A private chivalry

by Francis Lynde

“Get that off as quick as you can, and when you come back I’ll give you the letter to the despatcher,” he said, and a few minutes later Bertram took the message to the telegraph office.

When he came back Antrim had something else for him to do, and in the rush of the forenoon’s work the stenographer forgot all about the letter to the train despatcher—the letter without which the despatcher would know nothing about the arrangement made for the special. But if Bertram forgot, so did the chief clerk, though the omission hung over Antrim like a vague threat, which he tried vainly to define. At noon the threat had become a part of the general obscurity through which he seemed to be groping his way, and by that time he was so far behind with the business of the day that he went without dinner to save the noon hour, substituting yet other potations for the midday meal.

Such reckless disregardings of the simple necessities speedily brought their own penalties. By half past one o’clock he was little better than an automaton, doing whatever came to hand mechanically and by force of long habit. By three he had fairly entered the drunkard’s paradise—that exalted frame of mind in which the most abstruse problems seem to solve themselves of their own motion. After that, all things were easy of accomplishment, and the chief clerk shut and locked his office at six o’clock with the comforting conviction that he was quite himself again; that, notwithstanding the perplexities of the morning, he had acquitted himself with his old-time vigour and perspicacity.

Then he went to supper, and when he found that he had overshot the mark and could eat nothing, he began dimly to realize that he was in a bad way and forced himself to drink a double allowance of strong coffee. The slight stimulant began presently to counteract the effect of the greater, and with the first gleams of returning sobriety the threat of the forenoon renewed itself with added insistence.

When that happened he went to his room and sat down on the edge of the bed to reason it out. For an hour or more he wrestled with the thing, coming no nearer the truth than this: that out of the struggle came a great and growing conviction that he had left something of critical moment undone. That was enough. Things left undone in a railway superintendent’s office may easily mean anything in the category of disaster, and Antrim groped for his hat and coat and went out, meaning to borrow yet again of the usurer, and then to go back to his office to search for the slipped cog.

Fortunately for the latter resolve, the brisk walk in the cool night air sobered him sufficiently to send him straight to the office without the preliminary. Letting himself in and leaving the door ajar, he turned the key of the incandescent lamp over his desk and sat down to go painfully over the business of the day. It was slow work. His fingers were clumsy, and there was a curious haze before his eyes which seemed to befog the mental as well as the physical vision. Under such conditions it was not wonderful that he overlooked the message relating to the movements of the president’s special train; and when he had gone through the day’s correspondence without discovering anything amiss, he was dismayed afresh to find that the threat of impending disaster was increased rather than diminished, and his pulse quickened with a rising fever of apprehension.

“Oh, good Lord,” he groaned, “what has come over me that I can’t remember? I know I’ve missed something—something that will drive me crazy if I can’t find out what it is. Let me think: there was the Rowland excursion to arrange—that’s done; and the holding of Number Seven for the Western mail—I did that, too.” He went on through the day’s routine, checking off the items one by one. “No, it’s something else, and it’s gone from me—gone as though it never were. And whatever it is, it will ruin me, world without end. God of mercy, why can’t I remember?”

He leaned back in the swing chair and tortured his brain once again—cudgelled it until the sweat stood in great drops on his forehead, but all to no purpose. Once he started up with the thought that he would try to find Bertram, but he knew not where to look for the stenographer, and, besides, the nameless terror seemed now to be so close at hand as to forbid all expedients asking for time. This menacing phase of the unexplainable thing made him sick with fear, and the sickness made him sit down and sweat again and fight desperately for consciousness.

In the midst of this, while he sat staring blankly at the opposite wall, the end came. Having dwelt overmuch upon the day’s routine, the events of it now began to chase each other in a round of endless repetition. In this rhythmic round things tangible were presently involved, first the walls of the room, then the furniture. He caught at the arms of his chair to save himself from slipping into the vortex of the spinning whirlpool: something clicked, in his brain or out of it, the twirling maelstrom vanished in a puff of darkness that could be felt, and silence as profound as that in which the deaf live seemed to kill the sense of hearing.

How long he sat horror-sick in the stifling darkness he knew not; it might have been minutes or hours. Then a familiar sound broke the stillness, and he listened with the keen joy of one who hears the babble of running water in a thirsty desert. It was the clicking of the telegraph instrument on his desk, and the tiny tapping was his first assurance that he had not been stricken both deaf and blind in the same instant. At first the clicking spatter of dots and dashes was meaningless; then it slipped into coherence, and Antrim listened with his heart pounding like a trip hammer. The sounder was repeating the wire business of the day.