One Night in St. Andrews

By HAPSBURG LIEBE

T is not every man that has the ability to select the right sort of assumed name. Neither Jones, Smith, nor Brown, nor yet Trevelyan nor Spotswoode, appealed to the Raffles of the Vanishing City. He called himself Leaf—George Leaf. He was slender, of medium height, dark of hair and eyes, and extremely fair-skinned; he was silent, grave, and he wore a perpetual air of slumberous laziness that stood him well in his nefarious occupation. As a matter of fact, however, he was about the biggest bundle of sheer nerves—not to say nerve—that ever came to St Andrews, the Vanishing City, the city that is, in the winter months, and in the summertime is not. From which you will correctly conclude, of course, that “St Andy” is away down South in the land of the pine and the palm, the ’gator and the moccasin.

Leaf had a single but comfortable room in the front of the third and upper story of the Little Hotel, a room that looked directly across the city’s narrow central avenue and into the front of the Big Hotel. This was a vantage point, surely, worthy of consideration.

It was an hour after the fall of darkness, and the Vanishing City had robed itself more or less gloriously in preparation for another inning of social triumph and display. There was the soft and sad cry of a nightbird in the banana trees, the melancholy moaning of the Gulf wind among the palm fronds, the distant and low booming of the surf beyond the dim lines of lonesome Boca Toro. Leaf sat beside his open window, which was dark—it was not often that one saw a light in his apartment—and with eyes like those of a sailing osprey watched certain bejeweled women who had just entered the upstairs parlor of the Big Hotel. In his resourceful brain he was evolving a plan which, if carried out, would add a few more diamonds and a few more pearls to the hoard he kept nicely hidden under the floor in a corner of his clothes closet.

Then suddenly, George Leaf straightened in his chair and put both his thin and slender, white hands to the left side of his chest. His face was white.

“Heart again,” he muttered, swallowing. “Too much supper. I’ve got to quit gorging like that, or I’m soon saying my last fond good-byes to this interesting little thing they call ‘Life.’ Life,” he whispered, as an afterthought, “is an interesting little thing, though it’s mostly tragedy.”

Leaf professed to be an unbeliever, an infidel. But he wasn’t.

Three minutes later he rose, half gasping, went to the phone, and called the clerk of the Little Hotel.

“Who,” he asked, “is the best doctor in St Andy?”

The answer came promptly. “Can’t say. But there’s one right here in the house now. Arrived this afternoon, from Chicago. Heart specialist. If it’s anything like that, he’s in room twenty-seven, second floor. Shall I call him for you, Mr. Leaf?”

“Thanks, no,” said Leaf. “I—I’ll just go down and see him.”

Shortly afterward he was rapping lightly at twenty-seven, second floor. The door opened, and a big and round, florid, smooth-faced man confronted him somewhat sourly.

“Well?”

“Doctor?” Leaf asked.

“Doctor D. R. Janeson, at your service sir; diseases of the heart. Am not down here to work, but to rest, though I’m willing to work, of course, to save life. Has yours anything to do with the heart?”

The other nodded, muttered his assumed name, and put out his hand. Dr. D. R. Janeson accepted the hand with more or less of warmth. “Come in,” said Janeson, “sit down, and tell me about yourself.”

Leaf walked in and sat down. Janeson, diseases of the heart, closed the door and within five more seconds had taken a chair facing his caller. Leaf gave a brief history of his ailment.

“Nervous, I see,” said Janeson; when Leaf had finished. “And that’s not good for you. Now Mr.—er, Leaf, there are several kinds of heart disease: the killing kinds, and the kinds brought on by such things as nerves and indigestion. I myself have the kind brought on by indigestion. I suffer horribly with it now and then—had an attack only last night. If you’ll kindly remove your clothing from your waist up, Mr.—er, Leaf, I’ll examine you.”

Leaf rose and removed his clothing from his waist up, and Janeson rose and brought his stethoscope into action. After a short time that seemed next to interminable to Leaf, Janeson put the instrument into its case, and the two sat down again.

“Well?” said Leaf, and his voice betrayed anxiety.

“Mustn’t smoke, musn’t drink, musn’t eat much, and musn’t exert yourself at all; must on no account get excited,” said Janeson. “You have both valvular and aortic trouble, and you’re likely to see through the clouds at any minute. I wouldn’t put it so brutally as that, Leaf, but it is very necessary to impress you with the importance of being careful with yourself.”

Leaf stared. “And if I obey all your instructions, what then? How long—how long is it likely that I’ll live?”

Janeson shook his head. “Impossible to say. Maybe a year, maybe a month, maybe a day; or, perhaps, only ten minutes. Sorry to have to tell you this, Leaf. If you’ve got any peace to make with the hereafter, better be doing it. It’s a serious thing, Leaf, to die.”

“To die;” Leaf muttered to himself, “to die—”

After a moment, he rose unsteadily, seeming broken, and a century old. Janeson, too, went to his feet; he helped Leaf into the clothing he had taken off for the examination.

“Your charges, doctor?”

Janeson waved his hand. “I’m not practicing now. But at home, in Chicago, I get twenty-five dollars for work like this. If you care to—er, pay that, Leaf, you may just—er, you may—”

Leaf placed twenty-five dollars in banknotes on a nearby table, turned and walked slowly out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

When he reached his apartment on the floor above, he did not make a light, which, of course, was nothing unusual for him. He groped, somehow stunned, over to his open window, and there sat down weakly. He heard the soft and sad cry of a nightbird in the banana trees, the melancholy moaning of the Gulf wind among the palm fronds, the distant and low booming of the surf beyond the dim lines of lone some Boca Toro. He turned his eyes up ward. The stars, bright as electric arcs, seemed almost near enough for his hands to reach, and beyond them stretched in beckoning and eternal mystery the limitless, velvety-blue bowl of space. For a few seconds he forgot death in the magic of that night.

But soon he thought of death again, and he wondered what it was, if there was anything that lay on the other side of it.

Then he knew that he was no infidel. There must be something, he told himself, something that created and kept everlasting vigil over all that magnificent and elaborate system of stars and suns and moons and planets. The trouble was, people measured the something wrongly. They measured the infinite by their poor little, puny yardsticks; they judged of God, and thought of God, and feared God, and imagined they loved God, all within their tiny, wormlike standards. He himself had thought of the Master, when he thought of Him at all, as a big and incessantly frowning Man in a flowing white robe, with a long white beard. It was wrong. It was sacrilege. Not only that, it was sheer blasphemy! Enlightenment and civilization—it was to laugh! Hair-splitting creeds and ways of worshipping the Supreme Being—again it was to laugh!

And George Leaf did laugh, a low ripple that sounded tragic. Then he began to think more deeply of himself, and of his chances beyond the pale of death. He thought of the things he had done, and he was ashamed. When They asked him, there in the Beyond, what he had done, what would he tell Them? Would he be like Tomlinson, that immortal Tomlinson of Kipling’s, out of place in both Heaven and Hell? He knew he couldn’t lie to Them there. He would have to tell them that he was, and had been always, a professional thief!

For the first time in his misspent life, George Leaf knew as much of penitence as his soul could ever know. Then he sat up straight in his chair. He could undo a part of his sins, at least. He could return to its rightful owners something like twelve thousand dollars’ worth of loot. And he would do it. If his heart would but last long enough, he would do it.

Leaf crept, like the thief he had been since he could remember, across the room and to his dresser. Silently he opened a drawer and took out a small electric flashlight. He went slowly and without a sound, the habit of years strong upon him, to his clothes closet, slipped inside, and shut the door on his heels.

He snapped on the flashlight, knelt, pried out a short piece of floorboard with his knife, and put in a hand. Another second, and he had taken from the hole a tiny black enameled box. He opened it. and the jewels twinkled even as the stars were twinkling in the vault of limitless space. Leaf ran a hand through them, for the moment forgetting, the old spirit of unlawful conquest uppermost in him. and smiled. It was his heart that brought him back. It fluttered like a wounded bird in the dust.

“Time!” Leaf begged there on his knees, his upturned face like chalk. “Give me a little more of life!”

Again his heart became normal in its action. He slipped quickly from the closet, drew the shades carefully, locked the door, and turned toward an electric switch-button on the wall; soon the room was flooded with a soft white glow. He sat himself down at a little table, and drew toward him paper and envelopes, pen, ink, and blotter.

Then he addressed fourteen envelopes to fourteen persons, most of whom were women, some of whom were even then guests at the Big Hotel across the avenue. This done, he wrote fourteen short letters, each exactly like the others, confessing everything and imploring, not only forgiveness, but prayers, in his behalf!

The jewels went with the fourteen letters into the fourteen envelopes, exactly where they belonged, and the envelopes were carefully sealed. Leaf felt decidedly better over it. He rose from the table and thrust the heavy letters into his coat pocket. Again his heart fluttered like a wounded bird in the dust. It sent him staggering to the phone.

“All right, sir?” the voice came cheerily enough from below.

“Send me,” said the weak and tremulous voice of George Leaf, “either a priest or a preacher—either a priest or a preacher—I think I’m dying—”

Barely five minutes later, there was a low but hasty rap at Leaf’s door. Leaf unlocked and opened it, and in stepped a tall and serious faced, bearded man who wore glasses.

“Were you,” the bearded man asked quickly, solicitously, “in need of a doctor?”

“My heart—” began the pale, sheer bundle of nerves that other people called George Leaf.

The doctor stepped to him and bent an ear to his chest. The ear listened for not much more than a minute. The doctor straightened, smiling.

“You’re scared, man!” he exclaimed. “A little palpitation, that’s all. Caused by eating, drinking, or smoking too much. Now if you had it like the fellow in twenty-seven, second floor, you’d have reason for being scared. He just dropped dead from organic heart trouble; I left him to come to you. Professional crook, I understand, and posing as a physician. Janeson was his name, or assumed name... I’ll see you to-morrow!”

The doctor was gone. Leaf smiled at the great discovery. Then a little, round man in black, all flushed from running up the two stairways, suddenly became framed in the doorway.

“Did you,” he asked kindly, “wish the services of a priest?”

George Leaf’s hand gripped tightly, greedily, wolfishly, a bundle of fourteen bulky envelopes in his right coat pocket. His eyes narrowed.

“Not me.” His voice carried a sneering tone. “The man who wanted you is in twenty-seven, second floor. He’s dead. What the devil do you think I would want with a priest?”