CHAPTER IX. – BUCHANAN’S STORY.
It has been for me, as I have already said, a difficult job to decipher and translate this manuscript. All the more so on account of the probably well-meant offers of linguistic aid which my friend Buchanan has put upon me. I have maintained my good humor in the matter, but Buchanan has seen fit to adopt an injured and mystified cast of countenance. Fortunately for my purpose, he has manifested his spleen by a frequent absenting of himself from my society. His comforter is, I suspect, invariably Forder’s governess. I never visit the Belle Marie location myself without encountering Buchanan somewhere about the Superintendent’s house. Wouldn’t he just jump at a tale like this to regale Louise Norther with!
Later. Well, I should think he would like to tell her, considering that he knows far more about it than I know, or probably ever shall know. I think I will let him tell his own story. Now you shall hear his side:
Baird, chemist of the Belle Marie mine, has asked me to put in writing my side of the story of Zwingli Ziszekor. I herewith do so. And, if the narrative should appear somewhat bald, I would gently remind the reader that, like Tristram Shandy, I prefer to tell my story in my own way. So I open the case with an explanation from the counsel for the defense—I mean myself. My name is Buchanan—George Buchanan. I am a regularly admitted attorney-at-law. I have done a doubtful business in Houghton and Marquette, and have vegetated in Iron Mountain now two years. We room above Gleason & Moriarty’s saloon, on Stevenson Avenue—Baird and I. And that brings me to the reason of my present undertaking.
You see, Baird, who, by the way, is a peculiar fellow, or, in parlance d’Iron Mountain, “a queer coon,” has been comporting himself of late even more peculiarly than ever. He always had been of the shy and unsociable sort; never would take a turn at “penny ante” of an evening; never manifested any interest in the paces of the “black and white horses” over the post-office; never bet, except on a sure thing; never drank anything stronger than distilled waters; never loafed in Siebert’s drugstore; had, in fact, no bad habits, except that of smoking very cheap and nasty cigars, and very many of them.
It goes without saying that in a town like Iron Mountain a man of such rare parts, although he may be respected, will hardly be understood. Consequently my chum goes by the sobriquet of crank.
Such being the case, it is not necessary to add that he has consistently shunned the society of women,—that is, until lately, which brings me to the point, to wit:
Baird, while manifesting on one hand an abnormal reticence toward me, has developed on the other an unforeseen interest in the society of Forder’s governess. Forder is the superintendent over at the Belle Marie mine. I rarely visit the mine myself without encountering Baird somewhere near Miss Norther’s abode. Their points of consecutive coincidence—I mean Baird’s and hers—take forms of such interest as Buchheim’s Deutsche Lyrik, Heine’s Reisebilder, and Whitcomb and Otto’s English-German Conversations. Miss Norther, I ought to have said, is German; comes by way of California. I’ve not found out exactly how. But since she is the most agreeable—in fact, for me, the only—woman in town, Baird’s attitude of intimacy toward her wounded me. It has struck home, as it were, both to my business and bosom. But why he should avoid me the more in proportion as he has become the more straitly involved in the toils of German idiom, I have been at a loss to explain. For, considering that I studied for some time in Germany, I naturally might be of service to a tyro. To tell the truth, not long ago I was seized of the fancy that Baird was elaborating and addressing bad German verses to Miss Norther. The fancy vanished. Knowing that Baird had something like a fifth-rate facility as a versifier, I might reasonably expect the accompanying moral obliquity. His scribbling continued, and his pilgrimages to Louise Norther. She, while apparently as cordial to me as heretofore, saw fit to feign ignorance of any ulterior purpose in Baird’s linguistics. He, if I entered our rooms while he happened to be versifying, would uniformly shuffle aside certain Sibylline leaves, and, with an appalling apathetic indifference, lock them up.
But if he were merely writing verses, why should he, the other day, for instance, ask me such an idiotic question as “What does Er halle einen Affen Gekauft mean?”
“It means that the gentleman was disguised in liquor,” I replied. “Do you intend to put that into a poem?”
And then, why should he turn red, stammer something about not finding the phrase in Whitcomb and Otto, unlock and lock his desk nervously, and leave me to my surmises?
He appeared to have lost his interest in foreign languages for a week or two, then one day he borrowed my Mendelssohn and a map of Germany; and in an off-hand and apparently purposeless manner asked me no end of questions about Giessen, Coblenz, and the Rhine. I inquired, when he had finished, whether he contemplated European travel after the heavy export. He looked surprised.
“What’s the matter with you, George? Why this questioning? What happy event?”
The density was gracefully assumed, and I admired it.
“The fireman’s ball this evening,” I replied.
“Oh, are you going?” asked he. “I have asked Louise Norther.”
I went to the ball,—”stagged it,” as the boys say. As I had no particular partner on my hands, I had hoped to have a word or two with the little governess; but through the evening the opportunity did not present itself. “She did not care to dance,” said she, with a smile that seemed to suggest as compensation the seat at her side. But I was piqued, and since Baird at that moment came up with an ostentatious “Gütiges Fräulein,” I bowed and turned on my heel. Miss Norther flushed slightly; but I noticed that if I drew near the corner in which she was ensconced, she merely leaned forward to pursue with unabated vivacity her conversation with Baird. I had never seen her so pretty. One rebellious curl on the side next Baird kept falling across her cheek—she as persistently tossing it back. A high Elizabethan ruff of soft lace, the exact like of which I have seen no other woman wear, encircled her throat like the calyx to a flower. I think she was born in it; at any rate she never appeared without it. The evening was dull for me, until Baird, about ten o’clock, was called away by a message from the engine house. Some steam-pipes leading to his laboratory had frozen. With a rueful countenance he excused himself to Miss Norther. “I’ll be back subsequently, if not sooner,” he said to me as he left the hall, but he did not request me to atone for his absence. Although the chair by the girl’s side remained empty, vacant, I ground solidly through the programme, turning my eyes with subtle irresolution away from the face that lay against the wealth of dark cedar in the corner.
Some accursed polka or schottische—I have forgotten which—was revolved. I had seated my partner—a pink, palpitating damsel—by the window, and was dispatched for the inevitable glass of water. I glanced at the corner as I passed. Miss Norther, half rising from her chair, was, I fancied, looking toward me. A swinging crowd by the door delayed my egress, and, pausing, I felt a light touch on my arm. Louise stood by my side,—a mingled vexation and amusement in her upturned face.
“Mr. Buchanan?” she said.
“Why, certainly!” I faltered.
“It’s so hot here,” she went on, “and tiresome, and Mr. Baird has been away so long, and my head aches, and—and would you mind my asking you to see me home, if it’s not too—too unconventional?”
“Why, of course!” I blurted out, and the vexation vanished from her face, leaving a smile.
“My wraps are in the little room to the left,” she continued, taking my arm as we moved toward the door.
CHAPTER X. – A LOST OPPORTUNITY.
The band burst again into a brazen blare, and the pulse of many feet falling into rhythm haunted our ears as we passed into the moonlight. The recent snow had wreathed drifts across the path, and the feathery crystals made vari-colored scintillations on either side.
We had reached the cut of the Milwaukee and Northern Railway, where the sidewalk slopes sharply toward the track.
“Take care, Miss Norther; it’s pretty slippery here, with that thin snowfall over the crust.” And I passed my hand under her arm in the reasonable but barbarous manner adopted by Philistines of all nationalities. She made no objection, but dashed without warning down the incline and across the track to the sidewalk opposite. That schismatic curl of hers slipped from under her cap; and I don’t know why, but at the same moment my hand must have closed on the fingers that touched it. It was one of those coincidences that— Miss Norther paused, and ordering the curl back into ranks,—“My hair is always tumbling ridiculously down,” she observed. “Makes me look like a schoolgirl.”
“Or like Ribera’s St. Mary in Egypt,” I suggested, and she took my arm in the usual fashion.
“Yes, I do sometimes feel like a Mary in the Desert,” she assented. “Ever since we left Germany, for instance,” and she paused.
“And your parents?”
“They are dead.” She relapsed into silence, as she always did if I presumed to broach that subject. We turned at the foot of the street toward the long walk that leads to the Location. Louise was evidently debating some moot point, but I was not admitted to the court. She gazed absently at the white smoke as it floated from the engine houses over the valley. To the right rose dark the mass of the Hewitt Bluff; a lonely pine stretched skyward from the summit. Into the folds of the hill beyond sparkled the myriad lamps of the Belle Marie. We stood looking toward the hill. A light flared in the towering shaft house. From the dark porthole gaped an automatic ore car down the long gradient, down the slope of the rails, slackened as it neared the dump, turned on one side, rattled the ore upon the frozen summit of the stock-pile beneath, paused, regarded attentively its achievement, reassumed its dignity, and, with serene satisfaction, re-traveled the incline to the shaft house. To the left the hills receded toward the lights of the Kaween, hanging like a constellation in the western horizon; and far off, on the face of the mountain, a ruddy gleam told of some chilly lander at the stock-piles of the Pennekawan. To be sure, it was hardly the setting for dreams, but no word was interchanged. My companion was probably entertaining an immaterial dialogue, and I was persuading myself that the tranquillity of the occasion must have interpreted to her something that I should have liked to tell. There was surely something propitious in the dreamy interest with which she viewed the stately passage of the ore car. We passed the machine-shops, clinking with night-workers, and long ranks of cars empty, expectant of the swathing engines that, close by, hissed and vapor-ed upon their enforced inaction. Slowly the trim figure by my side labored through the drifts. It was from no lack of temptation that I refrained from lifting her bodily over them. The immaterial dialogue had wrought itself to a conclusion.
“I wonder what has become of Mr. Baird?” said she, as serenely as if our previous conversation had found its sequel.
“Oh, he’s probably lost himself over his German prefixes or his chemicals.”
“German!” she repeated, with interest. “Then is he so very much taken up with German?”
“Presumably,” I replied; “but I had imagined that you knew more about his researches in that line than I did.”
“Why, he has been making a kind of German dictionary out of me for the last month or so; but I think, after all, his researches are more in the line of Z. Z. than in the line of German, don’t you?”
“Z. Z.!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean? What is Z. Z.? Who is Z. Z.? What’s Baird been telling you about Z. Z.?”
“Why, nothing, or next to nothing,” she answered, “and evidently he has told you less. Pardon me; I’m afraid I’ve betrayed a confidence, but—” and she paused with an embarrassed inconclusion.
I was nettled. Then they had confidences, Baird and she. I turned to look at her, but her eyes were as mysteriously non-committal as might be. I confess that I harbored momentarily ungenerous impulses against this monogrammatic Z. Z. He was a blind, a fiction probably,—behind their interest in whom they were concealing their interest in each other. “Whose confidence, may I ask?”
“Why, Mr. Baird’s,”—and she gave a little laugh; “but it serves him right; he should either have told me more or have told me nothing.”
“What do you mean?” said I, more mystified than ever; “what is this Z. Z.?”
“One at a time, Mr. Buchanan!”—and she threw her face back just far enough to give warning of a mischief in her eyes. “Be thoroughly sympathetic, now, and I’ll recount you my grievances. Z. Z.? Oh, Z. Z. is a mystery, a Pennekawan mystery; and he made glassware—oh, a good deal of glassware,—and he broke it into bits,—very little bits,—and he hid the bits in Mr. Baird’s pocket-handkerchief—and I object to him,” pursing her lips.
“To whom?” I ventured, “to Z. Z.?”
“Yes—no, to Mr. Baird,” with a resentful shrug of the shoulder; “I mean to his insatiable interrogatives!”
“About what?” I gasped, with as much of groping despair as I could put.
“Well,” said she, and she sank her voice to an enigmatic murmur,—“I’ll tell you again just what the trouble is. He has a mystery. He is hunting down somebody that made broken glassware and German proverbs over at the Pennekawba. And he might just as well tell me, and not pump, pump, pump away for declensions and all sorts of chemical phrases—and slang,—and—and quite rude slang too, sometimes,” and she nodded her head decisively, “and-“
“Ah,” I remarked, and struck my head that was designed so vigorously against the other as to shake completely her fingers from my arm. “And so he’s been at you, too, has he? Then this is what this scribbling means. Eh?” I had a sense of relief.
“Yes,” she said, “at least that’s all the explanation I can offer.” Then, suddenly changing the subject, “Do you know, Mr. Buchanan,” she resumed, “I am going away from here next year.”
I was deep in the Pennekawban riddle. This new bit of information upset me.
“What?” I ejaculated.
“Yes, I think I shall teach school next year,” continued she. “I have word that the schoolhouse at Antoine is to be reopened in the spring.”
“Might as well perform a suttee, or bury yourself alive, like a vestal virgin,” I exclaimed, my emphasis getting the better of my classics. “No,” I added, “you shan’t do that. I’ve just been elected school inspector; we’ll find you a place in town.”
The girl stopped as I opened the gate before us. “Ah, you are so very kind,”—and she gave me a look that warmed me. “Mr. Baird said he thought you could manage it.” I was suddenly cold again. “Yes, you are both very kind; that would be much more pleasant,” and we turned through the gate toward the superintendent’s house.
The red-globed lamp in the hall threw a warm flush on her face as we entered. The door of the parlor, which was unoccupied, stood open. The hanging lamp was turned low, and the flame of a coal fire leaped and filled the room with abrupt pulses of light and shadow; flickered now over the olive curtains, and now warmed to life the marble Clytie on the table. Miss Norther had removed her hat. The strand of hair that always worked loose swept her neck as before. She stood with one foot on the fender, smoothing dreamily the fingers of her gloves upon the mantelpiece. I pushed a chair to the fire. The girl turned with a memory of the flame in her eyes, and began to unbutton her cloak.
“Let me help you off with it,” said I. As I did so, my fingers lost their way in the Elizabethan calyx. Surely she did not suspect me of sacrilegious intent, but I stepped back quickly with a culpable rush of blood to the eyes. I think it was I disentangled the velvet from her shoulder,—at any rate the back of her head denounced me. I had not meant to desecrate the ruff, and the condemnation was not just; it was my fingers that had put themselves against the lace. I assiduously disposed the cloak upon a chair. “Good-night,” I murmured.
“Why, yes,” she said, turning with a gentleness, as if she had been oblivious of the hour. “I suppose it must be good-night. Mr. Buchanan, I want to thank you for several things, and I will sometime. Do you know, I keep on wondering if that dignified one ear has got back to the shaft-house yet.” She gave a queer inconsequential laugh. “I’m always—dreaming,” she said, and she put out her hand to me. I took it; it was still cold. With an inspiration I stooped toward it. The hand trembled; at least I thought so; and the bronze clock on the mantel chimed, one silvery stroke, a quarter to eleven.
“Pardon me,” I stammered. “I didn’t—I didn’t think it was so late.” And I backed out of the door into the night.
I had always been a coward, and I returned now to solace myself with that reflection. But somehow two other thoughts played odd-and-even through my brain as I trudged home. One was that I was a fool; the other, that perhaps Baird had already succeeded where I had only intended. So I mounted the stairway past the saloon, and closed the door behind me. I had lost the best chance I had ever had in my life.
CHAPTER XI. – BUCHANAN’S SUDDEN INTEREST IN Z. Z.
Baird was grumbling to himself as I entered. He looked up morosely. “Nice sort of a man, you are,” he growled, “to run off with a girl the minute a fellow’s back is turned.” He picked up the lamp and moved toward the bedroom.
“Oh, hold on a minute, old boy! You’re pounding both on cross-head and crank-pin; you need babbitting. Miss Norther was attacked with a serious headache the moment you left, and it devolved on me to see her home. Sit down and have a smoke to sweetener your temper. It’s only in the shank of the evening yet. Here, have a fill of Lone Jack!”
A trifle mollified, he filled a pipe, sat down, tilted his chair back, scratched a match under the seat, and proceeded to cloud the room with smoke.
“Sorry to hurt your feelings, old boy,” I went on. “Shouldn’t have cut you out, if I could have helped it; but, really, you were absent nearly an hour before I took Miss Norther home.”
“Mighty nice girl,” observed Baird.
“Yes, you evidently think so. I had never a chance to pass the time of day with her until you went. Say, Duncan, you used to think you didn’t care for her—that is to say—much, if anything?”
“Why,” remarked he, increasing the angle of his chair with the horizon, and giving me a quick glance, “you haven’t taken a chattel-mortgage on the young lady, have you?”
“No,” said I, frankly. “And I don’t know whether I ever shall; but I’d like to. There, that is honest, isn’t it?” He made no reply. “Say, there, what are you doing with my writing-pad? Hang it!” I cried, “you have ruined a brief!”
I snatched the document from him—briefs were briefs in those days—and found that he had written in one corner the line, “Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath;” and below, “Gott set mir Sünder gnädig!” “Baird,” I began. “are you writing any poetry nowadays?”
“Yes,” unlocking his drawer; “do you want to hear some?”
“Oh, no, no, no! Not any, thanks. But I merely wish to get at the raison d’être of this prayer for mercy.” He smiled grimly.
“Did you bring back my ‘Mendelssohn’?” I resumed. “What did you do with it, anyhow?”
“Miss Norther suggested that I should sing with her.” I will record to Baird’s credit, that in the article of this prevarication he blushed.
“Baird, are you presumptuous enough to dream that you can win any young woman’s goodwill by constructing verses, German verses—to her”—I was on the brink of acrimony—“eyebrow?”
Baird laughed for the first time that evening, pulled a straw out of the little ivory-handled whisk-broom, cleaned out his pipe-stem, and remarked: “Buchanan, it’s time you stopped setting springs to catch woodcock. I’m no chicken. Your flashes of sarcasm have a jaundiced ray. I’m not combating your interest in Miss Norther.”
This statement was apparently frank, but it was really ambiguous. How could I believe him? “Then why this irresponsible enthusiasm for her native tongue?”
“I didn’t say that I don’t admire her. I do. But I’m not like one of Heine’s brand of blue-stockings. I don’t affect intellectuality in order to strike wonder and love to the heart of the opposite sex. I study for culture, I do.” On this occasion he omitted the blush. “I do wish I knew something about German,” he appended.
“Why do you particularize?”
He had again appropriated my writing-pad, and was engrossed in the disqualification of a stray garnishee blank. The employment seemed to relieve his moral tension, and I suffered it. So we smoked until he reposed his chair on all-fours, remarked with interest the strip of wall-paper he had rubbed off, and knocked his pipe out against the table-leg. Then he set his shoes toeing in toward the stove, and went to bed. In about half an hour, rising to follow him, I picked up the garnishee blank, and amid a vortex of Z’s, read as follows:
Garnishee Summons, S. 84 (1,105). Ihling Bros., Blankbook Mfrs., Kalamazoo.
State of Michigan, } SS.
County of Menominee, } SS.
To any constable of said county, greeting. In the name of the people of the State of Michigan, you are hereby commanded to Summon Zwingli Zschorer.
“The deuce!” I said.
I went straight to where Baird lay on the far side of the bed, snoring heavily, and shook him from side to side. “Here, wake up! What do you know about Zwingli Zschorer?”
“Zschorer,” he murmured, “Gehazi—Zschorer?” He raised himself on his elbow, and with a dazed expression, began: “Yes, Second Kings,—fourth,—and thirty-first level. Oh, let a fellow alone,” he snapped out, “I’ll tell you about it to-morrow.” And he rolled, with a discontented lurch, against the wall.
I laid hands upon him with some violence. “You’re sure, Duncan,” I said solemnly, “that you haven’t happened to see any of my letters?”
“Why, no! Course not! What’s up with you, anyhow?”
“Baird, pull on your clothes and come into the other room. I’ve got an idea.”
“Better keep it for a nest-egg,” he muttered, but he pulled his garments on.
When I had got him into the next room by the stove,—“Where is Zwingli Zschorer?” I asked, and I placed in his hand the garnishee summons which he had filled out.
“Why, the last I heard of him, he was in the north cross-cut of B shaft, seventh level, Pennekawba mine.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Only waiting—been waiting for the last thirteen years.”
“What for?”
“For the day-shift, I suppose.”
“Baird,” I insisted, “I’ve good reason for asking about this Doctor Zschorer.”
“Well,” he asseverated, “that’s straight: he was in that same north cross-cut when the shaft caved in, and dumped about five thousand tons of rock on top of him.”
“Kill him?”
“Well, slightly!”
I reflected for a moment, then: “Take my word for it, Duncan, I have a right to anything you know about this man. I have been on the lookout for him since 1873.”
CHAPTER XII. – THE THIRTEENTH COPY OF A LETTER.
“On the lookout for him since 1873? Nonsense! Oh, yes, of course I believe you—but it beats the Dutch! It does! Since 1873? You must be intimately acquainted with Gehazi!”
I stared.
“Oh, no secret about mine,” continued he, taking some papers out of his breast-pocket. He pushed the manuscript across the table. “Been wearing it like a hair-shirt, but you’re welcome to it.” He kept his head in a gracious mutation. “Might ha’ had it long ago, if you hadn’t been surer than I was that I was making love to Louise Norther, and felt it necessary to keep an eye on my thoughts, words, and scribblings, because I chose to practice up my German with her.” There was some quizzicality about his tone, but his purpose was evidently magnanimous.
“Yes,” he explained, “I found the notebook, all decayed, down in the cross-cut where he worked last. This is as good as a Bohn’s translation, though. Read it!”
“Forgive me, old boy,” I managed to mutter, and without further apology I began the reading.
A periodic interjectional grunt from Baird, as I turned page after page, was the only interruption. I drew closer to the fire. The twelve o’clock whistle blew, the monotone of the hoisting engines ceased, the electric lights leaped and died. The narrative grew deeper. I turned the lamp higher, and read on. The quarter-whistle boomed. The lights throbbed and flashed up again. Oil-lamps flared past my window. I could hear the miners tramping briskly back to work. One o’clock shrilled suddenly, and fell two octaves through the night. I read the last words, and laid the papers on the table with a sigh.
“Well, George,” broke in my chum, appearing hazily over his pipe. “Well, what d’ye think?”
I shivered involuntarily at the transition from fact to speculation. “In the hand of Gehazi,” I said, laying my fingers on the papers; “he struck it off well there! And the dead child! I don’t wonder the poor fanatic hid himself, like a leper, in the underground.”
My chum looked at me, and kicked open the draught of the stove. “Yes,” said I responsively, “it’s my turn now,” and I moved toward my desk. “Peculiar as it may sound, Baird, I have no right, in strict legal etiquette, to disclose what I don’t know about Zschorer.”
“Don’t know?”
“Yes; don’t know,” I repeated, “but might. For it’s a letter that I have been carrying around for him.”
“For silence I’m a sarcophagus,” suggested Baird.
“Yes,” said I, and I leaned against the desk. “Well, this is the way it happened: In ’73, when I was on my way home from Leipzig, I passed through Giessen. I thought I’d drop a train or two, and stroll out to one of the neighboring villages, where lived a fellow of my corps, who had taken a fancy to me, and had been cramming me with ‘Weber-Rumpe’s Memory-System,’ and all sorts of fads, during our last semester at the university. David—Eduard David—was his name; but that doesn’t matter. I found him. We planned several walking-tours together: Wetzler, Marburg, etc.; and I put up at the Einhorn Hotel, the best in Giessen, by the way——”
“Oh, go on!” said Baird. Baird’s always in a hurry.
“Well,” I proceeded, “it’s just beside that Evangelische Kirche that Zschorer writes about, and near the parson’s house. One morning I was leaving the Spiesa-Saal, where I’d been having some of the Elephant brew, when I was accosted by a portly, legal-looking old customer, who conducted me, with an unctuous mystery, into a private room. Said he, after he had, to my anxiety, locked the door, and looked through the keyhole:
“‘Herr Dr. Buchanan?’
“‘I bowed. He returned the salutation, turning out the palms of his hands.
“‘I find,’ he barked, ‘from your registration on the hotel book, that you have the degree of Juris-Doctor, and that your Geburtsort is Marquette, in the State of Michigan, America. May I inquire, Herr Doctor, whether you intend soon to return to America?’
“‘I do,’ said I.
“‘Then,’ pursued he, ‘should you be willing to look up the whereabouts of a former professor—he had a great spell of breathing hard and turning out his palms here—‘of this university, with whom I wish to communicate, and whom we suspect to be now in the United States?’
“‘I demurred. America was quite a country, and I wretchedly undetective.
“‘I suppose so,’ he urged, pairing an importunate hang-nail; ‘but, Herr Doctor, the service I ask of you is not arduous, nor shall I expect you to perform it—gratuitously.’
“You remember I was on the verge of returning to America. My spirits were low, and my pocket still lower; my interest was aroused.
“‘We can not undertake to pay you—any large sum,’ whispered the Rechtsanwalt, cautiously; he probably had caught the avidity of my glance, ‘since this’—he drew an envelope from his wallet—‘is the thirteenth copy of this letter that we have sent out. We will advance you fifty marks for your trouble in undertaking the commission, and we promise you one thousand marks, upon your informing us either of the delivery of the letter, or of the whereabouts of the man addressed.’”
“Well, you’re sure of your two hundred and fifty dollars,” put in Baird. “Don’t you think you’d better go shares on the whereabouts? Guess so. But fire away!”
“I put up my hand,” said I, resuming the narrative, “to take the letter which the Rechtsanwalt held toward me, but he promptly withdrew it.
“‘Wait a moment,’ he added, with a circumspect wheeze; ‘you engage, of course, to reveal to no one, either before or after your commission has been fulfilled, your motive in this search, or the manner in which you were induced to attempt it?’
“‘I promised. He gave me my fifty marks and the letter. It was addressed to this Zwingli Zschorer of yours. And that’s what I know about him. As to what I don’t know, Baird, you’ve given me sufficient proof of his death. I think we may as well find out what dodge they had for catching him.”
Baird repeated his asseveration about the sarcophagus. I drew from the upper drawer of my desk a yellowed envelope, and with a hazy acquiescence in my own perfidy to my employer, said:
“Here’s the letter!”
Baird looked over my shoulder as I opened it. “By Jove!” he cried, his eyes straining at the signature, “Ludwig Wilhelm Gersdorf!—for heaven’s sake read the thing!”
CHAPTER XIII. – WHO IS LOUISE NORTHER?
I DID SO. We did not take the pains to sit down until I was through. There was no address; nothing but the date, July 23d, 1873.
“Geehrter Herr Doctor:
“May Heaven grant that this reach you. Your fame is for all time. Your child lives; saved and saved by—you! When on that eventful day you fled, we remained. Often since that moment that dread scene have haunted your thoughts, as it has haunted mine, and to recall it once more, Herr Doctor, is necessary, though, thank God, no longer dreadful; for it wakens now memories not of the pause of death, but of the pulse of life.
“When we had for some time awaited your return we followed you to the cellar, but you had fled, and we with you were guilty of murder. And we, too, thought to save ourselves by flight. But the child! Might not yet something be done? We returned to the room; there lay the child, pale and lifeless, to reproach us. I—from myself—I essayed transfusion; hopelessly, with vain endeavor to do somewhat, till my hands refused to yield the apparatus!—I strove. Then, in turn, yielded Von Norden his blood till Nature could no longer give. In vain. The child breathed not; the color of life was there; alas, too, the stillness of death. Galvanic excitation we attempted; respiration, also, without effect. Von Norden sank upon the bench.
“‘Gott in Himmel!’ he cried, ‘and is this the end—the end! Can you not think—’ he slipped to the floor; ‘think’—I was chafing the child’s hands as he muttered, ‘think! ha!’ he said it was a stimulus. Perhaps,”—and then Von Norden fainted.
“Strength anew seized me. Stimulants eagerly tired. What stimulant could bring again the departed breath! I turned away in despair. Your ichorine met my eyes. ‘Stimulant,’ I thought unsteadily, ‘this might serve; at any rate nothing else can.’
“What was left in your vial I drew into a syringe and injected hypodermically. Was it a quiver, or of my own quivering brain? I pressed down the piston to the last drop. A sudden flush spread to the child’s temples! Gott sei Dank, a flush of life! She shivered, moved aimlessly her hands, opened her eyes sightlessly. I bent over her; she murmured something.
“‘To-morrow, Onkel Zwingli, I am so tired to-night.’
“I fell upon the floor beside Von Norden, and embraced him.
“Worthy Herr Doctor, for my skepticism I do not apologize, but for my unmanly scorn. Forgive! Return to the Fatherland; give to the whole fruits of a discovery that exalts you high above Plotner and Denis, above Berzelius and Carlanus, above all scientists of all centuries. You shall be named with those who have brought life into the world, for you have slain death. You owe the revelation to that world which as yet knows naught of you or of your discovery; for we have given out that you fled the country to avoid the cruel test. Your child is with Von Norden. By the events of this day his health is shattered. He is first removed to Mentone; thence, I have news, to Los Angeles, with the child—by the advice of physicians—but I hear from him nothing. Unhappy! Is it possible that he is dead? Return, worthy sir, to the distinction that awaits you; or communicate at once with me through my lawyer, your quondam haus-bruder of the Marburger Strasse. May these words bring solace to your soul, and Glück auf!
“Yours, with the deepest contrition and respect,
Prof. Dr. Ludwig Wilhelm Gersdorf.”
Baird was swallowing the yarn with an acquiescence that struck me as altogether out of proportion.
“By George!” I said, “it was a shameful trick to try to get the poor fellow back by such a scheme as that! A lie on the face of it; from beginning to end, a lie!”
“A lie?” repeated Baird. “Why, what do you mean? That letter’s all right, isn’t it? Else, what under heaven could have been his purpose in writing it?”
“You make me weary! Nice sort of a lawyer you would make,” cried I, getting to my feet impatiently. “Why, it’s as plain as the acid stains on your coat-sleeve! Of course, all this is nonsense about bringing the girl to life. And what should they write the letter for? Why, I’ve told you once: to trap Zschorer. These men are accessories to the murder of the child Babette; they want to entice the chief criminal back to Germany.”
My chum shook his head. “That would do them no good. If this murder was ever committed, it’s perfectly plain that Gersdorf or Von Norden, or both of them, are in jail long ago; and that’s the end of them.”
“Hold on,” said I, “how do you know that Gersdorf is in jail? I tell you, if he ever has become of Von Norden, that man Gersdorf was in hiding when he suggested this scheme to his greasy solicitor—a scheme to secure his own immunity by hooking and exposing Zschorer.”
“Well now—sit down again, Buchanan. Quiet now! Let’s consider the case calmly. Suppose—just suppose—that the statement is true; suppose Babette was brought back to life-“
“Suppose!” said I. “You chemists suppose you can take a human body to bits, let it lie dead half an hour, and put it together again like a clothes-wringer! Well, fire away! That’s what it means to credit this fellow, Gersdorf. But suppose anything you like.”
“Suppose,” resumed Baird, quietly, “that it’s true; and that the girl recovered, and went to America with Von Norden, and that Gersdorf has had no word of them since. Why should he write that letter?”
“Well,” said I, “he must naturally have had some reason—but it was an underhand, sneaking reason, I warrant you. Think such a man as Gersdorf would write a dozen letters to beg Zschorer’s pardon? Not much!”
“No, not to beg his pardon,” replied Baird, “but you grant for the moment that the letter is truthful; now I grant that there was some dishonest reason for writing it, and I have the reason. If the writer can find out that both Zschorer and Von Norden are dead, his fame and fortune are made.”
“How ‘made’?” I asked in amazement.
“Why, don’t you see, George, that if Gersdorf can prove both Zschorer and Von Norden dead, he is the only one left that knows of this great discovery? And he’ll publish it as his own.”
“You’d make more money, and be less likely to be dubbed a fool, if you simply published Zschorer’s diary—eh?”
“Not a bad idea,” said he, with perfect soberness; then, “let me see that letter again.”
I did so. He leaned forward, reading it carefully. His cheek gave a little twitch. He read more closely. Suddenly a light in his eyes,—“Buchanan, heaven and earth, Buchanan!” and he brought his hand with a sounding slap against his thigh.
“What’s up—why—what’s up, old boy? You haven’t found another reason?”
“No,” said he, quickly. “No, but—ah, that’s it. Say, George, do you remember—now don’t think I’m insane—do you remember a German down there by Mud Lake of the name of Klein, who had two brothers by the names of Little and Small?”
“Yes.”
“And old what’s-his-name, who got himself translated into Nicholas Skewouldnot?”
“Yes,” said I, “but come back to the business. What’s Nicholas got to do with this investigation?”
“Oh, nothing,” answered he, and was still. Then he rubbed his chin, and looked embarrassed. “But excuse me now,” said he. “You won’t mind, will you, George? But look here, you hope to—a—to be lucky enough to be engaged to Miss Norther some day, don’t you?”
“Why—yes, I should like to hope so.”
“Well, when you are,” he continued, “or when you’re married—and I hope you shall be, some day—just lift that curl on her neck, and see whether you have married Louise Norther or——”
“What?” I shouted.
“Or Babette!”
“Great God!” I exclaimed, jumping to my feet, “you don’t think——”
“I do,” said Baird, quietly.
I put my hand out for my overcoat.
“It’s two o’clock,” said Baird.
Here breaks off Buchanan’s narrative.
And, as he himself might phrase it, “this document further sayeth not.” My chum, Buchanan, undertook to write his side of Zwingli Zschorer’s story, at my request; but, unfortunately, he has never consented to finish what he had attempted. About a fortnight after the evening, the events of which are recorded above, he informed me, with exasperating serenity, that his engagement with Miss Norther was ready for announcement. But whether he was engaged to Louise Norther or Babette, he omitted to tell me. He has persistently ignored the subject; I have, therefore, justly taken it up with myself, without his will or knowledge, to prepare, for the press, papers that appear to me of the utmost scientific importance.
If Gersdorf is a swindler as well as an accomplice in murder, then the world should know the fact; if Zschorer’s discovery in the refusal of blood, is what Zschorer claimed that it was, then to Zwingli Zschorer, not to Gersdorf, is honor due. In any case, I am convinced that the public, considering the vital character of the interests involved, will not only sustain me in the course that I have adopted, but will, sooner or later, compel my friend Buchanan to throw such light as may be in his power upon the statements of the memoranda which I found on the seventh level.—D. M. B.
(The End.)
