The Man Who Couldn't Sleep

s old. For nine of those years I have lived in New York. And b

eriod is past. I now have to face the fact that I am a failure. For when a man

ettings is still more or less a mystery to me. Perhaps it was merely because of its far-offness. Perhaps it was because the editors remembered that I came from the land of the beaver and sagely

of school-libraries yet brought in telegrams from motion-picture directors for first rights. I gave them enough gun-play to shoot Chilcoot Pass into the middle of the Pacific, and was publicly denominated as the apostle of the Eye-Socket School, and during the three-hundred-night run of my melodrama, The Pole Raiders, even beheld on the Broadway sign-boards an extraordinarily stalwart picture of myself in a rakish Stetson and a flanne

he atlases and sent for governmental reports, and pored over the R.N.W.M.P. Blue Books, and gleaned a hundred or so French-Canadian names for half-breed villains from a telephone-directory f

d be best to keep my head as low as possible until I was feeling better. As for firearms, I abhorred them. I never shot off an air-rifle without first shutting my eyes. I never picked up a duck-gun without a wince of aversion. So I was able to do wonderful things with firearms, on p

d often so disparagingly known as society. Society, as a rule, admits only the lions of my calling across its sacred portals. And even these lions, I found, were accepted under protest or the wing of some commendable effort for charity, and having roa

her. The tea-hour visit merged into the formal dinner, and the formal dinner into the even more formal box at the Horse-Show, and then a call to fill up

s type. That went down only with musicians. So I soon learned to keep my bangs clipped, my trousers creased, and my necktie inside my coat-lapels. I also learned to use my wits, and how to key my talk up to dowager or down to debutante, and how to be passably amusing even before the champagne

explain, as an impecunious but dependable young bachelor. And I suppose I could have kept on at that r?le, year after year, until I developed into a foppish and somewhat threadbare old beau. But about this time I was giving North America its first spasms of goose-flesh with my demigod type of Gibsonian engineer who fought the villain until his flannel shirt was in rags and then shook his fist in Nature's face when she dogged him with the Eternal Cold. And there was money in writing for flat-dwellers about that Eternal Cold, and about battling claw to claw and fang to fang, and about eye-sockets without any

that somewhat somber shell nested an amazingly rich kernel of luxuriousness. It was good form; it was unbelievably comfortable, and it was not what the c

ople to help the man who helped me, and then a town car to take me back and forth from it, and then a chauffeur to take care of the car, and then the service-clothes fo

. He was a valet and a chef de cuisine and a lord-high-chamberlain and a purchasing-agent and a body-guard and a benignant-eyed old godfather all in one. The man babied me. I could see that all along. But I was already an overworked and slightly neurasthenic specimen, even in those days, and I was glad enough to have that masked and silent Efficiency always at my elbow. There were times, too, when his activities merged into

happened on Latreille as he was being measured and "mugged" in the Identification Bureau, with those odd-looking Bertillon forceps taking his cranial measurements. The intelligence of the man interested me; the inalienable look of respectability in his face convinced me, as a student of human nature, that he was not meant for any such fate or any such environment. And when I looked into his case I found that instinct had not been amiss. The unfortunate fellow had been "framed" for a car-theft of which he was entirely innocent. He

not a product fresh from the factory, as I had anticipated. But Latreille was proud of that car, and proud of his position, and I was proud of having a French chauffeur, though my ardor was dampened a littl

the Hudson every other week and never have missed it. She was beautiful; she was wonderful; but she was dishearteningly wealthy. With all those odious riches of hers, however, she was a terribly honest and above-board girl, a healthy-bodied, clear-eyed,

I lost my heart. When I met her at the Obden-Belponts, a week later, she confessed that I'd rather been on her conscience. She generously offered to hand over that oblong of old velvet, if I still happened to be grieving over its loss. But I told her that all I asked

o-and she wanted it to be big work, gloriously big work. She wouldn't even consent to a formal engagement. But we had an "understanding." I was sent back to my work

are never found on the bargain-counter. I had outgrown the Spartan ways of my youth when I could lunch contentedly at Child's and sleep soundly on a studio-couch in a top-floor room. And more and more that rapacious ogre known as Social Obligation had forged his links and fetters about my movements. More than ever, I saw, I had my end to keep up. What should have been a recreation had become almost a treadmi

from the frivolous side-issues of life, divorced from the distractions of a city which seemed organized for only th

ours together was memorable. It was one of the mile-stones of my life. I wanted to furbish up my information on that remote corner of the world, which, in a way,

ng at me with open admir

ough I stood a little at a lo

a casual hand-wave about that

etort. "I mean those stories

mendation from a man who knew life as it was, w

?" I asked, more for something to dissemble my e

gh the mails about the same as they'd come through the mails down here. And fo

about them?" I inquired, a little

l, Witter. It's you. I said yo

d, with the drip of the honey n

o get away with it!" was P

y with it?"

know the country. I know how folks live up there, and what the laws are. And it may strike you as queer, friend-author, but folks up in that district are uncommonly like folks down here in the States. And in the Klondike and this same British Yukon th

taring

ctures," I gasped. "And

ake it out of their pants pocket before they know they've gone by-by. Why, you've even got 'em tranced off in the matter of everyday school-geography. You've had some of those hero-

He told me many things that were new to me, dishearteningly, discouragingly, devitalizingly new to me. Without knowing it, he poignarded me, knifed me through and through. Without dreaming what he was doing, he eviscerated me

first slee

it was like seeking consolation beside a corpse. For me, Alaska was killed, killed forever. And blight had fallen on more than my work. It had crept over my very world, the world which only the labor of my pen could ke

t I couldn't afford to go away. And it was an unspeakably hot summer. I did my best to work, sitting for hours at a time staring at a blank sheet of paper, set out like tangle-foot to catch a passing idea. But not an idea alighted on that square of spotless white. When I tried new fields, knowin

ven more diffidently asked me a question or two. He ended up by announcing that I was as sound as a dollar,

that double-edged sword of mortification, I once again tried to bury myself in my work. But I just as well might have tried to bury myself in a butter-dish, for there was no effort and no activity there to envelope me. I was coerced into idleness, without ever having acquired the art of doing nothin

manded something, in the name of God, that would give me a good night's sleep. He was less

ound it hard to account for, drove me into daily violations of the traffic laws. Twice, in fact, I was fined for this, with a curtly warning talk from the presiding magistrate on the second occasion, since the offense, in this case, w

king veronal now, to make me sleep, and with cooler weather I looked for better rest and a return to work. But my hopes were ill-founded. I came to dread the night, and the night's

e given over to festivity. Latreille had motored me out to a small dinner-dance at Washburn's, on Long Island, but I had left early in the evening, perversely depressed by a hilarity in which I had not the heart to join. Twice, on the way back to the ci

s along the sidewalk. But it was too late. I could feel the impact as we struck. I

I dropped weakly back in my seat. I think I was sobbing. I scarcely noticed that L

he asked, glancing back

I said, surrendering merely to that blind and cowardly p

t there gasping and clutching my moist fingers together, as I've seen h

nsoling blackness of the night about us. And I thanked God, as

ing brokenly as we slowed u

ed my face. Then he looked carefully back

He said it coolly, and almost impersonally. But

I clamored insanely, weakly, as we

wheels!" calmly protested my enemy, for I

to do?" I gasped, for I noticed tha

od off the running-gear, bef

e to me in all its ghastliness. I could see axles and running-board and brake-bar dripping with red, festooned with shre

feel the occasional tremors that went through the frame-work as he busied himself at that grisly task. I could hear his grunt of satisfaction when he

emeanor, a note which even through that black fog of terror reached me and awakened my resentment. We were partners i

ngly indefinite. I was too shaken and sick to ferret out its consequences. I lef

of the tragedy. I even encountered my good friend Patrolman McCooey, apparently by accident, and held him up on his beat about Gramercy Park to make casual inquiries as to street-accidents, and if such things were increasing of late. But nothing of moment, apparently, had come to McCooey's ears. And I stood watching him as he flatfooted

or not doing what I should have done to succor the injured, then sinkingly remembering what Latreille had mentioned about the weight of my car. Yet

de of his mouth, so that Benson, who stood on the h

resenting the man's use of th

onosyllabic explanation. An

ood enough of the law of the land to know that a speeder who flees fro

d carry the body back to his house

covered his movement of catching hold of my a

rt and conspiratorial undertone. "Sit

reason to feel that this silence wasn't always as profound as it seemed. For at the end of my third day of self-torturing solitude I went to my club to dine. I went with set teeth. I went

a grip on myself, and forlornly argued that it was all mere imagination, the vaporings of a morbid and chlorotic mind. Yet the next moment a counter-shock confronted me. For as I stared desolately out of that club window I caught sight of Latreille himself. He stood there at the curb, talking confidently to three other chauffeurs clustered about him between their cars. Nothing, I sud

dless avenue of denuded infants. It was all so horrible that it left me limp and quailing before the lash of daylight. Then, out of a blank desolation that became more and more unendurable, I clutched feverishly at the thought of Mary Lockwood and the autumn-tinted hills of Virginia. I felt the need of ge

said, "D

in me. But there was nothing. Bad news, I bitterly reminded myself, had the habit of traveling fast. Mary knew. The endless chain had

cket-fence script that was as sharp-pointed

oth have to get used to the idea of trudging along in single harness. And I think you will understand why. I'm not exacting explanations, remember. I'm merely requesting an armistice. If you intend to let me, I still want to be your friend, and I trust no perceptible gulf will yarn [Transcriber'

rank much more Pommery-Greno than was good for me. I got drunk, in fact, blindly, stupidly, senselessly drunk. But it seemed to drape a veil between me and the past. It made a bonfire of my body to burn up the debris