# Thicker Than Water (Benét)

Extracted from Cosmopolitan, May 1924, pp. 77–80, 144, 146, 148, 150, 151. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
By Stephen Vincent Benét
A Story of a Spider and a Fly
Thicker Than Water
Illustrations by Pruett Carter
DEVORE did not know how he knew that they were going to try blood transfusion as a last resort. He knew, somewhat detachedly—for his mind seemed to have floated a little away from his body—that he was ill and very weak, and that he had been thus for some time; so ill and weak that to turn in bed was a great weariness, and that separate nights and days blurred into one long night and day. It was annoying, being ill, for a masterful man.
Would he die? He wondered. The possibility irritated him faintly but it did not make him afraid. He was not accustomed to fear—a fearful man could never have lived his life. He had liked life and enjoyed it, few more subtly. And life, rousing out of nothingness to talk and act for a childish moment, inconsequent as brief, was all. He had never been able to trick himself into a belief that, after the annihilation of the body, something continued. Hell—Heaven—Elysium—bubbles—old wives' tales. Death meant blackness, the end of enjoyment where so much still remained to be enjoyed. Nothing more. Even so—he had lived, in his span. Lived as none of his forebears had dared to live. He almost smiled.
If he died, the stiff family portraits would think he had got his just “come-uppance” at last—the vengeance of a Puritan God, overdue. Poor family portraits! The ants had gathered so painfully for the grasshopper to waste. Odd, to be the last of a New England line and to find in oneself no slightest trace of that doleful thing, a New England conscience. But fate was sportive and grew weary of virtuous men.
Blood transfusion—hm-m. What poor devil would they get for—the party of the second part? He vaguely attempted to remember newspaper stories concerned with such matters. Husband Gives Own Blood to Save Wife—and so forth. <A family matter—blood is thicker than water—a family matter, kept in the family. But he had no family, thank Heaven, no devoted family, not even a wife to snuffle about the sickbed and sacrifice and inherit. He stood alone. It would have to be a stranger. A quaint distaste arose in him—he wondered if it wouldn't be better to die like a gentleman than to buy life back again with another- man's blood. Actual blood—red, living. Another man's blood in your veins. A stranger, a veiled figure, a nameless passer-by, bringing a singular gift in silence, departing without speech, not to be seen again, and yet—the uncanny bond between the two of you after the thing was done. Would there be such a bond? Of course not—he must be getting delirious. And yet blood-brothers. He smiled at the grim play on words.
There were now, he remembered, men who made an avocation of such barter. Sellers of life. He had read of them—did not hospitals keep a list of possible donors? Queer! Subjects—healthy subjects; he seemed to recollect one case, a man who had been such a subject some dozen times. Some of them gave without price but most were paid—fifty dollars or so an occasion, he thought. It was fortunate he had money—he grinned wryly; certainly no one of his acquaintance would ever do such a thing for him for love. No. But money could buy almost anything—even length of days, now doctors were so skilled. Well, it would be a new experience, at any rate. He closed his eyes and began to drift toward a troubled sleep, © still wondering about the stranger, the man from nowhere who for some unfathomable reason would presently come and lie in the next bed and give him new life and new strength from his unknown veins.
He was very weak when the actual transfusion was made, but still curious under his weakness. But his eyes blurred annoyingly when he taxed them, so he could not see all he wished. The doctor was saying something —had the stranger come, then? Yes—there he was. Devore looked at him eagerly.
He was a big blond fellow—thirty, perhaps—a chest like a barrel—rough, strong hands. His eyes were candid and simple, their gaze frank and cheerful, without subtlety or unusual intelligence. He seemed entirely at ease and so admirable a mortal contrivance of health and strength that one could not imagine his body ever accepting the indignity of disease or pain. Devore hated him for that a little, then the mood passed. His eyes searched the stranger's face again but found nothing to interest a connoisseur of emotions.
“A dumb brute,” he thought, “'a splendid, stupid beast, undoubtedly possessed of every uninteresting virtue, industrious, righteous, God-fearing. One of the fortunate animals who lac the intelligence to know when they should be bored. On the whole, I am just as glad our acquaintance is to be so brief. I wonder what his name is—it should be Smith.”
Then the stranger bared his arm.
Devore had never been wholly afraid before. Miss Leigh looked at the cringing man and shuddered. “If,” threatened Jones, “you ever try and find her——”
If Devore had beeen capable of gasping, he would have gasped. There is something about the occasional complete perfection of the human body, or a part of it, even in sculpture, suddenly seen, that dazzles the vision for a moment. And the stranger's arm was more perfect than sculpture, for it lived. The skin was fair as a woman's and the supple, serpentine muscles knotted and uncoiled beneath it in delicate response to the slightest gesture. It was huge, as the man was huge, but it did not seem so, for it was as exquisitely proportioned as it was powerful—a superbly accomplished mechanism. Devore saw the stranger's hand half clench for an instant, and saw the muscles obey. He looked at one of his own arms disgustedly. It had always seemed capably muscular enough before; now it seemed like a piece of botch-work, crudely contrived by an apprentice. Then his eyes turned and he stared again at the stranger's arm.
Ah, they were getting ready—what a strange apparatus— rubber tubes—a thing like a little pump—the doctor said something informative about Unger's instrument—a needle for Devore's arm—a needle for the stranger's—so.
When Devore was getting well, two memories stayed with him—the delicious sensation of new vitality that had invaded his whole being like delicate liquor after the operation had been completed—and the sight of the stranger's arm. Which was odd, he thought, for he remembered little else about the man except his size. Indeed, he felt sure he might not have recognized him on the street—unless he had bared his arm.
His first question as soon as he was allowed to talk had been, “Who was he?”
At first the nurse did not understand. “Who was who, Mr. Devore?”
“Who was he? The—the man that——”
“Oh! Why, I think his name was Jones, Mr. Devore. I'll ask the doctor about him as soon as you're a little better. But you mustn't talk much yet, you know.”
“I know. Jones—eh? I thought it was Smith. But since it wasn't, of course it would be Jones.”” He smiled.
The nurse, who was literal-minded, promptly took his temperature.
Devore let the matter rest till he was quite recovered. But the day before he left the hospital he obtained what information he could.
Henry Jones was recorded as white, thirty-one and single. Blood-count—and so on; but Devore did not bother with that except to note that Jones's blood was of the very highest quality in its particular class, and that he had been a “donor”' on three Previous occasions, the first gratuitously for Jones, Sally—a_ niece. His occupation was given as_ truck-driver; he lived in Brooklyn; street and number were noted. Devore was mildly amused at the willingness of the hospital authorities to assist him. They so obviously thought him grateful—a rich man anxious to do something pleasant for the poor man who had saved his life. Also, those who had known him were evidently fond of Jones.
Devore smiled; extraordinary how even semi-intelligent people liked to believe in sentimental fairy stories where honest virtue is rewarded. Why should he be grateful to Jones? As well be grateful to the salesman who sold you a necktie; the transactions differed only in degree, not in kind. As well be grateful to the doctor and pay his bill with a thankful sob. He was not in the least grateful to Jones; he was merely curious about him.
Nevertheless, as soon as he had his life in some sort of order again, he drove over to Brooklyn one day and, after some difficulty, arrived at Jones's address.
At what had been Jones's address, for Jones had moved. Where? The slatternly, incurious landlady could not tell him. She thought it might have been to Hoboken but she wasn't sure. No, Mr. Jones hadn't left a forwarding address; he didn't get much mail. Maybe the trucking company would know. Devore's interest was piqued and he went to the trucking company, who had no more news of Jones than the landlady. Jones had left, they thought, for a better job; he had always been a steady, respectable man. They knew nothing of any relatives he might have. That was all.
Devore called up the hospital. No, Jones had not reappeared there. They were rather anxious to get hold of him at the moment, in fact—there was a case that—— Devore listened politely, asked them to notify him if Jones should turn up, and rang off. The successive defeats annoyed him; he was unused to defeat. His desire to solve the puzzle of Jones increased. He would find Jones. What he would do with him when he found him was of minor importance; he neither knew nor cared; but Jones must be found.
He consulted his lawyers and inserted a “personal” in the newspapers. “If Henry Jones, etc., will call, etc., he will hear of something to his advantage.” Some seventy Henry Joneses replied, in person or by letter, but not one of them was Jones. Devore swore.
He was a busy man; he then put the matter in the hands of a detective firm. They collected large fees and produced innumerable Joneses, but never the right one. Devore did not grudge the fees; he began to realize that finding a man named Jones, white, single, thirty-one, blond, presumably American citizen, might not be such an easy affair. There had been nothing unusual about Jones but his singular avocation—and even that gave no clue, for Jones's affair with Devore had been, apparently, his last appearance in the rôle of a “donor.” A less tenacious man would have given up the search in a month, but Devore did not. Jones had become a whim of his, and he had never been anything but willing to pay for his whims.
Months passed. Jones sank to the bottom of Devore's mind. But he was always there.
Meanwhile Devore carried on his life precisely as he had before his illness, thus disproving the old adage that when the Devil was sick the Devil a monk would be, and its sequel. Having suffered no sudden fever of terrified repentance, even at the worst of his physical weakness, he remained consistent, and when he was well did not celebrate the fact with the customary orgy of the sinner returned to his fleshpots after an enforced bout of temperance. A careful sensualist, he permitted his senses to delight again in all that had ever delighted them, but never to that excess that takes the keen edge off pleasure. He was as entirely ruthless in such matters as he was fearless of heavenly reprisals, but selfishness dictated certain bounds of caution, and within those bounds he flourished like a green bay tree and observed his more careless fellow revelers plunge to destruction unblinkingly.
He was that deadly anomaly, a cautious libertine—it is often so when Puritan stock turns moldy; and while a number of women and several men had every good reason for wishing to root him out of the soil of life in which he fattened like a mandrake, he was always a little too supple for their intentions. Moreover, as has been said, he did not mind paying for his whims, and he had never been quite afraid.
The incident of the Cavendish girl and its unfortunate sequel occupied his time for some months near the close of the year and demonstrated again to him who needed no such demonstration the curative power of money cleverly applied. A visit to Europe followed; a return; Devore's forty-third birthday—a birthday he celebrated with appropriate festivities, for he was pleased to find that now, nearly two years after his illness, that illness seemed to have left no mark upon him at all. Indeed, even doctors pronounced him astonishingly young for his age. “Shows what regular living will do for a man,” said the doctor. Devore smiled, and thought of Jones.
Coincidentally enough, some days later he received a telephone call from his detective firm. They had found Jones.
An hour later Devore was again in a hospital, but this time as a visitor. He smelled the eternal odor of hospital corridors with a pleasant feeling of health, tasting the contrast between this visit and the former one. Then they took him into the accident ward. Jones was there.
“I don't know whether he'll recognize you,” said the nurse doubtfully.
“It doesn't matter very much,” said Devore. “I shall recognize him.”
He did, but it was with an effort. Jones was there—but how altered! Of course there were bandages, but that was the least.
The very lie of the body told of strength suddenly made useless by a blind hammer stroke, the face was drawn with pain, the eyes large with pain. Out of the drawn and bandaged mask of the face the eyes looked at him unrecognizingly, the candid eyes of a brave animal who has been hurt, who does not know why, who suffers without outcry. Devore wondered how he had looked when he lay in that other bed and Jones stood beside him, strong, young and casual, a creature unimaginably removed from weakness and anguish. Time brought its revenges shrewdly, with irony. There was Jones now—and here was he. He drew in a long breath; he could feel the blood run in his body, strong, rich, alive. And Jones?
Jones, turning a little where he lay, flung up his left arm—the unbandaged one—in a gesture Devore remembered. The sleeve slipped back, disclosing the fair skin, the adroit, miraculous grace of the muscles. Devore shivered. Yes, that was the arm. He bent down to see if the needle prick had left a mark. No. His own arm tingled as he looked. The other arm was clumsy with bandages—it lay stiff at Jones's side.
“Too bad,” said the nurse later. “Too bad. Such a splendid fellow. And so patient.”
“What was it?” queried Devore.
“An accident—an explosion. He was working at”—but that did not interest Devore.
“He'll live?”
“Oh, yes—but of course, even so—the whole right side—doctor thinks he'll be able to save the foot—but even so——”
“He'll be permanently disabled?”
The nurse nodded. “I'm afraid so. At least—he'll be able to do light work—he'll be able to walk—but his right arm will be practically useless—and his face—there'll be scars, of course. Are you—a near relative?”
“Not exactly.” Devore smiled. “And yet, in a way----”
He made arrangements to have Jones transferred to a private room. It gave him a sense of retaliation, of power, to be able to treat this broken strength like a careless-acquired new plant. As Jones mended, Devore went often to see him. The hospital thought him an uncommonly grateful philanthropist; he had let the story of his first meeting with Jones be known. And they let Jones know who he was, and the reason he was there.
Jones was, as Devore had expected him to be, dumbly grateful. It gave Devore intense entertainment to watch his uncouth, serious attempts to express his gratitude.
“But, Mr. Devore, I—I——”
“Now, Jones.”
Jones became convalescent, the bandages were gradually unwound. Devore visited him regularly; he became quite a privileged character in the hospital. Finally there came a day when the last of the bandages were off.
Devore found Jones sitting docilely in his chair.
“Well, Jones, got rid of the last of your swaddlings, I see. That's fine.”
“Yes,” said Jones with his characteristic heavy meekness, “that's fine.”
“Come, come, Jones!” said Devore, enjoying himself. “Mustn't complain. You might be dead, you know. You might be dead.”
Jones looked at him steadily. “I'd better have died,” he said.
“Why, J—”
“Look at that,” said Jones suddenly, and lifted his right arm with his left hand. Devore flinched. Yes, it was worse than he had imagined. Yes. “There's no strength in it, Mr. Devore,” said Jones deeply. “Not strength to pick up a match from the floor.”
“Oh, come, Jones——
“Oh, I'll get used to it, I guess,” said Jones in a colorless voice. “But I used to be a strong man, Mr. Devore. And now—what's a man without his strength? That's what I want to know,” he repeated, with an abrupt, surprising passion. “What's a man without his strength?”
“Well, well,” said Devore. “We'll see.”
The nurse paralleled Jones's query that same day.
“Yes—he'll be well enough to leave in a week, Mr. Devore. As well as he's likely to be. But”—her voice was troubled—“but—what is he going to do? We've been trying to think of some- thing for him, but—”
“I thought—if he would care to take service with me said Devore, with obvious diffidence.
“Oh, Mr. Devore!”
Devore put the question himself the following day.
“The medicos say you're well enough to leave almost any time now, Jones. Have you any plans?”
He watched, excitedly, for a twinge of despair or pain to cross Jones's face, but nothing of the sort came, only a heavy, stupefied expression.
“No, sir.”
“No plans at all?”
“No, sir.”
“Well—would you like to take service with me? I think I could make a place for you—in my house—something you'd be able to do——”
Devore braced himself for a flood of exclamatory gratitude. But Jones merely said, “I'd like to, sir—if you think I'd be up to the work.”
“Very well,” said Devore, rather disappointedly, “that's settled.” He paused. “That all, Jones?”
A gleam appeared momentarily in the eyes of Jones. “I guess you can count on me for anything you want me for, any time, Mr. Devore,” he said, and again Devore shivered. It had not been the words exactly, or the look of Jones's eyes, but there had been something—for an instant he had felt as if he had put his hand on the naked nerves of a heart. He disliked such emotions.
“Oh, your duties won't be so onerous, Jones,” he said lightly. “I think I shall call my new servant Caliban,” he said to his teeth.
Caliban he became to Devore, and Caliban he remained. Devore passed the nickname about among his friends, who were amused. To himself the idea grew more savory as the days passed. Jones was so faithful.
Devore took an artistic delight in the whole situation. It pleased him like a fine bit of draftsmanship; Hogarth might have drawn it in a few rough, cruel, powerful lines—the cold, relentless dandy and his big, twisted servant, at his heels like a dog.
At first his place in Devore's household brought Jones the confusion that Devore had anticipated. The other servants seemed to puzzle if not awe him; he moved among them as among a collection of elegant bric-à-brac, with uneasy awkwardness, and it was obvious that they thought him rather a savage. But soon his vast patience began to fit him into the life of the house. He became a sort of general factotum, as far as he was able; the other servants began to treat him with the condescending fellowship one bestows on a big rough dog; whenever some household detail was unpleasant, or a little tedious, it fell to Jones. They discovered he could do astonishingly heavy work, considering. He developed a clever knack of making the best of his crippled side; though practically one-handed, he could polish silver, for instance, after a few lessons, with a thoroughness and success one would not have believed possible in a crippled giant. Devore sometimes found him thus, his good hand occupied in cleaning some small. silver object with meticulous precision, the large fingers so careful. It gave Devore the odd feeling of spying upon something that should not be seen.
Jones was nearly always busy at something and what spare time he had he spent in his room, no one knew how. He went out very little of his own volition; he did not read, he received no visitors. Perhaps he occupied his few odd moments with slow recollections of the time when he had been whole.
Devore had not thought that accident could age a man so in such short space. Jones was ten years younger than he, but he looked the older of the two. That too tickled Devore's sense of contrast—to overhear the other servants talk about “poor old Jones.”
But it was not in the house alone that Jones proved valuable. He accompanied Devore on dubious expeditions and ran strange errands for him; Devore had counted on that. As time went by the expeditions and the errands became more strange; it was not without entertainment that Devore had noted the simplicity and steadfastness in Jones's eyes. He wondered if there were not some means of paining, of shocking that simplicity, that candor. There did not seem to be; Jones among evil company—and it was evil— remained Jones; his simplicity undisturbed. That he did not relish some of the occupations which Devore devised for him was obvious, but he always obeyed orders with slow precision; and always in his attitude was the unspoken admission of an unshakable debt.
It would have amused Devore even more, in all probability, had Jones taken pattern of life from his new master. Sometimes he even hated that simplicity no example or contact could tarnish. The temptation and fall of Jones—what a spectacle for the gods! But since it was not to be so—even better. “One never tastes the full flavor of misdemeanor unless one knows that a person of rigid propriety knows all about it,” Devore remarked to his intimates. “Sin needs a background of virtue or it hardly shows. Jones is my background; for a man of my tastes there is no more priceless possession than an utterly honest and stupid familiar—eh, Jones?”
And yet, if Devore felt any emotion toward Jones, it was that of hate. He felt more and more sure of that as spring succeeded winter.
Hate led him to set traps for Jones, to expose Jones's clumsiness in public; hate of the gadfly that buzzes around a crippled bull; hate that increased the more Jones seemed un conscious of it; hate that kept tapping, tapping at Jones with tiny strokes of a needle, searching for some hidden wound. If he could just once humiliate Jones in the eyes of his own simplicity—but the moment never came.
There was the business of the new secretary, for instance. Devore had discovered that if there was one thing that did embarrass Jones, it was feminine youth. So naturally when he engaged his new secretary, he made sure of Jones's being present.
There were some twenty girls to be interviewed and Devore gave Jones the task of ushering them in and out. Jones's cumbrous, tongue-tied politeness to the gum-chewing little fools was really delicious, thought Devore. After they had gone, he summoned Jones in.
“Well, Jones, which one do you advise?”
“What, Mr. Devore?”
“Which one of the departed bevy of beauteous morons shall we select for the not very difficult position of private secretary?”
“Well, sir,” said Jones, “if you really want to know what I think me
“Jones, your thoughts are pearls. Go on.”
“I'd take that Miss Winslow, sir. She had the best references.”
“Winslow—Winslow—oh, the thin little frump with the pince-nez! I am hiring a secretary, Jones—not a secretary-bird. Have you no sense of the appropriate?”
“Well, Mr. Devore,” said Jones seriously, “that other one—Miss Hale, I think it was—she looks like a steady worker.”
“She does,” said Devore, with a sigh, “and she has a face like a muffin. No, Jones, really—your advice is doubtless sincere but it is singularly lacking in humor. No”—he mused reflectively—“I think we will have Miss Leigh.” He consulted a sheet of paper. “Miss—Moira Leigh.”
An odd expression crossed Jones's face. “Miss Leigh?”
“Yes, Jones,” said Devore impatiently, “Miss Moira Leigh. The little brunette with the Irish eyes.”” He contemplated his pencil. “I think Miss Leigh will do very well indeed.”
“But Mr. Devore,” said Jones, with curious insistence, 'Miss Leigh—oh, I guess she's capable enough—but—why—she said herself she'd hardly had any experience at all—and Miss Winslow——”
Devore looked puzzled. Jones sounded so earnest. The fact decided him. Jones was presuming—for Jones.
“My dear Jones, it's very good of you to take such an interest in the relative efficiency of my prospective secretaries. But I think we will take Miss Leigh. After all, experience is valuable enough, in its way, but a man of taste must pay some attention to— personality. Yes, I think Miss Leigh will do very well.”
Devore congratulated himself on his decision later. If Miss Leigh was not experienced—and this seemed to be her first position of any importance—she was very painstaking—quaintly like Jones in that. And besides——
Moira Leigh at twenty had blue eyes and black hair and the serious grace of a quaint, delightful sculpture. Her mouth was small as a child's, and melancholy had touched it—the reasonless, beautiful melancholy that is the sound of the Irish harp; but a child's quick delight in all small pleasantnesses made it gay. Her hands were thin and surprisingly well shaped; her clothes, Devore thought appraisingly, very bad, but she knew how to wearthem. She was spirited, candid and humorous; that pleased Devore well enough but it really interested him to note how unconsciously and with what eager appreciation she reacted to beauty and pleasantness in any form—the furnishings of Devore's house, the flowers on his desk, even so common a thing as a sunny day. He was amused and piqued—she was so obviously youthful, so obviously poor, so obviously ardent for all delight. Pretty soon he began to be interested more and more.
It amused him, too, to watch Miss Leigh and Jones together. She had won Jones—hulking Jones with his muscle-bound shyness—before Jones even realized that he was being won. Perhaps it was because she always treated him as an equal, not as a curiosity, but Devore never thought of that. She would ask his advice, quite solemnly, about little matters. Once she even made him laugh. That startled Devore. Once he came upon Jones helping to fix her typewriter, too—an amusing spectacle. The worshiping sort of look on Jones's face!
Gradually, delicately, with practised ease, Devore, stung by his insatiable curiosity, began to investigate. Miss Leigh was easy to investigate—she told the truth with distressing frankness. And gradually, slowly, he felt himself drawn toward a certain course of action.
He could not believe in her inexperience, her simplicity, at first; he had long ago given up believing in innocence. But gradually he was convinced. And when he was convinced, he trembled a little. The gods of ill repute he had served all his life so faithfully stood ready now to requite him even beyond expectation. The flesh tired of its accustomed toys, but this toy was unique—would furnish unique diversion for as much as a year, even longer, maybe. And Devore had come to an age when a new diversion is beyond all price.
Moira saw nothing at first; she merely thought her employer a very agreeable old gentleman for his age.
Devore could be patient. He was patient now. The bitter, enchanted thread that he spun about the girl was cautiously devised, each filament frail as cobweb, the whole gradually weaving into the shape of a net. Miss Leigh's work began to necessitate more confidential conversations with her employer, work after hours, little dinners, all the rest. Important letters must be typed at Mr. Devore's house, and so forth. Miss Leigh noted that Jones seemed positively gruff, now and then, as these last occasions grew more frequent. But by that time she was already beginning to be entangled in the spinning thread.
The climax of Devore's preparations came as he had planned it, one summer evening in his home. The pretense of work, at first; then Devore dropped the pretense.
He took a box from his pocket.
“What do you think of these, Miss Leigh?”
They were earrings, pearls, pale and lustrous as frost—beautiful, matchless things.
“They're—oh, they're beautiful!”
“Then they belong to you.”
“But Mr. Devore—I——”
Devore braced himself. “Moira—you're lovely, Moira—I love you—Moira——”
The gods were true to their tried servant. She was in his arms.
After a little while: “So I'm going to take you away, Moira—we're going away—to the country—my place in the country—tonight——”
She looked at him, dazed, dazed, a part of him thought detachedly. Good heavens—had she never even been kissed before?
“But—but——”
“Oh, yes,” he smiled—tenderly, he hoped. His heart pounded. 'Your things—we'll get them—but we'll buy you other things, Moira— all the things you must have—all the things you've never had—as soon as we go away.”
She looked at him. “And—and—we're going to be married in the country?”
“Oh, yes—married—of course—after a while.” He spoke as one speaks to a child. The old trick—the old musty, shopworn trick. But his luck would hold—he knew it. The trick would serve. Afterwards
“Are you coming, Moira?”
“T—I—my things----”
He had a sudden idea. Jones.
“We'll send Jones for them, Moira.”
Jones. Jones, who had always looked at Moira as—as a more honest Caliban might have looked at Miranda. Jones, who so obviously, so dully thought Moira the embodiment of all the virtues. Jones should see— perhaps here at last was the shock to break his simplicity to pieces like a broken mirror. Oh, Jones must be here at his triumph! It was the crowning touch.
“Yes—we'll get Caliban,” he said dreamily, and rang.
Jones entered. He must have been disturbed at some household occupation, for he was in his shirt-sleeves. He seemed clumsier than ever tonight, thought Devore, drunkenly. He would hardly look at Moira; his face was drawn.
“Jones.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am going to the lodge tonight. Have my bag packed. Tell Vincent I want the car in half an hour. Telephone the lodge that we are coming.”
“We, Mr. Devore?” said Jones heavily.
“Yes,” said Devore with brutal directness, “we. And Jones—Miss Leigh will give you a note—you will go to her boarding-house, have her things packed and bring them here in a taxi at once. All right—that's all.”
He waited for Jones to go, but Jones did not stir.
“Jones!”
Jones turned to Moira. His face was expressionless. “You want me to go and get your things, Miss Leigh?”
“I told you that, Jones,' Devore broke in impatiently, but Jones ignored him.
“You're going out to the lodge with Mr. Devore?” he persisted.
Moira's voice replied to him, like a voice in sleep. “Why—yes, Jones. We're going to be married, you know.” Then, a trifle timidly: “Aren't you going to congratulate us, Jones?”
“You ain't going to be married,” said Jones in the same flat voice; then, as she did not seem to comprehend: “He ain't going to marry you, Miss Leigh.”
“Jones!” said Devore furiously, then, anxiously, to Moira: “I don't know what the fool thinks, dear, but----” He stopped.
“Oh!” said Moira sharply, and her hand went to her breast. Then she turned on Jones defiantly. “And suppose he isn't?” she said, in a high, queer voice. “I don't care—I've got to have a good time sometime—I've got to have a good time sometime—haven't I—Jones?”
The last words were almost a wail. Devore sighed with relief. This simplified matters so.
“Well, Jones—are you satisfied?”
But Jones was staring at the girl incredulously, with a gray face.
“Don't you see I've got to have a good time sometime, Jones? Don't you see I'll never have it any other way?—and oh, I'm so tired of mending and scrimping. Here, Jones”—she scrabbled in her bag—“here—I'll give you the note. I'm going----”
Jones's face set. “No. You ain't,” he said through tight lips. Moira looked at him and covered her face with-her hands.
“This has lasted long enough,” said Devore impotently. “Jones—you're discharged—get out!”
“Not unless she comes with me,” said Jones.
Enormous rage overcame Devore. “Get out, Jones!” he said, breathing hard. Fisticuffs were ridiculous, but this would not even be fisticuffs. It would be a well man, strong enough, who had kept his youth, against a cripple. There could be no doubt of the con clusion.
His fists clenched, he stepped toward Jones.
“You stupid hulk, what right have you to interfere in my affairs?” he said.
Jones watched him come without making a movement to protect himself, his eyes blank and hard.
Then, just as Devore was tightening for the blow, Jones raised his left arm.
“I got this!” he said, in a high, harsh voice.
Devore's right hand dropped to his side as if it had been struck with an ax. He stared. Jones's sleeve fell back, revealing the white skin, the powerful bulge of the crawling muscles, the spot where the needle had lain. An abrupt, blind terror palsied Devore. He saw—not the Jones who stood before him, haggard and crippled, but the other Jones, the strong man exulting in his strength, the stranger who could have broken him like an egg, the man who had given him his blood. He shrank back and back as if before some monstrous prodigy of nature. His nerves jangled like broken wires.
“I got this,” said Jones again, “and I want my pay for it!” He came closer as Devore shrank. “I give you my blood, huh, Mr. Devore? I give you the blood you couldn't 'a' lived without----”
“For a price,” said Devore, trembling.
“Yeah,” said Jones. “And unless I get the price, Mr. Devore—unless you let Miss Leigh go—I want my blood, I tell you!” His voice shook like a madman's. “I want my blood, and I'm going to take it back!”
His hand had gone to his pocket. Now it came out again, and the cowering Devore saw that it held a knife.
“You're crazy—you said you'd do anything for me----” Devore half moaned. “Oh, you fool—you fool—keep off----”
“No—I ain't crazy. And I guess I know what I owe you—but it's paid, Mr. Devore—it's paid by the things I've done.” His voice was very bitter. “But my blood ain't paid for----”
“I'll give you any money,” babbled Devore, “any money----”
“I don't want money. I got my own price. If you don't let Miss Leigh go now, I want----”
But Moira had laid a hand on his arm. She was sobbing. “Oh, Jones—Jones—it's all right—I'll go----”
“And you won't never see Mr. Devore again?” said Jones, the fury still in his eyes.
She looked at the cringing man against the wall and shuddered. “Oh, no, no, no, Jones! I'll never see him again.”
“All right,” said Jones with a sigh, “then we'll be going, I guess.”
The madness flared up a moment in him. He looked at Devore.
“And if you ever try and find her——”
But he had no need to conclude. Devore had never been wholly afraid before, as has been said. But he was now, and his whole body shook with the ague of it.
“All right,” said Jones again. “Come along, Miss Leigh.”
Devore watched them take their departure without word or sign. She was leaning on Jones's arm. Devore heard her say something about fools and God and rescue. The net had been torn in two—Devore knew that as he looked at her; it was not to be woven again.
He saw Jones's arm steady her as she walked, and his breath shuddered deep in his throat. Then they were gone and he was left alone with his terror. He would never sleep again, he thought—there would always be dreams. Dreams of an Arm, a Hand.
Down somewhere in the house there was the sound of a door closing. Miranda and Caliban had escaped from the house of the spider.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1943, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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