My Heart Laid Bare Read Online Free PDF

agitation, managed an insolent smile, a flash of gold in his left incisor, Thank you gentlemen and lady for your cooperation!
    Black domino mask, a wide-brimmed straw hat with a red polka-dot band, creamy white blazer and trousers, white starched shirt, red and white striped tie, was there ever such a colored boy in all of the Chautauqua Valley? A dapper little moustache riding his pert upper lip (as Edgar Warwick afterward recalled), a thin twisting scar in his right cheek, the mark of the Devil (as Seraphina Warwick Dove recalled), the terrible weapon held unwavering in his hand, pointed at Dr. Frelicht’s heaving chest. Now quiet! Now no alarm! Gentlemen and lady—you have my warning!
    Not five minutes before Frelicht had led the others in a toast, victory champagne, glasses held high over Seraphina’s rosewoodbox—“‘Thou visible god!’” Frelicht intoned in a luxuriant baritone—and now the black man in the dazzling creamy white clothes was aiming death at his heart, his poor pounding heart, and where were the words, where the breath, to protest? You sir, the robber said to Frelicht, hunching his slender shoulders in a sudden childish spasm of pleasure— you, sir, are not to arouse my ire!—but will please obey!
    Frelicht tried to speak but could not: his lips, drained of blood, were suddenly flaccid.
    Edgar E. Warwick tried to speak but could not: a wave of sheer animal panic rose from his bowels, and he knew he was to die.
    Poor Seraphina, more agitated than she’d been at the deathbed of Mr. Dove, tried to speak but could not: her words of angry protest broken into mere sounds, stammers, breathy sobs, for here was a young black man not a servant, not one who must obey her but one whom she must obey.
    To be robbed by a mere nigger of their prize—!
    Yet it was to be, as if ordained by the Heavens: an outrageous black man in a domino mask and cocky straw hat, $400,000 in bills deftly transferred by chocolate-brown fingers into a smart crocodile-hide suitcase as the cowering victims stared . . . the victims and three other witnesses, belonging to the hotel staff: two waiters (black) and a wine steward (of French origin, but white), none of whom dared offer resistance.
    The miraculous money—the highest recorded winnings in Chautauqua’s history—in bundles of $100 primarily though there were also some $500 and $50 bills—stolen away by an outlaw’s hand, 11 May 1909, 9:25 P.M. in the Crystal Room of the grand old Chautauqua Arms, the victims surprised in the midst of a victory feast (oysters on the half shell, pheasant au vin , truffles, French champagne), Edgar E. Warwick, sixty, lifetime resident of Chautauqua Falls, Mrs. Seraphina Warwick Dove, fifty-eight, lifetime resident of Chautauqua Falls, A. Washburn Frelicht, Ph.D., age given as forty-eight, various addresses offered to police (most recently, Mrs. Dove’s residence), Thank you gentlemen and lady, you are indeedwise to save your lives, insolent dazzling-white smile, soft mocking melodious voice, bright dark gaze showing a rim of white inside the tight-fitting mask. Now you will please to keep your places, not to stir for many minutes!—not to summon aid!—not to dare!—not to arouse my ire!—not to follow after!—not to be the temptation, to make of me, who has never yet spilled a drop of blood, a murderer!
    This speech so froze the company, all stared at the robber as if turned to stone, as he, agile as a dancer, assured as one who has had a long apprenticeship on the stage, turned, and with a final (taunting? playful?) sighting of his long-barreled pistol at Washburn Frelicht’s chest, leapt into the very night outside the window and disappeared.
    SERAPHINA FAINTED, FELL heavily forward into her melted crimson sorbet, Edgar E. tried to rise from his chair but lacked the strength, ashen-faced Dr. Frelicht, of whom more might have been expected, merely sat