The Man Who Couldn't Sleep

dullest ebb of earth's deadest hour, when Bens

nouvelles. I had just reached that mildly assuaging point in Une Nuit de Cléopatre where the mysterious arrow, whistling thro

The thrill of drama, I cogitated, is apt to leak out of a situation when it comes to one over a circuit of two thousand moldering ye

hy aren't

sir," began the intruder

bout it that I rose like a fish

e of night?"

s,

nd of gentle

t of hesitation that is able to

sir, it's

demanded, in

e lock. When he forced the door, sir, not being

and tossed it aside. It was only drama of the second dimension, as old and musty as a mummy

ting, Benson. Be so good as

hands of the little French clock on my mantel

r," explained that astute old dissembler, "bein

d fetch him here. And you might bring up a bottle o

nswered. But sti

is in the cabinet-

laugh; times when the transparencies of his obliquit

fancy is amusement, distraction, excitement, anything-

t a good sign. I got up and paced the rug, like a castaway pacing some barren and empty island. But

me mishap. Then the portière parted for the secon

s the tint of a rather soiled white glove. It could never have been a ruddy face. But its present startling pallor, I assumed, must have been largely due to Benson's treatment, although I was still puzzled by the look of abject terror which gave the captive's eyes their animal-like glitter. He stood before me for all the world as though a hospital interne had

len and silent. His sulky speechlessness was plainly that of a low order of mind menaced by vague uncertainties and mystified by

e, for all their terror, with some inner sense of vicious security. To fire questions at him was as futile as throwing pebbles at an alligator. He h

was new to those respectable Anglian ears, I had to translate it.

nce. He felt from pocket to pocket, as gingerly as small boys feel into ferret

ame a small electric flashlight. Under our burglar's coat, with one end resting in his left-hand waistcoat pocket, was a twenty-inch steel "jimmy." It was a very attractive tool, not unlike a long and extre

inger rings, a gold barrette, and a foot or two of old-fashioned locket chain,

s indurated hide. His passivity was beginning to get on my nerves. He might have been a wax figure in the Ed

w where this s

out of those sullen and rebellious blinke

t breast-bone. "Go on with the search, Benson, and get everything." For it was p

ression on our prisoner's face. He looked worried and harassed by this time; he seemed to have lost his tranquil and snake-like assurance. His small, lean head with the pathetically eager

een his hand bringing away a small vase partly wrapped in a

of sang-de-boeuf porcelain told me what it was. There was no possibility of mistake. One glimpse of it was enough. It was from the Gubtill collection. For once before my fingers ha

d white with its slowly deepening tinge of pale green. Then I looked up at the delicate lip, the lip that had once been injured and artfully banded with a ring of gold. It was a vase of the K'angshi Peri

of haricot-red groundwork, with rose spots accentuated by the usual clouds of apple-green, and a taller and, to my mind, much more valuable ashes-of-roses cylindrical Lang Yao with a carved ivory base. We had looked on the occasion as somewhat of an event, for such things naturally are not picked up every day. So the mere sight of the vase took me back to the Gubtill home, to that rich and spacious house on lower Fifth Avenue where I had spent not a fe

elings. Yet the thought of such beauty being in the hands of a brute like that sickened me. I was angered by the very idea that such grace and delicacy should be outraged by

nd down. I noticed, for the first tim

this?" I asked, gazing back, against my will, a

for the first time. For th

o its owne

o is it

to the vase, and

over t' Fifth Avenue," he h

e did you

o'

tience as my glance fell on the all

me to swallow th

you swallow. I know the

truth?" I found it hard to

as his cu

out dark corners, and crawl under beds, and arm yourself to the teeth, and stand ready to murder innocent women, to

ut on his face in

anyway?" he demanded

er of women's jewe

a man can stoop to. You've skulked and crawled an

a license to ca

's anything but low and arrant

id with a grin that

ppose because I don't carry a jimmy and gun t

elt under my heels. The other man followed my glance, but with a lip-curl of contempt. He had jumped to the conclusion, of c

al side-issue, "that's all play-actin'. Get up against what I have, a

bermaids and running like a pelted

ince, and that it took a

right," he retorted. "And the kind o' ne

t him a step or two nearer. Bu

glar, with his eyes on my face, stepped still closer, as thoug

nd what's doin' behind them brick walls, and who's awake, and where a shot's goin' to come from, and what chances of a getaway you'll have, and the size of the bit you'll get if you're pinched. Just

e. I had trifled with that ethical totem-

came to me. "We'll try it, and we'll try it together. For I'm go

sudden change came over it. His rat

ated Benson, remembering, doubtless, his encounter

be over-nice in his methods, I knew, now that I had him cornered. A second idea occurred to me, a rather intoxicating one. I suddenly

tleman here with you. And while you look after him, I

o-night," broke in

here's nothing extraordinary in his particular line of activity

looked

leave it until morning, sir, and talk it over quiet-like with your friend Mr. Mc

nt gentleman of the black-jack, and keep this handsome Colt of his quite close about you while you're doing it. For I'm going to take this piec

th Avenue house, in that ebb-tide hour of the night when even Broadway is empty, wondering what lay behind the brownstone mask, asking myself wha

c push-bell until a sleepy servant answered it. But that, after all, seemed absurdly tame and commonplace. It was without the slightest tang of drama, and I wa

took a certain crude form of nerve. I was convinced of this, indeed, as I saw the approaching figure of a patrolman on his rounds. It caused me, as I felt the jimmy like a staybone against my ribs, and the flashlight like

time I turned and sauntered slowly toward Sixth Avenue. As I swung eastward again I found that the last house on the side-street, the house abutting the Fifth

rated against the iron covering of a coal-chute. This coal-chute stood midway between the curb and the area railing. I looked down at it for a moment or two. Then something prompted me to test its edge with the to

I could see that it was a somewhat ignominious beginning. But I felt buoyantly sure that I was on the right track. It took an effort to work th

there for several seconds, inhaling dust, and listening and wondering whether or not the walls above me harbored a caretaker. Then I took out the

y been forced open. I knew, however, that I was following in the footsteps of my more experienced predecessor. Then cam

ge upward. I was, of course, confronted by nothing more disturbing than ghost-like furniture covered with ticking and crystal-hung chandeliers encased in cheesecloth. I began to admire my friend the burglar's astuteness in choosing so circuitous a

he enemy's lines. Yet the way still seemed clear enough. For, as I came to the roof-scuttle of the second house I found that it, too, remained unlocked. My predecessor had made things almost disappointingly

or quite different to that of the house I had just left. There was something expository in it, something more vital and electric, eloquent of a place inhabited, of human beings

s disturbed by the thought of how deep I had ventured into an uncertainty. I began to be oppressed by the thought of how complicated my path was proving. I felt intimidated by the undetermined intricaci

he darkness, that a burglar's calling was not all beer and skittle

arkness with one hand against the wall, I caught the rhythm of a slow and muffled snoring. There was something oddly reassuring in that reiterated vibration

dy too deep in the woods to think of turning back. My one passi

d not all of them, I very well knew, would be equipped with the same generous whistling-buoy as that I had just left behind me. There was, too, something satisfying in the knowledge that I was at least getting nearer and nearer the ground-floor. This was due, not so much to the fact that I was

assured me that I had reached the last step in my descent. I was relieved to be able to turn carefully and silently about to th

alf cabinet-lined study and half informal exhibition-room, was the chamber wherein Anthony Gubtill treasured his curios. It would take but a mi

interrogatively about the massively furnished room, resting for a moment on marble and metal and glass-fronted book-shelf. I remembered, with almost a smile of satisfaction, the little Clytie above the fireplace, and t

reading-table. I stood there, picking out remembered object after object, remarking th

d room with my spear of light, satisfied myself that the space between the peach-

etting my bald light-shaft root like a hog's-snout along that shelf so crowded with delicate

-lamp and the light at once went out. I stood there with every nerve of my body on edge. I crouched forward, ti

self, not ten paces from me. He was sitting in a high-backed armchair of green leather. He must have been watching me from the f

t not a sound, beyond the querulous tick of the clock, came

foolish explanation. I crouched low and backed off obliquely, as though some value lay in the intervention of space, and as though something venomous were confronting me. I fell slowly back, pawing frenziedly about me f

screen, for it fell to the floor with an echoing crash. I waited, holding my breath, with horripilat

en mere hallucination, that expectant attention had projected into my line of vision a purely imaginary fig-lire. I still waited, with my heart pounding. Then

at crashed, bullet-like, through the film of consciousness. It was foll

ric ray directly in front of me. I let the minute circle of illumination arrow through the d

but of that I am not sure. Yet of one thing I was only too c

at covered the relaxed body. I was collected enough to assume that he had overheard the intruder; had come to investigate, and had been struck down and cunningly thrust into a chair. This inference

th had been caused by a cruelly heavy blow, dealt by some blunt instrument, that the enormity of my own intrusion into that house of horror came home to me. I

of an electric switch-button. Then, of a sudden,

a desirable thing. My foolhardy caprice, before an actuality so overawing, dwindled into something worse than absurdity. And thought came back at a bound to the porcelain in my pocket. I recalled the old-time rivalry between the dead man and myself for The Fl

he thud of a quietly closed door fell on my startled ears. Then came the murmur of voices. There was no longe

closed the door of the inner room. I felt more secure with ev

nd then the snap of a light-switch. There was nothing secret about the new invasion. I knew, as I shrank

head of the stairs. It was a cautious and carefully modula

t you,

ame a

strangely reassuring in that commonplace boyish voice. Anthony Gubtill, I knew, had no immediate fami

voice from the lower hall,

girl who might be coming home tired from a dance at Sherry's. Yet, knowin

n's voice from the lower hall. There were sounds

e answer from above. "

a stif

swered the g

or two, will you?" requested the youth from above, still

?" deman

!" was the sleepily

he white blur of his shirt-front. Behind him, framed in the doorway, stood a young girl of about twenty, a blonde in pale blue, with bare arms and bare shoulders. Her skin looked very soft and baby-like in the strong sideligh

end. I realized, as I peeped out at her, that my first duty would be to ke

nt without moving. Then he turned and walked out

Yet for all that new-born ecstasy of impatience, I was still compelled to wait, for I could hear the occasional sound of

on its cabinet, without so much as flashing my light. Then I circled back along the wall, felt for the library door, and groped cautiously across the perilous breadth of the furniture-crowded chamber. It took me

led Orrie held in his hand a revolver that seemed the size of a toy-cannon. This was leveled directly at my blinking eyes. The other youth, in cerise pajamas with orange colored frogs and a dressing-gown tied at the waist

too much; I could not react to this newer emergency. I kept wondering if the idiot with the Colt realized just how delicate a pressu

s. I might have been a somewhat obstinate black bass

his brow into a frown of youthful determination. "Don't

intention

pted the younger man. "

l-post. She reminded me, with her delicate whites and pinks and bl

e door," cried Orri

e to hold my hands above my head. I did so without hesitation; I

She stood with her back to it, studying my face. I could see that I rather interested them all. But in that interes

say?" demanded Orrie,

say," I told him. "But I pr

his movement

t!" commented the youth

ce," I continued with some heat, "and then send these children out

n indignant gasp from

assured the youthful hero in ce

tute Orrie, staring at me with the utmost insolence. Yet I could see

ted. "I'm not a burglar,

e tripartite ripple of laug

ou?" asked the i

o further use beat

ou?" demanded t

olver balanced in his right ha

hem, as steadily as I could. "

t nu

My young friends, I could see, were enjoying a home melodrama, a melodrama in which I was obviously th

e!" ejaculated the

how or when I broke my hat-crown. I had remained as unconscious of the scratch across my cheek as I was of the garret cobwebs that festooned my clothing. I saw as I peeped into the mirror only a sickly-hued and grimy-looking footpad with dirty hands and a broken hat. I

at!" he gasped. "You

divorced from the sterner problem confronting both

nough of this tomm

-rot, and get him tied," proc

rrie's Colt while he goes through him," he commanded, in the chest-to

, though in an altogether wary and tight-lipped manner. To continue my protests, I sa

triumphantly unearthed the jimmy and the damnatory skeleton keys. I could see the

ld not help remembering how this scene was paralleling another of the same natu

ts as he explored still deeper and dug out my monogramed wallet, and then a gold cigarette-case, on which my name was duly inscribed. He turned them over in his ha

irectory. He riffled through the pages with quick and impat

done," he cried, his eye

anded the y

ough Witter Kerfoot's, as well. He's taken these things fr

clutch at his two listeners. I could see them surrend

call Uncle Anthon

oth the tragedy that lay so close at hand, a

ill outside. Caddy, I think you'll have to come a

thinking mostly of the soft-eyed girl with the bab

uietly?" my capt

without looking up,

ittle shrill with excitement

r!" she cried out, in her

what i

a gent

erent Orrie as he motioned me, with a curt mov

as her inconsequential y

e la

rious barber out of Sing Sing," he scoffed. "And o

commanded Orrie, and I could feel his insolent gun-barrel against my ribs as he gave the command for the second time. They were drunk, I could see, with the intoxication of their exploit. They were preoccupied wi

ying their foolish and murderous-looking firearms. The girl rem

ell," I wearily explained. "

g," said Orrie as I fit

o call the officer who is watching us

then!" was the youn

olman, across the corner and up the steps. I swung open the door as h

ly, and then assure these gentlemen I am Witter

unperturbed McCooey. "But wh

e three of us will go quietly upstairs, you'll find my man Benso

the doorway,

I can't be stayin'

ou've

as a Sing-Sing lifer bottled up in this block, and I'm holdin' wan end av the p

at?" I

sir. But I

g the door. "Your man's up

e?" he demande

cCooey, if you'll make as short work of this situation as you can, for the truth of the matter