Appointment in Samarra (29 page)

“I think, if you don’t mind, I think we shall play a little tune,” he said aloud. He played Paul Whiteman’s record of Stairway to Paradise, and when the record came to the “patter” he was screaming with jazz. The phonograph stopped itself but he was up and changing it to a much later record, Jean Goldkette’s band playing Sunny Disposish. He laid a lot of records out on the floor without looking at their titles. He spun a spoon around, and when it stopped he would play the record to which it pointed. He played only three records in this way, because he was pounding his feet, keeping time, and he broke one of his most favorite, Whiteman’s Lady of the Evening, valuable because it has the fanciest trick ending ever put on a record. He wanted to cry but he could not. He wanted to pick up the pieces. He reached over to pick them up, and lost his balance and sat down on another record, crushing it unmusically. He did not want to see what it was. All he knew was that it was a
Brunswick, which meant it was one of the oldest and best. He had a drink out of the glass. He used the vase for resting-drinking, and the glass for moving-drinking. That way he did not disturb the main drink while moving around, and could fill the glass while getting up and sitting down. Unintentionally he lay back. “I am now,” he said, “drunk. Drunk. Dronk. Drongk.” He reached like a blind man for the fresh bottle and with eyes that he knew were sober he watched himself pour himself a drink. “No ice I get drunk kicker. Quicker,” he said that aloud. To himself he said: “I bet I look like something nice now.” He found he had two cigarettes burning, one in the ash tray on the floor, and the other getting stuck in the varnish on the edge of the phonograph. He half planned a lie to explain how the burn got there and then, for the first time, he knew it would not make any difference.

He got to his feet and went to the stairs. “Anybody in this house?” he called.

“Anybody in this house?”

“Any, body, in, this,
house!
”

He shook his head. “Nope. Nobody in this house. You could wake the dead with that noise,” he said.

He got a package of cigarettes from the table and took the new bottle of Scotch. He wished he had time to look around the room to see if everything was all right, no more cigarettes burning or anything like that, but there wasn’t time. There wasn’t time to put out the lights or pick up anything or straighten the rugs. Not even time to put on a coat, pull up his suspenders or anything. He went out on the porch and down the steps and opened the garage door and closed it behind him. He shivered a little from the bit of cold, and it was cold in the garage, so he hurried. He had to see about the windows. They had to be closed. The ventilator in the roof was closed for the winter.

He climbed in the front seat and started the car. It started with a merry, powerful hum, ready to go. “There, the bastards,” said Julian, and smashed the clock with the bottom of the bottle, to give them an approximate time. It was 10:41.

There was nothing to do now but wait. He smoked a little, hummed for a minute or two, and had three quick drinks and was on his fourth when he lay back and slumped down in the seat. At 10:50, by the clock in the rear seat, he tried to get up. He had not the strength to help himself, and at ten minutes past eleven no one could have helped him, no one in the world.

Our story never ends.

You pull the pin out of a hand grenade, and in a few seconds it explodes and men in a small area get killed and wounded. That makes bodies to be buried, hurt men to be treated. It makes widows and fatherless children and bereaved parents. It means pension machinery, and it makes for pacifism in some and for lasting hatred in others. Again, a man out of the danger area sees the carnage the grenade creates, and he shoots himself in the foot. Another man had been standing there just two minutes before the thing went off, and thereafter he believes in God or in a rabbit’s foot. Another man sees human brains for the first time and locks up the picture until one night years later, when he finally comes out with a description of what he saw, and the horror of his description turns his wife away from him….

Herbert Harley said he thought he heard a car about ten o’clock. It sounded like a Ford, starting in front of the English home, but he could have been mistaken. Or, as Deputy Coroner Moskowitz pointed out, it could have been just any car that happened to stop in front of the English home, Dr. Moskowitz wanted to have the thing all neat and no loose ends, and he wished the driver of the car would come forth and reveal himself; but he guessed he never would; that part of town was pretty secluded, you might say, and necking couples often went there. So the car probably was just some necking couple, Dr. Moskowitz said, and anyway it was an open-and-shut case of suicide by carbon monoxide gas poisoning, the first of its kind in the history of the county (and a damn nice,
clean way of knocking yourself off, he added off the record). What happened, as he reconstructed it, was: Mr. English had had difficulties with Mrs. English, so he went home and got drunk and while temporarily deranged through alcohol and grief, he, being well acquainted with the effects of carbon monoxide, being in the automobile business, why he committed suicide. There was no doubt about him being insane, at least temporarily, because from the broken Victrola records in the house, and the clock that was smashed in the car, deceased manifestly had been in a drunken rage and therefore not responsible. His widow, Caroline W. English, was apparently the last one to see him alive, and that was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Mrs. English had telephoned the two servants in the house and informed them that a party scheduled for that night was postponed, and they could go home and so they went.

Fortunately deceased had seen fit to vent his rage and smash the clock in the front part of the car, which readily enabled the deputy coroner to fix the time of death at about eleven o’clock P.M., the night of December 26, year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred thirty. Thus it will be seen that seven hours elapsed between the last time Caroline W. English had seen her late husband and the time of his death. This was verified by Mrs. Judge Walker, mother of Caroline W. English, at whose home Mrs. English had been stopping from the time she last saw deceased up to the time she had been informed of his death.

This had been done by Dr. William D. English, chief of staff, Gibbsville Hospital, and also father of deceased, the first physician called after the body was discovered.

The body had been discovered by Herbert G. Harley, next-door neighbor of deceased. Mr. Harley was an electrical engineer, employed by the Midas Washeries Company, operators of the Midas, Black Run, Horse Cave and Sadim washeries. Mr. Harley was at home reading, the night of the death of Mr. English. Mrs. Harley had gone to bed early, being exhausted as it was the day after Christmas and with children in the house, the day after Christmas you know how it is. Well, so
Mr. Harley was reading a book called
N by E,
by Rockwell Kent. He happened to remember that because he had met Mr. Kent once while on a visit to New York; he had met him at the Princeton Club. And that was how he happened to remember the name of the book. He was reading it, or rather to be exact studying the pictures in it, when he heard the car start in Mr. English’s garage. The time, he should judge, as nearly as he could place it, was roughly about ten-thirty. In the evening. Ten-thirty P.M. He thought nothing of it at the time, as he and Mr. English came and went and while they were always very friendly and polite in a neighborly way, they never were what you would call good friends, as Mr. English traveled with, well, a different crowd from the one Mr. Harley traveled with. He had known Mr. English about four years and saw him on the average about once a day usually.

Well, so he went on reading the book and then for some reason that he couldn’t explain, he got some sort of a premonition. It wasn’t a premonition exactly, but more like the feeling you get when you
know
someone is in the room even before you
see
the person. That was the feeling he got, and Mr. Harley wanted to be sure to make it clear that he did not believe in spiritualism or anything like that, as he had a scientific education and he did not believe in that kind of bunk. It was all right for some people; they could believe what they liked. But Mr. Harley did not hold with that school of thought, and to prove it, he had an explanation, what might be called a scientific explanation, of why he had that feeling. The explanation was this: he had been sitting there perhaps a half an hour, and something inside him told him something was wrong. In a minute he understood what it was; it was the motor running.

All that time the motor had been running in Mr. English’s car. You could feel the low vibration of it, hear the distant sound of it. Not loud, the sounds weren’t; and the vibrations weren’t strong. But out where they had their home you get so you know every little sound, and it was very unusual for a motor to be running that length of time. Mr. Harley debated with himself and finally decided to go take a look and see what
was what. He thought perhaps Mr. English was having trouble with his car, and he was going to volunteer his assistance.

Well,
the moment he stepped out on his front porch he knew there was
something
amiss. The motor was running, but the garage was dark. He got closer to the garage and he looked in a window—the one in the west wall of the garage—and all he could see was the car. The dash lights were the only lights in the whole garage that were burning. He thought it best to go tell Mr. English that he had left his motor running and to warn him against staying in the garage any length of time. Mr. Harley of course knew the danger of carbon monoxide and had known one or two cases of carbon monoxide poisoning in his engineering experience. He went up and rang the bell of the English home, then he opened the door and called out, but there was no answer from anyone. Then he ran as fast as he could back to the garage. He opened the big door and the windows so as to create a draft, and then he opened the front door of the car, and there was Mr. English.

He was lying sort of slumped down on the seat, half of his body almost off the seat. Mr. Harley had a little trouble, as Mr. English was not a small man, but finally he got him and carried him, fireman-fashion, out of the garage and laid him down on the drive-way. He felt Mr. English’s heart and there were no beats, and he felt his pulse, and there was no pulse. He tried giving him artificial respiration, because he knew the value of artificial respiration in such cases, and he yelled as loud as he could to his wife, and when Mrs. Harley stuck her head out the bedroom window he told her to call Dr. English.

He continued giving artificial respiration until Dr. English came, but Dr. English examined his son and pronounced him dead. They carried the body inside the house and then Dr. English thanked Mr. Harley and Mr. Harley went back to quiet Mrs. Harley, who by that time was almost out of her wits, with not knowing what it was all about.

As nearly as Mr. Harley recalled, Mr. English was attired in dark gray trousers, white shirt without a tie, black shoes. There was a strong odor of whiskey about his person. His eyes
were open and his face was pinkish, or, rather, pallid with a pinkish tinge. Mr. Harley asked permission to add that in his opinion, judging by the position of the body and what he knew about such cases, Mr. English may have wanted to commit suicide when he first got in the car, but that he had changed his mind just before becoming unconscious, but had not had the strength to get out of the car.

Well, that did not alter the main fact, in the opinion of Dr. Moskowitz. All they had to go on proved pretty conclusively that deceased had taken his own life, no matter what else might have been in his mind. The jury returned a verdict to that effect.

Dr. English thought it best not to try to influence the verdict of the jury. In this case let the little kike quack Moskowitz have his revenge, which Dr. English knew Moskowitz was doing. Dr. English knew Moskowitz loved every bit of testimony that pointed toward suicide, for it gave Moskowitz a chance he had wanted ever since the time Dr. English had given a dinner to the County Medical Society and failed to invite Moskowitz. Dr. English thought he had good reason: the dinner was at the country club, and Jews were not admitted to the club, so Dr. English could not see why he should violate the spirit of the club rule by having a Jew there as his guest. Anyway he despised Moskowitz because Moskowitz once had said to him: “But, my dear Doctor, surely you know the oath of Hippocrates is a lot of crap. I’ll bet your own wife uses a pessary. Or did. Mine always has, and still does.”…Let Moskowitz have his revenge; Dr. English would have something to say hereafter about the deputy coronerships. Without that Moskowitz could not live.

Dr. English thought of himself as crushed by Julian’s death. He knew people would understand that; crushed. His wife, on the other hand, was a little silly, bewildered. She cried, but he did not think he heard pain in her cry. He thought he might expect a nervous breakdown when the enormity of her grief touched her, and he began immediately to plan something, say a Mediterranean cruise, which they could take together as
soon as Julian’s affairs were settled. Julian had been dead only twelve hours when the thought first entered the doctor’s head, but it was well to have something ahead to look forward to when a sad loss crushed you. He would recommend the same thing to Mrs. Walker, and at least offer to pay Caroline’s share of the trip. Not that Mrs. Walker needed it or would accept it, but he would make the offer.

Dr. English was not afraid of what he knew people were saying—people with long memories. He knew they were recalling the death of Julian’s grandfather. But inevitably they would see how the suicide strain had skipped one generation to come out in the next. So long as they saw that it was all right. You had to expect things.

*   *   *

It was a lively, jesting grief, sprightly and pricking and laughing, to make you shudder and shiver up to the point of giving way completely. Then it would become a long black tunnel; a tunnel you had to go through, had to go through, had to go through, had to go through, had to go through. No whistle. But had to go through, had to go through, had to go through. Whistle? Had to go through, had to go through, had to go through, had to go through. No whistle? Had to go through, had to go through, had to go through.