"Your name's Sanderaft?" said the man.

"Yes; that's my name--Dr. Sanderaft."

As he sat down he shook the snow over everything, and said coolly: "Set down, doc; I want to talk with you."

"What can I do for you?" said I.

The man looked around the room rather scornfully, at the same time throwing back his coat and displaying a red neckerchief and a huge garnet pin. "Guess you're not overly rich," he said.

"Not especially," said I. "What's that your business?"

He did not answer, but merely said, "Know Simon Stagers?"

"Can't say I do," said I, cautiously. Simon was a burglar who had blown off two fingers when mining a safe. I had attended him while he was hiding.

"Can't say you do. Well, you can lie, and no mistake. Come, now, doc.

Simon says you're safe, and I want to have a leetle plain talk with you."

With this he laid ten gold eagles on the table. I put out my hand instinctively.

"Let 'em alone," cried the man, sharply. "They're easy earned, and ten more like 'em."

"For doing what?" I said.

The man paused a moment, and looked around him; next he stared at me, and loosened his cravat with a hasty pull. "You're the coroner," said he.

"I! What do you mean?"

"Yes, you're the coroner; don't you understand?" and so saying, he shoved the gold pieces toward me.

"Very good," said I; "we will suppose I'm the coroner. What next?"

"And being the coroner," said he, "you get this note, which requests you to call at No. 9 Blank street to examine the body of a young man which is supposed--only supposed, you see--to have--well, to have died under suspicious circ.u.mstances."

"Go on," said I.

"No," he returned; "not till I know how you like it. Stagers and another knows it; and it wouldn't be very safe for you to split, besides not making nothing out of it. But what I say is this, Do you like the business of coroner?"

I did not like it; but just then two hundred in gold was life to me, so I said: "Let me hear the whole of it first. I am safe."

"That's square enough," said the man. "My wife's got"--correcting himself with a shivery shrug--"my wife had a brother that took to cutting up rough because when I'd been up too late I handled her a leetle hard now and again.

"Luckily he fell sick with typhoid just then--you see, he lived with us. When he got better I guessed he'd drop all that; but somehow he was worse than ever--clean off his head, and strong as an ox. My wife said to put him away in an asylum. I didn't think that would do. At last he tried to get out. He was going to see the police about--well--the thing was awful serious, and my wife carrying on like mad, and wanting doctors. I had no mind to run, and something had got to be done. So Simon Stagers and I talked it over. The end of it was, he took worse of a sudden, and got so he didn't know nothing. Then I rushed for a doctor.

He said it was a perforation, and there ought to have been a doctor when he was first took sick.

"Well, the man died, and as I kept about the house, my wife had no chance to talk. The doctor fussed a bit, but at last he gave a certificate. I thought we were done with it. But my wife she writes a note and gives it to a boy in the alley to put in the post. We suspicioned her, and Stagers was on the watch. After the boy got away a bit, Simon bribed him with a quarter to give him the note, which wasn't no less than a request to the coroner to come to the house to-morrow and make an examination, as foul play was suspected--and poison."

When the man quit talking he glared at me. I sat still. I was cold all over. I was afraid to go on, and afraid to go back, besides which, I did not doubt that there was a good deal of money in the case.

"Of course," said I, "it's nonsense; only I suppose you don't want the officers about, and a fuss, and that sort of thing."

"Exactly," said my friend. "It's all bosh about poison. You're the coroner. You take this note and come to my house. Says you: 'Mrs. File, are you the woman that wrote this note? Because in that case I must examine the body.'"

"I see," said I; "she needn't know who I am, or anything else; but if I tell her it's all right, do you think she won't want to know why there isn't a jury, and so on?"

"Bless you," said the man, "the girl isn't over seventeen, and doesn't know no more than a baby. As we live up-town miles away, she won't know anything about you."

"I'll do it," said I, suddenly, for, as I saw, it involved no sort of risk; "but I must have three hundred dollars."

"And fifty," added the wolf, "if you do it well."

Then I knew it was serious.

With this the man b.u.t.toned about him a s.h.a.ggy gray overcoat, and took his leave without a single word in addition.

A minute later he came back and said: "Stagers is in this business, and I was to remind you of Lou Wilson,--I forgot that,--the woman that died last year. That's all." Then he went away, leaving me in a cold sweat. I knew now I had no choice. I understood why I had been selected.

For the first time in my life, that night I couldn't sleep. I thought to myself, at last, that I would get up early, pack a few clothes, and escape, leaving my books to pay as they might my arrears of rent.

Looking out of the window, however, in the morning, I saw Stagers prowling about the opposite pavement; and as the only exit except the street door was an alleyway which opened along-side of the front of the house, I gave myself up for lost. About ten o'clock I took my case of instruments and started for File's house, followed, as I too well understood, by Stagers.

I knew the house, which was in a small uptown street, by its closed windows and the c.r.a.ped bell, which I shuddered as I touched. However, it was too late to draw back, and I therefore inquired for Mrs. File. A haggard-looking young woman came down, and led me into a small parlor, for whose darkened light I was thankful enough.

"Did you write this note?"

"I did," said the woman, "if you're the coroner. Joe File--he's my husband--he's gone out to see about the funeral. I wish it was his, I do."

"What do you suspect?" said I.

"I'll tell you," she returned in a whisper. "I think he was made away with. I think there was foul play. I think he was poisoned. That's what I think."

"I hope you may be mistaken," said I. "Suppose you let me see the body."

"You shall see it," she replied; and following her, I went up-stairs to a front chamber, where I found the corpse.

"Get it over soon," said the woman, with strange firmness. "If there ain't no murder been done I shall have to run for it; if there was"--and her face set hard--"I guess I'll stay." With this she closed the door and left me with the dead.

If I had known what was before me I never could have gone into the thing at all. It looked a little better when I had opened a window and let in plenty of light; for although I was, on the whole, far less afraid of dead than living men, I had an absurd feeling that I was doing this dead man a distinct wrong--as if it mattered to the dead, after all! When the affair was over, I thought more of the possible consequences than of its relation to the dead man himself; but do as I would at the time, I was in a ridiculous funk, and especially when going through the forms of a post-mortem examination.

I am free to confess now that I was careful not to uncover the man's face, and that when it was over I backed to the door and hastily escaped from the room. On the stairs opposite to me Mrs. File was seated, with her bonnet on and a bundle in her hand.

"Well," said she, rising as she spoke, and with a certain eagerness in her tone, "what killed him? Was it poison?"

"Poison, my good woman!" said I. "When a man has typhoid fever he don't need poison to kill him. He had a relapse, that's all."

"And do you mean to say he wasn't poisoned," said she, with more than a trace of disappointment in her voice--"not poisoned at all?"

"No more than you are," said I. "If I had found any signs of foul play I should have had a regular inquest. As it is, the less said about it the better. The fact is, it would have been much wiser to have kept quiet at the beginning. I can't understand why you should have troubled me about it at all. The man had a perforation. It is common enough in typhoid."