Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

Kale-3

“Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send to them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and hocked it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months later; but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed it looked to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to get that money.

“One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the house thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to have a wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of Jake's good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there came a ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was asleep way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear.

“'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around for his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in—he could ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was a blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice underneath, and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip down and bust some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't care much if he did.'

“But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from the servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket.

“I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had a number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar that lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening.

“I lifted the bar and swung the grille open.

“'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?'

“And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me.

“And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar. It raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped just outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug that was there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and sneezed that bar was right over the old man's brain-box.

“'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and a prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks at home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's collection—just one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes, and he's got anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his clothes.'

“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What then? The electric chair, huh?'

“'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another. Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time. It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means your chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and take care of those you have been neglecting.'

“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides, you'd kill him.'

“And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit too hard.

“And yet, I might not have done so! I might have hit him just enough to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest life since then.

“But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and I thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny for a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed.

“'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around.

“I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the grave.

“'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in, and I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.'

“I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I saved his life from.

“He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take a drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him, what does he do but pull out that billfolder.

“'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down in a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.'

“He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what he was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I have done it? Or should I have let him go by?

“Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it moral to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me, kid. You know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by morals. If I was to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap, you'd know me better than you do. If I had hit him just right and made my get-away, I would have led a different life.

“And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum.

“And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it.”

Ed brooded in silence for a while.

And then I said, “It's strange he didn't know you.”

“It's been ten years,” said Ed, “and you saw that the old man's got to the doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he didn't see them every day or two.”

“I suppose,” I said, “that the old man feels he is ending his days in a very satisfactory manner—the national prohibition thing triumphant, and all that.”

“How do you mean?” asked Ed.

“Don't you know?” I said. “Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped to finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big money all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and putting the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there was anything crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that represented organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor interests were still saying national prohibition could never come.”

“The hell he did!” said Ed. “I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on the night I saved his life.”

“Old Man Singleton,” I said, “is credited with having had more to do with it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside.”

“The old coot!” said Ed. And then added wryly: “I hope he gets as stiff in his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!”

It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the papers of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the victim. A head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him on his own head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He had been dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet a considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was sure that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage lay on the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not pretend to be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into one of the park trees.

The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old man, who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and struck his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could have had nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with his head at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and swung it on him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too absurd to be considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, when the same results might have been attained with the more usual blackjack, stick or fist?

Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the sum was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage fell out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man who limped and who said to him: “Kale is given to them that can best use it, to have and to hold.”

He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped from his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but he was suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too lightly; he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. The police pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the alleged person who limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was irrational and should be kept at home evenings; as far as they were concerned, the incident was closed.

But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is red and joy is unconfined.

“I met a friend of yours,” he said, “by the name of Ed down there, who is running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his regards to you. Must have made it pay—seems to have all kinds of money. Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said nobody knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret—though you might guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what was it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down—here it is: 'Kale! Kale! The g**g's all here.' Make anything out of it? I can't.”

I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in Cuba; I consider him an immoral person.