The Case and Exceptions Part 2

So when the news came that Josiah Bateman was dead I think everybody connected with our firm, from the senior partner to the office boy, was curious to learn how the old man had left his money.

The news of his death did not reach us until a week after he had been buried. We were then advised by letter that he had been on a hunting trip in the Adirondacks and had become ill and died when far away from any town. The guides seem to have known nothing about him and he was buried at the nearest cemetery. No papers or doc.u.ments were found upon the body, and it was not until a week after his funeral that a crumpled piece of paper was discovered in his game bag. This proved to be one of our letters to him and we were at once put in possession of the facts.

At the same time we were informed that the body had been exhumed and positively identified by an old friend of our client. Mr. Paulding was away from Town on his vacation when the news came and in his absence the responsibility for proper action devolved upon me.

The letter announcing Mr. Bateman's death arrived in the morning mail, but I was engaged in Court all day and it was nearly seven o'clock in the evening before I returned to the office. Letters and papers had acc.u.mulated on my desk during my absence, but I was too tired and hungry to attack the work they suggested, so dismissing the clerks for the night I sought out the nearest restaurant.

All thought of Bateman's affairs had been crowded out by the events of the day, and it was not until I had finished my after-dinner cigar that they were recalled to me by seeing Mr. Bateman's obituary printed in an evening paper.

It was the usual "boneyard" article which had doubtless been set up in the newspaper office years before. Any way, after reading three quarters of a column I learned nothing about the man I did not already know, and what I knew could have been condensed into a dozen lines. It set me thinking, however, about our queer old client. Perhaps his Will contained some directions for the disposition of his body which should govern my immediate instructions to the people in the Adirondacks. His end would have been lonely enough anywhere, but up there in the silent mountains, away from the city's bustle and battle which he loved, death must have seemed fearful to that lonesome old man. Late as it was I determined to return to the office and look at Mr. Bateman's Will.

I always carried a key to the front door of our office building, for no one slept on the premises and sometimes it was important to gain admission after the closing hour.

The streets were absolutely deserted as I left the restaurant and my footsteps echoed upon the flagstones.

Surely down-town New York is the most dismal spot in the world at night--a veritable city of the dead. The silent, empty streets have an atmosphere of utter gloom--the buildings dark and forbidding stand in gruesome solemnity or huddle together in hideous att.i.tudes of fear--the deserted offices here and there show a shaded light in some rear room, but the ghastly glow only intensifies the darkness, and over all is the silence--the awful silence--of the night. It is not the restful quiet of sleep--it is not the peaceful stillness of death--it is the horrid, breathing, staring silence of the trance. It is the silence that makes you stop and listen--hush and whisper, or gently motion with your finger on your lips.

The feeling of all this was upon me as I turned toward my office. The unaccustomed stillness filled me with absurd apprehension, and tricked me into starting at every shadow. My footsteps echoed more and more rapidly upon the sidewalk, and louder and louder until I found myself actually running along deserted Front Street.

I had been in the offices at night before, but I stumbled and tripped up the familiar stairway as though the steps and the very walls themselves had changed positions in the darkness.

I lit a lamp in our front room, but the big black shadows transformed the well-known surroundings so that nothing seemed the same.

The globe on the corner shelf took the shape of some great bird sitting gorged and sombre on its ample perch--the doc.u.ment cases with their white letterings suggested dark heads and shining rows of teeth, and the green baize doors studded with bra.s.s-nails seemed like monster coffins set on end, each staring silently through an oval eye of gla.s.s.

I carried the lamp into my private room, but the draught from the hall blew it out, so I closed the door before lighting it again.

In those days my private room in the rear of our office suite was connected with the main rooms by a short hall, from which it was separated by a green baize and gla.s.s-panelled door. In this room was the firm safe, a cavern-like affair built into and occupying the entire rear wall. The interior was lined with sheet iron, and the huge doors of the same material were opened and locked with a key weighing perhaps half a pound.

Sitting down at my desk I touched the secret spring of the drawer containing this key. I am not a nervous man, but I had been under more or less tension all day, and the stillness of the streets and the ugly suggestions of the dark shadows in the outer offices had had their effect upon my nerves, making me start as the spring snapped and the drawer shot out. Holding the lamp in my left hand close to the safe directly behind my chair, I fitted the huge key into the keyhole, and unfastened the lock. The bolts turned easily, and placing the lamp upon the desk again I pulled at the handle of the safe door. For a moment it resisted and then swung open with a sound like a sob, emitting a breath of cold air that chilled me and set the flame of the lamp flaring above the chimney. It was like the damp breath of some underground tomb.

Moreover, it seemed to circle around me, blowing upon my neck and making the papers on my desk rustle and whisper. So strong was this impression that I swung about in my chair and stared into the blackness at the other end of the room, and even as I did so, one of the papers before me was silently wafted off the desk. I watched it as it floated slowly and noiselessly towards the doorway, and when at last it settled gently on the floor, I felt the beads of perspiration trickling down my face.

For fully a minute I must have sat peering into the darkness as though fascinated by the gigantic shadows on the walls.

Then I laughed nervously, mopped my forehead, turned again to the safe, and hastily took from the inner compartment a bundle of wills. Bateman's testament was the third in the bundle. It was sealed up in a plain envelope and the endors.e.m.e.nt was in his own handwriting.

"_Will of Josiah Bateman. Dated June 10, 1855._"

The papers had that musty smell peculiar to old doc.u.ments, and to which I was entirely accustomed, but that night the odor had a sickening effect upon me. It seemed to dry up the very air and make it suffocating with the horrible stench of decay. I stood up and stretched my neck to get an upper stratum of air, but the whole room seemed tainted with the foul cloying breath.

I sat down at the desk again and turned my back upon the lamp so that the light would fall over my shoulder. With a shudder I picked up the envelope, which seemed to reek with the unendurable odor, and as I did so, noticed the window close beside me. Why had I not thought of that before? I dropped the paper and rose to open the sash.

The darkness outside and the light within had turned the window pane into a mirror reflecting the room behind me with perfect clearness. The whole effect was fearfully weird, and for an instant it held me spellbound. In the foreground was my own ghastly white face--the eyes apparently gazing not into mine, but at something behind me. In the background the lamp, the desk, the papers, and the bra.s.s-nailed green baize door, jet black in the night light, stood out clearly.

As I stared into this reflected room, I noted a peculiar dark spot on the oval gla.s.s panel of the door. Was it at this my mirrored eyes seemed to look?

I knew I was in no fit condition to withstand the tricks of imagination, so I turned, not without an effort, to ascertain what really caused this strange reflection. But my imagination would have served my over-wrought nerves better than the fact, for the dark spot was unquestionably something pressed against the gla.s.s from outside the room. Steadily I gazed at this object, and endeavored with all the power I possessed to reason myself out of the nameless dread that had settled down upon me.

It could not be what it seemed.--Hair against the panel of that coffin-like door was too full of horrible suggestions! It must be a mop which had fallen against the gla.s.s.--Of course it must be that. A mop, too, would account for those damp breath stains on the gla.s.s.

Thus I reasoned, never taking my eyes off that oval pane in the door.

But as I gazed my theory fell to pieces and my reasoning stopped. The moist spots on the gla.s.s began to expand and contract, vanish and reappear slowly and regularly as to some heavy breathing. Every exhalation seemed to blow that fearful odor of death toward my nostrils!

After a few moments however I could no longer deceive myself, for my eyes, accustomed to the light, made out too plainly for doubt a face pressed close against the gla.s.s watching my every movement.

With that discovery my reason and coolness seemed to return instantly.

Without taking my eyes off the face framed in the door panel, I slid open the drawer immediately beneath my hand, groped for, and at last grasped, the revolver I always kept there.

At last the face withdrew from the gla.s.s, but so sure was I that no illusion had deceived me that I waited without moving a muscle. At length the handle turned and the door was pulled open slowly. As slowly I turned the chamber of my revolver, touching each cartridge with my finger. The door continued to swing cautiously, and with my elbow still in the drawer I raised my forearm, covering the widening slit with the muzzle of my weapon.

The door opened outward into the hall, and at first I could see nothing of the person pulling it. Then suddenly a hand darted out and grasped the inside k.n.o.b, and at the same moment the figure of a man, his back turned toward me, blocked the opening. Had I fired then I could not have missed my aim, but the opportunity was so complete it seemed murderous.

The fellow paused in the doorway and seemed to listen or look for something in the hall or rooms beyond.

I tried to speak, but my throat only responded with a dry click. When at last I controlled my voice its utterance was a harsh whisper,

"Stop where you are, or I'll fire! Don't turn or move a muscle! I have you covered with a revolver."

The figure in the doorway started convulsively, but made no other motion, and for a moment everything was so still I could hear my watch ticking. Then I heard the man say,

"Don't shoot, Mr. Wainwright. I'm going to face you."

My heart almost stopped beating as I recognised the voice, but the horror of the situation did not burst upon me until Josiah Bateman turned and stood before me under the glare of the flaring lamp.

For a moment neither of us spoke, but I noticed the haggard look of the man, the unkempt condition of his grey hair, and his soiled and tattered clothing.

There was no doubt that the living man stood before me, but everything about him breathed a horrid suggestiveness. At last I motioned to a seat and addressed him.

"What does this mean?"

The old man smiled wearily, but his voice was much the same as usual.

"I'm afraid I've given you a scare, without intending it, Mr.

Wainwright. I owe you an apology. But you were plucky, Sir, and I--well, I took some risks too."

"What does all this mean?" I repeated, with some annoyance in my tone.

"It's hard to tell in a few words, Mr. Wainwright, but I haven't risen from the dead. Yes, I see you looking at my clothes, but I haven't been inside a grave, and no undertaker has handled me yet."

"Don't you think we've had enough of mysteries, Mr. Bateman?" I inquired impatiently.

"Surely--surely," replied the old man, "but I want to give you time to recover yourself and----"

"I have quite recovered, thank you."

"Everything but your temper, Mr. Wainwright, everything but your temper.

You need to have that in hand before giving me advice."

"You seek a strange hour for consultation, Mr. Bateman. Allow me to suggest an appointment for to-morrow morning."

"No time like the present, Mr. Wainwright. I might say no time except the present. But while we are talking of time we waste it."