The Seventh Knight

The Black Dog

"The right to die?"

Professor Barstow, with a perplexed scowl ruffling the barbette of gray hairs above his keen eyes, shook his head and turning from the young man whose long legs extended over the end of the lean sofa upon which he sprawled in one corner of the laboratory, held the test-tube, which he had been studying abstractedly, up to the light. The flickering gas was not good for delicate work, and it was only lately that Barstow, spurred on by a glimpse of the end to a long series of experiments, had attempted anything after dark. He squinted thoughtfully at the yellow fluid in the tube and then, resuming his discussion, declared emphatically,

"We have no such right, Peter! You 're wrong. I don't know where, because you put it too cleverly for me. But I know you 're dead wrong-even if your confounded old theories are right, even if your deductions are sound. You 're wrong where you bring up."

"Man dear," answered the other gently, "you are too good a scientist to reason so. That is purely feminine logic."

"I am too good a scientist to believe that anything so complex as human life was meant to be wasted in a scheme where not so much as an atom is lost. Bah, your liver is asleep! Too much work-too much work! The black dog has pounced upon your shoulders!"

"I never had an attack of the blues or anything similar in my life, Barstow," Donaldson denied quietly. "You 'll propose smelling salts next."

"Then what the devil does ail you?"

"Nothing ails me. Can't a man have a few theories without the aid of liver complaint?"

"Not that kind. They don't go with a sound constitution. When a man begins to talk of finding no use for life, he 's either a coward or sick. And-I know you 're not a coward, Peter."

The man on the couch turned uneasily.

"Nor sick either. You are as stubborn and narrow as an old woman, Barstow," he complained.

"Living is n't a matter of courage, physical or moral. It suits you-it doesn't happen to suit me, but that doesn't mean that you are well and moral while I 'm sick and a coward. My difficulty is simple-clear; I haven't the material means to get out of life what I want. I 'll admit that I might get it by working longer, but I should have to work so many years in my own way that there would n't in the end be enough of me left to enjoy the reward. Now, if I don't like that proposition, who the devil is to criticize me for not accepting it?"

"It's quitting not to stay."

"It would be if we elected to come. We don't. Moreover, my case is simplified by circumstances-no one is dependent upon me either directly or indirectly. I have no relatives-few friends. These, like you, would call me names for a minute after I 'd gone and then forget."

"You 're talking beautiful nonsense," observed Barstow.

"Schopenhauer says-"

"Damn your barbaric pessimists and all their hungry tribe!"

Donaldson smiled a trifle condescendingly.

"What's the use of talking to you when you 'll not admit a sound deduction? And yet, if I said you don't know what results when you put together two known chemicals, you 'd-"

There was a look in Barstow's face that checked Donaldson,-a look of worried recollection.

"I 'd say nothing," he asserted earnestly, "because I don't always know."

For a moment his fingers fluttered over the medley of bottles upon the shelves before him. They paused over a small vial containing a brilliant scarlet liquid. He picked it out and held it to the light.

"See this?" he asked.

Donaldson nodded indifferently.

"It is a case in point. Theoretically I should have here the innocuous union of three harmless chemicals; as a matter of fact I had occasion to experiment with it and learned that I had innocently produced a vicious and unheard-of poison. The stuff is of no use. It is one of those things a man occasionally stumbles upon in this work,-better forgotten. How do I account for it? I don't. Even in science there is always the unknown element which comes in and plays the devil with results."

"But according to your no-waste theory, even this discovery ought to have some use," commented Donaldson with a smile.

"Well," drawled the chemist whimsically, "perhaps it has; it makes murder very simple for the laity."

"How?"

Barstow turned back to his test-tube, relieved that the conversation had taken another turn.

"Because of the slowness with which it works. It requires seven days for the system to assimilate it and yet the stomach stubbornly retains it all this while. It is impossible to eliminate it from the body once it is swallowed. It produces no symptoms and leaves no evidence. There is no antidote. In the end it paralyzes the heart-swiftly, silently, surely."

Donaldson sat up.

"Any pain?" he inquired.

"None."

Barstow ran his finger over a calendar on the wall. Then he glanced at his watch.

"Stay a little while longer and you can see for yourself how it works. I am making a final demonstration of its properties."

Barstow stepped into the next room. He was gone five minutes and returned with a scrawny bull terrier scrambling at his heels. The little brute, overjoyed at his release, frisked across the floor, clumsily tumbling over his own feet, and sniffed as an overture of friendship at Donaldson's low shoes. Then wagging his feeble tail he lifted his head and patiently blinked moist eyes awaiting a verdict. The young man stooped and scratched behind its ears, the dog holding his head sideways and pressing against his ankles. He looked like a dog of the streets, but in his eyes there was the dumb appreciation of human sympathy which neutralizes breeding and blood. As Barstow returned to his work, the pup followed after him in a series of awkward bounds.

"Poor little pup," murmured Donaldson, sympathetically leaning forward with his arms upon his knees. "What's his name?"

"Sandy. But he 's a lucky little pup according to you; within an hour by the clock he ought to be dead."

"Dead?"

"If my poison works. It was seven days ago to-night that I gave him a dose."

Donaldson's brows contracted. He was big-hearted. This seemed a cruel thing to do. He whistled to the pup and called him by name, "Sandy, Sandy." But the dog only wagged his tail in response and snuggled with brute confidence closer to his master. Donaldson snapped his fingers coaxingly, leaning far over towards him. Reluctantly, at a nod from Barstow, the dog crept belly to the ground across the room. Donaldson picked up the trembling terrier and settling him into his lap passed his hand thoughtfully over the warm smooth sides where he could feel the heart pounding sturdily.

From the dog, Donaldson lifted his eyes to Barstow's back. They were dark brown eyes, set deep below a square forehead. His head, too, was square and drooped a bit between loose shoulders. He smiled to himself at some passing thought and the smile cast a pleasant softness over features which at rest appeared rather angular and decidedly intense. The mouth was large and the irregular teeth were white as a hound's. His black hair was cut short and at the temples was turning gray, although he had not yet reached thirty. It was an eager face, a strong face. It hardened to granite over life in the abstract and softened to the feminine before concrete examples of it.

"It is a bit of a paradox," he resumed, "that so harmless a creature as you, Barstow, should stumble upon so deadly an agent. What do you call it?"

"I have n't reported it yet. I don't know as I care to have my name coupled with it in these days of newspaper notoriety-even though it may be my one bid for fame."

Donaldson drew a package of Durham from his pocket and fumbled around until he found a loose paper. He deftly rolled a cigarette, his long fingers moving with the dexterity of a pianist. He smoked a moment in silence, exhaling the smoke thoughtfully with his eyes towards the ceiling. The dog, his neck outstretched on Donaldson's knee, blinked sleepily across the room at his master. The gas, blown about by drafts from the open window, threw grotesque dancing shadows upon the stained, worn boards of the floor. Finally Donaldson burst out, ever recurring to the one subject like a man anxious to defend himself,

"Barstow, I tell you that merely to cling to existence is not an act in itself either righteous or courageous. If we owe obligations to individuals we should pay them to the last cent. If we owe obligations to society, we should pay those, too,-just as we pay our poll tax. But life is a straight business proposition-pay in some form for what you get out of it. There are no individuals in my life, as I said. And what do I owe society? Society does not like what I offer-the best of me-and will not give me what I want-the best of it. Very well, to the devil with society. Our mutual obligations are cancelled."

Barstow, still busy with his work, shook his head.

"You come out wrong every time," he insisted. "You don't seem to get at the opportunities there are in just living."

The young man took a long breath.

"So?" he demanded between half closed teeth. "No?" he challenged with bitter intensity. "You are wrong; I know all that it is possible for life to mean! That's the trouble. Oh, I know clear to my parched soul! I was made to live, Barstow,-made to live life to its fullest! There isn't a bit of it I don't love,-love too well to be content much longer to play the galley slave in it. To live is to be free. I love the blue sky above until I ache to madness that I cannot live under it; I love the trees and grasses, the oceans, the forests and the denizens of the forests; I love men and women; I love the press of crowds, the clamor of men; I love silks and beautiful paintings and clean white linen and flowers; I love good food, good clothes, good wine, good music, good sermons, and good books. All-all it is within me to love and to desire mightily. How I want those things-not morbidly-but because I have five good senses and God knows how many more; because I was made to have those things!"

"Then why don't you keep after them?" demanded Barstow coldly.

"Because the price of them is so much of my soul and body that I 'd have nothing left with which to enjoy them afterwards. You can't get those things honestly in time to enjoy them, in one generation. You can't get them at all, unless you sell the best part of you as you did when you came to the Gordon Chemical Company. Oh Lord, Barstow, how came you to forget all the dreams we used to dream?"

Barstow turned quickly. There was the look upon his face as of a man who presses back a little. For a moment he appeared pained. But he answered steadily,

"I have other dreams now, saner dreams."

"Saner dreams? What are your saner dreams but less troublesome dreams,-lazier dreams? Dreams that fit into things as they are instead of demanding things as they should be? You sleep o' nights now; you sleep snugly, you tread safely about the cage they trapped you into."

"Then let me alone there. Don't-don't poke me up."

Donaldson snapped away his cigarette.

"No. Why should I? But I 'll have none of it. That damned Barnum, 'Society,' shall not catch me and trim my claws and file my teeth."

He laughed to himself, his lips drawn back a little, rubbing behind the pup's ears. The dog moved sleepily.

"Barstow," he continued more calmly, "this is n't a whine. I 'm not discouraged-it is n't that. I 'm not frightened, nor despondent, nor worried, understand. I know that things will come out all right by the time I 'm fifty, but I shall then be fifty. I 'd like a taste of the jungle now-a week or two of roaming free, of sprawling in the sunshine, of drinking at the living river, of rolling under the blue sky. I 'd like to slash around uncurbed outside the pale a little. I 'd like to do it while I 'm young and strong,-I 'd like to do it now."

"In brief," suggested Barstow, "you desire money."

"Enough so that I might forget there was such a thing."