The Penalty Part 47

XLVII

It was rare in Dr. Ferris's experience to see a man, after an operation, come so quickly to his senses. It was to be accounted for by perfect health and a powerful mind. The patient lay on his side, because of the wound on the back of his head, and into his eyes, glazed and ether-blind, there came suddenly light and understanding, and memory.

Memory brought the sweat to his forehead in great beads.

"Is it over?" he asked quickly. "Have you done the trick?"

"It couldn't be done."

"When did you find that out?"

"I knew it before you went under ether."

"Then you haven't mutilated young Allen?"

"No."

The legless man's eyes closed, and he smiled, and for perhaps a minute dozed. He awoke saying: "Thank G.o.d for that." A moment later: "I'm all knocked out of time--what have you done to me?"

"I took the liberty of freeing your brain from pressure--result of an old accident. It can only do you good. It was hurting your mind more and more."

"I'd like to sleep, but I have the horrors."

"What sort of horrors?"

"Remorse--remorse," said the legless man in a strong voice.

Dr. Ferris was trembling with excitement.

"But thank G.o.d my deal against Allen didn't go through. That's something saved out of the burning. Where is Rose? I want Rose."

"Rose?"

"I remember. I locked her up--in that room. The key's in the bureau top drawer, left. I'd like her to sit by me. I want to go to sleep. I want to forget. Time enough to remember when I'm not sick.... That you, Rose?

Sit by me and hold my hand, there's a dear. If I need anything she'll call you, doctor. Just leave us alone, will you?"

He clung to the hand, as a child clings to its mother's hand; and there was a tenderness and trust in the clasp that thrilled the girl to her heart.

"Say _you_ forgive me, Rose." His voice was wheedling.

She leaned forward and kissed him.

"We got a lot to live down, Rose. Don't say we can't do it. Wait till I'm up and around, and strong."

He fell asleep, breathing quietly. Two hours later he woke. Rose had not moved.

"We'll begin," he said, "at once by getting married. I've dreamed it all out. And we'll set up home in a far place. That is, if _they'll_ give me a chance. But I've never asked you--Rose, will you marry me?"

"Do you want me?" She leaned forward and rested her cheek against his.

"Do you understand?" he said. "We're beginning all over. You can't undo things that you've done; but you can start out and do the other kind of things and strike some sort of a balance--not before man maybe--but in your own conscience. That's something. I want to talk to Ferris. Call him, will you, and leave us."

"Doctor, was everything I _was_ bone pressure? Ever get drunk?"

Dr. Ferris nodded gravely. "In extreme youth," he said.

"Well, you know how the next day you remember some of the things you did, and half remember others, and have the shakes and horrors all around, and make up your mind you'll never do so and so again? That's me--at this moment. But the past I'm facing is a million times harder to face than the average spree. It covers years and years. It's black as pitch. I don't recall any white places. Everything that the law of man forbids I've done, and everything that the law of G.o.d forbids. I won't detail. It's enough that I know. Some wrongs I can put finger to and right; others have gone their way out of reach, out of recovery. Maybe I don't sound sorry enough? I tell you it takes every ounce of courage I've got to remember my past, and face it. Was it all bone pressure? Am I really changed? Am I accountable for what I did? Was it I that did wicked things right and left, or was it somebody else that did 'em?

Another thing, is the change permanent? Am I a good man now, or am I having some sort of a fit? Fetch me a hand-gla.s.s off the bureau, will you?"

Blizzard looked at himself in the mirror.

"Seems to me," he said, "I've changed. Seems to me I don't look so much--like h.e.l.l, as I did. What do you think?"

"I think, Blizzard," said Dr. Ferris, "that when you were run over as a child you hurt your head. I think that even if I hadn't cut off your legs you would have grown up an enemy of society. I think that up to the time of your accident, and since you have come out of ether just now, are the only two periods in your life when you have been sane, and accountable for your actions. Between these two periods, as I see it, you were insane--clever, shrewd--all that--but insane nevertheless. I think this--I _know_ it. Even the expression of your face has changed.

You look like an honest man, a man to be trusted, an able man, a kind man, the kind of man you were meant to be--a good man."

"You really think that?"

"It isn't what I think, after all; it's what _you_ feel. Do you wish to be kind to people--friends with them? To do good?"

"That is the way I feel _now_. But, doctor--will it last?"

"It's got to last. Blizzard. And you've got to stop talking."

"But will they give me a chance? Lichtenstein could send me to the chair if he wanted to."

"He won't do that. He will _understand_."

"I should like Miss Barbara to feel kindly toward me."

"She will. I hope that your mind has changed about her, too?"

"That," said Blizzard, "is between me and my conscience. Whatever I feel toward her will never trouble her again."

XLVIII

With O'Hagan dead and Blizzard turned penitent, the bottom of course fell clean out of the scheme to loot Maiden Lane and the Sub-Treasury.

But the work of Lichtenstein and his agents had not been in vain. Like the man in the opera Lichtenstein had a little "list." The lieutenant-governor soon retired into private life. He gave out that he wished to devote the remainder of his life to philanthropic enterprises.

The police commissioner resigned, owing to ill health. Others who had counted too many unhatched chicks went into bankruptcy. Some thousands of discontents in the West who had been promised lucrative work in New York, about January 15th, were advised to stick to their jobs, and to keep their mouths shut. The two blind cripples who had delved for so many years in Blizzard's cellars were brought up into the light and cared for. Miss Marion O'Brien went home to England with an unusually large pot of savings, and married a man who spent these and beat her until she had thoroughly paid the penalty for all her little dishonesties and treacheries. It was curious that all the little people in the plot received tangible punishments, while the big people seemed to go scot-free. Blizzard, for instance.

No sooner recovered from the operation on the back of his head than the creature was up and doing. In straightening out his life and affairs he displayed the energy of a steam-boiler under high pressure and a colossal cheerfulness.

His first act was to marry Rose; his second to let it be known throughout the East Side that he was no longer marching in the forefront of crime. This ultimatum started a procession of wrongdoers to Marrow Lane. They came singly, in threes and fours, humble and afraid; men of substance, gun-men, the athletic, the diseased, fat crooks, thin crooks, saloon-keepers and policemen, Italians and Slavs, short noses and long (many--many of them), two clergymen, two bankers, sharp-eyed children, married women who were childless, unmarried women who weren't--and all these came trembling and with but the one thought: "Is he going to tell what he knows about us?"