Vistas of New York Part 17

The Irishman did not approve of this. "An' of coorse," he continued, "it may be a sc.r.a.p 'twixt a ginny and a Polander; or maybe, now, a c.o.o.n has gone for a c.h.i.n.k wid a razzer, and sliced him most in two, I dunno'."

Then he clanged the bell unexpectedly, and swerved off the track and down a side street toward the river.

The doctor soon found a curious crowd flattening their noses against the windows of a drug-store on a corner of the Boulevard. He sprang off as the driver slowed down to turn and back up.

A policeman stood in the doorway of the pharmacist's, swinging his club by its string as he kept the children outside. He drew back to let the young surgeon pa.s.s, saying, as he did so: "It's no use now, I think, Doctor. You are too late."

The body of the man lay flat on the tile pavement of the shop. He was decently dressed, but his shoes were worn and patched. He was a very large man, too, stout even for his length. His cravat had been untied and his collar had been opened. His face was covered with a torn handkerchief.

As the doctor dropped on his knees by the side of the body, the druggist's clerk came from behind the prescription counter--a thin, undersized, freckled youngster, with short red hair and a trembling voice.

"He's dead, ain't he?" asked this apparition.

The doctor finished his examination of the man on the floor, and then he answered, as he rose to his feet: "Yes, he's dead. How did it happen?"

The delivery of the young druggist was hesitating and broken. "Well, it was this way, you see. The boss was out, and I was in charge here, and there wasn't anything doing except at the fountain. Then this man came in; he was in a hurry, and he told me he was feeling faint--kind of suffocated, so he said--and couldn't I give him something. Well, I'm a graduate in pharmacy, you know, and so I fixed him up a little aromatic spirits of ammonia in a gla.s.s of soda-water. You know that won't hurt anybody. But just as he took the gla.s.s out of my hand his knees gave way and he squashed down on the floor there. The gla.s.s broke, and he hadn't paid for the spirits of ammonia, either; and when I got round to him he was dead--at least I thought so, but I rang you up to make sure."

"Yes," the doctor returned, "apparently he died at once--heart failure.

Probably he had fatty degeneration, and this heat has been too much for him."

"I don't think any man has a right to come in here and die like that without warning, heart failure or no heart failure, do you?" asked the red-headed a.s.sistant. "I don't know what the boss will say. That's the kind of thing that spoils trade, and it ain't any too good here, anyway, with a drug-store 'most every block."

"Do you know who he is?" the doctor inquired.

"I went through his pockets, but he hadn't any watch nor any letters,"

the druggist answered; "but he's got about a dollar in change in his pants."

The doctor looked around the shop. The policeman was still in the doorway, and a group of boys and girls blocked the entrance.

"Does anybody here know this man?" asked the surgeon.

A small boy twisted himself under the policeman's arm and slipped into the store. "I know him," he cried, eagerly. "I see him come in. I was here all the time, and I see it all. He's Tim McEcchran."

"Where does he live?" the doctor asked, only to correct himself swiftly--"where did he live?"

"I thought he was dead when I saw him go down like he was sandbagged,"

said the boy. "He lives just around the corner in Amsterdam Avenue--at least his wife lives there."

The doctor took the address, and with the aid of the policeman he put the body on the stretcher and lifted it into the ambulance. The driver protested against this as unprecedented.

"Sure it's none of our business to take a stiff home!" he declared.

"That's no work at all, at all, for an ambulance. Dr. Chandler never done the like in all the months him an' me was together. Begob, I never contracted to drive hea.r.s.es."

The young Southerner explained that this procedure might not be regular, but it revolted him to leave the body of a fellow-mortal lying where it had fallen on the floor of a shop. The least he could do, so it seemed to him, was to take it to the dead man's widow, especially since this was scarcely a block out of their way as they returned to the hospital.

The driver kept on grumbling as they drove off. "Sure he give ye no chance at all, at all, Doctor, to go and croak afore iver ye got at him, and you only beginnin' yer work! Dr. Chandler, now, he'd get 'em into the wagon ennyway, an' take chances of there bein' breath in 'em. Three times, divil a less, they died on us on the stretcher there, an' me whippin' like the divil to get 'em into the hospital ennyhow, where it was their own consarn whether they lived or died. That's the place for 'em to die in, an' not in the wagon; but the wagon's better than dyin'

before we can get to 'em, an' the divil thank the begrudgers! It's unlucky, so it is; an' by the same token, to-day's Friday, so it is!"

The small boy who had identified the dead man ran alongside of them, accompanied by his admiring mates; and when the ambulance backed up again before a pretentious tenement-house with a brownstone front and beveled plate-gla.s.s doors, the small boy rang Mrs. McEcchran's bell.

"It's the third floor she lives on," he declared.

The janitor came up from the bas.e.m.e.nt and he and the driver carried the stretcher up to Mrs. McEcchran's landing.

The doctor went up before them, and found an insignificant little old woman waiting for him on the landing.

"Is this Mrs. McEcchran?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered; then, as she saw the burden the men were carrying, she cried: "My G.o.d! What's that? What are they bringing it here for?"

The young Southerner managed to withdraw her into the front room of the flat, and he noticed that it was very clean and very tidy.

"I am a doctor," he began, soothingly, "and I am sorry to say that there has been an accident--"

"An accident?" she repeated. "Oh, my G.o.d! And is it Tim?"

"You must summon all your courage, Mrs. McEcchran," the doctor returned.

"This is a serious matter--a very serious matter."

"Is he hurt very bad?" she cried. "Is it dangerous?"

"I may as well tell you the truth, Mrs. McEcchran," said the physician.

"I cannot say that your husband will ever be able to be out again."

By that time the stretcher had been brought into the room, with the body on it entirely covered by a blanket.

"You don't mean to tell me that he is going to die?" she shrieked, wringing her hands. "Don't say that, Doctor! don't say that!"

The bearers set the stretcher down, and the woman threw herself on her knees beside it.

"Tim!" she cried. "Speak to me, Tim!"

Getting no response, she got to her feet and turned to the surgeon. "You don't mean he's dead?" And the last word died away in a wail.

"I'm afraid there is no hope for him," the doctor replied.

"He's dead! Tim's dead! Oh, my G.o.d!" she said, and then she dropped into a chair and threw her ap.r.o.n over her head and rocked to and fro, sobbing and mourning.

The young Southerner was not yet hardened to such sights, and his heart was sore with sympathy. Yet it seemed to him that the woman's emotion was so violent that it would not last long.

While he was getting ready to have the body removed from the stretcher to a bed in one of the other rooms, Mrs. McEcchran unexpectedly pulled the ap.r.o.n from her head.

"Can I look at him?" she asked, as she slipped to the side of the body and stealthily lifted a corner of the covering to peek in. Suddenly she pulled it back abruptly. "Why, this ain't Tim!" she cried.

"That is not your husband?" asked the doctor, in astonishment. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" she answered, laughing hysterically. "Of course I'm sure! As if I didn't know Tim, the father of my children! Why, this ain't even like him!"