The Penalty Part 19

Now he has two--they aren't a good color match, but he sees as well with one as the other. When these ideas are perfected it will be possible, perhaps, to make old people young. The secret is absolute cleanliness and the accuracy in joining of a Chippendale or an Adams. So you see,"

he smiled, "that in a way you and I are chasing the same ambition--how to express the thing imagined through perfection of technique."

"Are you the only man working along these lines?"

"Heavens, no! Aristotle probably believed in animal grafting. But I think that, owing to a natural talent for doing close and accurate work with my hands, I have gone farther than anybody else. What gave you the impulse to be a sculptor, Barbs?"

She laughed gayly. "The statues in the Metropolitan that have lost their arms and heads and legs. I felt very sorry for them. I was very young and foolish, and I invented a game to play. I'd select a statue that needed an arm, say, and then I'd hunt among the other statues for an arm that would fit, or for a head or whatever else was missing. Through playing that game I got the idea of making whole statues from the beginning and not bothering with fragments."

"And to think," said Dr. Ferris, "that we have failed to understand each other. Why, Barbs, your ambition is a direct lineal descendant of mine. It was a maimed marble that showed you your life's work. It was a maimed child that showed me mine. It seems that at heart we are both menders."

"I began on dolls," said Barbara.

"And I began on guinea-pigs."

A footman entered with whiskey and soda on a tray. Barbara rose.

"Shall I pour you a drink?"

"A very little one, please."

She poured him his drink, and once more seated herself at his feet.

"After I graduated from the P. & S.," said Dr. Ferris, "I did ambulance work for two years, accidents, births, fires. I was ambitious to learn, and worked myself sick. One morning, after I'd been all night bringing a most reluctant young Polack into the world, I was called to the house of a world-famous man in East Thirty-fourth Street. The house was full of servants mad with grief and fright. The man and his wife had gone out of town, and their son, a beautiful boy about ten years old, had got himself run over by a truck. His governess, I gathered, a German fool, had been in some way directly responsible. But that is the small end of the matter. The boy's legs were horribly crushed and mangled. It seemed to me that if his life was to be saved, they must come off at once. The family's physician was the famous old Doctor Watson Bell. I sent for him. He didn't come at once, and when I had waited as long as I dared, I took upon my own shoulders the very heavy responsibility of operating.

I put the child under ether, and with the help of one a.s.sistant took his legs off just below the hip-joints. Then Dr. Bell came. He was a very old friend of my father's, and he had always been very good to me. First he looked to see that what had been done had been well done. Then he examined the legs that I had taken off. Then he sent the nurse out of the room. Then he turned and looked at me, and his face was gray and cold as a stone. He said: 'You fool! You imbecile!' And he showed me, clear as a flash of lightning, that the legs never should have been amputated. Then he said, more gently: 'For your father's sake I will save your face, young man. I shall set my approval to this catastrophe.

For your father's sake, and for your mother's. I have always looked on you as an adopted son. Are you drunk?' I told him that I had been up all night, and had had no sleep since five o'clock the morning before. He shrugged his shoulders, and said: 'In your right mind, you couldn't have done it,' and I knew that I couldn't. 'Horrible!' he said, 'horrible!

This poor baby to be a wreck of a thing all his life, because a healthy and hearty young man cannot get along on a little sleep. But, thank G.o.d, the child will never know that the operation wasn't necessary,'

"By common accord, we turned to look at the little boy. His eyes were open. He had come out of the ether with miraculous suddenness. And we saw by the expression of his face that he had heard--and that he had understood."

Barbara took her father's hand in both hers and pressed it hard. "Poor old dad," she said.

"Of course," Dr. Ferris went on, "the child told his parents. But Dr.

Bell lied up and down to save my face. He said that what the child thought he had heard was part of an ether dream. And I lied. And n.o.body believed the little boy. I had told him, before Dr. Bell could stop me--I was hysterical and crazy--that if there was ever anything under heaven that I could do for him, I would do it--no matter what it was.

And the boy told his parents that I had said that, but it was only taken by them as evidence that I felt terribly sorry for what I had had to do, and that I had a tender heart."

"Poor old dad!" said Barbara. "And what became of the little boy?"

"He grew vicious," said Dr. Ferris. "I don't blame him. Quarrelled fearfully with his father, dropped into all sorts of evil ways and companions.h.i.+p--all my fault, every bit of it--and finally disappeared completely out of the station to which he had been born. I had reason until the other day to believe that he was dead. Then I saw him."

There was quite a long silence. The fire burned brightly. Dr. Ferris, greatly agitated by tragic memories, closed his eyes very tightly, as if to shut them out.

"And of course," said Barbara at last, "the small boy is my Mr.

Blizzard. Well, what can we do for him?"

"_You_ owe him nothing," said her father sharply.

"Oh, yes," said Barbara gently, "oh, yes. Your obligations are mine. I shall tell him. It's like owing a frightful sum of money. We can't be happy till we've paid up, can we? You and I?"

"It seems," said Dr. Ferris, "that I have made two terrible mistakes.

And the second is having told you about the first. My G.o.d, but this life is hard to bear!"

"But--why--what have I said? If there is _anything_ we can do for him, we ought to do it."

"Are you going to say that to him?"

"Of course," she said.

"Suppose," said her father, "that in all this world he wanted only one thing--you?"

This suggestion was most unexpected to Barbara and odious. And she said coldly: "I hope he is not quite such a fool."

"But if he is?"

"My dear father," said Barbara, "I have been told that somewhere along the Milky Way there is a bridge between stars. Let's cross that when we come to it."

A footman entered carrying a large pasteboard box on which, in gilt letters, was the name of a Third Avenue florist. But the jonquils in the box were very fresh and lovely. They were, however, unaccompanied by a card.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Some unknown person," said Barbara, "has formed the habit of sending me flowers"]

"Some unknown person," said Barbara, "has formed the habit of sending me flowers." She smiled. "I shall ask my friend, Mr. Harry West," she said, "to find out who it is."

And then, suddenly, she turned away, so that her father should not see that she was blus.h.i.+ng. The thought, not in the least disagreeable, had occurred to her for the first time, that perhaps Mr. Harry West himself was anonymously going down into his pocket for her sweet sake.

XVI

The legless man was not in the habit of waiting for things that he wanted, when the chance to take them had come. And he did not propose to endure the torture of sitting perfectly still hour after hour, morning after morning, while any young woman made a bust of him. Yet he allowed a number of mornings to pa.s.s without taking any definite steps toward the vengeance which he felt to be so dear to him.

That Barbara was a high-born lady was the chief obstacle in his plans.

If she were to disappear suddenly out of the world which knew and loved her, there would be raised a hue and outcry greater, perhaps, than his utmost powers and resources could check. He would be run to earth without much doubt and put where even the sweet memory of vengeance would taste bitter in his mouth. It is perhaps pleasant to pluck the fruits of vengeance, but a man requires time in which to eat and digest them. If they are s.n.a.t.c.hed from his hand the moment they are picked, his vengeance fails of all sweetness and justification.

On the other hand, Blizzard, in order to revenge himself on the man who had maimed him, was willing to give, if not his liberty, his life.

If he could not abduct Barbara and go free, he would kill himself when they came to take him. But he did not wish to kill himself. He wished to live a long time after, gloating on his memories. He had also on foot a scheme which, starting almost as a pleasantry, had developed in his mind, and was still developing, until its latent possibilities staggered his own imagination.

A certain Jew, proprietor of a p.a.w.nshop, was in reality a receiver of stolen goods. It was common knowledge among certain crooks in the city, that the recently stolen Bland diamonds had come into this man's hands.

Blizzard thought that it would be funny to take these diamonds away from the Jew, hold them for a while, and then, since the fellow was after all a friend, return them. To break into Reichman's store at night would be dangerous. Reichman himself was no coward, and he employed a savage night-watchman, just out of Sing Sing. So Blizzard planned a robbery in a spirit of farce, and in the broad and crowded light of day.

Six stalwart young fellows entered Reichman's p.a.w.nshop at eleven-thirty in the morning. Each one had a watch or an overcoat to p.a.w.n. They crowded about Reichman, all talking at once. They were strangers to him.

At exactly the same time the attention of the six policemen on the six nearest beats was attracted by the drunken and disorderly behavior of six more stalwart young fellows--one to each policeman. In the end six arrests were made, the six young drunkards were marched off to the station house, and the beats of the six policemen were for the time being deserted.

Sharp at eleven-thirty-seven, five of the six young men in Reichman's shop flung an overcoat over his head and rushed him into a dark corner, choking him so that he could not scream. A person in the street, however, saw the struggle, and rushed off to find the nearest policeman, who of course could not be found. Meanwhile the sixth young man ran lightly upstairs, looked under the mattress of the palatial Reichman bed, where he had been told to look, and secured the stolen diamonds.

The farce came to a proper conclusion. Reichman could not complain to the police that he had been robbed of stolen goods. And he went about for many days with a sour face.

Blizzard came every day to condole with him, and finally to return the diamonds. Then he told Reichman, a man he could trust, how the robbery had been worked, and the two put their heads together.