Читать книгу The Penalty - Gouverneur Morris - Страница 6

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"I've done enough for you more than once," said the legless man; "you're big enough and strong enough to work, but you're a born loafer."

"I had a job." The speaker, a shabby, unshaven man with a beastly face, whined dolefully. "And I done right; but I got the sack."

"What was the job and why were you sacked?"

"I got a job as a artist's model. I sits in a chair while the lady makes a statue out of my face, and then she gives me money, and I goes and spends it. The third day she gives me more money, and tells me I looks too well fed and happy to suit her, and sends me away."

The legless man was astonished to learn that his heart was beating with unaccustomed force and rapidity. "Who was the artist?"

"She's a lady name o' Ferris."

The legless man steeled his face to express nothing. "Ferris," he commented briefly.

"Say," said the unshaven man, "what's all that about the devil falling out of heaven and fetching up in hell?"

"Why?"

"That's how she says I looks. And she wants to make a statue of him, just when he comes to and sits up, and looks up and sees how far he's fell. She says my face has all the sorrers and horrors of the world in it."

"And then, you fool," said the legless man, "you spoiled her game by high living. You ate and you drank till you looked like a paranoiac bulldog asleep in the sun. Where was the lady's studio?"

"Seventeen McBurney Place."

"And she wants to do a Satan, does she?"

The unshaven man drew back from the expression of the legless man, in whose face it was as if all the fires of hell had suddenly burst into flame. The unshaven man covered the breast of his threadbare coat with outstretched hands as if to shield himself from some suddenly bared weapon. His eyes blinked, but did not falter.

"Say," he said presently, after drawing a deep breath, "if she could see you once."

"If I don't know," said the legless man, "how Satan felt after the fall, nobody does. The things I've been--the things I've seen--back there--down here--the things I've lost--the things I've found! Hell's Bell's, Johnson! what is it you want--food?--drink?--a woman?"

The unshaven man's eyes shone with an unholy light.

"What would you do for twenty-five dollars?"

The unshaven man said nothing. He looked everything.

"Do you know the McIver woman?"

"Fanny?"

The legless man granted. "Yes. Fanny. She'll look at you if you've got money."

"She'd crawl through a sewer to find a dime."

"Quite so," the legless man commented dryly. "Well, it wouldn't matter to me if she went on a tear and was found dead in her bed."

"It's worth fifty." Something in the unshaven man's voice suggested that he had once been remotely connected with some sort of a business.

The legless man shook his head. "Judas Iscariot," he said, "betrayed the Lord God for thirty. Fanny McIver's scalp isn't worth a cent over twenty-five. You're just a broken-down drunk. It takes a bigger bluffer than you to make me put an insult on Christendom. Fifteen down. Ten when Fanny's had her last hang-over."

"Why don't you do some of your dirty work yourself?"

"I do all I can," said the legless man simply; "I can't find time for everything."

The unshaven man shifted uneasily on his shabby feet. In his stomach the flames which only alcohol can quench were burning with a steady gnawing fury. "How about a little drink?" he said.

"Fifteen down," said the legless man; "ten when the job's done, and a ticket to Chicago."

"With a reservation? I'll feel like the devil; I couldn't sit up all night."

"I'll throw in an upper," said the legless man.

Still the unshaven man resisted. "What's Fanny done to you?"

"None of your business."

As if that settled the matter, and removed all obstacles and moral scruples, the unshaven man sighed, and held out his hand for the money which was to bind the contract.

Twelve hours later, Fanny McIver's death was being attributed by the authorities to the insane, jealous rage of a lover. But as she had lately changed her name and address, she lay for a while in the morgue awaiting identification. It was the legless beggar who performed that last solemn rite. He was quite unmoved. Her death mattered no more in his scheme of life than the death of a fly.

But as he held up his hand and swore that the identity of the corpse was such and such, he remembered how graceful she had been at sixteen, how affectionate, how ready to forgive. He remembered with a certain admiration that during the heyday of her earning powers she had always trusted to his generosity, and had never tried to hold any of her earnings back. Prison and drink had destroyed all that was honest in her, all that was womanly. So a drop of acid will eat out the heart of the freshest and loveliest rose. She became a very evil thing--full of evil knowledge. There was even a certain danger in her--not much--nothing definite--but enough. She was better dead.

He turned and swung out of the morgue into the sunlight. And he wondered whatever had become of the child that she had borne him.