His hand was limp and shaking, but Van Dorn could not see it. “Tom, Tom,” he cried. “God help me–help me.” He repeated twice the word “me,” then he went on:
“For being what I am–only what I am–” he emphasized the “I.”
“For giving in to your devil as I give into mine–for falling as I have fallen–on another road–I was going to kill you.”
The revolver slipped from his hands. He picked it up by the barrel. He rose crying in a weak voice,
“Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom,” Van Dorn was lifting up in his chair, “Tom, Tom, God help us both poor, hell-cursed men,” sobbed Fenn, and then with a fearful blow he brought the weapon down and struck the white, false forehead that gleamed beneath Fenn’s wet face.
He stood watching the man shudder and close his eyes, watching the blood seep out along a crooked seam, then gush over the face and fine, black hair and silken mustache. A bloody flood streamed there while he watched. Then Fenn wiped dry the butt of his revolver. He felt of the gash in the forehead, and found that the bone was not crushed. He 218was sober, and an unnatural calm was upon his brain. He could feel the tears in his eyes. He stood looking at the face of the unconscious man a long, dreadful minute as one who pities rather than hates a foe. Then he stepped to the telephone, called Dr. Nesbit, glanced at the fountain pen and the crumpled letter, burst into a spasm of weeping, and tiptoed out of the room.
219CHAPTER XXI
IN WHICH WE SEE A FAT LITTLE RASCAL ON THE RACK
A year and a month and a day, an exceedingly hot day, after Judge Thomas Van Dorn had fallen upon the stair leading to his office and had cut that gash in his forehead which left the white thread of a scar upon his high, broad brow, Judge Van Dorn sat in chambers in his office in the court house, hearing an unimportant matter. Because the day was hot, the Judge wore a gray silk coat, without a vest, and because the matter was unimportant, no newspaper reporters were called in. The matter in hand was highly informal. The Judge, tilted back in his easy chair, toyed with his silken mustache, while counsel for defendant, standing by the desk before which the Judge’s chair was swinging, handled the papers representing the defendant’s answer, to the plaintiff’s pleadings. The plaintiff herself, dressed in rather higher sleeves than would have been thought possible to put upon a human form and make them stand erect, with a rather larger hat than one would have said might be carried by a single human neck without bowing it; the plaintiff above mentioned was rattling the court’s paper knife.
Plaintiff’s counsel, a callow youth from the law offices of Joseph Calvin, to be exact, Joseph Calvin, Jr., sat meekly on the edge of a small chair in the corner and being a chip of the old block, had little to say. The court and said hereinbefore described plaintiff talked freely between whiles as the counsel for said defendant, Henry Fenn, ran over his papers, looking for particular phrases, statements or exhibits which he desired to present to the court.