I'd Die For You

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  “No! You going to drink it. I know what it is—it’s chloral hydrate—it’s a ‘Mickey Finn.’ Why, I can smell it!”

  Miss Hapgood stood on the stairs and smiled ineffectually as she held out the glass.

  “Drink it!” Emmet commanded, not even pausing in his wrecking task, which consisted in throwing the extracted spokes through a broken window into the garden. “When that Cardiff comes I want to have you all passed out in rows before he drinks his! My God! Can’t a man die in peace!”

  Miss Trainor turned on the hall light against the darkening day—and Emmet Monsen looked ungratefully at her.

  “And you with your smile, as if it was all so pretty. California!” The name of the state was accompanied by a long-drawn splintering of the top stair rail.

  “I’m from New England, Mr. Monsen.”

  “Never mind! Write yourself a check anyhow. And write Miss Hapgood a check—on her chart.”

  Miss Hapgood rose to the occasion. Perhaps a vision, like Joan of Arc’s, had come to her, a ghostly whisper from Florence Nightingale:

  “Mr. Monsen—if I do drink this, will you go to bed?”

  Hopefully she raised the glass of chloral.

  “Yes!” agreed Emmet.

  But as she lifted it to her mouth the Trainor girl darted up the stairs, tilted her arm and spilt the liquid.

  “Somebody’s got to watch!” she protested.

  The hall below seemed suddenly crowded with people. There was Dr. Cardiff, massive in himself; there was Mrs. Ewing coming on her shift; there was a gardener from the Davis estate with a letter in his hand.

  “Get out of here,” Emmet shouted. “That includes Dr. Hippocrates.”

  His arms were full of broken wood as he backed up a few steps and braced himself against what remained of the toothless bannister.

  “I’m going to have him disbarred at the next port. Write him a check, Miss Hapgood. You’re off the case. I’m treating myself. Go on! Write checks! Get away!”

  Dr. Cardiff made a step up the stairs and Emmet weighed a chunk, snarling happily. “Right at those spectacles. No curve—just a fast one. I hope you’ve got insurance on the sockets!”

  While the doctor hesitated Emmet proved his aim by clipping off the light of the upper hall with a minor fragment.

  Then the gardener, a man of seventy, started slowly up the stairs, holding out an envelope toward Emmet. Emmet’s hand tightened on the big chunk but the fearless old face reminded him of his own father.

  “From Mr. Davis,” the gardener said, expressionless. He put the envelope through the gap in the balcony and started down.

  “All of you get out!” Emmet cried, “while you’re still whole. Before I—”

  The world was spinning around him in cyclorama—

  —and then suddenly he knew that the hall was empty. There was no sound in the house. For a few minutes he stood there, all his energies bent upon an attempt to focus. With a last resurgence of tension he crutched himself down the stairs—and listened. He heard a door shut far away—motors starting.

  Leaning over so that he touched his hands to the steps he crept back up; at the head of the stairs his fingers touched an envelope. He lay on his back on the floor and ripped it open:

  My Dear Mr. Monsen:

  I had no idea of your condition. I saw the spokes come out the window—one of them hit me. I must ask you to vacate by nine o’clock tomorrow.

  Sincerely

  Carlos Davis

  Emmet sat up, and accidentally his legs flung out over space through the gaps where the spokes had been. The house was absolutely quiet now. There was an echo as he experimentally dropped a last spoke down into the stair well. Presently, he told himself, he would get in bed. It was so nice and quiet. There were no people in the house. He had won.

  V

  When Emmet awoke there seemed to be no light save in the lower hall, but he had the half-waking memory of a sound far away in the dark house. He lay silent, seeing from the circlet moon in a window that it was late—somewhere between midnight and two.

  The faint sound came again, with a suggestion of caution in its pitch, and Emmet sat up carefully. He tiptoed into his bedroom, put on his dressing gown and felt for his revolver in the drawer of his bureau. Snapping out the chamber he found to his annoyance that it was unloaded; and his hand came into contact with no bullets in the drawer. The chances were that anyone trying to break in was some discouraged tramp, but he put the empty gun in the pocket of his gown as he tiptoed down the stairs.

  In the door of the dark living room he listened again—then he waited again outside the kitchen and the secretary’s office—hearing the sound once more, as if from somewhere behind him.

  He took the revolver in his hand and crept to the door of the living room—

  A voice spoke suddenly from a corner.

  “It’s Miss Trainor, Mr. Monsen.”

  “What?”

  “Trainor. The light switch is beside your hand.”

  Blinking at the glare he saw her curled in the big armchair, as if she herself had just awakened.

  “You can’t get on relief at night,” she said. “So I just stayed.”

  “I heard something,” Emmet said. “And if you’re asleep it couldn’t have been you. Know anything about the bullets for my revolver?”

  “Mrs. Ewing took them out, that first night.”

  “You mean that gun was empty when you brought it in the kitchen?”

  Miss Trainor nodded.

  “Sh!” he warned her suddenly, and flipped out the light. After a moment he whispered:

  “There’s somebody here. Do you know where she put those bullets?”

  “No, I don’t. And I went through the house myself a little while ago.”

  Unconvinced, Emmet prowled back toward the kitchen. Either his nerves were still in collapse or there were intermittent creaks that might be footsteps. Again he whispered to Miss Trainor, primed with suspicion:

  “It isn’t those medical masqueraders? That doctor or those nurses. Tell me frankly.”

  No answer—and for a moment he thought he had hit upon it—then he realized that Miss Trainor was no longer near him. A moment later, as she approached softly from the drawing room, he repeated his question.

  “They’ve left, Mr. Monsen.” She hesitated. “There has been a carpenter here but he’s gone; he’s coming back at six-thirty with new spokes for the bannister, and a new window frame.”

  Emmet forgot the suspected prowler as he asked in astonishment:

  “Why?”

  “Well,” she seemed embarrassed. “I had nothing to do—so I gathered up the spokes.”

  “Mr. Davis wrote me that one of them hit him,” he interrupted. “He told me to get out.”

  She paused, then her voice brightened.

  “Well, it didn’t stick in him, because the spokes were all out there in the garden—and if they’re back in place he’ll have a hard time suing you.”

  “How did you get a carpenter at this time of night?”

  “My father,” she said. “He used to be [a] shipwright.”

  “Damn nice of you.” He added suddenly, “Sh!”

  They listened—but when Emmet looked at her she shook her head negatively; her smile was sad; she wanted to agree with him that there had been a noise, but conscientiously she couldn’t.

  “It’s this house,” he decided suddenly. “The place is thoroughly haunted. I’m going out and walk a few minutes. I think if I could smell a field growing—”

  He was in the hall putting a light overcoat over his dressing gown when Miss Trainor suggested:

  “Do you mind if I walk along with you?”

  Suspicion came back into Emmet’s voice.

  “You won’t give me any orders?”

  Ashamed of himself, he changed his tone:

  “I don’t mind.”

  Passing in front of the garage Emmet once more thought he heard a peculiar sound—but when it was not repeate
d he struck out with the Trainor girl across a dirt road—and off Carlos Davis’ property.

  It was a down-hill path and presently, with no particular fatigue, he sat down on one of the mounds of new-mown hay that dotted the field.

  “You settle for the next pile,” Emmet suggested considerately. “After all, you still have a reputation—which is one up on me.”

  Presently she spoke from a rustle ten feet away:

  “There may be animal life here, but this is something I always wanted to do.”

  “Me too—what’s the technique? Do you pull the hay over you? Or do you burrow down into it? You don’t suppose I’d find Miss Hapgood!”

  No answer. He stared at the waning moon for awhile, then murmured drowsily, “It all smells good.”

  —This wouldn’t be a bad place to end, he thought drowsily. Even Elsa didn’t seem especially to matter. But for a long time there had been no sound from the other pile, and curiosity made him ask: “Dreaming about New England?”

  “Not dreaming at all—I had coffee with father. I’m wide awake.”

  “I feel saner myself minute by minute.”

  “You were never very bad.”

  Emmet sat up, feeling almost insulted as he wiped the glossy bristles from his ears.

  “What do you mean! Why I was menacing! I was told to vacate!”

  The Trainor girl was on her feet and near him.

  “We must face the truth,” she said, “There’s a heavy dew and this hay is dampish. I’m leaving you.”

  “What do you mean? It’s the finest hay.”

  No answer.

  “Leaving me!” he exclaimed. “I thought you asked to come along.”

  Her voice reached him from thirty yards off.

  “The hay’s damp—and you told me not to give you any advice.”

  “You might at least wait a second.”

  He sighed—he stood up, and started after her. The path was up-hill now and when he caught up with her they stopped every few minutes. After the third time they had established somehow the convention that each time they stopped they would wink at each other.

  “We’ll have trouble explaining this to the burglar,” he said, as they approached the house. “Maybe we better brush each other off.”

  “Virtue is its own reward.”

  But she slapped the particles conscientiously from his coat—and she did the same for herself as he looked back at the moon, and at the silver-spotted field below them. Then they stepped into the kitchen and she flipped on the light. Her smile seemed brighter than anything outside or in, brighter than anything Emmet had ever known.

  VI

  We shift the Camera Angle: Shooting toward Carlos Davis getting up in an exclusive bedroom set. It is eight-thirty in the morning but he awakes upset by the events of the night before.

  Carlos Davis had scarcely begun his morning exercises when his Philippino came in.

  “Doctor take care of Mr. Monsen—he want to talk to you on phone. Ver important.”

  Carlos Davis removed the encyclopedia from his abdomen while Manuel plugged in the phone. A few grave sentences between himself and Dr. Cardiff established the facts of Emmet Monsen’s conduct of the night before.

  Then the doctor’s voice sank almost to a whisper.

  “Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Davis, that there may be another factor in this eclusion—this coronary thrombosis?”

  “Is that what you call it? I thought it was just delirium tremens. Cripes! When they bean you with bannister spokes—”

  “That’s about the idea, Mr. Davis.” The doctor spoke slowly. “But we know there was only that one bottle of brandy in the house—and he drank less than half of it . . .”

  There was a pause over the telephone.

  “Let me put it another way: when a doctor leaves the case at the mere whim of a patient—”

  “Whim!” protested Davis. “If that’s his idea of a whim!”

  “When patient has only a twenty-five per-cent chance for life the doctor naturally wants to know all the facts—so he can inform the next doctor.”

  Carlos Davis was thoroughly mystified as Dr. Cardiff continued: “What do you know about Monsen, Mr. Davis?”

  “Nothing—except he’s a sort of—well-known man—and all that sort of—”

  “I mean about his private life. Has it ever occurred to you that there are articles which can be concealed in a smaller space than alcohol?”

  Davis found this hard thinking for this hour of the morning—a difficult script.

  “You mean like stillettos—and dynamite?” he suggested, and then:

  “Why don’t you come out this afternoon and talk to me?”

  Davis dressed in a state of some agitation, deciding in the middle of breakfast to collect a posse of gardeners, and see if his tenant had cleared out. He was within his legal rights. It was past nine—the hour he had set. However, he wanted, above all things, to avoid a scandal, and as he was not a timorous young man he left his followers outside and went in alone by the kitchen door.

  The house was silent. He peered into the secretary’s office, approached the living room—where he stopped short in the doorway. There, stretched on the sofa, apparently alive, but lost in the softest sleep, lay Miss Trainor. He stared at her momentarily, frowned, uttered a sigh, was half tempted to wake her and ask the address, but, with Macbeth’s reverence for sleep, forced himself to turn away. He mounted the stairs.

  In the big bedroom he found Emmet Monsen, also in a peaceful reverie. A little puzzled he began to retrace his steps, when suddenly he remembered the spoke that had flown from the window—and stood transfixed, staring at the bannisters: the spokes were there. Lightly he bounded up and down several times, then, with a slight feeling of nausea, he tried his eyes on several other objects—retreating finally to the kitchen.

  Here he recovered his aplomb—certainly a half empty bottle of brandy stood in plain sight on a closet shelf—and with his relief a portion of Dr. Cardiff’s conversation came back to him—this time with meaning.

  “—articles that can be concealed in a smaller space than alcohol.”

  Carlos Davis dashed outside and in front of the garage took deep breaths of the pure California air.

  Cripes! That was it—Dope! Emmet Monsen was a Secret Dope Fiend! Dope—the subject was somehow confused in his mind with the movies of Boris Karloff but it seemed to explain everything—only a dope fiend would have had the diabolical cleverness to wrench out bannister spokes, and then replace them without a flaw before morning!

  And the girl asleep on the sofa—he groaned—she had probably led a pretty decent life before this Monsen, full of Tropical devices, had tricked her into a first whiff of the opium pipe a few days before . . .

  He walked with the head gardener toward his house. Since he was not apt at phrases he quoted the doctor.

  “There are articles that can be hidden in a smaller space than alcohol,” he said darkly.

  The gardener got it—glanced back wonderingly.

  “My golly! One of them hopheads!”

  “And American womanhood!” Davis added cryptically.

  The gardener did not make a connection—but his mind jumped to another: “Mr. Davis, I should of spoke to you—maybe you know, down around the old stable—”

  Davis was hardly listening—he was headed toward the telephone and Dr. Cardiff.

  “—them weeds growing there is hemp, and it ought to be cut down and burned—”

  “All right—all right.”

  “—because I read how them G-Men are cutting it down—because guys sell it to school children, and I had to chase some fellas out of there one day—”

  Davis stopped.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That marijuana, Mr. Davis. The peddlars make them reefers out of it and it drives them school children crazy. And if it got in the papers that marijuana was on your estate—”

  Carlos Davis stood in place and uttered a long m
ournful cry.

  VII

  The Trainor girl, lately subject to Carlos Davis’ commiseration, awoke about noon feeling that there were people in the room and that they were staring at her. She stood up, with those indispensable dabs at the hair that, though symbolic in their result, give a woman a sense of being “fixed up.”

  The party that had entered consisted of Dr. Cardiff, and two husky younger men with a firm, alert manner—and, hovering tentatively in the background, that celebrated shadow known as Carlos Davis.

  Dr. Cardiff said Good Morning somewhat grimly, and continued a conversation with the two young men.

  “The County Hospital has given you your instructions; I am simply here at the request of Mr. Davis. You know the ingenuity of these people—and how small a syringe can be.”

  The young men nodded. One of them said: “We understand, doctor. We look under mattresses and down the drains, and inside of books and powder-boxes.”

  “Behind their ears,” supplemented the other young man. “Sometimes they keep it there.”

  “And be pleased to examine those bannister spokes,” proposed Dr. Cardiff. “Monsen may have been trying to get at it.” He brooded momentarily. “I wish we had one of those broken spokes.”

  Carlos Davis spoke up nervously.

  “I don’t want any violence. Don’t start looking behind his ears till you get him in custody.”

  A new voice sounded strange from the doorway.

  “What’s this about my ears?”

  Emmet, fatigued from the effort of shaving, found his way to a chair and looked at the doctor for an explanation, but he found none, nor on any other face till he met the eyes of the Trainor girl—who winked solemnly. This time, behind the wink, he divined a warning.

  Other signals were going on. The two young men exchanged cryptic glances, whereupon one departed the room while the other drew a chair close to Emmet, and sat down.

  “My name is Pettigrew, Mr. Monsen.”

  “How-do,” said Emmet shortly—and then, “Sit down, Davis—you must be tired. I saw you from my window an hour ago—reaping that weed patch behind your stable. And you were pitching in!”