Cupid's Middleman Part 18

The mysterious death of a woman, supposed to have been murdered in an apartment house in this city by her husband, two days prior to an incendiary fire that took place six weeks ago and destroyed all traces of the crime, was considered by the Grand Jury to-day, with Coroner Flanagan as one of the witnesses. The names of the parties concerned in the tragedy could not be learned at the Central Office, and Coroner Flanagan refused to give any details concerning the autopsy. He admitted, however, that the matter had been called to his attention anonymously, and his subsequent investigations had led him to report the matter to the Central Office. The police say that publicity at this time might make it impossible for them to secure the presence of the murderer, who has been found in a Western State.

As the case has reached the Grand Jury, an indictment may follow at any time.

A well-known merchant who has been absent from the city since the date of the fire is in some way said to be involved as an important witness.

On the back of the clipping, Mr. Tescheron's dazed eyes noted a market report dated at Chicago, but he did not scan the paper more closely.

Nervously he handed it to Smith. When he had pondered a moment he said:

"I'll pay it."

CHAPTER XVII

What should I do with myself? That was my problem, when I went out into the world again. No boarding-house could satisfy me, so I determined to set up in light housekeeping, which is a city imitation of Robinson Crusoe in two rooms. There I could be melancholy without interruption; it would not be necessary to chatter with the other boarders either to keep them from observing my absent-mindedness or to divert my own attention from the dull routine of cannery products, synthetic meats, and "laid down eggs"--laid only a little way down by the hen and away down in a barrel by a man under water-gla.s.s for eight months and eight cents more per dozen. Besides, if you keep house in the city an arrangement may be made with your milkman so that you may irrigate your milk to suit yourself. You simply request him to deliver the water he usually blends with the milk in a separate vessel, which, of course, you are glad to provide. Then if you get only a pint of cow's milk for the price of a quart, you are satisfied, because you have the privilege of seasoning it by superior home-methods of irrigation to suit yourself. I was too much of a farmer to ever board comfortably in the city.

Jim always agreed with me in those days before nervousness induced by woman drove us through fire and over the b.u.mpy paths of error, that housekeeping was the ideal life. Knowledge of what the people will stand is power, and it has packed some powerful doses in cans. They used to throw away half the hog until they got knowledge. Some epicure who lived on rats and bats' eyes, announced that the black spot in the oyster is the best part. What he had to say was published in a bulletin or a report--let me see, was it from the Department of Agriculture? I've read a good many of their bulletins, but I can't be sure if they did that for the country or not. At any rate, the report went into oysters from away back, quoted authorities from Egypt and Persia, who were fond of dogs, and gave the needed impetus to the captains of the canning industry, who are always on the lookout for pointers--or pugs. Since then all the black spots have been saved on the farm, whether in hogs or apples, done up at some factory in neat gla.s.s jars, with a chemist's certificate that they do not contain boracic acid or turpentine, and will not eat the enamel off a stew-kettle; sterilized, gold-labeled and rechristened "Meadfern" crab apples, mince-meat, gelatine, invalid's food and what not, until it is hard to tell where the economy will stop. The latest thing in this line is the current information that it pays to feed the stimulating p.r.i.c.kers from the wild gooseberries to make the hens lay.

I once asked a fellow who ran a cannery why he used such expensive labels.

"To please the goats," he answered.

And so his business is largely human nature, too. We laugh at the foolish goats for eating the label off a can--we eat the same thing ourselves. When I come to drink the bitter hemlock, I pray it may be labeled so as to take the pucker out of it.

I would rather starve than board, so I started out to find my desert island.

"You advertise rooms for light housekeeping," said I to a sad-faced, middle-aged woman, who answered my ringing of the bell of a three-story brownstone house in East Thirty-eighth Street. Some prosperous merchant had probably lived there twenty years before, but it had been converted into a nest for workers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU ADVERTISE ROOMS FOR LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING."]

"Yes, sir," she replied. "Two back rooms."

"What floor?" I asked, having in mind the force of gravity.

"Second floor. How many in your family?"

"Only me."

"You keep house alone?"

"Certainly. I know how."

"Don't you find it lonesome?"

"I hope so. I want to be lonesome."

"Well, I don't know." She hesitated and looked me over with great care.

"Have you anybody to recommend you?"

"I see that you doubt my sanity, madam. My nerves are a little out of line; I have just left the hospital and must be quiet. Do you see? If you must have references, I work for the Department of Health."

"Oh, that's all right, then, if you work for the Department of Health."

The rooms suited me. The small hall-room was the kitchen, and the larger room was the living-room, equipped with one of those furniture alligators and diabolical economizers of s.p.a.ce, a folding bed, and a few chairs bravely presenting a polished but brittle front, under the bracing influence of the gluepot, as I afterward learned. Every time one of those chairs broke down under me, my heart also went out to the poor soul, Mrs. Dewey, the landlady, who made her living by pinching a profit out of every penny. She was a generous creature, so far as she could be; but a hard world's exactions squeezed her to a meanness she herself detested, but must practice or starve. When I think long of poor Mrs.

Dewey, whom I knew for only a few weeks, I want to begin life over again as a reformer. I'd take an axe to Mr. Dewey, and begin my reforms on him as a typical subject in need of annihilation, and get as far as a man a few centuries ahead of his time might expect to.

Old Dewey--the Mr. Dewey herein before referred to--was the black background and cellar of the inst.i.tution. Like a rat, he came from the coal heap or a hidden corner unawares and was gone into further darkness before you could turn to learn the cause of the noise he made. His shadowy partic.i.p.ation in home management contributed to the family's progress as a millstone about the neck of its mistress, and did not follow over-stimulation, the common cause of chronic depression in husbands of boarding-house keepers and women who rent furnished rooms.

Bone-laziness filling the marrow and changing its natural pink to a Roquefort verdigris of decay, was my diagnosis of old Dewey's ailment.

He moved with a premeditation which nine times out of ten amounted to standing still; rest resulted from two opposing forces, Mrs. Dewey's beseeching and threats colliding with his will traveling against her purpose with counter-balancing velocity and ma.s.s. A hired man would have left her long ago under such tongue-las.h.i.+ng, but old Dewey could not leave, because to leave is an act. There were no verbs in his vocabulary comprehending possibilities of usefulness within range of the present tense. What an irony in names! I often thought.

A man who is employed in the Department of Health has a pa.s.s to the good wishes of a woman who rents a house in New York. Mrs. Dewey regarded me as a person of influence with the governing powers, one who could probably get her landlord to "do something with the old-fas.h.i.+oned bathtub" by prying him through the official lever of departmental requirements. It was far from my purpose to deceive her, but nothing I could say in denial was strong enough to change her conviction. My presence under her roof induced in Mrs. Dewey a state of expectancy over a new enameled bathtub that carried with it at first more deference than she paid to the other tenants. When my milk-bottle fell off the back window-sill into the yard below, she swept up what the cat left without complaining.

A few short weeks before I was a man with some confidence in my fellows; life had its charms, hope sustained me. Rosy views are for those whose faith has not been shattered. Optimism could find no support in my bitter experiences. Hermits may find seclusion in crowds, thought I. No one could find me at my new address, and it was my intention to seek no new friends, and to avoid every one I knew. I did not want to answer questions about Jim, and I did not want to hear anything more of him. I had read all the published accounts of the fire and was glad to note that the secret had not been revealed. As for Miss Tescheron, she had probably lost faith in him and suspected me by this time. As I could not explain to her my change of heart toward Jim without implicating myself, I proposed to wash my hands of the whole affair and go it alone in future--for a time at any rate. Should I not write to her and thank her for sending flowers to me when I was ill? Was it not the grateful thing to do? I had written Hygeia and no reply came. I had quite a bunch of Jim's letters on hand also to demonstrate my powers as a letter-writer.

Writing, I concluded, was not fortunate for me. It would be better to have Miss Tescheron regard me as an ungrateful wretch, a fit a.s.sociate of the scoundrel who had toyed with her affections.

Robinson Crusoe started his island home with about as many clothes as I had when I left the hospital. It was fortunate that the city was such a kind employer; that my pay went on while I was ill, and that my connection with the Health Department secured the best hospital service at a nominal charge. I ordered a new trunk and a new outfit of clothing the day after my arrival, and when the clothes came I proceeded to try them on, but there was no fun in it without Jim to guy me. I fought hard to keep that fellow out of my mind, but he was with me day and night. I could not get away from him and my sorrow. Was it his ghost hovering near, longing to return to its earthly habitation, and propose a housekeeping merger with me? My fried onions might have penetrated the other world and recalled him with such longings, for there are worse places than home at dinner-time.

Mrs. Dewey entered one day and found me with my feet on the window-trim and the rest of me crouched in the most substantial rocker. I was smoking and cogitating. It was so quiet and I was so far out of sight that she did not know I was there until she started to dust the chair.

The smoke had not suggested my presence, for old Dewey was always doing that--he had learned how when young, and so it was no trouble.

"Oh, excuse me, I didn't know you were in the room. You're always so quiet," she said.

"Sorrow makes a man quiet."

"Sorrow? Yes, you're right; but what have you--"

"Yes, I have much," I answered. "I know your tragedy, but you can't guess mine. You have my sympathy, and if I could help you I would; but you can't help me."

"Some woman, Mr. Hopkins--I did not think you were married. You must be--"

"No," said I, and I spoke slowly, with some choking. "I have been wronged by a man, a friend in whom I had faith; with whom I lived for ten years. We were closer than brothers. He deserted me in my hour of need--but go on with your dusting; what matters it? I tell you so that you may understand why I feel so badly. Heaviness grows upon me, so that I doubt if I shall ever see the bright side of things again."

Mrs. Dewey wiped away the tears from her careworn face.

"Ten weeks ago," I continued, "we parted, and he has fled, branded as a criminal in my eyes, by evidence which no one can doubt. I am alone, despondent, and insanity or hard work must be my escape. As I cannot get my mind on my business, I fear the worst. The blow is more than I can bear."

"Pshaw! You're only a young man. You don't know what sorrow is. When you spoke so sad, you brought a tear to my eye, but I never let the tears get the best of me. I think you are weak in body yet. You need better food. You don't eat right. You ought to go out to some good restaurant and get three square meals a day. You have the money to pay for them, and you ought to do it."

"Eat! Don't speak of eating. My appet.i.te is all gone. Some day I may get over this dismal feeling and take your kind advice, but not now."

"Men have no grit. It takes a woman, I'm thinking, to carry a heart-load. If it was a woman you were worrying about, I'd coddle you a little; but I never knew a man who ran away from his friends who was worth a tear. You'll soon see the folly of it."

"I don't blame you for hating all men," said I, knowingly. "You judge the s.e.x by the specimen you have at home. All women do the same at your age."

"You're crazy, now, Mr. Hopkins," blurted the woman, her anger quickly rising. "Two days in my house and you undertake to advise me against my husband with whom I have lived in peace for twenty-five years. Have I given you license to interfere in my affairs? You astonish me with your impertinence! You amaze me! No man has ever dared to offer me such an insult! I will have you understand, sir, that Mr. Dewey is my husband, and I will allow no one to slightingly refer to him in my presence." She was heaving and grasping the broom pretty firmly. I crawled into a farther chair.

"Why, madam, I overheard you in the hall this morning berating him as the laziest vagabond that ever breathed, and you prayed--"