by Fritz Leiber
And, oh, God! The injustice of it!
I sprang up, driven to express revolt in action. For lack of a better outlet, I beat with closed fists against the wall—the bars. A lumpish, besotted creature in the cell next to mine roused and snarled like a beast at the noise.
“Ar-r-gh!” it slobbered, and thereafter established its fellow-humanity by a protest that was a verbal river of filth.
That roused a companion—and another. As among caged animals, the contagion of resentment spread. I was in one of a single tier of cells that faced a blank, whitewashed wall. I could see only the wall. It was rather appalling to hear that invisible line of rank life froth into clamor on the right and left of me.
Presently one of the beasts’ keepers came tramping along the narrow alley between wall and cages. Reaching my steel grate he halted, said something inaudible, and turned his head to yell a threat that carried over all the other racket. Some of the beasts quieted and some did not; at least, the tumult diminished enough so that he could speak to me and be understood.
I had retreated a little from the bars. I was not sure how this warder would look at me, a murderer. My new character was strange to me. Instinctively I shrank from being seen in it.
He peered through; then jerked his thumb down the line.
“Fierce bunch they raked in here last night,” he observed. “Dempsey raided the Fish-Eye joint and a couple of other dumps over in the old Fifth. This here’s a overflow meeting from his station. Guess you didn’t get much rest, huh?”
“I slept,” said I.
“Good work! Wanta send out for some breakfast? Or would ya rather wait till y’r out? Don’t reckon to spend the day here, do ya?”
The question seemed a needless and malicious mockery. It stiffened my spine by making me angry. But I would not satisfy the mocker’s spleen by showing that.
“I would like some coffee,” I said steadily. “That is all I care for just now.”
“Suit y’rself; but say, you don’t want none of the slop they dope out here. I c’n get ya some real good from Frank’s across the street.”
I suddenly understood. Behind his raillery the man was hoping to be paid for the service he offered. What did he care whether I was a murderer, a pickpocket, or an innocent man? Probably, when I was brought in he had noticed that I was well-dressed, and regarded me, not with moral horror, but as a possible purveyor of small change.
I thrust a hand in my pocket, but it came out empty. He grinned.
“That’s all right. You’ll get y’r coin back from the sergeant as ya go out, and you can slip it to Megonigle for me then. I go off duty in a half hour more. Sure ya don’t want nothin’ to eat?”
“Only the coffee, but what—”
He had slipped out of range, with a stealthy agility of movement that belied his rather clumsy figure. In a few seconds he was back again, his chest against the grated door.
“C’m here!” he hissed softly. Puzzled, I moved nearer. “Take it!”
Then I saw that through one of the square apertures of cross-grating a folded bit of paper had been thrust. I drew it through to my side, though with no notion of what it could be. The man drew off again.
“I’ll see that ya get y’r coffee, Barbour,” he said, in a loud, offhand voice. “Morning, Mike! Early, ain’t ya?” He turned to me again. “This here’s Mike Megonigle. Slip him a dollar fer me as ya pass out, an’ then ya won’t owe me nothin’.”
A red-faced, bull-necked individual had tramped into view. He stared heavily from my grating to the night warder and back again.
“’S all right, Mike,” the latter asserted. “This here’s Mr. Barbour. Pal of his croaked a guy last night. Barbour ain’t implicated. Just a witness. He’ll be getting his bond pretty quick, and when he goes out you collect that dollar for me, Mike. Can’t afford to lose that dollar—not me, huh?”
He winked jovially in my direction, waved a hand on one finger of which something glittered brightly, and was gone. The other guard grunted, stared after him for a long minute, and moved on up the passage, still speechless and shaking his head in a slow, puzzled manner, like a bewildered ox.
But his bewilderment could not have been so great as my own. The thing that glittered on the night-guard’s finger had attracted my attention before he waved it. It was a ring that had a strangely familiar look. The setting was an oval bit of lapis lazuli, cut flat, incised with a tiny device the scrolls of which had been filled with gold, and surrounded by small diamonds.
Nils Berquist wore a ring like that. It was the one possession I had ever known him to prize, and that was because it had been in his family for generations. It was very old, and different from modern rings.
A duplicate? Nonsense! Why was that warder wearing Nils’s ring—and what had he meant by describing me as a “witness”?
But I think some of the truth had begun to dawn on me even before I unfolded the paper that had been thrust through my grate. The inner side carried a lead-pencil scrawl, written in French. As the light in the cell was bad, and Berquist’s handwriting worse, I had more than a little trouble in deciphering it.
I had read it all, however, before the return of the night-warder—that superbly corrupt official who took a bribe to deliver a message, honestly delivered it, and thereafter brazenly wore the bribe about his duties. He returned with my coffee. I was face down on the shelf that served for a bed. He rattled the grate, spoke, and as I didn’t answer shoved the coffee under the door and went off—whistling, I fancy.
I couldn’t have spoken to him if I had wished, because I was crying like a girl. The reaction from friendless solitude in a world made new and terrible had hit me that way. It was not that I meant to accept Nils’s sacrifice. I really hadn’t thought about the practical side of it yet.
But to discover that a man who had actually seen me do that awful thing, in spite of it remained my friend and loyal to the amazing degree of taking the burden on himself—that changed the world round again, some way, and made it almost right again.
Why, the mere fact that Nils could think of me without abhorrence was enough if it restored to me all the love and friendship that had been mine, and from which last night’s deed had seemed to irrevocably cut me off.
If Nils, then those nearer and dearer than Nils—Roberta—but there I halted and cringed back. That way there loomed a dreadful and inevitable loss. Let contemplation of it wait awhile.
With wet eyes I sat up and again held Nils’s message in the barred light that fell through the grating. He had protected his meaning by using a safer language than English—safe from the warder, at least—and couching it in terms whose real-import would be obscure if it fell into other hands. At that his sacrifice was endangered in the sending, but not so much as by leaving me to blurt out the truth unwarned:
My Dear Friend:
This to you, who last night were past understanding. May the morning have brought you a clear mind. I take the chance and write. I killed James Moore. Understand me when I say this. He struck at me, but I wrested away the weapon and killed in self-defense and not in intent.
There followed a rather circumstantial account of his supposed struggle with Moore. Nils’s brain had not been numbed last night, like mine. Into this story which he had made for us both to tell he had fitted the least possible fiction. Questioned on details up to almost the moment of Moore’s death, we had only to stick to the truth and we could not disagree. It was a clever—a noble lie that he had arranged.
You will bear witness to all this, and they will not convict me of murder. Alicia Moore had swooned. She did not witness Moore’s death. I rely on you, therefore, as my sole witness. And it is fortunate that Moore in his anger turned not on you, but attacked me! I know you, dear friend, and that you would take my place and bear all for me, if that were possible. But I have no
t one in the world, save you, to suffer the anguish for my trouble. I have little to lose.
Not for your own sake, then, but for the sake of those to whom you are all—for the sake of her whose life-happiness rests with you to hold sacred or shatter, I command you to be glad that I and not you have this to go through with. For that I shall not think the less of you. I only ask that in your heart I be held always as a friend.
Nils Berquist.
Nils was no sentimentalist, but the French—language of love and friendship—had lent its phrases touchingly to his purpose. In my heart he would indeed dwell, from this day!
To accept would be dishonor unthinkable. Even the weight of the thinly veiled argument he put forward must be out-balanced by the shame of allowing an innocent man to risk, the most disgraceful of deaths in my stead. I could not accept, yet though I died, the wonder of Nils Berquist’s attempted loyalty should go with me—out there!
Out there! Into that dim, guessed-at coldness, with its shadowy, mocking inhabitants…
“You are right!” said a voice. “That world is to yours as the shadow to reality. But why cast the real life away?”
Had one of the warders entered my cell and addressed me, his voice could have echoed no more distinctly in my brain. Before I looked up, however, I knew what I should see. When, raising my own eyes, they met those dear, light-blue ones, I felt no surprise.
There floated the face, bodiless again, but aside from that with an appearance of substantiality which equaled—it could not exceed—that of its last tragic visitation. The undimensional flatness had given way to the solidly modeled curves of living flesh.
The point of my improvised weapon, however, had left not even a mark on the face it was meant for. That material aspect was false. Though I hated him now with an added loathing, I had learned bitterly that combat with him must be on other than physical ground. I sat sternly quiet, hoping that if I did not answer, the presence would vanish.
“Your violent temper,” he continued pleasantly, but with a trace of kindly reproach, “has placed you in danger. Fortunately we—you and I—are not as other men. We need not be overborne. Tell me, which of all the forces that influence life is the strongest?”
“Hate!” Springing erect, I thrust forward till my face almost touched that of the Presence. “Such hate as I feel for you!”
He did not retreat. I could—I could almost have sworn that I felt the warmth of his flesh close to mine!
“Aw-w-w-w, cut it out!” wailed the dweller in the next cell. “Ain’t yer never gonter let a guy git his beauty sleep?”
“You need not speak aloud,” smiled the face. “And I would suggest that you sit down. Consider the feelings of others! Consideration is a beautiful quality, and well worth cultivating. Speech between you and me need disturb no one. It can be silent as thought, for it is thought—my thought to yours. Sit down!”
A sudden weakening of the knees made me obey him. Revilings I could have withstood; curses, or threats of evil. But there was an awful sweetness and beauty in the face—a calm assurance about his preaching phrases—that frightened me as threats could not have done. Could it be that I had misjudged this serene being from beyond the border?
Then I looked in his eyes and knew that I had not. They were too like my own! I understood them. Another he might have deceived, but never me.
“Hate,” he continued, in his placid, leisurely manner, “is a futile, boomerang force that invariably reacts on itself. It is the scorpion among forces, stinging itself to destruction. No; I did not come here to preach. You understand now that I spoke the truth and can read your unvoiced thoughts with perfect readiness. Our conversations are thus safe from eavesdroppers. As I was saying, hate is its own enemy and the enemy of life. There is but one invincible power, offered by God to man, and which God has commanded man to use.”
“You mean—”
“Love! Armored in love, your life will be a sacred, guarded joy to you. Believe me! I am far older than I appear, and wiser than I am old. Guided by me, guarded by love, you have a beautiful future at your command.”
“Begun with murder!” I snarled.
The presence beamed patiently upon me. “That was a mistake. Don’t blame yourself too severely. Blame me, if you like, though I had no idea that your foolish animosity would bring forth the red impulse of murder. Yes; we who have passed beyond can commit blunders! I made one in appearing when I did. Can’t we forgive one another and forget?”
“Not while I am in jail for it and facing electrocution!” said I grimly.
“But you are not. Very shortly you will walk out a free man; under bond, it is true, but only—”
“Never!” I was on my feet again at that. “Let Nils Berquist suffer in my place? Never!”
“But he won’t suffer! Or at least, not as you would. Come! Trust all that to me, who can see far, and have a certain power. Won’t you trust me?”
“You mean that you can influence a jury to acquit him?”
“I have power! And think. Would you cast back his friendship in his face? Would you hurl your father into his grave, killed by horror? Would you drag your sister—your mother—through the mire of notoriety that surrounds a criminal? Would you leave them destitute? Would you stab through the very heart of the girl who loves you? Your friend has none of these to care. The opprobrium will not hurt him. He is by nature an isolated soul; and moreover, he is innocent. He has that strength, and the glory; of sacrifice to sustain him. Once freed yourself, you can do much to bring about his release.
“It is well known that Moore had an evil temper. The plea of self-defense will be borne out by you. Engage a clever legal advisor for your friend, and in the end your pitiful mistake will have brought harm to no one except Moore himself, who deserved it. He was a very selfish, disagreeable man! He was not loved by anyone, even his wife. What? Oh, leave Alicia out of it, my dear boy. You won’t find our plans upset by her. And now, I should advise that before seeking a bondsman elsewhere, you telephone to the man whose friendship you have already won at the bank. Your immediate superior there is a kindly, good man—”
The presence got no further with his advice. As he had talked, quietly, soothingly, I had found my thoughts beginning to follow the smooth current of his. But his reference to Mr. Terne had been another of those errors to which he claimed that even the disembodied were prone. It had recalled to me that scene in the president’s office—Van’s desperate face—and the ignominy into which I had been betrayed.
Repulsion—loathing—surged mightily through my veins again.
“No! No! No! In the name of God, leave me!” I cried aloud. To my amazed relief the presence obeyed. He had faded and gone in an instant—though by the last impression I had of him, he still smiled.
Trembling, I looked down at Nils’s letter in my hand.
From the barred grating a shadow was cast upon it, and the form of that shadow was a cross.
CHAPTER XIV
SO LIKE HIM!
Around 2 P.M. I was taken before Magistrate Patterson and my bail set in the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars. Arthur Terne, second vice-president of the Colossus Trust Company, having appeared as my bondsman, the matter of my liberty pending the inquest, to be held the following morning, was soon arranged.
I left the court in Mr. Terne’s company. Nils Berquist I had not seen, but was given to understand that he had been remanded without bail. I had pleaded in vain for a chance to talk with him.
Mr. Terne was kindness personified, though I inferred from one or two remarks he let fall that the Colossus’ leonine president was not pleased.
The morning papers had featured the affair with blatant headlines. They had got my name. The Barbour & Hutchinson failure was resurrected.
The Colossus itself stalked, in massive dignity across one column,
irrelevantly capping a “Brutal Slaying in Haunted House,” and when I saw that, I knew that “not pleased” was a mild description for Vansittart’s probable emotions!
The bizarre character of Alicia, the nature of the wound, and the ghastly inappropriateness of the weapon which effected it, had appealed to the reportorial fancy with diversely picturesque results. A plain murder, with no more apparent mystery attached than this one, would have passed with slight attention. But though Alicia was not a professional medium, it appeared that she and Moore had a certain reputation.
In hinting to me of the latter’s tempestuous exit from the Psychic Research Association, Nils had spared mentioning Alicia as the bone of contention. I now learned that she had been a country girl, the daughter of a hotel-keeper in a tiny Virginian village where Moore had spent two or three autumn weeks.
Discovering in her what he regarded as supernormal powers, he wished to bring her north for further study. On her father’s strangely objecting to this treatment of his daughter as a specimen, Moore had settled the difficulty by offering marriage. After the wedding, he did bring her north, educated her, and finally presented her to the Association as a prodigy well worth their attention.
Unfortunately, after several remarkable séances, she was convicted of fraud in flagrant degree. It was through the slightly heated arguments ensuing that Moore was asked to resign his directorship.
The fantastic dispute had amused the lay-public intermittently through a dull summer, but I was off in the mountains that year with Van, and what news we read was mostly on the sporting pages, whither the pros and cons of spiritualistic debate are not wont to penetrate. But all that was raked up now, as sauce for the news of Moore’s sensational death, and having acquired a certain personal interest in spiritualism, I read it.
Following Mr. Terne’s advice and my own inclination, I went straight home. No need to rehearse all I endured that day. Roberta’s smilingly tearful consolations were the worst, I think, though my father’s: “Okay, son, you are right to stand by your friend!” ran a close second. He said it because I refused to hear a word against Nils, and insisted that the fault had not been his. Though I would not go into the details of what had taken place in Moore’s library, I stuck at that one truth, and Dad, at least, who had taken a fancy to Nils the evening he dined at our house, believed me.