Suddenly he drew in his breath. She had poured the tea into the three bowls. One she set before him, one before herself, the other she placed on a little table by the fire near the chair her husband usually sat in, and it was as she placed this last one on the table that a little strange smile curved round her lips. It was the smile that did it.
He knew!
A remarkable woman — a dangerous woman. No waiting — no preparation. This afternoon — this very afternoon — with him here as witness. The boldness of it took his breath away.
It was clever — it was damnably clever. He would be able to prove nothing. She counted on his not suspecting — simply because it was “so soon”. A woman of lightning rapidity of thought and action.
He drew a deep breath and leaned forward.
“Mrs. Merrowdene, I’m a man of queer whims. Will you be very kind and indulge me in one of them?”
She looked inquiring but unsuspicious.
He rose, took the bowl from in front of her and crossed to the little table where he substituted it for the other. This other he brought back and placed in front of her.
“I want to see you drink this.”
Her eyes met his. They were steady, unfathomable. The colour slowly drained from her face.
She stretched out her hand, raised the cup. He held his breath.
Supposing all along he had made a mistake.
She raised it to her lips — at the last moment, with a shudder she leant forward and quickly poured it into a pot containing a fern. Then she sat back and gazed at him defiantly.
He drew a long sigh of relief, and sat down again.
“Well?” she said.
Her voice had altered. It was slightly mocking — defiant.
He answered her soberly and quietly.
“You are a very clever woman, Mrs. Merrowdene. I think you understand me. There must be no — repetition. You know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean.”
Her voice was even, devoid of expression. He nodded his head, satisfied. She was a clever woman, and she didn’t want to be hanged.
“To your long life and to that of your husband,” he said significantly and raised his tea to his lips.
Then his face changed. It contorted horribly... he tried to rise — to cry out... His body stiffened — his face went purple. He fell back sprawling over the chair — his limbs convulsed.
Mrs. Merrowdene leaned forward, watching him. A little smile crossed her lips. She spoke to him — very softly and gently.
“You made a mistake, Mr. Evans. You thought I wanted to kill George... How stupid of you — how very stupid.”
She sat there a minute longer looking at the dead man, the third man who had threatened to cross her path and separate her from the man she loved...
Her smile broadened. She looked more than ever like a Madonna. Then she raised her voice and called.
“George... George... Oh! do come here. I’m afraid there’s been the most dreadful accident... Poor Mr. Evans...”
The Marionettes
by O. Henry
Here is one of the Old Master’s lesser-known stories, brought back from undeserved obscurity... You will witness a murder committed under your very eyes — a daring thing to have been conceived in 1902 when this story first appeared in the famous magazine of the day, “The Black Cat,” and as O. Henry has written it, still a daring — almost a shocking — conception.
The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the street. The time was two o’clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.
A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and carrying something in one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the black alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured air that is linked with conscious authority. The hour, the alley’s musty reputation, the pedestrian’s haste, the burden he carried — these easily combined into the “suspicious circumstances” that required illumination at the officer’s hands.
The “suspect” halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with a rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into a side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the policeman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the name “Charles Spencer James, M.D.” The street and number of the address were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even curiosity. The policeman’s downward glance at the article carried in the doctor’s hand — a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small silver mountings — further endorsed the guarantee of the card.
“All right, doctor,” said the officer, stepping aside, with an air of bulky affability. “Orders are to be extra careful. Good many burglars and holdups lately. Bad night to be out. Not so cold, but — clammy.”
With a formal inclination of his head, and a word or two corroborative of the officer’s estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his somewhat rapid progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted his professional card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case as vouchers for his honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those officers seen fit, on the morrow, to test the evidence of that card he would have found it borne out by the doctor’s name on a handsome doorplate, his presence, calm and well dressed, in his well-equipped office — provided it were not too early, Doctor James being a late riser — and the testimony of the neighborhood to his good citizenship, his devotion to his family, and his success as a practitioner the two years he had lived among them.
Therefore, it would have much surprised any one of those zealous guardians of the peace could they have taken a peep into that immaculate medicine case. Upon opening it, the first article to be seen would have been an elegant set of the latest conceived tools used by the “box man,” as the ingenious safe burglar now denominates himself. Specially designed and constructed were the implements — the short but powerful “jimmy,” the collection of curiously fashioned keys, the blued drills and punches of the finest temper — capable of eating their way into chilled steel as a mouse eats into a cheese, and the clamps that fasten like a leech to the polished door of a safe and pull out the combination knob as a dentist extracts a tooth. In a little pouch in the inner side of the “medicine” case was a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now half empty. Underneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few handfuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred and thirty dollars.
To a very limited circle of friends Doctor James was known as “The Swell ‘Greek.’ ” Half of the mysterious term was a tribute to his cool and gentlemanlike manners; the other half denoted, in the argot of the brotherhood, the leader, the planner, the one who, by the power and prestige of his address and position, secured the information upon which they based their plans and desperate enterprises.
Of this elect circle the other members were Skitsie Morgan and Gum Decker, expert “box men,” and Leopold Pretzfelder, a jeweller downtown, who manipulated the “sparklers” and other ornaments collected by the working trio. All good and loyal men, as loose-tongued as Memnon and as fickle as the North Star.