The Eater of Darkness, page 12
Pen and paper lie before him. He is writing a poem, or a letter to Charles Dograr, or an apologia for his career (the facts were never clearly known). Suddenly he bursts into tears. His head falls forward on the desk. Heavy sobs rack his body.
Now his head rises from the couch of his crossed arms. His eye falls on the x-ray machine. A bitter sneer twists his lips, which form the words: “What—has—this—profited—me?”
He rises. He seizes a hammer. With a quick movement he swings it above his head; is about to bring it down on the delicate mechanism. A fit of coughing shakes him. He leans against the table for support till the spasm shall pass.
(“Why? … Why? …” he gasped, like a [sic] infant wonderingly. A cold tentacle of phlegm lapped against his palate and a retching convulsion squirmed into his throat. For a moment he struggled literally for breath. “If–I can—last—long enough. Only a—few hours–more!”)
Again the weight of hatred tautens his courage. He flings the hammer to a far corner of the room. He strides to the desk; tears up the paper on which he had been writing. For a moment he stares down into the street below. His back is turned to the camera, but his hands are seen to clench with rage. He turns, raises his fist above his head. His lips form the words: “Curse—Charles—Dograr! He—has—spurned–me!”
With extreme care, he begins polishing the glittering accoutrements of the machine.
(Iris out on the machine)
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8. A telephone girl at the switchboard. A light flashes. She plugs in.—“Long distance from Erie? Aw ri’. … Yeah, this Plice Headquarters. Whosi’ for? … Huh? … the Chief? … Aw r’ … Waitaminit. You’ll get yeh connection.” She plugs in the wire for the Chief’s Office, twitches the call-bell lever.
13—LE KERMÈS DE L’YEUSE
In the studio they were all drinking but (as she stepped like falling out) on the balcony (behind her the treacherously lighted room a bomb in the night and) clutching the chill iron railing she:
(Inside weaving back and forth they laughing they were all dancing and singing Teddy Pierre Jim Lily they were all drunk) the stars like shark’s teeth smiled at her. It is cool she felt and (patting down her breasts her breathing sides to the trickling flanks) the whiskbroom breeze as (inextricably intermingled with trees they were all drunk) tumbling (the light striped with laughter spread fanlike) they:
she here (if for a while no) no I am not (no one) not drunk but: her throat fluffed rigidly against that last glass of (sweetish: and her mind softening like a tremulously uprearing cone gelatinous) slightly painful but: it must be balanced:
(I shall not be drunk she thought: Where was he?) she thought:
(As with (almost) tears) here he died (as she remembering: Ah! It had been wonderful in the old days!) remembering: the arm behind her back his legs (hooked) into hers while (the night like a shawl about her shoulders and) the writhing filmy night. I said yes. I always (and) looking down:
It fell to earth and bred millions of little white moths about her eyes (I am not (crying I am not) drunk. He has gone) but:
It became four stories and kneading (the balcony becoming a window) into a tall brownstone old house: it would be a bedroom: it would be pinkshaded: the girl wears blue: and (carefully) adjusting (her head like the kermés de l’yeuse hardening) and her arms against the cold granite windowsill. She looks down as that other shall do four stories into (where was he? West Twenty-Third Street?) and:
It is West Twenty-Third Street so for a few minutes she offers up hours and hours of watching (before the next dance) a vicarious sacrifice to Love. She produced:
1. Late into the night, Hélène Montmorency remained at her window, staring across the light-lichened expanse of Twenty-Third Street at the House of Mystery opposite.
Sometimes the ripe red lips parted in a sigh. Sometimes a whisper, scarce louder than a sigh, issued from that perfect throat—“He will come soon now”—and, faintlier-flying than her swarming hopes, lost itself on the nigrescent air as she settled again (unconscious of that other who with deft fingers the creamy shoulder modeling, shaping the soft voluted throat across miles and her head dreaming) to the lonely vigil. And still the grim house across the way concealed its secret.
That there was danger she knew. So much she had read in the curl of Fred’s predatory lips, in the exultation of his glance as, with scarce a word to her, he had dashed into the room, seized his pistol and hurried out to the street again.
There, from her window she had seen him—strangest sight of all on that strange night!— cross the street and disappear behind the heavy portal of the House of Mystery. And when, at last, he had reappeared, it had been arm in arm with that one–Charles Dograr as we know, his name to her unknown—to whom one night she had thrown sweet kisses and, breathless with passion, had seen him fling the honeyed swarm back from his lips to hers again!
Fred—with the man she loved! A thousand surmises sued her reason for a tardy credence. The man she loved, and the man who loved her, walking arm in arm together! Had Fred forsworn his duty? Had he been won over by bribes—by the cunning persuasion of that old gentleman whom she saw, from time to time behind his window, spiderlike at work among the webbed mechanism of his strange machine? Had he—but no! With all his faults, Fred Coolan prized above aught else the Honor of the Force. And besides, that Captaincy of Detectives—his dream for many years—he had said would be the guerdon of a successful capture. And that he suspected these two across the way of responsibility for the Electric Murders that had terrorized the city, there was no doubt.
Had he trapped them, then? Had he wormed his way cunningly into their confidence, that he might learn their plans and then betray them? If so, only a miracle at this late hour could save the youth she loved from destruction—or worse.
But rather, had they, by superior cunning, misled the detective and tangled his feet in the net of their persuasion? She watched and wondered, waited and watched. Three o’clock boomed from the Metropolitan Tower (or the mill, is it the Epte? pulsing across the fringing perfumed fields? she weaving?) waiting:
“He won’t be long … now. …”
Love, of all the passions flesh is heir to—Love alone could furnish a flame so intense at once and so enduring, to keep those long hours warm with hope, alight with expectancy.
Hélène Montmorency, her body, soiled by contact with a world that is hard and dreary enough for the most fortunate of us, but to none harder, to none drearier than to an orphan foundling cast forth at an early age from the doors of a heartless institution instead of a mother’s fond love, penniless, into a brutal world, had grown callous under Life’s buffetings.
But deep in the inner core of her weary heart one shrine she had kept pure. And here now, as before an altar, she burned before his image the incense of her adoration.
“Soon … now.” And shifting slightly in her cramped position as (carefully unfolding the satin fold of her kimono slipping revealing the snow-white softness of that matchless shoulder, the incipient curve of the lifting breasts and like moons in syzygy the crescent curves of thigh and abdomen where scented like pineapple, downy-fragrant like fields cupped beneath the strobile night and with soft weaving fingers modeling as (there are people crinkling laughing on the road “I shall look like a storm here staring white” and still down) waiting:
Sense ye not, Hélène Montmorency, that silent watching figure—miles, miles away, ’tis true, in flesh, but near, so near, in dream and thought? Feel ye not, Hélène Montmorency, those weaving fingers, softly threading thy marble-veined limbs with life, cushioning thy proud, ripe breasts within the silken shift and offering all, in the amorous Night, to the distant lover?
And you, Charles Dograr, danger forgotten, the chase forsaken, the lust of gold, the heat of passion stilled at last—what hidden Will now leads you back down the silent street and makes you pause a moment, unnoticing, beneath a certain window ere you cross and enter, to join the erst loved, now hated, companion of your many crimes?
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2. He stands a moment in the silent street. A bit of paper flutters down before him. Opening, reading: “Beware of the blonde man!” His features express surprise. He looks up. All the windows of the house are dark, tenantless. Shaking his head, as one confronted by an insoluble riddle, he crosses the street. Lets himself into Mystery House with latchkey.
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3. Within an upper chamber of the House Across The Way, a girl in a blue silk chemise kneels by her bedside. The room is dark. Only a single moonray, stealing through the open window, illuminates the sobbing shoulders, gilds like an aureole the straying, silken hair.
She is praying and, as she prays, scalding tears flow streaming down the shell-pink cheeks. She raises her eyes, her clasped hands to Heaven. Her face, torn by emotion, moves convulsively. Her lips form the words: “Save—him—from—danger.”
Fade-out
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4. Press-room of metropolitan paper. Men hurrying to and fro with spiked sheets, rolling hogsheads of ink back and forth, etc. Foreman of press-room stands beside stopped presses, with order for make-up in his hand. Gesticulates angrily, looking at watch. Assistants surround him, deprecatory.
Caption:
“Half an Hour Past Deadline Now.
First Time The Paper’s Been Held
Up In Years.”
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5. City-room of paper. Rows of reporters at typewriters; eye shades; throw sheets of paper hastily into copy baskets. Desk (R.U.E.) City Editor, shirt sleeves, smoking cigar, reading galleys. Looks at watch. Calls star reporter to his side.
Caption:
“How About That City Mercantile
Bank Story? If We Hold The Presses
Till Midnight And They Don’t
Make The Arrest. …”
6. Reporter smiles. Hands sheet of typed paper to Editor.
Caption:
“Here’s The Lead For The Story.
The Chief Of Police Told Me They
Have The Gang Under Their Thumb
And They’ll Pinch Them All When
They Try to Rob The Bank. It’s
A Sure Thing.”
7. Editor looks doubtful. Shakes Head. Takes sheets from reporter; scans them; begins to smile approvingly.
8. Close-up flash of story;
X-RAY MURDERER CAUGHT AT LAST
Scientific Criminal and Accomplice Arrested on Threshold of Big Hold-Up
One Hundred Shots Fired On Crowded
Thoroughfare. Police Make
Long-Awaited Arrest As
Thousands Stare.
At an hour a little past midnight, as he stood surrounded by eighteen victims on the threshold of his greatest coup, René Fonstant, alias Benjamin Constantin, Thorndyke Smithers, Edouard Percy, James Butler, Arthur Moss, etc., etc., met justice at last.
Two police cars swung around a corner loaded with policemen, as he was transferring nineteen millions in specie from a looted armored car into a waiting motor car before the City Mercantile Bank, and after a furious pistol battle in which nine policemen and two bystanders were wounded, succeeded in putting under arrest the most dangerous and brutal murderer in the history of crime.
With him was his young accomplice, alias Charles Dograr. Both stand charged with the astounding total of sixty-seven murders, all committed—by means of some as yet unknown mechanism permitting electrocution by radio—within the short space of two months. They pleaded ‘Not Guilty,’ and it is said that eminent legal aid will be called in to their assistance in what promises to be one of the most sensational trials of the century. Fonstant himself, as he was. …
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* * *
9. Editor looks up from copy, smiling.
Caption:
“It’s A Good Story. We’ll Wait For It.
Better Run Down To The Bank And Be On The Spot When They Pull It Off.”
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* * *
10. Steps of rooming house on West Twenty-Third Street. A fuzzy little man ascends to door, rings bell. Landlady opens. They talk.
Caption:
“Can I Get A Room Here, Ma’am?”
Landlady opens door wider. He goes in, after hasty glance, as if one hunted, around and up and down street. It is Rupert Pragman.
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11. Solemnly (circling the hills and bluegray fields behind) Binghampton; Utica; Syracuse; Troy a man ploughing and (cleaving (a white road where the red and green buckboard spick-and-span is pawing) the horizon) and: click-toc-toc-click-toc-toc-click-toc-toc-click
From here and there scattering the lights went on: with a shattering roar of wheels couplers grinding whirling axles following: between the dead blank walls of a factory Eastman’s Soap. It was Amsterdam and on:
“When do we reach New York?”
“Well, boss, we was thutty minutes late outa Erie but we made up fifteen minutes already. Ah raickon we’ll pull in awn time at tenfawty. Yessuh.”
Herbert Trask, seated in the railway carriage, glances impatiently at his watch. Half past nine.
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* * *
12. Office of Chief of Police. Large, handsome man with irongray mustache. In uniform, seated at mahogany desk. Picks up telephone and twiddles hook. Then talks into receiver.
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* * *
13. Precinct police station. Police lieutenant at desk, writing in blotter. Several policemen tunics unbuttoned lounge in chairs. (It is a heavy-angled room as if it suspended tons of masonry and in an egg-yellow illumination; policemen always look as if they had just finished stew and dumplings for dinner and these in the scene their faces belch at the vacant walls) Lieutenant answers phone. Speaks, nodding deferentially —Yes, yes, yes. Snaps receiver back on hook, summons policeman.
Caption:
“Stand By For A Riot Call. Chief Says
They’re Going to Pinch Them Radio
Murderers Tonight!”
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* * *
14. There was a knock on the door. Hastily concealing his test-tubes in a drawer and (throwing a cloth shrouding the outlines of the x-ray machine—“Come in,” the old gentleman called and) the door opening.
A smallish man his face emerging from a light fuzzy gray suit like a moth from its cocoon was standing there. He was casting quick furtive glances at the apparatus of the room.
“Well?” and a suspicion Worcestershire-sauce-like the old gentleman at his heart as—“Is. … is this the … ah … Seaside Employment … Agency?” The man’s voice ran down the words like a timorous spider down its thread.
“No!” barked the old gentleman. “I’m busy.”
The little man hesitated.
“I’m busy. Get out!”
But for a long time afterward. …
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* * *
15. “This is the last time,” he had said. He had gone away and left her. Running with brilliant rapidity through her mind in the short space between the Manager’s Office and her dressing room, Adeline Laggick had lived over again the events of that afternoon on the Palisades, spent in the arms of the man she now knew to be her uncle’s murderer.
Her flesh crawled as she thought of it … his kisses … faugh! (She wipes her lips at the remembrances, expressing disgust) … the nestling tug of his hip into hers … this man, this Dograr, as Herbert had said he called himself—was a coward, a cur, and yet … was it true, what the doctor had said—that she would bear a child to this monster? … Would she pay the price of the shameful thing she had done on that moon-darkened evening? … Oh! … And children. … Les’ Dinkle … What was it he had said? …
So, her face gray and weary beneath the greasepaint … and here Dinkle himself, waiting sheepishly before the door of her dressing-room. … Good old Les’ … Her heart warmed at his honest eyes. . .
“I was waitin’ to show you that snap o’ my youngest kid, Ad,” he brought out awkwardly. And added, still more sheepishly. “Say, Ad! I was figurin’ out a darn’ good number you an’ me could do together—supposin’ …” he hesitated painfully. … “Supposing you an’ me was to … you know … get married an … go into vaudeville together. …” He looked beseechingly up at her.
“But you’re already married aren’t you, Les’?” she queried, wondering.
“Aw, sure … but my wife’s a Mormon. We was married out in Salt Lake.”
A sudden revulsion seized her. Men were all alike. And this Dograr. … Once she had thought. … But she could not bring herself to hurt this honest heart.
“We could try it out here … you know … work it up with the circus before we jumped.”
“It’s too late for that, Les’,” she answered sadly. He stared in amazement. “I got the can five minutes ago.”
“You! Fired! Why, but listen. …” he was stuttering, sobbing, in his mingled wrath and amazement. “Listen, Ad’, you got your contrac’.”
“Evans says it’s cancelled. You see, I jumped the show last night, to—to meet my cousin in Erie, Pa.”
“Aw, but say, Ad’. …”
It wrenched her heart. But the mission now before her … she must purge herself of all the softer passions … she must forge her mind, her body to the instrument of Hate. For a moment sorrow blinded her eyes and she stared with infinite compassion at the honest face before her. Then—
