Vistas of New York Part 18

The doctor did not know what to say. "Allow me to congratulate you, madam," he began. "No doubt Mr. McEcchran is still alive and well; no doubt he will return to you. But if this is not your husband, whose husband is he?"

The room had filled with the neighbors, and in the crowd the small boy who had brought them there made his escape.

"Can any one tell me who this is?" the surgeon asked.

"I knew that weren't Mr. McEcchran as soon as I see him," said another boy. "That's Mr. Carroll."

"And where does--did Mr. Carroll live?" the doctor pursued, repenting already of his zeal as he foresaw a repet.i.tion of the same painful scene in some other tenement-house.

"It's only two blocks off--on the Boulevard," explained the second boy.

"It's over a saloon on the corner. I'll show you if I can ride on the wagon."

"Very well," agreed the doctor; and the body was carried down and placed again in the ambulance.

As the ambulance started he overheard one little girl say to another: "He was killed in a blast! My! ain't it awful? It blew his legs off!"

To which the other little girl answered, "But I saw both his boots as they carried him out."

And the first little girl then explained: "Oh, I guess they put his legs back in place so as not to hurt his wife's feelings. Turrible, ain't it?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MY! AIN'T IT AWFUL? IT BLEW HIS LEGS OFF!"]

When the ambulance started, the driver began grumbling again: "It's not Dr. Chandler that 'ud have a thing like this happen to him. Him an'

me never went traipsing round wid a corp that didn't belong to n.o.body.

We knew enough to take it where the wake was waitin'."

The boy on the box with the driver guided the ambulance to a two-story wooden shanty with a rickety stairway outside leading up to the second floor.

He sprang down as the ambulance backed up, and he pointed out to the doctor the sign at the foot of these external steps--"Martin Carroll, Photographer."

"That's where he belongs," the boy explained. "He sleeps in the gallery up there. The saloon belongs to a Dutchman that married his sister. This is the place all right, if it really is Mr. Carroll."

"What do you mean by that?" shouted the doctor. "Are you not sure about it?"

"I ain't certain sure," the fellow replied. "I ain't as sure as I was first off. But I think it's Mr. Carroll. Leastways, if it ain't, it looks like him!"

It was with much dissatisfaction at this doubtfulness of his guide that the doctor helped the driver slide out the stretcher.

Then the side door of the saloon under the landing of the outside stairs opened and a stocky little German came out.

"What's this? What's this?" he asked.

The young surgeon began his explanation again. "This is where Mr.

Carroll lived, isn't it? Well, I am sorry to say there has been an accident, and--"

"Is that Martin there?" interrupted the German.

"Yes," the Southerner replied, "and I'm afraid it is a serious case--a pretty serious case--"

"Is he dead?" broke in the saloon-keeper again.

"He is dead," the doctor answered.

"Then why didn't you say so?" asked the short man harshly. "Why waste all that time talking if he's dead?"

The Southerner was inclined to resent this rudeness, but he checked himself.

"I understand that you are Mr. Carroll's brother-in-law," he began again, "so I suppose I can leave the body in your charge--"

The German went over to the stretcher and turned down the blanket.

"No, you don't leave him here," he declared. "I'm not going to take him.

This ain't my sister's husband!"

"This is not Mr. Carroll?" and this time the doctor looked around for the boy who had misinformed him. "I was told it was."

"The man who told you was a liar, that's all. This ain't Martin Carroll, and the sooner you take him away the better. That's what I say,"

declared the saloon-keeper, going back to his work.

The doctor looked around in disgust. What he had to do now was to take the body to the morgue, and that revolted him. It seemed to him an insult to the dead and an outrage toward the dead man's family. Yet he had no other course of action open to him, and he was beginning to be impatient to have done with the thing. The week of hot weather had worn on his nerves also, and he wanted to be back again in the cool hospital out of the oven of the streets.

As he and the driver were about to lift up the stretcher again, a man in overalls stepped up to the body and looked at it attentively.

"It's d.i.c.k O'Donough!" he said at once. "Poor old d.i.c.k! It's a sad day for her--and her that excitable!"

"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.

"Don't I?" returned the man in overalls, a thin, elderly man, with wisps of hair beneath his chin and a shrewd, weazened face. "It's d.i.c.k O'Donough!"

"But are you sure of it?" the young surgeon insisted. "We've had two mistakes already."

"Sure of it?" repeated the other. "Of course I'm sure of it! Didn't I work alongside of him for five years? And isn't that the scar on him he got when the wheel broke?" And he lifted the dead man's hair and showed a cicatrix on the temple.

"Very well," said the doctor. "If you are sure, where did he live?"

"It's only a little way."

"I'm glad of that. Can you show us?"

"I can that," replied the man in overalls.

"Then jump in front," said the doctor.

As they started again, the driver grumbled once more. "Begorra, April Day's a fool to ye," he began. "Them parva.r.s.e gossoons, now, if I got howld of 'em, they'd know what it was hurt 'em, I'm thinkin'."

The man in overalls directed them to a shabby double tenement in a side street swarming with children. There was a Chinese laundry on one side of the doorway, and on the other side a bakery. The door stood open, and the hallway was dark and dirty.

"It's a sad day it'll be for Mrs. O'Donough," sighed the man in overalls. "I don't know what it is she's got, but she's very queer, now, very queer."