The Complete Works of O. Henry

by O. Henry

  "Well, I don't know," said Woods, reflecting. "Some of the papers have done good work in that line. There's the Morning Mars, for instance. It warmed up two or three trails, and got the man after the police had let 'em get cold."

  "I'll show you," said Tiernan, rising, and expand- ing his chest. "I'll show you what I think of news- papers in general, and your Morning Mars in par- ticular."

  Three feet from their table was the telephone booth. Kernan went inside and sat at the instrument, leaving the door open. He found a number in the book, took down the receiver and made his demand upon Central. Woods sat still, looking at the sneer- ing, cold, vigilant face waiting close to the trans- mitter, and listened to the words that came from the thin, truculent lips curved into a contemptuous smile.

  "That the Morning Mars? . . . I want to speak to the managing editor . . . Why, tell him it's some one who wants to talk to him about the Norcross murder.

  "You the editor? . . . All right. . . . I am the man who killed old Norcross . . . Wait! Hold the wire; I'm not the usual crank . . . oh, there isn't the slightest danger. I've just been dis- cussing it with a detective friend of mine. I killed the old man at 2:30 A. M. two weeks ago to- morrow. . . . Have a drink with you? Now, hadn't you better leave that kind of talk to your funny man? Can't you tell whether a man's guying you or whether you're being offered the biggest scoop your dull dishrag of a paper ever had? . . . Well, that's so; it's a bobtail scoop -- but you can hardly expect me to 'phone in my name and address.

  . . . Why? Oh, because I beard you make a specialty of solving mysterious crimes that stump the police. . . . No, that's not all. I want to tell you that your rotten, lying, penny sheet is of no more use in tracking an intelligent murderer or highway- man than a blind poodle would be. . . . What? . . . Oh, no, this isn't a rival newspaper office; you're getting it straight. I did the Norcross job, and I've got the jewels in my suit case at -- 'the name of the hotel could not be learned' -- you recog- nize that phrase, don't you? I thought so. You've used it often enough. Kind of rattles you, doesn't it, to have the mysterious villain call up your great, big, all-powerful organ of right and justice and good government and tell you what a helpless old gas-bag you are? . . . Cut that out; you're not that big a fool -- no, you don't think I'm a fraud. I can tell it by your voice. . . . Now, listen, and I'll give you a pointer that will prove it to you. Of course you've had this murder case worked over by your staff of bright young blockheads. Half of the second but- ton on old Mrs. Norcross's nightgown is broken off. I saw it when I took the garnet ring off her finger. I thought it was a ruby. . . . -- Stop that! it won't work."

  Kernan turned to Woods with a diabolic smile.

  "I've got him going. He believes me now. He didn't quite cover the transmitter with his hand when he told somebody to call up Central on another 'phone and get our number. I'll give him just one more dig, and then we'll make a 'get-away.'

  "Hello! . . . Yes. I'm here yet. You didn't think -- I'd run from such a little subsidized, turn- coat rag of a newspaper, did you? . . . Have me inside of forty-eight hours? Say, will you quit being funny? Now, you let grown men alone and at- tend to your business of hunting up divorce cases and street-car accidents and printing the filth and scandal that you make your living by. Good-by, old boy -- sorry I haven't time to call on you. I'd feel perfectly safe in your sanctum asinorum. Tra-la!"

  "He's as mad as a cat that's lost a mouse," said Kernan, hanging up the receiver and coming out.

  "And now, Barney, my boy, we'll go to a show and enjoy ourselves until a reasonable bedtime. Four hours' sleep for me, and then the west-bound."

  The two dined in a Broadway restaurant. Kernan was pleased with himself. He spent money like a prince of fiction. And then a weird and gorgeous musical comedy engaged their attention. Afterward there was a late supper in a grillroom, with champagne, and Kernan at the height of his com- placency.

  Half-past three in the morning found them in a corner of an all-night cafe, Kernan still boasting in a vapid and rambling way, Woods thinking moodily over the end that had come to his usefulness as an upholder of the law.

  But, as he pondered, his eye brightened with a speculative light.

  "I wonder if it's possible," be said to himself, "I won-der if it's pos-si-ble!

  And then outside the cafe the comparative stillness of the early morning was punctured by faint, uncer- tain cries that seemed mere fireflies of sound, some growing louder, some fainter, waxing and waning amid the rumble of milk wagons and infrequent cars. Shrill cries they were when near -- well-known cries that conveyed many meanings to the ears of those of the slumbering millions of the great city who waked to hear them. Cries that bore upon their significant, small volume the weight of a world's woe and laugh- ter and delight and stress. To some, cowering be- neath the protection of a night's ephemeral cover, they brought news of the hideous, bright day; to others, wrapped in happy sleep, they announced a morning that would dawn blacker than sable night. To many of the rich they brought a besom to sweep away what had been theirs while the stars shone; to the poor they brought -- another day.

  All over the city the cries were starting up, keen and sonorous, heralding the chances that the slip- ping of one cogwheel in the machinery of time had made; apportioning to the sleepers while they lay at the mercy of fate, the vengeance, profit, grief, reward and doom that the new figure in the calen- dar had brought them. Shrill and yet plaintive were the cries, as if the young voices grieved that so much evil and so little good was in their irresponsible hands. Thus echoed in the streets of the helpless city the transmission of the latest decrees of the gods, the cries of the newsboys -- the Clarion Call of the Press.

  Woods flipped a dime to the waiter, and said: "Get me a Morning Mars."

  When the paper came he glanced at its first page, and then tore a leaf out of his memorandum book and began to write on it with the little old pencil.

  "What's the news?"' yawned Kernan.

  Woods flipped over to him the piece of writing:

  "The New York Morning Mars:

  "Please pay to the order of John Kernan the one thousand dollars reward coming to me for his arrest and conviction.

  "BARNARD WOODS."

  "I kind of thought they would do that," said Woods, "when you were jollying them so hard. Now, Johnny, you'll come to the police station with me."

  EXTRADITED FROM BOHEMIA

  From near the village of Harmony, at the foot of the Green Mountains, came Miss Medora Martin to New York with her color-box and easel.

  Miss Medora resembled the rose which the autum- nal frosts had spared the longest of all her sister blossoms. In Harmony, when she started alone to the wicked city to study art, they said she was a mad, reckless, headstrong girl. In New York, when she first took her seat at a West Side boardinghouse table, the boarders asked: "Who is the nice-looking old maid?"

  Medora took heart, a cheap hall bedroom and two art lessons a week from Professor Angelini, a retired barber who had studied his profession in a Harlem dancing academy. There was no one to set her right, for here in the big city they do it unto all of us. How many of us are badly shaved daily and taught the two-step imperfectly by ex-pupils of Bastien Le Page and Gerome? The most pathetic sight in New York -- except the manners of the rush-hour crowds -- is the dreary march of the hopeless army of Me- diocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and Tabbies who linger about the doorsteps of her abode, unmindful of the flying brickbats and boot-jacks of the critics. Some of us creep back to our native vil- lages to the skim-milk of "I told you so"; but most of us prefer to remain in the cold courtyard of our mistress's temple, snatching the scraps that fall from her divine table d'hote. But some of us grow weary at last of the fruitless service. And then there are two fates open to us. We can get a job driving a grocer's wagon, or we can get swallowed up in the Vortex of Bohemia. The latter sounds good; but the former really pans out better. For, when the grocer pays us off we ca
n rent a dress suit and -- the cap- italized system of humor describes it best -- Get Bo- hemia On the Run.

  Miss Medora chose the Vortex and thereby fur- nishes us with our little story.

  Professor Angelini praised her sketches excessively. Once when she had made a neat study of a horse- chestnut tree in the park he declared she would be- come a second Rosa Bonheur. Again -- a great art- ist has his moods -- he would say cruel and cutting things. For example, Medora had spent an after- noon patiently sketching the statue and the archi- tecture at Columbus Circle. Tossing it aside with a sneer, the professor informed her that Giotto had once drawn a perfect circle with one sweep of his hand.

  One day it rained, the weekly remittance from Har- mony was overdue, Medora had a headache, the pro- fessor had tried to borrow two dollars from her, her art dealer had sent back all her water-colors unsold, and -- Mr. Binkley asked her out to dinner.

  Mr. Binkley was the gay boy of the boarding- house. He was forty-nine, and owned a fishstall in a downtown market. But after six o'clock he wore an evening suit and whooped things up connected with the beaux arts. The young men said he was an "Indian." He was supposed to be an accomplished habitue of the inner circles of Bohemia. It was no secret that he had once loaned $10 to a young man who had had a drawing printed in Puck. Often has one thus obtained his entree into the charmed circle, while the other obtained both his entree and roast.

  The other boarders enviously regarded Medora as she left at Mr. Binkley's side at nine o'clock. She was as sweet as a cluster of dried autumn grasses in her pale blue -- oh -- er -- that very thin stuff -- in her pale blue Comstockized silk waist and box- pleated voile skirt, with a soft pink glow on her thin cheeks and the tiniest bit of rouge powder on her face, with her handkerchief and room key in her brown walrus, pebble-grain band-bag.

  And Mr. Binkley looked imposing and dashing with his red face and gray mustache, and his tight dress coat, that made the back of his neck roll up just like a successful novelist's.

  They drove in a cab to the Cafe Terence, just off the most glittering part of Broadway, which, as every one knows, is one of the most popular and widely patronized, jealously exclusive Bohemian re- sorts in the city.

  Down between the rows of little tables tripped Medora, of the Green Mountains, after her escort. Thrice in a lifetime may woman walk upon clouds once when she trippeth to the altar, once when she first enters Bohemian halls, the last when she marches back across her first garden with the dead hen of her neighbor in her band.

  There was a table set, with three or four about it. A waiter buzzed around it like a bee, and silver and glass shone upon it. And, preliminary to the meal, as the prehistoric granite strata heralded the pro- tozoa, the bread of Gaul, compounded after the for- mula of the recipe for the eternal bills, was there set forth to the hand and tooth of a long-suffering city, while the gods lay beside their nectar and home-made biscuits and smiled, and the dentists leaped for joy in their gold-leafy dens.

  The eye of Binkley fixed a young man at his table with the Bobemian gleam, which is a compound of the look of the Basilisk, the shine of a bubble of Wurzburger, the inspiration of genius and the plead- ing of a panhandler.

  The young man sprang to his feet. "Hello, Bink, old boy! be shouted. "Don't tell me you were go- ing to pass our table. Join us -- unless you've an- other crowd on hand."

  "Don't mind, old chap," said Binkley, of the fish- stall. "You know how I like to butt up against the fine arts. Mr. Vandyke -- Mr. Madder -- er -- Miss Martin, one of the elect also in art -- er -- "

  The introduction went around. There were also Miss Elise and Miss 'Toinette. Perhaps they were models, for they chattered of the St. Regis decora- tions and Henry James -- and they did it not badly.

  Medora sat in transport. Music -- wild, intoxi- eating music made by troubadours direct from a rear basement room in Elysium -- set her thoughts to dancing. Here was a world never before penetrated by her warmest imagination or any of the lines con- trolled by Harriman. With the Green Mountains' external calm upon her she sat, her soul flaming in her with the fire of Andalusia. The tables were filled with Bohemia. The room was full of the fragrance of flowers -- both mille and cauli. Questions and corks popped; laughter and silver rang; champagne flashed in the pail, wit flashed in the pan.

  Vandyke ruffled his long, black locks, disarranged his careless tie and leaned over to Madder.

  "Say, Maddy," he whispered, feelingly, "some- times I'm tempted to pay this Philistine his ten dol- lars and get rid of him."

  Madder ruffled his long, sandy locks and disar- ranged his careless tie.

  "Don't think of it, Vandy," he replied. "We are short, and Art is long." Medora ate strange viands and drank elderberry wine that they poured in her glass. It was just the color of that in the Vermont home. The waiter poured something in another glass that seemed to be boiling, but when she tasted it it was not hot. She had never felt so light-hearted before. She thought lovingly of the Green Mountain farm and its fauna. She leaned, smiling, to Miss Elise.

  "If I were at home," she said, beamingly, "I could show you the cutest little calf! "

  "Nothing for you in the White Lane," said Miss Elise. "Why don't you pad?

  The orchestra played a wailing waltz that Medora had learned from the hand-organs. She followed the air with nodding head in a sweet soprano hum. Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered in what strange waters Binkley had caught her in his seine. She smiled at him, and they raised glasses and drank of the wine that boiled when it was cold. Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the unusual spring catch of shad. Miss Elise arranged the palette-and-maul-stick tie pin of Mr. Vandyke. A Philistine at some distant table was maundering volubly either about Jerome or Gerome. A famous actress was discoursing excitably about monogrammed hosiery. A hose clerk from a department store was loudly proclaiming his opinions of the drama. A writer was abusing Dickens. A magazine editor and a photographer were drinking a dry brand at a re- served table. A 36-25-42 young lady was saying to an eminent sculptor: "Fudge for your Prax Italys! Bring one of your Venus Anno Dominis down to Cohen's and see bow quick she'd be turned down for a cloak model. Back to the quarries with your Greeks and Dagos!"

  Thus went Bohemia.

  At eleven Mr. Binkley took Medora to the board- ing-bouse and left her, with a society bow, at the foot of the hall stairs. She went up to her room and lit the gas.

  And then, as suddenly as the dreadful genie arose in vapor from the copper vase of the fisherman, arose in that room the formidable shape of the New England Conscience. The terrible thing that Medora had done was revealed to her in its full enormity. She had sat in the presence of the un- godly and looked upon the wine both when it was red and effervescent.

  At midnight she wrote this letter:

  "Mr. BERLAH HOSKINS, Harmony, Vermont.

  "Dear Sir: Henceforth, consider me as dead to you forever. I have loved you too well to blight your career by bringing into it my guilty and sin-stained life. I have succumbed to the insidious wiles of this wicked world and have been drawn into the vortex of Bohemia. There is scarcely any depth of glittering iniquity that I have not sounded. It is hopeless to combat my decision. There is no rising from the depths to which I have sunk. Endeavor to forget me. I am lost forever in the fair but brutal maze of awful Bohemia. Farewell.

  "ONCE YOUR MEDORA."

  On the next day Medora formed her resolutions. Beelzebub, flung from heaven, was no more cast down. Between her and the apple blossoms of Harmony there was a fixed gulf. Flaming cherubim warded her from the gates of her lost paradise. In one evening, by the aid of Binkley and Mumm, Bohemia had gathered her into its awful midst.

  There remained to her but one thing -- a life of brilliant, but irremediable error. Vermont was a shrine that she never would dare to approach again. But she would not sink -- there were great and com- pelling ones in history upon whom she would model her meteoric career -- Camille, Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza -- such a name as one
of these would that of Medora Martin be to future generations

  For two days Medora kept her room. On the third she opened a magazine at the portrait of the King of Belgium, and laughed sardonically. If that far-famed breaker of women's hearts should cross her path, he would have to bow before her cold and im- perious beauty. She would not spare the old or the young. All America -- all Europe should do homage to her sinister, but compelling charm.

  As yet she could not bear to think of the life she had once desired -- a peaceful one in the shadow of the Green Mountains with Beriah at her side, and orders for expensive oil paintings coming in by each mail from New York. Her one fatal misstep had shattered that dream.