Читать книгу The Casual Murderer and other stories - Footner Hulbert - Страница 3

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I was crossing Union Square on my way to the office thinking about nothing at all, when I received one of those curious psychical shocks that the sight of an unknown face will sometimes give one. This was a young man sitting on a bench with his long legs stretched before him, and his hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets. He was out of luck—well, all the benchers in November are out of luck; this one bore it with a difference. His chin was not sunk on his breast, but held level, and his gentian-blue eyes were staring straight before him with an expression of complete despair.

My impulse was to speak to him. I suppressed it, of course, and kept on. How quickly one learns to suppress ones natural impulses in town! But this one was not going to be so easily suppressed. It set up a painful agitation in my breast. Coward! Coward! a still small voice whispered to me. How about the Good Samaritan? Here is a fellow-creature suffering some wound infinitely more dreadful than wounds of the flesh, and you pass by on the other side!

Before I got to the Seventeenth street corner I was forced to turn around and go back again. A new terror attacked me. What was I to say to a strange man? I was so flustered I walked right past him again. Shame! the voice whispered to me; you’re nearly thirty years old and red-haired and your own mistress! What is there to be afraid off? Don’t think about what you’re going to say; but say the natural thing that springs to your lips.

So I turned around, and marched up to him and said:

“What is the matter?”

He raised the blue eyes to my face, hard with scorn; his tight lips writhed with pain and rage. “That’s my affair,” he said.

Well! I flew. My face was crimson, I expect. Never again! Never again! Never again! I said to myself. The worldly sense which teaches us to restrain our impulses is right!

But before I got back to the Seventeenth Street corner I heard rapid steps coming after me—I would have died sooner than look around; and the resonant, pain-sharp voice at my ear saying quickly:

“I’m sorry. What must you think of me? I didn’t want to hurt you. The fact is I’m nearly out of my mind, and I lashed out blindly ...”

I could look at him then. The blue eyes had become human and appealing, and of course, I was instantly melted.

“I understand,” I said. “It was quite natural. I was too abrupt. That was because I was embarrassed.”

“No,” he insisted. “I am a fool. If there was ever anybody who needed a friend in this city it is I and yet I ... Why, at the moment you spoke to me, I was thinking what a God-forsaken, soulless city this is, and yet when you offered me a kindness ...”

We were then abreast of the last bench in the Square. “Let us sit down a moment,” I said.

We did so.

“I suppose you live here,” he said with a painful eagerness; “Do you know the city well?”

“Pretty well,” I said.

“Then tell me, how do you set about finding a person who has disappeared?”

“The police?” I suggested.

An inexpressibly painful smile twisted his lips. “Yes, I’ve been to police headquarters,” he said. “They advised me to go home and forget about it.”

“If you cared to tell me the circumstances ...” I suggested.

“Yes, indeed,” he said—he was humble enough now; “if you’ll only listen. How thankful I am to have somebody to talk to! I should have gone clean out of my senses otherwise!”

His name was Edward Swanley. He was the public librarian of Ancaster, a small town up-state. He had one assistant in the library, a girl Aline Elder. They had fallen in love among the book-shelves, and were engaged to be married. He, Swanley, had gone to Ancaster from college to take the job, but Aline had lived there all her life. Her father and mother were dead and she lived with a large family of cousins. He described her as an old-fashioned sort of girl; that is to say, simple, unaffected and good. She was very pretty. It was clear that he loved her better than his life.

“If I don’t find her,” he said simply, “well ... that is the end, for me.”

Six days before Aline had said that she must go to New York for a day’s shopping. The announcement, while unexpected, was not an unnatural one, because all the women in Ancaster allowed themselves a day in New York once or twice a year. But they usually went in parties, or at least in couples, whereas Aline departed alone. Swanley couldn’t accompany her, because they couldn’t both leave the library at the same time. She left Ancaster at noon on the following day, Wednesday, meaning to spend the night in New York, and the whole of Thursday, getting home on the last train Thursday night.

Swanley had met the train, and she was not on it. He was surprised but not greatly put about, expecting a telegram in the morning. There was no telegram, and he began to get anxious. He telegraphed to Aline at her hotel, and got no reply. Later in the day his landlady came to him, saying that she felt it her duty to inform him what they were saying about town, and that was that Aline had received a letter from New York the day before she went, in a man’s handwriting. It had come from an assistant in the post office.

Swanley was enraged, but to doubt Aline was the last thing that occurred to him. Why, her simplicity and goodness of heart were proverbial in Ancaster; her life had been as open as the day; Swanley felt that he knew her heart better than his own. He visited the post office, but the terrified girl stuck to her story; Aline Elder had received a letter with the New York post-mark and addressed in a man’s hand, the day before she went away. The envelope had no lettering on it, but there was a little picture raised in the paper of the flap.

After a night of torment, Swanley set off for town on Saturday morning. He went to a certain woman’s hotel, where Aline had said she would stop, and was informed that she had not been there. He then told his story to the police. When the Inspector was told of the letter Aline had received, he smiled sympathetically at Swanley, and advised him to go back to Ancaster and forget her. That brought the unfortunate young man to the end of his resources. Since then he had been wandering blindly about the streets. It was Monday morning when I found him.

Now I had no right to speak for my busy, famous mistress, but I knew her kind heart, and I took a chance. “Did you ever hear of Madame Rosika Storey?” I asked Swanley.

He shook his head.

“Everybody in New York knows her,” I said. “She’s a famous psychologist. I’m her secretary, Bella Brickley.”

“What do you mean by psychologist?” he asked.

“Her profession is solving human problems,” I said. “She works through her knowledge of the human heart.”

“Crimes?” he said.

“Crimes and other problems. When there is more time I will tell you of the wonderful things she has done. Come along with me now, and talk to her.”

“I have no money,” he said dejectedly.

“Never mind that,” I said. “She will listen to you. If you succeed in interesting her, the money will not matter.”

“Ah,” he said, “she will just think like everybody else that Aline has gone with some man.”

“Madame Storey never thinks like everybody else,” I said. “She is unique.”