a year or so. When I returned to this country I made my home here in New York City.”

“So you never even read in the newspapers about Bland--” the Voice persisted. “I don’t suppose the European papers would bother with a piece of American news like that, though.”

“No. I never read anything about the case after I left this country,” said Defoe.

“That’s odd. I’d have thought you would have followed the case through to the end,” the Voice said, half-musingly. “But still, if you had, perhaps you would not be here tonight.”

“Why not? What difference would it have made?”

“I don’t know. That’s merely my surmise,” said the Voice.

A faint footstep padded through the hall outside the living-room.

“Is that you, Manuel?” Defoe asked, wondering what would happen when his Cuban valet encountered the intruder behind the chair.

The footstep halted.

“Si, _senor_,” answered the man-servant, at a respectful distance from his master’s chair. “I come to see why you sit up so late, _senor_.”

Defoe laughed mirthlessly. “Well, truth to tell, Manuel, I am detained on business,” and he wondered again how Manuel had escaped noticing the other presence in the room.

“You mean you fell asleep, _senor_?” asked the valet.

“I did, but some friendly caller has kept me pretty well awake the last ten minutes.”

“But he has gone? And you come to bed now?” inquired the Cuban.

Defoe, after a pause, said, “Yes; I might as well go to bed, I guess.”

The Voice behind the chair broke in:

“Tell your valet you will smoke another cigar before you retire.”

Defoe settled down again in the chair.

“You heard, Manuel?” he asked. “You see, my visitor says he wishes me to smoke another cigar.”

“But I see no visitor, _senor_,” said the Cuban.

“You heard what he said, though,” Defoe insisted.

“No, _senor_. I only hear _you_ say he wish you to smoke another cigar,” explained the valet.

“Well, you ought to have your ears examined, Manuel. Get my box from the table and hand it to my visitor.”

Manuel fumbled in the darkness until he found the box, then handed it to Defoe. The latter waved it toward the Voice behind him.

“My guest first, Manuel,” he corrected.

The Cuban stood motionless. “I see no one else,” he insisted.

The Voice interrupted:

“Tell him I don’t care to smoke, Mr. Defoe.”

“I can see no one, _senor_,” the Cuban repeated.

“But didn’t you just _hear_ him?” Defoe cried, leaning forward nervously.

“No, _senor_, I hear no one speak but you.”

Defoe stared up at his valet, then half rose from his chair.

“Sit down, Defoe!” commanded the Voice sharply.

Defoe sank back once more.

“There!” he exclaimed to his valet. “Now tell me you didn’t hear any one order me to sit down just then!”