The House Of Cain

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Most medical students feel like that at first, Mr. Sherwood,” the doctor replied; “but nearly all become hardened––fortunately so for all concerned, and for the progress of medical science. In an official capacity I have observed several executions, both by electricity and the rope. I witnessed hundreds of deaths in the hospitals during the Great War. To a doctor, in general, death, like birth, is a mere incident.”

  “I read a book once wherein a South American State adopted the electric chair,” the big man put in, a broad smile playing over his mahogany-tinted features, the philosophy of happiness in his twinkling eyes. “The prison officials decided to go one better than Uncle Sam and supply twenty thousand volts as a curative treatment to gentlemen who fell from grace. Having taken a lot of trouble and spent heaps of money over the stunt, it was only natural that a very important personage should––er––open the bazaar, as it were. Therefore, the President himself, in spite of some natural diffidence, was persuaded to be seated. He took the twenty thousand volts like a lamb, and when they unstrapped him after half an hour with the current full on, he bounced up like a young man, declaring that electricity was the finest thing on earth for lumbago. The switch operator he made a General of Transport; the second-choice President got a mere two thousand volts and busted.”

  Dr. Moore smiled darkly and the fat man next Martin guffawed. Smith, the aged infant, showed two very yellow teeth in an astoundingly evil leer; but Mrs. Jonas, sitting very straight, looked bleakly at Mabel Hogan, who had just come from putting her child to sleep.

  “Ah yes, I am told that too much electricity does not bring about the officially desired result,” Moore responded. “Most nations nowadays boast of the quickness of their executions; but, with the exception of the guillotine of France and the axe of mediæval England, both of which remove the head, not one of the modern methods is instantaneous.”

  “Dear me! is that really so?” inquired Anchor with perceptibly raised brows. He was regarded steadily by his friend.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Moore said with finality. “Perhaps, seeing we are at dinner, I had better not go into this unpleasant subject.”

  “Oh! but do, Dr. Moore. I am so interested.”

  Monty raised his eyes with a startled expression. He could conceive no subject to be more rigorously barred from conversation among confessed takers of human life than the death penalty; yet here were these people calmly discussing its details, and one of them, a woman, urging a continuance of the subject because she was “so interested”! To Martin it was incredible that human nature could become so callous as to favour, for dinner-table conversation, one of the most horrible problems known to civilized society.

  “Very well, Madeline! As you are interested and no one else raises any objection, I will give you my conclusions,” came the high-pitched drawl. “I was remarking that other than by removing a person’s head the law’s method of killing is not instantaneous. The law in respect to homicides is revengeful, inasmuch as the man or woman awaiting execution suffers a thousand deaths in imagination before the physical event takes place.

  “Let us take my case as an instance, and from other cases add a bare description from what would have been my fate under the usual legal procedure. When I killed Dr. Talmadge he had no pre-knowledge of his end, which was entirely physical. He suffered neither pain nor mental torture. Being the living instrument of his death, I am tried and condemned to die. My death affords no compensation to Dr. Talmadge for being killed. When I die he doesn’t return to life. Neither will it prevent any other Moore killing any other Talmadge when the same irresistible urge arises.

  “We regard the tortures practised upon homicides in the Middle Ages with horror, because our imagination is so coarse that it can easily picture burning flesh and breaking bones. Yet the rack, the thumbscrew, boiling water, and red-hot iron are mild forms of torment to the law’s modern torture of the mind. Our imagination is not yet fine enough to appreciate the mental torture of waiting, waiting, waiting, during three interminable weeks, for an unnatural death.

  “Try to realize the mind of the person awaiting death. The hour and the day are written in letters of blood on every square foot of his cell walls. Those letters are burned into his brain. The hour, the minute, takes on life, the aspect of some terrible Thing that creeps to him ever nearer. As in a nightmare, he is bound by chains which hold him motionless and powerless to evade or fight the oncoming Thing.

  “Day by day his personality ebbs. He comes to regard himself as inhuman, to look on his few visitors and the warders as automata beyond his ken. Nothing can free him from his chains, nor conquer the Thing ever drawing nearer.

  “He knows that they know how many pounds he weighs. He knows that already it is decided how many inches he will be dropped from the trap. Daylight goes and the darkness is peopled by awful faces till daylight comes again. Another day nearer to the terrible Thing.

  “Collapse comes when on the fatal morning the hangman enters with his shackles. The victim is a man no longer. He is a screaming, writhing imbecile. The public read how he walked with firm steps to the scaffold. Lies! all lies! He is urged forward. But he will not go, will not follow the surpliced figure, the representative of Christ. Still screaming, foam upon his lips, he is carried along the corridor, into the yard, stationed on the trap.

  “The law says he must be hanged by the neck until he is dead. Banish from your minds the brave man standing to attention on the trap. Picture him, limp with fear, held up, supported by the hangman’s assistants standing safely outside the trap, who signal its release and spring away when the wretch drops. They hang not a man, but something that used to be a man. The law is satisfied. It has had its revenge. But the victim of the murderer is no less dead.”

  “Your point of view is most interesting,” observed Martin quietly. “But surely something must be done to takers of life. Granted that the punishment of murderers might and should be much less crude than clumsily killing them, yet an example must be made, and the awful death penalty is probably a deterrent where life imprisonment would not be.”

  “Your line of argument would be sound if applied to ordinary crime,” Moore continued. “As a deterrent the death penalty would, I think, lessen to a great extent crimes like embezzlement, forgery, and swindling. But the death penalty will never lessen murder, because murder is the result of a temporary mental derangement, a derangement over which the sufferer has no control. Ninety-nine murders in every hundred are committed upon impulse, the impulse being the effect of excitement, which in turn is the effect of a complication of circumstances. But let us keep to our subject.”

  “By all means, my dear Moore,” murmured William J. Anchor, helping himself to a very fine Stilton.

  “Yes, one subject at a time,” agreed Monty. “You were saying that the law’s present method of murdering murderers is a bit slow.”

  “That is so, Mr. Sherwood. When the unfortunate is on the scaffold the noose is tied so that the knot passes under the side of his chin. When he drops, the medulla oblongata is jagged and broken, for that is the extension of the brain which receives the blow from the rope. It contains the respiratory centre which, when shocked, causes paralysis of breathing; the consequence being that the victim dies of suffocation.

  “No doctor can say, truthfully, that the hanged man dies instantaneously; neither can that statement be made in regard to the electric chair. Of the two, I should very much prefer the rope. Imagine being strapped into an ordinary high-backed chair, your head fixed by a clamp, your shaven poll kissed by an electrode, another being applied to the calf of one leg where the trousers have been slashed to ribbons by a warder.

  “For five seconds you are given full voltage, then two hundred volts; up the scale to two thousand five hundred’ an interval; two hundred volts again; and so on, till your face becomes livid, partly cooked. The method does not take quite so long as the antique rack; but it is anything but instantaneous.

  “Here, again, de
ath comes from paralysis of respiration––shock to the medulla. The current is turned on the victim when the lungs are empty of air, and at least one minute and a half elapses before he is dead. I have attended five such executions, and I know. So you see that the boasted instantaneous death is somewhat a prolonged affair. We kill animals more humanely than we kill murderers, and therein we show not justice but revenge. The veterinary surgeon’s pistol, used to dispatch horses, is placed against the centre of the upper frontal bone, and instantaneously smashes the brain. That is the way I should like to die.”

  “Indeed! I should much rather die in bed at a ripe old age, surrounded by my children and grandchildren,” declared the millionaire mildly. At this Monty chuckled, and Madeline laughed outright.

  “Tosh!” the doctor exploded. “Why make death a screen picture? There ought to be established in every city and town a suicide chamber, to which anyone might resort when life became a problem. No fuss, no gloating relatives greedy for legacies, no doctor mourning your coming absence from his ledger, no howling women thinking how nice they’ll look in black.”

  “Your suicide chamber idea is great!” chortled Monty. “In it there should be an automatic arrangement to pass the body into an incinerator, so that even the undertaker would make nothing out of your mortal remains. Screen picture! Your way, my dear doctor, would make death a regular Charlie Chaplin affair.”

  Again the mountain of flesh guffawed, and “The Cat” showed his two yellow teeth.

  “A dustman would still be required to take away the ashes,” said William J. Anchor gently.

  “There always is a fly in the ointment,” chirped Mallowing.

  Then came the clear-toned, disapproving voice of Mrs. Jonas.

  “I really think that you should treat death with less levity. Death is a very momentous, a very solemn change to the immortal soul. It is as tremendous as will be the day of Universal Resurrection, and should be regarded with awe.”

  “I am perfectly in agreement with you, Mrs. Jonas,” Anchor said, now with a serious mouth, but with eyes that laughed. The big man noted that peculiarity, and marvelled at the oddity of a man so seldom smiling with both mouth and eyes at the same time. “Death is a serious matter, especially when it concerns us.”

  The very slight emphasis on the last word escaped Mrs. Jonas, who gave him a gratified look and rose from the table; whereupon “The Cat,” exhibiting extraordinary good manners sprang to the door and, holding it wide to allow the ladies to pass out, bowed with exaggerated politeness.

  For a moment Anchor regarded him sternly. When he spoke it was to the chubby Mallowing.

  “To-morrow Dr. Moore is flying to Marree,” he said, helping himself from a thin-necked bottle of Rudesheimer. “When I informed Madeline that arrangements had been made for her journey to Canada, in which dominion she would be able to live again a normal life, she amazed me by confessing that she would rather remain here. It does seem a pity that the expense of the arrangements should be wasted. Would you care to take the opportunity of leaving us?”

  “Is that a command, sir?”

  “No at all. You may please yourself entirely.”

  “Then in that case, I would much prefer to remain.”

  “Very well, my dear fellow; remain, by all means. We should miss you, I feel sure. What about you, Smith?”

  The old young man leered and shook his bald head. When he used his fingers to make known his views Monty realized, with a sense of shock, that he was dumb. Their host said, with a short laugh, genuine pleasure and gratification on his face:

  “There, Moore, you see our friends will not leave us. You will have to go alone.”

  “It appears so,” the doctor drawled, in a voice perilously like a grunt. “I trust that to-morrow will give me better visibility than this afternoon. If you will excuse me––”

  Moore had risen to his feet when, with startling suddenness, the door was flung wide open and into the large room stalked the skeleton at the feast of the man-killers in the person of the ghastly, emaciated Earle. The doctor and those sitting round the table gazed on the apparition with a sudden fear clutching at their hearts.

  Like the Egyptians reminded of common mortality by the customary bringing in of the skeleton, the company saw in this tall, swaying lath of a man the inevitability of their own decay; and what remained in every mind from a mother’s teaching––no matter the cynicism, no matter the atheistic pose––that after death would come judgment, a judgment which neither lying nor evasion could avoid, or prevent from being just.

  For a full, long, portentous minute Earle, his eyes blazing, saliva trickling from the corners of his drawn and sunken mouth, glared at the diners; and they, as turned into images of stone, mutely reflected his stare. When Earle did speak it was at first in a low tone, but as he proceeded his voice rose up the scale into a scream.

  “You sit here and eat,” he said, his head thrust forward over his sunken chest. “You smoke and talk and make merry while God’s fire hangs over this house, red fire descending upon the world, fire like blood, fire the colour of the brand of Cain which marks us all.

  “In that descending fire I saw my three children. They came down to me from heaven and at me pointed their tiny fingers. There was no happy smile on their sweet faces, just terrible regret that they were dead, and at me they pointed with accusing fingers.

  “What use,” his voice rose in cadence, “what use for me to tell them, to implore them to believe, that I sent them to heaven because I feared that without my loving guidance their souls would perish? What use to tell them that I knew when I slew them that in saving their souls I was dooming myself to eternal hell? Ah, no! No use! No use!

  “They want earth-life, my children. They cry for the lost chance of becoming worthy of heaven on this earth. They say they can never grow up because I–– I stopped them from growing up. There was no hate of me in their faces”––the man’s voice rose into a scream of horrible agony––“but neither was there any love––no love for me who adored them––me, who, for their sakes, forwent my birthright for the certainty of hell. They cry always and always for life. And I destroyed life.”

  The man was swaying like a reed. Never had Monty seen human eyes so big and brilliant; never had Martin heard a human voice so full of terror, so laden with unutterable remorse. The thin, sagging shoulders shook violently with a suffocating fit of coughing. And then with heightened fury Earle went on, his voice almost a shriek:

  “Cursed––cursed am I! You, too, are damned, forever damned. Prepare yourselves for everlasting torment, ye killers of men and women. Be ready for the Breath that shall raise your souls from the dust of your bodies. For then Cain’s bugle shall sound his ‘fall in,’ and he shall lead his army down, down into the fiery pit. You fools––you fools that are damned! Neither your screams nor your pleadings will avail you. As you withheld mercy, so mercy shall be withheld from you.”

  The animal Lane pushed back his chair and slid to the floor, gurgling with a terror that helped to unnerve the others. “The Cat’s” face was ashen and he trembled as a mass of jelly. Mallowing’s forehead glistened with beads of sweat. The doctor––the doctor was smiling. During the pause when Earle was again seized with coughing, Madeline Fox giggled. It was the laugh of the Devil triumphant.

  Anchor, rising from his seat, approached Percival Earle with the evident intention of pacifying him, but halted when Earle flung up his hand and, crouching back with fear-convulsed face, screamed:

  “He comes! I knew it. I knew he would come in the end. There stands our father in blood, the leader of our army, the blazer of the track we murderers must follow, follow down the steep path into the depths. There stands Cain! Cain, who in the beginning slew Abel––Cain, whose fate it is to marshal the killers of men and lead them to eternal damnation.

  “I see the ruddy glow way down that road. It will burn, burn, burn. Oh Christ! I cannot go. I will not go, I tell you. I cannot. I cannot stand pain, the bite
and sear of flame. I tell you I cannot bear it, I will not.”

  With a last piercing shriek, Earle turned and rushed from the room. They saw him cross the hall, heard his feet on the veranda boards beyond, heard his screams grow faint, and more faint, until they were lost in the distance among the sand-hills.

  Came then the baying of hounds, followed by hurrying feet, and in the doorway stood Mrs. Jonas, her face like paper, her hands pressed over her breasts.

  “My God! whatever is the matter?” she panted. In the silence greeting her question they heard a child crying, the opening and slamming of a door. Then came Anchor’s soft, drawling voice:

  “It is only Earle rehearsing the lead in Macbeth, Mrs. Jonas,” he said.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE LIE

  ANCHOR’S reassurance was followed by a silence so profound as to cause Martin to think its callous jocularity, succeeding so closely a scene that had touched the heights of human tragedy, had temporarily stunned the company. Though the majority had committed murder, and two were evidently degenerate, ordinary human sympathy held the upper hand.

  “You are incorrigible, Anchor,” Moore accused his friend, a little irritably. Then, turning to “The Cat,” he said: “Come along, Smith. I want you to help me with an experiment.”

  The aged infant, now himself again, rose obediently and preceded the doctor to the door. They heard Monty say to Anchor that again they had been disappointed at the nonappearance of Austiline Thorpe, and heard his reply to the effect that he was to take them to her at nine. Just before he closed the door Anchor drawled:

  “It is now five minutes to the hour. We will wait for the precise minute. Let me offer you smokes. And this Rudesheimer is really excellent.”

  When in the hall Moore laid a hand on “The Cat’s” shoulder and talked to him in a low voice. The mute signified that he understood; and, being satisfied, the doctor led the way to the great tapestry, one side of which he pulled back, revealing a black oak panel. Low down, near the floor, he pushed to the right a part of the panel frame, when the panel itself opened inwards like a door. Beyond was a landing paved with cork, from which descended a flight of cork-paved steps.