"Who are you?" Alan asked.
"Say, who'r you? What t'hells syou doin' here? Never see you before ... go—go get Ben Corvet. Jus' say Ben Corvet, Lu—luke's shere. Ben Corvet'll know Lu—luke all right; alwaysh, alwaysh knows me...."
"What's the matter with you?" Alan had drawn back but now went to the man again. The first idea that this might have been merely some old sailor who had served Benjamin Corvet or, perhaps, had been a comrade in the earlier days, had been banished by the confident arrogance of the man's tone—an arrogance not to be explained, entirely, by whiskey or by the fever.
"How long have you been this way?" Alan demanded. "Where did you come from?" He put his hand on the wrist; it was very hot and dry; the pulse was racing, irregular; at seconds it seemed to stop; for other seconds it was continuous. The fellow coughed and bent forward. "What is it—pneumonia?" Alan tried to straighten him up.
"Gi' me drink! ... Go get Ben Corvet, I tell you! ... Get Ben Corvet quick! Say—yous shear? You get me Ben Corvet; you better get Ben Corvet; you tell him Lu—uke's here; won't wait any more; goin' t'have my money now ... sright away, your shear? Kick me out s'loon; I guess not no more. Ben Corvet give me all money I want or I talk!"
"Talk!"
"Syou know it! I ain't goin'...." He choked up and tottered back; Alan, supporting him, laid him down and stayed beside him until his coughing and choking ceased, and there was only the rattling rasp of his breathing. When Alan spoke to him again, Luke's eyes opened, and he narrated recent experiences bitterly; all were blamed to Ben Corvet's absence; Luke, who had been drinking heavily a few nights before, had been thrown out when the saloon was closed; that was Ben Corvet's fault; if Ben Corvet had been around, Luke would have had money, all the money any one wanted; no one would have thrown out Luke then. Luke slept in the snow, all wet. When he arose, the saloon was open again, and he got more whiskey, but not enough to get him warm. He hadn't been warm since. That was Ben Corvet's fault. Ben Corvet better be 'round now; Luke wouldn't stand any more.
Alan felt of the pulse again; he opened the coat and under-flannels and felt the heaving chest. He went to the hall and looked in the telephone directory. He remembered the name of the druggist on the corner of Clark Street and he telephoned him, giving the number on Astor Street.
"I want a doctor right away," he said. "Any good doctor; the one that you can get quickest." The druggist promised that a physician would be there within a quarter of an hour. Alan went back to Luke, who was silent now except for the gasp of his breath; he did not answer when Alan spoke to him, except to ask for whiskey. Alan, gazing down at him, felt that the man was dying; liquor and his fever had sustained him only to bring him to the door; now the collapse had come; the doctor, even if he arrived very soon, could do no more than perhaps delay the end. Alan went up-stairs and brought down blankets and put them over Luke; he cut the knotted laces of the soaked shoes and pulled them off; he also took off the mackinaw and the undercoat. The fellow, appreciating that care was being given him, relaxed; he slept deeply for short periods, stirred and started up, then slept again. Alan stood watching, a strange, sinking tremor shaking him. This man had come there to make a claim—a claim which many times before, apparently, Benjamin Corvet had admitted. Luke came to Ben Corvet for money which he always got—all he wanted—the alternative to giving which was that Luke would "talk." Blackmail, that meant, of course; blackmail which not only Luke had told of, but which Wassaquam too had admitted, as Alan now realized. Money for blackmail—that was the reason for that thousand dollars in cash which Benjamin Corvet always kept at the house.
Alan turned, with a sudden shiver of revulsion, toward his father's chair in place before the hearth; there for hours each day his father had sat with a book or staring into the fire, always with what this man knew hanging over him, always arming against it with the thousand dollars ready for this man, whenever he came. Meeting blackmail, paying blackmail for as long as Wassaquam had been in the house, for as long as it took to make the once muscular, powerful figure of the sailor who threatened to "talk" into the swollen, whiskey-soaked hulk of the man dying now on the lounge.