Flora Eaton came in hastily, in a gardening apron, her thin sallow face damp and her dark hair damper still and disheveled. She threw aside her gardening gloves and advanced into the room, her dotted cotton dress fluttering about her angular figure. “Dear, dear Kenton!” she exclaimed. “How happy
I
am to see you! How is darling Beatrice? Do forgive my appearance—my sweet peas, you know, in this weather, and my phlox—not doing well at all—and Martin will be so happy, too, to see you! Iced tea, Kenton, or perhaps”—and her pale lips made a naughty coy moue—“a little drop of something?”
“A little drop of something, dear Flora,” said the beaming Senator, as he enfolded her thin freckled hands in his warm, fat palms. “Where is Martin?”
Flora was breathless, as always, and she “jiggled” in the present fashionable way, all jumping fingers, nodding head, and little jerkings of her shoulders. The Senator disliked this fashion, which had been taken from the Florodora Sextette’s handsome young ladies, but the lively animation was not too repellent in a girl, though tiresome. However, a lady Flora’s age should know better, he commented to himself. She made him nervous. What did she remind him of—and other ladies like her? Some disease. Yes. Parkinson’s.
Flora gaspingly informed him that her husband was in his study, as he always was in the morning, but she would summon him and they would have a little cozy chat. Her big, hollow dark eyes rolled meaningly, her big white teeth glittered, her elbows, hands hips, shoulder, jiggled, and she kept rising and falling on her toes.
“No, no, dear Flora!” cried the jovial Senator. “I wouldn’t take you from your beautiful garden for a moment! I should have called first. I’ll go to Martin’s study. Dull business, y’know, my dear, dull business, not fit for a lady’s ears. I know the way! Don’t bother, my dear, don’t bother!” He tapped her affectionately on her sharp shoulder and went off very fast for a gentleman of his girth and size. Flora looked after him languishingly. He was so good, so kind, so sweet, so distinguished. She found her gloves and raced back to her garden, which she was preparing for a tea that afternoon.
The Senator climbed the stairs. Here again all was shuttered and dim, and the shut air smelled of wax and heated varnish and aromatic dust. He passed room after room, with closed doors, until he came to the study, on which he knocked quickly. He said, “Martin? Kent Campion here. Can you see me for a few minutes?”
He heard a creak, a hoarse mutter, then a shuffling, which came toward him. The door opened and the tall and shrunken figure of the sick doctor stood on the threshold, staring at him dully. The once fat face was fat no longer; it had sunken in one year. His bald head no longer shone; the skin was yellowed and parched. The once kind blue eyes had faded and were slitted. Only the big nose and the thick lips remained, ruins among ruins. Martin leaned on two canes, and his left side was almost completely paralyzed.
He wore a wool morning coat, for all the heat, and wrinkled trousers, and a collarless shirt striped in white and gray, and suspenders. He trembled as he stood with the aid of his strong canes. He said slowly and precisely, “Good morning, Kent. Come in.” He had regained a good measure of his speech. He shuffled slowly back into the dusky room, which was filled with Mission oak furniture, leather chairs, ugly lamps, and dark blue silk draperies. Here he had held consulfations with lesser doctors on important matters concerning an obscure case or a rich patient. Now his precious medical library, which lined the oak walls, was dusty and unused. The rug held no footprints, for few came here any longer. Martin, since his niece’s tragic death, had become a recluse, drinking in lonely silence in this room and reading “light” books and magazines, and thinking, thinking, thinking, his own desolate and anguished thoughts.
The Senator glanced about him. Pity was not one of his virtues, but he felt pity now. He remembered hearty convivial days in this library, or study, and manly jokes and chuckles, when a big fire was laid on that black marble hearth and the winter snow hissed on the long windows. There were only echoes here now, and on that desk, once weighted with medical books and folders, stood only a bottle and a glass and a pitcher of water.
The Senator, still beaming, seated himself near the desk and thought, but only for an instant, that he was on dirty business and he wished it was not necessary. However, it indeed was necessary. Besides, in a way, he was doing Martin a favor. No doubt the shattered doctor had been dreaming, for a year, almost, of revenge, and had broken because he could not attain it. His dear friend, Kent Campion, would put it in his hands. So the Senator became cheerful again. “Yes, yes, Martin, I will indeed have a drink. Thank you.” He watched the crippled man reach for another glass, survey it for dregs, and then fill it with whiskey and water. “Thank you,” repeated the Senator, and leaned forward and took the glass. “How are you, dear old friend?”
“Waiting for death,” said Martin very slowly.
The Senator laughed heartily. “Oh, dear me, how morbid you are! But, of course, you are joking. You’re a young man yet, Martin. World before you. Two years younger than me. Why aren’t you sitting out in the garden, your wonderful gardens? So pleasant in this weather, with cool breezes from the river.”
The doctor had painfully and carefully seated himself. He put aside his canes. He folded his right hand over his paralyzed left one, which now resembled a claw. He gazed at the Senator with eyes so sunken and so narrowed that they appeared lifeless and of no color at all.
“I care for nothing,” he said. He lifted the bottle. When the Senator would have helped him, he waved him aside exhaustedly. He filled his glass, added only a dash of water, then put the glass to his lips and drank like a man dying of thirst. The Senator watched him, marveling that he could drink so much, and not for the first time today, either.
He said with his usual buoyancy, “Now, Martin, we must pull ourselves together, we really must. For the sake of our— er—friends. Our—er—community. Our—er—loved ones. We owe it to ourselves, to others. We are not unimportant. We are revered, admired, needed, We—”
“Shut up, Kent,” said the weary voice, and the right hand tilted the bottle over the glass again. “What do you want? You always want something.”
“Is that kind?” said Kenton Campion, chuckling richly. He drank of his own glass and tried not to notice the mass of fingerprints on it. “We’ve had many a happy hour in this room, dear Martin, many a happy hour. We miss you. We miss those hours. We shall have them again. I promise you that—when all this is forgotten, and —er—consummated.”
One lean broad shoulder rose and fell under the morning coat. But now the dying eyes fixed themselves attentively on the politician. They actually peered in the dusk, and the Senator, perceptive as were all politicians, was aware of a concentration on him, a sudden watchfulness. He pulled his chair closer to the desk. “I am here to bring you the satisfaction you’ve been dreaming of for months, Martin, for months. And then a miracle will happen, and your heart will be at peace, and your health restored.”
“Go on,” said the faltering voice, but it had quickened.
“Jonathan Ferrier,” said the Senator.
He expected some show of emotion now, at the sound of that hated name, a quickening, a trembling of the side of the face which was not paralyzed, an exclamation, a faint cry, perhaps, a clenching of the living hand, an involuntary movement. But nothing of this occurred. Martin Eaton continued to stare at him with those frightening eyes for several long moments, and he said not a word. Finally he stiffly turned his big head, with its glinting yellowish baldness, and he looked at the shuttered windows. He appeared to have forgotten the visitor.
“Jonathan Ferrier,” said the Senator, wondering if Martin’s mind had gone also, and if he had forgotten that name.
“I heard you,” said Martin, and still looked at the windows and did not move.
The Senator coughed. “The man we all still believe killed your niece and her unborn child.” (What the hell was the matter with him, anyway?)
Martin said in a vague and distant voice, “They believe that still?”
“Indeed, indeed, dear friend! They never believed he was innocent. There are rumors he bought some members of the jury.”
Martin closed his right hand over his left again. He rubbed the dead flesh slowly, slowly, and did not look at the Senator. His ash-colored mouth fluttered uncontrollably, and the Senator was pleased, for now he was surely expressing his grief and inconsolable sorrow. Then Martin said, “He did not buy the jurors. They were honest men.”
The Senator frowned. “Ah, well, you know rumors, Martin. I never heed them myself. But who can stop tongues? And—old stories? But we know Ferrier was guilty. You know, too. Didn’t you stand up in the courtroom, when the verdict was given, and didn’t you cry out, ‘No! No! No!’ “
The fallen chest, once so massive and strong, heaved visibly, and the Senator smiled a little. So, the old hatred still burned there, in spite of the dead and passive face, the averted head, the hidden eyes.
“Yes,” said Martin. “I did.”
“So you know he was guilty.”
There was a long sick silence. Then Martin mumbled, “He was guilty.”
“Well, then,” said Campion, freshly pleased. “And now
I
have some news for you. Do you hear me, Martin? Yes.
I
hear that Ferrier has decided to remain in Hambledon after all, to destroy and injure at will. To flaunt his crimes in our faces. But—we, shall we say ‘we’ at present?—have decided that this little city must no longer be defamed and shamed by his presence. We—have been working not only to revoke his license in the whole state but to revoke it permanently, and everywhere. Who will give him shelter and privileges when the sovereign Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will no longer permit him to practice but will drive him out?”
Now the ruined face turned almost quickly to the Senator and for the first time there was a sharp burning deep within the hollows of the lost eyes, an intense and focused burning. The Senator nodded richly.
“Yes, dear old friend, yes.”
“He is a doctor,” said Martin.
This was not exactly the reply the Senator had expected.
“Well,” he said, waving his hand. “He soon will not be.” He watched Martin as he lit one of his heavy cigars and then deposited the match in a bronze tray. Martin watched his every movement as if powerfully fascinated. “With your help, Martin.”
Martin had fixed his gaze on the cigar. The lips were shaking again. The Senator said, “All you have suffered in your sorrow will be avenged. Poor lovely Mavis will be avenged.
I
promise you that, my friend, I promise you that.”
Then, to the Senator’s consternation, the big ruined head began to move negatively from side to side, in denial. “He is
a
doctor,” said Martin again.
The Senator wet his lips. “Yes. But what
a
doctor! And how he repaid you for the paternal affection you gave him, the patronage, the introductions, the pride, the kindness! He repaid it all with hatred—and the murder of that lovely thing, your heart’s joy and delight.”
Now the fiery spark in Martin’s eyes dimmed with moisture.
“No,” said Martin.
The Senator took the cigar from his mouth, blew out
a
cloud of smoke, and said gently, ” ‘No’ what?”
“You shall not have my help,” said Martin.
The Senator raised thick and chestnut eyebrows. “But, Martin, why not?”
The shaking lips firmed and again the slow denial began.
“Come,” said Kenton Campion, and smiled. “I know it is painful for you, dear friend. I know you do not wish old sorrows to be exhumed again. But you must be brave. Have you forgotten Mavis? Ah, who could forget that vision of beauty and joy and laughter? Not her devoted—uncle. Who adored her. Be brave, Martin. This is the last battle, and Mavis will be avenged.”
“What do you want of me?” asked Martin.
“I will bring witnesses to you, here, Martin, Louis Hedler, Humphrey Bedloe, for your testimony, which you did not give in court. We have long known that you knew something which would have convicted Ferrier but suppressed it, perhaps because of your old—interest—in his mother. Old friendships. A tender heart that had suffered enough. Your heart. Yes, we knew that you deliberately did not testify in
a
crucial matter, that you kept your silence. I do not want you to keep it any longer, dear friend. I want you to tell your friends of it, to unburden your heart at last, to bring justice to bear on that murderer finally.”
The reply was a dry whisper. “Double jeopardy.”
“Yes, I know,” said the Senator with impatience, and again waving his cigar. “He cannot be tried again for the same crime. But your testimony will convince Hedler, who is proving a little fractious in spite of what he has suffered from Ferrier’s hands, to allow us to bring in two prominent members of the State Medical Board from Philadelphia. They already have many—proofs, shall we say?—but yours will be the most convincing of all.”
“Proofs?”
“Oh, not of that crime. But of others. Enough to drive Ferrier out of the country. To the ends of the earth.”
Again the eyes were bits of fire. The slow voice came without intonation: “What did he do to you, Campion?”
The Senator started, looked with keenness at the broken doctor. His smile became pinched. “Enough, Martin, quite enough. He did me a great injury. I, too, want revenge. But I will not bother you with my troubles. Yours are sufficient When shall I bring the witnesses to you?”