Markheim

Markheim had just entered from the bright, bustling streets, and his eyes were still adjusting to the dim, cluttered interior of the shop. The old dealer, a small, pale man with round shoulders, held up a candle, its flame casting stark shadows on Markheim's face. “Yes,” the dealer was saying, “our unexpected gains come in various forms. Some customers are ignorant, and then I profit from my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,” he paused, letting the light fall full on his visitor, “and in that case, I profit by my virtue.”

Markheim blinked painfully at the pointed words and the nearness of the flame, and looked aside. The dealer chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “You come to me on Christmas Day,” he continued, “when you know I am alone, with my shutters up, refusing business. Well, you'll have to pay for that—pay for my lost time, when I should be balancing my books. And you'll pay for the manner I see in you today. I am the soul of discretion, I ask no awkward questions, but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he must pay for it.” He chuckled again, then, switching to his usual business tone, though with a hint of irony, added, “You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came by the object? Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!”

The little dealer stood almost on tiptoe, peering over his gold spectacles, nodding with every sign of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with infinite pity and a touch of horror. “This time,” he said, “you are mistaken. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curiosities to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the walls. Even if it were intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange and would likely add to it, not sell. My errand today is simple: I seek a Christmas present for a lady.” He went on, gaining fluency as he launched into his prepared speech. “I owe you an apology for disturbing you on such a small matter, but the thing was neglected yesterday, and I must have my little compliment ready for dinner. As you well know, a rich marriage is not to be neglected.”

A pause followed, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the strange lumber of the shop, and the faint rush of cabs from the nearby thoroughfare, filled the silence.

“Well, sir,” said the dealer at last, “so be it. You are an old customer after all. And if, as you say, you have a chance at a good marriage, far be it from me to stand in your way. Here is a nice thing for a lady,” he went on, picking up a hand mirror. “Fifteenth century, guaranteed. From a fine collection, too, but I won't name the source—my customer was, like yourself, the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector.”

As the dealer stooped to take the object from its place, a shock ran through Markheim—a start of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many emotions to his face. It passed as quickly as it came, leaving only a slight trembling in the hand that received the glass.

“A glass,” Markheim said hoarsely, then paused and repeated more clearly, “A glass? For Christmas? Surely not.”

“And why not?” cried the dealer. “Why not a glass?”

Markheim looked at him with an indefinable expression. “You ask me why not? Look here—look in it—look at yourself! Do you like what you see? No. Nor I. Nor any man.”

The little man had jumped back when Markheim suddenly confronted him with the mirror, but now, seeing no worse on hand, he chuckled. “Your future lady, sir, must be hard to please,” he said.

“I ask you for a Christmas present,” said Markheim, “and you give me this—this cursed reminder of years and sins and follies—this hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess: are you, in secret, a very charitable man?”

The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd—Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an eager spark of hope, but nothing of mirth.

“What are you driving at?” the dealer asked.

“Not charitable?” returned the other gloomily. “Not charitable; not pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?”

“I'll tell you what it is,” began the dealer sharply, then broke off into another chuckle. “But I see this is a love match of yours, and you've been drinking the lady's health.”

“Ah!” cried Markheim with strange curiosity. “Ah, have you been in love? Tell me about that.”

“I!” cried the dealer. “I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the time today for this nonsense. Will you take the glass?”

“Where's the hurry?” returned Markheim. “It is very pleasant standing here talking. Life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure—no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think about it—a cliff a mile high. If we fall, it would dash us out of every feature of humanity. So it's best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each other. Why wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become friends?”

“I have just one word to say to you,” said the dealer. “Either make your purchase, or walk out of my shop.”

“True, true,” said Markheim. “Enough fooling. To business. Show me something else.”

The dealer stooped again, this time to replace the glass on the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes. Markheim moved a little nearer, one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat. He drew himself up and filled his lungs; many emotions warred on his face—terror, horror, resolve, fascination, and physical repulsion. Through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth showed.

“This, perhaps, may suit,” observed the dealer, beginning to rise. In that instant, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long, skewer-like dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, then tumbled to the floor in a heap.

Time had a score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow, others garrulous and hurried. All told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the sound of a lad's feet, running heavily on the pavement, broke in and startled Markheim back to his surroundings. He looked about him fearfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly flickering in a draught; by that small movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle, heaving like a sea—tall shadows nodding, gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as if breathing, the faces of portraits and china gods wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, peering into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.

From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, lying humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In those poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and lo! it was nothing. Yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of motion—there it must lie till it was found. Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, that was still the enemy. "Time was that when the brains were out," he thought, and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished—time, which had ceased for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.

The thought was still in his mind when, one after another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated over and over, like an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own steps, however light, vexed the surrounding quiet. As he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with sickening iteration of a thousand faults in his design. He should have chosen a quieter hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious and only bound and gagged the dealer, not killed him; he should have been bolder and killed the servant too; he should have done everything differently.

Poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot. The hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping file, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumor of the struggle must have reached their ears and set their curiosity on edge.

In all the neighboring houses he divined them sitting motionless, ears strained—solitary people condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties struck into silence around the table, the mother still with raised finger; every degree and age and humor, but all by their own hearths prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him.

Sometimes he felt he could not move too softly; the clink of a tall Bohemian goblet rang out loudly like a bell; alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. Then again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place seemed a source of peril, a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate with elaborate bravado the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.

But he was so pulled about by different alarms that, while one part of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity: the neighbor hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement—these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course—and yet, in the bulk of the empty house about him, he could surely hear a stir of delicate footing; he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious, of some presence.

Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door, which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, showing dimly on the threshold of the shop.

And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there not hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat on the shop door with a staff, accompanying his blows with shouts and good-natured insults in which the dealer was continually called upon by name. Markheim, frozen, glanced at the dead man. But no! He lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. Presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his knocking and departed.

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence—his bed. One visitor had come; at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed and not reap the profit would be too abhorrent a failure. The money was now Markheim's concern; and as a means to that, the keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression, pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That, for Markheim, was the one displeasing circumstance.

It carried him back instantly to a certain fair day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly colored: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the death grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, with the same sense of physical revolt, at those vile pictures; he was still stunned by the thumping of the drums.

A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer.

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies; and now, by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness; the same heart that had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.