The Ear in the Wall

by Arthur B. Reeve

  XXI

  THE MORGUE

  There had come a lull in the activities which never entirely cease,night or day, in the dingy building at the foot of East Twenty-sixthStreet. Across the street in the municipal lodging-house the city'shomeless were housed for the night. Even ever wakeful Bellevue Hospitalnearby was comparatively quiet.

  The last "dead boat" which carries the city's unclaimed corpses awayfor burial had long ago left, when we arrived. The anxious callers whopass all day through the portals of the mortuary chamber seeking lostfriends and relatives had disappeared. Except for the night keeper andone or two assistants, the Morgue was empty save of the overcrowdeddead.

  Years before, as a cub reporter on the Star, I had had the gruesomeassignment once of the Morgue. It was the same old place after allthese years and it gave me the same creepy sensations now as it didthen. Even the taxicab driver seemed glad to set down his fares andspeed away.

  It was ghoulish. I felt then and I did still that instead ofcontributing to the amelioration of conditions that could not beotherwise than harrowing, everything about the old Morgue lent itselfto the increase of the horror of the surroundings.

  As Kennedy, Carton, and I entered, we found that the principal chamberin the place was circular. Its walls were lined with the ends ofcaskets, which, fitting close into drawer-like apertures wereconstantly enveloped in the refrigerated air.

  It seemed, even at that hour, that if these receptacles were evenadequate to contain all of the daily tenants of the Morgue, much of theanguish and distress inseparable from such a place might be sparedthose who of necessity must visit the place seeking their dead. As itwas, even for those bound by no blood ties to the unfortunates whofound their way to the city Morgue, the room was a veritable chamber ofhorror.

  We stood in horrified amazement at what we saw. On the floor, whichshould be kept clear, lay the overflow of the day's intake. Bodies forwhich there was no room in the cooling boxes, others which were yetawaiting claimants, and still more awaiting transfer to the publicburying ground, lay about in their rough coffins, many of them brutallyexposed.

  It seemed, too, that if ever there was a time when conditions mighthave been expected to have halfway adjusted themselves to the pressurewhich by day brought out all too clearly the hopeless inadequacy of thefacilities provided by the city to perform one of its most importantand inevitable functions, it was at that early morning hour of ourvisit. Presumably preparation had been completed for the busy day aboutto open by setting all into some semblance of respectful order. Butsuch was not the case. It was impossible.

  In one group, I recall, which an attendant said had been awaiting hisremoval for a couple of days, the rough board coffins, painted theuniform brown of the city's institutions, lay open, without so much asface coverings over the dead.

  They lay as they had been sent in from various hospitals. Most of themwere bereft of all the decencies usual with the dead, in strikingcontrast, however, with the bodies from Bellevue, which were allclosely swathed in bandages and shrouds.

  One body, that of a negro, which had been sent in to the Morgue from aHarlem hospital, lay just as it came, utterly bare, exposing to publicview all the gruesome marks of the autopsy. I wondered whether anythinglike that might be found to be the fate of the once jovial and popularMurtha, when we found him.

  I almost forgot our mission in the horror of the place, for, nearby wasan even more heartrending sight. Piled in several heaps much higherthan a man's head and as carelessly as cordwood were the tiny coffinsholding the babies which the authorities are called on by the poor ofthe city to bury in large numbers--far too poor to meet the cost of thecheapest decent burial. Atop the stack of regulation coffins were thenondescript receptacles made use of by the very poor--the most pathetica tiny box from the corner grocery. The bodies, some dozens of them,lay like so much merchandise, awaiting shipment.

  "What a barbarity!" I heard Craig mutter, for even he, though now andthen forced to visit the place when one of his cases took him there,especially when it was concerned with an autopsy, had never becomehardened to it.

  Often I had heard him denounce the primitive appointments, especiallyin the autopsy rooms. The archaic attempts to utilize the Morgue forscientific investigation were the occasion for practices that shockedeven the initiated. For the lack of suitable depositories for theproducts of autopsies, these objects were plainly visible in rudeprofusion when a door was opened to draw out a body for inspection.About and around the slabs whereon the human bodies lay, in bottles andin plates, this material which had no place except in the cabinets of alaboratory was inhumanly displayed in profusion, close to corpses forwhich a morgue is expected to provide some degree of reverential care.

  "You see," apologized the keeper, not averse to throwing the blame onsomeone else, for it indeed was not his but the city's fault, "onereason why so many bodies have to remain uncared for is that I couldshow you cooling box after cooling box with some subject which figuredduring the past few months in the police records. Why victims ofmurders committed long ago should be held indefinitely, and theirgrowing numbers make it impossible to give proper places to each day'stemporary bodies, I can't say. Sometimes," he added with a sly dig atCarton, "the only explanation seems to be that the District Attorney'soffice has requested the preservation of the grisly relics."

  I could see that Carton was making a mental note that the practicewould be ended as far as his office was concerned.

  "So--you saw the story in the newspapers about Mr. Murtha," repeatedthe keeper, not displeased to see us and at the publicity it gave him."It was I that discovered him--and yet many's the times some of theboys that must have handled the body since it was picked up beside thetracks must have seen him. It was too late to get anyone to take thebody away to-night, but the arrangements have all been made, and itwill be done early in the morning before anyone else sees Pat Murthahere, as he shouldn't be. We've done what we could for himourselves--he was a fine gentleman and many's the boy that owes a boostup in life to him."

  Reverentially even the hardened keeper drew out one of the best of thedrawer-like boxes. On the slab before us lay the body. Carton drewback, excitedly, shocked.

  "It IS Murtha!" he exclaimed.

  I, too, looked at it quickly. The name as Carton pronounced it, in sucha place, had, to me at least, an unpleasant likeness to "murder."

  Kennedy had bent down and was examining the mutilated body minutely.

  "How do you suppose such a thing is possible--that he could lie aboutthe city, even here until the night keeper came on,--unknown?" askedCarton, aghast.

  "I don't know," I said, "but I imagine that in connection with theactual inadequacy of the equipment one would find reflected the samemakeshift character in the attitude and actions of those who handle thecity's dead. It used to be the case, at least, that the facilities forkeeping records were often almost totally neglected, and not throughthe fault of the Morgue keepers, entirely. But, I understand it isbetter now."

  "This is terrible," repeated Carton, averting his face. "Really,Jameson, it makes me feel like a hound, for ever thinking that Murthamight have been putting up a game on me. Poor old Murtha--I should havepreferred to remember him as the 'Smiling Boss' as everyone alwayscalled him!"

  I called to mind the last time we had seen Murtha, in Carton's officeas the bearer of an offer which had made Carton almost beside himselfwith anger at the thought of the insult that he would compromise withthe organization. What a contrast, this, with the Murtha who, in turn,had been trembling with passion at Carton's refusal!

  And yet I could not but reflect on the strangeness of it all--the factthat the organization, of which Murtha was a part, had by its neglectand failure to care for the human side of government when there wasgraft to be collected, brought about the very conditions which had madepossible such neglect of the district leader's body, as it had beenbandied back and forth, unwittingly by many who owed their verypositions to the organization.

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bsp; I could not help but think that if he had served humanity with one-halfthe zeal which he had served graft, this could not have happened.

  The more I contemplated the case, the more tragic did it seem to me. Ilonged for the assignment of writing the story for the Star--the chanceI would have had in the old days to bring in a story that would havegot me a nod of approval from my superior. I determined, as soon aspossible, to get the Star on the wire and try to express some of thethoughts that were surging through my brain in the face of this awfuland unexpected occurrence.

  There he lay, alone, uncared for except by such rude hands as those ofthe Morgue attendants. I could not help reflecting on the strangevicissitudes of human life, and death, which levelled all distinctionsbetween men of high and low degree. Murtha had almost literally sprungfrom the streets. His career had been one possible only in the socialand political conditions of his times. And now he had only by thenarrowest chance escaped a burial in a pauper's grave at the hands ofthe city which he had helped Dorgan to debauch.

  Carton, too, I could see was overwhelmed. For the moment he did noteven think of how this blow to the System might affect his own chances.It was only the pitiful wreck of a human being before us that he saw.

  I was not an expert on study of wounds, such as was Kennedy, who wasexamining Murtha's body with minute care, now and then muttering underhis breath at the rough and careless handling it had received in itsvarious transfers about the city. But there were some terrible woundsand disfigurements on the body, which added even more to the horror ofthe case.

  One thing, I felt, was fortunate. Murtha had had no family. There hadbeen plenty of scandal about him, but as far as I knew there was no oneexcept his old cronies in the organization to be shocked by his loss,no living tragedy left in the wake of this.

  "How do you suppose it happened?" I asked the night keeper.

  He shook his head doubtfully. "No one knows, of course," he repliedslowly. "But I think the big fellow got worse up there in that asylum.He wasn't used to anything but having his own way, you know. They sayhe must have waited his chance, after the dinner hour, when things werequiet, and then slipped out while no one was looking. He may have beencrazy, but you can bet your life Pat Murtha was the smartest crazy manthey ever had up there. THEY couldn't hold him."

  "I see," I said, struck by the faith which the man had inspired even inthose who held the lowest of city positions. "But I meant how do yousuppose he was killed?"

  The attendant looked at me thoughtfully a while. "Young man," heanswered, "I ain't saying nothing and it may have been an accidentafter all. Have you ever been up in that part of town?"

  I had not and said so.

  "Well," he continued, "those electric trains do sneak up on a fellowfast. It may have been an accident, all right. The coroner up theresaid so, and I guess he ought to know. It must have been late atnight--perhaps he was wandering away from the ordinary roads for fearof being recaptured. No one knows--I guess no one will know, ever. Butit's a sad day for many of the boys. He helped a lot of 'em. And Mr.Dorgan--he knows what a loss it is, too. I hear that it's hit the Chiefhard."

  The attendant, rough though he was and hardened by the daily successionof tragedies, could not restrain an honest catch in his voice over thepassing of the "big fellow," as some of them called the "Smiling Boss."It was a pretty good object lesson on the power of the system which theorganization had built up, how Murtha, and even the more distant Dorganhimself, had endeared himself to his followers and henchmen. Perhaps itwas corrupt, but it was at least human, and that was a great deal in aworld full of inhumanities. In the face of what had happened, one feltthat much might be forgiven Murtha for his shortcomings, especially asthe era of the Murthas and Dorgans was plainly passing.

  "Here at least," whispered Carton, as we withdrew to a corner to escapethe palling atmosphere, "is one who won't worry about what happens tothat Black Book any more. I wonder what he really knew about it--whatsecrets he carried away with him?"

  "I can't say," I returned. "But, one thing it does. It must relieveMrs. Ogleby's fears a bit. With Murtha out of the way there is one lessto gossip about what went on at Gastron's that night of the dinner."

  He said nothing and just then Kennedy straightened up, as though he hadfinished his examination. We hurried over to him. I thought the look onCraig's face was peculiar.

  "What is it--what did you find?" both Carton and I asked.

  Kennedy did not answer immediately.

  "I--I can't say," he answered slowly at length, as we thanked theMorgue keeper for his courtesy and left the place. "In fact I'd rathernot say--until I know."

  I knew from previous experiences that it was of no use to try to quizKennedy. He was a veritable Gradgrind for facts, facts, facts. As formyself, I could not help wondering whether, after all, Murtha might nothave been the victim of foul play--and, if so, by whom?