Arthur Stringer

“ I could make out the mockery of an open fire smoldering in a little mockery of a marble grate, at the far end of the room. And as I looked at it, through the cold and the silence, the truth of it all came home to me. The man was a miser, a mean and penurious-minded old harpy, a niggardly-souled old lickpenny, a Harpagon out of his time!
I had never dreamed, in a city of such over-swollen fortunes and riotous living, of such loose-handed and prodigal wealth, that a person like this could still exist! ”

“ I lay there, boxed in on the high-backed old horsehair sofa, blinking meditatively about me. It was that dead hour when midnight begins to drag on toward waiting daylight, when the sleeper who awakens is uneasy, when life is in some ways at its lowest. Now and then a cinder fell in the grate. Now and then the purr of a breaking flame disturbed the silence, and threw shadows across the half-lit room.
Lying there, waiting, I watched idly the broken light play on the features of the ever-compelling and ever-menacing duelist. ”

“ The painted duelist glowered down at me, intact—for all I could tell, a flat surface of canvas. Then I wheeled about to the door, for it had opened and closed again, as I stood there with the quickness of a trap.
It was the little old man. In his left hand he held his low-turned bedroom lamp; in his right he carried a long-barreled magazine revolver. His face was now the bloodless, cadaverous yellow of unripened cheese, yet out of its pallor shone and glowed his deep-set, furtive little eyes. They reminded me of a cat's. He stopped, and peered over at the woman on the floor. ”

“ The heavily barred windows at the back of the room showed the earliest faint gray of coming morning, a leaden twilight more oppressive and phantasmal than darkness itself.
Only once did the woman stop in her work. I could not make out what prompted her to do so. All I knew was that she had suddenly drawn back from the safe, wheeled about, and after standing there listening for a minute or two, once more directed the light of her flash-lamp across the room to the painted figure of the duelist. She seemed to study it in bewilderment. Then she slowly turned back to the open safe. ”

“ It seemed to dominate the the room, to menace and threaten it, as that painted stare, concentrated, malignant, yet indescribably debonair, cut out with the keenness of a sword-blade through the silence and the darkness. Once before, and once only, had I seen anything like it. That had been on the occasion of a certain more or less painful interview in the Chicago office of the Pinkertons. There, in the great detective's inner sanctum, had hung the life-sized painting of a burglar, wearing a black mask, and pointing a revolver out of the canvas. ”

“ And be shuffled off through the gloom, and up the echoing stairs, with his lamp in his talonlike clutch, pausing every few steps, with his head on one side, to listen. His elfish figure, as I watched it, seemed rather one of the Dark Ages, of the days of the thumbscrew and the stake, than of modern and machinery-ridden New York. And the house about which I stared seemed rather the grotto of some fabulous ogre than the brownstone habitation of a twentieth-century human being. ”

“ THE cool and quiet of midnight hung over the city. The narrow cross-streets, lonely defiles of brownstone and brick flanked by still lonelier gas-lamps, dipped and fell away into the unbroken darkness of the East River. ”

“ Still again she steadied her gun-barrel so that it pointed directly between my squinting eyebrows. I could see her face contorted and twisted with contending fears, but the dominant one, I knew, was the horror of taking a human life. That discovery left me brave enough to laugh at her again, and she fell back a step or two, with a gasp of frustration.
"No!" she cried, "I can not—I can not kill him! I can not murder!" And again my quietly forced laugh seemed to harry and madden her.
"The revolver!" she burst out, in her tight throated whisper. "Father, you—you must do it! ”

“ The man almost nauseated me.
"Look at her face!" I cried, stepping back. "Look at her face and see."
He put the lamp down on the floor. Then revoltingly, with the barrel-end of his revolver, he pried the woman's body over, emitting an indifferent grunt as the relaxed shoulder fell back into its former position. I stooped and picked up the fallen flash-light, and as I did so the muscular little scoundrel slipped an arm under the woman's waist and turned the inert figure completely over. ”

“ The empty revolver in her hand was still pointed at me; I had a new enemy to face.
My startled brain had scarcely realized the meaning of the picture before she flung the useless pistol from her. Her fall had been a feint; the dummy-chucker had merely made use of an old trick of her trade! Yet I wondered what her next move would be.
"Father!" The call rang out, high and tense and clear, making the room echo and pulse with sound. It was enough to wake the dead. ”

“ I queried.
"Are you a light sleeper?" he suddenly asked. I assured him I wakened at the slightest sound, whereat he fell to wagging his head, and pointed toward the high-backed old horsehair sofa and vowed I'd be as snug as a bug in a rug.
"Look here," I said swinging round square in front of him. "If I'm going to watch the room, I want to know what I'm watching!" ”

“ For it showed the tense and waiting figure of a man in middle life, his shoulders stripped to his white shirt, peering straight out of the canvas. The man's right hand—and it was a very tricky and effective bit of foreshortening—was held straight before him. And in this hand was balanced a dueling pistol, the barrel pointed directly out of the canvas, so that a round "O" of menacing steel was all that could be seen of it. Above this arm glowed the wary and guarded eyes of the duelist, looking out into space as though determined to lose no slightest movement on the part of some unseen enemy. ”

“ I watched him shuffle out into the gloomy hall and disappear into the silence above-stairs. My way was at last clear.
VIII
I slipped over to the door, and quietly closed and bolted it. Then I darted back to the safe. The unconscious woman still lay on the bare floor. She was as white and impassive as the dead.
I stooped to the tape-tied packets that lay about the opened vault door, bending over the carelessly scattered wealth for which more lives than one had been hardened and embittered. ”

“ Then he shuffled across the uncarpeted boards of the hallway, and cautiously swung back a great door of oak. I noticed, as he did so, that he carefully turned down the wick of the lamp. The door opened into what seemed a dining-room, a musty-smelling chamber of quietness.
"You're armed, of course, if you're an officer?" he ventured, as he crept guardedly into the twilight room.
I took my Colt out of its padded resting-place above my hip and dropped it loose into the side pocket of my coat. The frightened householder noticed the movement, with a guttural little sound of approval. ”

“ The light of the flash-!amp, as it steadied and shone on the burnished surface of the nickel dial, was reflected and diffused back into the face of the stooping figure. And I saw, as I peered through the gloom at it, that the softly yet clearly outlined face was a woman's face ”

“ I paid him that—two dollars a week and board and keep, month in and month out, year in and year out!"
"You have other servants?"
"Servants? What do I want with a pack o' servants?" he whimpered.
"Who cooks for you? Who takes care of your place?"
"Weaver's granddaughter used to look after things a bit, until she off and married. That was last spring. And a dollar a week she used to cost me, month in and month out. When the girl went, we shifted for ourselves." ”