Incident at the Window

It chanced on a Sunday, when Kessler was on his usual walk with Devon Parks, that their way lay once again down Mercer Row, and that when they came in front of the door, both men stopped to look at it.

The morning had been fine, one of those dry Sundays at the end of February, when the city feels rinsed and raw. They had taken the long way, down through the market and along the row of awnings, and Parks had talked the whole way about a woman he was trying not to marry, a subject on which he required no answers and offered no conclusions. Kessler had listened with half his mind. The other half had been counting streets, and when they turned onto Mercer Row he felt his pace quicken without his permission.

"Well," said Parks, "that story is at an end, at least. We shall never see more of Mr. Marsh."

"I hope not," said Kessler. "Did I ever tell you that I once saw him myself, and shared your feeling of repulsion?"

"It was impossible to do the one without the other," returned Parks. "And by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that this was a back way into Voss's property. It was partly your own fault that I found it out even when I did."

"So you found it out, did you?" said Kessler. "But if that be so, we may step into the court and take a look at the windows. To tell you the truth, I am uneasy about poor Voss. Even from outside, I feel as if the presence of a friend might do him good."

The court was cool and a little damp and full of premature twilight, although the sky high overhead was still bright with sunset. The brick of the annex rose on two sides of it, and a fig tree grew from a crack in the pavement, one of those city trees that survive against every likelihood. The middle one of the three barred windows was half open. And sitting close beside it, Kessler saw Adrian Voss in a chair drawn up to the opening, with his elbows on his knees and his chin sunk toward his chest. The flesh had gone out of his cheeks, so that the shape of the jaw showed under the skin, and his hands hung between his knees, the one working at the cuff of the other. He did not look down into the court. His eyes rested on the brick of the far wall and stayed there.

A cat sat washing a paw on the sill of the far building's ground-floor window. A bicycle was locked to the fig tree's stake, and the noise of the street came into the court muffled, as though through wool. Both men stood there a moment longer than they needed to before Kessler raised his eyes to the middle window.

"What! Adrian! Adrian!" he cried. "I trust you are better."

"I am very low, Walter," replied the doctor drearily. "Very low. It will not last long, thank God."

"You stay too much indoors," said the lawyer. "You should be out, whipping up the circulation the way Devon and I do. This is my cousin, Devon Parks. Adrian Voss. Come now, get your coat and take a quick turn with us."

"You are very good," sighed the other. "I should like to very much. But no, no, no, it is quite impossible. I dare not. But indeed, Walter, I am very glad to see you. This is really a great pleasure. I would ask you and Mr. Parks up, but the place is really not fit."

"Why, then," said the lawyer, good-naturedly, "the best thing we can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are."

"That is just what I was about to venture to propose," returned Voss with a smile.

But the words were hardly uttered before the smile was struck out of his face. His mouth opened and stayed open, his hands went up to the sill, and he drew back into the dark behind him. The sash came down with a crack that carried the length of the court. The two men went out into Mercer Row without a word.

In silence, too, they traversed Mercer Row. It was not until they had come out into the busier street beyond, where even on a Sunday there were still some stirrings of life, that Kessler at last turned and looked at his companion. They were both pale, and there was an answering horror in their eyes.

"God forgive us. God forgive us," said Kessler.

But Parks only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once more in silence.

They did not speak of it again that day, nor for many days. The Sunday walks continued. They lengthened, as if by mutual consent, out along the river, where the wind came off the water and blew the memory of that face about. Once, crossing a bridge, Parks stopped and looked down at the dark water for so long that Kessler stood beside him without speaking until he turned away of his own accord. Kessler, who had walked beside him for eleven years and had never yet lacked a subject, found that he had none. He had come as far as the middle of the bridge with the whole of it in his mouth: the door, the will, the name on the check, the face at the window above the court. Parks looked down at the water and said, "Whatever it is, Walter, keep it. You know my rule." And Kessler, who had wanted for months to be told exactly that, did not say it.

Two weeks later they came down Mercer Row again, and neither man pretended to be surprised when their feet slowed at the mouth of the court. The middle window was shut. The fig tree had put out new leaves. They stood on the pavement of the street, in the ordinary light, like two men reading a notice they already knew by heart.

"He looked at us," said Parks at last, "the way you look at a bank statement when you already know the number."

"Or the way a man looks out of a cage," said Kessler, "at the people walking free."

"You may have it whichever way you want it. I only know that I have dined with murderers by accident and sat next to liars on purpose, and I was never once afraid of them until afterward. This was the first time I have ever been afraid while it was happening, and the man had not raised his voice, and he had done nothing at all but smile at us."

"And then stop smiling."

"And then stop smiling," Parks agreed. "That is the part I have been carrying about. Anybody can look like that and mean nothing by it. It was how quick it went off him, like a lamp put out from behind by somebody else in the room." He put his hat back on, and they walked on. The route of their Sunday walks changed that spring, quietly and without consultation, and it was a long time before either of them came down Mercer Row by choice.