Henry, he ain"t eat his pill yet. He is jest looking at it and shaking.
The perfessor pulls out his watch and lays it on the table.
"It is a quarter past eleven," he says. "Mr. Murray, are you going to make me shoot you, after all? I didn"t want a scandal," he says. "It"s for you to say whether you want to eat that pill and get your even chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting method is sure, but it causes talk. These pills won"t. WHICH?"
And he pulls a revolver. Which I suppose he had got that too when he went down after them pills.
Henry, he looks at the gun.
Then he looks at the pill.
Then he swallers the pill.
The perfessor puts his gun back into his pocket, and then he puts his pill into his mouth. He don"t swaller it. He looks at the watch, and he looks at Henry.
"Sixteen minutes past eleven," he says. "AT EXACTLY TWENTY-NINE MINUTES TO TWELVE MR. MURRAY WILL BE DEAD. I got the harmless one. I can tell by the taste."
And he put the pieces out into his hand, to show that he has chewed his"n up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes fur a verdict from his digestive ornaments. Then he put them pieces back into his mouth and chewed "em up and swallered "em down like he was eating cough drops.
Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make fur the door, but he falls down onto a sofa.
"This is murder," he says, weak-like. And he tries to get up again, but this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint.
"It"s a dern short fifteen minutes," I thinks to myself. "That perfessor must of put more science into Henry"s pill than he thought he did fur it to of knocked him out this quick. It ain"t skeercly three minutes."
When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was turned up. But she don"t yell none. She can"t. She tries, but she jest gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won"t let her fall acrost Henry.
He ketches her. "Sit up, Jane," he says, with that Estelle look onto his face, "and let us have a talk."
She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty has got. But she can"t look away from him.
And I"m kind o" paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I jest NEEDED to fetch a yell.
But Henry ain"t more"n dropped down there till I"m feeling jest like he"d ALWAYS been there, and I"d ALWAYS been staring into that room, and the last word any one spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
"You"re a murderer," says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in that stare-eyed way. "You"re a MURDERER," she says, saying it like she was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one.
"Murder!" says the perfessor. "Did you think I was going to run any chances for a pup like him? He"s scared, that"s all. He"s just fainted through fright. He"s a coward. Those pills were both just bread and sugar. He"ll be all right in a minute or two. I"ve just been showing you that the fellow hasn"t got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine woman like you, Jane," he says.
Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o" wild like, her voice clucking like a hen does, and she says:
"It"s worse then, it"s worse! It"s worse for me than if it were a murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was," she says. Or they was words to that effect.
And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn"t of took it no harder than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but jest wasn"t no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more"n fur Henry.
Doctor Kirby always use to say women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is foolish about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good "eal better than to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. They will still be crazy about the man that is dead, even if he was crooked. But they don"t never forgive the fellow that lets himself be made a fool and lets them look foolish, too. And when the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs, and Henry comes to and sneaks out, Jane, she never even turns her head and looks at him.
"Jane," says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, "you have a lot o" things to forgive me. But do you suppose I have learned enough so that we can make a go of it if we start all over again?"
But Jane she never said nothing.
"Jane," he says, "Estelle is going back to New England, as soon as Margery gets well, and she will stay there for good."
Jane, she begins to take a little intrust then.
"Did Estelle tell you so?" she asts.
"No," says the perfessor. "Estelle doesn"t know it yet. I"m going to break the news to her in the morning."
But Jane still hates him. She"s making herself hate him hard. She wouldn"t of been a human woman if she had let herself be coaxed up all to oncet. Purty soon she says: "I"m tired." And she went out looking like the perfessor was a perfect stranger. She was a peace, Jane was.
After she left, the perfessor set there quite a spell and smoked. And he was looking tired out, too. They wasn"t no mistake about me. I was jest dead all through my legs.
CHAPTER XII
I was down in the perfessor"s labertory one day, and that was a queer place. They was every kind of scientifics that has ever been discovered in it. Some was pickled in bottles and some was stuffed and some was pinned to the walls with their wings spread out. If you took hold of anything, it was likely to be a skull and give you the shivers or some electric contraption and shock you; and if you tipped over a jar and it broke, enough germs might get loose to slaughter a hull town. I was helping the perfessor to unpack a lot of stuff some friends had sent him, and I noticed a bottle that had onto it, blowed in the gla.s.s:
DANIEL, DUNNE AND COMPANY
"That"s funny," says I, out loud.
"What is?" asts the perfessor.
I showed him the bottle and told him how I was named after the company that made "em. He says to look around me. They is all kinds of gla.s.sware in that room--bottles and jars and queer-shaped things with crooked tails and noses--and nigh every piece of gla.s.s the perfessor owns is made by that company.
"Why," says the perfessor, "their factory is in this very town."
And nothing would do fur me but I must go and see that factory. I couldn"t till the quarantine was pried loose from our house. But when it was, I went down town and hunted up the place and looked her over.
It was a big factory, and I was kind of proud of that. I was glad she wasn"t no measly, little, old-fashioned, run-down concern. Of course, I wasn"t really no relation to it and it wasn"t none to me. But I was named fur it, too, and it come about as near to being a fambly as anything I had ever had or was likely to find. So I was proud it seemed to be doing so well.
I thinks as I looks at her of the thousands and thousands of bottles that has been coming out of there fur years and years, and will be fur years and years to come. And one bottle not so much different from another one. And all that was really knowed about me was jest the name on one out of all them millions and millions of bottles. It made me feel kind of queer, when I thought of that, as if I didn"t have no separate place in the world any more than one of them millions of bottles. If any one will shut his eyes and say his own name over and over agin fur quite a spell, he will get kind of wonderized and mesmerized a-doing it--he will begin to wonder who the d.i.c.kens he is, anyhow, and what he is, and what the difference between him and the next feller is. He will wonder why he happens to be himself and the next feller HIMSELF. He wonders where himself leaves off and the rest of the world begins. I been that way myself--all wonderized, so that I felt jest like I was a melting piece of the hull creation, and it was all shifting and drifting and changing and flowing, and not solid anywhere, and I could hardly keep myself from flowing into it. It makes a person feel awful queer, like seeing a ghost would. It makes him feel like HE wasn"t no solider than a ghost himself. Well, if you ever done that and got that feeling, you KNOW what I mean. All of a sudden, when I am trying to take in all them millions and millions of bottles, it rushed onto me, that feeling, strong. Thinking of them bottles had somehow brung it on. The bigness of the hull creation, and the smallness of me, and the gait at which everything was racing and rushing ahead, made me want to grab hold of something solid and hang on.
I reached out my hand, and it hit something solid all right. It was a feller who was wheeling out a hand truck loaded with boxes from the shipping department. I had been standing by the shipping department door, and I reached right agin him.
He wants to know if I am drunk or a blanked fool. So after some talk of that kind I borrows a chew of tobacco of him and we gets right well acquainted.
I helped him finish loading his wagon and rode over to the freight depot with him and helped him unload her. Lifting one of them boxes down from the wagon I got such a shock I like to of dropped her.
Fur she was marked so many dozen, gla.s.s, handle with care, and she was addressed to Dr. Hartley L. Kirby, Atlanta, Ga.
I managed to get that box onto the platform without busting her, and then I sets down on top of her awful weak.
"What"s the matter?" asts the feller I was with.