Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

back his hat, exposing, in the flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with a rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into a side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the policeman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the name “Charles Spencer James, M.D.” The street and number of the address were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even curiosity. The policeman’s downward glance at the article carried in the doctor’s hand⁠—a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small silver mountings⁠—further endorsed the guarantee of the card.

“All right, doctor,” said the officer, stepping aside, with an air of bulky affability. “Orders are to be extra careful. Good many burglars and holdups lately. Bad night to be out. Not so cold, but⁠—clammy.”

With a formal inclination of his head, and a word or two corroborative of the officer’s estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his somewhat rapid progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted his professional card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case as vouchers for his honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those officers seen fit, on the morrow, to test the evidence of that card he would have found it borne out by the doctor’s name on a handsome doorplate, his presence, calm and well dressed, in his well-equipped office⁠—provided it were not too early, Doctor James being a late riser⁠—and the testimony of the neighborhood to his good citizenship, his devotion to his family, and his success as a practitioner the two years he had lived among them.

Therefore, it would have much surprised any one of those zealous guardians of the peace could they have taken a peep into that immaculate medicine case. Upon opening it, the first article to be seen would have been an elegant set of the latest conceived tools used by the “box man,” as the ingenious safe burglar now denominates himself. Specially designed and constructed were the implements⁠—the short but powerful “jimmy,” the collection of curiously fashioned keys, the blued drills and punches of the finest temper⁠—capable of eating their way into chilled steel as a mouse eats into a cheese, and the clamps that fasten like a leech to the polished door of a safe and pull out the combination knob as a dentist extracts a tooth. In a little pouch in the inner side of the “medicine” case was a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now half empty. Underneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few handfuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred and thirty dollars.

To a very limited circle of friends Doctor James was known as “The Swell ‘Greek.’ ” Half of the mysterious term was a tribute to his cool and gentlemanlike manners; the other half denoted, in the argot of the brotherhood, the leader, the planner, the one who, by the power and prestige of his address and position, secured the information upon which they based their plans and desperate enterprises.

Of this elect circle the other members were Skitsie Morgan and Gum Decker, expert “box men,” and Leopold Pretzfelder, a jeweller downtown, who manipulated the “sparklers” and other ornaments collected by the working trio. All good and loyal men, as loose-tongued as Memnon and as fickle as the North Star.

That night’s work had not been considered by the firm to have yielded more than a moderate repayal for their pains. An old-style two-story side-bolt safe in the dingy office of a very wealthy old-style dry-goods firm on a Saturday night should have excreted more than twenty-five hundred dollars. But that was all they found, and they had divided it, the three of them, into equal shares upon the spot, as was their custom. Ten or twelve thousand was what they expected. But one of the proprietors had proved to be just a trifle too old-style. Just after dark he had carried home in a shirt box most of the funds on hand.

Doctor James proceeded up Twenty-fourth Street, which was, to all appearance, depopulated. Even the theatrical folk, who affect this district as a place of residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had accumulated upon the street; puddles of it among the stones received the fire of the arc lights, and returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid spangles. A captious wind, shower-soaked and chilling, coughed from the laryngeal flues between the houses.

As the practitioner’s foot struck even with the corner of a tall brick residence of more pretension than its fellows the front door popped open, and a bawling negress clattered down the steps to the pavement. Some medley of words came from her mouth, addressed, like as not, to herself⁠—the recourse of her race when alone and beset by evil. She looked to be one of that old vassal class of the South⁠—voluble, familiar, loyal, irrepressible; her person pictured it⁠—fat, neat, aproned, kerchiefed.

This sudden apparition, spewed from the silent house, reached the bottom of the steps as Doctor James came opposite. Her brain transferring its energies from sound to sight, she ceased her clamor and fixed her pop-eyes upon the case the doctor carried.

“Bress de Lawd!” was the benison the sight drew from her. “Is you a doctor, suh?”

“Yes, I am a physician,” said Doctor James, pausing.

“Den fo’ God’s sake come and see Mister Chandler, suh. He done had a fit or sump’n. He layin’ jist like he wuz dead. Miss Amy sont me to git a doctor. Lawd knows whar old Cindy’d a skeared one up from, if you, suh, hadn’t come along. Ef old Mars’ knowed one ten-hundredth part of dese doin’s dey’d be shootin’ gwine on, suh⁠—pistol shootin’⁠—leb’m feet marked off on de ground, and ev’ybody a-duellin’. And dat po’ lamb, Miss Amy⁠—”

“Lead the way,” said Doctor James, setting his foot upon the step, “if you want me as a doctor. As an