An Unsuccessful Homicide

by Montague Glass

An Unsuccessful Homicide

To the eye of a casual observer, Pincus Shapiro was an undersized child of seven, jumping clumsily up and down on the sidewalk in front of his Scammel Street home. Not so to himself, however, for at that moment Pincus was a horse, a proud horse with Mowing mane and tail, a restive beast that plunged and reared even as did the steed of Mr. Madigan, the saloon-keeper, on St. Patrick's Day. So Pincus shook his head and made bubbling noises with his lips like an impatient pony, desisting at intervals to cope with a severe coryza by process of inhalation.

It was during the execution by Pincus of a truly marvelous pirouette that Ambrose McGann paused on his way home to lunch from the parochial school, and made critical survey of the performance. Here was something extraordinary, Ambrose cogitated; an infant, and to all appearances one of the seed of Abraham, playing a solitary game on the sidewalk and finding amusement in dumb motions that made you laugh—yes, that made you guffaw in raucous, inarticulate jeers. It excited a certain resentment in Ambrose.

Ambrose was not imaginative, and couldn't play that he was a horse any more than he could eat a potato and think it an apple. He had attained the age of eight years on Cherry Street, which is equivalent to twelve on Fifth Avenue and sixteen in the rural districts; and he was disillusionized accordingly. All his playing had its utilitarian aspect. For instance,, hide and seek around the vegetable stands of the corner grocery meant eating apples at the conclusion of the game, just as an apparently childish romp in the dry dock near Jackson Street resulted in a visit to the junk-shops of the neighborhood and much candy for a few days.

Hence it offended Ambrose to view the harmless pleasure of Pincus Shapiro; and by way of showing his disapproval, he picked out a nice soft spot on the plump person of that unfortunate centaur and landed on it hard with his right fist.

Pincus, at the moment, was poised on the coping in front of his father's basement store. Losing his balance, he toppled over, striking the pavement of the four-foot depression full on the back of his head.

Ambrose waited for the wail of anguish that he felt sure would follow. Hearing none, he peered cautiously down the areaway. The erstwhile steed lay huddled in a little heap, his face showing white through its accustomed grime, and a thin stream of blood trickling from his nostrils.

A spasm of terror seized Ambrose. He turned and bolted in blind, headlong flight, nor paused until his feet could go no farther. He sank panting upon one of the benches of a small East Side park, where he stayed only long enough to recover his wind, and renewed his journey almost immediately. He had but a single idea—to put as much distance as possible between himself and that little blood-stained body. Ambrose knew something of death, for not long before he had seen his own father brought home a corpse—killed by falling from an unfinished building.

At length the fugitive could run no more. He seated himself on the stoop of a house in a quiet up-town avenue that might have been in a different hemisphere from Scammel Street. Here he remained in a sort of coma for half an hour, incapable of motion or even of thought, gasping for breath, until the wild jumping of his heart had in some degree subsided. Then, with a rush, the recollection of his awful deed came over him; and as he was only a little boy after all, he bent his head over his knees and gave way to his pent-up emotion in a torrent of choking sobs and tears.

Even as Ambrose himself had loitered to observe the antics of Pincus Shapiro, so did a butcher's assistant pause and watch in silence the violent sobbing of Ambrose, who soon became dimly aware of the spectator's presence and lifted his tear-stained face.

"Wot yer rubberin' at?" he said, stifling his sobs as well as he could.

For answer, the butcher boy stared on. Ambrose sprang to his feet, and, without any premonitory dialogue, sailed in to whip the insulting youth, who was at least four years his senior and almost a head taller. It was a short and decisive battle, and Ambrose, his feelings much relieved by his victory, started for the park, which he saw a block distant, while the butcher boy ran wailing down the street, his own gore mingling with that of his master's meat and poultry on his white apron.

The waning light of a March afternoon told Ambrose it was after five o'clock, even had his stomach, the little boy's unfailing chronometer, not confirmed the announcement. The thing now was to find something to eat. He had been on his way home to lunch when he met Pincus, and the thought of the fried liver or chuck steak that he had missed almost made him weep anew. But meals on Cherry Street are more or less uncertain affairs. Sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't; and the skipping of lunch only made Ambrose the keener for his dinner.

As he entered the park, he encountered a boy carrying a small wooden box suspended from his shoulders.

"La-a-arzenges, cent a package!" the young merchant chanted for Ambrose's benefit. "Milk chawklet. Peanuts!"

Ambrose waited to hear no more. He made one grab and was off with the spoils before the astonished vender could even put forth a show of defense. His last flight led him into the middle of the park, and there, in a little rocky glen, he proceeded to make his evening meal of the stolen peanuts and candy.

The afternoon was darkening to a bleak winter night as Ambrose finished his supper. Licking the last crumbs from his grimy hands, he turned over in his mind the chances of getting a shelter till morning. Often in summer he had slept in Central Park, but in winter he never strayed further north than Houston Street. Once, when his late father had been out of a job, he and his mother had spent the night in the boiler-room of a factory on Water Street, and the memory of its grateful warmth made him shiver the more in his present uncomfortable situation.

At any rate, the park was no place for sleeping in winter, so he shaped a course for the setting sun and trudged manfully on toward the West Side. It is fairly astounding, when you are a fugitive from justice, how many policemen you meet. Ambrose must have run across half a dozen in the next ten minutes. The last one he recognized as a former neighbor of his father on Cherry-Street, and it spurred his tired legs into a stumbling trot. But he was footsore and exhausted, and when he halted, at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Seventy-Second Street, he was indeed a forlorn little figure.

His Nemesis was close upon him. Just as he was about to subside into another fit of weeping, a tall patrolman, his father's late neighbor, lifted the boy in his arms.

"Quit yer beefin'," the policeman said, " an' say what ails yer."

"Narten," Ambrose wailed through his tears. "Lemmego, I tell yer!"

He kicked and struggled in an effort to escape.

"Gwan!" said the officer. "Cut dat out, or I'll spank the britches off'n yer!"

He made closer inspection of the wriggling youngster. "Holy cripes!" the officer cried. "It's Ambrose McGann! What er yer doin' up here, Ambrose?"

Ambrose sniffled and was still. He submitted to being plied with steaming coffee and butter-cakes in an adjacent lunch-room until he could eat no more.

"Now listen to me, kid," the officer said at the conclusion of the meal. "Tell me what ails yer, or I'll jail yer fer de rest of yer life."

The jig was up at last, and Ambrose prepared to make a clean breast of the whole matter.

"I done up a kid on Scammel Street dis mornin'," he said, between sobs.

"Well, what of it?" the officer persisted. "Was he done up bad?"

Ambrose could hardly restrain a smile of pride.

"I guess he croaked," said Ambrose simply.

It was thus that he confessed his crime. The officer whistled softly.

"Now don't get scared," he said. "You kin stay in de back room of the station-house to-night, and ter-morrer's my day off, so we'll go down town tergether and see what kin be done."

There was little sleep for Ambrose in the hospitable warmth of the back room. The electric chair is a favorite topic of conversation among the corner loafers of Cherry Street, and many a gruesome discussion of its dread office had Ambrose overheard in the vicinity of his home. It all came back to harry his soul that long night through, and it was a pallid criminal that accompanied Officer Shea down town next day.

They first visited the station-house on Madison Street, and Shea saluted his old sergeant behind the desk.

"Any murders on Scammel Street yesterday, sarge?" he said.

"Ain't heard o' none," the sergeant answered.

"Well, dis kid here says he killed a man there."

The sergeant leaned over the desk.

"Did yer shoot him or stab him?" he asked Ambrose, with a twinkle in his eye.

Ambrose became indignant.

"No kiddin'! I pushed de guy down a basement, an' I kin show yer de stiff," he said by way of offering proof.

"Go 'round wid him to see it," the sergeant said, and they started for Scammel Street without further delay.

It was nearly noon, and Scammel Street, which is an unusually quiet thoroughfare for the East Side, was almost deserted, save for the plump figure of Pincus Shapiro. Pincus' features were swollen and twisted into a picturesque variation of their ordinary irregularity. A large piece of surgical plaster adorned the back of his head, and he was running violently to and fro in front of his father's basement store.

"Honk, honk!" he cried, as he dragged after him a soap-box on wheels.

His painful injuries of yesterday were merged in the amusement of the hour, for in the exercise of a beneficent imagination, Pincus was himself again—a forty horse-power gasoline automobile.

Montague Glass