The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

Just before daybreak the next morning Dr. Helberson and his young friend Harper were driving slowly through the streets of North Beach in the doctor’s coupé.

“Have you still the confidence of youth in the courage or stolidity of your friend?” said the elder man.  “Do you believe that I have lost this wager?”

“I know you have,” replied the other, with enfeebling emphasis.

“Well, upon my soul, I hope so.”

It was spoken earnestly, almost solemnly.  There was a silence for a few moments.

“Harper,” the doctor resumed, looking very serious in the shifting half-lights that entered the carriage as they passed the street lamps, “I don’t feel altogether comfortable about this business.  If your friend had not irritated me by the contemptuous manner in which he treated my doubt of his endurance—­a purely physical quality—­and by the cool incivility of his suggestion that the corpse be that of a physician, I should not have gone on with it.  If anything should happen we are ruined, as I fear we deserve to be.”

“What can happen?  Even if the matter should be taking a serious turn, of which I am not at all afraid, Mancher has only to ‘resurrect’ himself and explain matters.  With a genuine ‘subject’ from the dissecting-room, or one of your late patients, it might be different.”

Dr. Mancher, then, had been as good as his promise; he was the “corpse.”

Dr. Helberson was silent for a long time, as the carriage, at a snail’s pace, crept along the same street it had traveled two or three times already.  Presently he spoke:  “Well, let us hope that Mancher, if he has had to rise from the dead, has been discreet about it.  A mistake in that might make matters worse instead of better.”

“Yes,” said Harper, “Jarette would kill him.  But, Doctor”—­looking at his watch as the carriage passed a gas lamp—­“it is nearly four o’clock at last.”

A moment later the two had quitted the vehicle and were walking briskly toward the long-unoccupied house belonging to the doctor in which they had immured Mr. Jarette in accordance with the terms of the mad wager.  As they neared it they met a man running.  “Can you tell me,” he cried, suddenly checking his speed, “where I can find a doctor?”

“What’s the matter?” Helberson asked, non-committal.

“Go and see for yourself,” said the man, resuming his running.

They hastened on.  Arrived at the house, they saw several persons entering in haste and excitement.  In some of the dwellings near by and across the way the chamber windows were thrown up, showing a protrusion of heads.  All heads were asking questions, none heeding the questions of the others.  A few of the windows with closed blinds were illuminated; the inmates of those rooms were dressing to come down.  Exactly opposite the door of the house that they sought a street lamp threw a yellow, insufficient light upon the scene, seeming to say that it could disclose a good deal more if it wished.  Harper paused at the door and laid a hand upon his companion’s arm.  “It is all up with us, Doctor,” he said in extreme agitation, which contrasted strangely with his free-and-easy words; “the game has gone against us all.  Let’s not go in there; I’m for lying low.”

“I’m a physician,” said Dr. Helberson, calmly; “there may be need of one.”

They mounted the doorsteps and were about to enter.  The door was open; the street lamp opposite lighted the passage into which it opened.  It was full of men.  Some had ascended the stairs at the farther end, and, denied admittance above, waited for better fortune.  All were talking, none listening.  Suddenly, on the upper landing there was a great commotion; a man had sprung out of a door and was breaking away from those endeavoring to detain him.  Down through the mass of affrighted idlers he came, pushing them aside, flattening them against the wall on one side, or compelling them to cling to the rail on the other, clutching them by the throat, striking them savagely, thrusting them back down the stairs and walking over the fallen.  His clothing was in disorder, he was without a hat.  His eyes, wild and restless, had in them something more terrifying than his apparently superhuman strength.  His face, smooth-shaven, was bloodless, his hair frost-white.

As the crowd at the foot of the stairs, having more freedom, fell away to let him pass Harper sprang forward.  “Jarette!  Jarette!” he cried.

Dr. Helberson seized Harper by the collar and dragged him back.  The man looked into their faces without seeming to see them and sprang through the door, down the steps, into the street, and away.  A stout policeman, who had had inferior success in conquering his way down the stairway, followed a moment later and started in pursuit, all the heads in the windows—­those of women and children now—­screaming in guidance.

The stairway being now partly cleared, most of the crowd having rushed down to the street to observe the flight and pursuit, Dr. Helberson mounted to the landing, followed by Harper.  At a door in the upper passage an officer denied them admittance.  “We are physicians,” said the doctor, and they passed in.  The room was full of men, dimly seen, crowded about a table.  The newcomers edged their way forward and looked over the shoulders of those in the front rank.  Upon the table, the lower limbs covered with a sheet, lay the body of a man, brilliantly illuminated by the beam of a bull’s-eye lantern held by a policeman standing at the feet.  The others, excepting those near the head—­the officer himself—­all were in darkness.  The face of the body showed yellow, repulsive, horrible!  The eyes were partly open and upturned and the jaw fallen; traces of froth defiled the lips, the chin, the cheeks.  A tall man, evidently a doctor, bent over the body with his hand thrust under the shirt front.  He withdrew it and placed two fingers in the open mouth.  “This man has been about six hours dead,” said he.  “It is a case for the coroner.”

He drew a card from his pocket, handed it to the officer and made his way toward the door.

“Clear the room—­out, all!” said the officer, sharply, and the body disappeared as if it had been snatched away, as shifting the lantern he flashed its beam of light here and there against the faces of the crowd.  The effect was amazing!  The men, blinded, confused, almost terrified, made a tumultuous rush for the door, pushing, crowding, and tumbling over one another as they fled, like the hosts of Night before the shafts of Apollo.  Upon the struggling, trampling mass the officer poured his light without pity and without cessation.  Caught in the current, Helberson and Harper were swept out of the room and cascaded down the stairs into the street.

“Good God, Doctor! did I not tell you that Jarette would kill him?” said Harper, as soon as they were clear of the crowd.

“I believe you did,” replied the other, without apparent emotion.

They walked on in silence, block after block.  Against the graying east the dwellings of the hill tribes showed in silhouette.  The familiar milk wagon was already astir in the streets; the baker’s man would soon come upon the scene; the newspaper carrier was abroad in the land.

“It strikes me, youngster,” said Helberson, “that you and I have been having too much of the morning air lately.  It is unwholesome; we need a change.  What do you say to a tour in Europe?”

“When?”

“I’m not particular.  I should suppose that four o’clock this afternoon would be early enough.”

“I’ll meet you at the boat,” said Harper.

Seven years afterward these two men sat upon a bench in Madison Square, New York, in familiar conversation.  Another man, who had been observing them for some time, himself unobserved, approached and, courteously lifting his hat from locks as white as frost, said:  “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but when you have killed a man by coming to life, it is best to change clothes with him, and at the first opportunity make a break for liberty.”

Helberson and Harper exchanged significant glances.  They were obviously amused.  The former then looked the stranger kindly in the eye and replied: 

“That has always been my plan.  I entirely agree with you as to its advant—­”

He stopped suddenly, rose and went white.  He stared at the man, open-mouthed; he trembled visibly.

“Ah!” said the stranger, “I see that you are indisposed, Doctor.  If you cannot treat yourself Dr. Harper can do something for you, I am sure.”

“Who the devil are you?” said Harper, bluntly.

The stranger came nearer and, bending toward them, said in a whisper:  “I call myself Jarette sometimes, but I don’t mind telling you, for old friendship, that I am Dr. William Mancher.”

The revelation brought Harper to his feet.  “Mancher!” he cried; and Helberson added:  “It is true, by God!”

“Yes,” said the stranger, smiling vaguely, “it is true enough, no doubt.”

He hesitated and seemed to be trying to recall something, then began humming a popular air.  He had apparently forgotten their presence.

“Look here, Mancher,” said the elder of the two, “tell us just what occurred that night—­to Jarette, you know.”

“Oh, yes, about Jarette,” said the other.  “It’s odd I should have neglected to tell you—­I tell it so often.  You see I knew, by over-hearing him talking to himself, that he was pretty badly frightened.  So I couldn’t resist the temptation to come to life and have a bit of fun out of him—­I couldn’t really.  That was all right, though certainly I did not think he would take it so seriously; I did not, truly.  And afterward—­well, it was a tough job changing places with him, and then—­damn you! you didn’t let me out!”

Nothing could exceed the ferocity with which these last words were delivered.  Both men stepped back in alarm.

“We?—­why—­why,” Helberson stammered, losing his self-possession utterly, “we had nothing to do with it.”

“Didn’t I say you were Drs. Hell-born and Sharper?” inquired the man, laughing.

“My name is Helberson, yes; and this gentleman is Mr. Harper,” replied the former, reassured by the laugh.  “But we are not physicians now; we are—­well, hang it, old man, we are gamblers.”

And that was the truth.

“A very good profession—­very good, indeed; and, by the way, I hope Sharper here paid over Jarette’s money like an honest stakeholder.  A very good and honorable profession,” he repeated, thoughtfully, moving carelessly away; “but I stick to the old one.  I am High Supreme Medical Officer of the Bloomingdale Asylum; it is my duty to cure the superintendent.”