A sudden chill ran through the room; the others stood transfixed, as at the swift passage of some cold and deadly wind. Death had stooped there for an instant, had stooped and past, leaving a trail of terror and confusion. Then the door leading to the street slammed; Marcus had disappeared.
Thereon a great babel of exclamation arose. The tension of that all but fatal instant snapped, and speech became once more possible.
“He would have knifed you.”
“Narrow escape.”
“What kind of a man do you call THAT?”
“'Tain't his fault he ain't a murderer.”
“I'd have him up for it.”
“And they two have been the greatest kind of friends.”
“He didn't touch you, did he?”
“No—no—no.”
“What a—what a devil! What treachery! A regular greaser trick!”
“Look out he don't stab you in the back. If that's the kind of man he is, you never can tell.”
Frenna drew the knife from the wall.
“Guess I'll keep this toad-stabber,” he observed. “That fellow won't come round for it in a hurry; goodsized blade, too.” The group examined it with intense interest.
“Big enough to let the life out of any man,” observed Heise.
“What—what—what did he do it for?” stammered McTeague. “I got no quarrel with him.”
He was puzzled and harassed by the strangeness of it all. Marcus would have killed him; had thrown his knife at him in the true, uncanny “greaser” style. It was inexplicable. McTeague sat down again, looking stupidly about on the floor. In a corner of the room his eye encountered his broken pipe, a dozen little fragments of painted porcelain and the stem of cherry wood and amber.
At that sight his tardy wrath, ever lagging behind the original affront, suddenly blazed up. Instantly his huge jaws clicked together.
“He can't make small of ME,” he exclaimed, suddenly. “I'll show Marcus Schouler—I'll show him—I'll——”
He got up and clapped on his hat.
“Now, Doctor,” remonstrated Heise, standing between him and the door, “don't go make a fool of yourself.”
“Let 'um alone,” joined in Frenna, catching the dentist by the arm; “he's full, anyhow.”
“He broke my pipe,” answered McTeague.
It was this that had roused him. The thrown knife, the attempt on his life, was beyond his solution; but the breaking of his pipe he understood clearly enough.
“I'll show him,” he exclaimed.
As though they had been little children, McTeague set Frenna and the harness-maker aside, and strode out at the door like a raging elephant. Heise stood rubbing his shoulder.
“Might as well try to stop a locomotive,” he muttered. “The man's made of iron.”
Meanwhile, McTeague went storming up the street toward the flat, wagging his head and grumbling to himself. Ah, Marcus would break his pipe, would he? Ah, he was a zinc-plugger, was he? He'd show Marcus Schouler. No one should make small of him. He tramped up the stairs to Marcus's room. The door was locked. The dentist put one enormous hand on the knob and pushed the door in, snapping the wood-work, tearing off the lock. Nobody—the room was dark and empty. Never mind, Marcus would have to come home some time that night. McTeague would go down and wait for him in his “Parlors.” He was bound to hear him as he came up the stairs.
As McTeague reached his room he stumbled over, in the darkness, a big packing-box that stood in the hallway just outside his door. Puzzled, he stepped over it, and lighting the gas in his room, dragged it inside and examined it.
It was addressed to him. What could it mean? He was expecting nothing. Never since he had first furnished his room had packing-cases been left for him in this fashion. No mistake was possible. There were his name and address unmistakably. “Dr. McTeague, dentist—Polk Street, San Francisco, Cal.,” and the red Wells Fargo tag.
Seized with the joyful curiosity of an overgrown boy, he pried off the boards with the corner of his fireshovel. The case was stuffed full of excelsior. On the top lay an envelope addressed to him in Trina's handwriting. He opened it and read, “For my dear Mac's birthday, from Trina;” and below, in a kind of post-script, “The man will be round to-morrow to put it in place.” McTeague tore away the excelsior. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation.
It was the Tooth—the famous golden molar with its huge prongs—his sign, his ambition, the one unrealized dream of his life; and it was French gilt, too, not the cheap German gilt that was no good. Ah, what a dear little woman was this Trina, to keep so quiet, to remember his birthday!
“Ain't she—ain't she just a—just a JEWEL,” exclaimed McTeague under his breath, “a JEWEL—yes, just a JEWEL; that's the word.”
Very carefully he removed the rest of the excelsior, and lifting the ponderous Tooth from its box, set it upon the marble-top centre table. How immense it looked in that little room! The thing was tremendous, overpowering—the tooth of a gigantic fossil, golden and dazzling. Beside it everything seemed dwarfed. Even McTeague himself, big boned and enormous as he was, shrank and dwindled in the presence of the monster. As for an instant he bore it in his hands, it was like a puny Gulliver struggling with the molar of some vast Brobdingnag.
The dentist circled about that golden wonder, gasping with delight and stupefaction, touching it gingerly with his hands as if it were something sacred. At every moment his thought returned to Trina. No, never was there such a little woman as his—the very thing he wanted—how had she remembered? And the money, where had that come from? No one knew better than he how expensive were these signs; not another dentist on Polk Street could afford one. Where, then, had Trina found the money? It came out of her five thousand dollars, no doubt.
But what a wonderful, beautiful tooth it was, to be sure, bright as a mirror, shining there in its coat of French gilt, as if with a light of its own! No danger of that tooth turning black with the weather, as did the cheap German gilt impostures. What would that other dentist, that poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of greyhounds, say when he should see this marvellous molar run out from McTeague's bay window like a flag of defiance? No doubt he would suffer veritable convulsions of envy; would be positively sick with jealousy. If McTeague could only see his face at the moment!
For a whole hour the dentist sat there in his little “Parlor,” gazing ecstatically at his treasure, dazzled, supremely content. The whole room took on a different aspect because of it. The stone pug dog before the little stove reflected it in his protruding eyes; the canary woke and chittered feebly at this new gilt, so much brighter than the bars of its little prison. Lorenzo de' Medici, in the steel engraving, sitting in the heart of his court, seemed to ogle the thing out of the corner of one eye, while the brilliant colors of the unused rifle manufacturer's calendar seemed to fade and pale in the brilliance of this greater glory.
At length, long after midnight, the dentist started to go to bed, undressing himself with his eyes still fixed on the great tooth. All at once he heard Marcus Schouler's foot on the stairs; he started up with his fists clenched, but immediately dropped back upon the bed-lounge with a gesture of indifference.