In the meantime, it was joyful to be alive and he wanted to prolong this unique experience.
He had almost reached the street when a uniformed messenger approached him. “Dr. Ferrier?” asked the lad, then touched his cap, gave Jonathan an unstamped but sealed letter, and rode off on his bicycle. Jonathan looked at the writing on the envelope and it was unfamiliar to him, and for some peculiar reason he thought, This is a feigned writing and not the real one of the writer. Perhaps it was the elaborate curlicues, or the change in slanting, or a “t” crossed differently from another “t,” or a baroque circle over an “i” when following “i’s” were merely dotted with a tiny dash or not dotted at all, which made the writing appear hidden or contrived. Jonathan opened the letter.
“Murderer!”
it shouted. “
If
you are not out of this good city by September 1st, at the latest, you will be ridden out on a rail, tarred and feathered! Do you remember the effigy of you which was hung near the courthouse when you were
falsely acquitted of the murder of your wife? The next time the rope will hold your neck and not an effigy. Beware! Your crimes are all known.”
Jonathan could not believe it. His first impulse was to laugh, then destroy the letter, for only a madman could have written it. But then he was impressed by a sense of malignancy in the writing more than in the wording, a deep and terrible hatred of him, a personal hatred. He had received hundreds of vicious letters from not only Hambledon but from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and even from New York and Boston, when he had been acquitted, and after his initial rage he had begun to laugh at them and destroy them and forget them at once. A sensible man did not give any of his attention to the sly and anonymous wicked ones of the world, or he would go mad himself. But this letter caught his attention as none other ever had. Someone in Hambledon had sent it. Jonathan went back into his offices and called the messenger service.
A youthful male voice answered him. This had been a very busy Saturday, it informed Jonathan, with many people coming in and leaving packages and messages, and no record was kept except in cases where a reply was expected. Yes, indeed, sir, he did recall a letter for Dr. Jonathan Ferrier! But, was it a young lady, or a gentleman, who had brought it in for delivery and had paid the fee? Jonathan waited and could almost see the avid ear of Central listening in. Confound the girls. They were always eavesdropping on his calls these days, and he must complain about it. The young male voice was obviously ruminating, if one could imagine such a thing. Then it returned with apology. It could not remember at all. It was “someone,” it was sure, but who that one was escaped it entirely, and it was very sorry. It was also sincere. Jonathan hung up. He went back to his private files, opened one and took out his bottle of whiskey, and drank a considerable amount. He knew again the desire to kill with his own hands. He stood with the glass in his hand, his elbow leaning on the files, and his face was again stark and hard and pale under its darkness, and his mouth was set and harsh. He drank again. Then he remembered that he had promised to see Priscilla Witherby almost immediately. He put the bottle away and locked the files, and once again left the hot and silent offices.
He went to the livery stable for his horse, and spoke absentmindedly to the groom, who watched him canter away. What was wrong with Doc Ferrier now? He hadn’t seen such
a look on his face for a long time, and now it was back. They called him a tough man in Hambledon, and the groom could well believe it for the first time. No, sir, he wouldn’t want to cross Dr. Ferrier!
Jonathan tied up his horse before the handsome white brick and stucco house of rich old Jonas Witherby, careful that the animal was in the shade of the great elms. He went up the flagged walk; the stones were colored rose and faint blue and yellow, in a very artistic pattern. But today everything looked malign and hurtful to him, and too sharp in outline and tint and shade. He had often wanted revenge. He wanted it now with a terrible hunger he had never felt before, except for a few times with Mavis. The brilliant white door, with its polished brass knocker, opened for him and he was confronted by Priscilla, who took him at once by the hand and pulled him quickly into the large and pretty hall with its scent of jasmine, a perfume Priscilla favored and which she always wore and with which she always permeated her environment.
“Jon, dear!” she gasped. (Prissy always gasped, as if unbearably surprised, outraged, delighted, overcome, amazed, startled, or aghast. It was considered very intriguing by her admirers.) “Oh, Jon, dear, I wondered if you’d forgotten me! I watched by the windows every second!” She was out of breath. She had a dear little voice like a very young girl’s, or a breathless child’s. “Do come into the drawing room, where it is so nice and cool! I have your favorite whiskey. Jon, you get handsomer every time I see you, I swear it! And you should never wear anything but riding clothes and boots, and carry a crop!” She burst into tears. “Jon, I can’t bear it, not for a single minute more, not for a single minute!”
She threw her arms about his neck, standing on tiptoe to do so, and she kissed him fervently on the lips, and hugged him harder, pressing her face into his neck. He held her by the arms, gently, then put her off. “All right, Prissy, did the old bastard put arsenic in your coffee?”
Prissy was at least thirty-two and had been a whore since she was fourteen, and a very jolly and appreciative and expensive one. She was a little woman, small even in an age which preferred little women. She was a perfect miniature of a female, lovingly formed, a figurine of porcelain, softly but brightly colored, smooth and glowing with porcelain lights. There was a sleek polish about her which transferred itself by magic to her clothes. She was always svelte and clean and
perfumed and exquisitely and fashionably dressed. Today she wore a flowing lawn dress with pink dots sprinkled all over it, a pink sash, and a pink ribbon, broad and satiny, tying back her pale shining hair. She even wore pink slippers of an incredibly small size, and narrow and pointed, and her arch showed the glint of a silk stocking. Being a lady of taste, and fastidious, she rarely wore much jewelry except for the great diamond which old Jonas had given her and little pearls in her pretty ears. Her dainty features were childlike and guileless and frank, and she had very large, pale blue eyes as innocent as an infant’s, with golden thickets about them. She reminded many adoring men of a lily, and they had spoken of it, and Jonathan, who was very fond of her, had always made a ribald remark. He had often been one of Prissy’s patrons before she had married old Jonas and had never discovered anything gross or repellent about her. But, then, as he had frequently said, and with approval, there was no one quite so refined as a whore who knew her own worth and respected herself, and enjoyed her profession. Prissy had not been “forced into selling her pure white body,” as the current phrase was, but had chosen her life’s work with full deliberation and realism, as she had often confided to Jonathan. Golly, she liked men! Was there anything wrong with that? And if gentlemen wanted to give her a little gift, or a small fur, or a pretty piece of lingerie, the dears, whose business was it? Her bank accounts, long before she had incomprehensibly married old Jonas, had caused her to be received with bows and enormous respect in the banks of Hambledon, Prissy was prudent. She was also modest and never let anyone use “rude” language in her presence, or pass a “naughty” remark or tell a pungent story. In addition to all this, she was intelligent.
She owned considerable property in Hambledon, including a lumber business of increasing prosperity, and was known as a very shrewd businesswoman. She was a scandal. The ladies hated her, though since she had married Jonas Witherby, she was often invited to the “best” houses. “For Jonas’ sake,” the hostesses would apologize. “Dear, darling old Jonas.” They were certain that Jonas was Prissy’s victim, though gentlemen held exactly the reverse of that opinion and wondered often and loud, and resentfully. Had old Jonas gotten “something” on Prissy? a very few asked each other, including Jonathan. Jonathan was certain he had, though Prissy denied it vigorously. He was very rich, and she had liked him, honestly she had, and she had thought him so good and kind, and after all a girl had to think of her future, too, didn’t she? Prissy was never the legendary “prostitute with a heart of gold.”
The drawing room was most tastefully furnished—by Prissy. She had removed the huge and sullen furniture it had once possessed, and now it reflected Prissy in its small and gay and colorful chairs and settees and really good paintings on the white walls. She led Jonathan to a chair, and, with fresh tears rolling prettily down her cheeks, she poured him a large drink, hesitated, tossed her head, and prepared one for herself. She sat down near him, a delicious china figure, and stared at him hopelessly.
“Come on, Prissy, what’s the trouble?” asked Jonathan, after a pull at his crystal glass. “I have an appointment later in the afternoon.”
“You know Jonas,” said Prissy, wiping away a tear with the tip of a rosy finger as small as a child’s, and as vulnerable in appearance. “Ever since he came home from the hospital —Jon, you never did believe that I tried to poison him, did you?”
“No, dear. But I often hoped you would.”
Prissy giggled abruptly. “Well, I’ve thought of it, but I’m not a fool, Jon. You know who they’d first suspect, and maybe with good reason, him with all that money, too. Not that I’d grieve much now if he’d drop dead. But he’ll live to be a thousand, Jon! A thousand! He’s just that bad—he’d live to spite me.”
“And spite others, too,” said Jonathan.
“Well.” Prissy sighed. “Jon, I know you won’t believe me. But I’m sure now that Jonas was really poisoned. I’m sure he did it to himself. Go on, laugh at me.”
Jonathan shook his head slowly. “No, dear. I won’t laugh. I believe it myself. Oh. he didn’t take enough to kill him, of course, the old devil. But just enough to make him interestingly sick—and make people ask questions. About you.”
“But why, Jon, why?” The girl cried again.
“He wants people to remember his ‘illness’ in the hospital. I hear he talks about it constantly so they won’t forget. Then, when he does die, there’ll be ugly conjectures. Nothing positive will be proved about you—but they’ll talk. Perhaps there’ll be litigation over his will. Perhaps he’s already arranged that. Perhaps there’s something rotten about you in that will; it wouldn’t surprise me. Perhaps he’s left you nothing, saying that he had always ‘suspected’ you tried to kill him before and that you were thwarted by fast medical attention. To be truthful, his record on admission does say that he ‘showed all symptoms of poison.’ But he didn’t vomit in the hospital, and so we had no samples, and don’t make such
a
nasty face, Prissy. However, he insisted, the dear innocent loving old man, that he had eaten nothing you hadn’t eaten and that it was surely only ‘acute indigestion.’ He actually cried when I questioned him. I wasn’t his admitting physician. I was away when he came in. Perhaps he made sure of that, too, fearing that I might be too sharp for him and too cynical.
“But he did need a fella who’d suspect poison after all, and so I did. He didn’t want soothing-syrup doctors who wouldn’t make good witnesses. He handled it very cleverly. No overt evidence. I saw him forty-eight hours after he had been admitted to the hospital under emergency. He was suffering the aftermath of poison all right, but what kind was not clear.
I
think myself it was arsenic.”
“I still don’t understand, Jon, why he should do that!”
“Prissy dear, like all sanctimonious brotherly-lovers, he hates people. I don’t know why. There are still some hellholes in the human psyche that baffle me even now. It could be that the brotherly-lovers are afraid they might be detected in their luxurious hatred and then others wouldn’t love them, and they do cherish the regard of others! They know all about themselves, probably, and secretly despise themselves, and their only defense against the horror of their whole being is to see the deceived love-light and admiration for them in the eyes of other people. We all have our methods of self-defense against the world. The brotherly-lover probably more than most, for he is a weakling and can’t accept what he is, and is afraid that if found out, the world would punish him —as it ought to do, by God! He’s a menace.
“The brotherly-lover is not only cruel, beyond the cruelty of less talented liars, but he loves to see people suffer. He doesn’t dare be overt to them and cause them to suspect him of their misery, for they might punish him as he deserves. So he slides around them, like an oily snake, making loving sounds as he inserts fangs—which they don’t know are his alone.”
Prissy had listened with her fair brows in
a
knot. She shook her head. “It sounds very strange to me, Jon. I’ve always been decent to others and always thought they’d be decent to me in return. Until I knew Jonas. Why should—what do you call them?—brotherly-lovers enjoy seeing others suffer?”
“Because they are crazy, my dear, absolutely mad. And they’re evil. In some cases evil and craziness are the same thing. Well, you know the history of Jonas’ wife, who killed herself, and his wretched sons. They hadn’t injured Jonas. But they were handy for his malice. He’d call that ‘reforming’ them. You’ll notice that it is the haters of humanity who are always trying to reform it. They want to feel superior to the general run of mankind. Besides, they’re malevolent to the very heart of them. What did Christ call them in one of His less benign moments? ‘Hypocrites, liars, sons of the Devil.’
“Well, that’s what old Jonas is. And so, he wants to make you suffer. I don’t think he has anything against you. In fact, I think he likes you in his perverted way, and is very fond of you. But, you are handy. If he can make you totally miserable, then hell be contented and beam like a rose.