O. Henry Read online

  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 had 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 clue 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 letters at the top of the papers:

  B—xa— ——rip N— 2—92.

  Three Paragraphs

  * * *

  “COPY,” YELLED the small boy at the door. The sick woman lying on the bed began to move her fingers aimlessly upon the worn counterpane. Her eyes were bright with fever; her face, once beautiful, was thin and pain drawn. She was dying, but neither she nor the man who held her hand and wrote on a paper tablet knew that the end was so near.

  Three paragraphs were lacking to fill the column of humorous matter that the foreman had sent for. The small pay it brought them barely furnished shelter and food. Medicine was lacking but the need for that was nearly over.

  The woman’s mind was wandering; she spoke quickly and unceasingly, and the man bit his pencil and stared at the pad of paper, holding her slim, hot hand.

  “Oh, Jack; Jack, papa says no, I cannot go with you. Not love you! Jack, do you want to break my heart? Oh, look, look! the fields are like heaven, so filled with flowers. Why have you no ice? I had ice when I was at home. Can’t you give me just a little piece, my throat is burning?”

  The humourist wrote: “When a man puts a piece of ice down a girl’s back at a picnic, does he give her the cold shoulder?”

  The woman feverishly put back the loose masses of brown hair from her burning face.

  “Jack, Jack, I don’t want to die! Who is that climbing in the window? Oh, it’s only Jack, and here is Jack holding my hand, too. How funny! We are going to the river to-­night. The quiet, broad, dark, whispering river. Hold my hand tight, Jack, I can feel the water coming in. It is so cold. How queer
it seems to be dead, dead, and see the trees above you.”

  The humourist wrote: “On the dead square—a cemetery lot.”

  “Copy, sir,” yelled the small boy again. “Forms locked in half an hour.”

  The man bit his pencil into splinters. The hand he held was growing cooler; surely her fever must be leaving. She was singing now, a little crooning song she might have learned at her mother’s knee, and her fingers had ceased moving.

  “They told me,” she said weakly and sadly, “that hardships and suffering would come upon me for disobeying my parents and marrying Jack. Oh, dear, my head aches so I can’t think. No, no, the white dress with the lace sleeves, not that black, dreadful thing! Sailing, sailing, sailing, where does this river go? You are not Jack, you are too cold and stern. What is that red mark on your brow? Come, sister, let’s make some daisy chains and then hurry home, there is a great black cloud above us—I’ll be better in the morning, Jack, if you’ll hold my hand tight. Jack, I feel as light as a feather—I’m just floating, floating, right into the cloud and I can’t feel your hand. Oh, I see her now, and there is the old love and tenderness in her face. I must go to her, Jack. Mother, mother!”

  The man wrote quickly:

  “A woman generally likes her husband’s mother-­in-­law the best of all his relatives.”

  Then he sprang to the door, dashed the column of copy into the boy’s hand, and moved swiftly to the bed.

  He put his arm softly under the brown head that had suffered so much, but it turned heavily aside.

  The fever was gone. The humourist was alone.

  A Personal Insult

  * * *

  A YOUNG LADY in Houston became engaged last summerto one of the famous short stops of the Texas base ball league.

  Last week he broke the engagement, and this is the reason why:

  He had a birthday last Tuesday, and she sent him a beautiful bound and illustrated edition of Coleridge’s famous poem, “The Ancient Mariner.”

  The hero of the diamond opened the book with a puzzled look.

  “What’s dis bloomin’ stuff about anyways?” he said.

  He read the first two lines:

  It is the Ancient Mariner,

  And he stoppeth one of three—

  The famous short stop threw the book out the window, stuck out his chin, and said:

  “No Texas sis can gimme de umpire face like dat. I swipes nine daisy cutters outer ten dat comes in my garden, I do.”

  When the Train Comes In

  OUTLINE SKETCHES AT THE GRAND

  CENTRAL DEPOT.

  * * *

  NEXT TO a poker game for a place to contemplate human nature in its most aggravated form, comes a great railway passenger station. Statistics show that nine-­tenths of the human race lose their senses when traveling on the cars, and give free demonstrations of the fact at every station. Traveling by rail brings out all a man’s latent characteristics and propensities. There is something in the rush of the train, the smell of the engine smoke, the yell of the butcher, the volapuk cries of the brakeman and the whizzing scenery visible from the windows that causes the average human being to shake off the trammels of convention and custom, and act accordingly.

  When a train stops at the depot and unloads its passengers, they proceed at once to adopt for their style of procedure the idea expressed by the French phrase “sauve qui peut,” or in polite language—“the devil take the hindmost.”

  An observer, unless he is of the “casual” variety, can find much entertainment in watching the throng of travelers and bystanders at any metropolitan depot. The scene presented belongs to the spectacular comedy. There are no stage waits; no changing of scenery; no forgetting of lines or casting about for applause. The mimes play their part and vanish; the hero with his valise is jostled by the heavy villain from the baggage room; leading ladies scramble, kiss, weep and sigh without boquets or applause; marionettes wriggle and dance through the crowd, putted by the strings of chance, and the comedian plays his part unabashed by the disapproving hiss of the engines, and the groans of the grinding wheels.

  At the Houston Grand Central depot when the trains come in there are to be seen laughter and lanterns, smiles and sandwiches, palavering and popcorn, tears and tamales.

  To the student of human nature is presented a feast; a conglomerate hash of the lighter passions and eccentricities of man; a small dish whereof, ye Post man will endeavor to set before you.

  The waiting room is bright with electric lights. The line of omnibuses and hacks line the sidewalk on Washington street, and the drivers are crowding close to the dead line on the south side of the depot.

  Scattered among the benches in the two waiting rooms are prospective travelers awaiting their trains. The drummers and old traveling men sit reading their papers or smoking, while new and unseasoned voyagers are pacing up and down, glancing uneasily at the clock, and firing questions at everybody that passes. The policeman at the door who has told the old man with the cotton umbrella at six different times that the Central arrives at 6:35, makes up his mind that if he inquires once more he will take the chances on getting a verdict of justifiable homicide.

  The old lady with the yarn mittens who has been rapping with her spectacle case at the ticket agent’s closed window for fifteen minutes says, “Drat the man,” and begins to fumble in her traveling bag for licorice lozenges.

  In the ladies’ waiting room there is the usual contingent of peripatetic public. The bright-­eyed, self-­possessed young lady who is the traveling agent for a book, or, perhaps, a new silver ware polish, has learned the art of traveling. Haste and flurry are unknown to her. A neat traveling cloak and a light hand satchel comprise her accoutrements. She waits patiently, tapping lightly with a patent leather toe, and faintly humming the refrain of a song. Not so the large and copious family who are about to make the journey of their lives—at least fifty miles. Baskets, bags, valises, buckets, paper bundles, pot plants, babies and dogs cover the benches in their vicinity. The head of the family wears a look as deadly solemn as if he were on his way to execution. His face shows the strain of the terrible journey he is about to undertake. He holds his tickets in his moist hand with a vice like grip. Traveling is a serious matter with him. His good lady has taken off her bonnet. She drags out articles from boxes and bags and puts them back; she trots the baby and strews aprons, hairpins, knitted gloves and crackers far and wide. She tells John where she has hidden $13 under a loose board at home. She would never have mentioned it, but she is certain the train is going to run off the track and she may be killed. A few grimy looking men sit with their coat collars turned up, by the side of their weary spouses, who look as if they cared not for accidents, end of the world, or even fashions. A black-­veiled woman with a prattling boy of five sits in a corner, disconsolate and lone; some aimless town stragglers enter and wander through the room and out again.

  In the men’s waiting room there is more life. Depot officials in uniform hurry through with lanterns. Travelers loll upon the benches, smoke, read and chat. From the buzz of voices fragments of connected words can be caught that read something like this:

  “Got a $300 order from him, but it cost me $10 in drinks and theater tickets to get it—yes, I’m going to Galveston; doctor ordered perfect quiet and rest—a daisy, you bet; blonde hair, dark eyes and the prettiest—lost $20 on treys up; wired my house for expense money this morning—ain’t seen Sam for fifteen year; goin’ to stay till Christmas—loan me that paper if you’re through with it—Red flannel scratches me, this is what I wear—wonder if the train’s on time—No, sir, don’t keep the North American Review, but here’s Puck and Judge—came home earlier one night and found her sitting on the front steps with—gimme a light, please—Houston is the city of Texas—confound it, I told Maria not to put those cream puffs in my pocket—No, a cat didn’t do it, it�
�s a finger-­nail mark; you see I put the letter in the wrong envelope, and—Toot—toot—toot—toot—toot.”

  The train is coming. An official opens the north doors. There is a scramble for valises, baskets and overcoats, a mad rush and a struggling, pushing, impolite jam in the doorway by a lot of people who know that the train will wait twenty minutes for them after it arrives.

  The bell clangs; the single eye of the coming engine shines with what may be termed—in order not to disappoint the gentle reader—a baleful glare. A disciple of Mr. Howells’ realistic school might describe the arrival of the train as follows: “Clang—clang—chookety chookety—chookety—clang—clackety clack—chook-­ety—chook. Che—e—e—e—ew! Bumpety—bump—Houston!”

  The baggage men, with yells of rage, throw themselves upon the trunks and dash them furiously to the earth. A Swiss emigrant standing near clasps his hands in ecstasy. “Oh, Gott,” he cries, “dess ees yoost my country like. I hear dot Avalanch come down like he from dot mountains in Neuchatel fall!”

  The passengers are alighting; they scramble down the steps eagerly and leap from the last one into space. When they strike the ground most of them relapse into idiocy, and rush wildly off in the first direction that conveniently presents itself. A couple of brakemen head off a few who are trying to run back under the train and start them off in the right direction.

  The conductor stands like a blue-­coated tower of strength in the center of the crowd answering questions with an ease and coolness that would drive a hotel clerk wild with envy. Here are a few of the remarks that are fired at him: “Oh, conductor, I left one of my gloves in the car. How long does the train stop? Do you know where Mrs. Tompkins lives? Merciful heaven, I left my baby in the car! Where can I find a good restaurant? Say! Conductor, watch my valise till I get a cup of coffee! Is my hat on straight? Oh, have you seen my husband? He’s a tall man with link cuff-­buttons. Conductor, can you change a dollar? What’s the best hotel in town? Which way is town? Oh, where’s mamma gotten to? Oh, find my darling Fido; he has a blue ribbon round his neck,” and so on, ad noisyam—as one might say. You can tell old travelers at a glance. They have umbrellas and novels strapped to their satchels and they strike a bee line for the open doors at the depot without creating any disturbance.