19 Tales of Terror

by Whit Burnett

  suppressed, always festering in the dark hollow of his heart. He

  thought, as he had a thousand times in his boyhood, that there

  could be no depravity so low as this vicious ill-will towards his

  unconscious, blameless brother. He told himself once again

  that he was cheating Mary-he knew why she overlooked his

  personal insignificance, his poverty-it was because she had the

  illusion that he was true-hearted, above baseness. If she should

  learn that he was capable of this obscene resentment of the

  kind and generous Roger's superiority--she would tum away

  no

  Nineteen Tales of Terror

  •

  from him forever. Was there any real difference-no, there

  was not-between such a feeling towards a brother and the upraised arm of Cain?

  But Mary was looking at him ! She had lifted her eyes from

  her account book! He had not seen when. How long had she

  been watching him? A man with a guilty secret is always terrified to be watched. Had she guessed? Had she read this thought in his face? He froze. And waited.

  But Mary smiled. The room shone. The golden light around

  him brought Francis with a start out of his nightmare.

  "Why, you've been asleep," said Mary.

  "Yes, I must have dropped off a moment." He thought he

  had been having a bad dream. What a relief to be waked up!

  Before he lay down to sleep that night, he stepped over to the

  twins' little cribs. Through the high railing of the sleepingporch the barred moonlight shone on their round faces, bland in sleep. How safe they looked. And it was he who made them

  safe, their father. His heart grew great with love.

  But after he was in bed Mary heard him draw the long sighing breath of disheartenment. "What is it, dear?" she murmured. He did not answer. Probably be was already asleep, she thought.

  He was awake. His sigh had been of disheartenment. He had

  perceived that his love for his little boys was tarnished and

  sullied by satisfaction in his brother's childlessness.

  The tide that had been sweeping in so strongly, had begun

  to ebb.

  The two vacant-lot courts had never been so busy as that

  summer. Bert Warder made them the center of Jefferson Street

  life as much as he could. For there he knew success. By concentrating fiercely on his game, he had made himself one of the best players, and looked forward all through his uneasy days to

  the hour with his racket at the end, which was almost his only

  respite from misery. His big unused working-man's body

  grunted with satisfaction in the hard physical effort and the

  copious sweat: the strain of his fixed idea relaxed in a momentary forgetfulness of Don in jail: and his perpetual doubt of his equality with those about him fell with the ravening zest of

  starvation on the chance to inflict defeat.

  He steered clear cunningly of the two or three men who

  could beat him. And naturally played a good deal with Frankie

  Tuttle. They did not work in the same department of Stott Mc­

  Devitt, but he scarcely let a day go by without hunting up

  Francis, inviting him to play, and saying facetiously that he did

  hope this time he might get by Francis' cannon-ball serve and

  maybe score a few points against him : promising if he did, to

  campaign for Frankie's election to be town dog-catcher, or

  ne Murder on JeHerson Street • I l l

  chief reader-aloud a t th e Sewing Society. Day b y day h e scored

  more points.

  Mary went up to watch the play once, and afterwards said,

  "See here, Francis, why don't you give up tennis for the rest of

  the summer? You're wearing yourself out." But the tum of her

  phrase, the quality of her voice showed Francis how pitiful he

  looked on the courts, going to pieces under Bert's ragging,

  trotting about, broken-kneed, like a futile old woman, unstrung, unable to command even his usual modestly competent strokes. If he stopped playing now after such exhibitions of

  feebleness there would be no limit to the joshing he would get

  at Bert's hands.

  And by this time Bert's joshing did not so much annoy as

  frighten him. He was terrified at the thought that another

  chance lunge in the dark might lay open to Bert's rough handling the secret shame he was trying to leave behind. Bert had, so far, never twitted him with Roger, but at any moment he

  might try that line; certainly would if he guessed that to be a

  sore point. Francis' nerves tautened in vigilance if he even

  caught sight of Bert from afar. He seemed to feel Roger in the

  air, whenever Bert was present.

  He was right in feeling that Roger's name was often in Bert's

  mind. The contrast between Francis' brother, distinguished,

  wealthy, well-known, and his disgraced convict brother was

  one of the sorest of Bert's stripes, the worst of all his envies.

  Glaring across the net at Francis, going forlornly and hopelessly through the complicated wind-up for his serve, he thought, (as he called out in his witty way, "Play ball, bald

  head,") ''There's one sure thing, 'bo . • • . you'll never know

  from me I ever heard of that big stiff!"

  Mary was rather troubled by the way Francis seemed to feel

  the heat that summer. But the hot weather would soon be gone.

  And wasn't he growing thinner? She'd have to start the evening

  hot chocolate and crackers again. He didn't seem to have the

  interest in his garden of other summers. Perhaps only that he

  hadn't much time left over from tennis. He hadn't written a

  line of poetry for weeks. But of course the wind of poetry blew

  fitfully. Was he enjoying the twins as much as he did? Or was

  that only a fancy of hers?

  It was no fancy of hers. Coming in to his children after his

  daily defeat in tennis, worn out with standing guard over his

  threatened secret, it was soon borne in on him that he had been

  in a fool's paradise. Now, while his little sons were babies, yes

  of course, they were his, as other men's children were theirs.

  But they grew so fast. Over and over he lived helplessly through

  in imagination as if it had already happened, how they would

  turn from him. They would soon naturally be asked to visit

  112

  Nineteen Tales of Terror

  •

  their Uncle Roger. They could not but be struck by the difference between the two homes. They would begin to compare their father with his brother. And then they would see how their

  father always took a back seat, never was consulted, never

  elected to any office, had no influence. As they grew, they

  would note people's surprise that a Senator-Roger would

  probably be a Senator by that time-had such a queer singedcat of a brother . . . . "And now," Francis often thought, his fingers fumbling with his thinning hair, "Now a mangy singedcat."

  Twenty times a day it seemed to him, he was startled to find

  that without his knowing it, he was nervously drawing his hair

  up over the crown of his head.

  He was even more startled to discover that he was not the

  only one to notice this involuntary reflex. "Have you hurt the

  top of your head lately, Mr. Tuttle?" Mrs. Benson once asked

  him. He was shocked and turned on her such a darkening face

  that she hurriedly excused herself, "I just noticed that you

&nbs
p; often put your hand up to it."

  He snatched down his hand-to his amazement it was once

  more lifted to his head-and told her shortly, "No. I'm all

  right." As he moved away a strange thought came to him, one

  that soon became familiar by repetition. "It would be better if

  all the hair on my head would come out. And have it over

  with !" Sometimes he imagined for an instant between sleep and

  waking that this had happened. And it was a relief. He was

  sickened to find that he could not control himself even in such

  a little matter as fumbling with that thin place. How could he

  hope to hide his secret vice? Every time he found his fingers in

  his hair he thought anew, disheartened at his own weakness,

  that he would never be quick enough to hide what would

  ·

  come

  leaping up to his eyes at a mention of Roger.

  .V

  But until now he had had Mary. As long as Mary was

  there . . .

  Then early in August a tragic telegram took M ary away for

  a time. Her delicate sister, now a young wife, was lying at the

  point of death, her baby prematurely born. "Come at once.

  Florence calling for you," the telegram read. She telephoned

  the news to Francis who looked up the hour of the next train

  for her and hurried to draw the money from the savings bank

  to cover her expenses. Mary, wild with sorrow and alarm began

  to pack, interrupted herself to run over to ask Mrs. Benson to

  keep a neighborly eye on Francis while she was away, tried to

  ' The Murder on Jefferson Street • 113

  think what clothes the twins would need, stopped to telephone

  the cleaning-woman about getting Francis' meals, stood still in

  the middle of the floor and wrung her hands. When Francis

  came with the money, he was startled to see her so distraught.

  "If it were only time for tny vacation, so I could go along to

  take care of the twins," he said.

  "Oh, if you only could be there to take care of me!" cried

  poor Mary, weeping on his shoulder. "I'm scared to death to go

  by myself. I don't know how to face anything without you

  now!"

  The memory of this cry of Mary's, the thought of her need

  for him, Mary's real and actual need for him hung like incense

  around Francis as he stood on the station platform that evening

  looking after the train from which the twins' handkerchiefs

  still fluttered. It was a sweetness in the night air as he let himself into the empty house. He was breathing it in as he fell asleep, his arm on the pillow sacred to Mary's dear head. Mary

  had not yet wholly gone.

  The next day, the first day since his marriage that he had

  wakened alone, he arrived early at the office. To his surprise

  Bert Warder was at a desk farther down the same room, among

  the apprentices. Francis wondered if this meant that Bert had

  been definitely put out of the drafting room. There had been

  some gossip about his mistakes there. Bert's eyes were roving

  about unhappily. He saw the surprise in Francis' glance. "You,

  damn you, with your rich brother and your pull! Of course you

  get on!" he thought, savage over the injustice of the world. To

  say something he called out foolishly, "Hey there, Francis, I

  got special orders to report here to keep the air blowing through

  your clearing." As Francis took out the papers from his drawer

  he heard Bert's loud unmodulated voice explaining the joke

  about "the clearing." "Have I got to go all through that again?"

  thought Francis shrugging his shoulders wearily. But the men

  near Bert thought the joke a flat one, found Bert's noise about

  it tiresome, and took no pains to conceal their impression.

  Smarting, humiliated, apprehensive, resentful, Bert drew

  glumly back into himself, waiting bodefully for a chance to pay

  Francis out for his rebuff.

  At lunch he went out of his way in the cafeteria to sit at the

  same table with Francis, ostentatiously familiar with him and

  after work he let trolley after trolley go by the comer while he

  waited till Francis arrived. Knowing that he had been punished for being too fresh, he was impelled by the fatality that hangs over people who have struck a false note, to strike it yet

  more loudly. Francis had never found him harder to endure. As

  they walked up Jefferson Street together, he said peremptorily,

  l l4 • Nineteen Tales of Terror

  "Run on in and get your tennis things on, Frankie. We'll have a

  set before supper. Maybe if I try hard I can score a point or

  two on you."

  "It's gosh-awful hot for tennis," protested Francis.

  Bert's heavy eyebrows lifted ironically over his bulging eyes,

  he began a certain menacing one-sided smile which was the

  introduction to his worst joshing. It was uglier than usual, ominous and threatening. There was but one threat that Francis feared. It came instantly into his mind. He lost his head, "This

  is the time he is going to bring Roger up-and I have not yet

  thought what to say or how to look!" and said in a hurried

  panic, "All right, all right. Yes, let's play. It may do us good."

  A couple of hours later he came in. He had lost one love set

  after another to Bert. Too tired to bathe and change, he sank

  down in a chair. The cold supper that was to be left for him

  every evening by Mary's cleaning-woman, faced him on the

  table. After a time he ate a little of it, and went stiffly to bed.

  But for a long time not to sleep. Out of the darkness white balls

  hurtled towards him. Every time he began to doze, he saw one

  like a bullet, driving straight towards his eyes, and starting to

  one side to avoid it woke up to find himself sweating, his heart

  beating fast, all his muscles taut.

  The cleaning-woman, come in early by Mary's instructions

  to get Mr. Tuttle's breakfast told him, "You don't look so good,

  Mr. Tuttle."

  "It was hot last night," he told her pushing his uneaten breakfast away.

  It was hot all that day too. But in spite of it he lingered in

  the furnace-like office till the 5 : 20 trolley. To no avail. As soon

  as he stepped off the trolley Bert and a couple of others shouted

  at him to come and make a fourth at doubles. They played set

  after set, shifting partners in all the possible combinations.

  But defeat always came to the side that Francis was on. He

  could have told them that beforehand, he thought, playing more

  and more feebly.

  When he went home he found two letters waiting for him in

  the hot shut-up living room. One from Mary. One from Roger.

  What could Roger be writing for? Looking at that letter with

  apprehension he opened Mary's. The twins were well, she

  wrote, her sister had recognized her but was not expected to

  live. The rest was love. •" . . . take care of yourself, darling,

  darling! I miss you so! I need you, dearest. I love you. I love

  you." A murmur as from Mary's voice rose faintly from the

  paper. But died away in the silence coldly breathed out from

  the letter he had not read. He sat a long time looking at it, forgetting his dinner. But it had to be read. He tore it open.

  R
oger wrote to give Francis the news everybody was to see

  The Murder on Jefferson Street • 1 15

  in the newspaper the next day, that through a new business

  combine, he was now one of the Vice Presidents of the Stott

  McDevitt Company, as well as of his own. "We'll see to it that

  this means some well-deserved advancement for you too, Francis, old man," wrote Roger pleasantly. His letters were always kind. "It'll be fine to see more of you and Mary. We may even

  decide to become neighbors of yours. Nothing holds us here.

  And I certainly would enjoy getting acquainted with my splendid little nephews."

  The darkness fell slowly around Francis holding the letter

  in a clutch he could not relax. He had not eaten since noon. His

  old inner wound opened slowly, gaping here and there, and

  began to bleed. No, no, he told himself shamed to the heart, it

  was nothing so clean and wholesome as bleeding; it was the

  drip of pus from a foul old ulcer. Well, a man was a leper, who

  could feel nothing but mortal sickness over his own brother's

  success.

  The blackness deepened. Out of it, one after another, there

  hurtled towards him bullet-like revelations of his own pitifUl

  abjectness. He had always known he was a dub at business, a

  dub at tennis, a dub at life--everybody's inferior in everything!

  But till now he had hoped he might at least grow into a harmless dub. But he was not even that. He was incurably vicious, with the mean vice of feebleness. The beast in his heart would

  not die, starve it though he might. It snarled and gnashed its

  teeth over every new triumph of Roger's and sprang up from its

  lair, rattling its chain in sordid hope every time a faint shadow

  came over Roger's life. He would rather die, oh infinitely rather

  die than have Mary leam that her husband could not kill that

  hope tighten his hold as he might around its filthy throat.

  Through the darkness a voice in a loud snarl came to Francis' ears, "He'll never have any children. And I have two sons."

  Francis leaped to his feet. Who was there in the dark with him?

  He bad thought he was alone. He snapped on a light and looked

  wildly around the empty room. He was alone.

  Had he said that? Or had he only thought it so fiercely that it

  rang in his ears like a cry? His knees shook. Suppose Mary had