by O. Henry
The boy might have seen him place the file in his pocket, and the penalty of the law for such an act was very severe.
Some distance back from the file room was the draftsman’s room now entirely vacated by its occupants.
Sharp dropped behind the outgoing stream of men, and slipped slyly into this room.
The clerks trooped noisily down the iron stairway, singing, whistling, and talking.
Below, the night watchman awaited their exit, ready to close and bar the two great doors to the south and cast.
It is his duty to take careful note each day that no one remains in the building after the hour of closing.
Sharp waited until all sounds had ceased.
It was his intention to linger until everything was quiet, and then to remove the certificate from the file, and throw the latter carelessly on some draftsman’s desk as if it had been left there during the business of the day.
He knew also that he must remove the certificate from the office or destroy it, as the chance finding of it by a clerk would lead to its immediately being restored to its proper place, and the consequent discovery that his location over the old survey was absolutely worthless.
As he moved cautiously along the stone floor the loud barking of the little black dog, kept by the watchman, told that his sharp ears had heard the sounds of his steps.
The great, hollow rooms echoed loudly, move as lightly as he could.
Sharp sat down at a desk and laid the file before him.
In all his queer practices and cunning tricks he had not yet included any act that was downright criminal.
He had always kept on the safe side of the law, but in the deed he was about to commit there was no compromise to be made with what little conscience he had left.
There is no well-defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty.
The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other; so the only safe road is the broad highway that leads straight through and has been well defined by line and compass.
Sharp was a man of what is called high standing in the community. That is, his word in a trade was as good as any man’s; his check was as good as so much cash, and so regarded; he went to church regularly; went in good society and owed no man anything.
He was regarded as a sure winner in any land trade he chose to make, but that was his occupation.
The act he was about to commit now would place him forever in the ranks of those who chose evil for their portion — if it was found out.
More than that, it would rob a widow and her son of property soon to be of great value, which, if not legally theirs, was theirs certainly by every claim of justice.
But he had gone too far to hesitate.
His own survey was in the patent room for patenting. His own title was about to be perfected by the State’s own hand.
The certificate must be destroyed.
He leaned his head on his hands for a moment, and as he did so a sound behind him caused his heart to leap with guilty fear, but before he could rise, a hand came over his shoulder and grasped the file.
He rose quickly, as white as paper, rattling his chair loudly on the stone floor.
The boy who land spoken to him earlier stood contemplating him with contemptuous and flashing eyes, and quietly placed the file in the left breast pocket of his coat.
“So, Mr. Sharp, by nature as well as by name,” he said, “it seems that I was right in waiting behind the door in order to see you safely out. You will appreciate the pleasure I feel in having done so when I tell you my name is Harris. My mother owns the land on which you have filed, and if there is any justice in Texas she shall hold it. I am not certain, but I think I saw you place a paper in this file this afternoon, and it is barely possible that it may be of value to me. I was also impressed with the idea that you desired to remove it again, but had not the opportunity. Anyway, I shall keep it until to-morrow and let the Commissioner decide.”
Far back among Mr. Sharp’s ancestors there must have been some of the old berserker blood, for his caution, his presence of mind left him, and left him possessed of a blind, devilish, unreasoning rage that showed itself in a moment in the white glitter of his eye.
“Give me that file, boy,” he said, thickly, holding out his hand.
“I am no such fool, Mr. Sharp,” said the youth. “This file shall be laid before the Commissioner to-morrow for examination. If he finds — Help! Help!”
Sharp was upon him like a tiger and bore him to the floor. The boy was strong and vigorous, but the suddenness of the attack gave him no chance to resist. He struggled up again to his feet, but it was an animal, with blazing eyes and cruel-looking teeth that fought him, instead of a man.
Mr. Sharp, a man of high standing and good report, was battling for his reputation.
Presently there was a dull sound, and another, and still one more, and a blade flashing white and then red, and Edward Harris dropped down like some stuffed effigy of a man, that boys make for sport, with his limbs all crumpled and lax, on the stone floor of the Land Office.
The old watchman was deaf, and heard nothing.
The little dog barked at the foot of the stairs until his master made him come into his room.
Sharp stood there for several minutes holding in his hand his bloody clasp knife, listening to the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the loud ticking of the clock above the receiver’s desk.
A map rustled on the wall and his blood turned to ice; a rat ran across some strewn papers, and his scalp prickled, and he could scarcely moisten his dry lips with his tongue.
Between the file room and the draftsman’s room there is a door that opens on a small dark spiral stairway that winds from the lower floor to the ceiling at the top of the house.
This stairway was not used then, nor is it now.
It is unnecessary, inconvenient, dusty, and dark as night, and was a blunder of the architect who designed the building.
This stairway ends above at the tent-shaped space between the roof and the joists.
That space is dark and forbidding, and being useless is rarely visited.
Sharp opened this door and gazed for a moment up this narrow cobwebbed stairway.
* * *
After dark that night a man opened cautiously one of the lower windows of the Land Office, crept out with great circumspection and disappeared in the shadows.
* * *
One afternoon, a week after this time, Sharp lingered behind again after the clerks had left and the office closed. The next morning the first comers noticed a broad mark in the dust on the upstairs floor, and the same mark was observed below stairs near a window.
It appeared as if some heavy and rather bulky object had been dragged along through the limestone dust. A memorandum book with “E. Harris” written on the flyleaf was picked up on the stairs, but nothing particular was thought of any of these signs.
Circulars and advertisements appeared for a long time in the papers asking for information concerning Edward Harris, who left his mother’s home on a certain date and had never been heard of since.
After a while these things were succeeded by affairs of more recent interest, and faded from the public mind.
* * *
Sharp died two years ago, respected and regretted. The last two years of his life were clouded with a settled melancholy for which his friends could assign no reason. The bulk of his comfortable fortune was made from the land he obtained by fraud and crime.
The disappearance of the file was a mystery that created some commotion in the Land Office, but he got his patent.
* * *
It is a well-known tradition in Austin and vicinity that there is a buried treasure of great value somewhere on the banks of Shoal Creek, about a mile west of the city.
Three young men living in Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clu
e of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence for about three hours.
At the end of that time their efforts were rewarded by the finding of a box buried about four feet below the surface, which they hastened to open.
The light of a lantern disclosed to their view the fleshless bones of a human skeleton with clothing still wrapping its uncanny limbs.
They immediately left the scene and notified the proper authorities of their ghastly find.
On closer examination, in the left breast pocket of the skeleton’s coat, there was found a flat, oblong packet of papers, cut through and through in three places by a knife blade, and so completely soaked and clotted with blood that it had become an almost indistinguishable mass.
With the aid of a microscope and the exercise of a little imagination this much can be made out of the letter; at the top of the papers:
B–xa– ––rip N– 2–92.
QUERIES AND ANSWERS
[From The Rolling Stone, June 23, 1894.]
Can you inform me where I can buy an interest in a newspaper of some kind? I have some money and would be glad to invest it in something of the sort, if some one would allow me to put in my capital against his experience.
College Graduate.
Telegraph us your address at once, day message. Keep telegraphing every ten minutes at our expense until we see you. Will start on first train after receiving your wire.
* * *
Who was the author of the line, “Breathes there a man with soul so dead?”
G. F.
This was written by a visitor to the State Saengerfest of 1892 while conversing with a member who had just eaten a large slice of limburger cheese.
* * *
Where can I get the “Testimony of the Rocks”?
Geologist.
See the reports of the campaign committees after the election in November.
* * *
Please state what the seven wonders of the world are. I know five of them, I think, but can’t find out the other two.
Scholar.
The Temple of Diana, at Lexington, Ky.; the Great Wall of China; Judge Von Rosenberg (the Colossus of Roads); the Hanging Gardens at Albany; a San Antonio Sunday school; Mrs. Frank Leslie, and the Populist party.
* * *
What day did Christmas come on in the year 1847?
Constant Reader.
The 25th of December.
* * *
What does an F. F. V. mean?
Ignorant.
What does he mean by what? If he takes you by the arm and tells you how much you are like a brother of his in Richmond, he means Feel For Your Vest, for he wants to borrow a five. If he holds his head high and don’t speak to you on the street he means that he already owes you ten and is Following a Fresh Victim.
* * *
Please decide a bet for us. My friend says that the sentence, “The negro bought the watermelon of the farmer” is correct, and I say it should be “The negro bought the watermelon from the farmer.” Which is correct?
R.
Neither. It should read, “The negro stole the watermelon from the farmer.”
* * *
When do the Texas game laws go into effect?
Hunter.
When you sit down at the table.
* * *
Do you know where I can trade a section of fine Panhandle land for a pair of pants with a good title?
Land Agent.
We do not. You can’t raise anything on land in that section. A man can always raise a dollar on a good pair of pants.
* * *
Name in order the three best newspapers in Texas.
Advertiser.
Well, the Galveston News runs about second, and the San Antonio Express third. Let us hear from you again.
* * *
Has a married woman any rights in Texas?
Prospector.
Hush, Mr. Prospector. Not quite so loud, if you please. Come up to the office some afternoon, and if everything seems quiet, come inside, and look at our eye, and our suspenders hanging on to one button, and feel the lump on the top of our head. Yes, she has some rights of her own, and everybody else’s she can scoop in.
* * *
Who was the author of the sayings, “A public office is a public trust,” and “I would rather be right than President”?
Eli Perkins.
* * *
Is the Lakeside Improvement Company making anything out of their own town tract on the lake?
Inquisitive.
Yes, lots.
WAIFS AND STRAYS
This collection of stories was first published in 1917.
The “Hill City Quartet,” to which O. Henry belonged as a young man in Austin
CONTENTS
THE RED ROSES OF TONIA
ROUND THE CIRCLE
THE RUBBER PLANT’S STORY
OUT OF NAZARETH
CONFESSIONS OF A HUMORIST
THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE
HEARTS AND HANDS
THE CACTUS
THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR
THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET
A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS
THE SNOW MAN
THE RED ROSES OF TONIA
A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south-bound from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat.
Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands empty except for a cigarette. At the small station, Nopal, he had learned of the delayed train and, having no commands to wait, turned his ponies toward the ranch again.
Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any more for the after-church parade on Fifth Avenue than she does for her loyal outfit of subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cactus, Tex., a mistake has been made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of the Frio country put forth Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as faithfully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for one day, a mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise. And now it was Good Friday, and Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat blushed unseen in the desert air of an impotent express car, beyond the burned trestle. On Saturday noon the Rogers girls, from the Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, from the Anchor-O, and Mrs. Bennet and Ida, from Green Valley, would convene at the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. With their Easter hats and frocks carefully wrapped and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation would then merrily jog the ten miles to Cactus, where on the morrow they would array themselves, subjugate man, do homage to Easter, and cause jealous agitation among the lilies of the field.
Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house flicking gloomily with a quirt at a tuft of curly mesquite. She displayed a frown and a contumelious lip, and endeavored to radiate an aura of disagreeableness and tragedy.
“I hate railroads,” she announced positively. “And men. Men pretend to run them. Can you give any excuse why a trestle should burn? Ida Bennet’s hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall not go one step toward Cactus without a new hat. If I were a man I would get one.”
Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement of their kind. One was Wells Pearson, foreman of the Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other was Thompson Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from the Quintana Valley. Both thought Tonia Weaver adorable, especially when she railed at railroads and menaced men. Either would have given up his epidermis to make for her an Easter hat more cheerfully than the ostrich gives up his tip or the aigrette lays down its life. Neither possessed the ingenuity to conceive a means of supplying the sad deficiency against the coming Sabbath. Pearson’s deep brown face and sunburned light hair gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth’s profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia’s plight grieved him through and through. Thompson Burrows was t
he more skilled and pliable. He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties and shoes, and was made dumb by woman’s presence.
“The big water-hole on Sandy Creek,” said Pearson, scarcely hoping to make a hit, “was filled up by that last rain.”
“Oh! Was it?” said Tonia sharply. “Thank you for the information. I suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you think a woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as you do. If your old water-hole could have put out the fire on that trestle you might have some reason to talk about it.”
“I am deeply sorry,” said Burrows, warned by Pearson’s fate, “that you failed to receive your hat, Miss Weaver — deeply sorry, indeed. If there was anything I could do— “
“Don’t bother,” interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. “If there was anything you could do, you’d be doing it, of course. There isn’t.”
Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her frown smoothed away. She had an inspiration.
“There’s a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Nueces,” she said, “that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers there. She said it was the latest style. It might have some left. But it’s twenty-eight miles to Lone Elm.”
The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost smiled. The Knights, then, were not all turned to dust; nor were their rowels rust.