Queed: A Novel

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

XXX

Death of the Old Professor, and how Queed finds that his List of Friends has grown; a Last Will and Testament; Exchange of Letters among Prominent Attorneys, which unhappily proves futile.

On the merriest, maddest day in March, Henry G. Surface, who had bitterly complained of earthly justice, slipped away to join the invisible procession which somewhere winds into the presence of the Incorruptible Judge. He went with his lips locked. At the last moment there had been faint signs of recurring consciousness; the doctor had said that there was one chance in a hundred that the dying man might have a normal moment at the end. On this chance his son had said to the nurse, alone with him in the room:—

"Will you kindly leave me with him a moment? If he should be conscious there is a private question of importance that I must ask him."

She left him. The young man knelt down by the bedside, and put his lips close to the old man's ear. Vainly he tried to drive his voice into that stilled consciousness, and drag from his father the secret of the hiding-place of his loot.

"Father!" he said, over and over. "Father! Where is the money?"

There was no doubt that the old man stirred a little. In the dim light of the room it seemed to his son that his right eye half opened, leaving the other closed in a ghastly parody of a wink, while the upper lip drew away from the strong teeth like an evil imitation of the old bland sneer. But that was all.

So Surface died, and was gathered to his fathers. The embargo of secrecy was lifted; and the very first step toward righting the ancient wrong was to let the full facts be known. Henry G. Surface, Jr., took this step, in person, by at once telephoning all that was salient to the Post. Brower Williams, the Post's city editor, at the other end of the wire, called the name of his God in holy awe at the dimensions of the scoop thus dropped down upon him as from heaven; and implored the Doc, for old time's sake, by all that he held most sacred and most dear, to say not a word till the evening papers were out, thus insuring the sensation for the Post.

Mr. Williams's professional appraisement of the scoop proved not extravagant. The Post's five columns next morning threw the city into something like an uproar. It is doubtful if you would not have to go back to the '60's to find a newspaper story which eclipsed this one in effect. For a generation, the biography of Henry G. Surface had had, in that city and State, a quality of undying interest, and the sudden denouement, more thrilling than any fiction, captured the imagination of the dullest. Nothing else was mentioned at any breakfast-table where a morning paper was taken that day; hardly anything for many breakfasts to follow. In homes containing boys who had actually studied Greek under the mysterious Professor Nicolovius at Mimer's School, discussion grew almost hectic; while at Mrs. Paynter's, where everybody was virtually a leading actor in the moving drama, the excitement closely approached delirium.

Henry G. Surface, Jr., was up betimes on the morning after his father's death—in fact, as will appear, he had not found time to go to bed at all—and the sensational effects of the Post's story were not lost upon him. As early as seven o'clock, a knot of people had gathered in front of the little house on Duke of Gloucester Street, staring curiously at the shut blinds, and telling each other, doubtless, how well they had known the dead man. When young Surface came out of the front door, an awed hush fell upon them; he was aware of their nudges, and their curious but oddly respectful stare. And this, at the very beginning, was typical of the whole day; wherever he went, he found himself an object of the frankest public curiosity. But all of this interest, he early discovered, was neither cool nor impersonal.