New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American
"It's only two blocks off--on the Boulevard," explained the second boy.
"It's over a saloon on the corner. I'll show you if I can ride on the
wagon."
"Very well," agreed the doctor; and the body was carried down and placed
again in the ambulance.
As the ambulance started he overheard one little girl say to another:
"He was killed in a blast! My! ain't it awful? It blew his legs off!"
To which the other little girl answered, "But I saw both his boots as
they carried him out."
And the first little girl then explained: "Oh, I guess they put his legs
back in place so as not to hurt his wife's feelings. Turrible, ain't
it?"
[Illustration: "MY! AIN'T IT AWFUL? IT BLEW HIS LEGS OFF!"]
When the ambulance started, the driver began grumbling again: "It's
not Dr. Chandler that 'ud have a thing like this happen to him. Him an'
me never went traipsing round wid a corp that didn't belong to nobody.
We knew enough to take it where the wake was waitin'."
The boy on the box with the driver guided the ambulance to a two-story
wooden shanty with a rickety stairway outside leading up to the second
floor.
He sprang down as the ambulance backed up, and he pointed out to the
doctor the sign at the foot of these external steps--"Martin Carroll,
Photographer."
"That's where he belongs," the boy explained. "He sleeps in the gallery
up there. The saloon belongs to a Dutchman that married his sister. This
is the place all right, if it really is Mr. Carroll."
"What do you mean by that?" shouted the doctor. "Are you not sure about
it?"
"I ain't certain sure," the fellow replied. "I ain't as sure as I was
first off. But I think it's Mr. Carroll. Leastways, if it ain't, it
looks like him!"
It was with much dissatisfaction at this doubtfulness of his guide that
the doctor helped the driver slide out the stretcher.
Then the side door of the saloon under the landing of the outside stairs
opened and a stocky little German came out.
"What's this? What's this?" he asked.
The young surgeon began his explanation again. "This is where Mr.
Carroll lived, isn't it? Well, I am sorry to say there has been an
accident, and--"
"Is that Martin there?" interrupted the German.
"Yes," the Southerner replied, "and I'm afraid it is a serious case--a
pretty serious case--"
"Is he dead?" broke in the saloon-keeper again.
"He is dead," the doctor answered.
"Then why didn't you say so?" asked the short man harshly. "Why waste
all that time talking if he's dead?"
The Southerner was inclined to resent this rudeness, but he checked
himself.
"I understand that you are Mr. Carroll's brother-in-law," he began
again, "so I suppose I can leave the body in your charge--"
The German went over to the stretcher and turned down the blanket.
"No, you don't leave him here," he declared. "I'm not going to take him.
This ain't my sister's husband!"
"This is not Mr. Carroll?" and this time the doctor looked around for
the boy who had misinformed him. "I was told it was."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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