Page:The Post-Mortem Murder by Sinclair Lewis.djvu/15

THE POST-MORTEM MURDER 15 bench in the Melanchthon station. Apparently 1 had come from the At- lantic seaboard to Nebraska to sit on this broken bench and watch an undesirable citizen spit at a box of sawdust* I spent the night at a not agreeable tavern or hotel, and next day I again called on Edgerton. I had surmised that he would be bored by the sight of me. He was. I begged him to permit me to look over his library. Impa- tiently, he left me alone, hinting, "When you go out, be sure and close the front door.'* With the chance of some one enter- ing, it would not have been safe to scurry through his desk and his ingen- ious cabinets in search of data regard- ing Jason. But while 1 stood appar- ently reading, with a pen-knife I so loosened the screws in a window-catch that the window could be thrust up from outside, I was going to burglarize the study. That night, somewhat after twelve, I left my room in the hotel, yawned about the office, pretended to glance at the ragged magazines, sighed to the drowsy night clerk, "I think I *ll have some fresh air before I retire," and sauntered out. In my inner pocket were a screw-driver and a small elec- tric torch which I had that afternoon purchased at a hardware shop . I knew from the fiction into which I had some- times dipped that burglars find these torches and screw-drivers, or "jim- mies," of value in their work. I endeavored, as I stole about the streets, to assume an expression of ferocity, to intimidate whoever might endeavor to interrupt me. For this purpose I placed my spectacles in my pocket and disarrayed my bow-tie. I was, perhaps, thrown off my nor- mal balance. For the good name of Jason Sanders I would risk all of serene repute that had been precious to me. So I, who had been a lecturer to re- spectful students, edged beneath the cottonwoods, slipped across a lawn, crawled over a wire fence, and stood in the garden of Whitney Edgerton. It was fenced and walled on all sides save toward the street. That way, then, I should have to run in case of eruption — out into the illumination of a street lamp. I might be very prettily trapped . Suddenly I was a- tremble, utterly in- credulous that I should be here. I could n't do it. I was menaced from every side. Was n't that some one peering from an upper window of the house? Did n't a curtain move in the study? What was that creak behind me? I, who had never in my life spoken to a policeman save to ask a direction, had thrust my- self in here, an intruder, to be treated like a common vagrant, to be shamed and roughly handled. As I grudgingly swayed toward the study windows I was uneasy before imaginary eyes. I do not remember a fear of being shot. It was something vaguer and more en- feebling: it was the staring disapproval of all my civilization, schools, churches, banks, the courts, and Quinta. But I came to the central window of the study, the window whose catch I had loosened. I could n't do it. It had seemed so easy in fiction j but crawl in there? Into the darkness? Face the unknown? Shin over the sill like a freshman? Sneak and pilfer like a mucker? I touched the window; I think I tried to push it up. It was beyond my strength. Disgust galvanized me. I to thieve