On the Turn of a Coin

by Cleveland Moffett

 

On the Turn of a Coin ^[1]

BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT

DOWN the corridor, walking carefully, came four hospital attendants, holding the stretcher resting on two large wheels, rolling noiselessly. The operation was over. On the stretcher lay a young woman, unconscious. Her face was beautiful, hut white as the covering sheets, and her head was wound with bandages. She breathed faintly through parted lips.

Out of the operating-room came the surgeon who had finished his work, and with him his assistants, young men in blouses and black caps, most of them wearing pointed beards. An odor of carbolic acid followed them.

“Poor girl,” said one, as he watched the stretcher turn into one of the wards. “I wonder if she'll speak before she dies.”

"It will be better for her assassin if she doesn't.” said another.

Then they went off to various duties. Last of all came Auguste L'aseau, hurrying and behindhand, as usual. He had risen late, had reached the hospital late, and had had no breakfast. Of all the medical students at the Lariboisiere Hospital there was none more popular than Caseau, but the pleasures of Paris at night often made him neglect his duties of the day. In the present instance he did not know who the young woman was whom he had just seen under the knife, nor had he any idea how her skull had been crushed with such frightful wounds. Al he knew was that she had remarkable beauty and was doomed to die.

He was hurrying off to a neighboring café when a stranger waiting at the door touched his arm. The man's eyes were eager, he spoke with ill-concealed excitement and seemed like one who had gone many hours without sleep.

“Tell me,” he said, “did she speak?”

Caseau shook his head, looking at the man suspiciously,

“Can she live?”

“God knows, the doctor took sixteen pieces of bone out of her head.”

“Holy Mother, sixteen pieces of bone!”

Caseau was walking meantime toward the café, and the man followed him. His eagerness for information betrayed an interest in the case that argued some special knowledge, and Caseau was curious. “Will you drink?” he said, when they had taken seats at a table.

The stranger called for absinthe and drained his glass quickly. “I must ask one more question, my friend,” he said. “Tell me where were the wounds on the girl's head—were they on the back?”

"They were,” assented Casseau, who had ordered his breakfast.

“Were there none in front, none on the forehead nor on the face?”

Caseau shook his head. “There were none.”

“How strange,” muttered the man. “She was facing him when...”

“Facing whom?” asked Caseau sharply, and the question seemed to bring the man to his senses.

“Pardon me; I forgot that you do not know. I have been through so much for the last twelve hours that I am dazed. Do you believe in occult things, hallucinations and so on?”

Caseau was only in his second year, and the lectures on hallucinations did not begin until the third, so he answered guardedly.

"That depends,” he said, with an air of holding knowledge in reserve. He questioned with his eyes, and for the first time appeared sympathetic. The man ordered another absinthe.

“I will tell you about it,” he said. “I shall go mad unless I tell some one. In the first place, let me assure you that usually I am the most matter-of-fact man in Paris; I never get angry, I never get excited, but last night”—He paused and a little shiver ran over him.

“But last night,” repeated Caseau encouragingly.

“It was about nine o'clock, and I was walking up the Rue Fontaine with my hat off because the night was hot, and whistling because business had been good. You see I am a grocer down on the Street of the Four Winds. When I reached the corner of the Rue Breda, where I live, 1 stopped in a little cake-shop to buy some sweets for my wife. Then I hurried upstairs, two at a time, for I was eager to see her. Our apartment is on the fifth floor, looking out on the Rue Fontaine, and a balcony runs along the windows where my wife keeps flowers growing. It is a nice place to sit summer evenings, and I expected to find her there.

“Imagine my surprise, then, on opening the door, to find the apartment quite dark, except for the glow of the little night-lamp from the bedroom at the end of the corridor. And instead of seeing my wife come running to meet me, all smiles, I found absolute stillness in the place, stillness and darkness. In that moment, as I stood with the door ajar, and my hand on the knob, there came over me a creeping sense of fear, something I had never known before. It seemed to me that some great danger was lurking in the air, that some evil presence was near me. So strong was this feeling that, acting on the first impulse, I stepped back on to the landing outside and closed the door behind me.

“In an instant, however, my reason reasserted itself, and ashamed of my weakness I opened the door again, closed it sharply behind me, and double-locked it. Then hanging my hat on a hook at one side I started down the corridor. There was a distance of twenty feet that I had to traverse before reaching the bedroom, and I assure you that I never in my life endured such torture as I felt in taking those few steps. At first it was a fear for myself that held me back, but presently this was superseded by a horrible sickening fear for my wife. I saw it was she whose life was threatened, or had been threatened, for the conviction grew upon me that I had come too late. When I was half-way down the corridor, I clutched the wall with one hand and pressed the other to my brow, which was throbbing with frightful fancies. They say that drowning men see strange things as death comes on, but no drowning man, I am sure, ever saw a vision more distinct than came to me there of my poor wife.”

By this time Caseau was listening intently.

“She is a beautiful woman, I beg you to believe, and I saw her as plainly as I see you now, stretched on the bed, her face as lovely as ever in its setting of dark hair, only very pale. But there were wounds, dreadful wounds, on the back of her head, from which the pillow was stained crimson.

“But this was only a vision?” put in Caseau.

“Yes, a vision. God grant you may never have one. I was unable to move, afraid to speak. I seemed rooted to the floor.

“Finally my will conquered, and I staggered into the bedroom. With an awful fascination my eyes sought the bed, around which were drawn the red curtains. On the side toward me, on a little table, burned the night lamp. Everything in the room seemed as usual—there was no sign that ill had come—yet I cannot tell you with what feelings I stepped forward and drew apart the curtains. My wife lay there apparently sleeping, her lovely face turned toward me, and the pillow beneath her head as white as her hand that pressed it. With a sigh of relief I sank into a chair. At that moment I was startled to hear, behind the curtains, a gasping sob, and then a burst of hysterical weeping. Hurrying to the bedside I besought my wife to be calm, assuring her that I was there to protect her.

“At last my wife recovered sufficiently to explain her fright as well as she was able to do so. She had dined alone about six o'clock and about seven had given Amandine, our servant, permission to go out for the evening. Then she had spent a little time tidying up the apartment, and about half-past seven had settled down to read in the room where we have our library. This room faces on the Rue Breda. In front of this room there is a short stretch of balcony, which ends in an iron partition that separates it from the balcony of the house adjoining, which is No. 4. It would be possible for a man to climb over this partition and step from one balcony to the other.

“As my wife read she must have dozed, for presently, although her back was turned toward the window, she seemed to see a man of large stature standing on the balcony outside and peering into the room. This man had bushy red hair and eyes of the palest blue—eyes that frightened her. Presently he withdrew stealthily, climbed over the partition, and peered into a window of No. 4. Once again he drew back, seemed to hesitate, smiled with a grim humor and noiselessly drawing a coin from his pocket spun it in the air and caught it deftly in his open palm. Then moving closer to the window for better light he nodded, put the coin back in his pocket and forthwith entered the room where my wife sat, passing easily through the long door-like halves of the window, that were swung wide open.

“Spellbound, my wife watched the man, who paid no heed to her, but made his way at once to the bedroom, she following in mortal terror. Approaching the bed he noticed that its curtains were drawn and paused a moment, casting his eyes about him as if in search of something. Near the fireplace lay a heavy brass poker which he picked up, returning with it to the bedside. Breathless my wife watched as he put aside the curtains. A woman lay there sleeping, with her face turned away, but my wife thought it was herself. She saw the man lift the poker as if to strike, at which the woman lying in the bed started and looked toward him. At this my wife's terror burst the bonds in her throat and she cried aloud.

“Of course it was only fancy, a dream if you like, something that was not real, for the next instant she was alone in the room. But the effect was most distressing. Do what she would she could not drive from her mind the face of that tawny-haired assassin, with his pale blue eyes. It seemed to her that he was still near her with murderous purpose. In vain, lamp in hand, she searched the apartment, and tried to convince herself that nothing was there; in vain she closed and bolted the windows opening on the balcony. That sense of nameless fear pursued her still; and whichever way-she turned it seemed to her that an enemy was crouching behind her, waiting his chance to spring or strike.

“Finally she went to bed, hoping that sleep would give her some relief; but she could not sleep, she could not get her thoughts out of the morbid channel in which they were running. So, anxious, restless, sick at heart, she had waited for me to come, and my coming, alas, brought her only added terrors, for my strange delay at the door, my opening it twice and closing it, then my long pause and silence in the corridor, instead of the cheery greeting I was wont to give her, made her sure that it was not I at all, but some intruder come to do her harm, some prowling assailant of the night, perhaps the very man whose eyes and fiery hair had frightened her so in the vision.

“Then, realizing that it was her husband who was there, the man who loved her, and that there was no danger at all, she burst into the fit of hysterical sobbing from which I had such difficulty in calming her.”

“You are preventing me from eating my breakfast, sir, with your queer story,” said Caseau. “And besides, I can't see what connection it has with the young woman who has just been operated on.”

“Let me finish,” said the man, “let me finish. We hardly slept all night, for our fears persisted in spite of the knowledge that no harm had befallen. I made matters worse by foolishly telling my wife of the fright I had experienced on entering the apartment, and my vision of the murdered woman. You will remember particularly that the wounds were on the back of the head, and you tell me that is where they really were.”

“That is where they were on the woman in the hospital, but she is not your wife?"

"No, thank heaven, hut you know who she is?”

Not I, said Caseau. “I got in too late to learn any details.”

"She is Marie Gagnol, who occupied the apartment adjoining ours in No. 4, Rue Breda.”

"My God!” exclaimed Caseau.

Just then one of the other students came in from the hospital. "She's dead,” he said. "She never spoke. But they are going to try an important experiment on her. Dr. Rosseau thinks she closed her eyes with fright at the very moment when she saw the murderer, and never opened them since. He's going to test his new apparatus for getting the last image recorded on the retina. If he succeeds it will be a new triumph for the hospital and for science.”

“Gentlemen,” said the stranger impressively, “if the doctor's experiment succeeds I believe on my soul that it will be also a triumph for justice.”

That afternoon Dr. Rosseau made the experiment, with brilliant success; it was one of the first demonstrations of the possibilities of colored photography. Registered in the sensitive film of the dead woman's eyes, was found the distinct image of a man of unusual size, who clutched in his hands an uplifted poker. The man's hair was red, his eyes a pale blue.

Two months later such a man died under the knife on the Place de la Roquette. He had been arrested, convicted and condemned on the sole evidence of a pair of lifeless eye-balls, supported by the testimony of a woman who had never seen him except in a vision. On the eve of his execution he made a full confession. He stated that the murder was a chance crime, prompted only by greed. He had reached the balcony running in front of Nos. 2 and 4 Rue Breda by using a rope hung from the roof. He declared that for about five minutes while he was standing outside he had hesitated whether to enter the apartment of No. 2 or No. 4. He had rested the decision on the turn of a coin.

1. Copyright, 1900, by The Shortstory Publishing company. Copyright secured in Great Britain. All rights reserved.