Conrad Aiken

King Coffin

“I think you are wise, and I shall mar my philosophy with no more murders. If, indeed, I have killed him; for I assure you that beyond administering the poison to his wretched body I have done nothing. Perhaps he is not dead. Can you hear his heart beating?”

“I can hear the spoons of my children beating on their empty platters!”

“Is it like that with you? Poor devil! Oh, poor, poor devil! Philosophers should have no wives, no children, no homes, and no hearts.”

— RICHARD MIDDLETON

I The Particular Occasion

In the prime assurance of his youth, in the fresh arrogance of his wisdom, and power in wisdom, with a sense of his extreme handsomeness, if not indeed beauty (for Gerta had said more than once that he was beautiful, and his own mirror had pleasantly corroborated this) Jasper Ammen leaned from the sixth floor window and projected his own image upon the world. In particular, he projected it against the sunset: a more melancholy, and therefore more pleasant, form of this occupation, and one in which he frequently indulged. The sunset lay long and level and bright-banded above the hills of Belmont and Mount Auburn. Against a streak of white light, horizontal and cold, the black tower of the cemetery marked the presence, or the absence, of Henry James; to the right of it, slowly darkening, as the evening deepened to mystery, ran the irregular line of trees toward Belmont. And as he leaned his cheek on his left hand he felt once again how all this scene, this width and depth of air and light, was becoming himself. This was all Jasper Ammen, a singular magnification or distillation of his own essence, it was himself gone abroad for the greater exercise of his subtlety and power. The tower was his strength, the trees were his strength, the evolving and changing of the light were merely, as it were, the play of his thought over an earth everywhere his own; and the clear abyss of twilit sky, the lucid profundity into which he now figured himself as looking not upward but directly and amazingly downward, was simply his own mind. Below him, across the little street, the horse chestnut tree was uncurling its first soft-russet fingers of leaf: in another three weeks, it would blossom, and this too he felt as a precise and surer emanation of himself. The gesture would be as simple as his now taking out his pipe: as his remembering the sight of the folded newspaper protruding from his letter box in the hall downstairs: or the letter from Sandbach which just perceptibly stiffened his side pocket. Sandbach, like the chestnut blossom, could wait: one could curl a handsome lip at Sandbach, one could defer or dismiss him as an inferior part of oneself, keep him at a distance, measure him from afar with an omnipotent and all-understanding eye. It was exactly like viewing and appraising one’s own past: or even despising it; for the past should always be cut ruthlessly away, allowed to fall from one, remembered not for its leaves but for its seeds.…

In this sense he despised the gradual sentimental dislimning of the spring sunset: without any sense of loss, he watched it go, gave it to the evening, allowed it to drown slowly in his own receptive darkness. He felt his face assuming its habitual expression of proud contempt, the feeling as of looking down at something very small and unimportant from a Himalayan summit. He became increasingly conscious of his high cheekbones, his narrowed green eyes, the sleepy superciliousness of his fixed gaze, the curtness of his mouth: but then he relaxed, and permitted himself to play another, and equally habitual, part, one which he often used (and to effect) in social gatherings: the part of the poet, — detached, remote, inscrutable: the Zarathustrian prophet. Ridiculous, to consider how few people knew enough of themselves to be able to use, for such social effect, their own presence, their own bodies! An elementary mistake, a fault of adolescence, if not of childhood. To know one’s moroseness, and to use it, one’s meanness and to use it, one’s hatred, and to project it vigorously and without mercy — this was, after all, only the beginning, only the beginning. One should know with scientific minuteness one’s exact appearance from every angle — the back, the sides, the look of the shoulders as they turn away, the value of one’s six-feet-two, the rhythm of one’s gait. There must be no accidents! But above all, one must value one’s capacity for hate, and use it with the finest justice. And one’s deliberate rudenesses must be carefully relished.

Bringing back his gaze from the deployed subtleties and cold venoms of the faded sunset, he turned it shortly downward toward the two flat roofs which were immediately below him. On the nearer, beyond the cement runway of the garage, a young man was sitting in a deck chair: one of The Crimson editors. His head was thrown back, his arms were lifted behind his head, a book was open on his knees. Examined, he was at once understood. A faithful and earnest joiner and belonger: a member of society. To see through him, disemboweling all his little clipped ambitions with a single penetrating eye, was as easy as it would be, from this window, to shoot him; and to consider the justice of the metaphor was only to weigh, pleasurably, one’s sense of power in a situation as superior in altitude as it was in consciousness. The young fool was comprehended, or killed, without knowing it. He had stopped reading not because it was as yet too dark, but in a twilight mood of narcissism: something had passed into him from the opened pages of that book, and he was now weakly luxuriating in that something: he was as helpless as a schoolgirl. To demonstrate this helplessness and also to prove to himself that he was not afraid of a direct action, Jasper whistled. The head turned round a little, then turned up, the eyes were surprised, the mouth was slightly opened — in short, the whole expression was foolish. The young man stared upward for a moment, but finding that his gaze was met without sign and without discomposure, turned away again, embarrassed. He was blushing. He then closed his book, rose, and walked very self-consciously to the steps which led down into the building on the far side. The dignity of his disappearance was terrific.

The flat roof beyond was a narrower and longer one, covered with tar paper and gravel; and to look at it was to observe, of course, that the cast-iron chimney pipe, at the back, had been restored to its upright position. An excellent minor example of the value of habitual observation: and it had given him pleasure to recognize in the street the woman who owned the house (merely by the way she walked) and to inform her (she not knowing him from Adam) that her chimney had fallen on the roof in the snow and might prove a source of danger. She had looked at him as if he were mad. So that was why her kitchen fire hadn’t been drawing properly! She was still saying this, from beneath her umbrella, and staring, when he bowed and walked away.…

Quarter to seven.

He took Sandbach’s letter from his pocket, the blue envelope, tapped it against his long thumb, and walked along the linoleumed corridor toward his room. He walked quickly, with a slight self-conscious scuffing of the heels, pleased with the total effect (which he had often studied in street mirrors and shop windows) of graceful casualness, and also with the echoed sound of the light iambics: his shoes were expensive. Arrived at his door, he hesitated. Sandbach might be inside, or Gerta, or both — not that it much mattered. Ostensibly, they would have come to take him to the meeting at Tremont Temple, they would chatter about that, nervously no doubt, and of course Sandbach would as usual, in that oblique sniffing way of his, be hinting about money for the sacred cause of anarchism or the strikers at Haverhill. But beneath all that would be the real sense of crisis—the sense of the personal and psychological crisis which he himself had so carefully constructed; and he was not quite sure whether, supposing Gerta and Sandbach had now decided to make common cause, he wanted to see them together or separately. They had spent the entire day looking for him, they had left notes, they had repeatedly telephoned, Sandbach had finally sent his special delivery letter; it had all gone off just as he had willed it and planned it; and he himself had remained hidden in the University Theater all afternoon, enjoying, in that seclusion, the muffled sense of their frightened activity, while he analyzed the social function of Popeye the Sailor Man. The universal Oedipus complex, no doubt? But it would perhaps be better not to see them until immediately before the anarchist meeting, when it would of course be impossible for them to be personal, to be anything but professional — to meet them lightly and coldly there, and to make it clear at once that he did not intend to have any disgusting emotional dealings with them, none whatever. Not that he wasn’t, of course, profoundly curious about their little mutual fever, their cooperative eagerness, and their desire to turn toward him a joint expression of bright and sympathetic explanation — not at all! But that pleasure he was already, and deliciously, tasting. What they must learn was that he could intrude, but not they.… Hearing no sound from the room, he entered.

One candle had been lighted on the white mantel, beneath the mask of Nietzsche, and against it was propped a note from Gerta. Jasper my dear — I have waited here all afternoon in your hushed little chamber, hoping to have a private word with you before you see Sandbach. I have the feeling, as no doubt you intend, that you are avoiding me: of course I understand that, for if you’ll forgive me for saying so I do know you pretty well. But don’t you think you could overdo it? There are features which might better be discussed without Sandbach — I mean, you and me. I make no preposterous claims: you ought to realize that I respect your privacy and individualism and don’t want to infringe. But my dear, human nature is not as easy as that, there are obligations — well, of a shadowy sort; you could find a better word. It’s quite all right, of course, and as it should be, you needn’t be so afraid, but what I suggest is that what is private for us — you and me — might be a little bruised if Sandbach is allowed to participate at the outset. Do you see what I mean — or would you regard this as a claim? I am not going to the meeting. But I shall be in my room all evening, and I wish you would come there when the fireworks are over. I gather you are going to resign, from what S says, and he is hurt, and of course is divided between that and anger, and also tries to comfort himself by saying that you were never really sincere anyway. He thinks you are just an esthete, and that anarchism is no more important for you than the taste you exercised in the decorating of this very chaste and epicene room. It is chaste and epicene — good lord, yes! Gerta.

Good lord, yes! Gerta.

So that was what Sandbach thought — or said.

With his hat still on, he sat down at the little red table, on which was a blue and orange square of Chinese embroidery, and looked across the room at the window. The curtain ring, hanging motionless, made a sharp little oval against the pale sky, beyond which, on the roof of the A. D. Club, was a rapidly spinning chimney pot. Chaste and epicene? It was exactly what Julius Toppan was always saying downstairs, Gerta had probably been discussing it with him, and come to think of it that identical remark had appeared in Julius’s diary. That was a week ago. There must, by this time, be several more entries in Julius’s diary, entries about himself — it was time he went in and read them. Perhaps by now Julius had definitely reached the conclusion — to which he already tended — that he was crazy: he would certainly think so if he knew that his diary was one of Jasper’s chief sources of entertainment. An abuse of hospitality? of trust? But Julius knew his views about these things, knew that he proposed to live beyond ordinary morals, so it hardly mattered. If one’s brains could be picked by others, let them be picked.

Yes, Gerta had been discussing his taste with Julius, she had been to Toppan’s room, perhaps several times, perhaps today — that was worth knowing and noting, it was a significant little light, and of course the import of it was clear enough — she too was trying, in her little way, to surround him, to triangulate him into view, and that was admirable enough too, although bound to be futile. It was all a sort of conspiracy of fright, with which also a little designingness and greed was mixed: Sandbach looking for his money, Julius for his “influence,” the secret of his power, Gerta for his love. The fright was perhaps genuine as far as Gerta was concerned, she genuinely and unselfishly — questionable, though — liked him; anyway, she was concerned, a little foolishly so, about his sanity, and of course had to run to and fro discussing him with her friends and acquaintances: little realizing that on a lower and. simpler plane of morals this would have been very reprehensible. In fact, it was reprehensible on her plane, but not on his. The dear little fool, playing desperately at a losing game! And so earnest about it, too.

He opened Sandbach’s letter.

Gosh, you certainly are an elusive cuss, I’ve been pussyfooting all over town after you to tell you that a Chicago member will be there tonight and that as the attendance will be very small I hoped you would come and also that you would perhaps refrain from throwing any bombs of a private nature, they could be postponed for a better occasion — unless you have really decided to clear out. From what Gottlieb said at the C Bookshop the other day on the Hill, I gather you have finally decided to take an individualist turn and go the whole metaphysical or Hegelian Hog and coddle your ego in the footsteps of Max Stirner. Maybe you were only kidding, but in the light of some of our talks I can see it might be logical for you, though you can’t expect me to applaud. I have always hoped you would become one of our most active and useful members, would really help us, as you are in a position to do, not that you haven’t already helped us a lot. But what I mean is, please don’t choose tonight for any bust-up, it would be a little impolite to Breault (Chicago), if you don’t mind. I also wanted to see you about Gerta, you know how things stand there, and I just wanted to assure you that there isn’t and hasn’t been and won’t be any treachery. S.

Treachery by Sandbach? A contradiction in terms, for one could only be betrayed by an equal, never by an inferior. A treachery foreseen and understood, or even to some extent fomented, was not a treachery, it was simply one’s own action: and to explain this to Sandbach would be his natural punishment, or rather, humiliation. And Gerta’s too, though Gerta perhaps did understand it, and was (at any rate partially) an equal?…

Just the same, he quite recognized his own quick anger, as he tore one strip and then another from the edge of Sandbach’s ill-written letter and laid the strips along the table before him: it was necessary to be angry with Sandbach’s “belongingness,” his politicalness, his Jewish mixture of guile and affection and effrontery: his parasitism. It was necessary to be angry, but to be only privately angry. Publicly, only a gentle contempt, only the natural expression of a natural superiority: the mere exercise of personal presence. And this was easy enough. One simply looked down at little Sandbach, one smiled, one wore one’s clothes, one lighted one’s pipe, one entered or left a room, and Sandbach knew what one meant. Sandbach knew that one knew all about his dirty little sycophantic hand-rubbing soul, quite as clearly as one knew that he seldom changed his underclothes and socks. He would resent this, and would scheme an answer to it, he was always wanting to make, as it were, an injurious little place for himself in the souls of his superiors, just as now he was no doubt enormously pleased with himself for his conquest — permitted, and partial — of Gerta. His ascent to Gerta was seen by himself as a climb over dangerous scaffolding towards Jasper? And now the moment had come, perhaps, to kick him down, to kick him in the face, but precisely by not bothering to kick him. Beyond that, he had no importance, and it was absurd to be angry at all: except as one was consciously aware of one’s anger with oneself.

But Gerta was more difficult, Gerta was deeper. Gerta had a real virtue of her own, or a partial one, she had in her the power to challenge. She was challenging him now.

He dropped the strips of Sandbach’s letter into the metal wastebasket, forgetfully, and with his hat pushed back on his head went to the mantelpiece and examined the mask of Nietzsche; and it was exactly as if he were examining Gerta’s challenge. Lighted thus from below by the little calm candle flame, the mad face looked madder than ever, demonic, voracious: it was the face of a revenger, the eaten one who wanted to eat. “Oh, my brethren, am I then cruel?… Everything of today — it falleth, it decayeth; who would preserve it! But I–I wish also to push it!” Yes, one must separate oneself. And Gerta’s challenge was just there — it was the last line of her defense of “belongingness” that thus she would invoke this thing she wanted to call “love.” It was her only obvious weakness? For otherwise—

The sense of her came immediately into this room, too immediately, as if she were herself entering and taking possession, her face was between his and the mask, somber and sibyline, but mischievous as well, and as he turned away, toward the window, it was difficult to suppose that she had not herself moved also, to stand there against the last of the sunset, as she was often in the habit of standing. She was decidedly more difficult, he was always thus projecting himself in her image and with a weakly disguised tenderness, it must stop. Take care lest a parasite ascend with you! But the parasite was actually, in such a case, simply oneself — one was oneself only the cage for the bird, the container; the cause of one’s hatred was not without but within; it was not therefore a question of getting rid of Sandbach or Gerta, not at all, but of getting rid of one’s need. If one could not dismiss them, one could perhaps replace them with symbols more innocent: with this mask of Nietzsche: with the brass Russian teapot on the window sill, dark against the pale sky, the little Woolworth cage of glass hung from its spout: the seashell: the blue-green ginger jar. Could one not successfully deploy oneself in these simpler images? and thus keep one’s virtue harder and clearer, readier for the fine purity of hate? less roiled?

— Do you ever feel — he suddenly said aloud, thrusting his hands deep in his pockets — that the whole world is nothing but a kind of pale fantasm?

He stood still, a little surprised and perhaps embarrassed by the abrupt and vibrant sound of his voice, a little ashamed of the conscious dramatization, but then he smiled and saw how ridiculous it would be to do anything but surrender to an impulse which was obviously genuine and in any case very moving.

— And especially people. Especially people. With what person or persons, Jasper, do you ever manage to establish even for the tiniest fraction of a second anything like a reality of understanding? Good God, no. They are nothing but shadows.

At first he had kept his voice low, but now he allowed it to rise in volume and pitch. He walked across the room to the Chinese waterfall, looked at it, then returned to the window.

— That waterfall. And this seashell, if I touch it — it gives itself to me without asking anything in return. The truth is, you’re alone, every one is against you, and that, even if you don’t like it, is all for the best! Yes, you’ve got to like it. They all want to kill you, they all want to kill the spirit. Isn’t that true?

He stopped in the middle of the room and stood still, staring out of the window.

— Chaste and epicene! There it is, by God, there it is — that was Gerta’s little murder. And that’s the way it always is. We go around trying just like that to hurt people, to revenge ourselves, but always, like that, dishonestly and obliquely and crookedly and for private reasons! Good God, how dirty it all is. And how dirty I am. But I’m damned if I’ll be dirty. I’m damned if I will. I must be pure.

The silence, when his voice stopped, seemed almost self-conscious. He controlled an impulse to look quickly right and left, the motive of which was quite apparent (namely, to see if any one had overheard him), and examined with sharp despair, and then with amusement, the singular fact that one could not thus even talk aloud to oneself without feeling unnatural about it. Or, what was worse, much worse, without being, or becoming, unnatural in the thing itself. One had to become eloquent even in addressing remarks to oneself — that was it — and it was disgusting. And if that was so, was it perhaps also so that even in one’s thinking—

But the fantasm notion was true. It must be that every one felt that — here could be nothing private or delusory about it — it was true that no human being could ever achieve a real contact with anything or anyone. And in a world of unrealities, how could there be rights or wrongs or obligations? or injuries or thefts? how either join or separate, when there could be no question of touch? Suum cuique. His thought came round on itself, he was puzzled, frowned, looked down into the wastebasket, at the scraps of Sandbach’s letter, saw the word “bomb,” the word “expect.” If it was all as scattered and meaningless as that, as intangible, or almost intangible, then the only course was to extend oneself violently outward, to thrust everywhere, to occupy the world entirely with one’s own entire length.…

He went into the little bedroom, turned on the electric light, and looked at his face in the dressing-table mirror, turning it first to the right and then to the left. It was an intelligent face, and the eyes looked back at him steadily, but also with an unanswerable question. Yes, it was a noble face, and fine, as Gerta had said — the conscious end of the conscious world. The room was gray and pictureless, there was no ornament save a small bronze Buddha on a scarlet shelf. This he could see behind him in the mirror as he began passing the comb backward through the dark luxury of his hair.

II The Idea Germinates

He looked in through the wide window of the Merle as he passed, and particularly at the chair by the table in the corner, behind the end of the marble soda fountain; the impulse was the familiar one of recapitulation, the desire to see himself sitting there, where he had sat half an hour before, eating his supper of sandwiches. Julius Toppan was now sitting at the same table, and was looking straight at him, and nodded, half raising his hand with a knife in it. The gesture, the situation, his eating there in such a position as to command a view of the pedestrians outside, was a flagrant imitation, of course, and deserved the rebuke of a “cut”: accordingly he passed the window without any sign of recognition, nothing but a cool stare and the merest trace of an ironic smile. So much for flattery, so much for Toppan. He could return to his law books, he could make a new entry about that madman Jasper in his diary. Saw Ammen tonight and am more than ever convinced the man is a megalomaniac: he evidently thinks he is the only liberated and intelligent person alive. He is gradually closing himself in.…

The necessity for recapitulation — yes, this must be recognized, and tonight it seemed especially necessary — the well-known backward glance, the embracing gesture with which one must gather one’s past, one’s collection of identities, in order to take the next forceful step forward into the future. The Buddha, for example, was still there behind him, in the mirror, on its scarlet shelf, and with the Buddha, as he walked along Massachusetts Avenue past the lighted shopwindows, came the brief experiment with the hardening doctrine of yoga, the deep breathings, the concentration on the thought of drowning, the concept of the individual. But other things must be freely admitted as well — if one took a dime from one’s pocket for the subway fare one must see it as a symbol of much sore history, behind it came the image of his father sitting at a mahogany desk in Saint Louis, his arms extended sideways on the desk, both fists tightly clenched, his gray face suddenly darkened with hatred and surrender. And not only surrender, but sundering — their hatred for each other had at last become outspoken, had been seen by both of them as positively a kind of psychological food without which they could no longer live. And his father’s words, too, hung before him on the platform of the subway, amongst the cement columns and slot-machines, above the newsstand, against the lighted windows of the waiting train. Unfortunately, I told your mother, before she died, that I would give you an allowance, and make you independent: otherwise, take my word for it, I wouldn’t give you a cent, not a cent. What you need, and what you’ve always needed, is discipline. The words effected the final silence between them, the silence which had in fact always been the inevitable outcome, the natural silence as of a profound chasm of misunderstanding between them. In the silence, he had come east, he had begun to build in it his new life, had been able to turn round on himself for the first time in order to discover, spherically, his own dimensions and reach, like a man learning to swim. It had given him room for his bitterness, he had been learning to hit and hurt: and that was good. The fact that his father still sat there, his fists pressed hard on the mahogany desk, didn’t really matter. It was entirely natural, just as his mother’s death had been natural, or the insanity, so progressive and orderly, of brother Kay. No less natural than his own detective curiosity about this progressive insanity, his secret collection of photographs of Kay at all the different stages, beginning at the age of three, the sharp-eyed sharp-faced child who gazed with such burning intelligence over the back of the gilt-knobbed chair, ending with the fat and sleepy and stupid face of twenty-seven, from which all awareness of reality had suddenly faded. A gross face, of which the secret was a cunning defense of a private idea. The hands curiously small and birdlike, and always picking.

The bell rang, the doors slid softly shut, recoiled from rubber flanges, shut again more firmly, the motors began their ascending whine, and his eye rose to the long line of advertisements above the porcelain handholds. A salesgirl was saying — wash it with Ivory. When years steal away the gold, restore the golden hair of girlhood. Golden Hair Wash. Priceless the life of a child.

The detective impulse, the spying mania — it would be possible to evolve the natural history and origin of that, one could develop it ad lib., trace it from childhood up, but what would be the use, it was all quite clear, it could be seen very neatly and comprehensively in perspective: the reading of forbidden books, the exploration of forbidden streets, the cultivation of forbidden acquaintances, the special sharp delight in all duplicity, above all the really exquisite pleasure in knowing more than one was supposed to know. Reading, for instance, the doctor’s letters about Kay, the reports of the teachers and psychiatrists; watching the anxiety of father and mother; observing the subtle deterioration of Kay. More recently, his new game (and what a joke that it was Julius Toppan who had put the idea in his head) of picking out a stranger in the street and following him — but again it was sufficient simply to note this, and to see that the Jasper was the same Jasper, the same superior consciousness, the same one whose perceptions had the invisibility of extreme subtlety. It was the Jasper who loved to keep secrets, and who prevented his friends from becoming intimate: who had a kind of genius for dividing up his daily life into separate departments, so that no one individual knew anything more of him than the one department to which he had been assigned. Very satisfactory, it gave one an enormous advantage with people if one could thus play on their defeated curiosity: it gave him the whip hand with Sandbach and Gerta, even now they were beside themselves with frustration, though they didn’t like to admit it, and were clearly upset because they didn’t know what he was going to do. They felt something impending, they knew they were in the midst of a crisis, they suspected danger, but what shape it would have they couldn’t guess. Nor whether perhaps the whole thing might not turn out to be a joke.

— The post office buys the stamps?

— Yes.

— And they give the girls that space?

— Yes.

— She has three windows?

— Yes, she has to sell a hundred dollars’ worth of stamps—

— Well, I don’t know, I don’t understand it.

— Why should the post office—

— and a rake-off on every stamp she sells—

He took out his pipe, looked to see if it was empty, put it to his mouth and blew out the little bubble of caught moisture in the stem. Yes, he had them on the run, and all by the simplest turn of the wrist — a postcard to Gerta, saying dislocation number one, another to Sandbach, saying dislocation number two, and then the quick little insult to Gottlieb at the C Bookshop, in the presence of Mrs. Taber, she standing there astounded, her mouth open, the gaps in her teeth showing, the ragged little feather duster in her hand. Amateurs, you are all sickening little amateurs, not one of you has any guts, not one of you would have the guts to act alone, to take any risk by yourselves. It’s all play-acting, exactly like the tiresome tepid little immoralities of Beacon Hill and Fayette Street. No brains, no pride. Just rats. You go round together like rats.

— Say you are selling light wines—

— Well, now listen, how would it be if—

— That to me is outrageous, why should they pay that woman a rake-off, it’s the cheapest service—

Like all human situations, the thing was a composite, the elements in it were on at least two different planes, if not more; above or below his abandonment of federalist anarchism, his abandonment of the “cause” and the Boston Group, was his sharp warning to them that there was to be a personal change as well, that he had risen above them and was henceforth consigning them to a lower circle. It was this which they found painful and bewildering, their affections and pride were hurt, Gerta’s affections, Sandbach’s pride, he was hurrying them into a defensive alliance which they both found humiliating, and insofar as they had thought they possessed him they now felt exposed and defrauded. Certainly they were feeling rushed, they had been caught unaware by the sudden action, the unexpected psychic speed, it was as if he had forced them into an emotional stammer; but the question was, whether he himself could now stand outside the results of his action, avoid being caught in his own whirl, get away in time to a higher and safer ground. The question was also whether he knew quite where the hurry was going to lead, and quite why it had happened, or happened so suddenly. The sense of hurry was at any rate acute, he had felt it mounting day by day and hour by hour, as if there were somewhere a destination (a little vague) to which he must go with the utmost directness and despatch: the sense as of a map spread out before him, and a watch ticking excitedly in his hand, and nearer every moment the sound of a coming invasion. He was going to do something, he must do something, there must be the final action by which he would have set the seal on his complete freedom. To escape the company of rats, to express the profundity of his contempt — to kill a rat—!

His eyes rose slowly and heavily from the thought, he saw the knees of the man before him, a loose thread, the edge of the soiled and worn coat, he heard the man’s voice saying post office, in the post office, observed the little fold of shirt protruding between trousers and waistcoat, resented the oppressive nearness of the strange human body, and got up from his seat angrily and abruptly. He pushed contemptuously between the two men, sundering them, was aware of their turning heads, looked back at them with a little smile as he squared his shoulders through the crowd, and pressed toward the opening door. A moment later, as he walked quickly along the cement platform, he found himself laughing, and slapping his hand against his side, he felt a little drunk, a little drugged, for if his eyes had risen heavily from the thought he had himself risen as heavily, it was almost as if he had experienced a slight blow on the head, a concussion. Something had happened, something important had happened! It was always like that. It always came like that. There was just exactly that kind of accidental conjunction of idea and fact — the thought occurring precisely at a moment when the mere physical nearness of a stranger’s human body was beginning to oppress and stifle him, making itself felt as an unwarrantable and disgusting intrusion. The feeling of hatred, intolerable hatred, had come like a flash and had revealed to him as never before the rightness and terribleness of the deed: as under lightning, the whole landscape leapt out of darkness in green and maplike and logical minuteness. The mere presence of the strange human body had shown him not only what he wanted but exactly why he wanted it. And not only that, but also how right had been the idea.

The discovery, as he ascended on the escalator and emerged under the red brick tower at Park Street, had an odd effect on him. He looked round him with a sharp sense of relief and detachment, he felt alone and tall and superior amongst the disorderly crowd of nocturnal pedestrians, and almost indeed as if he belonged to a different race or species; and as he stood still by the corner, observing first one face and then another, one hand jingling pennies in his pocket, the other holding his unlighted pipe, it occurred to him that a cat must feel something like this: a cat alone in a cellar, sitting perhaps on the top of a flour barrel, and watching the naïve and unconscious antics of mice. Close at hand, in an Independent taxi, the driver was reading The Traveler. Red Sox Win Slugfest with Senators. The solemn face was chewing gum. A woman stepped out into the street in front of the cab, paused, looked into her bag, checked her balance as if to come back, then quickly resumed her way. A voice behind him said, the clock says quarter to nine, my watch must be slow, and two young men, wearing identical brown felt hats, approached the taxi with obvious intent. The driver leaned forward to hear the address, Lenox Hotel, clinked the flag down, and in a moment the two felt hats, behind the door of the cab, described a pair of parallel curves round the corner into Tremont Street and were gone. It would be easy and amusing to follow them? And there was now, all of a sudden, plenty of time — for with the sense of relief had also come a curious alteration of his sense of hurry — as if the hurry need no longer be transacted externally, but could become, and without pressure, concentric, an affair of his own, a mere matter of revolving within or around himself. No, the time had now come, as he might have foreseen, for a careful weighing, a careful and cautious inspection; a period of leisure and close scrutiny; and if there was still an urgency, such as was now causing his heart to beat a little more rapidly, it was wholly private. Between his own world and the world outside, a peculiar division had now arrived, and if time still existed importantly for himself, it had no longer any important existence elsewhere: in his own kingdom, the kingdom of thought, he could move as rapidly as he liked, stay as long as he liked, the outside world would meanwhile stand still, and he could rejoin it whenever he wished, and exactly at the point at which he had left it. The situation, or series of situations, which he had created, would remain as if suspended until he chose to resolve them: Gerta would be waiting. Sandbach would be waiting, everything would hang motionless in a kind of timeless limbo. So clear, so beautiful, was this impression, this divination, that he paused to give it visual form. It was like the story of the sleeping beauty — a whole world suddenly frozen into stillness — or the tranced figures of the Grecian Urn. The anarchist meeting in Tremont Temple would still be there, when he got there after his voyage upon voyage round the world, Sandbach would still be holding the black and sticky stump of a cigar in yellow fingers, and saying yes I think maybe, yes I think maybe but do you agree with me, Toppan would still be taking a safety razor blade from his pocketbook to sharpen a smooth red pencil, Gerta would be standing at her window to look at the Charles River Basin, a book opened before her on the window sill, an apple in her hand. They would be listening, they would be waiting, and for what? To be destroyed. To be touched, and waked, and destroyed.

He crossed Tremont Street, entered the drug store, found an empty telephone booth by the front window, and began dialing with the stem of his pipe. In the next booth a voice was saying but I can’t, but you see it would already be too late, I’m way in here at Park Street, a woman’s voice, peevish and whining, softened and made more nasal by the wooden partition. He half turned to listen.

— Hello?

— Ammen speaking. I wanted to be clear—

— Oh, Jasper; did you get my note?

Gerta’s voice was anxious, a trifle high-pitched. She was self-conscious.

— I wanted to be clear that there would be no one else there.

— Of course. If there’s any one else I’ll send them away. I thought that would be understood, my dear.

— All right. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes or half an hour. I don’t expect to loiter at the meeting, if I stay at all.

— Very well, if—

He cut off the phrase by hanging up the receiver. No doubt she was now saying Jasper, hello, Jasper, hello, hello, while already he clasped the brass handle of the door. He listened again to the voice in the adjacent booth — but I said I was in here at Park Street, yes, at Park Street — and then went out. Like all fragmentary or uncompleted remarks, as in fact like Gerta’s unfinished phrase, it had an oddly ominous ring, a ring of fatality; and one’s sense of power arose precisely from the fact that one could thus cut them off oneself. As one should.

And what now should be said to little Sandbach?

He walked rapidly with the beginnings of the sentences, touched them against his teeth lightly with the cool pipe stem, let them down with him from the curb in Bromfield Street to pick them up again on the other side, allowed them to be dispersed by the lurid placard of announcements in the lobby of the Temple and to fall behind him on the wide stairs. His shadow rose huge and high-shouldered on the bare wall of the second story, dislocated itself sideways, raised an immensely long arm, and vanished against the open door, from which came the sound of several voices in animated talk. His shadow had, in fact, gone in ahead of him, and he followed it into the room with the feeling of having an immense advantage.

There were half a dozen irregular little rows of folding chairs, and beyond these, by the little platform, Sandbach was talking with a few people, only a handful, it was clear that the meeting was a complete failure. Mrs. Taber was there, smiling her perpetual sweet smile under a pale purple bonnet, that immortal bonnet, and her husband the shyster lawyer, and Mrs. Hays the amateur psychoanalyst.

— Here he is now.

Sandbach crooked his elbow and pointed at him, pointed with his cigar, the dozen faces turned and looked at him with silent appraisal. They all seemed more than ever small and shabby, ridiculous, unreal, and as he bore down on them with his six feet two, stooping slightly forward, he was aware of playing Gulliver in Lilliput, his shadow was over them like a vast wing.

Sandbach, as always when he was a little frightened, smiled too much and looked cunning, his face seemed to be all width and no height, the eyes and mouth made long insinuating horizontals. Difficult to say where the Asiatic began and the Semitic left off, it was very fawning and subtle, no doubt about that, one could see in him the uneasy fertility which attracted Gerta.

— What do you think, Ammen, what do you say, the meeting is so small, it is a pity, this is our comrade Breault, shake hands with him, we thought as it was so small we wouldn’t try to have any speeches, but just have a little talk together, maybe. We could all go to my room in Allston Street. If you could come along, we were waiting for you.

Mrs. Taber put her skinny little hand on his arm, and cooed.

— Now do come, Mr. Ammen, I’m sure we need a little of your fine young cynicism!

He looked over their heads toward the windows, then round the bare and sordid little room with its air of cheap varnish, he remembered the excitement of his first meeting here, when it had seemed that something real and vigorous was being done, something dangerous and profound. It had suddenly shrunk to the size of his hand.

— No, Sandbach, I told you in my postcard that I was finished, I’m sorry, I just dropped in to tender my formal resignation. I’m afraid I no longer see any use in it.

— I see. He no longer sees any use in it. If he ever did!

— The sneer is gratuitous, but I had foreseen it.

— You had foreseen my sneer? I made no sneer, I think I merely stated a fact.

Mr. Taber began laughing offensively, then turned his back and walked away. Mrs. Hays, dressed in black, and as usual trying to look sibyline, put her head on one side and smiled condescendingly. Beneath their anger and hurt pride, of course, was their disgusting disappointment in losing his money, it was his own money which had paid for Breault. It was as if they were his employees, his servants, and he had dismissed them, their anger and hatred was slavish and cringing, they were clinging together against him.

— I didn’t come here to argue with you, but simply to make a statement. Unfortunately I find that neither your ideas nor your feelings have any reality or importance whatever. I’m afraid I was mistaken in you — or mistaken in myself, which comes to the same thing.

— Aren’t you carrying your subjective idealism pretty far? Now, Breault, you can see what happens when young men read too much Berkeley.

— I can assure Mr. Breault that your concern about my reading doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I think you’re all a little grotesque, it seems to me a little shameful that I ever thought I had anything in common with you.

— Very well, I don’t think we need to say anything further.

— You aren’t dismissing me—I’m dismissing you. I’ll be grateful, but not excessively so, if you’ll take my name off your mailing list, and send back my books. Good night.

He looked at Breault, who was embarrassed and blushing, and felt that he hadn’t yet done full justice to the situation. He laughed and put on his hat, then turned to Sandbach again.

— If you only knew how funny you are!

— Is anything to be gained from bad manners or impudence?

— Manners are of the mob, Sandbach, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

He swung his back to them and walked toward the door, a woman’s voice said why he thinks he’s God Almighty, Sandbach and Breault had begun laughing very loudly, somebody whistled turkey-in-the-straw. From the door he half turned and waved his hand. For a moment all the faces were quite still, it was like a photograph, and his final impression of them was that they were all hungry.

III The Background

The evening had deepened, with the completion of this action, but again it was only as if the evening were a mere projection of himself, and its deepening, or his own deepening, was of course due to the very fact that the action had not been entirely satisfactory. It would have been better if he had made a formal address, a formal and drastic analysis: if he had dissected their pitifulness and futility before their very eyes, shamed them, horrified them. He could have quoted Martin—“I am sick of this oozing democracy. There must be something crystalline and insoluble left in democratic America. Somewhere there must be people with sharp edges that cut when they are pressed too hard, people who are still solid, who have impenetrable depths in them and hard facets which reflect the sunlight. They are the hope of democracy, these infusible ones.” To hell with their crowd-mindedness, their weak and slavish dependence on each other! What had their little anarchism to do with this? It was a contradiction in terms, an absurdity, they were themselves absurdities, and their unfitness was as clear in their sheeplike instinct of banding themselves together as in their sheeplike faces. Yes, this would have been better, he ought to have done it, but as usual his own sense of hurry — was it that? — had impeded him, his anger had produced the usual short circuit. At such moments one’s mere animal disgust became paramount, it was impossible to do anything but turn one’s back, it was a choice between that and killing them.

To kill them, yes: what was necessary was a machine gun.

The beautiful terribleness of the deed!

He stood still in the dark canyon of Beacon Street, between the somber stone walls of his own canyon, at the bottom of his own sky, at the center of his own world, and aimed his pipe stem like a gun across the paving stones toward a small crowd which stood before one of Houghton and Dutton’s windows. The fascinating impulse was already quivering in his index finger. The stupid backs were cut in two by death’s mechanical rattlesnake chatter, the plate glass window was drilled shrilly from side to side, the falling glass made an irregular tinkling and chiming, and then everything was again silent. It was toward a group of dead men that he crossed the street, it was a group of corpses that he joined before the window, and looking over the heads he saw that the window had been turned into a little zoo, it was a cage of monkeys. A dozen little gray monkeys, with long ratlike tails, skipped, sat, or swung, stared sadly, peered out of kennels, or made rapid circuits of the interior, scarcely seeming to touch floor, wall, trapeze or platform in their soundless flight. Close to the window, in the foreground, oblivious of the onlookers, one of them picked with fastidious little black fingers at the posterior of another, and tasted what he found: the crowd laughed obscenely, face turned grinning toward grinning face, their animal blood thickened and darkened. It was Sandbach observing the obscenity of Sandbach, the foulness was irremediable.

Sandbach, speaking of treachery!

He turned away, up the hill, in the deepened evening, the darkened world, felt in every direction and dimension the swift growing and extension of new structure, new thrusts and explorations into the infinite, but all of it a little crazy, perhaps, a little headlong and awry. Why was this? The affair of the meeting had been, certainly, only a partial success, it was in some measure because he had gone there with his plans unformulated, with nothing but his anger and contempt, and therefore it had got beyond his control: or at any rate, his control had not been quite perfect. This remained tethered to him, as by threads or eyebeams, as if himself, the puppetteer, had become subtly and dangerously entangled in the threads of his own puppets, could not quite escape from them, found their voices still at his ears, like gnats. The meeting was still there, in Tremont Temple, Sandbach was still breathing thickly down his nose at Breault, Mrs. Taber cooed her professional old-lady’s sweetness, they stood in a group round the varnished platform and chattered about manifestos and propaganda and the founding of a paper or the revival of The Voice of the People, in Saint Louis, or The Anarchist, in Boston, or whether the No Hat Club might be re-established, or they should join the Socialists, secretly, and operate “from within.” Now perhaps they were rustling down the stairs, they were saying his name, Ammen, and again Ammen, laughing angrily, they walked in twos and threes into Pemberton Square and past the dark courthouse, under the dark windows made foul with the piled nests of pigeons. They must be dismissed, they had been dismissed, their path lay now at right angles with his. They had gone to Sandbach’s bleak room in Allston Street, to look adoringly at the portrait of Bakunin which hung above the fireplace of smooth-carven white marble, relic of a capitalist past.

Dismissed. His fumbling amateurish past dismissed, his slave-self strangled and cast out. He would be an infusible one. He said aloud — egoism is the essence of the noble soul, every star is a similar egoist, I revolve like Nietzsche proudly amongst my proud equals. But then from the street and the houses, the hill of houses around him, came the ugly shapes of his amateurish past, the sordid ill-directed history of two years, the voices and faces of Sandbach, Gottlieb, Toppan, Mrs. Taber, Gerta (but with exceptions), the frequenters of the esthetic little candlelit restaurants on the hill, the shadowy denizens of the radical “parties,” smelly young women and unwashed young men. It had been a mistake, a miscalculation, but need one be too concerned about it? It was all there, no doubt, it was a part of him, this alien city was a part of him, was in a sense himself, it could be accepted and dismissed. It had now become simply a background, it had receded from him, like the evening itself with its pale stars, it would henceforth serve merely as the rich backdrop for the action to come. And for this purpose all that scene of the past would be useful: the meetings at Tremont Temple, at the printing press in Hanover Street, in Gerta’s room or Sandbach’s, the midnight conclaves at the C Bookshop: Gottlieb’s drinking parties, the literary young men and women, the lesbians and pansies, the endless pseudo-intellectual talk, the indiscriminate alcoholic amorousness: it now died away drowsily like the chorus fading off stage at the opera, fading and dying before the coming of that profound and meaningful silence in which the action will suddenly deepen to tragedy.

The action to come.

He quickened his step at the thought of it, the shape of it urged him forward, but at the same time he wanted to delay the meeting with Gerta, and crossed Beacon Street into the Common. Had Gerta, in fact, also become unimportant, dropped into that background? The idea was just faintly disagreeable. To cut oneself off, yes — but might Gerta still be useful? actively, or receptively, useful? Some one to talk to, but of course only partially, not with complete confidence. One must be aware of her duplicity henceforth, the doubleness supplied by Sandbach: Sandbach’s shadow would be always just over her shoulder. What one said to her must be calculated therefore for a double purpose, the echo must be taken into account, and this in itself would actually be amusing …

He sat down on the bench under the light below Walnut Street. Two men came down the stone steps, talking, one of them paused to strike a match.

— Well, I’m a great soup-eater. I’m very fond of soup. Now I’ll eat meat only once a day as a rule, but I’m very fond of soup …

They went down the curved brick path toward the pond, talking about soup. This too to know! But Gerta was waiting there, leaning out of her window with a bitten apple, Gerta was the question, and perhaps the answer was in the affirmative. And perhaps especially, perhaps all the more so, because now, with the intervention of Sandbach, something of the purely personal pressure between them would have ceased: the relation could be calm, sexless, cerebral: the other aspect or possibility would be once and for all removed. He could make her listen, make her the receptacle of his hate, compel her to be, as it were, the praegustor of his new poisons, observe her horror. She could be forced into a half unwilling alliance, and one of which she would of course intensely disapprove. And she wouldn’t dare to interfere, she wouldn’t dare to discuss it with Sandbach. Or would she? And if she did, would it so much matter? But how much should he tell her? She posed as a liberal, a radical, as emancipated — but how much would she dare? To test and press her, in this direction, would be delicious, would be an important part of the venture, the experiment — yes, she would be indispensable—

He ran up the steps, remembered how once he had found there, on just such an evening, a woman’s handkerchief and ten dollars in neatly folded bills, touched the iron railing with his hand, and in another moment, admitted by the old Negress, Sally, was on his way up the carpeted stairs. Apollo stood listening in his plaster niche in the curved wall, as well he might: from the front room, that of the two gay girls from Haverhill, came the sound of the eternal radio, did you ever see a dream walking, well I did, did you ever hear a dream talking, well I did, he heard them laughing, and through the partly open door saw one of them, the younger one, in her knickers, her back turned, one foot on a stool to pull up a stocking.

On the floor above, a shaft of soft light across the stair rail told him that Gerta’s door was also open, she was standing between the two candles by the fireplace, her elbows on the mantel behind her, wearing her blue painter’s smock, she had let down her hair, which had fallen in dark ringlets on her shoulders. Her sleeves were rolled up, her arms were bare. The effect was calculated and she looked at him gravely. Keeping his hat on, he said:

— Don’t you ever get tired of your esthetic candles?

— I think they’re very restful. I notice you use them yourself.

— I have them, it’s a concession, but I don’t use them. I suppose you had a reason for lighting one of them?

— Simply to light up your lovely death mask.

— That’s very apropos.

— What?

— Nothing.

— I’ll put them out if you like.

— Don’t bother.

He went to the window and looked out at the Charles River Basin, the rows of lights along the Esplanade reminded him once again of the Steinlen lithograph, Ballade d’Hiver, it was as if winter had returned, the snow was falling.

— Why have you been avoiding me, Jasper.

— Have I been avoiding you?

— Of course. But I don’t think we need to be quite so dramatic with each other.

— I wasn’t aware of any drama?

— Then what about your postcard. Postcards. Dislocation number one and number two.

He turned around, looked down at her somber face, white and calm between its dark parentheses of hair, and smiled. He had her in the palm of his hand.

— I’m afraid I move too quickly for you, don’t I?

— Why can’t you be simpler? The whole thing is quite simple.

— I didn’t say it wasn’t. You merely mistake my insistence on clearness for drama. That’s why I say I move too quickly for you: you don’t follow me: neither you nor Sandbach. You and Sandbach.

She was in the act of seating herself, crossing her knees, she looked upward at him with baffled affection, deliberate affection, and he returned the gaze downward with a conscious narrowing of his eyes, but amiably. She stroked her silk-stockinged knee with a fingertip, ruffling the smock’s edge to do so.

— Me and Sandbach: you put us together invidiously, don’t you.

He took off his hat and bowed.

— Again too quick, but not drama. Perhaps in due course I’ll tell you all about it. My postcards were a mere statement. I didn’t have to, but I wanted to give you a signal.

— I don’t say you owed me anything, but we’ve been good friends, we might even have been better—

— You mean we might have been lovers.

— Well, yes, why not?

— Because I don’t want it and never did. There’s nothing invidious in it.

— There’s something really wrong with you, Jasper — what is it?

— Only this: I won’t be contaminated any longer, by you or any one else. That’s something the exceptional man must learn sooner or later, and I’ve learned it. Nietzsche speaks of it in Beyond Good and Evil. The exceptional man is subject to one great temptation — a sort of desperateness — a sudden weak-kneed longing for the society of the commonplace and orderly, the good little parasites. He thinks he gets a kind of healing from it. It’s a flight from himself, from his loneliness. The same with sex. Nietzsche speaks of the fear of the eternal misunderstanding, and of the good genius that prevents people of opposite sexes from hasty and degrading attachments.

— Good Lord. So it’s that, is it. You’re afraid I’ll contaminate you, so you prefer to have me contaminate Sandbach, or to be contaminated by him. You prefer to get your contamination at one remove, and to experiment with us as if we were guinea pigs!

— Why not?

— My dear, do sit down, you make me uneasy when you pace about like that.

That was characteristic of Gerta, her levelness, her calm, it was what he most liked in her, and he sat down, stretching his long legs before him. In the silence, he could hear the dishes being washed in the Women’s Club next door. Sandbach had lectured there, it was there that Gerta had met him, it was after that lecture, two years ago, that she had first told him of Sandbach’s curious oriental detachment and humor.

— You’re pretty insufferable, you know. Not many women would stand it!

— I don’t ask them to.

— Neither do I make any claims. I simply wanted to help you: that’s why I wanted to see you today, and to explain—

— Oh, don’t bother! I know all about it—

— that it needn’t make any difference. It will simply be quite separate. But I wish you could talk about it, aren’t you being a little too tense, this dislocation business and all that. It seems to me you’re getting too deeply into yourself, it might be dangerous.

— Oh, of course I need a job to take my mind off it! Christ.

— You are changing. Something is happening to you.

— My assumption of power? It’s only the beginning.

— It’s very attractive, but isn’t it a little unbalanced?

— Not at all, and you know it. You agree with me. The strong individual makes his own laws, you make yours and I make mine, at this point we agree that you shall go to Sandbach so as to leave us free from this sex thing and free to co-operate in something new. Dislocation number three. These two dirty years have got to be wiped out. I gave Sandbach his congée at the meeting, dismissed them brutally. I now propose to exist outside society. And I’m beginning to have a very beautiful plan. But I don’t know whether I can trust you. Will you really be able to remain separate in this regard from S?

She put her fingertips together and thought, turning her head sideways, he admired the soft candlelight on her smooth arms, her artist’s hands, he liked the gentle and unhurried grace with which she just perceptibly swung her knee. The door creaked slightly open in a draft, he rose to shut it, shutting out the renewed sound of the radio from downstairs, and returned then to a suddenly sharpened sense of the fact that something really extraordinary was impending. The shape of it hung beautiful and ominous. A new relationship, a new dimension, the dreadful taste of eternity in a new horror, the sense of sharing, himself and this woman, in a deeper and darker world of which a pure terribleness would be the principle. He was seducing her — his genius was in the very act of seducing her — her entire attitude, at this moment, was precisely that of a woman to whom an adultery has been proposed. She was fascinated, she was frightened, her balance half lost she was half consciously debating with herself whether to lose the rest, she knew that if she looked at him she would be destroyed. What fascinated her was the dimly guessed thing, the new and astonishing pattern into which she would be drawn with him. Perhaps even now she was a little impure — perhaps she thought that their co-operation in the “thing” would lead inevitably, or possibly, to an “affair”—or perhaps it was this very violence to her instincts that enticed her forward. Could she share all the way, all the way to its logical culmination, his hatred and contempt for mankind? And could she, at the same time, deliver herself voluntarily to its evil, in the shape of little Sandbach, and at his own bidding, for the sake of the completeness? And could she see how important it was that they were alone, together, that they must be alone in the world, as now they were alone in this room? Or at any rate that she should revolve around his aloneness?

— It’s very queer, isn’t it.

She spoke very quietly, with the characteristic combination of frown and smile. Then, the smile fading, the frown continuing, she added:

— I suppose it simply means that you’re asking me to share your insanity. You are insane, aren’t you?

— No.

— It would be interesting. I think Sandbach could be managed — of course you know that I share your feeling that he is inferior, he would be a substitute, it wouldn’t be necessary to feel that he was being betrayed.

— He talks of treachery to me.

— And there’s no need to be sorry for him. He’s quite competent!

— God, yes.

— But aren’t we insane?

— You’re thinking of Kay. But purity is not insanity. An action could have the purity of a work of art — it could be as abstract and absolute as a problem in algebra.

— What sort of action do you mean, Jasper?

He got up from his chair again, went behind her to the mantel, and blew out first one candle and then the other. She sat quite still below him as the room darkened, and he knew that in ordinary circumstances, or with another man, Sandbach for example, she would have interpreted this as the preliminary move toward a kiss. He wondered why he had wanted to do it. His thoughts went back, for no reason, to Julius Toppan, to her phrase about his chaste and epicene little room, that unconscious murder, to the fact that she had discussed him with Julius, and he felt a tightening of amused anger. But she was now helpless.

— I didn’t say. I don’t think I’ll quite tell you, yet. As a matter of fact, it has only become clear to me this evening. There will be plenty of time for that, when I’ve worked it out, and made up my mind exactly how it should be done.

— You and your precious inviolacy, my dear!

— Incidentally, don’t think any part of my hatred of S is jealousy. It’s not. He’s not the only one — I hate them all, the whole damned crowd. There isn’t a soul in this city that I wouldn’t willingly kill, they’re all alike.

He felt his bitterness rising, it came up from within him as if he were a deep well of venom and blackness, he must be careful not to go too far. At such moments it was only too easy to surrender to the vision, to give it its headlong freedom. The vision grew like a tree, like a tree-shaped world — he walked quickly to the window, turning his back, and looked down into the dark yard, across which fell oblique shafts of light from the windows of the Women’s Club. He added, without turning:

— There’s nothing abnormal about it.

— I wonder whether you dislike S because he is older—

— No!

— My dear, you are certainly very difficult. Do you mind if I turn on the light?

— Go ahead. It might change our tempo.

She switched on the table lamp, by the door, then came and stood beside him at the window. They both stood still. He thought again of Steinlen, but this time of the black cat on the farmyard wall, in the moonlight, the two peasants embracing under a dark tree. Something seemed to suffocate him, perhaps it was her nearness, like the nearness of the postman in the train: he felt as if he must move, or say something: Gerta might already have guessed too much. Certainly, there were elements in the situation which seemed to be unaccountable, a little incalculable—

— I suppose you don’t want to tell me, Jasper, why you suddenly have to quarrel with every one like this — and make things so hard for yourself—

— No. We’ve got to learn to be hard.

She gave a little laugh, which sounded half angry, half distracted, and walked away from him, putting her hands to the sides of her head: and laughing bitterly she thus crossed and recrossed the room several times, shaking her head, while he watched her. Then she sank down into her chair, as if she were suddenly very tired.

— I suppose I must wait, she said.

— Did you think I meant to kill some one? But I’m not as transparent as I sometimes look.

— Of course not!

— Not that it would matter much, would it. I’d like to play King Coffin!

She looked at him soberly, and he smiled. Her lips were parted, she seemed bewildered, perhaps a little apprehensive, she slid the silver bracelet up and down her arm.

— What on earth do you mean?

— I’ll tell you about it sometime. It was a doctor’s sign I saw somewhere — or thought I saw, or perhaps simply dreamed I saw — I could even swear it was in Commonwealth Avenue, near Massachusetts, on the south side. But it may have been in Saint Louis. Just the name King Coffin. It seemed to me a very good, and very sinister, name for a doctor — it sounds a little supernatural. It might not be a man at all, but a sort of death-principle. It would be nice to be King Coffin, don’t you think? I’ve often thought about it, I’ve thought I might make a story out of it. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari! But you needn’t be frightened. It’s just one of my crazy ideas, no crazier than anarchism, no crazier than absolute egoism, no crazier than the fact that we are here, or that Sandbach doesn’t know what we have arranged for him—

— Jasper, I’m very tired—

— I’m afraid I bore you—

— No, but it’s all rather a strain—

— I see.

— If we could talk about something else for a while—

— Oh, of course. Oh, of course. Of ships and shoes and sealingwax, and cabbages and coffins. Sandbach’s taste in shirts, for example.

She was silent, with lowered eyes.

— His socks, too. His one necktie, and his yellow shoes, his East Side shoes, by God! And always that little piece of nostril ingredient protruding from the left nostril—

He watched her blush, wondering how much of it was shame and how much was anger. He picked up his hat from the table and put it on.

— Well, I’ll go and make my plans, and communicate with you later. If I decide to communicate at all. You’ll of course consider how to deal with Sandbach, and how much to say to him, if anything. But you needn’t bother to report to me, for of course I shall know.

— You don’t need to be angry.

— I’m not — thanks for the taste of the future — dislocation number four.

He walked past her quickly, as she started to rise, ran down the stairs, heard her say Jasper but paid no attention, and on emerging into Walnut Street stood still on the brick sidewalk, thinking. The shape had not been exactly as foreseen, but on the whole the direction was correct, the huge structure was rising all about him, and himself borne upward with it, the arc of bright steel was beginning to threaten the sky. He breathed hard, ran his eyes along the row of dark eaves opposite, felt that with a simple gesture he could remove the tin gutters, making one sweep of the hand. Park Street Church was striking ten, Toppan would not be in till a little before eleven, there was still time for a further formulation before the plunge into sleep.

IV The Friends Who Might Be Murdered

He looked in through the wide window of the Merle as he passed, it was possible that Toppan would have returned there for his usual glass of orangeade and his perusal of the stock market reports and in the hope that he or Gottlieb might turn up; but the room was empty, the waitress was wiping a table, he saw the cocoanut on the shelf, it would soon be closing time. Toppan was probably at his law club in Church Street, after all there would be plenty of time, or even if he had returned it hardly mattered, the diary could be read another day. Better however if it could be done tonight, for Toppan himself could thus be considered: if only to be eliminated. And of course he would have to be eliminated, for in his case the dangers, even if one were going to accept the dangers, would be too immediate, and the actual result perhaps less rewarding. Might it not be better to employ Toppan as witness number two — a figure in the half background — as one who, for example, would know more than Sandbach but less than Gerta? The problem might be posed for him as if it existed entirely in the abstract, in the realm of pure supposition. Moreover, the mere technique of it, the detective aspect, would interest him. From this point of view, of course, it was fascinating to consider that Toppan might become: a necessity, even of the act itself.

But no, the idea was at once perceived to be secondary, it was already past, and on the level of mere observation, like the window of the Merle or the row of queer dresses hanging in Keezer’s: it was as still and lifeless as those dresses, which in the lamplight from the corner looked like a ghostly Madame Tussaud’s, as if the waxworks had stepped out of them for the night. Toppan would definitely be a stage-hand, useful but unimportant. And if at any time he became suspicious or pressing, that would merely add to the excitement, the pressure. He would simply be there, looking over Gerta’s shoulder, as in a photograph.…

He turned on the lights in his room, all three, the sitting room and bedroom and kitchenette, deposited his hat on top of the scarlet enamel Chinese cabinet, then went at once to the mirror. Jasper Ammen. With his long hands flat on the glass top of the dressing table, he surveyed himself with the usual and desirable calm and leisure: after an action, or series of actions, and especially as now in the presence of a prospect of an action, it was necessary to see oneself from outside. It was necessary to see and recapitulate what Gerta had seen, to study what Gerta had studied, and to judge himself through Gerta’s eyes. It was therefore Gerta’s Jasper whom he saw, mysterious, tall, a little languid perhaps, but with an obvious reserve of tremendous subtlety and power, not to say of cruelty. The eyes were enigmatic and lynxlike, and with that profound and inscrutable impersonality which looks out of eyes which themselves see too clearly for any counteranalysis: all they offered was an anonymity of depth and light. They were pure vision. The controlled mouth, and the Greek serenity of the forehead, accentuated the effect of philosophic essentialness: the face, the body, the hands (one of them surrounded by the tiny hexagonal wrist watch) were all one thing, they were a pure ego of unimaginable intensity, and it was this, above all, that Gerta had seen. She had felt the extraordinary virtue of this, it was this that always held her motionless and as if incapable of any separate action. Even in the act of moving toward Sandbach she was moving not to Sandbach but to himself.

He said aloud: But there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth. Thus spake Zoroaster. He watched the words form themselves on the lips, which only restrainedly and slightly moved, the eyelids were a little lowered, the beautiful face remained immobile and cold. It was as if the word death had been pronounced by a flower, or by a mask of silver: and now the flower, or the mask, had become death’s symbol. He smiled superciliously in the silence which was his own, then pulled out the top drawer and took from it a photograph. It was of Gerta, he had suddenly thought of it in the train, Gerta at Walden two years ago, she looked much younger: with one bare arm raised she was shading her eyes and laughing, her eyes squinting a little in the bright sunlight. He looked closely at the dress, remembering it as one which had since been discarded, and considered with it the sense of deepened time. It had been himself of course that she was thus peering at from under her hand, thus laughing at, not yet had the obscurities and tangles between them been discovered by either of them, though they were already taking shape; it had been their age of innocence; the day at Walden had been relatively simple. Thoreau, and the notion of egoism, had hung, there a little, but not much: Gerta had been pretty sure that they would end by marrying, or at any rate that they would have an affair. But was there, just perceptible in the sunlit frown, the shadow of a doubt, the shadow of Sandbach? Perhaps this was why she had written jokingly on the back “Gertadämmerung. Passed by the Censor.”

The twilight of Gerta.

He slid the photograph into his side pocket, not for the moment wishing to be separated from it, since it might give rise to further considerations, then retraced his steps into the corridor, leaving the lights on, and proceeded towards the back stairs which led down to Toppan’s room. The electric lights had been turned off for the night, and the gas jets turned on, the copper cylinder of the fire extinguisher gleamed in its corner, and the corridor was still, except for the low voices of the epileptic and his wife from the room by the stairhead. He paused to listen.

— and walking very slowly like that with the paper in my hand—

— She probably didn’t see you at all.

— watching me just the same, I could see—

— matter. I ordered a packing case from Sage’s—

But was Gerta quite as asquiescent as she appeared to be?

He descended the two flights, deliberately lightening his footsteps, glanced through the window at the dark pile of Beck Hall, and his thoughts reverted to Gerta’s question. But aren’t we insane? Certainly there was a hint of “outside” observation or criticism in this, but if the aroma of challenge arose from it, very faintly, it needn’t perhaps be taken too seriously. The tone of acquiescence was already there, it need only be followed up, the challenge was not aimed at rebellion but simply at — yes, there could be no doubt of it, and he smiled — at her need for further coercion, her desire for further coercion. She wanted to be persuaded, she wanted to be forced, her real depth of pleasure would lie precisely in the fact that she was being compelled into a conspiracy which perhaps she considered insane and horrible. But did she think this? She knew his logic to be flawless. After the first step beyond morals, beyond good and evil, one was in chaos and must trust one’s own wings. Her wings she might mistrust, but his—

There was no answer to his perfunctory knock at Toppan’s door, he stood for a moment looking at the visiting card, Julius Shaw Toppan, into which some one had inserted, with a carat, the pencilled name Diogenes: a reference to Toppan’s reputation for unmitigated honesty; then entered, switching on the light. A tray was on the piano bench, a half-filled bottle of gin, a bottle of ginger ale, two glasses. Toppan was expecting him. This was annoying, but it could be permitted to pass. He sat down in the swivel chair by the flat-topped mission desk, pulled out the middle drawer, and removed the loose-leaf diary. Beside it, in the drawer, lay five or six new letters, one of them in an unfamiliar handwriting and postmarked Chicago, these would be interesting, but they could wait. There was also a theater-ticket envelope, which he found contained two tickets for the ballet. Was he taking Gerta?

“April 22. April 23. April 24. Chaste and epicene.

“April 27. Am resolved in future to make this not so much a diary as a journal; but when I pause to reflect why I should make this decision I am not so sure whether in the future such a record would really be as interesting as a record of facts? More amusing to know, ten years from now, that today I walked round the Pond with Gerta, on her suggestion, and just as I imagined it was because she wanted to talk about the great Jasper. Not very flattering. Any fool could see she is in love with him. But why pick on me? Because she knows he interests me, which he does. She thinks he is behaving more queerly of late, but good God Almighty how could he? The people in this apartment house are frightened to death of him, those who don’t just hate his guts. And no wonder. Just the same, a part of his fascination for Gerta (and for me) is in the very fact that he knows he is fascinating and uses it so deliberately and conceitedly. You can’t help admiring the perfection of his technique. Gerta seemed to think he was changing. Said he was more “morose.” I confess I hadn’t noticed it, but maybe there’s something in it. I told her about his call the other night (Thursday) when he came in, walked once round the room, looking at each picture on the wall in turn, and then went out without a word. The trouble about that is, it’s hard to say whether he knows his behavior is odd or not. I give him credit for knowing that it is: Gerta says she isn’t so sure, and particularly just in the last month or two. I could see she was dying to ask me whether I thought he was insane or not, but I decided quite rightly to keep out of that mess and didn’t give her any help. Personally, I don’t think he is. I think it’s all a belated sort of adolescent pose, the business of playing genius. Especially when you consider all the esthetic stuff as well, the vague hints thrown out now and then of his mysterious “writings” and so on, which no one has ever seen and never will. My diagnosis is spoiled child, but that’s only half of it: more than any person I ever knew he has something like genius, but God knows what it is — the only way I can define it is to say that he is or has the appearance of being terribly concentrated. Not that that butters any parsnips. Or that it will help Gerta. I’d like to warn Gerta to clear out, but what business is it of mine? She’s free, white and twenty-one and prides herself on her independence, you can’t tell these Lucy Stoners anything.

“April 28. Law Society, Hempy talking for an hour on torts, sheer waste of time, I could have done it better myself—

“April 29. Queer mixup with Ammen about tea. He left a note in my box, asking me, I scribbled an answer on the back of it and put it into his, a little later I found it in my box again and thinking it a mistake put it back into his, and this happened twice more. I began to be a little mad about it. And when I went to his room at half past four he wasn’t in. God deliver me from these geniuses. I feel sorry for them. Signet for lunch, and Peters brought—

“April 30.… what Gerta said. I can’t make out Gerta. Of course I don’t suppose she is quite what they call a lady, she’s knocked around a little, she’s not one of that Beacon Hill crowd for nothing. But you feel that what the others do because they’re unprincipled, she does because of an idea. You can’t help respecting her — and you can’t help feeling sorry for her either, especially this attachment of hers for J — good God what a burden that must be. Bad luck that she should have attached herself to him, who so obviously cares only for himself.… Sandbach came in for a minute and said J was resigning from the little anarchist group and making an unnecessary amount of stink about it. Wanted to know if I knew what was behind it. I told him J hadn’t discussed it with me and wasn’t likely to. Sandbach says he is behaving very queerly about it. It’s certainly damned funny how his peculiarities and oddities lend a curious sort of importance to his actions — whatever the reason may be he keeps every one interested, not to say angry. Maybe because you never know which way he’ll jump. Which of course is one of the difficulties of dealing with a deliberate egoist. And he has brains.”

And he has brains.

Ten-thirty-five.

He returned the diary to its drawer, had a look at the Chicago letter, which turned out to be merely a business note with regard to the sale of a stamp collection, with reference also to a mandolin (apparently a former roommate at school in Connecticut), then went to the open window and filled and lit his pipe. Toppan was intelligent, but not intelligent enough — he could easily be kept at the right distance, he was also sufficiently good company, and his own peculiarities were themselves sufficiently interesting. That business of the safety-razor blades, for instance, and the episode of the girl’s hair at Mechanic’s Hall after the relay race. It had been put down as an aberration due to overwork and overtraining, but the fact remained that Toppan had always been fooling with knives and razor blades and scissors, always carried them round with him and was obviously in some abnormal way fascinated by them. It was a weak spot, one could exert pressure upon it, the odd thing was that Toppan had weathered the business without a further or deeper collapse of some sort.

The difficulties of dealing with a delicate egoist. Insane?

He was looking closely at the color print of the Chinese painting, Lychees and Birds, which of course Toppan had bought in sedulous imitation of his own taste for Chinese art, when Toppan came in. As usual he blushed: the signal of inferiority: as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He said, putting a book down beside the tray:

— I hoped you would be here.

— Why do you always blush?

Toppan gave an uneasy laugh, the blush deepening into the roots of his reddish hair, and it was also noticeable that his hand trembled as he held a match for his cigarette, but in spite of this he looked back steadily enough, the blue eyes timid but sharp behind rimless round glasses.

— Ah, that’s my innocence. Have a drink?

— No, thanks. You’ve been talking to Gerta, haven’t you.

— How did you know.

— I saw her tonight.

— Yes.

— That’s all right, it’s your own affair, but I want to say that I’m quite satisfied with things as they are and don’t want any complications of an accidental or external nature. Do you see what I mean.

— Certainly.

— I’ve got a project of a very important and private sort which I don’t want jeopardized. I can’t discuss it with you now, I may later.

— I see.

Toppan, standing sideways, said this into the glass as he poured himself a drink: he was very self-conscious in his obvious attempt to make it apparent that he was intelligent, that he understood. He was perhaps a little frightened.

— Gerta doesn’t mean to be disloyal and it might not matter if she were, but her present situation is difficult, she may be tempted to ask questions, and I think it advisable that they shouldn’t be answered. I’m not asking a favor — I’m merely putting a choice before you. You can do as you like.

He smiled a little, watching the shape of Toppan’s decision, watching Toppan’s desire for importance in Jasper Ammen’s eyes rise delightedly to the surface. He was as easy to handle as Gerta, and as translucent, there was even something to be said for making Toppan the victim, for then it would be possible to watch the record of the “closing in” in the diary, an extra turn of the screw. But no, this would sacrifice the notion of purity—

— Also I want to put a supposititious case before you. It was suggested by your passion for pure detection, detection for the sake of detection—

— Oh, I wouldn’t say it was a passion—

— what is valuable in such an experience is the unsuspected mastery of another person’s life: you know all about him, while he doesn’t even guess your existence, much less that you are following him. Suppose you pushed it to its logical extreme, and took his life. That’s all right, it’s quite understandable if you had a contempt, like the Orientals, for the value of human life, it might for people like you and me be actually an essential accomplishment on the way to becoming completely realized. I’m not discussing that, we can take it for granted, we both agree about it. Beyond values and so on.

He directed at Toppan a look of deliberate openness, and paused. He wanted to feel the edges of what he had just said, to feel quite sure of its shape and direction, its weight and its speed, and he wanted also to give Toppan plenty of time for a flurried conjecture that it was now precisely the secret “project” which was being discussed. It was to be dangled before him just like that, dangled but not defined or named or admitted. He would be allowed to draw his own breathless conclusions and then, in turn, to doubt them. Toppan took a sip of his drink and put down the glass very guardedly, his hand remained on the glass, with his forefinger he was tapping the rim reflectively, he had nothing to say; the situation had already become too precarious for him. He was simply waiting.

— All right. Now suppose it was you who decided to do this, suppose you picked out some one, me or Sandbach or Gottlieb or Taber, and began planning your murder.

He stood still, with his back to the open window, looking downward at Toppan. The quarter bells of Saint Paul’s Church began their melodious and lazy cycle in the still air, then the hour was struck, and before it was quite finished Memorial Hall began striking on the same tone, but farther away. Eleven o’clock. He listened intently till the last note had sounded, waited for the neutral returning silence to lift them once more into isolation, then pointed with his pipestem for emphasis.

— Suppose you decide there is a sublime rightness in the idea, that it is true to yourself and to nature, a deep principle vested in you and nature, as natural as being born, or eating, or loving: you might even say it is a profound obligation if you are to become complete, and just as inevitable as exploitation — exploitation is the natural order of things. To injure or destroy is natural, it’s life itself: to deny that is to deny life. Well, you know it’s right, and I know it’s right, but society won’t agree with us, will it? Consequently what? Consequently what ought to be a public action, and done openly, has to be private or secret: unless you make up your mind to go the whole hog and do it openly and take the social consequences. That’s the way it ought to be, to be perfect, it ought to take place in sunlight.

He narrowed his eyes as he stared at Toppan, and Toppan narrowed his own a little in answer, but made no reply beyond a slight nod. A mere reflex, a mere automatism, he was hardly listening, or at any rate not listening intelligently, he had simply become a fascinated mirror.

— All right, suppose for whatever reasons you decide that your action has to be secret, even though this takes away some of its virtue: you pick out your victim and you make your plans; but then it occurs to you that although you can’t tell every one about it, and do it with nobility, you can at least tell one or two trusted persons. Can’t you?

— I suppose you could.

— You suppose you could. Suppose then you decided to tell me. In that case do I become an accessory before the fact, and am I criminally liable if you are caught?

— Certainly. That is, if I gave you away. But if you kept your mouth shut—

— It would be to my interest to keep my mouth shut.

— Good God, yes. But why—

— That’s all I wanted to know. I’m thinking of writing a story about it. I’ve even got the title for it — King Coffin.

— King Coffin. That’s a swell title. Real up-to-the-hilt nihilism.

— Not at all.

— I don’t get you, then.

— It’s just life, it’s just hatred. The essential thing in life is hate!

He put his pipe quickly into his pocket, walked to the door without looking again at Toppan, and as he let himself out said without turning—

— Bear in mind what I said about Gerta.

Toppan’s uneasy “of course” was cut off by the closing door, and the sound of his chair being pushed back, he had been interrupted in the very middle of his unhappy vision, he would now have time to pace to and fro in his empty room and to allow, in the silence, the nocturnal conjecture to pile itself to heaven in all its true horror. It was already beginning, the smaller shadows were grouping themselves about his feet and in the corners, the crazy shape was hinting itself first here and then there, and horribly against his will it would curse his sleep.

So much for Toppan, the seed of the vision had been securely planted, but what about his own vision?

Noiselessly and swiftly, and with a queer kind of exultation, he took the stairs three steps at a time, the vision grew like a tree, the immense whirl was once more above him, the sense of speed and hurry returned, it was almost as if something threatened to stop his breathing. But he must take it calmly, the thing must be thought out with precision: the tempo must be slowed down. The vision was all right, but it must not become too possessive or emotional; calculated or uncalculated, there must be an interruption. At the bend of the corridor, in the shadow beside the professor’s door, the professor’s cat was sitting, it watched his approach without moving, looked up at him when he paused, rose and arched its back when he spoke to it.

— Little cat, you can be the interruption. Come in.

He opened his door and stood aside. The cat preceded him into the room, advanced into the center of the rug with cautious dignity, and sat down, looking towards the window. The spiked seashell on the window sill was white and sharp against the darkness outside, the little glass bird cage sparkled, in the stillness of the room he could hear the voices of two students from Plympton Street below.

— All right, start her up.

— Wait till I get this thing under the back here—

— Well, go ahead—

As the self-starter began its rhythmic skirling he sat by the red table and drew towards him a sheet of paper and a silver pencil. On the paper in a straight small column he wrote quickly the names Toppan, Gerta, Sandbach, Taber, Gottlieb. But no — no! At once he drew a precise line through each name in turn, crumpled the paper into a ball, and rolled it along the floor to the cat, who, with a neat hook of the paw, skittled it under the table.

The terribleness of the deed must be kept pure: the problem had become a problem in art-form.

V But Perhaps a Stranger

The Angelus was striking in the campanile of Saint Paul’s as he turned off the shower, the three urgent bells, and three others after a pause, and three more, and then the rapid complexion of the nine, as if the bell ringer had triumphantly added his significant sum; eight o’clock; no doubt some pious sort of hugger mugger was going on there at this minute, fellows in white surplices — or was it chasubles — shaking mysterious cocktails over a kind of holy bar, or waving red lanterns up and down; and all for the benefit of a few housemaids and nursemaids. It might be a good thing to go there: to drop in on the way to breakfast, stand at the back for a moment, look over the little audience, or even observe more particularly, and for a particular purpose. He stepped out of the pools of water which his feet had left on the oilcloth floor, slid into the red slippers, then leaned from the little window. Clouds and a wind, the skylight was gray, he could hear the humming. Looking downward, he could see into the bathroom of the apartment on the floor below: the fair-haired girl, Mrs. Finden, was leaning against the wash-bowl, naked, her hands thrust forward into the water. Her husband came and stood beside her, rested for a moment one hand on her hip, squeezed it, then took some small object from the shelf and disappeared.

It was like that, of course; it ought to be just like that. The unknown eye from above, the God’s eye view, the death ray directed downward when least suspected. Like The Crimson editor on the roof, Mrs. Finden was now dead without knowing it; the thing was completely pure, completely motiveless: the anonymous tree stump had been struck by anonymous lightning. He watched Mrs. Finden dry her hands and arms, she turned her head to say something over her shoulder while still manipulating the blue towel, the muscles of her small upper arms trembling slightly, then she picked up two rings from the marble slab, slid them on to the fourth finger of her left hand, and vanished. Finden was laughing at something, then after a moment the bath was turned on, a masculine arm reached up and closed the ground-glass window.

In his own room, the curtain still lowered, he ran it up and let go of the cord so that it flapped round and round. Clouds and a wind. The man at the window of the room in Fairfax, a block away, was there as usual, in his B.V.D.’s, as close to the window as he could get, holding a mirror in his hand to preen himself. He stooped slightly, turned the mirror this way and that to get a better light, then put something that looked like a nightcap over his hair and went away for a moment only to return and resume his peculiar occupation. This too. The same thing. A dead man.

Yes: but these were a little too close, too immediate, to put one’s hand on them was too easy. What was wanted—

The little ball of paper was still lying under the table where the cat had left it, he remembered first his impulse to drop the cat out of the window, and the curious repugnance which had seemed to rise as if from his hands; then the relief with which he had driven the cat out into the corridor. Odd. But the list of names was there, crumpled but still there, and the question with them, the profound question. And it could only be answered by himself: about this, there could be no conferring, not even with Gerta. The decision must be pure. The question was, was it still in fact a question? or had it actually — and as he thought this he stood quite still and stared at the necktie which he was holding — been solved in his sleep? There had been a dream, a queer and deep dream: a series of crisscrossed shadows, shifting and ominous. Further than that, it was vague, but as he had waked from it he had felt a kind of lightness or ease, something spacious but as if lightly etched with lines — analogous — was that it? — to the small script hidden inside the crumpled ball of paper, the list of rejected names. Rejected, yes, but for what, in favor of what? Something more remote, but how remote? He carried the blue necktie to the mirror in the bedroom, tossed it over his head, began to draw it to and fro beneath the collar. The Buddha was behind him on its shelf, the bed was unmade in the silent room, it was his own silence once more beginning to deepen and widen, and as he leaned closer to the glass to look into his black pupils it seemed to him that the sense of limitless silence and peace came from his own eyes. The mystery lay there, the solution lay there, was already known there, it was as if he were looking into an immense depth, an immense distance, and trying to make out some far-off and tiny and incredible action. Had it already taken shape there? But remember, if thou gazest into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. The abyss will gaze into thee.

But it is your own abyss?

The photograph of Gerta was still in his pocket of course, he removed it, dropped it into the top drawer, speculated idly as to the suspended line of thought which it indicated, dismissed it. That was over. For all major intents and purposes, Gerta was over. Dislocation number five. He said it aloud — dislocation number five — walked quickly to the red table, took two postcards from the upright stand and put them in his breast pocket. Perhaps the Findens would be going down in the elevator at the same time. Or Toppan. If Toppan, he would cut him dead, turn his back, not reply if spoken to.

Clouds and a wind. In Massachusetts Avenue the dust whirled under the bright wheels of a streetcar, a dirty black hat was blowing across the street with a small man in pursuit, rolling on its rim, the noise of traffic came all along the street from the Square, windblown and clamorous. The Merle was empty, the bookshop was closed, three starched shirts lay mute in the window of the one-day laundry, and beside them a pair of patent-leather shoes. Liggett’s drugstore, and the telephone booth immediately to the right of the door, and its directory with splayed leaves: he hesitated. The impulse was clear and sharp, it was an obvious enough association of ideas, he had telephoned similarly the night before. But why now? To get her out of bed, wake her, startle her, remind her of the singular bond which now lay heavy between them. Gerta? Yes. Jasper speaking. Yes? Just to remind you, that’s all.… The booth was unoccupied, it would be easy, he enjoyed thinking of her surprise, her agitation, not to mention the mystification in which she would be left. And it would be as well to add: I’m still without a formula.

The effect of daylight on the situation was odd, a little unnatural, like the sudden opening of wide windows into a secret theater, the stage moonlight abruptly dissipated: a queer sort of falseness was introduced, but also an unlooked-for intenseness: as if the actors all had at once to look in a new direction and for something unknown and terrifying. In this light, the events of the night before all turned like weathercocks, the events and the people too, Gerta and Sandbach and Toppan, and the sad little group in the Temple, it was as if they were all present here in Massachusetts Avenue and all turning simultaneously in the wind. Something new, something strange, was lighting and blowing them, as it was lighting and blowing himself; as if the entire constellation had brightened and shifted slightly to the left. It was because he himself had moved forward into another light, another time: he had turned to the left, and they with him.

Yes: their danger had passed.

He saw this in the haberdashery window, which he always looked into as he passed, he saw the phrase as if written there among the shirts and socks and neck ties. New woven madras shirts. New crochet ties. Boston Brace Garters. Varsity Shorts. Bostonia Hats. Double toe and heel hose, three pairs one dollar. Their danger had passed. Hab Ihr Das.

Yes, their danger had passed; he resumed his quick walk in the wind, avoided the faces of the early pedestrians, dropped two cents in the cigar box and took a Herald from beneath the brick, turned down Dunster Street. He would be early enough to breakfast alone, in the far corner at the back, a table to himself on which to spread out the newspaper, he could be undisturbed while he prepared the next step. Breakfast dishes. He surveyed the morning list, tray in hand, the firm little packet of linen-rolled silver under his thumb. Tomato Juice, Poached Egg on Corned Beef Hash Browned, Buttered Toast. He could have these things, himself as well as another, he remained strictly anonymous as he watched the waitress dip the poached egg from the boiling water, but just the same it gave him a sense of remarkable power to stand before her embodying a principle which, had she been able to divine it or understand it, would have made her scream. The composition was of a Bachlike perfection, it was the ideal counterpoint of good and evil.

— Graham toast, please.

— Yes, sir.

But if these were safe, if after all it was not to be a friend, or even an acquaintance—?

He dissected the egg as delicately as one might dissect a thought, looked into the moving liquid, paused. At this point one must go slow. One must be orderly. One must avoid all flurry, all agitation, all unnecessary confusion, work the thing out as neatly and precisely as one would a three-mover in chess. If it was a problem in philosophy, or a problem in esthetics, and as a matter of fact it was a little of both, there could be no room for sentiment and no excuse for excitement. Their danger had passed — Gerta’s and Sandbach’s and Toppan’s, and all the others’—simply because, and it was of course at once extremely obvious, the choice of any one of them would immediately introduce extraneous elements. The murder would not be pure. No matter how slight, there would be some little fringe of emotional complication — his disgust at Sandbach, his idle scorn of Toppan, his contempt — if that was it — for Gerta; there would be this minute chemical trace of motive; the anonymity would not have been strict. But if not these—

An acquaintance?

He lowered the newspaper, rested his hands flat upon it, surveyed the half empty room of glass-topped tables. The girl who gave out the checks sat at his left, on a high stool, her back turned: she was in the act of estimating the contents of a tray, hesitating, her hands poised over the keys of her machine. The man who was holding the tray was Mather, in the English department. Not very bright, said to be good to his mother, harmless, defensively amiable, weak. No. Neither of them. Nor any one else in the room. Certainly, at any rate, not a woman. It must be a man, he had really known that all along, but what was now also just as unmistakable was that it must be a stranger. A complete stranger! Some one chosen at random.… Absolutely at random.

Mather came towards him tray in hand, nodded ingratiatingly, said good morning, with any encouragement would have sat down at the same table, but he froze him by staring past him. The weak eyes lifted away, the tray swerved in its anxious course, the cautious footsteps moved away forward in the long room, toward the window. The kind of despicable herd-member who was always on the lookout for some one to sit beside, some one to join and confide in. In a moment he would look round to make sure whether Ammen had really recognized him, unwilling to believe that his coldness could have been intentional. He would do this obliquely and with a little cough. And then lower his head tenderly over his hurt little breakfast.

No, certainly not an acquaintance, and certainly not Mather, but just the same to consider Mather was useful, for it served to make clearer the essential principles, moral or esthetic, on which the final decision must be made. To look at Mather was to pity him and despise him — or at any rate to want to pity or despise him — he was despicable and pitiful, or pitiable: to remain completely indifferent to him was impossible. And that, of course — and he slapped both hands on the table and laughed — was exactly the point. The stranger must be someone to whom one could be completely indifferent. He must be neither attractive nor unattractive, not to be loved or pitied, nor hated or feared, some one whose strangeness and anonymity (in the sense that one knew nothing about him and felt nothing) was pure. The face must be quite ordinary, just a face, the bearing and gait must be neither offensive nor enviable, the clothes of a sort of universal characterlessness. In short, it must be simply “a man.” A mere lay figure, or drawing of a man, such as you saw in a newspaper advertisement of ready-made suits for sixteen dollars and fifty cents.

Yes, that was it, it was the discovery, it was as if suddenly an immense fortune had been left him, the whole population of the world had become his capital, the whole world lay before him or under him like an unconscious victim. He slapped the newspaper down in the chair, walked rapidly toward the cashier’s wire cage, smiled over Mather’s head, while he waited for his change to trickle out of the machine drew a postcard and pencil from his pocket, then against the weighing machine in the lobby addressed the card to Gerta and wrote quickly on the other side: Formula found, dislocation number six.… Superb. With each little accretion of definition the situation became tighter, drew them all more shrewdly and painfully into false and unwilling postures, they came along with him willy-nilly and without knowing where, and he could see exactly with what expression of dismay Gerta would read this latest bulletin: the heels of her hands pressed quiveringly to the sides of her head, then quickly dropped, then a few swift steps across the room and back, the somberly curved mouth a little opened, the witty eyes a little dulled. She would want to call him up on the telephone but wouldn’t dare, she would want to come and see him, she would remain paralyzed until she had heard from him again, at most perhaps daring to write him a note of desperate question. Or would she decide to go away, go back to New York?

Clouds and a wind, the morning was profound, from his own tower of vision he looked down at the sordid little human maze far below him, into which his lightning could now strike freely where it willed, and once more, as he proceeded toward the post office, along Mount Auburn Street, the sense as of a deceptive serenity and leisure arose from his own deployed creation. Deceptive, for of course there was much still unsolved if not insoluble — no, not insoluble, but unsolved, waiting, the actual terminus not yet selected. This day, and the next, and the one after — this week, or the next — the question of time was undoubtedly there, the thing could not be timeless, but must have a time; and in this lay of course the necessity for a decision. Today? begin today? Begin with a definite volition? or allow his feet to take him where they wished? or simply stand in midstream, as it were, and allow the human current to divide itself unconsciously against him until the right “moment” came? Deceptive, yes, for to consider this was at once to be immersed again in the feeling of hurry. And there were also the subsidiary problems, the merely practical ones: the choice of a weapon, the choice of method and place, the actual planning of the deed itself, and whether at a long or short interval after the selection of the victim. Whether with contemplation or with suddenness. And whether or not with precautions against detection?

But no, that element need not enter. He himself would be, from the victim’s viewpoint, a complete stranger: the crime would be completely without reason: all of a sudden the fellow would be dead, no one could possibly be suspected, and that would be the end of it. The management of it should be excessively, almost childishly simple. A brief study of the man’s daily habits, his goings and comings, the discovery of his name, some ordinary ruse to get him to the appointed place at the appointed time — Belmont? Concord? — and there it was. A profound surprise.

But how to select him!

He dropped the postcard in the letter box, turned, recrossed Brattle Square; a small cyclone of dust whirled from the open end of the subway, the clock on the police station tower said a quarter to nine.

A telephone directory opened at random, with the eyes shut, a pencil in hand, the sortes Virgilianae? He smiled, the notion was not unattractive, the merely geographic possibilities were very rich and unpredictable. Even more delicious if, for example, he were to invite Gerta to do it?… But perhaps that would be premature. For the moment, what seemed most of all desirable was the maintenance of his own deep secrecy, his own inviolable privacy and mystery. Gerta and Toppan and Sandbach, and the shabby little haunters of the C Bookshop on the hill, all these people must be kept in the dark, they must be given a sense of some impending action, some continuous but enigmatic and unfathomable activity; like the leaves and twigs which the spider draws imperceptibly but imperatively together in his nocturnal spinning, each in turn bent together, they must feel but not see, only with daybreak would come — if indeed it were permitted to come to them at all — the revelation that they had been organized into an arbitrary pattern by the will of another and for a purpose unknown. They must be touched, used, made to quiver, but kept in ignorance. This would be their fright, this would be a useful part of his own satisfaction. The whole hated city, this alien city of contemptible ones, the vast nest of rats, would become his own property, his own web.

No Peddlers or Solicitors Allowed in This Building.

He followed the gray coat, the round-shouldered gray coat, with the collar turned up under a black velour hat, past the Personal Bookshop to the Square. A green bag depended from the right hand, full of books, the gait was slack and middle-aged, the knees not quite straightening, the spectacled profile, when it turned to inspect the oncoming traffic from the direction of the subway, was gray and dry and mustached. Standing close behind him, it was possible to observe that the under side of the turned-up collar was worn and unbrushed, that there was cigarette ash on the crown and rim of the hat, and that the hand which suddenly rose to steady it against the wind was veined with an unpleasant blue. A professor, with a nine-o’clock, on his way to Sever or the New Lecture Hall. He balanced in the wind, then decided, but with obvious indecision, to turn left across Brattle Street, at the last minute had to make an ungainly little run, when the traffic signal changed: the whistle shrilling, he scuttled, head down, hand on hat, toward the policeman’s canvas box.

To stand and watch him, as he then veered around the box and darted across the tracks toward the subway entrance, his hand still held anxiously against his hat, the green bag bobbing awkwardly at his side, conspicuous among all the rush of morning pedestrians simply because singled out for observation, was to renew and refresh one’s sense of power: it would be child’s play to follow him, find out who he was: in point of fact, it would be too easy altogether: to send a smile after the retreating figure was in itself, for the moment, a sufficient murder. No, this was not the sort of thing, though it whetted the appetite. Much more interesting, and much more fruitful, was the multiplicity of the morning rush itself. In this, as he began to walk slowly toward the subway, conscious of his great height, and conscious of his consciousness, was the real and unspoiled secret: an immense sense of wealth, a multitude of treasure, into which one merely needed to thrust an exploring hand. On the lower platform, where the ramps converged from the Arlington and Mount Auburn cars, it would be at its best. Moreover, there would be telephone booths, and telephone directories.

Descending the stairs, he crossed the stream of hurrying people and pushed towards the row of illuminated boxes, which looked like the lighted cells of a hive. A good point of vantage. He leaned casually against the edge of a booth, took the book in his hand, opened it at random, and while he watched the crowd let his finger fall on the page. There was a name under his finger, but for a moment he didn’t want to see what it was: instead, he quite calmly smiled at one face and then another and then a third of those that passed him. The last, an old man, bareheaded, turned surprised eyes over his shoulder. Then he looked down. Joseph Kazis, 241 D Street, South Boston. South Boston—! A little remote, perhaps, but just the same, by way of experiment—

He closed the door, dialed with his pipestem, listened to the far-off ringing, heard the click of the lifted receiver, and the slow Jewish drawl, a woman’s voice.

— Who iss it?

— Is Mr. Kazis there?

— No, Mr. Kazis has gone to work now, who iss it please?

— Can you tell me where I can get him, it’s most important.

— Well, of course, you could try the paint shop on Stuart Street, but they don’t like for—

— Can you give me the name—?

— Why, it’s the Vacuum Paint Shop and Upholstery—

He hung up the receiver, laughed, dropped in another nickel, waited.

— Hello?

— Ammen speaking.

— Why, Jasper—

— I’ve just had a vision. Dislocation number seven, or is it eight! And listen—

— Yes?

— Here’s a funny name just to remember, and then forget: Joseph Kazis. Came over in the Mayflower.

— What? Hello, Jasper—?

— But we shall see! No, it will not be Kazis. It will be someone else.… Someone strange!..

VI The Stranger

To say that he was unmistakable, when he came a few minutes later, was not quite the truth: it happened, when it happened, very quickly, very lightly, there was really nothing in the little man’s appearance which particularly answered to any previous notion. In that respect, it might even be said that it was not the man; the face was certainly not the face which he had vaguely foreseen. No, the decision was made automatically, somatically, with a mere physical gesture: he had simply, and before he knew it, stepped away from the telephone booth, against which he was leaning, and begun to follow him. This was no Joseph Kazis, no abstraction, nothing so remote as a mere name in South Boston, and in that sense it was already possible to feel an acute disappointment, a definite derangement of the basic idea. But of course, the minute he thought about that, he saw that it was inevitable; and what the little man supplied was exactly what mathematically would have had to be supplied — a real and surprising existence. He was actual.

He had come up the sloping ramp of concrete from the Arlington side, walking rather slowly, with his head a little down; he seemed to be hesitating; and when he had arrived almost as far as the telephone booths, having passed the barrier, he stopped for a moment and stood still. He looked straight before him with a half-smiling fixity, his hands were in his overcoat pockets, his overcoat was unbuttoned and hung loose at the sides with an effect of habitual carelessness, the gray tweed hat was rather far back on his head. He was obviously wondering whether to turn around or not. Something had been forgotten; or some plan had been, or was about to be, altered. That much was clear, it was amusing to watch the whole affair transacted so shamelessly in the open, as on a trans-lux screen, but it was also plain enough, from the continuous little smile, a slightly stupid smile, that whatever the thing was it wasn’t of very great importance. The moment of irresolution passed, he gave a little cough and turned briskly toward the platform. He walked with an odd jauntiness, his feet turned out, and his head on one side. There was something birdlike about him, and the shape of his coat, which was too long for him, and had a heavy collar of cheap fur, somehow accentuated this. Lowering one shoulder, he turned neatly into the door of the train.

Pausing just inside the door, he looked quickly left and right, evidently saw that the forward end was the less crowded of the two, began to edge his way through the double row of passengers: to watch him from outside, and the slight patronizing smile with which he ingratiated while he made his way, was also to be able, without appearing to follow or any risk of attracting attention, to join him by entering at the front of the car. Accordingly, Ammen walked parallel with his victim: saw the gray hat appear and disappear: saw the hand go up once to touch a handhold and drop again: once glimpsed the half-turned smiling face, noticed for the first time the little mustache. Entering, he found himself almost too close to the little man, who had found a seat and sat down. But by standing opposite, with his back turned, it was easy to pivot slightly in order to watch him. It was also possible, by stooping, to see his reflection in the dark luster of the window glass. He could not leave without being seen — that much was at any rate certain. And that was all of course that was necessary. The danger always arose there: it had happened several times. In the case of a hurried exit at a more or less crowded station, it was necessary to be close at hand.

Revolving a little now, with his two hands above him on the white enameled handhold, he discovered that he could look obliquely between two swaying shoulders, and over a lifted newspaper, directly at the man’s face. This was perfectly safe, for the blue eyes behind their frameless spectacles were turned studiously downward: with complete absorption, the little man was making notes with a red pencil in a red notebook. The first impression of smallness and neatness was at once corroborated. The face was not young, it was obviously somewhat worn, showed unmistakable lines of care and age — he was perhaps thirty-five — there were sallow hollows under the eyes, which on calmer inspection looked tired, but in contrast to all this was a quite definite boyishness and delicacy in the small neatness of the head, the features, the short-clipped mustache. It was a boy grown old; a boy hardened prematurely, by whatever chemistry, into a man. The maturity, or the appearance of it, might be artificial or forced, but it was unmistakable, just the same: the calm laconic assurance which had been evident in his gait was again evident in the clear and detached precision, the obvious efficiency, with which he was giving his whole attention to the making of notes in a notebook. There was conceit in it too. He thought well of himself, he was pleased with his ability to abstract himself from his surroundings, just as he had been pleased with the sharp little foresight with which he had found himself an empty seat in a crowded train. The entire impression was that of a child-actor’s trained, and somewhat callous, small competence. When he looked up, presently, closing and pocketing the notebook and pencil, and glanced idly and again half-smilingly right and left, but not upward towards the face that watched him, his self-satisfaction was immense. He knew what he was doing, and that what he was doing was important.

Important?

But the importance was perhaps false.

The importance was simply a shell, the carefully elaborated defense of a weakling: it had no reality. The frog and the ox, as in Aesop’s fable! Nothing could be clearer than that the little man’s life was bound in shallows, if not in miseries, at any rate in smallnesses, and that the bright little notebook, the sharp little pencil, the detached little air of foresight and wisdom, all that careful assumption of precision and weight, were nothing at all but the feeble compensations of a barren and limited experience, a small body, a restricted mind. Already it was possible to begin the process of surrounding him: and exactly as it was easy to look down at him in the hurrying train, to study his mouth, his eyes, his hands, the large mole at the outer corner of the right eyebrow, the brown feather in the hatband of the cheap tweed hat, so also it was becoming absurdly simple to see the background, the suburban shabbiness and pretentious meanness, of his life. That life began already to lie open: with a single powerful glance one found its essential tissue: two suits of clothes, two pairs of shoes, dull lithochromes on the walls, a dirty tooth brush and a clean one, the cracked mirror over the kitchen sink, a comb always carried in the breast pocket of the coat, an umbrella stand in the front hall, in the zinc base of which was an old pair of rubbers. Or perhaps two, perhaps he was married. Perhaps even — and Ammen smiled at the advertisement at which he found himself staring, Morning Mouth Never Bothersome — he had children.

When the train climbed into the sudden sound of wind, the flood of daylight, on the Cambridge Bridge, sun flashing on windblown and dancing water, the sound of the train itself diminishing, it became possible to see the sallowness as more marked, the hollows beneath the eyes as more pronounced. And also a something melancholy or disillusioned in the eyes gave the lie to the amused impudence of the mouth. The eyes were a good blue, very deep, but inward-looking: self-centered. The mouth, under its short fair mustache, had about it a small air of authority. A tyrant in his own Lilliputian world: a domineering ant. A little bully.

At Park Street, it was easy to follow him, for as before he walked slowly and reflectively, hands in pockets, he seemed to be in no hurry, and to be enjoying the crowded scene, the cross-rush of opposed currents of pedestrians, some towards the North-bound cars, some to the South, himself sauntering beside the train, and now and then glancing into it, as he moved toward the escalator. Arrived on this, he stood quite still, did not turn, allowed himself to be borne upward to the surface with complete immobility. There he stepped off and turned to the left.

The thing was going perfectly: it could not have been better. And if now, as appeared likely, he was going to walk to his destination, it would be extremely simple. This was the advantage of great height. It was easy to follow because it was easy to see. Lagging fifty feet behind, one could observe every movement of one’s victim as from a tower. Unless he took a taxi — but he had already passed the Park Street stand — there could be no difficulty. Except for the matter of turning corners, following people in the street was simplicity itself: but when they turned a corner, one must be prepared to run. More than once, on such an occasion, he had found that in the interval between the disappearance of the stranger round the corner, and his own arrival there, the stranger had vanished: and into any one of so many possible doors that further pursuit was impossible. This time there must be no such mistake.

At the corner of Bromfield Street — and it amused Ammen to reflect on the literalness with which his own path of last night was being followed — the tweed hat hesitated, as if about to turn to the right, but then proceeded. It crossed Tremont Street to the graveyard, sauntered slowly along beside the railings, turned once to look in at the pigeons and squirrels, but without pausing, and presently had crossed Beacon Street. It was curious: the fellow positively seemed to have the air of knowing that he was followed. That turn of the head, the peculiar way he had hesitated at the corner of Bromfield Street, and moreover the almost studied insolence and self-consciousness of his back—! Was it possible? No, certainly not. Any watched person looks watched. A suspected person looks guilty. Just the same, it would be as well to be careful. He remained on the other side of the street, strolled slowly beside the gray churchyard of King’s Chapel, his eyes fixed on the little bobbing hat, and suddenly found himself thinking of Breault. Breault! This little man was like Breault — why hadn’t that occurred to him before? Absurdly like him. The same sort of little homunculus, the enforced dignity of the man small of stature, the pathetic truculence of the weak. The sort of ridiculous boldness which is quintessentially an invitation to death: the one-who-wants-to-be-killed. The one who wants to be killed!

And why not Breault?

There would indeed have been a special and beautiful irony in choosing an anarchist — and a Chicago anarchist to boot. As if one had managed to murder Louis Ling. Or Czolgosz.

And odd how that the pattern should thus be turning round on itself, himself now again passing Tremont Temple thirteen hours later, with the echoes of that scene still whispering on those stairs, in that absurd room, still ordering the separate behaviors of those ridiculous people! Mrs. Taber, with her feather duster, was at this minute probably talking about it in the C Bookshop to Miss Gerber, the lumber merchant’s daughter. At half past ten the shabby little fake analyst would come in — Meyer — to pick up gossip or blab the dirty secrets of his patients, throwing out dark hints as to their social importance. He would be told about it, and snigger, and recount for the hundredth time his story of the dinner he had given at the “Athens,”—that experimental dinner when he had provided a department-store salesgirl for each one of his highbrow guests, with instructions to try to seduce them, so that he could observe their behavior — and particularly the behavior of Ammen. “And Ammen never said a word. He just sat here and never said a word. Do you think he’s human, Mrs. Taber?”

Suddenly he found himself running.

At the Beacon Theater the hat had stopped, pivoted, and then with accelerated pace proceeded once more in the direction from which it had come: seeing that a change of traffic signals at the foot of Beacon Street was imminent, the little man had himself begun to run. As it was safer to run behind him than parallel with him, Ammen zigzagged through the traffic of Tremont Street, was just in time to drop to a walk again at the corner entrance of Houghton and Dutton’s and to cross ten feet in his rear: a little too close for comfort. A narrow escape, and it turned out, immediately, to have been even narrower than he thought: for at once the hat swerved to the right and entered the door of S. S. Pierce. Another moment and he would have been too late: caught by the stream of traffic, he would perhaps have been unable to see in what direction his quarry had gone, or into which of a multitude of doors. As it was, there was no great danger in following him into the store, which was reasonably crowded; there was plenty of excuse for dawdling, as if for inspection, first at one counter and then at another. The hat preceded him, with a firmness of purpose obviously born of familiarity, to the wine and spirits department at the back. A small bottle — to judge from its size and color a pint of whisky — was there procured, paid for, and pocketed; and this done the little man once more advanced to Tremont Street, once more resumed his interrupted journey towards Scollay Square, this time pausing just perceptibly at the entrance of the Beacon Theater to glance at the posters of the movies. Two facts had thus been learned about him: perhaps not quite facts so much as the possibilities of facts: one, that he drank, but with some indication that it might be on a minor and retail scale: two, that he might be a movie fan. A third seemed to be that whatever his job was — always assuming that he had one — it must be somewhat flexible; it was well after nine o’clock, and he still appeared to be in no hurry, but to be sauntering, and looking about him, as if his purpose was at most a half-purpose, and the mere killing of time not unpleasant.

This became more evident when he arrived at Scollay Square.

He stopped at the corner opposite Epstein’s, stood still for what might have been three or four minutes, his hands deep in his pockets, the tweed hat turning first right and then left, but clearly not with any regard to the question of crossing the traffic lines. No, it was obvious that he simply hadn’t made up his mind where he was going: or perhaps at any rate that he wasn’t anxious to get there. For a moment, he half turned towards the right, and seemed to be looking fixedly down Court Street: but then he reversed his direction and began to ascend the slight hill to the Court House. It was all very peculiar: but the oddity of it was in a sense its most interesting and exciting feature. That he should be unpredictable, as much in behavior as in appearance, was of course of the very essence of the stranger: but while it was to be expected in outline, or expected in its unexpectedness, the details must naturally, like this, be surprising. No less odd was again the curious recapitulation of the events of last night. To come again past the Temple, and now to proceed by exactly the path which must have been taken by Sandbach and Breault and Mrs. Taber, to be moving as if by conscious design towards the C Bookshop, toward Sandbach’s room — all this fitted beautifully, it was his own thought made manifest, it was once more — and the vision sharpened almost painfully — as if his own awareness had been simply externalized like a life-size model of the city itself. It was like a repeated dream, but with a difference, — for it was under control, it was being directed. The whole thing was simply his own chess game, projected: it advanced or developed before him exactly as he wished, just as helplessly as the smoke which he now blew from the pipe which he paused to light, all the while watching the tweed hat above his sheltering hand. Let him go as far as he liked; let him even round the corner at the top of the Square, turn towards Ashburton Place: let him, in fact, go where he liked: he was now under control, he would never escape. He was now — and the feeling was positively physical in its sureness and power — fastened. What was even surer than that he would turn to the right or left was that whichever direction he chose he was walking deliberately towards death. He was in the act of finding his grave.

At the back entrance of Houghton and Dutton’s, a truck was being unloaded. A heavy crate fell from the tailboard to the sidewalk with a sharp clap, a pistol shot of sound, and the sound was at once echoed by the simultaneous slapping of a hundred pigeon wings as the startled birds took whistling flight from the sooty window ledges of the Court House. Round the Square they circled, and vanished northward at the far end of the Court House, his eye following them out of sight; and in that instant the tweed hat had vanished also, turning to the left at the top of the hill. No need to worry — he would still be there — but he quickened his pace, glanced hurriedly over the crowded array of second-hand books in the window of the Rebuilt Bookshop, noting one title, Erring Yet Noble, and presently, keeping close to the window of the Waldorf, turned the corner and looked down toward Beacon Street. The little man had disappeared: he was not there.

Impossible!

But yes, of course, possible.

He must be either in the Waldorf, at his left elbow, or in the shoe-shine parlor beyond: the Waldorf, at this hour, seemed improbable, but to inspect the interior through the large windows was simplicity itself. And sure enough, the tweed hat was standing at the counter, was in the act of receiving a heavy china mug of coffee, came forward with it, stepping cautiously, sat down at a table without once having raised his eyes, dipped sugar from the sugar bowl and began stirring the cup with a spoon.

A retreat, and a wait, becoming necessary, Ammen bought an American from the newsboy at the corner, crossed the street, stood with lifted paper by the door of the Newsboy Foundation. PICKETERS HELD IN CONTEMPT. Holy Year O. K.’d by Pope. NAZI SPY GANG IS UNCOVERED. Bootleggers, dope peddlers, and other racketeers, driven into temporary retirement by repeal and other causes, are back of the Boston welfare swindle, it was charged today. Mother Faber, a tiny slip of a woman, today stood in humbled pride on the witness stand.… The question now is whether the state trial should have proceeded, with habeas corpus proceedings pending in federal court. Fliers Hop for Rome Tomorrow.

The wind whirled the pages, the paper flapped against his arm in its effort to escape, a tall spiral of dust went spinning past the City Club. For a moment the sun flashed downward, filled the dull streets, sparkled on the cars, then was again dimmed by heavy clouds. He looked upward, watched the clouds in swift procession, ragged and gray, but not rain clouds, it would not rain. From Park Street Church came, with clamorous loudness, immediate and strange, the eight bells of the half hour, windborne and irregular. Half past nine.

The whole thing was peculiar: he had started a good fox, and no mistake. Perhaps he had no job at all, was going nowhere. Either out of work, or of independent means. But surely not the latter?

Picketers and racketeers.

Or of course he might be an “outside man” for some firm or other, whose hours were more or less his own—

This time, when the little man reappeared, it was with a new air of purpose and a noticeable quickening of pace. In a few minutes he had reached Beacon Street, Ammen keeping fifty feet behind; and then suddenly the hat had turned left into a narrow doorway which appeared to lead into a barbershop. Hurrying forward, Ammen found that it was not in fact the barbershop, but the entrance to a flight of shabby marble stairs which led to the upper floors: business offices of the humbler sort. Listening, he could hear the footsteps climbing above, and at once, taking three steps at a time, and without making a sound, he followed. The hall on the second floor was vacant: ground glass doors of an insurance office, a dealer in real estate: the footsteps were again ascending, and as he reached the bottom of the second flight of stairs he saw the feet just arriving at the floor above. They disappeared, he could hear them slowing, then a jingle of keys, the turning of a lock, the opening of a door. The door must be the one immediately opposite the stairhead. He waited a moment, listened, heard the door close, and mounted swiftly. Behind the gray glass he could see the moving shadow of a man in the act of removing his coat, very close at hand. The stenciled letters on the door said: Acme Advertising Agency. K. N. Jones and T. Farrow.

Jones! If only it was Jones!

And why not?

He knocked his pipe softly against the yellow-plaster wall, dislodged the light crust of ash, began to laugh. That it should turn out to be a Jones would be almost too good to be true. The anonymous one, the abstract one, the mere Specimen Man — it would be perfect! But even if it turned out to be Farrow—

Walking forward to the front window, he looked down into School Street, ticked the black pipestem against his teeth, reflected with narrowed and unseeing eyes. The thing was beginning; he was in the presence of it; his shadow was already falling upon the tree, like an immense frost of peril; and even as he stood here, in the shabby hallway, unknown to the tweed hat which now hung on its peg, his powerful influence was beginning to expand and penetrate. He had entered the stranger’s little world, he was here inside it, learning its shape and size, taking possession of it. This worn wooden floor, the scarred plaster of the walls, the ground glass of the old-fashioned doors, the gas bracket in the corner — this was the stranger’s domain, known to his feet and hands and eyes, returned to day after day, dreamed about, hated, loved. The whole little life was beginning to lie open, like a familiar book.

Opening the window, he leaned out; and at once something caught his eye. The telegraph office. His long hands tightened on the edge of the sill, — the idea was sudden, and like a pair of claws. It was as simple as lightning. And it would be as effective.

Two minutes later, in the telegraph office, he wrote Gerta’s telephone number on a yellow telegraph form, added “please call after 11,” and sealed it in an envelope. On the envelope he printed with the pencil the name “K. N. Jones.”

— I want a messenger, please, right away.

— Yes, sir, for how long—

— I want him to come with me and deliver this note at the foot of School Street, while I wait outside for an answer. It will take him five minutes.

— Yes, sir, that will be—

— Give me the change from this.

Outside the barbershop, he handed the yellow envelope to the boy and explained.

— Just take this in and deliver it to Mr. Jones — or if Mr. Jones isn’t there, to Mr. Farrow. The third floor. I want you to notice what the man you give it to looks like. That’s all. Then come down and tell me, and I’ll give you a dollar. Have you got it?

— Yes, sir.

— All right, beat it. And make it quick.

Within a minute, the boy was back, grinning.

— I gave it to Mr. Jones, all right! And was he surprised! He asked me where it come from, but of course I didn’t say a word.

— What did he look like?

— Oh, one of these little guys, with a kind of a Charlie Chaplin mustache, and sort of bald.

— Was there anybody else there?

— No, sir.

— All right — here’s your dollar. And keep it under your hat.

— Sure thing. Thanks. Say, are you a detective?

— Yes. And by the way, what’s your name?

— Costello, sir. Peter Costello.

— I might need you again sometime. Now beat it, and forget it — see?

— Sure.

Clouds and a wind, the wild heavens opened and closed with wild light, the morning had deepened immeasurably, was deepening with each breath he drew: what a surprise was in store for Gerta, what a surprise was in store for Jones, what a surprise was in store for God! With his hand clenched tight in his pocket he held an imaginary revolver, he was already climbing the hill among the cedars to his particular place, the little hollow among birches and junipers, he was already taking aim at the rock, and now, rapidly and repeatedly, he pulled the fatally compliant trigger. Mr. K. N. Jones, of the Acme Advertising Agency, was as good as dead.

When he reached the Parker House Hotel, he suddenly decided to go in — he wanted not only to wash his hands, very carefully and slowly, but also to admire in the mirror above the washbasin the fine forehead and the extraordinary eyes of the man who had now so clearly and calmly seen to the end of a human life: King Coffin.

VII The Seven Words of the Stranger

If for a moment the thing, in coming closer, seemed almost in the nature of an encroachment, as if his own shadow were somehow falling on himself, or his own image walking toward him out of a mirror, the sensation passed immediately, with a mere knitting of the brows, and what ensued was a natural and profound laughter, the golden laughter of the gaia scienza, the gay wisdom. The heavens and the houses laughed together, the whole sound of the hostile city was gay, not to say ribald, and it was as if he himself were mounting rapidly up a spiral of air or light. The impulses were many and confused — to call up Gerta, for example, to call up Sandbach, call up Toppan, even Mrs. Taber; to call them all up and tell them what had happened. Ammen speaking! Yes? And I wanted to say that I’ve found a man, a stranger, and I have him on the end of an invisible cord, a cord three miles long, and with this cord I shall slowly but surely kill him. I shall dangle him there like a puppet, like Punch or Judy, until I want him. I shall then summon him to the place of execution, wherever I choose, and it shall be done.… But against this was also the contrary impulse, and the more natural — to make this the beginning of a new and essentially secret life: to go underground, into darkness, and to remain there. No one should know what he was doing, where he was, what planning, what evolving: at most, now and then, he would give them the fleetingest of little signals, the showing of a single and ambiguous light, glimpsed for only a moment and gone again, or the utterance of a deceptive word or two in the most disguised and bland of voices. They would know nothing, until he had returned at last from the underworld, wearing a new terribleness of splendor. And even then though they would recognize the new power, the new terror, they would guess in vain at the reason, find him as mysterious in the light as in the dark.

But only for the time being.

This fact must not be lost sight of.

He lengthened and quickened his pace, he had thought little about his direction, found himself now proceeding from the foot of Mount Vernon Street to the Esplanade against gusts of wind, the Charles River Basin lay before him half clouded, half flashing under the changing sky, the nearer waves leaden, the farther bright. The raw new works for the new lagoons, islands, bridges, the stretches of bare earth where as yet no grass showed, the heavy masses of unplaced stone lying awry, the ungainly bastions projecting against the river, windswept and sinister, — all this accorded admirably with his own changing scene, his sense of disruption and tumult. The ruthlessness and purposiveness of architecture, of the architect — yes, there are times when one must be a Bucyrus-Erie steam shovel.

Only for the time being: the shadow lay heaviest in that phrase, in the notion of time. Once the weapon had been aimed, one could not delay indefinitely the pulling of the trigger; there must necessarily be a limit to the time during which one merely observed, from a distance, and for whatever satisfaction, one’s quarry: the one-who-wants-to-be-killed must be killed! But need it be at once?

It was a nice question.

Actually, of course, there was no hurry. Mr. Jones could not escape — for how could he take flight from a danger of which he wasn’t even aware? He would be there, he would wait, as long as it was necessary for him to wait. But this wasn’t really the problem. The real problem was once more in the matter of purity, and about this it was imperative to think very clearly, without any vagueness or any self-deception. One must be certain that one was not delaying for the wrong reasons: for example, out of fear, or a distrust of one’s mere competence. But that was dismissed as soon as considered. The thing would be, if not entirely simple, at all events quite practicable: it would need, when the right time came, when the circumstances had been sufficiently studied or arranged only the cool exercise of a little logic. Some small and quite uncomplicated structure of deception would serve, all the more obviously in view of the fact that the victim was completely unsuspecting. An invitation to something, somewhere — Belmont, Concord, Nantasket—

No, there was no cause for worry, there was no fringe of self-deception, he was not afraid; the thing was as good as done. He could safely leave the actual form of the murder to be determined by future events. The revolver, with which he was an expert marksman, brought all the way from Naples, canoe on the Concord River — these details need not yet be considered. Or a casual lurch in the subway? What was far more important now was the other question, which he had not quite clearly foreseen though he had vaguely felt it — the question as to how legitimate would be the mere pleasure in observation, in the daily watching and study of Mr. K. N. Jones. In the last half hour, the intense reality of this pleasure had become only too manifest. It must have been, from the very beginning, somewhere vaguely in his mind — it was certainly a part of the pleasure of the pure detective-impulse, as discussed by himself and Toppan. But admitting this, how safely and for how long could it be protracted? The line must be drawn somewhere — the stranger must in essence remain a stranger — and if it was perhaps legitimate to learn as much about the little man as possible, by careful study, one must be scrupulous in learning only what could be learned from outside. Yes, that was it; that would keep it pure: everything would be all right as long as the stranger did not know him. The stranger must not become an acquaintance? Even this was not wholly clear, however — for if knowing about his victim was a perfectly legitimate part of his pleasure, then surely it was difficult to set any limit?…

Advertising; he was an advertising agent; a publicity expert. Presumably not a very good or successful one. What did such fellows do? And how could that be found out?

Two girls, one of them with an Alsatian on a leash, walked for a moment parallel with him.

— And from where I was sitting in the front row of the balcony I could look right down on his little pink bald head—

— Was his wife there too?

— Yes, I suppose it was—

— With red hair? and she has very skinny arms, you can see them when she wears—

He turned to the left, entered the rutted and shabby alley behind Beacon Street, paused to let a car pass, looked in and saw an old lady with a black hat and veil — the fierce bird’s-eyes peered at him and were gone. For some reason he stood still, gazed after the retreating car, watched it swing slowly, bumping over the uneven surface, up the left turn which took it to Beacon Street. A final glimpse of that white and hostile Boston profile and it had vanished. Something in it, as in this wind, the rapid shift of cold spring sunlight with gray shadow, brought him an eclipse: his hatred rose suddenly and sharply, the vision returned to him at last night at Gerta’s, it grew like a tree, thrust darkly and venomously above him, spread violent and lethal boughs to right and left over the hated void. As he stood still in the dusty alley, with tightening arms and hands held hard against his sides, it was himself who thus grew and darkened and obscurely multiplied. He had taken possession of the world. Conscious of his powerful arrogance, his half-closed eyes, his out-going intelligence and limitless vision, he looked to right and left along the alley as far as he could, saw the few people in the distance, knew them, dismissed them. They had not noticed him, and even if they had, they were as unaware of his true reality, his malevolence, as the oak tree is of thunder. If they saw him at all, they saw him simply as a man standing still in a dusty alley, a man with dusty shoes, tall and thin, dressed in a dark suit, his dark hair blown in the wind. Perhaps they thought of him as odd and solitary, or even as absurd and self-conscious: as if to be standing there close to the high brick wall, motionless in the swirling dust, was a kind of awkward pose, something either meaningless or ridiculous. Or shabby and mean.…

Mean!

But how could it be that?

He looked quickly upward toward the sound of an opening window, saw a maid shake a dusting cloth with a downward gesture of the white arm, felt for a moment something inimical in the mere notion of height. To be enclosed thus anonymously between high walls, and as if purposeless, at a standstill — this was to be enacting the “unrecognized” Satan, the Satan in disguise. It was that moment when Satan, humbly clad, has not yet declared himself; skulks in the background; pulls the hood low over his marked bright forehead; has not yet pointed toward the victim his mesmeric forefinger. Certainly there might be a kind of meanness in this, — as there was in any mere solitude. To be alone, in an absolute sense, was also to be mean, as the acorn or the toad is mean. But also to be alone was to be magnificent.…

He gave his laugh again, turning, he had come back again to his starting point, the laughter of the gay wisdom, it was all as clear and beautiful and ominous as a black beetle in a golden blaze of light. The scarab! He was the scarab. And with precisely that kind of hard and precious immortality. And its touch, when K. N. Jones felt it, would be cold.

But the telephone call was imminent, he must get to Gerta’s room, be waiting there, listen — for the first time — to the stranger’s voice. Gerta would not be at home of course, she was at the Museum, working in the print-room — perhaps he would leave a note for her. Crossing Charles Street, he ascended Chestnut, stamped the dust from his shoes, heard the sentences of the dialogue forming, listened intently to the new voice which crept all the way over the hill from an office in School Street. Advertising. The Acme Advertising Agency. The Farrow might be mythical. A one-horse show. Bought out, perhaps. And who went to such a firm for advertising?

When Sally let him in, unsurprised by his request to use the telephone and to leave a note, it was ten minutes to eleven. The room was empty, silent, smelt faintly of turpentine. The blue smock hung over the back of an unpainted chair, the green bowl of apples stood on the sill, the notice of an art show was propped against one of the candles. On the corner table, tilted to the wall, was a new painting — a new Gerta — which obviously she must have concealed the night before. Like all of Gerta’s recent work, it was queer, it surprised him — as if abruptly she had begun speaking in a foreign language. It might be the interior of a lunar volcano, — the inside, the wall, — but it was vascular with silver, encrusted as with heavy silver veins which seemed to have a cold and heavy life, and above this, in a light as dead and clear as terror, were two winged things, not birds, not moths, which appeared to be at dalliance. Above these, in turn, was a little hard pale wafer of a sun.

What did Gerta mean by it?

He took it to the window, held it to the light, saw how heavily crusted was the paint, all that veined interior as solid as a honeycomb, but also with a queer phosphorescent unreality. A strange world, as strange as his own, she was a match for him, it was what he had always liked in her: she had secret depths and heights, there must somewhere be a Kay in her family. She had said — aren’t we both mad?

No.

He replaced the picture, then stood still in the middle of the floor. At this minute, perhaps Jones had his watch in his hand, was putting out his arm toward the telephone, pulling it toward him, waiting. Or perhaps he was walking to and fro in the room, in the little dingy office, unable to sit down, wondering what the mysterious note could mean: and whether it meant a job or not, and why it had come by messenger. Perhaps the bottle of whisky stood on the desk, with a tumbler beside it. And an ash tray littered with matches and cigarette ends. Or had he forgotten the message already? was busy, wouldn’t call at all? It seemed unlikely. The very fact that it had come by Western Union messenger would make it appear all the more urgent.…

Urgent! He little knew.

A faint premonitory buzzing, and then the telephone, as if clearing away an obstruction, began its sharp and rhythmic ringing. For a moment he stood and listened to it, gazed down at it, smiled as he put his hand on it and lifted it, the receiver still unremoved. Beware lest, if thou gazest into the abyss, the abyss gaze also into thee!

— Hello?

— Hello? This is K. N. Jones speaking, of the Acme Advertising Agency. I received a note asking me to call this number—

— I beg your pardon?

— I say I received a note this morning asking me to call—

— Oh, I see; this is Mr. Jones.

— Yes. Who is this speaking, please?

— The Acme Advertising Agency, is that right?

— Yes! Yes?

The voice was a little anxious, a little eager, a little mystified: but low-pitched and quite pleasant. After a pause, getting no reply, it went on:

— What can I do for you?…

— Well, as a matter of fact, I’m not quite sure as yet. I merely wanted to make an inquiry.

— I see. Well, I’ll be glad to give you any information I can—

— You undertake all sorts of advertising work, I assume?

— Oh, yes. Anything and everything. Perhaps you could give me an idea of what it is you want?

Carrying the telephone with him, he took three steps to the window, placed the felted base of the transmitter on the sill beside the bowl of apples, looked down over the roofs toward the Esplanade, the bright surface of the Charles River Basin, the far-off Harvard Bridge. The window was a few inches open, and he closed it by bearing softly down upon the sash with his elbow.

— As a matter of fact, I’m making the inquiry not on my own account, but for a friend of mine.

— I see.

— Well, do you?

— Well, I mean I’d be very glad—

— It would be rather a confidential matter.

— Well, I guess that would be all right — would you mind telling me who recommended us to you?

— I think that hardly matters. But if you want to know, my friend simply happened to be in your building — in School Street, I think he said — and saw your offices.

— I see.

— You feel you would have to have references?

— Why, no, certainly not, I didn’t mean that, I just wondered how you knew—

— But of course, if there are going to be difficulties, we’d better not be wasting each other’s time—

— Not at all, not at all! Please don’t misunderstand me! I was only—

— My own part in it is simply to make inquiries. It’s a matter of political advertising which requires absolute confidence. Do you understand?

The gentle voice seemed to hesitate, then said:

— Of course. What medium, may I ask, did you have in mind?…

— That hasn’t been wholly decided. What I was going to suggest — will you hold the line a minute while I consult my partner?

— Yes—?

Resting the receiver on the sill beside the bowl of apples, the earpiece downward, he crossed the room to the mantelpiece, lifted the notice of the art show from beside the candle, read it carefully, then went to the Colonial mirror which hung on the rear wall. His back to the light, he peered at the shadowed and elongated face which he saw there, leaned closer to it, grinned at it with a conscious evilness of expression, his hands all the while in his pockets, then turned again toward the window and stood motionless. The thing was so easy as to be meaningless. If it was all going to be as simple as this—! And the poor little man was so eager, so keen to get the job! Waiting there, hardly daring to breathe. Perhaps it would be a good thing to create a danger. If the enemy didn’t hit back—

Returning to the telephone, he lifted it quietly and said:

— Mr. Jones?

— Yes?

— My partner thinks that perhaps the best procedure would be for me to have a talk with you in person. Now as it happens, I’m usually not very free during the day, and I wondered whether it would be possible for me to come and see you this evening somewhere. Would it be convenient for me to call on you at your home, for instance? Or have you a telephone there?

— Why, yes, I guess so—

— I mean, do you live in Boston?

— No, I live in Cambridge. 85 Reservoir Street.

— Reservoir Street. Let’s see, just where is that?

— If you take a Huron Avenue car, it’s only a couple of minutes from the car. I’ll be there all evening, and I’ll be very glad to have a talk with you. I’m sure you’ll find we can give you satisfactory service, and our prices are very reasonable.

— I might come in about nine. Or if not, I’ll perhaps give you a ring in a day or two.

— The Cambridge number is in the book, if you should want to call me there — K. N. Jones.

— I see. K. N. Jones.

— And as I say, I hope we can be of service to you. We’re not a large firm, but I think we know our business as well as most!

Allowing the little boast to hang unanswered and plaintive on the wire for a few seconds, as if for the full savor of its eagerness, and for the completion of the picture, Ammen merely said “Very well,” and hung up the receiver without waiting for any further reply.

In the ensuing silence, it was curiously as if some one had left the room. He replaced the telephone on the table, then began once more to examine Gerta’s odd picture — but as he gazed at that surface of honeycombed silver it was not a lunar volcano, nor Gerta, he was looking at, or looking into, so prolongedly and earnestly, but the identity of K. N. Jones: the little man with the clipped mustache, the tweed hat, the fur-collared coat; the little man with the suave and deliberately ingratiating voice. It was as if he were sitting there, the one who wanted to be killed, in the depths of a mirror, his hands relaxed on the edge of the desk, towards which his curious inward-looking eyes were directed downward. The expression, and the attitude, were those of despair.

What was it, exactly, that had created this impression — which, though faint, was so definite?

And was the situation in any way altered by this?

But why should it be?

Opening Gerta’s little writing bureau, he sat down and looked through the recent letters in the pigeonhole at the right. One from her mother in New York, with details of an attack of sciatica and iodine treatment; a card signed Petra from Washington, with a photograph of the Adams Memorial by Saint Gaudens; his own postcard of two days ago inscribed “Dislocation Number One.” But nothing from Sandbach. Perhaps in the wastebasket? No. And after all, there was no reason why he should have written — yet. Quite likely they had arranged a meeting for today by telephone: to discuss the latest phase of the Ammen situation. And when they did, Sandbach would get a surprise: he would find himself perched on the top of a towering scaffold which had, as it were, grown up under him during the night. A nightmare.

85 Reservoir Street. 85 Reservoir Street!

The day opened swiftly to left and right, like an immense stage from which the scenery was being slid into the wings, the prospect widened, and far off he saw the godlike arm and hand thrust violently downward from the hurrying clouds, the index finger pointing silently at a single house, then gone like a whirlwind. The arm and hand were his own, the house would soon be his, all that was in it would soon be known. A map of Cambridge bought at Amee’s, a taxi from Harvard Square, and before nightfall a new and terrible circle would have been drawn. At the center of it, Jones was beginning to be immortal, beginning to be still.

VIII The Daily Life of the Stranger

The insomnia was not real, was not actual, since there was no real desire to sleep; it was merely the removal, in one dark strip after another, of insulation; the progressive laying bare of the bright nerves of perception; the painless flaying of the dark integument of consciousness. With the turning over, with the listening, now to the murmur of nocturnal water in the pipes, again to the faint tyang of the grandfather clock in the professor’s apartment next door, or again to the intermittent snicker of the little motor in the electric refrigerator; with the lifting of his hand from beneath his head on the pillow, or the sliding of his fingers along the edge of the half-cool sheet; with each separate action of the restlessness which divided, into marked and conscious sections, the time-chasm which would ordinarily have been void and unconscious, it was as if he stepped closer to his own true being and purpose. On the hours, which came softly on soft air from the dark campanile of Saint Paul’s, — the twelve, the one, the two — came also an incandescent indifference to sleep. To these and other sounds he could be as inaccessible as he wished, as little touched as by the diagonal of cold lamp light, from Massachusetts Avenue, which made a pale remoteness of the ceiling and threw into humble relief the little Buddha on its shelf. These immediate things, his room, his window, his bed, the soft sucking sound made by the curtains in the study against the wire screens, the creaking of a ventilator on the roof of the A. D. Club across the street, were in fact as remote as they could be: they stood at an infinite distance; to cross time and space to them would be like crossing the Milky Way. Their remoteness, of course, lay in their comparative unreality. They belonged now to another and dimmer time-space, they seemed so distant and so silent, measured by the nearness and loudness of his own heart, as to be without meaning and without motion.

And not heart so much as vision.

The vision was this little man, who now so obsessed him: this little man, his house, his clothes, his name, his daily orbit. He was here, in this room: walked like a fly across the ceiling, as if the ceiling were the large white map — (now pinned to the wall over the table in the next room) — of Cambridge: on that map, with its concentric circles which marked the distance, in quarter miles, from the City Hall, a whole week of the life of Jones was now over and over again enacted. He opened his door in Reservoir Street, stooped to pick up The Herald, went in again. He opened the door later, and came out. From the little copper letter box — first unlocking it with a key — he extracted letters, glanced over them, selected some, replaced others. He walked to Huron Avenue, crossed it, and proceeded west to a block of one-story dingy shops between Fayerweather Street and Gurney Street; entered a grocer’s and left an order; then came out to wait for a streetcar. At half past five in the afternoon, he reappeared, carrying an evening paper; looked again in the letter box; unlocked the green door. The upper part of the door was of glass, and from across the street he could be seen going up a flight of stairs which turned to the left.…

His life went by the clock. He came out, to go in again; he went in, to come out again. The streets in which he walked were always the same. Perhaps that was why he so seldom lifted his odd, amused eyes or bothered to look left or right. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — on Friday he had left early, at a few minutes after eight, and come back at four. And at the other end of his life, the School Street end, his goings and comings were just as precise, just as methodical. Always the same route, the same apparently meaningless circuit round Pemberton Square, the pause for the reflective cup of coffee, then the accelerated descent of Beacon Street to the office. And at half past twelve, three-quarters of an hour for lunch, sometimes at a sandwich shop in Province Court, sometimes at the Waldorf in Bromfield Street.

He walked on the ceiling like a fly: it was easy to see him there: easy to meet him, at the bottom of those awful little streets: he came quite suddenly around the corner of Vassal Lane, for example, so suddenly that Ammen jumped, and laughed, for a moment forgetting that Jones did not know him by sight. To turn and saunter away, obliquely across the street, with averted face, and taking cover behind a coal truck, had been very simple. Vassal Lane. That had been an exception, too, in the routine, for Jones had gone there, to the house at the corner of Alpine Street, the first thing in the morning, directly after breakfast. Moreover, he had gone there as if with hesitation: to begin with he had passed it, merely pausing to look rather earnestly at the door; and he had then sauntered, rather slowly, all the way to Fresh Pond Avenue. There, standing across the street from the Pumping station, he had waited for fully five minutes, alternately staring at the pond and the row of half-fledged willows by the station. A dark day, with now and then a little spatter of rain. On the way back, he went into the house — a two-family house like his own — and stayed there about five minutes. It was the sudden meeting with him, at the corner of Vassal Lane and Reservoir Street — (he hadn’t thought Jones would have had time to get so far) — that had first suggested the advisability of hiring a drive-yourself car. Sitting in the closed Buick, parked now at one place and now at another, but usually on the south side of Huron Avenue, it had been easy to see without being seen. For the observation of the area immediately round the house, it was in fact ideal: but of course no good for following. For that, it had been necessary either to board Jones’s streetcar at Appleton Street, having seen him get on, or to lie in wait for him at the top of the ramp in Harvard Square.… Thanks to the little man’s regularity, both had been quite simple.

The neighborhood was detestable — it ought to be burned down. With all its inhabitants. A typical suburban swarm of wooden two-family houses, all exactly alike, brown shingles, dirty white-railed porches and balconies, one or two with projecting flagpoles. Here and there an attempt had been made at a clipped privet hedge: but for the most part the little front yards were bare, except for a forsythia bush or two. At exact intervals, for miles, the cement walk branched in toward a porch, from which opened two doors, one for the lower part of the house, one for the upper. On the right of each house another narrower cement path led to the cellar doors, at the rear. It was along this — on Monday evening — that he had seen Jones, with bare pink hands, bareheaded and wearing an old black sweater, trying to roll a heavy ash can on its rim. It was too much for him — it kept sitting down, wrenching itself away from his fingers. But after a deep breath or two, the hands still resting on the rims, the head bowed, he managed to heave it up again and to roll it a little farther toward the street, — toward the grimy border of ringed earth at the curbstone where week after week it waited for the ash man. The entire street was marked in this fashion. In front of each shabby little house was the deep pair of rings, grooved in the earth, where ash can and garbage can rested. And the inevitable residue of onionskin and eggshell and orange peel.… Sickening.

The clock in the professor’s room sounded, through the thin walls, its tyang—half past two.

He thought of the map, with its concentric circles, — Reservoir Street, one and three-quarter miles from City Hall, at its south end, where it joined Highland Street; but where Jones lived, a little farther. By Yellow Taxi, a fifty-cent fare from the Square.

K. N. Jones. 85 Reservoir Street.…

It had turned out to be Karl — not Kenneth, as he had guessed.

But who was the woman who was seen now and then passing the windows, with a white cloth bound over her hair? It had been impossible to make out whether she was old or young, or what she looked like. Once she had come down the outside stairs at the back, to the cement path, but before he could get a good look at her she had rapped her dustpan twice, sharply, on the edge of the ash can, and gone in again. It might be either his wife or his mother. It might be his sister. It was even possible that there were two women, not one; for occasionally she had seemed taller than he expected. But of this it was difficult to judge. Whoever it was, or whoever they were, thus far they had never come out of the house while he was watching. Probably his wife.

The curious thing was the repugnance which the actual scene had aroused in him from the beginning — from the very beginning. There was something really loathsome in it. The paltry houses, the ill-paved street, the ash cans, the litter, the air of furtiveness and meanness and defeat which overhung the whole neighborhood — there had been something in this which seemed a little outside his calculations. Of course, the unexpected was to be expected. Jones, Karl Jones, was not the sort of fellow who would be found living in a huge and grand apartment house — far from it.

The cheap fur collar had not meant that.

Nor the tweed hat.

But to find just this kind of meanness and sordidness, the sight of Jones wheeling an ash can with bare hands, then dusting, with dusty hands, the ash from the knees of worn trousers—

And all with such an air of good cheer and confidence. The cock-sparrowlike sideways tilt of the head, the ridiculous little strut of accomplishment with which he returned along the cement path! This was something to tighten the muscles in one’s arms, to contract the fingers, to narrow the eyes. But just the same—

No, the objection was not real, could not be real, all this was a natural part of the strangeness, it was inevitable; and in its way, also, it was a fine enough sharpening of the whole point that in its discovery it should bring with it a pullulating ant heap of new and all-too-human experience: to have blundered thus into such an unforeseeable quagmire of the deformed and spiritually unvirtuous — horrible though it might be — was of the very essence of the chosen adventure. To think, for instance, only of the names of those streets, as contrasted with their actual nature — Vassal Lane, Alpine Street, Fayerweather, Fresh Pond Avenue — Alpine, of all things, in a district as flat as a dried river bed, and as noisome! And all the shabby purlieus, moreover, of filled-in clay pits and mudholes, acres of festering tomato tins and sardine tins, rusted fragments of cars, old bedsprings, blown paper, greasy rags. When the wind came from the northwest, one smelt a sour and acrid smell of slow burning, the animal odor of smoldering human refuse, worse than the ghats of India: it drifted day-long from the reclaimed quarries by Fresh Pond, covering the entire forlorn suburb of wretched houses in its bitter miasma. To think, in the morning, of opening one’s windows to that! In the evening, if one walked forth toward the pond, in search of the picturesque, perhaps a sunset over Belmont to lift one’s eyes to, one saw also the shadowy and sinister figures which poked, like hobgoblins, at a score of sickly little flames in that waste land, prodding with sticks to see if here or there some object might be salvaged from the heaps of refuse. Only the trees, in that district, had any dignity, the willow-trees;—and especially the one, an old one, with a trunk as massive as an oak, which stood at the junction of Vassal Lane and Reservoir Street. And this had been useful. Its great girth gave excellent cover.

Of course Jones was poor — no one would live in a neighborhood like that if he could help it. If the Acme Advertising Agency did any business at all, it must be infinitesimal. No further proof of this was needed than that he had himself, twice, spent part of a morning in the bare hall outside the office — not a soul had come or gone in the whole time. And of course Mister T. Farrow must be a thing of the past — if he existed, he had at any rate never been seen. Perhaps Jones had just bought the name and good will. Anyway, apparently, Jones just sat there — three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon — without doing a thing. Once or twice, the telephone had rung, but it had been impossible to overhear what Jones was saying — it might even have been his wife.

What did he do there?

Perhaps that was where the whisky came in. Though he never showed any signs of it.

Or perhaps most of his business was mail-order advertising, the preparation of sales-letters — which could be managed largely by correspondence. A typewriter could be heard there intermittently, and used, moreover, with quite respectable speed. But always, then, came the long silence. In fact, it had soon become only too obvious that the fruitful end for observation was not the business, but the domestic, end of Jones’s little life-pattern — the study of the house, although a great deal more difficult, would in time be more rewarding. But how to manage this? To be seen hanging about there day after day, or even sitting in a car, would ultimately attract attention — it might not be Jones, it might be any one, but it would be dangerous. There was the problem of the postman, for instance.…

Toppan! The very thing.

He sat up in bed, switched on the light in the corner, looked at the hexagonal wrist watch — quarter to three.

Why not present the whole business to Toppan as a mere exercise in detection — the latest and best specimen — a particularly attractive problem? It would join on to the previous conversation perfectly: and his pleasure in it, both their pleasures, would be deliciously enhanced by the fact that Toppan wouldn’t quite dare presume that it was a question of the other thing, the pure murder, or in any case that it was for anything but the novel. Why not? And why not now? To rouse Toppan from his sleep, startle him, take him thus off his guard, with all his conscious defenses down, still surrounded, as it were, by all the naïve transparency of sleep — it would be like turning a harsh searchlight on a naked soul. An experience in itself.

In the study, knotting the dressing gown, he paused to look at the map, leaning close to it to familiarize himself once more with the tangle of small streets between Huron and Concord Avenues, and also to observe the column of dates which he had entered in pencil on the upper left-hand margin: ten of them, — the latest this morning’s. It looked formidable enough. Ten days. Possibly a little slow: but certainly there had been no delay? Map of the City of Cambridge. C. Frank Hooker Acting Engineer. 1932.…

From the table beneath it he picked up the small green book which lay open there, with the pages downward, and read again the passage which had caught his attention earlier in the evening. “But there is the dark eye which glances with a certain fire, and has no depth. There is a keen quick vision which watches, which beholds, but which never yields to the object outside: as a cat watching its prey. The dark glancing look which knows the strangeness, the danger of its object, the need to overcome the object. The eye which is not wide open to study, to learn, but which powerfully, proudly or cautiously glances, and knows the terror or the pure desirability of strangeness in the object it beholds.” Extraordinary that Lawrence should have said just that — italicizing the word “strangeness”—but wasn’t he completely mistaken in assuming that there was no desire — in the savage eye — to learn, to study? In any case, what was the savage eye? Who was to say? or who was to say that — finally speaking — it wasn’t the only true eye in the world, the only one which saw virtuously?

The terror, or the desirability of strangeness.

The pure desirability!

That was odd, too. An odd, but perhaps natural, antithesis. Something a little uncomfortable in it, as well. But why? After all, if the prime need was to overcome the object, then the study of it was absolutely indispensable, was simply a means to an end. The cat, in short, understands—in the deepest sense — the mouse: observes it with that sort of pure virtue of love which is the prelude to conquest. It sees, and knows, the mouse—and that is precisely its playing with it. In the savage eye there is therefore not merely the desire to kill, there is also that look which just as coldly embraces a tree, a landscape, a star, an idea. It must purify what it sees, and see what it purifies: the only vision which is noble. There is no compromise with the object, no placid or reasoned acceptance of it. It is seen, understood, and destroyed. The vision is pure.

He said it aloud, as he descended the half-dark stairs—“the vision is pure”—remembered his pipe and tobacco and went back for them, descended again with the pipe in his hand. Toppan’s door was unlocked, he stepped in, switched on the light, his forefinger automatically finding the ebony button in the dark, then for a moment he stood unmoving in the silent room. The bedroom door, in the far right-hand corner, was closed, the green window shade had been pulled down, except for three inches at the bottom, where the night-dark showed, a sheet of music had fallen from the piano and lay open on the bench, a brown felt hat dangled from one corner of the mantel. Taking three steps forward, to the middle of the gray carpet, he listened: he could hear the deep and regular breathing. Toppan had not waked: lay there at his mercy. To read the diary now, with Toppan in the next room—

And there it was, on top of the desk.

It had been closed on a pen, tonight’s entry was still fresh.

He turned the pages.

“May 2. The great Jasper has certainly stirred them up, and no mistake. Saw all of them — Sandbach, Gerta, Mrs. Taber, her husband, and that analyst chap, also a little fellow from Chicago, at the C Bookshop this afternoon, and what they wouldn’t do to him if they could! Sandbach and Mrs. T. in particular. They had a long discussion of the episode at Tremont Temple — I must say I couldn’t help laughing, for Jasper seems to have done a first-rate theatrical job of it: apparently just walked in and dismissed them. Not so bad! Goodness knows there is something rather fine about it, even if one doesn’t feel moved to emulation. Gerta, however, I noticed, didn’t have anything to say: what does she know? I had an impulse to talk with her, but of course, in the circumstances — I decided it could wait, perhaps she doesn’t know what I know, or guess, and there’s plenty of time. Mrs. T. says what he needs is a good spanking, that he’s spoiled. Sandbach rather surprised me by suggesting that he’s definitely insane. The analyst just said ‘Oh, no, perhaps a little paranoid,’ wanted to know what his relations were with his father. Gerta could have told him, of course, and so could I, but neither of us said anything. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure that would account for much, though I daresay an analyst would do him a lot of good. I never knew any one so cut off as he is — but then, you’ve got to admit that he seems entirely and horribly self-sufficient. It seems impossible to get at him, much less to hurt him. Walked back with Gerta, and she asked me in, but I didn’t go.… Squash with Hempel—

“May 3. Law Society—

“May 4, 5, 6, 7—

“May 8.… and had a curious encounter with Sandbach and Gerta outside the Fogg Museum. They looked as if they’d been quarreling, anyway something was up, they were walking along very slowly ahead of me, and just before I caught up with them they turned and came toward me. Their voices were raised a little, they had that fixed and angry look, didn’t see me at first, and then were both embarrassed. Very self-conscious meeting. I thought Gerta looked extremely pale. I asked them to tea, and Gerta came up, S pretending (?) that he had to get back to town to go over a talk he is giving at the Burroughs Foundation. Sounded like an alibi. Gerta was unusually quiet, subdued, didn’t say anything about J till after we had had tea, then asked me if I had seen much of him lately. I said quite truthfully that I hadn’t. She said she hadn’t either, and just wondered whether he was ‘all right’—wanted then to know whether I had seen him at all. As a matter of fact it hadn’t occurred to me before, but when I stopped to think of it, I had been pretty busy, and I don’t believe I have seen him, even a glimpse of him, for over a week. She thought this was a little queer, and asked me if I didn’t agree: as before, I could see she wanted to discuss the question of his sanity, in fact she got as far as saying she was worried about him, but I pooh-poohed it, reminded her that he had always been like that, going in for temporary disappearances and so forth. I don’t think I convinced her, but then I didn’t try very much, for I was uneasy about perhaps getting in too deep. She’s frightfully in love with him. I have a feeling Sandbach is jealous, and that the row was connected with it: of course S has been hanging around her for a hell of a while. She was a little hurt with me, I could see, managed to suggest something like ‘well, if you don’t want to talk I can’t make you’ but just the same was very nice about it, as she always is. A damned fine person, I admire her reticence, why in God’s name must she throw herself away on that incomparable egoist! It certainly is odd that neither of us has seen Jasper all week: I wonder if by any chance he’s gone to work on that fantastic Coffin idea: and I wonder what the analyst would make of that! Lordy, but wouldn’t he get his teeth into it.

“May 9.—Could it possibly be J I saw in a Buick on Concord Avenue? If he’s bought a car, that would account for a great deal — it’ll be a load off Gerta’s mind, anyway. Asked Jack, the janitor, if he knew anything about Jasper’s getting a car but he said d-d-d-didn’t know, M-m-m-mister Ammen hadn’t been around much. What next?”

What next?

Replacing the fountain pen in the loose-leaf diary, he went to the bedroom door, opened it quickly, looked around the edge of it and saw the dark shape on the bed in the corner, waited for it to stir. As it did not move, he said:

— Hi. Are you awake?

Kicking the door so that it swung open widely to the wall, the light falling across the brass bedrail, he returned and unlocked the inlaid tantalus by the piano. He took out the bottle of Haig, and while he was stooping to see if there were any glasses he heard Toppan’s voice, a little curt, behind him.

— Oh, it’s you.

Not turning, he said:

— Yes. I couldn’t sleep.

— What time is it — isn’t it a little late?

— Not three yet. Haven’t you got any glasses?

— You want a drink?

— I want a drink and I want to talk to you.

Toppan’s blue eyes seemed larger than usual, without his spectacles, his red hair stood up straight in a sort of point, he looked gnome-like. He was in pajamas.

— All right. Wait.

He got the glasses, and his dressing-gown, came back a little sheepishly, it was obvious that he was angry but wasn’t going to say so. He put the glasses on the piano-bench, ran his hands through his hair.

— Help yourself, Ammen. I won’t join you.

— You’re angry, aren’t you?

— Not at all.

— But it doesn’t matter — I want your advice.

— Advice? about what.

— That story I was telling you about. The question is — how much can I trust you — how discreet are you?

Toppan, putting on his spectacles, with very carefully raised hands, sat down in the mission rocking chair and smiled uneasily, ingratiatingly. He looked slightly silly, his transparency was too obvious, he had that almost offensive emotional nakedness which often goes with red hair; but also he was intelligent, he must be watched and controlled. He said, looking up obliquely through his spectacles:

— Ask and it shall be given unto you.

— Don’t be an ass. The point is this. For ten days I’ve been watching a man — I won’t mention his name, or say where he lives — just as I planned, it’s a complete stranger, the — as you might say—corpus vile of my experiment. For the sake of convenience, we’ll call him Kazis.

— It’s a good name.

— All right. I’ve learned a lot about him. I know where he lives, what he does, that he is probably married, somewhat hard up. I know a lot of his habits. Technically, too, as you would say yourself — I’m thinking, of course, of your observation of that osteopath in Brookline — it’s been interesting. But now I’ve come to a sort of impasse, don’t know quite what to do next: you can give me some advice.

— Oh, well, I don’t pretend to be an expert — but if you’ll give me an outline of how you’ve gone about it—

— Very simple. I saw him first in the subway, followed him to his office in town. Then perhaps I made a mistake. His office door had two names on it — Kazis and another. I wanted to find out which one was his, so I sent up a Western Union messenger with a message addressed to Kazis: the messenger boy came back and described him to me, and of course it was Kazis.

— I see. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I assume Kazis hadn’t seen you.

— Certainly not.

— And presumably the boy didn’t say who he brought the message from?

— No. You miss the point. It isn’t Kazis I’m thinking of, it’s the messenger. Don’t you see, in this novel, King Coffin, if ultimately my hero kills Kazis that messenger boy might remember the incident, remember the man who gave him the message — remember me. Of course, in the present instance it doesn’t matter, as naturally I don’t intend to commit any murder.

— Naturally!

— Naturally. But for the novel I want a foolproof method — do you understand? Unless you think this might be reasonably safe.

Toppan reflected, a little embarrassed, his eyes downcast.

— But I thought, in your novel, it didn’t matter if the hero was found out — that a part of the virtue of your pure murder would be in the very fact that—

— No. What I said was that in the circumstances it would have to be secret — only ideally could it be done with complete indifference to risks. For the purpose of my story, I want the detection itself completely foolproof.

— I see. Actually, there needn’t as a matter of fact be much risk in the way you did it. I suppose you didn’t sign any name?

— What do you think I am?

— Well then, assuming for the sake of argument that you eventually did kill Kazis, but not, say, for a month or two, the chances of your being found through the messenger boy would be practically nil. He’ll remember the episode of course, and tell about it, and give a fairly good description of you, especially as you happen to be of somewhat striking appearance, owing to your height, but that would hardly be enough to go on. You’d be safe as a church, as long as he didn’t happen to see you again — which you could easily avoid — or unless, of course, some other person or persons happened to have reasons to connect you with the crime: in which case you’d be brought before the messenger for identification. Without that, his mere description of the mysterious person as a tall man who wore a black velours hat would hardly be enough, would it?

— You think not?

— No.

Holding the green glass in his hand, he smiled down at Toppan, who smiled back. Toppan was on his guard: he must be on guard himself. The question about King Coffin’s indifference to discovery, for example, had not been quite ingenuous — or had it? But if Toppan was fascinated by the possibility, clearly he didn’t really believe in it: he speculated, he was a little frightened, but that was all.

You speak of other persons who might have reason to connect him — what do you mean?

Toppan laughed, drawing the dressing gown over his crossed knees.

— Why nothing special — it all depends.

— Depends on what!

— Well, to be frank, in the present case, assuming for the moment that you are King Coffin—

— You can assume as much as you like. It’s your own assumption, isn’t it?

— Of course. I mean, there’s myself. I know about it.

— Do you?

— Don’t I?

— You mean you’re an accessory before the fact?

— Oh, I could wriggle out of that!

— In other words, my hero had better not discuss it — even with those who share his views.

— Perhaps not, — there’s also Gerta.

— No — you can leave her out of it.

— Very well.

He crossed to the mantel, lifted the hat from the corner where it hung, looked inside it to see the maker’s mark, replaced it. Revolving his glass on the varnished ledge, he examined the delicate white flowers in the color-print, the cluster of rose-tinted lychee nuts, the blue-breasted birds. The bird not quite sufficiently stylized. Leaning closer to this, his back still turned to Toppan, he said:

— It’s a useful suggestion.… You know, I actually talked with him for ten minutes.

— Good Lord. How was that?

— Quite simple. In my message I asked him to ring me up — at a certain number — giving no name of course — and talked with him, pretending I wanted some work done. Discussed it with him, and told him I’d ring him again.

— And did you?

— Yes. At his house.

There was a pause, and as Toppan said nothing in reply to this, he turned and looked at him. His hand was over his eyes, his head was bowed a little forward. Perhaps he was tired — perhaps he was playing ’possum. The right foot, slippered, the veined instep showing below the green pajama leg, jigged up and down, mechanically, slightly, with the beating of his heart. Otherwise he was motionless. Looking down on him like this, one could see the white scalp through the disordered red hair: the hand across the forehead, by contrast, looked very living, very vital. Toppan’s consciousness was perhaps in his hand.

— But never mind that. Are you awake?

— Of course.

— What I want to know is, what can I do next.

While Toppan pondered this, kneading his forehead with his fingers, Ammen filled and lit his pipe: he watched Toppan over the flame, began to wonder whether the whole thing wasn’t a mistake, a miscalculation. Toppan was being a little too wary, and, as his diary had made clear, he perhaps now suspected a shade too much for comfort. He had begun to step out of his role as mere satellite, wanted to enjoy detecting the detective. If he and Gerta should now, as seemed not impossible, put their heads together—

— I said, what can I do next.

— It depends on what you want. And of course on how much you’ve already got. I take it you’ve already observed all that can be superficially observed—

— Yes. I know his daily habits, as I’ve told you, his clothes, his shoes, the papers he reads, the day he puts out the ash can, and so on. I know what he’s like. A thoroughly commonplace and somewhat conceited little person, a sort of unconvinced failure. Certainly nobody you’d want to waste five minutes with, otherwise. You ought to see the house, for instance — a dreary two-family thing, one of millions, you know without going into it exactly what it will be like — cheap carpets that look as if they’d been designed in vomit, bead curtains, a wallpaper in the bathroom meant to look like tiles, a mission clock, a gas log fire. But all this is general — I want now the specific. You understand? And of course without meeting him.

— Not so easy. But there might be ways—

— What.

— If you want to go into the house, you could pretend to be canvassing for something. There’d be a risk in it but not much — if you went in the daytime, which you would, you’d see only his wife, or whoever lives there, and even if—

— What.

— Even if in your supposed role as an eventual murderer you later kill her husband she would have, presumably, no special reason for connecting you with it, or even for recalling your visit.

— Not a bad idea. But for one thing, I’m beginning to be uneasy about appearing in that neighborhood too much — as you’ve probably noticed, there is always a postman about, or a policeman. What about that.

— Yes, I know. It’s not too easy. Have you thought of using a car?

— A car?

— Yes, a car. It’s of course one of the recognized devices — you sit in the car a little way off, it prevents your having to dodge about behind telephone poles day after day, and so on. I told you I used one that time in Brookline.

— I hadn’t thought of it — it might be a good idea. You mean, hire one.

— Yes.

— I’ll keep it in mind.

— Or if there happens to be an apartment vacant across the street—

— There isn’t.

— How long do you propose going on with it, anyway? After all, there isn’t much to gain after a certain point—

— My dear Toppan you’re sometimes very stupid. In a pure study of this sort there can be no limit.

— Incidentally, that time you had him call you on the telephone — isn’t there a weakness there?

— You mean he’d have a record of the number? No. The occupant of that apartment has been carefully instructed, if Kazis calls again, to say that the whole project is off, and without mentioning any names. It would be a dead end in any inquiry — completely.

— Do you think it’s quite fair to use Gerta for that?

— Did I say it was Gerta?

— It’s fairly obvious.

— You’re quite mistaken. It isn’t.

— In that case I’m relieved.

— Keep the change.

There was a pause — he walked to the piano, touched one note, felt a little defrauded, the thing was not going exactly as planned, the tone was wrong, as out of key — somehow — as this too-vibrant c-sharp. He said:

— I’m afraid you’re not much help, but thanks just the same. There’s one thing further — I must remind you that I expect you to treat all this in the strictest confidence. And since you mention Gerta, I’ll repeat what I said to you before, I think perhaps you’re forgetting it a little — I don’t want any interference there. I won’t go into details, but there is a very delicate and peculiar situation between Gerta and me, of great importance to both of us, and I don’t want any meddling with it — is that clear?

— Perfectly.

— Then why do you blush?

— As I said once before, that’s my innocence.

— All right. Keep it. And keep out.

— Just as you say, professor!

— If you don’t, I shall know it — I shall make it my business to know it. And I don’t think you’d enjoy the consequences.

— My dear fellow—

— Thanks for the smell of whisky. Good night.

Arrived on the top floor, he felt a little breathless, a little stifled, he suddenly discovered that he was holding his pipe too hard, and with a perspiring hand. The whole thing had been somehow forced—it had not come naturally, was not natural now; the effect was of a slight jangling. The map still hung there, with its marginal notes, the list of dates and scenes, it was all just as clear as before, just as orderly; but there was also a queer something which was changing. For one thing, he had not, as he now saw he had intended, presented Jones to Toppan, and this had seemed important. He had wanted — that was it — to make Toppan vividly aware of him — as vividly as he was aware himself. He had wanted to photograph him for Toppan — tweed hat, fur collar, ash can, and all: the mole, the perpetual smirk, the mustache, the jaunty little vulgarity of bearing. Curious he hadn’t seen that — his purpose had not been so much to ask advice as simply to talk about Jones; and in talking about him — was that it? — to take further possession of him. But for some reason, this project had broken down; Jones seemed if anything farther off than before; the excitement had cooled.

It must be simply that he was tired.

From the window he looked obliquely down at the deserted and lamp-lit stillness of Massachusetts Avenue, then, as always, lifted his eyes to the one mysterious light which always burned nightlong in an upper room of Boylston Hall. What secret was in that room—?

And at once, as always, when he thought of it, the vision returned; dimension after dimension rolled off soundlessly to disclose depth above depth, height below height; where vapor had been, the tree of clouds began once again to thrust upward with swirling boughs.

This was good, he could laugh again, Jones was still there. Let the clocks go as madly as they liked, Jones would still be waiting for him, waiting calmly.

IX The Stranger Is Gay

The little procession was monstrous, it was absurd, it was mad and meaningless, and as he watched it from the safe interior of the car, which was filled with tobacco smoke, with his black hat pulled down over his eyes, the pale afternoon sunlight seemed to emphasize and isolate each element in it as grotesquely as if it were merely an outlandish figure in a dream.

Karl Jones had suddenly become new — he was being seen for the first time.

Bareheaded, wearing again his old black sweater, grinning a little self-consciously, as if something in the occasion made him shy, and as if he were trying to carry it off with bravado, he came down the wooden steps of the Alpine Street house with a small striped mattress over his shoulder and a worn suitcase in his hand. The suitcase he dropped on the cement sidewalk, where already stood a white-painted chair, such as are seen in hospitals, a Gladstone bag, a porcelain slop bowl, and a brown wicker hamper. He flung the mattress into the back of the open model-T Ford which waited at the curb, balancing it carefully over the child’s cot which reared its white legs and bright brass casters into the air. A middle-aged woman followed him down the steps, bringing a rope; with this they proceeded to knot the mattress into place, first throwing a patchwork quilt over the whole shapeless pile. Then the hamper was with some difficulty wedged into the front, beside the driver’s seat: it was heavy, tied with cord, and what looked like bed linen protruded from the gaping lid. As the woman reascended the steps Jones called after her:

— Guess we’ll have to carry the rest! Hope you don’t mind!

What she said was inaudible, she waved a hand, entered the house, and in a moment reappeared accompanied by a man. The man climbed into the front seat, slammed the tin door, started the car and began turning it. Jones lifted the slop bowl by its handle, laughing, his head tilted to one side: the woman seated herself in the white chair on the sidewalk. She too was laughing, leaning forward and clapping her hands on her knees. When Jones said something to her, she got up, took the slop bowl from him, picked up the suitcase, and began walking away towards Reservoir Street. Jones swung the chair up against his shoulder, seized the handle of the Gladstone bag, and followed.

The whole thing was unreal: it had no existence.

The woman might be a trained nurse: she was wearing a dark cloak from beneath which, as she walked, flashed the white of what appeared to be a uniform.

And the child’s cot — what about that? If there was a child, in the Reservoir Street house, why had he seen no sign of it in all this time? And if the child was ill — as the presence of the nurse seemed to suggest — then it was difficult to account for the queer cheerfulness of the scene. The logic was a little wrong.…

He sat still, watched them turn the far corner at last, vanish out of sight. They had not noticed him, it would be easy enough to drive slowly through Reservoir Street and observe the end of this peculiar ceremony, but for some obscure reason he felt apathetic, indifferent. It hardly mattered: he had already seen more than he expected anyway, he had not really intended to come here at all, had simply made a last-minute detour on his way to meet Gerta. The thing was a windfall, it was in a sense outside the routine, needn’t be too much bothered about. Just the same, it was certainly odd, among other things, that Jones should be here, and not at his office — it was three o’clock.

And this indifference, this apathy—

It was a part of the time problem.

He tapped a fingernail on his watch, frowned, opened the window to knock the ashes out of his pipe. It had certainly become unexpectedly difficult, unexpectedly vague — the queer thing was the way in which, from the moment when he had actually found Jones, marked him down, begun to learn about him and know him, the element of hurry, of pressure, had begun subtly to dissolve. It was as if abruptly he had stepped out of time into timelessness: what need could there be, any longer, for hurry? Jones was not only there, he was here: Jones had joined him, had joined his life: it was almost, in fact, as if Jones had become a part of his own “self.” He had again that queer feeling of encroachment, as if his image were walking toward him out of a mirror, or his shadow somehow falling on his own body; the feeling was not unpleasant, brought with it a sense of power, a sense of agreeable duplicity; but also in it was something a little disconcerting, or even dangerous. It was all very well for Toppan to say, in his smug insinuating fashion, that there wasn’t any point in going on with it after a certain time — how could Toppan know anything about it? The pure vision — this was (as in the beginning he had of course not been able to foresee) the period of pure vision! To sit back and watch, to wait here now, for instance, actually foregoing his power to watch, was a very nearly perfect thing. It was comparable to the artist’s intuition of the completed work of art: Jones was in the process of becoming an artifact. He remembered saying to Gerta—“an action could have the purity of a work of art. It could be as abstract and absolute as a problem in algebra.…”

Wasn’t that still true?

Of course: and more than ever necessary. What must be kept firmly in mind was the inherent necessity. If the world was logical at all, then it must be logical in every item. And if it was despicable, if humanity was despicable, and if one was to sound one’s contempt for it to the bottom, separate oneself from it, then the final and inevitable action in the series would be simply an act of destruction: it would be the only natural purification. It was not, in this sense, dictated so much by hatred as by a need for purification. Was that it? Or not hate only, at all events. It was the need of the superior being to separate himself violently from the one-who-wants-to-be-killed, the inferior, the crowd.…

He smiled, recapitulating; the whole thing summed itself up neatly and decisively; the constellation of events became once more precise and orderly. Gerta, Sandbach, Toppan, Jones — they were arranged and fell into place, the clock moved them in its geometrical orbit, their voices and faces faded as they passed, became vivid as they approached, faded again. Toppan’s suspicions were powerless to take any shape in action; Sandbach’s guesswork was too far off to find any accuracy of aim, his emotions too confused for any singleness of purpose; Gerta’s devotion would continue, until too late, to constitute for her an effective paralysis. They circled with the clock, they watched as they moved, but their fixed orbit, fixed by himself, would never bring them any nearer to him. They, as much as Jones, were his own creation, they were falling into their grooves, they no longer had any freedom of will. To all intents, they had become puppets.

Two children, a boy and a girl, ran past him bowling iron hoops, the wooden sticks ringing dully on the metal, clanking regularly, the shrill voices raised in a meaningless and unintelligible gabble. An immense pile of white clouds had come up from the southwest, the sun went out, the afternoon became gray.

He took Gerta’s letter from his pocket, opened it on his knee.

Jasper my dear — I suppose you suggested the place in Belmont because you knew I’d be teaching there in the afternoon, but I wish you had taken the trouble to let me know a little sooner, it’s not too convenient — and don’t you take a good deal for granted? I don’t quite know why you should assume — as you appear to — that your plans are of such importance to me. If you had wanted to see me, any time in the past fortnight, you could easily have done so: and why you should now want to be so spectacular — shall I say melodramatic? — about our meeting I confess I don’t see. Don’t you think the whole thing is becoming a trifle absurd? Why on earth should I want to watch you at revolver practice? Don’t be ridiculous! However, I am a little concerned about you, for Julius says you look ill and haven’t been sleeping, and of course I won’t pretend that I wouldn’t like to see you, so I’ll be there as soon as I can get away from Miss Bottrall’s dreadful little life class. I’d be somewhat relieved if you’d kindly forget to bring your revolver. It hardly seems necessary. Gerta.

They had been talking together again — and Toppan had told her that he looked ill.

What was more interesting, however, was the note of withdrawal in the letter, which was distinct. This too might be Toppan’s doing, but more likely it was Sandbach’s. Sandbach was beginning to struggle. He was saying to her — that madman Ammen. You must cut yourself off from that madman Ammen. The quarrel in front of the Fogg Museum might have been that — Sandbach had been urging her to drop him, he was frightened and angry, and he disapproved of Toppan’s influence because Toppan didn’t agree with him. That was why he had refused Toppan’s invitation to tea. And also, of course, he probably suspected Toppan of knowing more about the situation than he did himself. He suspected all three of them of keeping him at a distance, keeping him in the dark, he was struggling in a web of which the filaments were maddeningly invisible.… The whole thing was working beautifully.

But what should he say to Gerta?

He became aware that he had been listening to the radio which sounded from an open window, Frankie and Johnnie—“bring on your rubber-tired hearses, bring on your rubber-tired hacks”—the melancholy irony died behind him in a sardonic drawl as the car picked up speed, and in a moment he had passed the house in Reservoir Street and was heading for Concord Avenue. The Ford had gone, no one was in sight, but the cot and bags stood on the porch, and the door was wide open. It was tempting — the opportunity was certainly unusual — but on the other hand to turn back now might be a little risky: some prying neighbor, standing behind curtains, might notice it and think it peculiar, might remember seeing the Buick there before; or remember it later when he came again. Better not. And the day’s work was already good enough.

But what should he say to Gerta?

And need it be shaped in advance, or could it be allowed to shape itself, or to be shaped by her?

As a matter of fact, the necessity wasn’t so much for saying anything as for appearing: the real need, for the moment, was that he should simply be seen, so that the weight of his character and purpose — above all his purpose — should again, and at this critical juncture, be deeply felt. The time had come for a subtle counter-balancing of Sandbach, a sly disturbance of the center of gravity. To do this, it would be sufficient, as it were, simply to cross the stage, to look hard at her for a few seconds, and then vanish. The bonds would be tightened, Sandbach’s work would begin all over again, the shadow on him would have deepened still further, and if in addition Toppan had fed her natural anxiety, so that she was concerned for him, or even had begun to feel sorry for him—

He laughed, sounded the claxon derisively, once, twice, three times. Sorry for him! And of course it was exactly what was happening. It had been apparent in his last interview with her, she had pressed the point about Kay, she had subsequently tried to discuss the subject with Toppan, and now it was more than ever apparent in her letter. He looked ill, he was not sleeping. There it was, plain as a pikestaff! Accordingly, she would take the initiative, she would be inquisitive, she would want to find out exactly where they stood, both with regard to each other and with regard to Sandbach, and this would render her — in the deepest sense — vulnerable. On this pattern, the scene could be allowed to shape itself. She would question — she would stand there questioning — and he would simply be. We ask and ask — thou smilest, and art still outtopping knowledge. The abyss will gaze into thee.

The details shaped themselves beneath his hands on the wheel, flew in parallels of bright speed, seethed with the wind through the cracks in the glass, rose before him in the grey shape of Belmont. If he got there first, he would leave the car at the edge of the road, in the usual place, would precede her to the familiar little hollow of rocks and grass and junipers, with its wall of cedars and birches, so that before she could see him she would hear him. But if she heard the shots, would she dare to approach?

That risk must be taken. If she heard him, and decided not to come—

There was no sign of her at the top of the hill, nor in the path that led to the abandoned racecourse, nor on the grass-grown racecourse itself, where he got out of the car. The gray stillness was profound, it was like the Sabbath, he took the revolver from the pouch in the car door, slipped it into his pocket, also the little red box of cartridges tied with string, then put two fingers to his teeth and gave a long whistle, whip-lashed at the end like a whip-poor-will. There was no answer, no echo from the coppice of white birches, he noticed the dandelions in the short grass at his feet, and it occurred to him that he could leave a note for her. He wrote on the back of Gerta’s letter: Quite safe to approach: firing the other way. Leaving this on the runningboard, with a pebble to hold it in place, he descended the short path of rocks and sprawling juniper which led to the hollow, lifting one elbow before his face as a protection against swinging branches. As he watched the last of the young birch leaves, bright green, slide across his blue sleeve, he heard Gerta’s voice before him, speaking levelly:

— I had an idea it would be safer to be here first.

— You needn’t have worried. I left a note for you on the car.

— Why the car? is that part of the plot?

— Of course. I thought Toppan had told you. And as a matter of fact, hadn’t he?

— As a matter of fact, he hadn’t.

Seated on the rock, her hands beside her, her foot swinging, she looked up at him with an air of challenge and mischief, her dark eyes narrowed but bright, a look which in other circumstances might have been disconcerting. The familiar blue cape was open, save at the throat, she was wearing the white Russian blouse, she was bare-headed, the dark hair turned away in wings from the calm forehead.

— Then I’ve no doubt he will.

— My dear Jasper, would you mind just explaining a little of all this?

— Must I? I thought everything had been made quite clear at our last meeting.

— I see. You assumed it would all go on.

— Why not?

— As I said in my letter, you appear to take a great deal for granted. Merely because in the past we’ve been very good friends—

— Am I right in saying that we came to an agreement? an agreement to co-operate? But I suppose, as I predicted, S has begun to influence you, you’re no longer to be trusted. You were unable to keep yourself separate from him!

She got up and walked away from him slowly, her hands holding tensely the dark edges of the cape. Over her shoulder she said, with an effect of measured lightness:

— I expected you to say that. I’ve been completely loyal. Sandbach is certainly distressed and angry about it, and of course very much mystified, nor can you blame him, he’s not content to let things just stand as they are, he wants to know what is happening.

She turned back towards him, stood still in the grass, the cape folded across her breast, her arms akimbo beneath it. Across the little interval of bright grass and dandelions she continued:

— Co-operation! What am I supposed to do when you go away and stay away? It’s all very well!

He took out the revolver, held it flat on the flat of his hand, weighed it appreciatively with downward gaze.

— You were supposed to wait, to be trusted. You know that.

— Jasper, I was—

— You’ve doubted, you’ve drawn away, your letter makes that clear! We’ll discuss it later — in the meantime do you mind if I try this out? A couple of rounds, just to see if it’s working. Two years ago at Capri—

— Capri?

— It was all right. I could hit a stone the size of a watch at fifty feet.… I’ll use that rock over there.

He placed the box of cartridges on the grass before her, the revolver on top of it, then walked deliberately across the hollow toward the large rock at the farther end, where it rose against the overhanging hillock of other rocks and cedars. As he went, he stooped, picking dandelions, choosing the larger ones, and these he hung over the lichened crest of the gray rock, their golden heads toward Gerta. The sun came out, accentuating their brightness and the paleness of his hands. Turning back, he counted off the paces.

— Twenty-five.

— I suppose you’d like me to hold one in my teeth?

— This is probably the first time in the world that dandelions have been used. Now cover your ears.

He smiled at her: she smiled back. Then, raising the little black pistol over his head and slowly lowering it to the level of the rock, and without perceptible pause, the first golden disk sighted, he fired. The rock seemed to have jumped, the first of the dandelion heads had vanished, the swift sound fled wildly off among the woods, the little smoke died in sunlight. Before the ringing in his ears had ceased he fired again, and again the rock jumped, but this time it was a miss; then again, again, again, and again. Four of the flowers were gone, the woods were singing with compressed clamor, one clap of sound folding hollowly on another, a muffled swoon of tumult. He clicked the empty revolver, lifted his face to the smell of drifting gunpowder, laid his hand over the short barrel to feel the warmth. When he turned round, he saw that Gerta had gone very white.

— Feel it, he said.

— No thank you. I’m not enjoying this.

— I’m sorry. Do you mind if I continue?

— Not at all.

— If you listened carefully, it might give you a sense of power!

— A sense of your power?

— Just as you like.

She was frightened, she sat down again on her rock, her lips tightly pressed together, her face averted: she was swinging one foot, nervously; perhaps angrily. What she was about to say was in her eyes, in her lowered brows: he watched her decision while he extracted the magazine of blue metal and reloaded it.

— If you don’t mind my saying so, it all seems to me extremely silly.

— Why should I mind what you say? It is silly. Like many necessary things. And like many things we’ve agreed on before. Sandbach, for instance!

He gave a laugh, she turned and looked at him with a sudden sharpening of expression, something very like hatred, then as quickly looked away again. As if deliberately to pay no attention to her meaning he clicked the magazine into the grip, drew back the barrel, raised the pistol once more, lowered it, and fired. Another dandelion leapt in air and vanished, the bullet, ricocheting, whined away to the left, the hum of it lost in the swift sound of tearing which screeched in a circle round the woods; and then the five other shots, which followed in quick succession, doubled and redoubled the confused clamor. Only one dandelion was left, the echoes repeated ee yah, ee yah, ee yah, diminuendo, wingbeat on remoter wingbeat, a sullen dying of applause, and everything was again silent. He looked down at the empty shells, scattered about his feet, and said:

— Sandbach, for instance.… Ten out of twelve, not so bad.

She had stooped forward, had picked a single grass blade, was examining it, turning it between her fingers.

— And now would you mind telling me what it’s all about?

— I said Sandbach.

— Sandbach was understood, wasn’t he?

— It’s an accomplished fact, then?

— If you don’t mind, Jasper, I’d prefer not to discuss that part of it. You see—

— I see. I foresaw! I even foresaw that with it would go this withdrawal. And of course that he would say to you that you must drop me. But it’s too late. You can’t. You’re here.

— Yes, I’m here, but I think I must tell you—

— I think I’d better tell you.

— My dear Jasper, I wish you would! If it’s not too late. I mean, if that part of it isn’t too late. I can’t go on with it — I won’t any longer have any responsibility — much as I love you — can’t you see that the whole thing was a sort of hallucination? Couldn’t we still make something much better of it? S means nothing, not a thing—

She had put the grass blade between her lips, was looking downward, tears had brightened her eyes. But her voice had remained as admirably level as always.

— What is it exactly that you’d like to know?

— I want to know what it’s all about.

— We had that out. I haven’t changed.

— Could you tell me about it?

— My dear Gerta, you’re like an open book!

He laughed again, looking down at her tightly clasped hands, and went on:

— Well, I’ll say this much, that if he isn’t perfect he’s at any rate very good!

— Sandbach?

Her expression of bewilderment might or might not be ingenuous.

— No. We’ll call him X, shall we? It’s not Kazis. Would you like to know his real name?

— No.

— It’s Jones. The ideal name, and almost the ideal person. Good God, I didn’t know such people existed! A real and complete nonentity. Lives in a two-family house, takes out his own ashes, wears rubbers on rainy days, rides on a streetcar every day of his life.

— I see. And that’s enough, is it?

— Of course. Not that it’s enough to know. It’s curious how interesting it has become to know about him, to learn about him — and I’ve learnt a lot. Would you like to hear some of it? He reads The Herald, uses toothpicks, wears brown shoes with a blue suit, drinks a pint of whisky everyday at his office. I suppose he has nothing better to do. He’s in the advertising business, has a business, so-called, of his own. Reads textbooks on advertising in the subway. Yesterday it was a Manual of Typographical Standards published by The New York Times. Mezzographs, Line Cuts, Half-Tones, and Ross Boards — I’ve been studying it myself.…

— You are insane.

— Are we?

— Do you know S wants to report you?

— Oh, he does, does he!

— Yes.

He picked up the red-covered box of cartridges from the grass, put it in his pocket, took out his pipe; and as he did so a cloud went softly over the sun, the scene darkened. Everything looked smaller and nearer, Gerta seemed shrunken, he suddenly had a strange feeling of loneliness. This had happened before — it had happened only this morning in Harvard Square, when the sight of so many people, all rushing towards the subway, had given him a queer and unmistakable sensation of panic, of which the essential was solitude. This had been quite recognizable, was recognizable now, but had it any real significance? Yes, they all wanted to kill him, everybody really wanted to kill every one else, to be immersed in a crowd was to be immersed in a world of enemies. To face another individual was to face an enemy, even to face Gerta, who, under his own guidance, was in the very act of escaping from beneath his control. The eyes with which she looked up at him were Sandbach’s eyes, the words she used were now Sandbach’s, Sandbach had possessed her, still possessed her, it was to Sandbach he was speaking.

— I see. It is really Sandbach I am now talking to.

— Jasper, my dear, won’t you sit down and discuss it calmly?

— Yes. Let’s talk about it, for the last time, calmly!

He stretched himself, lazily, full length, on the grass, his hands under his chin: at once she came and sat beside him, crossing her knees: it was her intention to encroach. Leaning forward, and looking at him earnestly, she said:

— Now tell me, my dear. Do you mean to go on with it?

Not meeting her gaze, though he was aware of it, he answered shortly:

— The novel? King Coffin? Certainly.

— You know I don’t mean that.

— I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.… By the way, I liked your new picture very much. What do you call it?

— Jasper!

— You have a really extraordinary imagination. It’s good — though I’m bound to say I don’t know what it means.

— I see. You won’t discuss it. I ought to have expected it, I suppose! I do what you ask, I accept Sandbach at your dictation, and this is what I get for my pains! It’s really funny!

She started to laugh, stopped abruptly, he watched her hands, in the grass, clutch savagely at the blades, and let them go again. He could hear her breathing rather quickly, turned his head sideways to look up at her with amused eyes, saw that she was staring sightlessly into the distance, the somber mouth relaxed, the whole expression desperate and unhappy.

— You can’t say I didn’t warn you. I warned you specifically. I pointed out precisely this danger — that you would shift your loyalty to Sandbach. Well, it’s come. What we were going to share — that new thing which we then both saw so clearly, dislocation number X — has come to an end because you failed me. You weren’t good enough!

As she said nothing, he added:

— Isn’t that it?

— Of course. You were quite safe, weren’t you, either way! Simply because you didn’t care. You care for no one but yourself. And surely that must begin to disappoint you!

— Oh, I miscalculate, like every one else. But I still have my amusements!

— Jones, for instance?

— Of course. A very harmless and pure entertainment. Like this target practice.

— Your notion of purity!

— And it’s beginning to be rather exciting! I’ve sent him some theater tickets — a whole box at the Orpheum — marked them complimentary, you know—

— Why?

— Oh, just for fun! I thought it would be nice to see him close-to for a whole evening — also to see what he brings with him — his wife, I suppose!

Lighting his pipe, the little yellow flame bright against young grass, he listened to the sound of a car climbing up a road in the distance, thrust the half-carbonized match into the soft earth, frowned. The scene was not quite what he had expected — it was curiously relaxed, random, directionless — and of course it was easy to see why, it was because Gerta wanted desperately to know exactly what he was going to do, but didn’t quite dare to ask him point-blank. She was probing, but probing without courage. Even now, in the slight droop of her shoulder, in the half-averted profile of which the expression was a deep powerlessness, he felt her to be about to give the whole thing up. She was discouraged, she was divided, her physical and moral loyalty to Sandbach was trying to assert itself, she was in the very act of listening to Sandbach’s voice. That madman Ammen. You must give up that madman Ammen. She was listening to this, but also she was feeling, and feeling profoundly, as if it were a kind of poison, the deep seal he had himself put upon her, that culminating moment of mystic communion between them when they had — as it were — tacitly agreed to share an insane secret. The voice of Kay! Sandbach was struggling violently in her against this ghost, the voice of Kay; she sat perfectly still; it was as if he were watching a stage from the opposite sides of which two choruses were trying to out-shout each other. Sandbach! It was in a sense Sandbach himself who ought to be destroyed, the loathsome and insinuating voice of reason, of common sense, the slimy voice of universal belongingness, of social safety, the shrill chorus of a world of parasites. His hatred rose suddenly and violently, the vision made him raise his head, the muscles in his arms tightened, his sense of time suddenly sharpened and became positively visual, as if the whole world were a swift and vast escalator moving rapidly upward towards the sun, towards the final flash of action. His own wisdom was omnipotent there, he had but to extend his hand, the right moment was near. He said:

— You’d better hurry back to the lower levels. You’d better listen to little Sandbach. It’s not very safe up here.

— My dear, it’s not myself I’m any longer concerned about, it’s you. It’s not very safe for you. I wish I could persuade you—

— Give it up. I’m beyond the pale.

— But of course I don’t quite believe you. It’s really nothing but a sort of fever, isn’t it? Couldn’t you go away for a time? Couldn’t you come with me to New York?

— New York! Good God!

— You’re not in a normal state.

— Is New York more normal?

This made her angry: she glared down at him Medusalike, with an admirable and delightful air of challenge, she looked somehow Hellenic.

— And what’s more, if you don’t come to your senses, I suppose we’ll have to do something about it!

— Who, exactly?

— All of us.

— Is that a threat?

— Just as you like!

He laughed, jumping up, stood above her laughing.

— Go ahead! But would you mind telling me what evidence you’ve got? Or who you propose to go to, or what you propose to say? Don’t be a fool. Nothing could be more harmless than my little attempt to make a scientific study of the habits of a stranger — and all with a view to writing a novel! Any time you want to look at my notes, my dear Gerta, you’re quite welcome. And if you think King Coffin would be of burning interest to the police, send them around, I’d be delighted to see them.… Can I drive you to Cambridge?

— No, thanks. I’m going back to Miss Bottrall’s. And I think I’ll walk.

— All right then — I’m off. Dislocation number — fill it in yourself! And I’ll see you in hell.

She looked up at him calmly, her hands on her knees, she seemed to be about to say something, but her lips remained closed, he noticed the little golden cord with which her blouse was knitted at the throat. With a wave of the hand he turned away, walked off whistling, was aware as he entered the path that she had not moved, still sat unmoving. Let her imitate Buddha as much as she liked, exert her pressures, sit there all afternoon, lie in the grass and cry, as she probably would — by all means! It would come to nothing. She would begin writing him letters again, telephoning to him at all hours, conferring with Sandbach and Julius, but the gesture would be helpless and fumbling and feminine, all three of them were helpless, as helpless as Jones himself; they could accomplish nothing. He broke a branch of birch, whipped it, as he walked, against other birches, until it was stripped of its leaves, dropped it before him in the green path and trod upon it. This was Sandbach. For a few seconds he stopped, stood still, closed his eyes — something had made him feel slightly sick, slightly giddy, the turmoil for a moment seemed unnatural — like the confused clamor of the echoed pistol shots, eeyah, eeyah, eeyah, a concentric and derisive chorus — but this passed, he opened his eyes again, and saw the sun just emerging with swimming rim, a pale lemon-yellow, from a bright edge of cloud. It was time caught in the act of moving, time in its dizzy descent to time.

X The Pure Murder

That he should fall asleep during the daytime was unusual, that he should fall asleep in a chair was stranger still; from a ragged fragment of dream, a wail of unintelligible voices in a darkening scene of leafless trees, he woke with a start to find that night had fallen, he had slept for two hours, it was after eight. The sea shell shone whitely on the window sill, there was a dim light in the little attic room of the club across the street, above the dark cowl of the ventilator on the roof were a few stars. The effect was odd, as of a profoundly mysterious hiatus in time, a sense of loss, and he sat still, listening to the delicate ticking of his watch, and trying to remember what it was, in the dream, that Gerta had said. Miles of aching arches of eyebrows—? was that it? It was something like that, but the words, even as he looked at them, seemed to be changing in shape, he could not be sure. And that he should have fallen asleep like this, in the midst of making notes, with the book on his knee — which now, with the pencil, had fallen to the carpet — this was subtly disturbing; and as he thought of it he felt his heart suddenly begin beating more loudly and quickly. Was there anything abnormal in it? It was true that he had not been sleeping well, as Toppan of course had reported gleefully to Gerta, but this was not at all because he was really worried, or because his nerves were in any way upset — not at all, not in the least. It was simply and solely because of late his conscious life had become so severely and energetically concentrated: the preoccupation had become so intense and unremitting that to break it off, for sleep, seemed a waste of time. No doubt, in the upshot, he had been more fatigued than he had supposed. One couldn’t go on working indefinitely without rest. And if in addition one was by nature more conscious than other people, and occupied, moreover, with a special problem, so that one’s consciousness was hourly deepening and widening, with a progressive increase in this peculiar interiorness of one’s life — an increase in its essential silence — why then it was natural enough that this should constitute not a strain exactly but at any rate a fatigue. That was it, of course! The scene with Gerta at Belmont, three days before, had somehow accentuated this; in some unanalyzable way had had the effect of still further emptying his world; and of leaving him there, for the future, alone with Jones. Henceforth, as he had seen almost at once, he was alone with Jones. They stood there together, at the center, like a man and his shadow.…

He gave a little shiver, the night had turned cool, got up to switch on the lights.

Jones!

Of course.

That was why his heart had begun beating — it was the theater night, it was Tuesday, Jones would perhaps be at the Orpheum. But there was no rush—: if Jones went there at all, he would be there all the evening. The show itself would probably be dull, it wasn’t really necessary to go till near the end. And in some respects this would be better. For if in fact (as he had half considered just before he fell asleep) an opportunity should occur tonight; if in some unexpected way Jones should prove vulnerable, or the circumstances propitious, for the thing itself — if for a moment, in the subway, Jones should detach himself from whoever might be with him, or on leaving the theater, or on getting off the Huron Avenue car — not that any of these things was likely or that in any case the scene itself would be the most suitable — he would be prepared for it, the revolver was in his pocket; and it would be safer, of course, if he had not been too long visible in the theater.… Yes, that had been the idea, when he fell asleep; but now, after dark, after waking in the dark to a subtle sense of change, of void, it all seemed oddly improbable, and as if not properly outlined: a little vague: a little unreal. What he needed was a wash, cold water on the eyes and wrists — what he needed was a drink. Then the thing could be looked at more calmly, more clearly. And after all, what was the hurry?

Moreover, was it quite certain that the revolver was the best way? Better, perhaps, to make an appointment with Jones to discuss the advertising project, drive him out to Concord, into the country, as if to meet the mythical “partner”—there would be no difficulties about that, it would be ridiculously easy — no one would know about it, not a soul, it could be done in daylight — and even if done with the revolver, there, in some wooded lane—

He turned his back on the vision, walked slowly across the room to the Chinese waterfall, stared at it, in the silence seemed almost to hear the headlong rush of the gray torrent: it was his own silence, his own world, it was himself who waited there in the little red pavilion among trees on the edge of the twisted crag, listening to that sound as of a pouring and terrible chaos. He leaned toward it, as if the better to hear it, the better to see it, but found that it wasn’t in fact the waterfall he was looking at, or trying to hear, but the little man who had become his shadow, the little man who stood alone with him in the center of the world. Jones was beside him in the car, Jones with his absurd tweed hat, the brown feather at the side, the cheap fur collar, the little red notebook in his hand. Jones turned toward him and said — what was it that he said? Jones was smiling at him sidelong, under the clipped moustache, was looking ridiculously competent as always, nodded with a knowing air, seemed to be about to say that he knew a trick or two worth two of that. And all the while, Jones was confidingly, almost invitingly, opening his heart to a pistol shot.…

In the bathroom, he ran the cold water over his extended wrists, let it run till it freshened, smiled slightly at the tall image which stooped forward from the greenish mirror. He said aloud:

— Are you getting into a panic about this? Are you being quite straight with yourself about this? Is your voice a little unsteady?

The weakness which he felt in the lips that shaped these words did not show in the reflection, the mouth was calm and curt, a little derisive, the fine eyes regarded him narrowly and ironically; and then as he stood still the whole beautiful face (despite its undeniable pallor) smiled at him with an air of enigmatic affection and power. The lynx-eyes were astonishingly clear, laughed with a private light of their own, the voice said to him:

— What are you afraid of? Don’t be a fool. The murder is now pure. It has now reached a perfection in idea. To be alone with Jones — is that so difficult or painful? Is it any deeper a corruption — or evil — than to be alone with yourself? alone with your own shadow? It is merely the sacrifice of a shadow.

He repeated softly the word shadow, to watch the movement of his lips, drew the tip of a finger across an eyebrow, as if merely for contact with the bold image which seemed so haughtily to keep its distance, considered for a moment the resemblance of the forehead to Kay’s. The speech was peculiar, did not quite seem his own, came out of a subtly different level of consciousness, like that of a dream — like the words of Gerta in the dream, miles of aching arches of eyebrows, or whatever they had been. But it was a comfort to hear his own voice, to hear it speaking so calmly and effectively, and to see moreover that his bearing was as imperturbable as ever. Resting both hands flat on the marble he leaned forward and said:

— The face is that of a genius. You must expect to have misgivings, that is the penalty of the solitary spirit! The one who dwells in the abyss.

The vibrant murmur died in the little room, he paused, then went on, speaking slowly, watching the shape of his mouth, the eagerness of his eyes in his white face.

— Behind this forehead is the tree, the vision of the tree, it is an imagination which can do what it likes. You hear? Do what it likes … Jasper Ammen.

Jasper Ammen.

He turned smiling away from the smiling image, and extinguished the light; in the silence of the other room he picked up the pencil and book from the floor. The book lay open, he put it on the table and read:

“Rule 2. No bizarre typographical arrangement of text in obvious violation of good taste is permitted. Type of heads and text must not be more than 12 points wide (1–6 inch) in its widest stroke.… All illustrations to be no darker than the equivalent of a number 8 Ben Day when laid on metal. Where accents are required ⅛ square inch of solid black may be used, but not as mass shading.”

But not as mass shading.

The voice of Jones, yes; but this was beginning to be a bore, it was tiresome, and of course it was now a little unnecessary. Of this aspect of Jones, enough was already known, the notes were ample; if any further conversation with him should become needed — for instance, in the drive to Concord to meet the mythical partner — the notes would serve. It was even a question — and as he reflected on this he found that he was about to sit down again, but decided not to — whether enough was not known altogether. In a sense, yes! In a sense. A great deal had certainly been learned. The picture was pretty complete, it was satisfactory as far as it went, but there was still room for something more immediate. The scene in Alpine Street, for example, had partially supplied this lack; but only to suggest the need for more. What was the trained nurse for — if that was what she was? And the child’s cot? It was possible to argue, of course, that the significance of these things lay outside the real problem — but that in turn depended on how one saw the problem. They might not contribute anything to the ease or success of the final action — that was true enough — but they certainly contributed something else, something almost as good. The Alpine Street episode had been profoundly and beautifully natural, it was essentially the right sort of thing, he reminded himself that in the talk with Toppan he had said there could be no limit in the matter of pure knowledge; and if Jones appeared tonight at the Orpheum, that too would have the same delicious weight and immediacy. It was even (if one looked at it like this) a question whether in the approach—! But no.

And then there was yesterday’s thing — the failure of Jones to appear from his house at the usual time; and instead, the arrival of a mud-spattered doctor’s car, with its little green cross, and the doctor staying in the house for over an hour. Was the child ill? or the mother? Why had the child never been seen in all this time, or the mother either? Was the child perhaps a chronic invalid? This would of course explain the good-natured casualness of the Alpine Street scene — or partially. Or on the other hand was it possible — and the idea suddenly arrested him in his pacing of the floor, it was as startling as a blow — that all this business was simply the preparation for a child? Good God! That would explain everything.…

The discovery came as a shock, he stood very still, stared out at the dark roof of the Club, saw the light turned off in the little attic window, heard voices from the club yard below. It must be an initiation night, the doors of cars were banging, the voices were loud, a little drunken. One of them was saying:

— Say, wait for me, will you?

He says wait. Oh-h-h-h, he floats through the air with the greatest of ease—

— The flying young man on the daring trapeze—

— Where’s Putnam? Hi, Putnam!

— Oh, come on, let’s go.

The car started, the voices trailed away round the corner, there was a sound of some one running, the slamming of a door, a moment of silence, then a simultaneous outburst of shouting farther off.

The discovery came as a peculiar shock, the night had mysteriously and deeply opened, but in one direction only; a swift tunnel of half-light; and as if it were an immense telescope, he looked along it to the far little amphitheater of brightness where obscure small figures were bending to obscure small tasks. His heart had begun beating loudly again, there was a real danger here, something uncalculated, a departure into a new dimension, a hindrance, a definite threat. But also there was a renewal of challenge; with the new danger came a fresh and sharpened necessity for energy and decision. If this were so, then once again the time element had become pressing; to look squarely at the situation itself was in fact to regard the face of a clock; and all the more so because of Gerta’s threat, and her report of Sandbach’s threat — the absurd possibility that Sandbach, in a moment of spleen or jealousy, might actually try to report him! How likely was this?

Gerta had not telephoned, had merely sent him a note, one line, saying, “I really mean it. Gerta.”

Sandbach had remained silent, invisible, had not attempted to communicate either with himself or — apparently — with Toppan. And Toppan’s diary, when examined night before last, had not been written up. Which might mean anything or nothing. At any rate, it had been impossible to confirm his suspicion that Toppan — presumably on Gerta’s suggestion? — was watching him. Had it actually been Toppan?

On Saturday night, when he had first noticed the shadowy figure under the arclight at the corner of Sparks Street he had not taken the idea seriously, had merely and fleetingly thought something in the gait familiar, and something also in the slope of the shoulders under the white raincoat. But last night, when he had abruptly come on the same figure at the same place, and half a block later had begun to wonder whether it mightn’t be Toppan, and doubled back through Royal Avenue, only to find that the figure had vanished — the suspicion had deepened, especially in retrospect. The technique, too, was recognizable — to stand so directly under the arc-light that the hat rim cast the face and upperpart of the body into a dense penumbra of shadow. And hadn’t there been a momentary flash of spectacles? Moreover, when he had gone to Toppan’s room, on returning, Toppan was out. Which again might mean anything or nothing.

The thing had become a little suffocating; like a physical pressure on the breast; there was certainly a shadow of danger, it was a nuisance, and observable in the foreground was the fact that to some extent the situation threatened to get out of control. But in essentials, this was good, this was right; he turned away from the window and regarded the map on the wall with a deepening of his sense of power; the city was there below him, the lights glided along those streets, the feet, the faces, the minds, beneath all those roofs the lives lay open, his glance went down to them from above. And this hostile alliance, if now it had at last really come into being, as Gerta’s attitude indicated, had of course not only been foreseen by him from the very outset but actually willed. There was nothing new in it, nothing strange, it was all his own creation, and if now there was a danger the danger was simply the shape of his own idea. Toppan and Sandbach and Gerta might indeed be plotting together, they might be whispering, call each other up by telephone, have their secret meetings, they might flatter themselves that they knew more than he did, could outguess him, anticipate him, by studious co-operation attempt to surround him, but his own advantage remained what it had always been: that none of them, not even Gerta, was quite sure of his intentions, and none of them — especially now — shared his entire confidence. At no point could they be quite sure that he was not simply making fools of them, that he would not suddenly turn on them and say that it had all been a joke, an elaborate joke, simply the theme for a fantastic novel, and themselves nothing whatever but the dupes of an experiment. They were aware of this. Between the assumption that he was mad or cruel, on the one hand, and the hope that it was a hoax, on the other, they must run to and fro, their eyes perpetually fixed on a moving shadow, their hands perpetually withheld from any overt action. They could guess, they could spy, but what could they do? They were still, as much as Jones, at his mercy. Just the same—

Suppose they were to warn Jones. Suppose they had discovered Jones, knew who he was, where he lived. This much they might safely do?

It came down, in short, to the question of time.

If they were, as he had himself planned, closing in on him, if his own plan was narrowing its scope, then the moment could not be far off when, instead of the luxuriation in knowledge — which was after all nothing but a preliminary — must come the pure terribleness of the deed. One day: two days: or three. Three at the most. If a telephone call tomorrow, an arrangement for the trip to Concord on Thursday—

A copy of The Cambridge Sun lay on the red table under the map, he had brought it up from the hallway downstairs with a view to reading the strange little social notes, under the caption Observatory Hill, which dealt weekly with the lives of those unhappy citizens who dwelt with Jones in the waste land beyond the Observatory and Saint Peter’s Church. He bent over it, ran his eye down the column of absurd paragraphs. These people of importance! Mr. Patrick Ronan of Upland Road, well-known druggist, is in Massachusetts General Hospital with an infected foot.… Last rites for Mrs. Margaret (McDonald) Connelly of Harvard, Mass., who died Saturday were held Tuesday at the home of her daughter, Mrs. F. F. Dugan, Fayerweather Street. A requiem high mass was said at Saint Peter’s Church at nine o’clock.… Mrs. Clarence Ricker, of 299 Concord Avenue, entertained her friends at a party held at her home Sunday evening.… Miss Giulia Abetabile is sojourning in South Carolina.… Funeral of Mr. Riley.… Surprise party for the talented young dancer, Peter Willwert: a banquet lunch served.… A baseball game at the Timothy Corcoran ground on Raymond Street.… Glamorous Spring Formal Plaza.… Last Saturday’s meeting of Bob’s Kiddie Klub at the Central Square Theater opened with the usual Hi-Bob from the audience and the singing of the theme-song. For the first number Bob presented another Bob, namely Bob Murphy, a Cambridge boy who started things going with a snappy toe dance. Next came an old friend of Bob’s, Marie Phelan, who pleased the audience with a toe-tap with a jump-rope. This number is as difficult to do as it is to say. The show closed with a snappy military tap by the Personality Kid, Aimee Dolon.…

Glamorous Spring Formal Plaza. What in God’s name was that!

And all this ridiculous ant-hill, the activities of these ridiculous ants — Jones among them—

He slammed the paper down into the metal wastebasket, seized his hat, banged the door behind him without turning out the lights, walked with a kind of drunken swiftness along the corridor, and as he waited for the elevator to come up, said aloud:

—“A different sense and grade of purity.… Such a tendency distinguishes — it is a noble tendency — it also separates. The pity of the saint is a pity for the filth of the human, all too human. And there are grades and heights where pity it regarded by him as impurity, as filth.”

The front door was open, the evening was warm and windless, arrived at the Square he turned to the left and entered the noisy and crowded little bar, pushed through to the back, leaned over the man who sat on the corner stool and ordered a double Manhattan.

— A double?

— Yes, I said a double. And with two cherries.

— Yes, sir.

And pity must speak with a revolver.

He patted the hard shape in his side pocket, picked out the two red cherries with the toothpick, swallowed the sweet fire at a gulp, and in another minute was running down the metal treads of the stairs to the subway, aware that it was half past eight. Much would depend on getting a seat on the left-hand side of the theater, as near the front box where Jones — if he came — would sit. But this ought not to be difficult, for at the Orpheum people were always coming and going, he could change his seat for one farther forward whenever opportunity offered, gradually get within range. Not, of course, for anything so absurd as rifle-practice, simply for vision. But it was amusing, just the same, to recall that queer business at the Beach Theater, several years before, when night after night the unknown individual had flung down his missiles into the audience — doorknobs, lumps of coal, fragments of metal — for his solitary pleasure in random murder, and for so long undetected. He had been an usher, had flung them down from the top-most balcony, over the heads of the gallery gods, and without being able to see where they landed: though most of them, he must have known, had to fall fairly far forward, so that as a matter of fact the orchestra had lived in perpetual terror. The ambulance stood always at the stage door, a doctor was handy, but all the while the newspapers hadn’t breathed a word about it — superb example of the venality of the press. Had he been insane? and if so, what sort? Perhaps not at all. And if it had really been as easy as all that, and if in some way tonight an opportunity did offer itself — for instance, in the dark little passage which led at the side, beneath heavy plush curtains, to the ground-floor boxes—

He lifted his eyes from the idea, frowned, saw the red headlines of a newspaper immediately before his eyes in the train, was aware of the row of station-lights passing, Central Square already, the long line of accelerating lights, tried to concentrate his attention on the advertisements above the windows. These were Jones again. He knew all about them. His life was written out here in this ridiculous shorthand. Hear ye, hear ye! Now try a real ale. Eat foods that make you chew, say doctors, dentists, beauty experts. The Slouch Softie in Stitched Crêpe of Vibrant Spring Colors. A girl in a felt hat for two dollars and ninety-five cents.… This was Jones, the little man spoke with all these voices, all these pictures, an ice-cream cone, drooling, sprinkled with yellow walnuts, a town crier waving a huge brass bell, his mouth wide open, a disembodied hand spreading an immortal steak with immortal mustard, pouring juice from a bottle into a green glass, a muslined girl, wind-blown, laughing with a million teeth in a field of daisies. There was no escaping him: he nodded complacently in all these nauseating pictures, smirked in all this too-convenient jargon. This was the little red notebook, the pencil, the tweed hat, the clipped moustache. It was the office in School Street, the house in Reservoir Street, the fur collar, the Karl, the Jones. It was speed inscribed with the vulgar news of a vulgar and destructible human life: a Fury, flying with a cheap message in its beak.

And it was curiously oppressive. As oppressive as any too acute awareness of self. Like seeing oneself unexpectedly in a bad mirror—

And he thought of this again when he saw himself, sidelong, in the Orpheum mirror, behind the parrot, the tall and somber figure somewhat inclined forward, a little stooped as if with urgency, the dark felt hat at an angle, one hand just rising to remove it. Ammen! Jasper Ammen. On his way to an appointment. In the echoing lobby, among the palms, the cages, the tanks of goldfish, in a sound of discreet music, a smell of cheap scent, the vulgar women waiting on gilded sofas for their escorts, their knees langorously crossed under silk. The music crept here, there was a roll of drums, it loudened as he entered, climbing the stiff slope of plush carpet, died before him as he faced the bright sunrise-light of the proscenium arch, the stage, the leader of the orchestra standing in poised silhouette.

— Down front, please.

It would be easy — the theater was half-empty.

The little arc of light flittingly notched the red path before his feet, he sank into a chair by the aisle, looked quickly up toward the box at his left, saw that it was empty.

Jones had not come.

And a quarter to nine already—

Two Negroes were on the stage, the fat one, wearing white socks, yodeled softly and rolled his eyes, scraping sinuous feet, while the other stared disapprovingly.

— Did you all hear whut I said?

— No, I didn’t hear nuthin’.

— I heard some news about you. I hear you goin’ to night school.

— Night school?

— Yeah, night school. What you takin’ up, nigger?

— Space.

— What’s your favorite study?

— Recess.

— Are you takin’ up psychology, technocracy, algebra?

— Algebra’s my favorite study.

— What are you talkin’ about! Go ahead, speak some algebra!

— Sure I will. Sprechen sie deutsch?

There was mild laughter, the white socks slid and recovered, the white-gloved hands were lifted in air.

— That ain’t algebra, nigger, that’s geography. But tell me, how many sneezes are there in a box?

— How big is the box?

A sudden snarl of music marked the joke, the orchestra leader joined obviously in the laugh, but the fat Negro, continuing unruffled his lazy and soft-slippered convolutions, added:

— Now I’ll axe you somethin’.

— Sure, axe me somethin’, big boy.

— Where is the east hemisphere and where is the western, and what are they doin’ there?

— Boy, you got me. But do you use narcotics?

— Yeah, trans-lux! Now tell this one. Where is the capital of the United States?

— That’s easy — doggone — it’s all over Europe.…

They cackled together, the fat one yodeled, slithering to and fro, the orchestra played half a bar of The Star-Spangled Banner discordantly, what the thin one was saying was drowned in the sudden applause. They began to dance, soft-stepping, languidly, idly, the slow rhythm delicately accented by the barely perceptible whisper of the soft soles, the white-gloved hands now widespread, now crossed or swinging, the knees loose, the shoulders sagging. Above the muted saxophone the thin one could be heard saying:

— With this dance, boy, I might give you a job making a moving picture.

— Well, tell it to me, big boy, what is the moving picture?

— Tah-te-te-tya. Green Apples. That’s the small one. I also made a large one.

— What part did you play in the small one?

— Tah-te-te-tya. I doubled with cramps.

— What was the big picture called?

— Showboat.

— Showboat! How come I didn’ see you in it?

— What day did you see it?

— Thursday.

— Tay-te-te-tya. Thursday? Oh, tha’s too bad, I missed the boat that day.

The fat one began doing a cake-walk, head flung back, a few swift and soundless steps, but at this moment there was a movement in the box, the sound of curtains drawn on rings, a gash of light, and Jones, wearing a derby hat, in the act of taking off his kid gloves, stood in the aperture, talking earnestly to the usher. The usher nodded, listened attentively, nodded again, Jones was emphasizing what he said by tapping the forefinger of one hand on the palm of the other. As obviously as if he were audible, he was asking the usher if he understood, and the usher was reassuring him. The usher appeared to be holding a card, peered at it in the dim light, then examined it with his flashlight. He withdrew, closing the curtains behind him, and Jones, taking off his coat, sat down by the edge of the box. Meanwhile, with a jig and a yell, to a crescendo of drums, the two Negroes were taking their bow, slid on again, slid off, reappeared once more, and were gone with a final clamorous discord. The illuminated name-plates changed at either side of the stage, the curtain rose, the scene was of a hotel lobby, decadently tinted with mauve and orchid, sumptuous with satins. Floodlights above poured a harsh light on a group of palm-trees in one corner, on a gilt sofa, where with round mouths a man and a girl sat singing.

— I’m just putty in the hands of a girl—

Jones, the little cock-sparrow, with his head on one side, seemed to be listening to this detachedly, it was easy to see him, for he was barely ten feet away, but as obvious as his air of detachment was his slight self-consciousness, as if the occupation of a box was a new experience. He sat a little stiffly, very guardedly now and then turned to glance quickly at the rows of people below him; perhaps felt even too close to the performers on the stage. And was he — possibly — looking somewhat pale?

Why should he look pale?

And what had he been saying to the usher?

A bellhop crossed the stage rapidly, intoning—

— Telephone for Mr. Frederick — telephone for Mr. Frederick—

It might be that he had been inquiring about the origin of the tickets. It might be that he was suspicious. But why should he be suspicious? There was little reason. Complimentary tickets were sufficiently common. No, it must be something else. And the most likely explanation — of course! — was simply that the other members of the party were coming later: he was alone, he had come in advance, he was waiting, had given instructions, by name, for the admission of the others. Cautiously, he now rested an elbow on the box-edge — and with returning confidence he had relaxed, his head was held a little farther back, he passed his left hand slowly backward over his thin hair. But he looked pale, he looked older, or ill — unless, of course, it was simply the effect of the unusual light, and of seeing him, so close too, without a hat. The face looked smaller than ever, whiter, the hollows below the cheekbone more marked—

The man, rising, was saying to the girl:

— A couple of wees and a couple of woos, eh?

— Oui, oui!

Her hands held out straight before her, stiff as snake’s heads, she shimmied, she oscillated, undulated the sharp hips from which hung the straight line of beads, appeared to be about to encircle her breasts with the bright scarlet fingernails, approached him, lifting the eager mouth, then retreated again.

He said:

— Well, if you have to go, you’ll have to go, I suppose!

He stood still in the middle of the stage, puffy red face above neat white flannels, the malacca stick wandlike in pasty hands.

— But if you don’t go soon, we’ll both have to go!.. Suppose you do the fan dance for me, we’re all paid-up Elks!

The laughter of the audience began uneasily, ran lamely from group to group, a little furtive, died out and began again, some one in the top balcony applauded loudly, a single and clear series of hard handclaps, but before the ensuing silence could become embarrassing the pas de deux had begun, the bellhop was again crossing the stage, doing it nimbly in patter-dance, the heavy mother emerged beneath the palms.

— Ride ’em cowboy! The last round-up! Whoopee!

— You like it?

— Like it? I should say so. Say, I can see you had coffee and doughnuts for breakfast.

— Oh, you can-can you!

With the fingers of his right hand, Jones was twisting his little moustache, he was laughing, a small cry catarrhal and descending laugh, the same four downward notes repeated over and over, huh-heh-ha-hah, huh-heh-ha-hah, then abruptly silent, the head tilted backward for dignity. It was easy to watch him, he sat there unsuspicious, exposed, immobile, near enough to touch with a tentpole. His coat was on the chair beside him, his hat on the floor, his heart, beating on the far side, naïve and vulnerable. Lighted thus, from above, the mole by the eyebrow was particularly noticeable, the slight curve of the aquiline nose rather more refined than one had suspected, the whole expression perhaps more intelligent, if also weaker. It was a homunculus, there was no mistake about that, a weakling — it was the face of a defeated animal, the sort of defeated animal in which a sense of humor has come to the rescue and has acted as defense: Jones was undoubtedly one of those innumerable ones who make a virtue of laughing things off. He was a belonger, a currier of favor, a propitiator, always ready to meet life halfway, a soft and guileful bargainer: the teeth and claws held in reserve. What mercy for this? What mercy for this, even now? It was a life, but it was also a symbol: its very nearness, now leaning on the box-edge, was an invitation: the arm, the raised hand, the pale cheek, shaved this morning in a paltry bathroom, the lungs full of foul theater air, the small belly with its little burden of half-digested supper—

To witness all this was to close the eyes to all other visible things, to forget on the instant the raised baton of the orchestra leader, the first violin leaning his face to his fiddle, the two girls who had sidled on to the stage, twin sisters, one blonde, one hennaed; it was to feel again the power and the vision; the vision arose, the vision grew like a tree, softly and soundlessly the magnificent boughs thrust right and left over the helpless world, it was like hands, it was like fingers, an all-exploring touch and grasp, one’s own body became immaterial. The knees pressed hard against the seat in front, the elbows pressed hard on the arm-rests, the revolver firm against the hip—

Blonde was saying to henna:

— Jane, why don’t you behave yourself?

— I would, but what’s in it!

— Where are you going to spend your honeymoon?

— In France. He said as soon as we were married he’d show me where he was wounded.

It all suddenly clicked firmly into place, it was perfect, and to be sitting here within ten feet of Jones, anonymous embodiment of death, as if they had come together here, in this queer place and in this company, for the performance of some profound ritual, was suddenly the rightest thing in the world. These subhumans, these chattering apes, were the witnesses, they bore unconscious testimony to the perfection and necessity of the idea and the action. Complete in itself, the whole scene had fallen swiftly out of time and space, was isolated as if it were itself a separate star, a final symbol: all of history had been preparing from the beginning for this absurd culmination. Jones there, in his box, sniggering at the stupid and laboriously obscene jokes, the fools clowning under an arranged light, the silly music, the rows of gaping idiots — all this was the reductio ad absurdum, the ultimate monstrosity of life; the awful perfection of the commonplace, the last negation of all values. And if Jones was the negative, he himself was the destructive positive, the anonymous lightning which was about to speak the creative Name. A ritual, yes — it was in fact a sort of marriage. And to realize this—

The blonde wiped her nose on the edge of her skirt, and said:

— He said to me, you’re just the kind of a girl I want for my wife. And can you beat this one, I said to him, well, you tell your wife she can’t have me. See? Just like that.

— to realize this—

It was of course — and this was really funny — to give Jones a kind of dignity, a kind of importance, he had become the other chief performer in the rite, the acquiescent one, the dedicated ram led garlanded to the pure altar. In this light, it was even possible to regard Jones with something oddly like affection; for as he sat there, with two neat fingers adjusting his spectacles, he was being subtly and dreadfully transmuted into something sacred. The bond between them had deepened immeasurably, he turned and looked at him steadily, smiling frankly, almost wishing that Jones would turn and see him, would meet the smile which meant so much to him without his knowing it; but at this very moment, like something planned, the curtains beyond Jones were swiftly drawn aside, the usher had entered, was stooping towards Jones and speaking agitatedly, Jones was rising, had risen, had snatched up his hat and coat, and gone. The curtains were swinging, the box was empty.

Something had happened: some message had come.

He jumped up, walked quickly up the steep aisle, heard behind him the phrase “show you a broken-down dance,” dived down through the marble and plush tunnel which led to the foyer, emerged into the alley, and saw, a block away, the illuminated front of the Park Street Church, and halfway to this, his hat in one hand, his coat in the other, Jones, in the act of running.

XI The Regret

Before Jones had reached the corner, he had himself begun running, laughing a little breathlessly as he did so: the speed was a delight, the action was a relief, in the whole unexpected event there was something comically satisfactory. That they should be running thus along a half-lighted alley, separated by fifty yards, the one ahead grotesquely unaware of the one behind — as if, in fact, they were somehow connected, were two parts of a single mechanism — this was both ridiculous and right; and that the whole great adventure should thus suddenly accelerate and take momentary shape in a species of action so elementary and humble was essentially good. He had time to think this as he sprinted towards the florist’s at the corner, where Jones had already turned to the left, and he had time also to foresee for Jones a choice amongst three possible actions: he could go out to Reservoir Street by subway and streetcar — which seemed in the circumstances unlikely—; he could go by subway to Harvard Square, and there take a taxi; or, if a real panic had possessed him, he could go by taxi all the way from Boston, sacrificing actual speed for the illusion of speed which is always to be extracted from a feeling of uninterrupted activity. All this, of course, was based on the assumption that it was to Reservoir Street that he was going — was it just possible he was going somewhere else?

Arrived at the corner, he stopped, stood still, glanced quickly south towards the subway entrance, saw no sign of Jones, but then at once noticed that a taxi in the Park Street stand was just at that moment snarling into motion, swerving left as it did so. It was turning north to go along Tremont Street, shot past him accelerating rapidly, and in the back seat Jones was fleetingly visible — leaning forward to struggle into his coat, his derby hat perched at a queer angle on the back of his head, obviously stuck there in a hurry, the earnest little face wearing an expression which was quite clearly something new, something different.

If it wasn’t fright, it was something very like it: Jones was frightened. For once, he had lost his smugness and complacency, his perpetual air of competence.

Something had gone wrong.

He watched the taxi out of sight, glanced at his wrist watch, glanced at his wrist watch, glanced up also at the clock of Park Street Church, found that he had forgotten the time as soon as he had noticed what it was, stood irresolute. Jones was still there, he had not in any sense escaped, his swift departure was merely a blind movement from one part of the closed circle to another, he was as easily reached there as anywhere else, and as easily seen. Standing here motionless by the florist’s shop, it was nevertheless as if he were watching Jones from above: looked down through the taxi roof, saw Jones nervously take out a cigarette, strike several matches in an attempt to light it with shaking hands. But if this was true, and if Jones could not really escape, it was also true that this new development had subtly altered the situation, the equation had been multiplied by an unknown quantity, the simple was becoming complex. To make the necessary arrangements now, in the face of this, would perhaps not be quite so easy: the greater pressure would have to be met with greater guile, or even with greater violence. The trap would have to be a more powerful one, and more enticingly baited.

But suppose it turned out to be something really serious.

He frowned, crossed the street, opened the taxi door with automatic hand, and said:

— Cambridge. Over the Cambridge bridge. If you go fast enough, you’ll overtake the Independent Taxi that just left here. Keep a little way behind it and follow it: I’ll tell you when to stop.

— Yes, sir!

Yes, the action had become unexpectedly complicated, the action or his awareness of it, the thing was on several different planes all at once, and in the very act of deciding to take a taxi he had still been on the point — surprisingly — of going across the Common to see Gerta, or even, if she had happened to be out, of then proceeding to Sandbach’s. To see Gerta at this juncture was reasonable enough: for a moment it had seemed in fact perhaps desirable. To put in an appearance, and above all a cheerful one, to laugh loudly about the whole thing, discuss her queer picture with her, make plans for an expedition to New York in the following week, disarm her completely — the shape of this action had risen sharply before him, he had seen it vividly as he glanced across the Common toward the Frog Pond, had begun in advance to enjoy the simplicity of the deception. The words of the conversation were clear, the tone was precise, Gerta’s initial surprise gave way to relief, even to gayety. Come out and have a drink. And I’ll tell you the greatest joke yet. Come down to the Union Oyster House and have some little-necks. Or shall we go to that little bar at the end of Charles Street? I’ve made a very peculiar discovery, I’d like to tell you about it. The last dislocation!.. But if Gerta was out, if Sandbach were there, or if he went to Sandbach’s room — this wasn’t quite so clear. Why? Why Sandbach? The image was repellent, the reality of Sandbach in Sandbach’s room was twisted and a little nauseating, the sound and shape of the interview was drawling and feverish, unnatural. No, the impulse was obscure and unpleasant, there was really no need to see Sandbach again, Sandbach was out of it for good. Sandbach had been defeated, even if he didn’t yet know it — and didn’t he actually know it? The tall shadow of Jasper Ammen was behind Gerta, Sandbach was aware of this and was angry about it, he struggled helplessly with it, knew that it would be useless. But just the same to stand before Sandbach now, in his own room, to smile down on him and patronize him, look idly at his books, ask casually about Breault, make no reference whatever to Gerta—

He closed his eyes for a second as the taxi shot up the curve of the bridge, kept in mind for a moment the image of the lighted train which had rushed past them full of people, felt suddenly a little sick. As against all this, this jangle of Gerta and Sandbach and Toppan, the Jones situation was still comfortingly simple. It had the merit of a pure perfection, stood off by itself, was as clear and beautiful as a single flower. To hold this up for admiration was still the best possible of all realities, it kept its finality, and having admired it to destroy it—

But exactly why, in the midst of this action, had he wanted to deviate from it, to see Gerta? With the revolver in his pocket, and Jones so close at hand, with the scene already so developed and so rich in potentialities, so rewardingly immediate, why step aside from it? The night was still young, the possibilities were immense, anything at all might yet happen. To intercept Jones might not be convenient, but to call him up by telephone, make an appointment, even to meet him later in the evening — what could prevent this, except of course this new development, his mysterious flight to Cambridge?

He watched the swift dance of streetlights, counted them, one, two, three, four, was half-consciously aware presently that they had passed the Technology buildings, crossed Massachusetts Avenue, and that there was still no sign of the other taxi. Perhaps they had gone by Broadway; but it hardly mattered. It would be just as well to keep a discreet distance behind, there was no particular reason for remaining within sight: the odds against his going anywhere but Reservoir Street were tremendous. Moreover, to realize this was to realize also his motive for wishing, at this point, to deviate. It was based on a sense of complete confidence, the feeling that poor Jones was now completely in the bag. In effect, Jones was still as close to him as he had been in his box at the theater: just as near, just as unguarded, just as unsuspecting. The flight from the box, from the theater, the dash to the taxi-stand, and the ensuing swoop on Cambridge, all this was really nothing more than the circumscribed panic of the mouse: the dart from sofa-shadow to chair-shadow. The door was still closed, the mouse was still within the room.

The taxi driver slid back the glass panel and said, without turning his head:

— That’ll be Connor now — yes, that’s him all right. How near will I tail him?

— Just keep him in sight, that’s all. If you lose him, never mind, take me to the corner of Sparks Street and Huron Avenue.

— Sparks Street and Huron Avenue, okay.… Boy, is he stepping on it! You’d think he was going to a fire.

A hundred yards behind, they followed dizzily the bobbing tail-light, lost it for a few minutes when they were held up by the signals at River Street bridge, caught it again as it slowed with glowing brake-light to turn left into Mount Auburn Street. Everything was going like clockwork, there could no longer be any doubt that Jones was on his way to Reservoir Street in response to a telephone call. He had arranged it with the usher, had given his name, and then waited: but presumably he had not really expected to be called, or he would not have come. And all this being the case, what did it mean? Either of two things: either that the child was being born, if that supposition was correct; or, if there was already a child, and the child was ill, that it had taken a sudden turn for the worse. Or was there just a chance — also — that it might be a question of the wife, the mother?

In any case, it could have no bearing on the situation. What had been decided was decided.

The only regrettable feature was that it indicated new avenues for exploration, which, with this sudden increase of pressure — if indeed it was pressure — from Gerta and Sandbach and Toppan, would have to be neglected. If life itself, or destiny, was about to take a hand, and tighten the screws on Jones, it was unfortunate not to be able to take advantage of the enhanced entertainment, even if the enhancement was purely adventitious. To watch his antics in this new predicament, whatever it was, and to observe what changes it might bring about in his habits — this would be of the finest essence of the experience. It would add the last fillip to the thing-in-itself, the perfect chiaroscuro for the projected image, the right silence for the hearing of the cry. And perhaps even now there would be time, it might be managed — the notion of seeing Gerta was not, on second thought, so bad, or even of seeing Sandbach. If too abrupt a transition was avoided, so that they didn’t suspect him of merely acting, of playing a part, they could even now be lulled into inaction and inertia, put off the track. The little ritual with Jones would be by so much deepened and prolonged, yield just so much more of its vital juice. And the further fact that their intervention was actually impending, that they stood there, in the background, ready to protect and save Jones, and only prevented from timely action by their stupidity, this too would add its deliciousness: it would be worth trying. A telephone call to Gerta, perhaps an invitation to S, and the first soundings could at least be taken. And if the signs were propitious, then the time problem would once more have become elastic. He and Jones could proceed with due leisure and affection to their profound little collaboration.…

And this was odd. He saw it against the swift palings of a white fence, the lighted windows of a house, the turning headlamps of a car — he saw it concretely, and with an almost horrible vividness — the form of his sick hatred for that ridiculous trio of people, the three of them plotting while they smiled, bowing while they whispered behind their hands. It was odd, it was loathsome, but it was true, and also it was funny; he began, in the swaying taxi, to laugh a little, then stopped, then laughed again. What it came down to was simply this — that he and Jones were now actually in alliance against Gerta and Sandbach and Toppan: had their private plan, their conspiracy, which those three, bowing among the elm-trees, were attempting to frustrate. He saw them this minute, separately and together; Gerta in the lunchroom at the Museum, talking earnestly with red-haired Toppan; Gerta pausing before the Kwannon with S, Sandbach’s fat little hand on her arm, the sharp tooth showing at the corner of his mouth; Gerta saying at Belmont “then we shall have to do something.” The images came together, fused, lost their identity only to separate again, their nearness so oppressive, and so actual, that he put out his hand toward the taxi window as if to destroy them. But he and Jones together — he and Jones together would defeat them.

The brakes began squeaking rhythmically, eek, eek, eek, eek, they had stopped in the silent emptiness of Wyman Square, the driver was saying:

— Do you want to stop here, Mister? He’s just turning the corner up there. There he goes now.

— Yes. This is all right.

— Baby, was that a ride! I didn’t know old Connor had it in him.

In another moment the striped taxi was reversing sharply to go back to Boston, he listened to the retreating sound, stood with his pipestem against his teeth and stared alternately west and north along Huron Avenue. There was no one in sight. Leaning over a fence at his elbow, almost touching him, a lilac bush was in bloom, the blossoms smoke-blue and artificial in the cold lamplight. The heavy fragrance sickened him, he began walking quickly towards Vassal Lane, debouched from Huron Avenue, looked over his shoulder as he did so to make certain that he was not being followed, and in half a minute had passed the willow tree and was approaching Jones’s house. The taxi, of course, had gone. Instead, the doctor’s car stood before the entrance: just as he had expected. The street was otherwise deserted, everything was quiet, he walked calmly up to the car and touched the radiator-cap with the palm of his hand. It was quite cool. The doctor had been here for some time, perhaps an hour — must have arrived very soon after Jones had set off to Boston. Stepping back, then, to the middle of the street, he looked up at the house.

All the windows on the second floor were lighted, and also the two windows at the right-hand corner of the top floor. None of the curtains had been drawn.

The three bow windows on the second floor were obviously the sitting room. Three bell-shaped lamp shades of ground glass hung from the plain brass chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, all of them lighted. Against the wall at the left the top of a bookcase was visible, with nothing on it but a glass vase, which was empty. Above this on the yellow wallpaper hung an oak-framed color-print — it looked like a single large face with a background of red flowers. Nothing else was to be seen, the room seemed to be deserted, and its quiet, under the three bells of light, took on a queer sort of significance.

The room to the right of this was not so easy to examine, for the white railing of the porch roof cut off what would otherwise have been an excellent view, through the glass door (which opened on to the improvised veranda), and the window, which, unlike all the others, was wide open. Through the door it was possible to see a table, on which was the telephone. Beyond this was an open door, which presumably led into the hall. Probably the room — as he had in fact concluded before — was Jones’s “den,” his office. In this room, too, there seemed to be no sign of activity; any one present would have been visible.

Of the room at the top, nothing could be seen, of course, but the ceiling and a fragment of wall: but these were eloquent. It was obvious at once that the entire life of the little house was now concentrated here. As in the sitting room, there was a brass chandelier, with three lights, but there must also be another light as well, somewhere lower down, for across the ceiling, and the visible portion of wall, shadows went and came with astonishing variety and rapidity, and not one shadow, but several. There were at least two persons moving about in the room, perhaps three, — the shadows moved separately, diverged, enlarged, blended; now and then altogether disappeared. Once, it seemed to be the light itself which had moved; for all the shadows shifted concertedly, and as if concentrically. Perhaps some one had moved a table lamp — for instance — from the table towards the bed. There was then a moment when none of the shadows moved at all. Everything was motionless, everything was silent. If only the windows had been left open—

He noticed again, what he had noticed before, but only casually, the ash can which stood by the curb just behind the doctor’s car. Of course, it was Tuesday, Jones would have put it out the night before, had not yet got round to taking it in again. It had been emptied this morning, was waiting, but Jones had been too busy or too anxious to remember it. And if Jones was too busy to attend to it, if they all, up there, were so occupied with whatever it was they were doing—

The idea was perfectly sound, he glanced rapidly north and south along the street to make quite sure that it was still deserted, then more carefully examined the houses behind him and those that adjoined number 85. There were lights in all of them, but in all of them, also, the shades had been drawn, there was no sign of any activity anywhere, no one was watching, or very likely to see him. There would be a certain amount of risk in it, certainly, but not much, — not more, at any rate, than could be easily bluffed out of. Accordingly, he pulled his hat down over his eyes, said softly to himself the words “briefly done,” and walked with careful but quick nonchalance along the cement path which led beside a privet hedge to the back of the house. It was necessary to act as if the action were customary: he must look as if he belonged there, had every right there, and he turned boldly at the corner to survey what he had found. The revolving clothesline lifted bare arms in the half-light from the street beyond, like some queer sort of desert tree, spiny and sterile; and before this, leading down to an open door, were the red brick steps which gave entrance to Jones’s cellar. There was no light below; and thinking to himself that he must show no sign of hesitation, and complementarily also no sign of undue haste, he ran lightly down the steps, feeling the slight grit of ashes beneath his feet, and stooped through the low doorway. Striking a match, he found a switch at the foot of a wooden stairway, turned on the light, saw that the cellar was divided into two sections by a wooden partition — one for each of the tenants — and that while one of these was padlocked the door to the Jones cellar was ajar, and the cellar itself in darkness. To find the swinging electric light bulb, with a help of another match, was quite simple: he turned it on, and discovered that he was standing immediately in front of a furnace. Above, the half-dozen asbestos-jacketed furnace pipes seemed, like an octopus, to be exploring the grimy and cobwebbed rafters of the ceiling: so low that he had to stoop to avoid hitting his head. The furnace itself, of course, was not lighted: the door was open, the interior was dark and cold, and at the edge of the ash door was a neat little pile of clinkers. One cigarette stub lay among them.

He stood still, listened; footsteps were crossing the floor overhead, in the apartment of the other tenants; they crossed the floor and returned again, slowly and without urgency, it was nothing to be alarmed about; some one traversing the room for a paper, or a box of matches. When the steps had ceased, there was no other sound — the silence was profound; and it occurred to him that not impossibly something — from the Jones apartment — might be audible through the pipes. But no. He listened and heard nothing, the upper rooms were of course too far away. What they were doing there remained a secret.

Revolving slowly on his heel where he stood, he looked to all corners of the little cellar, saw the divided coal bins at the front, the shovel leaning against the coal-blackened wall, the wooden soapbox half full of kindling with a short-handled ax laid across the corner, a newspaper on the cement floor, a wooden snow shovel, a pair of worn-out galoshes. Under the little cellar window at the side there was a hole in the cement floor, where the surface had for some reason cracked and crumbled, it had been scratched away and showed the earth beneath it: it occurred quickly to him that if anyone should come — if Jones himself should come — he could say that he was there on behalf of the landlord to examine the floor with a view to repairs. But all this was nothing. It was gratifying enough to step thus closer than ever to the small and secret life of Jones, to know his furnace and his shovels; but for any immediate or practical purpose it came to nothing. The newspaper, when he went nearer, turned out to be a week-old American: the headline simply said CARNEY ORDERS ERA “CHISELER PROBE.” The question was—

Considering it, and noticing also that his heart had begun beating rather rapidly, with the odd effect of giving him a sensation of suffocation in the left side of his throat, he walked slowly back to the door and regarded the wooden stairs which led up — presumably — to the Jones kitchen. The question was, if he should wait here, secret himself here, where all sounds would be muffled, or even completely inaudible, and whence escape would be so easy and so quick—

Why not?…

It would be the simplest thing in the world. No one would hear a thing.…

But how likely was Jones to come down? or to come down soon?

A curious pain was beating in each of his forearms, throbbing down into his hands, which felt swollen; the sudden intensity of his vision seemed in effect to glaze or dull his eyes; and it was only after a moment or two that he noticed the brown wicker wastebasket half way up the stairs. He reached over the railing for it, lifted it down, stooped and spread out the fragments of paper on the floor. Torn envelopes, one of them with the business address of the Acme Advertising Agency in the upper left-hand corner, the receipted bill of a news agent, the crumpled page for the month of April torn from a calendar, a nest of dead matches, a tiny hairpin, a pasteboard milk-bottle top slightly bent, a fluff of hair combings, a few torn fragments of paper which looked like shopping lists. Vegetables, groceries, cheesecloth — the items written in a small backward-leaning hand — but suddenly, from another list, written more boldly and coarsely, he noticed a single item—1 baby’s folding tub—and rose with it to go nearer the light. There could no longer be any doubt of it. “3 papers small safety pins. 3 papers large safety pins. 2 large agate pails with covers. 1 large agate basin. 1 bath thermometer. ¼ pound boric crystals. 4 oz. olive oil. 1 can baby powder. 1 kitchen scales with weights — avoid springs. 1 bathing apron.”

So it was that!..

At this instant, the little Jones was being born upstairs, — with Jones in attendance, and the doctor, and the nurse. The child’s cot, the hamper, the slop-bowl, the hospital chair — the whole thing was only too disgustingly obvious. The nurse, of course, lived in that house at the corner of Alpine Street, had loaned these objects, had been summoned, Jones had gone to the Orpheum not expecting any such immediate development, it was all happening prematurely. The drama of moving shadows on the ceiling in the upstairs bedroom was simply the drama of childbirth, a drama in which these items were the humble properties. He crumpled the paper in his hand, flung it down bitterly amongst the litter besides the overturned basket, ran quickly up the brick stairs to the back yard. That Jones should come down now was clearly inconceivable: the scope of action had abruptly narrowed — perhaps psychologically as much as physically? — and therefore something else must be done, something else must be thought of, the time-problem otherwise dealt with. But what, and how?

He stood for a moment beside the uplifted arms of the clothesline, stared at it, then walked slowly along the path towards Reservoir Street. There was an odd smell — faint, but unmistakable: it was ether, a slight sweet thread of ether on the night air, he paused to make sure, and at the same time heard a cry. It was not a child’s cry — it was a woman’s, a soft downward quaver, something between a sob and a moan, distant and muffled. It was not repeated, he stood listening for two minutes or perhaps three with angrily averted face, his hands clenched in his pockets, again feeling the curious pain in the side of his throat. His position, too, was tense and unnatural. He became slowly aware of the strain in his half-flexed right knee, the pressure of his elbows against his sides. Did he want to hear that sound again, or didn’t he?

This was becoming decidedly unpleasant. What was needed was a longer view, a wider horizon, something farther off on which to rest one’s eyes, a voice at the other end of a telephone, the simple reassurance of something known and familiar, even if hated. Gerta? Sandbach? Toppan? A rapid walk to the Square, to Fresh Pond, perhaps the getting out of the Buick and a drive into the counrty? The time-problem, in this fashion—

To think this was automatically to begin moving. Without any clear reason for it, he walked quickly to the street, passed the doctor’s car, then turned up the next path, proceeding thus again to the grotesque shape of the clothes-line in the back yard; and before he knew, had walked completely round the house without once looking at it. There was no sense in this; it was stupid and meaningless, it might even be dangerous; nothing was now to be gained from loitering here, despite his reluctance to go away in the very middle of what was so obviously a “scene.” He could ring the doorbell, of course, making some pretense of an inquiry, participate thus more intimately, perhaps even converse with his victim face to face — but to look up once more at the lighted windows on the third floor, to observe that now everything there was still, no shadows in motion, was also to decide that this too would be meaningless. The smell of ether had sharpened, he turned and walked rapidly towards Huron Avenue, feeling oddly defrauded, oddly reckless. It was curiously as if Jones had deserted him; as if the alliance between them had been denounced; as if he were now, precisely, walking away from the very thing which most clearly symbolized his own reason for living. This was the center, and to walk away from it—

An empty streetcar clattered past the corner, on its way to Harvard Square, he cursed it and turned in the other direction, already finding the angry phrases to telephone to Gerta. I really mean it. Gerta. What exactly did she think she meant? That she had discussed the whole thing, finally, with that dirty Jew Sandbach, told him all about it, cried with her face on his greasy shoulder and his ridiculous short arms about her? That they were working with Toppan? That they had told the police? Toppan would be here again tonight, no doubt, sitting in a car somewhere to watch him. Damn them all, and to hell with them. If they thought for a minute they could match their wits against his genius, against his freedom from scruple — the idea was crazy, he could laugh at it, and as he closed himself into the telephone booth in the drugstore at Gurney Street he was already feeling amused.

— Hello?

— Your dear Jasper speaking. I just wanted to thank you for your card: very kind of you.

Gerta’s voice was very cool, very detached; she said slowly—

— Now look here, Jasper—

— I’m looking with all my teeth.

— I don’t think you are taking quite the right attitude, do you? I’d be a little more concerned — for you I mean — if I didn’t know of course that the whole thing is a fake.

— Oh, so it’s a fake, is it?

— Obviously, isn’t it, my dear?

— Oh, obviously! I’ve just, for example, been in his house — in his cellar. I suppose that’s a fake. You and your Sandbach make me laugh!

— Of course it’s a fake! I don’t believe a word of it.

— Believe what you like. I assume, of course, we’re talking about King Coffin?

— You and your King Coffin!

— Yes, me and my King Coffin! Size five by two! Silk-lined and silver-handled; you’d be surprised! If you want to come out here, I’ll prove it to you. Is it a bet?

— Thanks, my dear, I’m afraid I’ve got better things to do.

— Suit yourself.

— And incidentally, I thought you were going to the Orpheum tonight.

— Certainly. I did!

— I see. You combined theater and cellar.

— Exactly. It’s been a great success! You’d find a full account of the evening very entertaining, I assure you.

— No, thank you. I’d rather not!

— I might have known you’d get cold feet—

— Call it what you like, my dear—

— I said cold feet.

— And when you come to your senses drop me a picture postcard, won’t you? Good night!

— Gerta — listen—!

He heard the click, listened, she was gone; she had played his own trick on him; he gave a little annoyed laugh, hung the receiver softly on its hook. A fake! It was an ingenious line to take, it did her credit, Gerta was no fool. She had calculated it cunningly to drive him out into the open, force him to show his hand. And so cool about it too. But behind this were other things, other shapes — imponderable but perhaps for that no less definite. She had not yet said anything, or much, to Sandbach, perhaps very little to Toppan. She was still hoping to bluff him, still hoping that she could manage the thing by herself. This much loyalty could still be counted on, to this extent she was loyal in spite of herself, or in spite of Sandbach; and to this extent by implication she was keeping open for him, if he should want it (or as she put it, come to his senses), a line of retreat. She had suggested New York — a holiday in New York. New York! But that was far away, impossible, it was another shape and another design, it was not and could never be in this pattern at all: for better or worse the thing had now taken its own deep direction. Jones was not in that world, nor New York in this, he and Jones were here together, more than ever together — and if the pressure of their queer relationship was becoming hourly more obscure, and hourly more subtle in its underground ramifications, it was perhaps for that very reason all the more tyrannous and inevitable. There could now be no New York, or “other” thing: any more, for example, than there could be life after death.

Life after death!

Exactly. It was like making an engagement for a party, or to meet a friend, or to go to a show, at eight-thirty on the evening following one’s death. Gerta, with her New York, her Sandbach, her painting, her print-room at the Museum, the bowl of apples on the window sill, the life-class at Belmont, the smile from under shaded eyes in the two-year-old photograph, Gerta with her Gertadämmerung and her Russian blouse — this was now already another world, whirled away diminishing into the past or the future, beyond all contact or reality. To think of it was simply to think of an amusing contrapuntal device in time, a synchronization of the impossible. It was an act of laconic leave-taking, a laconic farewell, the cry of a sea gull over the last whirl of froth that marked a sunken ship. The thing was gone.

He found that he was tapping with his fingers against the glass side of the telephone booth, looked down at his stilled hand as if suddenly it belonged to some one else, gave a little shiver. He noticed that he was again standing, as in the path of the Reservoir Street house, in a slightly unnatural way, and with an unnatural tenseness, like an animal that is frightened. The slight surge of the body which is being electrocuted! Relaxing deliberately and angrily, he opened the door, went out, pondering the other project, the idea of ringing up Jones. But this would be better when he got back, this would be better from Hampden. In the meantime—

The man in the white jacket behind the soda fountain was saying to a customer:

— fired for wearing a colored shirt and a wrong haircut.

— What? fired for what?

— For wearing a colored shirt and having the wrong kind of haircut.…

He went out, smelt the smoke from the burning-dump at Fresh Pond, the stars above the mean houses were like sparks borne on the cool north wind, a man and a girl were talking in low voices in a car which was parked at the corner. At the sight of this he stiffened, and turned quickly to the right, as if some sixth sense, some dark animal instinct, had given him warning. It was of course just the sight of people sitting in a parked car, that was all; but it reminded him just the same of Toppan, he had felt sure, he felt sure still, that Toppan was somewhere about, somewhere near. It had the simplicity of a conviction: it was just the right time for Toppan: he had in fact arranged for Toppan: and Toppan would be there. He might be in a car in the southern end of Reservoir Street, or in Huron Avenue itself; but more likely he would be on foot, and near Wyman Square. Or possibly he was even now in the act of walking up from Hampden, but had got quite close, was slowing down and moving cautiously as he drew near the neighborhood. This was excellent in its way, but it was also tedious, it was the little extra something of annoying and belated complication with which, for some reason, he felt reluctant to deal. One’s own past witticisms and ingenuities, one’s own history, in short, could become tiresome. To see Toppan, but to avoid him—

Keeping on the right side of the street, so as not to face the headlights of the oncoming traffic, and also keeping as close to the houses as possible and using the tree-line wherever he could, he walked swiftly, pointing before him the stem of his unlighted pipe. Very well, let Toppan come, by all means let him come, there would be plenty to say to him. Why, indeed, avoid him since there was obviously so much to say, and since besides it was always so easy to speak from the shadow — as it were, from the tomb — to those who walked in the sunlit innocence of their folly? The image of the party after death had recurred to him, it pleased him, it was a good idea, it would be nice to ask a group of ill-assorted people to come to a party, for instance, the night after one intended to commit suicide: send out the invitations, timing them very carefully, so that the guests would arrive and themselves make the charming discovery. The Findens, for example, Sandbach, Mrs. Taber, Gottlieb, Gerta, a sprinkling of mere acquaintances, of the socially climbing sort, like Mather, and a few ordinary University prigs—

A coffin party.

Mr. Jasper Ammen requests the pleasure of your company at a coffin party—

The door would be unlocked, someone would eventually try the door and walk in, and there he would be!

At Wyman Square, he was about to turn down Sparks Street when he saw the familiar white raincoat rounding the corner at Concord Avenue, hesitating and then coming quickly forward down the little hill, the whole figure very alert. This time, the bearing was unmistakable. He stood still in the shadow of an elm, completely invisible, and waited for Toppan to arrive at the opposite corner of the Square, — grinning, but as yet undecided what he would do. It was good. It was very good. It had all shaped itself quickly under his hand like magic, it was part of the whole beautiful scheme, it was growing miraculously and hugely, like a cathedral, with Toppan simply a gargoyle. As he approached the swerve of Huron Avenue Toppan slowed down, clung more closely to the hedge before the house at the corner, revolved his head, peering this way and that. Twice the round spectacles flashed under the arc light, but saw nothing, he even stepped cautiously out into the road so as to get a longer view round the curve; then, reassured, and once looking behind him, was about to go forward, when Ammen whistled.

The effect was comical.

Toppan not only stopped in his tracks, as if he’d been shot — he somehow managed to look extraordinarily silly. He just stood where he was, looking, but also pretending that he wasn’t looking, in every direction. One could imagine the slightly foolish smile. Ammen stepped out of the shadow and said:

— I’m over here.

Toppan came towards him rather slowly, his head a little on one side, his hands in his raincoat pockets.

— Oh, it’s you.

Yes: it’s me. I whistled because I had an idea you might be looking for me.

— And why should I be looking for you?

— Because, my dear Toppan, you don’t always mind your own business. And it was obvious to me that you needed a little help. Aren’t you being clumsy?

— Am I?

— Even your imitation of me is clumsy.

— Isn’t anything an imitation of you?

— But I’m sorry to have to outwit you. You can now pretend, if you like, to be taking a walk around the Pond, but can I tempt you to ride back to the Square with me in a taxi? Otherwise you’d be wasting your time.

— You think so?

— Don’t be silly. Of course it is. Of course you are.

— Is, or are?

— And there’s a question I want to ask you.

— My dear Jasper, go ahead!

— Oh, aren’t we clever! Oh, aren’t we smart! Don’t we stand with our heads cocked at an angle and feeling very brilliant! Jesus Christ!

Toppan was silent, merely raised his hands in his pockets, shrugged, turned his profile.

— Yes — breathing softly — there’s a question or two I’d like to ask you. If you don’t mind! And before you’ve become too impudent with other people’s affairs! You’ve been following me, and a lot of good may it do you. I’ve known all about it, and watched you at it, and it’s been funny. It’s made me feel a little ashamed. Do you understand that?

— So you thought I was following you!

— Thought!

— Could your question wait till tomorrow? I’m just on my way—

— My dear Julius, you were on my way, if you don’t mind my saying so, but let it pass. My question, which was about razor blades, can wait.

— Razor blades!

— Yes, razor blades. I’ll see you tomorrow.

He turned abruptly, with a slight gesture of the pipe in his hand, left Julius standing under the arc light, was off towards the yellow taxi which he saw at the top of the hill. He listened for the sound of Toppan’s footsteps, heard none as long as he was within range, figured to himself that Toppan must be standing motionless there, standing there fixed and smiling, fixed and thinking, but did not turn to see. To open the taxi door was in itself a dismissal of Toppan and the world, conscious of his height he stooped to enter, sank back and closed his eyes.

This giddiness again — this dizziness — it was the third time. It was queer. The sensation of speed, flowing past him and round him, catching him up and twirling him, with its steady pour of sound, was like a world of bright lines drawn swiftly in parallels, a vast river of bright lines. Amongst and against these rays of arrowy light he was borne rapidly forward in a half-recumbent position, with his eyes closed and his hands tightly clenched; and just above the roof of his mouth, on each half-painful crest of his breathing, was a new and peculiar darkness of helplessness and horror. This too it might be possible to visualize — one could see the shape of it, with a little trouble — but in a sense it was controllable, it could wait. The first thing was to call up Jones, and this could be done with perfect security from Hampden. To summon Jones down from that third-floor bedroom, make an appointment with him—

He dismissed the taxi by the barbershop, went round the corner of Plymouth Street with the phrases shaping themselves on his tongue. At the entrance of Hampden, Jack, the janitor, was standing on the granite steps with a dustcloth in his hand, bareheaded, his white hair bright in the lamplight. He pointed with the cloth towards the hall and said:

— Oh, Mr. Ammen, th-th-there’s a sss-pecial delivery for you in your b-box, you must have missed it.

— Thanks.

— You’re welcome.

He fished out the letter, saw the postmark, Saint Louis, the long blue stamp, slightly sinister in its suggestion of hurry, and his father’s printed name in the upper left-hand corner. This was ugly. It had a meaning, there could be no doubt of that, it was part of the narrowing circle of pressure, the unseen blockade. Damn him! And damn them all. The impulse to tear it in two ran sharply down his fingers, he had already visualized the gesture and felt the contempt in it, but instead he slipped the envelope into his side pocket and went to the telephone by the elevator. With one foot reaching back against the door behind him, he dropped in his nickel, gave the number, waited. Far off, he could hear the repeated double ring, the little rhythmic cricket-cry, — zeeng-zeeng, — zeeng-zeeng, — zeeng-zeeng, — zeeng, — zeeng, — it was as if he himself were there in the front room beside the oak table, on which the telephone stood, waiting for Jones to come downstairs. The ringing continued interminably, and then as if very close at hand the operator’s voice said:

— They don’t answer, shall I—

— Try them again, please, there should be someone there.

— I’ll try them again.

The little lost bell went on crying in its widening wilderness; with each repetition of the doubled sound the universe seemed vaster and emptier; it was as if Jones’s front room had become the seed of a world. To be the cause of this, to be sending into the void the small sharp signal from which should radiate such an expansion of significance, was both imposing and frightening. This act of creation-at-a-distance perhaps involved responsibilities: and the wider the expansion of the universe before one provoked an answer, the more freighted with consequences might eventually be the answer itself. Listening, with the receiver loosely held against his ear, he looked out through the small windows towards the garage at the back of Hampden Hall, noted the wrecking car which stood at the top of the concrete runway, and the strong curve of the steel crane, and then suddenly there was a cessation of the ringing, a faint sound as of clearance, and a voice.

— Hello? Karl Jones speaking.

The voice was flat, soft, tired, he smiled affectionately as he heard it, it was as if Jones had come into the room and were about to be greeted with the very warmest of reassurances.

— Ah, Mr. Jones. Perhaps you’ll remember that I called you up a little while ago about some advertising, political advertising.

— Yes?

— Well, now, I’ve had time for a careful discussion with my partner, our plans are fairly definite, and before we go any farther I’d like very much to have a talk with you.

— Yes—

— Now, my partner lives out in the country just beyond Bedford, near Concord, and I wonder if you would care to let me drive you out there, say tomorrow afternoon or evening sometime, to discuss it!

— Not tomorrow, no, I’m sorry—

— No?

— No. You’ll have to excuse me, I can’t talk to you now—

— Oh—

— You see, everything is upset, we’ve had an accident, my wife has just had a stillborn baby — just this evening—

— Oh, I’m very sorry — I’m extremely—

— And tomorrow is impossible, as the funeral is in the morning at Mount Auburn—

— I see, of course—

— Yes, I’m sorry.

— I suppose not for a day or two then—

— No, I’m sorry.

— In that case of course I don’t want to detain you, but would Friday perhaps be all right, do you think?

— Perhaps Friday. Yes, Friday would be all right.

— Suppose then I give you a ring at your office Friday morning, and we’ll arrange a meeting.

— Yes, very well. You’ll have to excuse me now—

— Certainly. I’m afraid I—

— Good night.

— Good night.

He hung up the receiver on its hook, in imagination he listened to the retreating footsteps of Jones, the footsteps hurrying quickly up the stairs to that bright and dreadful bedroom on the third floor, on the ceiling of which the shadows were perhaps now again in motion. The footsteps were running up the stairs, the conversation on the telephone was already forgotten, Jones was returning to that sordid and huddled little human scene. The woman lay on a bed in the corner, a raised hospital bed, perhaps raised on wooden blocks, she was naked, her lifted knees were apart, beside the bed was a white enameled pail, a table with an enamaled tray on which were bloody cloths, steel instruments, forceps. Jones was returning to that stupefying smell of ether, to that hurried and meaningful silence, to the dead child and the unconscious woman, the doctor and the nurse. Sometimes, in such cases, didn’t they use artificial respiration? In another room, in one of the other rooms, one of the bedrooms at the back, the doctor was perhaps working over the small body of the child, blowing into its blue mouth, trying to warm it to life. Outside the door, Jones, as he passed, could hear him working, knew already that it was useless, went on to the front room to help the nurse. The woman lay on the bed in the corner, unconscious, she didn’t yet know, later she would have to be told. In the meantime, the pail must be emptied, its contents must be burned in the furnace. While the nurse stayed with the woman, Jones took the pail and went down to the cellar. In the cellar, he noticed that some one had spilled the wastebasket on the concrete floor, had left it lying there amongst the litter. He paid no attention to it, went slowly towards the furnace.…

The front door of Hampden Hall creaked slightly, Jack was coming in with the dustcloth in his hand. The scene in Jones’s house suddenly became as small and remote as the picture in the finder of a camera, tilted brightly off and vanished, like a drop of light sliding off a leaf. He passed Jack on the stairs, and without sensible lapse of time was reading his father’s letter in the elevator. The glib phrases were sickening, were like a sickness. Wash my hands of you. Grateful if you’d be so considerate as to keep my name out of the courts. The writer of this anonymous letter says—

The lights in the apartment were turned on, he must have forgotten to switch them off, he dropped the envelope and the letter under the table on the floor and without thinking went straight to the whisky bottle in the kitchenette, poured half a wine glass full, and drank it straight. The writer of this anonymous letter. Who could this be but Sandbach, who but Sandbach — behind whom was Gerta no doubt, and perhaps Toppan as well. But perhaps not Gerta? No, not Gerta, Gerta would have given him a more specific warning, she would have said something tonight if she had known, after all Gerta was honorable. Honorable? He began to laugh, laughed louder and louder, putting both hands down flat on the butterfly-table; his head hung lower and lower over the table as he laughed, the spasms of laughter wheezed into silence, and he found himself studying carefully the grain of the table, on the waxed surface of which two tears had fallen. It was extremely funny.

But it was impossible to stay here.

He could perhaps go up on to the roof, look down from there at the traffic in Massachusetts Avenue.

Or down to the river and the stadium.

Instead, a few minutes later, he found himself walking into Harvard Square, bought a paper, went into Gustie’s and had a quick drink, crossed the street to the delicatessen place and had another. He held the paper before him with both hands and gazed at it without reading it, listening half-consciously to the talk.

— well, I should worry, I told him if he didn’t come by half past ten it would be gone, and it’s gone.

— served him right.

— Sure. It’s his own funeral. Next time—

— crazy as a bedbug.

— and two whisky sours, that’s three to come!

— and besides I don’t think he could really afford it. No, I don’t.

— You don’t think so.

— No, I don’t think so.

— can’t make out what his position is there, he’s always coming in, every evening, and they give him a handout—

— I heard he was unfrocked for something.

— poor themselves, too; Ada, she’s the oldest, working as a cigarette girl at the Palace—

— No. It’s a local beer. Only local.

He turned away from the counter, rising, went out, proceeded along Boylston Street till he came to the river, stood on the bridge and looked down at the dark luster of the water. Two men were standing close together on the float of the boathouse, talking intermittently in low voices: one of them stooped, put his hand into the water, then stood up again and wiped it with a handkerchief. They went slowly up the gangway into the club, which was dark, he heard the door close behind them, and at that moment he felt a single drop of rain on the back of his wrist. The sky was covered with broken clouds, ragged and hurrying, it was like a disordered mind, like a flight of disordered thoughts: with his hands on the parapet of the bridge, he tilted his head back and watched them, so long and so intently that at last he felt it was not the clouds which were moving but himself. And when he turned away, it was with such an acute feeling of giddiness that for a second he thought he was going to fall.

XII What It Is to Be a Stranger

If the whole apartment house had seemed hostile, on his return to it in the evening, and uglier and more prisonlike than ever after his telephone talk with Jones from the pay station in the hall (in the shadow of the elevator), it now seemed, in the soundless turmoil of time, nothing but an enormous and elaborate trap. Lying down for the twentieth time, fully dressed, on the dark bed in the dark room, he stared through the little square of window: not for any sight of the clouded and hurrying sky, but for a sharper vision of Hampden Hall. In mid-air, it was if he could reverse himself, return from halfway across the street (or from the roof of Widener Library) to see his own building from outside; as if in fact he were a bird, looking in through his own window, looking cynically downward at the dark figure on the bed which was himself. Seen thus, under the hurrying heavens, the building was simply nothing but a monster: it stood upright and unapologetic, in the midst of the mad universe, a queer hard brickwork organism with hot metal arteries and tingling nerves of copper, breathing the night air through huge vent holes on a flat roof of tar and gravel. Inside it were the human lice on which it nourished itself — it had gathered them together for the night. Among these of course was himself, lying there with his hands beneath his head; now staring out past the roof of the A.D. Club to meet the gaze of his projected spirit, which hung there like an angel in modern dress, now returning for a scrutiny of the little Buddha on its shelf. It was a prison, a trap; but it was more than that, worse than that — the whole building had seemed somehow sinister as he approached it; and after the telephone talk with Jones it had begun to seem definitely evil. The impulse to take flight had been sharp enough, he had wanted to hurry out again at once, to go anywhere, to drive a car madly into the country, even perhaps simply to go to town and get drunk. But disgust had inhibited this impulse, disgust and something else — a fear, a suspicion, an uneasy edge of self-doubt. Not fear, no — disgust, disgust, disgust, this queer new horror which, rising periodically in the back of his mind, almost on the back of his tongue, made him want to close his eyes lest he should see the world in the very act of changing its shape. And all this was not because of the telephone talk with little Jones, of course not, not at all — at most the telephone talk was a part of it, it had certainly not changed anything. No, what was sickening was the way in which all the details of his plans, his scheme, were now at every point working so well together but in a sense not quite his own: as if his own speech came back to him, from a mouthpiece, translated into an unfamiliar language. There was an ugly sort of distortion in it, everything was meanly and sneeringly caricatured, as by concave and convex mirrors; it was like the strange drawling and snarling sounds which quite ordinary and pleasant words or voices can become in a dream. With a desire to escape this he had thought of going to town, or even of simply taking a long walk, but at once to realize that the thing was inescapable. Much better had been the impulse to put it all down, to make the last entries in his journal of the adventure, add the last date to the column of dates on the map, and even to attempt to codify these impressions as if for the novel. Almost immediately, he had found himself trying to outline a queer sort of essay, a philosophic essay, but not quite philosophic either, perhaps psychological was what he meant, but of course without in the least being able to get at the thing: he had written intermittently for hours, now and again going out to walk from end to end of the long dimly lighted corridor, pausing at the one end to look down toward the river, and at the other to watch a late car or two speeding urgently along Massachusetts Avenue. All night, the world had seemed full of clocks — the grandfather clock in the professor’s apartment sent its soft tyang through the walls, Memorial Hall and Saint Paul’s dutifully and sadly echoed each other, the dreary wooden steeple of the Unitarian Church added its deeper note; but even with these to mark the passage of his feet along the corridor, the expensive shoes placed swiftly one in front of the other, the heels slightly scuffed and dragging, his eyes intent on the slight swerve with which the right foot as if carelessly placed itself, even with these the sense of time had not been so much marked as diffuse. He had got up only to sit down again, had flung himself on the bed only again to rise and begin walking, or had paced the crooked corridor only once more to sit down and try to write. It might be four o’clock, it might be five. Above Beck Hall, the sky had begun to brighten. There was a little patter of rain, a little grazing of rain, on the window. It was as if it had touched his skin, it stung him to a sudden but perhaps false alertness, he jumped up and went back to the table, looked sharply at the map, sat down.

His father’s letter—

It lay on the floor between his feet, the phrases of it looked up at him like round eyes — he had flung it there to forget it, flung it down in anger and hatred, but now it watched him. The phrases had of course stuck in his mind, only because they had so sickened him with anger and disgust — the typewritten phrases of a typical businessman’s smoothness and complacency. I do not presume to advise — as you are doutbless aware — far be it from me — I can only report that the writer of this anonymous letter says — tired of your irresponsible behavior — dragging my name into the police courts — not enough that you were a continual worry to your mother — and so on and so on.

Somebody had written to him, obviously — probably Sandbach. And Gerta must have given him the address.

And they were threatening police action?

He looked down at it, pushed it farther under the table with his toe. The hard, firm, coarse signature, written with large open letters and a heavy pen, lay there like some ugly relic of his own past, something hateful and obscene, something to be destroyed. The angry energy of hypocrisy—

To find this waiting for him in the letter box, with its menacing special delivery stamp, had undoubtedly made its contribution to his increasing sense of evil and ugliness, it had at once occurred to him — so right was his intuition — that it might be better to destroy it unread; but also it had occurred to him that it might actually contain something in the way of news. It was as if, even through the unopened envelope, he had been able to feel a threat, the encroachment of something: perhaps, however, only because the arrival of a letter from his father was in itself so unusual. He had waited, called up Jones first — keeping the letter in his pocket — and it was odd now to consider the intimate and by no means accidental connection between the two things. So intimate, in fact, that had he read the letter first he might not have telephoned to Jones at all. At any rate, it would have been necessary to consider it, to consider whether in the light of this threat the immediate project had not better be abandoned, the meeting with Jones postponed; perhaps even to consider the substitution of some one else for Jones, since it was now possible that Toppan knew who Jones was. The letter lay in his pocket speaking of this, while he himself spoke with Jones; just as later, in his room, the conversation with Jones spoke softly and disconcertingly through the curt phrases of the letter. It was peculiarly right that the two things should thus have coincided in time — but it was also peculiarly unpleasant.

He teased a cigarette from the opened packet on the red table, lit it, walked to the window. The smoke drifted backwards over his shoulder in a wide flat band of gray, undulated a little towards the floor, then softly dispersed in an upward vagueness towards the ceiling by the bathroom door. He watched it, saw the last pale thread of smoke lick neatly over the top of the door, and suddenly remembered that long ago he had meant to make a study of drafts in this fashion. “The flight of cigarette smoke is only a draft made manifest.” He said this aloud, as he crossed the room to open the door to the corridor, he said it with amusement, and then added:

— There goes the professor’s clock.

The clock had struck the half hour. Standing just outside the corridor door he blew upward a long soft plume of smoke, blew it towards the top of the doorjamb, but not forcibly: with the effect, therefore, of merely releasing, for observation, a trial balloon of smoke, a willing cloud. After a barely perceptible pause, the smoke billowed downward very slightly and then swooped in a long wide dispersed wave upward into the room. Keeping quite still, lest his own movement create any artificial current of air, he repeated the action: again the smoke swirled neatly, after a moment’s hesitation, into the quiet room — obviously the air in the corridor was warmer than the air inside. This being the case, the current near the floor must, of course, flow the other way. Stooping close to the linoleum floor he exhaled a soft cloud before him. It wavered, broke, and came loosely backward across and round his face. Exactly as one would expect.

The same thing would probably be true of the doors to the bedroom and the kitchenette?…

The bedroom worked beautifully — the draft was sharper, more dramatic, the smoke was as if violently seized, hurled headlong down invisible rapids. But the kitchenette, presumably because its window was shut, or simply because it was out of the path of the main currents, was a disappointment: the movement of the smoke, whether at floor or ceiling, was scarcely perceptible, sluggish, equivocal. In fact, it would go exactly where propelled. He blew cloud after cloud into the little boxlike room, it hung swaying and gently convolving over the table, over the white enameled refrigerator, over the gas stove, almost motionless, passive. It was like a backwater of a river: it was stagnant; and looking at it he became abruptly aware of the profound nocturnal silence. It was that moment between night and morning when the traffic is stillest, the brief interval between the end of the night life and the beginning of the day — the hour when life is at its ebb. In hospitals, people were now in the act of dying. And in Reservoir Street, at this instant—

He turned quickly away, walked to the corridor and closed the door. Returning, he stared out at the palely brightening clouds, heard again that grazing patter of the drizzle on the pane, saw the little chain of fine bright beads which had been lightly etched there. But the rain could make no difference — it neither added to nor subtracted from the wide appearance and nature of things. The structure beneath it was exactly the same, — undiminished, loyal, unsentimental: what one had made, or what one was making, was still the same, kept its hard and clear identity. And the whole face of the world, if one now dared to see it thus, was one enormous growing “thing”—a vast and dreadful or beautiful flower: a flower which, if beautiful, was also terrible: as if the universe might be simply a single outrageous pond-lily whose roots were murderous. Yes, it was exactly that. The blood drawn up by that profound taproot made possible the thrust and loveliness of the blind enormous flower: the perfect synthesis of good and evil. And if this was so, if life was in essence really like this, why then was it possible to feel any compunctions? Unless, of course, one simply failed outright in one’s attempt to identify oneself at all points with life: failed, at it were, to stretch oneself co-terminally with the four points of the cross, and to become, oneself, cruciform.…

The idea was not new, he had thought of it in fact at the very beginning, though not perhaps in quite such terms or so neatly. The structure of evil had been manifest and omnipresent, the evil in himself he had always quite recognized, or had at all events wanted to recognize: it needed no justification, was natural and right, and the whole action had in the end revolved quite properly around his decision to face the real shape of the world and to shape his own deed accordingly. But it seemed to him that he had never actually seen the vision, the tree-shaped vision, the lily-shaped vision, so clearly and perfectly as now. It was something of this that he had tried to put down in his rapid notes, the orderly sheets of which lay on the table beneath the map — but to look at them now was only to realize that vision is one thing, action or speech another. He said aloud, tearing the paper with deliberate hands:

— Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics. Few are the mystics! I must have a drink, and I must go slow.

But he made no move toward the kitchenette, where the whisky stood on the shelf, he stood still, aware that he was looking at nothing, he thought for a moment that perhaps the best thing would be to write, quite suddenly and quite simply—as if for the renewal of a lost contact with a swiftly sinking world — to Gerta. My dear Gerta, if it is not now, not already, too late — if now with the impediment in my speech removed—

Impossible.

It was not the conversation on the telephone with Jones which had done this — how could it be? It was not even clear that the conversation with Jones had anything to do with it. The logic of that, the logic of the consequences of that, was flawless: there had been no mistake: the whole thing now stood, from beginning to end, as perfect as a theorem in algebra. Jones, Karl Jones, would meet him on Friday, they would drive together to Concord — to meet the mythical partner and discuss the mythical advertising campaign — Jones had assented to the plan almost with alacrity — and with this was concluded the final pure curve of the idea. The ultimate cutting-off had thus been accomplished, the separation from humanity; the individual had asserted himself, stood alone in the full horror of a light which permitted no moral shadows: or none, at any rate, save those created by his own will and for his own purpose. The stranger had been identified — hadn’t he? — as Jones, and as such could thus be destroyed: the strangeness in Jones had been recognized, with its terror and its pure desirability; it had been observed carefully and inimically as the thing-that-wants-to-be-killed; it could be killed. There is no compromise with the object, no placid or reasoned acceptance of it. It is seen, understood, and destroyed. The vision is pure.

Yes!

But suddenly he felt that he must close his eyes; and opening them again, he as suddenly felt, for no clear reason, that he must clap his hands sharply together before him, turn quickly, look at something else, something new—do something, go somewhere. He clapped his hands together again, walked toward the waterfall without seeing it, revolved quickly away from it, and made as he did so a gesture with his hands such as he knew (and painfully) he had never in his life made before: a queer forward thrust of the hands, stiffly parallel, the fingers tensely apart, as if he were in fact reaching for something. It lasted only a moment, his arms fell limply to his sides, limply and a little self-consciously, almost perhaps ashamedly. This wouldn’t do, this wasn’t right at all! Once more he began to feel as if he were in some subtle way being indecently hurried; like a person who in stepping on to an escalator miscalculates its speed. It was as if one were rather cruelly and undignifiedly yanked, dislocated — and with that feeling of disgust with oneself which makes one disinclined for the time being to look at oneself in a mirror. To lose control—

He stepped into the dark bedroom, approached the dressing-table mirror and without turning on the light leaned on his hands towards the obscure image which he saw coming forward to meet him there. For a second, the face that looked out at him was not his own face, but the face of Jones. It looked at him merrily, impertinently — exactly as if it were going to wink. It was only a trick of the light — it was because the light was behind him — the sharp illusion was gone as soon as it had come — but the effect was nonetheless extraordinary. The face was his own, of course, he leaned again towards it on trembling hands, feeling weak and shaken, and as he examined his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks, the wide and pallid forehead, it seemed to him that his face had somehow changed. It seemed, in fact, in some subtle and dreadful way, to have lost its meaning. There was no character in it, no significance — it had become a more featureless area: a kind of mask: something seen from outside …

Had Jones done this?…

It was as if Jones, in that moment of vision, had said something, or been about to say something: as if, in thus interposing himself, he had somehow managed to make some preposterous sort of statement or claim. He had been about to say “I am no stranger than you are”; or perhaps “Aren’t you really a stranger yourself? Have you thought of that?”; or else, simply, “Now you know what it is to be a stranger.”

The words seemed actually to hang in the air; and it was with a feeling of automatically echoing them that he said aloud:

— Now you know what it is to be a stranger. Now you know! Jasper Ammen.

And certainly, now, he was looking at himself from an immense distance, and with a detachment which amounted really to cruelty and enmity. Or was it fear? Or was it amusement? One could say calmly, now, that the face was absurd, one could say that it was just an arrangement of lines and planes and colors, that it was obscene, that it was ugly. It was as surprising and as mean, as vital and objectionable, as definitely something to be suspected and distrusted and perhaps destroyed, as some queer marine creature which one might find on overturning a wet rock by the sea. It was conscious and watchful, its eyes looked out of the pool of the mirror with a hard animal defensive sharpness, clearly it was dangerous and alert. It might have to be killed. If one were to put out a hand or a stick and touch it—

But the thought was unbearable, he flung himself on the bed and said:

— I must try to sleep. I must try to get a few hours sleep.

He closed his eyes, and immediately the conversation with Jones on the telephone began to repeat itself. Not tomorrow, no. I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse me. I can’t talk to you now, you see everything is upset, we’ve had an accident, my wife has just had a stillborn baby, and tomorrow is impossible as the funeral is in the morning at Mount Auburn. Yes, I’m sorry. No, I’m sorry.… Perhaps Friday. Yes, Friday would be all right.… The dreadful shameless gentleness of the voice, the soft accent of concern, in which nevertheless there was no self-pity: the naked raw glibness of the confession on the telephone, the awkward glibness — the ordinary humble unavoidableness of the calm voice having to say such things on the telephone—You’ll have to excuse me now—as if he merely had an engagement for lunch, or had to go to the toilet. It had seemed so entirely simple, so almost meaningless, this series of tragic and placid statements, there in the corner of the marble-floored hall, beside the wrought-iron grill of the elevator; as if they might have been discussing the weather, or the prospects for the baseball season: except, of course, for the careful gentleness of Jones’s voice, the rather unsophisticated and surprised gentleness, calculated for the occasion. Not quite calculated, either — for what had been really disconcerting was the natural sound of the sorrow in the voice, as if Jones, taken off guard, didn’t know how to conceal his suffering. And thus, the whole scene had come to him over the telephone — the smell of ether in the garden, the revolving clotheshorse lifting its spiny arms in the lamplight, the empty ash can waiting at the curb, the doctor’s car, the shabby cellar, the coal-bins, the swiftly moving shadows on the ceiling of the upper bedroom, and then that moment when the shadows had suddenly ceased to move, and finally the woman’s cry, so queer, so quavering, so soft—

Christ!

He opened his eyes quickly and blindly, as if to do so would stop the whirl of impressions and phrases — it was if he were drunk, or sick, and sought any sight of the world, any fragmentary and lurching vision of a wall or ceiling, to check the wild swoop of his vertigo. And now the daybreak was square and bright in the little window, as sharp and immediate as the tiny jeweled picture in the finder of a camera, each moving cloud separate and round and distinct and with a color forever its own, never to be repeated, immortal. It was as good as a cinema, as comforting as the sight of moving water, he lay and watched the irregular regularity of the cloud-procession, listened to the faint intermittent claw-grazing of the little rain, tried to fix his attention there, to avert his attention by averting his face. And for a while it was in fact as if he had managed to fall asleep with his eyes wide open. He felt like a cat, with the cunning of a cat, allowed his mind to be lulled by the activity of his eyes, permitted all the motion of his consciousness to concentrate there on the surface, in those two points of sight. His hands were still, his body was still, his feet were softly pressed against the footboard of the bed, he breathed as lightly as possible. It was the process of becoming a cloud, or of becoming nothing but a consciousness of cloud: even the sounds came to him only indistinctly and tangentially: he refused to admit them: the bell-sounds, the car-sounds, the slamming of a door, the milkman hurrying along the hall, clinking his bottles, the first morning hum of the elevator, summoned down to the second floor by Jack, the janitor — aware of these, he also dismissed them, allowing himself to become simply a recipient of light. It was all like a world of glass, translucent, brittle, precarious, but infinitely precious. It was like having an enormous pain, which even to breathe was to invite: as long as one held one’s breath, it vanished. When one breathed again, one tried it cautiously, round the edges and corners, one sent down to begin with the tiniest little tentacle of air, a silver thread of exploration—

But it was no use. It was all no use. As soon as one did try to breathe, that preposterous and incredible mountain of sensation was there again, the unbelievable shape once more had to be believed. As in a nightmare the figure of the old woman seen in the street reappears vaguely again in the distance at the quayside, or on the ship, perhaps altered and unrecognizable, and later is heard mounting the stairs behind one, with a sort of scrambling and sinister haste, coughing and sneezing as she comes, and to one’s gaze over the banisters lifts at last the face of which the horror, hitherto not admitted or confessed, is freely and lethally given, so to his consciousness, through all its elaborate structure of dispersal, came the beginnings and misremembered fragments of that conversation with Jones. It could not have happened, and yet it had happened: that he should have leaned there at the public telephone in the hall by the elevator, with Jack standing at the front door to take his last nocturnal look at the weather, holding a dust-cloth in his hand, and that instead of an unruffled arrangement of the final plan should have occured this sudden plunge into the murkiest and ugliest and most painful of unsolicited intimacies—

But why should it be painful? Why should he want both to think of it and not think of it?

You’ll have to excuse me, I can’t talk to you now, you see everything is upset, we’ve had an accident—

An accident! The word looked a mile long, he was walking slowly from end to end of it, sparrows were chirping on the window ledge above Plympton Street, he must have slept. It was a quarter to eight, and still lightly raining. There was no time to lose, for Jones would probably go to Mount Auburn early — it wasn’t the sort of thing one dawdled about. And to make the necessary inquiries, one would have to get there first.

XIII The Stranger Becomes Oneself

The impulse was absurd, but he obeyed it, obeyed it with a kind of angry arrogance, he turned away from the Merle, deciding not to have any breakfast at all, and walked quite deliberately in the wrong direction, his back to Mount Auburn. At this point, when the pattern of one’s life was all speed and no detail, it was idle to ask oneself the reason for one’s decisions: one simply followed one’s feet. He followed his feet in the drizzle, the gray light, down Bow Street to Saint Paul’s Church, looked up at the Siennese tower — or was it Verona? — to observe through a light cloud of rain that the clock was on the stroke of eight, and that he would be in time for the Angelus. And as he entered, and stood at the back of the ornate and hushed interior, watching the priest and the mass-servers begin the service for three or four women and himself, and hearing the bell strike its first faint triad of notes far up in the steeple, he became aware that he had really been intending to do this for a long time. It was only the other day, in fact, that he had almost done so—

— Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae.

— Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.

— Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. Sancta Maria, mater dei, ora pro nobis nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Blessed Mary, God’s mother, pray for us, now and in the hour of our death.

He tried to remember, while the priest and the mass-servers intoned the responses, and the soft bell again sounded its remote three overhead, just when this had been, and what had made him think of it. Et verbum caro factum est. Et habitavit in nobis … Ave Maria. The Latin phrases echoed with silver purity in the hollow church, as always the Catholic service seemed curiously hurried and casual, almost undignified, and yet from this very appearance of carelessness, even in the shambling movements of the surpliced priest and mass-servers, came all the more a sense of power and certainty: they themselves might cough or stumble, be graceless or inaudible, but the mystery sustained them. He watched them, frowning — half listened to the final sentences; suddenly the thing was unceremoniously finished; and it was then, as he turned again toward the door, that he remembered. It had been the very morning—

The thing shocked him, he walked quickly along the wet brick sidewalks of Mount Auburn Street.

It had been the very morning of his first discovery of Jones. And his purpose in the notion of going there, of course, had been simply to see if actually, in the church, he might not find his victim: some member of the congregation might turn out to be the supposititious Jones. He remembered it now quite clearly; he had thought of it while he was taking his shower, hearing the bells of the Angelus through the little window — the window from which he had then watched Mrs. Finden drying her hands and arms, putting on her rings. Yes. It seemed very remote, a long time ago, very remote, and oddly bright and innocent: it had been spring; and although it was still spring, somehow now it seemed as if he were looking back to it from another season, another year. The plan had then been formless, of course, and this had given it the charm and vagueness of all new things, new undertakings — the stranger had not yet been discovered or his strangeness identified — the whole problem still remained metaphysical — a mere formula — and it was now possible to recognize that at that stage there had been an unmistakable sense of freedom which had at once, with the actual selection of Jones, disappeared. But more curious still was the fact that today, of all days, he should again have the impulse to go there. This was very peculiar, it had about it the air as of a compulsory completion of some obscure sort, like a forced move in chess. The idea had occurred to him casually, no doubt, but could he be sure that it had occurred without some deep reason? Its queer appropriateness — the appropriateness of the whole thing, the scene, the service, the words themselves — suggested a kind of rootedness in the pattern which it would be painful to investigate.

But it hardly mattered.

With the fine rain cool against his face and hands, like an added sensitiveness, he walked quickly, his raincoat half unbuttoned, and at the corner of Boylston Street, by the Square, found that his car had already been brought out for him; the man was waiting in it with the door open, stepped out as soon as he saw him. For a moment after entering, he sat still, stared ahead through the delicately misted windshield, looking at nothing, thinking of nothing. He could drive straight to the cemetery. Or he could go first to the house in Reservoir Street, wait till Jones came out, and then precede him to Mount Auburn — which would of course be easy. But he felt indifferent; it was perhaps unnecessary to take so much trouble; there was little, after all, to be gained in seeing Jones emerge from the house to the undertaker’s car, or in knowing whether it would be Jones or the undertaker who would carry the coffin. What did it matter? The thing was nearly finished. It would be enough to get a glimpse of Jones at the cemetery, a final glimpse — and if he went at once there would be plenty of time for the asking of questions and the taking up of a good position.

He drove slowly up Brattle Street against the traffic, switched off the windshield wiper when he noticed that the rain had almost stopped, and for the first time, listening to the loud irregular patter on the car roof, the large drops from trees, began to feel tired. His eyes were heavy and wanted to close, the whole length of his body felt relaxed and remote, his hands lay lightly and reluctantly on the wheel. The thing was dreamlike — everything had a dreamlike sharpness, the heavy immediateness and separateness of objects seen in a fever: the pale hands on the ebony wheel looked more real than his own; and the stopped sound of the windshield wiper was so palpable as to seem audible. The wet houses and fences, the dark rain-soaked trunks of elms, the blackened stems of bushes, went past him with an extraordinarily dense and meaningful solidity, each shape making a sound of its own—whish-whish-whish-whish; and from the total complex of noise made by the car itself each particular item was distinct: the faintly burred hum of the motor, the grazing clink of the key ring against the dash, the click-cluck of the clock, the delicate ticking of the watch on his wrist, the snicker of the wet tires on the slippery road. It was time made intensely audible, time made visible, time solidified in a concrete series of individual shapes — a slow-motion of time, almost in fact a “still.” As if, at a given moment, one could take a cross section of the universe, or slow down life itself to the point at which it was only once removed from death.… Was it that?

He had already decided to leave the car on the opposite side of the street from the entrance, he got out and walked deliberately across the car tracks toward the massive Egyptian gates of gray granite. In the office which adjoined the squat little chapel he leaned against the counter and said:

— A friend of mine, Mr. Karl Jones, is coming here this morning. Could you tell me when he’s expected?

— Mr. Karl Jones? Yes, I think I can tell you.

The man stooped over a table, ran his fingers slowly down a column of names.

— Also I should like to know in just what part of the cemetery—

— Certainly.… I see that we expect the interment to take place before nine. At nine or a little before. As for the other — if you’ll just wait a minute—

Interment!

An open book of grave-certificates lay on the counter, he found he was leaning above it, and began reading the blue certificate which was uppermost, still attached to its stub. Proprietors of the Cemetery of Mount Auburn. Vesper Lot 5000, Grave No. 591. This Certifies that………… of………… by the payment of twenty dollars, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, has purchased the right of interment in Grave numbered 591 in the Vesper lot which is owned by the Corporation, and has paid in addition Twenty-five Dollars to be added to the Repair Fund, for perpetual care of the grass. For each interment after the first, etc. Not more than two interments shall be made in the same grave, and the later interment shall be at least three feet below the level of the ground. When any such grave shall have become vacant, etc. Turning the leaf, he read on the back: Received of………… five dollars for grading and sodding Grave No. 591.

Grading and sodding. But how did a grave become vacant?

— Ah, yes, just as I thought; it’s in the Vesper lot, and that’s right at the western side; if you go straight along the front here and turn up Glen Avenue, by the railroad—

— Is it far?

— Oh, no, only a few minutes, it’s just where Glen Avenue meets Vesper—

— Thanks.

A curious idea had occurred to him, he gave a little laugh as he went out and followed a workman with a wheelbarrow along the narrow tomb-lined road, it had occurred to him that it was a very neat and fitting opportunity for buying a grave — why not? And cheap at the price, with grading and sodding thrown in, and perpetual care of the grass. Across the wheelbarrow lay a rake and a hoe, and beside them, nodding in a square box, a dozen little potted plants: destined, no doubt, for somebody’s border — somebody’s counterpane. The workman was whistling softly, but stopped at once as he heard footsteps behind him, looked quickly sidelong as he was overtaken. The nod he gave was guarded, professionally friendly.

The city of the dead. That was what they always called it. And certainly, if one paused to visualize the skeletons underground, all the placid bones lying horizontal in boxes, or amongst tarnished remnants of silver and wood, it was a city of a considerable size, a metropolis. But the whole surface of the earth, if one paused to think of that too, was nothing but a mausoleum: all that living surface was nothing but a rich mulch of death. And this little collection, at Mount Auburn, of the refined dead, the rich dead, the distinguished dead, the pretentious dead, was, if one saw it in due proportion, a very paltry affair. This absurd business of putting them all in one place, collecting them, as if they were rare stamps, or coins, or first editions! As if there weren’t time enough in which to duplicate them! Good God. The world would be the same forever. The same people would be arriving, and being important, and dying, forever. In this vault are deposited the remains of. Here lieth the body of. This stone is erected to the memory of. Here lie the remains of. In memory of. Sacred to the memory of. And they were all alike, in the long view they were all alike, all they ever managed to say was a feeble and stammering “I.” They said this with an air of extraordinary importance and bewilderment, made what they considered to be a unique gesture, and were gone. And then after them came the hordes, the shapeless hordes, the innumerable and nameless hordes, of the others, world without end, who would feel the same importance and make the same unique and imperious gesture. Each in turn would believe that in some extraordinary way he had really produced himself, wrought his own intelligence and power, created his own individuality. Each would say “I have this right,” “I have a right to happiness,” “I have a right to love,” “I must live my own life,” “I have thought this for myself,” “It is I who first felt this, thought this, needed this.” Each would believe himself unique.… And after him again would come, until the dying world was inherited briefly by grasshoppers and ants, the human swarm of others who would say and believe identically the same thing. All the Smiths, the Robinsons — the dead earth would become a tomb, sacred to the memory of the Smiths and Robinsons. And beneath it, like those who lay here now under inscribed stones, or broken columns, or slabs of marble engraved with the hour glass or the serpent, would sleep the whole human race.

He looked angrily at the stones, and then away, — the little white lambs of marble with crossed forelegs, the doves, the cherubs, the angels, the skulls — all silent, dripping in the fine rain; even the wet spring flowers, the daffodils and tulips, had a mortuary look, seemed somehow morbid. He walked along the grim avenue, taking long steps on the neat gravel, outdistanced the workman with the wheelbarrow, came to the turning and Glen Avenue. Beyond the wooden fence was the railway line, — the hard note of the quotidian and temporary. In this corner of the cemetery, not yet so crowded, the family lots were fewer: the graves humbler; many of them were unmarked save by the little oval metal plaques which gave their numbers. Noting the succession of these he found easily enough the new excavation at the juncture of Glen and Vesper Avenues. Beneath a small tree — a Judas tree? — which was covered with pink blossom, and some distance back from the road, it appeared harmless and natural enough. He walked across the sodden grass, looked into it, observed the carefully sheered sides of wet loam, as glistening as if they had been cut with a knife, and the little pile of soaked earth which had been neatly laid on canvas beside it, and the curious cat’s cradle of broad tape which lay across the aperture in readiness for the coffin. The whole thing was indescribably ugly: it was obscene: the falseness of it was profound. This note as of carefully prepared artifice, of concealment and mitigation—! Christ.

He turned, looked back over his shoulder toward the road, felt curiously ashamed and guilty: he felt sick: it was impossible to avoid the contamination, the sense of complicity and betrayal: it was himself who had done this, his own mind had conceived this dishonesty. And it was Jones who had been betrayed. To be standing here — to be seen standing here now—

He must get away quickly, before they came.

He must walk off a little way, perhaps to the tower and back, or to one of the ponds, and then, keeping always within view, return to the scene at the last moment, as if casually. That would be enough — there was no need for more — just to saunter by, have a last look, dismiss with a final gesture the dying world.

He hurried back to the road, and found that it made a loop towards the fence at this point, rejoining Vesper Avenue farther on, — it would be possible, therefore, by walking around this, examining methodically all the inscriptions, the flowers, the trees, to fill in the time and reappear at the right instant. He knocked the bowl of his pipe against the palm of his hand, but decided not to smoke; took the right turning; found that he was staring at the hideous stones and their monotonous inscriptions without seeing them, listening to the passing of a train, beyond the fence, without turning his head. Who departed this life, to the sorrow of his wife and three children … In hopeful rest I here remain … My faith to heaven ensnare … The phrases and sentences were all alike, so many precise wounds of the chisel in Vermont marble or granite; and if the rain had made them more vivid to the eye, they were too familiar to be meaningful to the mind. More actual than the death it symbolized was the cutting in the stone; it was as if only the stones were real, and the incised marks on them, half filled with water, more important than the thing they chronicled. In the gentle and windless drizzle, the scent of the flowers — the lilacs, the narcissus, the daffodils — was oppressive, stifling; it was like the smell of ether; weighed on the consciousness like a cloud; and with his pipe in his hand he was thinking this, and feeling as if he had been half anaesthetized, and walking amid the intermittent patter as if half asleep, when he heard behind him the sound of a car.

It could not have been better managed — he was at a safe distance, just far enough away to be unnoticeable — he stood still and watched the black limousine come slowly along the avenue and stop. There was a moment’s pause, the black door swung open, the hand that had pushed it was visible for a second and then withdrawn, and Jones, stooping, stepped down to the grass-edge. He was wearing the derby hat, turned round toward the car buttoning a soiled raincoat, he appeared to be saying something, his head a little on one side, and as he did so a second figure stooped from the car, holding with gloved hands a small white box. From the other side of the road a workman had mysteriously appeared, as if from nowhere, and the three men began to walk slowly across the grass toward the little grave, their heads just slightly lowered. The man who held the box wore a black frock coat — presumably the undertaker. The box he held was hardly bigger than a shoe box, it was astonishingly small, it made the whole affair seem more than ever ridiculous and meaningless. That it should all have come to this — that all the elaborate structure should amount only to this—! This absurd little ritual in the rain.

He watched them group themselves before the grave, Jones standing a little in the rear, as if in a measure detaching himself from the queer proceedings, and then the undertaker placed the coffin on the cat’s cradle and the workman began to lower it. Jones, with his hat still on, and his hands in his raincoat pockets, suddenly turned away and began to walk quickly toward the car: the undertaker, after a final look into the grave, while the workman drew up the bands, followed him. Apparently, not a word had been said. The whole business had been done in silence. No earth had been flung; only the soft rain fell into the grave.

It was unbelievable. And yet it was what he had expected?…

He found himself standing very tensely, as if he had been about to take a step but had inhibited it — his weight slightly forward; without conscious decision he began to walk toward the little scene, saw the two men get into the limousine, and had just reached the juncture of the two roads when the car passed him, driving slowly. Scarcely a yard away — their two orbits at last almost touching — Jones was sitting upright, his small chin raised as if proudly or challengingly, his blue eyes fixed straight ahead on the road beyond the driver. He was pale, it was obvious that he hadn’t slept, and it was just as obvious that he hardly knew what he was doing or where he was. Possibly he had been drinking. Beyond him, the undertaker was looking out of the window on the far side with an air of professional embarrassment, touching his gloved fingers together. Neither of them was speaking. In another minute, the car took a sharp left turn, and moved off toward the Egyptian gates. He watched it flash slowly in and out among the columns and pyramids and vaults, saw it make a final swing to the right, and then disappear.

And as it did so, a strange thing happened to him. He felt that he had died.

He must have known that this would happen — for when the car had turned to the left, and for a brief interval crept along the road which paralleled the one on which he was himself standing, he had suddenly felt an almost overwhelming impulse to run, to shout at it, to keep abreast of it, shouting — like the people on a wharf who rush excitedly, desperately, along the dock’s edge as the ship begins to move, trying to keep up with it, trying to hold it, crying to it, as if they were mere bodies whose souls it was taking away. He had felt this, but of course had done nothing. He had stood still. And it seemed to him now, as he stood motionless, watching the departure of that somber limousine, with Jones inside it, as if life itself were going away from him, moving farther and farther away, fading and dying like the melancholy last flare of sunset seen for a moment through lifting rain. The thing was finished.

Finished!.. Finis coronat opus. King Coffin …

Before he knew it, he was in his car, was driving fiercely down Mount Auburn Street. He was angry, he half closed his eyes and said aloud, bitterly — it oughtn’t to be like that; to think that it was like that; my God, that it should be like that! The rain had stopped again, the sky over Boston was brightening, a pale beam of sunlight glistened for a moment on a distant roof and was extinguished. To write to Gerta — to write now to Gerta. Yes. He decided not to take the car to the garage, but parked it immediately in front of the fire station in Eliot Square, and hurried on foot to Boylston Street before they could have time to notice it and protest. Let them protest! By all means. Let them look him up, and come hunting for him — the more the merrier. View halloo! In Boylston Street, he stepped into the Western Union office, sat down, drew the yellow form toward him on the glass-topped table, seized the chained pencil, and began to write.

My dear Gerta — the impediment in my speech removed—

He crossed it out, took a fresh sheet, closed his eyes for a second, and began again.

“My dear Gerta — the master builder builds better than he knows. Things have happened. I write too quickly to shape my thoughts, this is—so to speak — the final dislocation. Is it the shadow of Kay, and were you right after all? You were wise, anyway, you saw the queer shape of things more clearly than I, and I can now salute your narrow vision with respect if not with gratitude. To hell with gratitude! I don’t know any longer what it all is, the show is too profound, goes too fast, it begins to escape me, if you know what I mean, or care to know, but with the impediment in my speech removed I can at least say that the thing will be perfect as it now stands, or only lacking in perfection as it lacked you, or a clear vision of you: but even this I can now look back to with Kaylike detachment. That isn’t quite all of it either, there must be a halfway point which would be good—too difficult, however, for me to try to analyze for you now. No, it’s all too despicable.… Ammen.”

The large electric clock over the counter said nineteen past nine. He sealed the yellow envelope, and addressed it; then marked it, after a moment’s thought, Not to be delivered till eleven o’clock. At the desk he said:

— This is important, do you understand? It might be a matter of life and death. I want this note delivered to this address at precisely eleven — not a moment before, and not a moment after. I’m willing to pay for it. Can that be done?

— Yes, sir — at eleven o’clock — we’ll send the messenger and have him wait there till the correct time exactly. Walnut Street?

— Right.

His calculations might or might not be exact — it was difficult to tell — but it ought to make a very nice little gamble. It was Gerta’s day at home, she wouldn’t be going to the Museum, and the chances were, of course, that she wouldn’t have gone out before eleven. If she had—?

The sun was coming out again, the rails in Massachusetts Avenue were brimming and sparkling. It was spring, it was more than spring, it was almost summer. There would be track meets at the Stadium, boat races, perhaps a revival of the straw hat. In another month Gerta would go to Ogunquit, Greenwich Village would move to Provincetown, everywhere the human being would be creeping out of his cellar or attic to lie naked on a beach and admire the beauty of his body, as if it were something of transcendental importance. Young ladies would be photographed on headlands doing ridiculous dances with wisps of scarf. In secret places in the Maine woods, in half darkened bedrooms of seaside boardinghouses, in the warm hollows of Cape Cod sand dunes, lovers would once more be renewing the flesh at the expense of the spirit, as certain that in this way they had discovered God as that a year hence they would be embracing the same partner.… The wrens go to it, and the small gilded fly.

He looked through the wide window of the Merle as he passed, saw the Findens sitting at the table at the front. He had always thought they might be lonely, had thought of asking them to come and see him, to come and have coffee or a drink. Opening the screen door, he leaned in and said:

— I’ve meant for a long time to ask whether you’d come in and have coffee with me some evening, or a drink — if you’re not doing anything special tomorrow night would you care to drop in?

They were visibly surprised, Finden half got up from his chair holding a paper napkin, Mrs. Finden, over a glass of orange-juice, was looking at him very peculiarly, her mouth open, her gray eyes narrowed: as if she were looking at some one whom she thought very queer. Finden said:

— Why, we’d like to very much, I think!

— Thank you, Mr. Ammen, we’d like to!

It was not entirely satisfactory, but he hugged it, just the same, he thought of it with grim pleasure as he ascended in the creaking elevator and walked lightly along the corridor. The empty metal wastebaskets stood at the doors, Jack had already done his morning round, he entered his apartment and flung his hat violently on to the sofa, under the seashell on the window sill. The room seemed very quiet. Dropping his raincoat on the floor, he went into the kitchenette, looked down at the gas-stove, returned to the sitting room to make sure that the window was open, and to pick up the little green book from the table. Then he went back to the kitchenette, closed the door behind him, turned on all four taps of the stove, and sat down at the table with the book.

The gas behind him made a steady sh-h-h-h-h-h-h, sh-h-h-h-h-h-h, soft and insistent, and opening the book he started reading — (all the while conscious of the little watch ticking on his wrist, the tiny hand creeping slowly towards eleven) — the page at which he had left off.

“This reaction is still subjective. When a child stiffens and draws away, when it screams with pure temper, it takes no note of that from which it recoils. It has no objective consciousness of that from which it reacts, the mother principally. It is like a swimmer endlessly kicking the water away behind him, with strong legs vividly active from the spinal ganglia. Like a man in a boat pushing off from the shore, it merely thrusts away, in order to ride free, ever more free. It is a purely subjective motion—”

Like a man in a boat pushing off from the shore.

He raised his eyes, looked through the kitchen window, saw the immense Greek coping of the library, the huge words cut in granite, Harry Elkins Widener Library, then beyond it the slate roof of Boylston Hall, and farther still the gray wooden steeple of the Unitarian Church. There was a faint smell of coffee coming from the professor’s apartment, it mixed oddly with the not unpleasant smell of the gas, he was aware that he was hungry.

But also he was sleepy, it would be very easy to fall asleep. By this time, Jones would have got back to the shabby little house in Reservoir Street — the grave at Mount Auburn would have been filled — the khaki-clad messenger was sitting in a subway train on his way to Beacon Hill. And Gerta — would she be there? would she come? was she standing there at her open window, with an apple in her hand, looking down over the roofs to the morning sunlight flashing on the Charles River Basin? wearing the white Russian blouse?

Half past nine. The professor’s clock sent its soft tyang through the walls. He closed his eyes.

About the Author

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) was an American poet, novelist, and short story author, and one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century. His numerous honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award for Poetry, the Bollingen Prize, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Aiken was orphaned at a young age and was raised by his great-great-aunt in Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University with T. S. Eliot and was a contributing editor to the influential literary journal the Dial, where he befriended Ezra Pound.

Aiken published more than fifty works of poetry, fiction, and criticism, including the novels Blue Voyage, Great Circle, King Coffin, A Heart for the Gods of Mexico, and Conversation, and the widely anthologized short stories “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” and “Mr. Arcularis.” He played a key role in establishing Emily Dickinson’s status as a major American poet, mentored a young Malcolm Lowry, and served as the US poet laureate from 1950 to 1952. Aiken returned to Savannah eleven years before his death; the epitaph on his tombstone in Bonaventure Cemetery reads: Cosmos Mariner, Destination Unknown.

Content

Conrad Aiken
King Coffin

I The Particular Occasion

II The Idea Germinates

III The Background

IV The Friends Who Might Be Murdered

V But Perhaps a Stranger

VI The Stranger

VII The Seven Words of the Stranger

VIII The Daily Life of the Stranger

IX The Stranger Is Gay

X The Pure Murder

XI The Regret

XII What It Is to Be a Stranger

XIII The Stranger Becomes Oneself

About the Author