*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64930 ***

 The Goddess
 A Demon

 By Richard Marsh
 _Author of_
 “_In Full Cry_,” “_The Beetle: A Mystery_,” “_Marvels and
 Mysteries_,” “_Ada Vernham, Actress_,” &_c_.

 London:
 F. V. White & Co.
 14, Bedford Street, Strand, W.C.
 1900




 CONTENTS

 I. A Vision of the Night
 II. The Woman who came through the Window
 III. The Conquest of Mrs. Peddar
 IV. Dr. Hume
 V. A Curious Case
 VI. The Doctor accuses
 VII. The Suspicions of Mr. Morley
 VIII. The Recognition of the Photograph
 IX. The Revelations of “Mr. George Withers”
 X. Where Miss Moore was going
 XI. In the one Room--and the other
 XII. What was on the Bed
 XIII. She and I
 XIV. He and I
 XV. The Letter
 XVI. My Persuasive Manner
 XVII. My Unpersuasive Manner
 XVIII. I am called
 XIX. I leave the Court
 XX. A Journey to Nowhere
 XXI. A Check at the Start
 XXII. A Miracle
 XXIII. In the Passage
 XXIV. In the Room
 XXV. The Goddess
 XXVI. The Legacy of the Scarlet Hands




 The Goddess




 CHAPTER I.
 A VISION OF THE NIGHT

I was sure that I had seen Edwin Lawrence juggle with the pack. As I
lay there wide awake in bed it all came back to me. I wondered how I
could have been such an unspeakable idiot. We had dined together at
the Trocadero; then we had gone on to the Empire. The big music hall
was packed with people, the heat was insufferable.

“Let’s get out of this,” suggested Lawrence, almost as soon as we were
in. “This crush, in this atmosphere, is not to be borne.” I agreed
with him. We left. “Come into my place for an hour,” he said.

We both lived in Imperial Mansions, on the same floor. His number was
64, mine was 79. You went out of his door, along the passage, round
the corner to the right--the second door on the right was mine. I went
in with him.

“What do you say to a little gamble?” he asked. “It will be better
than nothing.”

I agreed. We had a little gamble--at first for trivial stakes. I am an
abstemious man. I had already drunk more than I was accustomed to. At
his invitation I drank still more. We increased the stakes. I really
do not know from whom the suggestion came, I know that I did not
object. I had lost all my ready money. I kept on losing. He was
dotting down, on a piece of paper, the extent of my indebtedness.
Presently, when he announced the sum total, I was amazed to learn that
it was very much more than I imagined--actually nearly a thousand
pounds. On the instant I was wide awake.

“Nine hundred and forty pounds, Lawrence! It can’t be as much as
that!”

“My dear chap, here are the figures; look for yourself.”

He handed me the piece of paper. His manner of arranging the several
amounts I found more than a little vague, but as I had been so foolish
as not to have kept count of them myself, I was hardly in a position
to dispute their accuracy; and, added together, they certainly did
come to the sum he stated. Still I felt persuaded that there was a
mistake somewhere, though in what it consisted I was unable at the
moment to perceive.

“Look here,” he said. “Be a sportsman for once in your life! I’ll give
you a chance--I’ll cut you double or quits.”

I did not want to. I would have very much rather not. Gambling on such
a scale was altogether out of my way. But he urged me, and I yielded;
I don’t know why. I must have been very much more under the influence
of drink than I imagined. We cut. I cut first--the knave of diamonds.
As it was to be highest, not a bad card. I watched him as he cut, and
saw that he dropped at least one card from the lot which he picked up;
and that after he had had an opportunity of getting a shrewd guess at
its value. The card which he faced was the queen of diamonds,
exclaiming as he did so:

“That does you!”

“But that was not the card which you originally cut--you dropped one.”

“I dropped one! What do you mean? I have not the slightest notion of
having done anything of the kind, and, anyhow, it must have been by
the sheerest accident. What are you looking at me like that for? Don’t
lose your temper because you happen to have lost.”

The insinuation was as gratuitous as it was uncalled for. There was
not the slightest danger of my losing my temper; but that I was right
in what I had said I felt assured. But then the card might have been
dropped by accident, and he might not have noticed what had happened.
And, anyhow, in face of the fact that I had been with the man on terms
of intimacy, and had never before had cause to suspect him of anything
in the least dishonourable, having regard to his explicit denial, it
was a delicate position to persist in. I got up from my chair,
conceding the point.

“That makes eighteen hundred and eighty pounds you owe me. My
sympathy, Ferguson; better luck next time.”

I mentally resolved that I would not play cards again with Edwin
Lawrence--at any rate, when we two were alone.

I was in a curious state of mind when I returned to my own chambers.
The events of the evening buzzed in my head. It was not the money
merely. Though I am very far from being a millionaire, and two
thousand pounds, less one hundred and twenty, is not a sum to be
lightly thrown away. The inquiry kept knocking at my brain--was the
man whom already I was beginning to regard as a friend such a very
poor creature after all? Was it possible that he had wilfully
manipulated those figures to his own advantage, and, with intention,
dropped that card? The more closely I followed the events of the
evening, the less I liked the conclusion to which they led me.

When I went to bed my thoughts went with me. I could not shake them
off. I tossed and tumbled in pursuit of sleep. And when, at last,
slumber did come, my sleeping experiences were even more disturbing
than my waking ones had been.

My repose is generally untroubled. I seldom am visited by dreams. But
that night I had a most extraordinary dream; so extraordinary that I
am haunted by it to this day, even in my waking hours. In appearance
of reality it was little less than supernatural. Indeed, I do not mind
admitting that I have been, and still am, at a loss to determine
whether I was not--at least in part--an actual, sentient spectator,
and not merely the subject of a vision of the night.

Of course, I am unable to say how long I had been to sleep, but it
seemed to me that I had only just closed my eyes, when something, I
knew not what, caused me to sit up in bed; and not only to sit up, but
to get out of bed. I have no recollection of putting anything on in
the shape of clothes; I am certain that I did not switch on the
electric light, I had a clear consciousness of the prevailing
darkness. And, in the darkness, I had an uncontrollable impulse to go
to Lawrence. I left the room, to the best of my belief, clad only in
my pyjamas. In the passage was a light--it is kept burning all
night,--and I distinctly remember noticing that it was burning as I
passed along. Reaching Lawrence’s door, I tapped at the panel. There
was no answer. I hesitated before knocking again; and, as I did so,
immediately became aware of a strange noise which proceeded from
within.

A stranger noise I never heard. I experience a difficulty in
describing it. It was as if some wild beast was inside the room, and
was beside itself with fury. Yelling, snarling, screeching--a horrid,
gasping noise--these sounds seemed to follow hard upon each other.
And, mingled with them, were faint cries as of some one in extremity
of both pain and terror. At that sound I ceased to hesitate. I turned
the handle. I stepped inside. The sight I saw I am not likely to
forget.

Lawrence was struggling frantically with some strange creature whose
character I was not able to distinguish. From this creature proceeded
those hideous sounds. It was a mass of whirling movement. I had never
seen a being so instinct with frenzied action. Every part seemed to be
in motion at once; and with its whole force it was assailing Lawrence.
He seemed to be offering a feeble resistance, as, hauled this way and
that, he staggered to and fro.

But, against such an attack, his efforts were vain. Presently he fell
headlong to the floor. The creature, stooping, rained on to his
motionless body a hail of blows, making all the time that horrid,
gasping noise, and then was still.

I had been conscious all the time that there was something about the
creature which was terribly human. It appeared to be covered with a
flowing robe of some shining, silken stuff, whose voluminous skirts
whirled hither and thither as it writhed and twisted. Now that it
became motionless there broke on my ears the sound of a woman’s
laughter.

I am not a nervous subject. Nor am I, I believe, a physical coward.
But I am compelled to own that, instead of attempting to interfere, or
offering the assistance which I had only too good reason to suppose
was urgently needed, at the sound of the laughter, like some
frightened cur, I turned and fled. And not the least strange part of
the whole business was that, as it seemed, immediately after, I woke
up. Woke to find that, however it might appear to the contrary, I
certainly had been asleep, for I was sitting up in bed covered with
sweat and trembling in every limb.

I looked about me. The blind was up before the long French window. I
remember drawing it up, as was my usual habit, before I got into bed.
The moon was shining through. All at once a sound caught my anxious
ear. I started forward to learn from whence it came. From the window!
I stared with all my eyes. I was wide awake now, of that there could
be no sort of doubt whatever. In the moonlight I could see that some
one was standing on the other side of the pane--a faint, mysterious
figure. The latch was raised; it was a little rusty, I could hear it
creaking. The window was pushed open, as by an unaccustomed hand, with
something of a jerk. Out of the moonbeams, like some spectral
visitant, a woman stepped into the room.




 CHAPTER II.
 THE WOMAN WHO CAME THROUGH THE WINDOW

I held my breath, staring in amazement. The figure was real, that
was obvious. And yet, how could a woman have gained my window from
without? Where had she come from at that hour of the night? What did
she want, now that she was here?

A vague wonder passed through my mind as to whether her object might
not be felony. She had left the window open--I could feel the cool
night-air--and stood inside it, as if listening. Was she endeavouring
to discover if her entrance had been discovered? She had but to use
her eyes, and look straight in front of her, to see me sitting up in
bed, staring. I was as visible as she was. So far as I could judge she
remained motionless, looking neither to right nor left. Presently she
sighed, as some tired child might do, a long-drawn sigh, as if the
action brought relief to her breast. Then I was persuaded that she was
at any rate no thief--there was something in the sound of that
sustained respiration which was incompatible with the notion of a
feminine burglar.

She came a little forward into the room, doubtfully, as if uncertain
of her surroundings. She stumbled against a chair, the contact seeming
to startle her. I saw her put her hand up to her head, with the
gesture of one who was trying to collect her thoughts.

“I can’t think where I am.”

The words broke the silence in the oddest manner. The voice was sweet,
soft, clear--unmistakably a lady’s. It thrilled me strangely. Nothing
which had gone before had disconcerted me so much--it was an utterance
of such extreme simplicity. Was it possible that the lady was a
somnambulist, who, held in the thraldom of that curious disease, had
woke to find herself in a stranger’s bedroom? If that was the case,
what was I to do? How could I explain the situation, without unduly
startling her?

The question was answered for me. I must unconsciously have fidgeted.
All at once her face was turned towards me. She exclaimed:

“Who’s that?”

I arrived at an instant resolution--replying with the most
matter-of-fact air of which I was capable.

“Do not be alarmed--it is I, John Ferguson. If you will allow me, I
will turn on the light, so that we may see each other better.”

I switched on the electric light. What it revealed again amazed me
into speechlessness. At the foot of my bed stood the most beautiful
woman I had ever seen; I thought so in that first astounded moment--I
think so still. She was tall and she was slight. She looked at me out
of the biggest and the sweetest pair of eyes I ever saw. But there was
something in them which I did not understand. It was not only
bewilderment, it was as if she was looking at the world out of a
dream. She regarded me, as I sat, with my touzled head of hair, not,
as I had feared, with signs of agitation and alarm, but rather with a
curious sort of wonderment.

“I don’t know who you are. Where am I? Have I ever seen you before?”

It was spoken as a child might speak, with a little tremulous
intonation, as if she were on the verge of tears.

“I don’t think you have. But don’t be alarmed--you are quite safe. I
think you have been walking in your sleep.”

“Walking in my sleep?”

“I fancy you must have been.”

“But--do I walk in my sleep?”

In spite of myself, I smiled at the simplicity of the inquiry.

“That is a matter on which you should know more than I do.”

“But--where can I have walked from?”

“That also is a question to which you should be able to supply an
answer. Do you live in the Mansions?”

“The Mansions?”

“These are the Imperial Mansions. Is your home here?”

“My home?” She shook her head solemnly. “I don’t know where my home
is.”

“Not know? But you must know where your home is. Who are you? What is
your name?”

“I don’t know who I am or what is my name.”

Was she an imbecile? She did not look it. I never saw intellect more
clearly marked upon a woman’s face. But the more attentively I
regarded her the more distinctly I began to realise that there was
something peculiar in her expression. She seemed mazed, as if she had
recently been roused from sleep and had not yet had time to acquire
consciousness of her surroundings. My original surmise was correct;
she had been walking in her sleep, and had not yet recovered
sufficient consciousness to enable her to recognise the actualities of
existence, and comprehend what it was she had been doing.

While I told myself this I had never removed my glance from off her.
And now my gaze fastened on something which had for me a dreadful
fascination.

She was covered from head to foot in a voluminous garment, which set
off her face and figure to perfection. I took it to be some sort of
opera-cloak, though, more than anything else, it resembled a domino
buttoned down the front. It was made of some bright plum-coloured
material, which I afterwards learned was alpaca. A hood, which was
attached to the garment, was half off, half on, her dainty head. The
whole affair, cloak and hood, was lined with green silk. The front of
the cloak was decorated with voluminous green ribbons; one of these
caught my eye. It was a broad sash-ribbon, some six or eight inches
wide, reaching from her neck almost to her toes.

For quite half its length the vivid green was obscured by what seemed
to be a stain of another colour. The stain was apparently of such
recent occurrence that the ribbon was still sopping wet. But it was
not the broad ribbon only which was stained; I perceived that, here
and there, the bright hues of the knots of narrower ribbon were also
dimmed. More, there were splashes on the cloak itself. She had her
hand up to her head. I glanced at it. How could the fact have
previously escaped my notice? There were stains upon her uplifted
hand, and upon the other hand which dangled loosely at her side. They
were half covered with something red--and wet.

All at once there came back to me the extraordinary vision I had had
of the strange happening in Lawrence’s room. I recalled the frenzied
figure, clad in the woman’s robe, with the whirling skirts. Woman’s
robe? Why, here it was in front of me, upon this woman, the very robe
which I had seen. And here, too, now sufficiently quiescent, were the
whirling skirts. I put my hand up to my eyes to shut out the horrid
thought which seemed to rush at me; and I cried--

“Tell me who you are, and from where you come!”

There was silence. I repeated my inquiry. She answered with another.

“Why do you speak so strangely? And why do you put your hand before
your eyes?”

The mere sound of her speaking soothed me. To my mind, one of the
greatest charms of a woman should be her voice. Never did I hear a
more comfortable voice than hers. It was impossible to imagine that a
voice in which, to my ears, rang so unmistakably the accents of truth,
could belong to one who was false. Removing my hands, I looked at her
again.

She had smeared her countenance with her fingers; all down one side of
her face was a crimson stain.

“Look,” I cried, “at what you’ve done!”

“What have I done?”

“What’s on your hands?”

“My hands? What is on my hands?”

She held out her hands in front of her, staring at them with the most
innocent air in the world.

“It’s blood.”

“Blood? Where has it come from?”

She asked the question as a child might do. In spite of her
blood-stained face, the ring of truth which was in her voice, the
unspoken appeal which was in her eyes, went to my heart.

“Try to think where you’ve come from, and what you have been doing?”

“Think? I can’t think.”

“But you must! Don’t you see you’re all covered with blood?”

“All covered with blood? Why, so I am! Oh!”

She gave a little cry which was more than half a sob. She swayed to
and fro. Before I could reach her she had fallen to the ground. I
found her lying as if she were dead. She had swooned.

This was a pretty plight which I was in. I have had but little
experience of feminine society. My life, for the most part, has been
lived in places where women are not. I knew as little of them as of
the cuneiform character--perhaps less. I, of course, had heard of
women fainting, but never before had I seen one in such a pitiful
predicament. What was I to do? I thought of Mrs. Peddar. She was the
housekeeper at the Mansions--an excellent woman. Everything under her
rule went by clockwork: she had been of more assistance to me in
various matters than I had supposed that a person in her position
could have been. But I scarcely felt that this was a case in which her
interference might be altogether desirable.

As I looked at the lovely creature lying there so still, I felt this
more and more. Her utter helplessness filled me with a curious sense
of pity. A resolve was growing up within me to constitute myself her
champion, if she would only avail herself of my services, in whatever
circumstances of doubt and danger she might find herself. If she had
something to conceal, by no action of mine should it be blazed to the
world. Without her express sanction, neither Mrs. Peddar nor any one
else, should be informed of her presence there. Yet how was I to
restore her to consciousness?

While I hesitated I perceived that something was lying beside her on
the floor. Where it had come from I could not tell; it was hardly the
kind of thing to have fallen from a woman’s pocket. I picked it up. It
was a photograph of Edwin Lawrence; I could not help but recognise the
likeness directly I raised it. Back and front it was smeared with
blood. Actuated by an impulse for which I did not attempt to account,
rising, I thrust it between the leaves of a book which was on the
mantelshelf. She moved. Turning, I found that she had raised herself a
little, and was looking at me with her eyes wide open.

“What is the matter with me? Have I been asleep?”

Her frank, fearless gaze, with, in it, that strange look of
bewilderment, filled me with a sudden sense of confusion. I stammered
a reply.

“You have not been very well. But you are better now. Let me help you
to get up.”

I held out my hand. Putting hers into it, she rose to her feet with a
little spring. When she took her hand away, on mine there was a ruddy
smirch. The condition of her plum-coloured garment, and of the bright
green ribbons, seemed to have become more conspicuous even than
before.

“Hadn’t you better take off your cloak?”

She looked at me as if amazed.

“Take off my cloak? Why should I?”

“You will be more comfortable without it.”

“Do you think so? Then of course I’ll take it off.”

She removed her cloak, with my assistance. I flung it over the back of
a chair.

“You will find water there with which to wash your hands and face.”

Again she eyed me with that suggestion of surprise.

“Why should I wash my hands and face?”

“There is blood upon them.”

“Blood?” She held out her hands with her former gesture. “So there is.
I had forgotten. I cannot think how it came there.” Her cheeks assumed
an added tinge of pallor. “Will it come off if I wash them?”

It seemed impossible to doubt that it was seriously asked; yet the
apparent puerility of the question stung me to a brusque response.

“We will hope that soap and water will at least, remove the outward
and visible stain.”

Turning, I went into my dressing-room, she following me with her eyes.
There I hastily donned some more conventional attire. Thence, passing
into the dining-room, I called to her through the bedroom door.

“When you are ready, may I ask you to come in here. We shall be more
at our ease.”

She did not keep me waiting, but appeared upon the instant, coming
towards me holding out her hands as a child might do.

“I’m clean now. Aren’t I clean?”

Her close propinquity filled with me wholly unreasonable agitation. I
drew back. The removal of the cloak had disclosed a dark blue silk
dress which fitted her, to my thinking, with the most marvellous
perfection. There was a touch of white about her neck and wrists. Her
beauty struck me more even than at first--it awed me. Yet at the back
of my mind was born a dim fancy that somewhere in the flesh I had seen
this enchanting vision before. I was at a loss as to the words with
which I ought to address her, speaking at last, blunderingly enough.

“Have you any reason why you should wish to conceal your name?” She
shook her head. “Then tell me what it is.”

“But I don’t know. Have I a name?”

“I presume that, with the rest of the world, you have. Pray do not
suppose, however, that I wish to force myself into your confidence. I
would only suggest that I think it might be better, for both our
sakes, if you could give me some idea of where you came from before
you entered my room.”

“Did I enter your room? Oh yes, I remember; but--I don’t remember
anything more.” She put her hand up to her head with the gesture which
had previously struck me. “Where did I come from?”

“I don’t know if you are intentionally trifling, but if you are unable
to supply the information, I certainly cannot.”

Something in my manner seemed to occasion her distress. She moved
towards me anxiously, like a timid child who stands in fear of
admonition.

“Why do you look like that? Are you angry?”

I knew not what to think or what to feel; but, at least, I was not
angry. If she was playing a part, which I for one was disposed to
doubt, she acted with such plausibility that I was conscious of my
incapacity to discover in what the trick consisted. I perceived that,
after all, this was a case for Mrs. Peddar.

“The housekeeper is a most superior person--a Mrs. Peddar. She will be
of more assistance to you than I can be. Will you allow me to tell her
that you are here?”

“Why not? Of course you can tell her--if you like.”

This was said with such an air of innocence, and with such an entire
absence of suspicion that there could be anything dubious in her
position, that I myself was conscious of a sense of shame at the
thoughts which filled my mind. I moved towards the door. She stopped
me.

“Who are you going to tell?”

“The housekeeper--Mrs. Peddar.”

“Oh.” This was with a little touch of doubt. “She’s a woman. You’re a
man. I’m a woman.” She said this with the utmost gravity, as if she
were giving utterance to portentous facts which she had just
discovered. She seemed to shiver. “Is she--nice? Will she--be kind to
me?”

I registered a mental vow that she should be kind to her, or I would
know the reason why; I said as much, though with less emphasis of
language. Then I left the room.

But, before I actually went in search of Mrs. Peddar I returned into
the bedroom, through the door which opened out of the passage. Using
that plum-coloured cloak with scant ceremony, I rolled it up into a
bundle and thrust it into a wardrobe behind a heap of clothes. Then,
opening the window, I stood on the balcony and threw the water in
which my visitor had washed her hands and face, as far as I could out
into the street. I heard it fall with a splash on to the road below.




 CHAPTER III.
 THE CONQUEST OF MRS. PEDDAR

Mrs. Peddar has her rooms at the top of the building--on the seventh
floor. The lift runs all night. It had been my intention, rather than
summon it and attract the attention of the porter, to have climbed the
endless flights of stairs; but, as luck had it, when I reached the
staircase the lift was setting some one down. Since it was there I
thought I might as well use it, to save time, and also my legs. I
stepped inside.

“Up or down, sir?”

“I am going up to Mrs. Peddar.”

The porter favoured me with a doubtful glance.

“Mrs. Peddar lives at the top of the building. She’s in bed long ago.”

“So I suppose. I’m afraid, however, that I shall have to wake her up
again, as I am in urgent need of her assistance.”

“Anything wrong, sir?”

“No. At least nothing in which you could be of service.”

As we mounted I could see that Turner--the night porter’s name is
Turner--was wondering what possible business I could have with Mrs.
Peddar that I should rouse her out of her warm bed at that hour of the
night. It occurred to me to ask him a question or two.

“Has a lady come up lately?”

“Up where?”

“Up to the first floor--or anywhere?” He shook his head. “You’re
sure?”

“Certain. No lady’s come into this building for a good two hours, at
any rate. The last was Mrs. Sabin; she and her husband’s on the fourth
floor. They’ve been to the Gaiety Theatre: I took ’em up in the lift.
She was the last lady as came in, and that was just after eleven.”

His words set me thinking. If my visitor had not come in through the
doorway, how then had she gained access to my balcony, which is on the
first floor, and between twenty and thirty feet above the ground.
Turner volunteered a statement on his own account.

“And the last man who went out was Mr. Lawrence’s brother.”

I pricked up my ears at this.

“Mr. Lawrence’s brother? Oh.”

“Yes--Mr. Philip, I think his name is. He came down not three minutes
before I saw you, just as I was going to take up Mr. Maynard--that was
Mr. Maynard who got out as you got in. He seemed to be in a big hurry.
I said good night as he went past, but he said nothing. He had a big
parcel in his arms, almost as much as he could carry.”

“You are sure it was Mr. Lawrence’s brother?”

“It was him right enough. My cousin’s his coachman--I ought to know
him.”

“You say he came down three minutes ago?”

“Not three minutes ago, I said.”

Then, in that case, he must have been with his brother some time after
my visitor had come to me. The knowledge occasioned me distinct
relief.

Turner continued:

“He went up about an hour ago: perhaps a little more. He’d got no
parcel then. I stared when I saw he’d got one when he came back. I
shouldn’t have thought he was the kind to carry a parcel, and
especially such a one. I’d have called him a cab if he’d given me a
chance, but I was just starting with Mr. Maynard, and he was off like
a shot. Shall I wait for you, sir? The first door round the corner is
Mrs. Peddar’s.”

I told him not to wait, feeling conscious that it might take me some
time to explain to Mrs. Peddar what I desired of her. The lady must
have been a light sleeper. Hardly had I saluted the panel of the door
with my knuckles than a voice inquired who was there. When I informed
her she made a prompt appearance in her dressing-gown.

“You, Mr. Ferguson! What do you want at this hour of the night?”

I immediately became conscious that it might be even more difficult to
explain than I had supposed.

“I have a visitor downstairs, Mrs. Peddar.”

“A visitor? Well? What has that to do with me? You can’t have anything
to eat at this time of night.”

She said that, I take it, because in the Mansions meals are provided
for residents, and she supposed that I had dragged her out of bed at
that unholy hour in search of food.

“The visitor is a lady, and I wanted to know if you could give her a
bed somewhere to-night.”

“A bed? Who is the lady?”

“Well--the fact is, Mrs. Peddar, something very remarkable has taken
place. I’ve come up to tell you all about it, and to ask your advice.”

“You had better come in.”

I went into her sitting-room, she, with an eye for the proprieties,
leaving the door discreetly open. There was that in her bearing which
made me wonder if she suspected me of having been guilty of some act
of rakish impropriety, unworthy of my age and character. I was
conscious that the course in front of me was not all smooth sailing.

“A young lady, Mrs. Peddar, has just entered my room through the
window.”

“Through the window! Mr. Ferguson! At this hour!”

“I’m afraid the poor thing is not quite right in her mind.”

“I should think not. That is the best thing you can hope of her.”

“She is quite a lady.”

“Lady!” Mrs. Peddar tightened her lips. “Mr. Ferguson, are you
laughing at me, sir?”

“I assure you I am perfectly serious; and I give you my word she is a
lady. You have only to see her for yourself to find that. Wait a
minute--let me finish! I thought at first that she was a somnambulist;
that she had been walking in her sleep; and I am still of opinion that
something strange has happened to her. She is unable to tell me her
name, who she is, whence she comes, or anything about herself; she
seemed as if she were mazed.”

“Has she been drinking?”

“Come downstairs and speak to her; you will perceive for yourself that
to connect her with such a notion would be worse than impertinence.”

“No offence, sir, but when you tell me that a strange young woman
comes through your window in the middle of the night, I can’t help
having my own thoughts.”

“And I tell you, Mrs. Peddar, that the ‘strange young woman,’ as you
call her, is a lady in every sense of the word, to whom, I am
persuaded, something very serious has recently happened.”

“Very good, Mr. Ferguson. I’m afraid that you’re too soft-hearted,
sir. Where is this young lady now?”

“She is in my dining-room.”

“Alone?”

“Certainly she is alone.”

“Then I should not be surprised if, by now, she’s gone back through
the window, taking something with her to help keep you in mind. You
must excuse my saying that I don’t think I ever did know quite so
simple-minded a gentleman as you are, sir. One thing’s sure--if we do
want to find her we’d better hurry for all we’re worth.”

Urged by Mrs. Peddar I hastened with her down the stairs. But her
forecast was not realised. My visitor had not gone. She was still in
the dining-room, fast asleep in an armchair. The first thing which
saluted our ears, as we entered the room, was the sound of her gentle
breathing; she slept softly as a child. The sight which she presented
touched the housekeeper’s womanly heart.

“She does look a picture, that’s certain! And quite the lady! And
isn’t she prettily dressed! My word, what lovely rings!”

The girl’s hands were extended on her lap. I saw that on her fingers
were what seemed to be two or three valuable rings. Now that Mrs.
Peddar had started, her enthusiasm almost equalled mine.

“How pale she is--and how beautiful! It’s plain that the poor thing’s
tired out and out. And you say that she came through the window! But
however did she get there? and who is she? and where did she come
from?”

“As I have told you, I have put those questions to her already,
without success. As you can see for yourself, she appears to be worn
out by fatigue. I think that if you could give her a bed for
to-night--I, of course, will be responsible for all expenses--in the
morning we may be able to obtain from her all the information we
require.”

“She shall have the bed all right, sir; I shouldn’t be surprised if
you’re right for once. She looks a lady; and, anyhow, I never could be
hard to any one so beautiful. But who’s to wake her? She is so sound
asleep, poor dear!”

“I will wake her.”

I did--by laying my hand gently on her shoulder. She moved, turned,
opened her eyes, and, when she saw who it was, sat upright in her
chair.

“I’ve been asleep again; it seems as if my eyes would not keep open.
Where have you been? I thought you never would come back. It was so
quiet here, and this is such an easy chair, I had to go to sleep.”

“I’ve been in search of Mrs. Peddar, of whom I told you. This is Mrs.
Peddar.”

The girl turned to her with a radiant smile; my conviction is that
that smile won Mrs. Peddar’s heart right off.

“Oh, Mrs. Peddar, I am so sleepy. I feel as if I wanted to sleep,
sleep, sleep. I can’t think what’s the matter.”

Mrs. Peddar was regarding her with inquisitive looks, in which,
however, there was sympathy as well.

“You’re tired, miss; that’s what the matter is with you. A good
night’s rest will do you good; you shall have it if you’ll come with
me, and as comfortable a bed as you ever slept in.”

“You’ll be all right with Mrs. Peddar,” I said; for the girl seemed to
hesitate. “You could not be in safer keeping, or in kinder hands.”

“Cannot I stay here?”

I looked at Mrs. Peddar; Mrs. Peddar looked at me. It was she who
answered.

“I think, miss, you will be more comfortable if you come with me. You
see, Mr. Ferguson lives alone.”

“But where shall you be?”

The anxious tone in which the girl put the question, and the appealing
gesture with which it was accompanied, afforded me an unreasonable
amount of pleasure.

“I shall be here, not so very far away from you; and, the first thing
in the morning, I will come to learn how you have slept.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Never did I promise anything more willingly.

She was still reluctant to go. To appease her I accompanied her
upstairs. When she reached Mrs. Peddar’s own apartment she was still
unwilling to suffer me to leave her, her unwillingness making me
absurdly happy.

As I descended those interminable stairs it was as if I trod on air.
It was ridiculous. Why should I be affected, one way or the other, by
the whims, and airs, and fancies of an apparently half-witted woman,
who had forced her way into my room at dead of night in a cloak all
wet with blood.




 CHAPTER IV.
 DR. HUME

I was awoke next morning by Atkins bringing in my cup of coffee. He
asked me a question as he arranged it on the small table beside my
bed.

“Do you know, sir, if Mr. Lawrence slept in his rooms last night?”

He had aroused me from a dreamless slumber, and I was not yet
sufficiently awake to catch the full drift of his inquiry.

“Slept in his rooms? What do you mean?”

“Because, sir, when I took him his coffee just now, as usual, I
knocked four times and got no answer. And his door’s locked; it’s not
his habit to lock his door when he’s at home.”

Atkins is one of the staff of servants attached to the Mansions, whose
particular office it is to wait on the occupants of chambers on the
first floor: a discreet man, who has a pretty intimate knowledge of
the manners and customs of those on whom he attends.

“Mr. Lawrence was in his rooms last night. I was with him till rather
late, and I believe he had a visitor after I had left.”

This I said remembering what Turner had told me about his brother
coming down the stairs, with the parcel in his arms.

“I think he must be out now--at least, I can’t make him hear. And the
door’s locked; I never knew him have the door locked when he was in.”

“Perhaps he’s ill,” I suggested. “I’ll slip along the balcony and see.
You wait here till I come back.”

I do not know what induced me to make such a proposition, except that
I was struck by the man’s words, and impelled by a sudden impulse. On
every floor a balcony runs right round the building. Lawrence and I
had often made use of it to reach each other’s rooms--his are the
first set round the corner. I put on a pair of slippers and a
dressing-gown, and started.

It was a chilly morning, with a touch of fog in the air, and it had
been raining. I made what haste I could. The window of Lawrence’s
dining-room opened directly I turned the handle. I went inside, and I
saw what I then instantly and clearly realised I had all along felt
sure that I should see. I sprang back upon the balcony. Atkins was
looking out of my window. I called to him.

“Come here! Quick! There’s something wrong!”

He came running to me.

“What is it, sir?”

“I don’t know what it is, but--it’s something.”

Atkins followed me into the room. Edwin Lawrence lay face foremost on
the floor. All about him the carpet was stained with blood. His
clothes were soaked. Had it not been for his clothes I should not have
certainly known that it was Lawrence, because, when we turned him
over, we found that his face and head had been cut and hacked to
pieces. In my time I have seen men who have come to their death by
violence, but never had I seen such an extraordinary sight as he
presented. It was as if some savage thing, fastening upon him, had
torn him to pieces with tooth and nail. His flesh had been ripped and
rent so that not one recognisable feature was left. Indeed, it might
not have been a man we were looking upon, but some thing of horror.

I spoke to Atkins. “Run and fetch Dr. Hume. I am afraid he will be of
little use, but he must come. And the police!”

Off he sped to tell the ghastly tidings. So soon as he was gone I
looked about me. On a chair close by was a pair of white kid gloves--a
woman’s. I picked them up and put them in my pocket. Among the
portraits on the mantelshelf was the face of one I knew. I put that in
my pocket also with the gloves.

The room was in some disarray, but not in such disorder as to suggest
that a desperate struggle had taken place. A chair or two and a table
were not in the places in which I knew they generally stood; the table
on which we had played that game of cards last night was pushed up
against another, on which were some copper vases. A revolving bookcase
had been driven up against the fireplace. On the woodwork were gouts
of blood. There was a blotch on the back of one of the books--a volume
of Rudyard Kipling’s “Many Inventions.” On the edge of the white stone
mantelpiece was the mark of where a hand had rested--a blood-stained
hand. Something lay on the carpet, perhaps two yards away from the
dead man’s feet. I took it up. It was a collar--a man’s
collar--shapeless and twisted and stiff with coagulated blood. As I
stared at it a wild wonder began to take shape and to grow in my
brain.

“Ferguson, what’s the matter? What’s this Atkins tells me about? Good
God! is that Lawrence?”

It was Dr. Hume who spoke. He had come into the room while I was
staring at the collar.

Graham Hume is a man who has taken high medical honours; but, having
ample private means, he does not pretend to have anything in the shape
of a regular practice. He has a hobby--madness. He is a student of
what he calls obscure diseases of the brain; insisting that we have
all of us a screw loose somewhere, and that out of every countenance
insanity peeps--even though, as a rule, thank goodness, it is only the
shadow of a shade.

Some strange stories are told of experiments which he has made. His
chambers are on the ground floor; and, though he has a plate on his
door, his patients are few and far between--nor are they by any means
always welcome even when they do appear. Probably the larger number of
them are residents in the Mansions, and because that was so, any one
living in the buildings being in sudden need of medical help used to
rush at once to him. Lawrence used to chaffingly speak of him as “the
Imperial Doctor.”

Hume was still in the prime of life--perhaps forty, of medium height,
sparely built, with clean-shaven face, high forehead, and coal-black
hair. A good fellow, in his fashion; but with rather a too
professional outlook on to the world. I always felt that he regarded
every one with whom he came in contact--man, woman, or child--as a
possible subject for experiment. Personally, I was conscious of
feeling no dislike for him; but I had a sort of suspicion that he did
not like me.

“Yes,” I replied; “that’s Lawrence--what’s left of him.”

He was kneeling by the dead man on the floor, his usually impassive
face all alert and eager.

“How has this happened--and when?”

“That is what has to be discovered.”

“Who found him?”

“Atkins and I.”

“Was he lying in this position?”

“No; he was on his face. We turned him over.”

“The man’s been cut to pieces.”

“It almost looks to me as if he had been scratched to pieces.”

“I fancy these wounds are too deep for scratches--in the ordinary
sense. It looks as if several narrow blades had been used, set in some
kind of frame, or a row of spikes. The flesh has been torn open in
regular layers. This is interesting--very.” This was the kind of
remark which I should have expected he would make; it came from him
sotto voce. “He’s been dead some time, he’s quite cold. Very curious
indeed.”

While he spoke he had been unfastening, with deft fingers, the dead
man’s clothes, laying bare his neck and chest. Now he called to me,
with an accent of suspicion.

“Look at that!”

I looked. I saw that the body was almost as much disfigured as the
head and face; that it was covered with gaping wounds.

“I see; enough violence has been used to kill the poor fellow a dozen
times over.”

“Is that all you see?” Hume spoke with more than a touch of
impatience. “Don’t you see that some sharp-pointed instrument has been
thrust right through the man’s body, from the back to the front, and
from the front to the back, because he has been attacked from both
back and front? If, then, a knife, or something of the kind, has been
driven clean through him, as it has been, over and over again, how
came it to miss his shirt, his coat, the whole of his clothes?”

“I don’t quite see what you mean.”

“Then, in that case, my dear Ferguson, I am afraid that you are even
more dense than you usually are--which is unfortunate. If I were to
stab you where you stand, the stabbing instrument would have to pass
through your clothing, and, in doing so, would leave a mark of its
passage. One would expect to find this man’s clothing cut to pieces;
but you can see for yourself that, with the exception of bloodstains,
there is not a mark upon them; they are intact, without rent or tear.
Are we to infer that the attacking weapon did not pass through them?
In that case, was the man naked when he was attacked, and were his
clothes put on him after he was dead?”

“I see, now, what you mean.”

“I am glad of that; perhaps your mental faculties are beginning to
move. I suppose these clothes are Lawrence’s?”

“I can prove that; he was wearing them when I saw him last.”

“Oh, he was, was he. When did you see him last?”

“Last night.”

Hume glanced quickly up at me.

“Last night? At what time?”

I considered for a moment.

“I don’t remember particularly noticing, but I should say that it was
about half-past eleven when I left him, or perhaps a little after.”

“Half-past eleven? Then I should say that within an hour of that time
he was dead; perhaps within less than an hour. That’s very odd.”

“Why is it odd?”

“Was he alone when you left him?”

“He was.”

“Did you part on friendly terms?”

The question took me somewhat aback; it was not one which it was easy
to answer.

“May I ask why you inquire?”

“My dear Ferguson, it is a question which some one will put to you.
You should be prepared with an answer. It seems rather unfortunate
that you should have quarrelled with him within an hour of his being
done to death.”

“I did not quarrel with him.”

“No? What did you do then? Your unwillingness to reply shows that it
was not on the best of terms you parted.”

“I shall be ready to give all necessary information to any one
entitled to ask for it.”

“So you are in a position to give information? I see? And you think I
am not entitled to ask? Oh! What, to your mind, would constitute a
title?--a magistrate’s warrant? You don’t happen to know if any one
saw him after you did?”

“I believe that some one did.”

Again he gave that quick glance upwards.

“Who was it?”

“I believe that his brother saw him.”

“You believe! What makes you believe?”

“I was told by Turner, the night-porter.”

“When?”

“Last night; or, rather, early this morning. I had occasion to use the
lift. Turner told me that he had seen Mr. Lawrence’s brother go up,
and that he had just come down again.”

“What time was that?”

“Between two and three.”

“I fancy that before the clock struck two, or even one, this man was
dead.”

“I found this on the floor just before you came in.”

I handed Hume the blood-grimed collar.

“What is it? A collar?” As he turned it over he saw what I had seen.
“Here’s a name--‘Philip Lawrence.’”

“I believe that Philip is his brother’s name.”

He looked at me with an unfriendly something in his glance.

“What do you infer from that?”

“I do not attempt to draw an inference.”

“But your tone suggests. Do you suggest that when Philip Lawrence came
to see his brother he took off his collar and left it behind him on
the floor? Why?”

“It must have been soaked with blood.”

“Then you do suggest that Philip Lawrence left his collar behind
because it was soaked with blood.”

“I suggest nothing. I say that I saw it on the floor and picked it up;
that’s all.”

Hume stood up.

“What else have you found?”

I fenced with the question. I did not propose to speak of the gloves
or the photograph, being conscious that Hume was prepared to make
himself extremely disagreeable if occasion offered.

“I have not looked. The collar lay staring at me on the floor; I could
not help but see it.”

“Then we will look together. In such a case as this, one never knows
what ‘trifles light as air’ may prove ‘confirmation strong as Holy
Writ.’ Here’s a waste-paper basket; let’s see what’s in it. More than
one man has been sent to the gallows by a scrap of waste-paper. Here’s
what appears to be a letter--not too carefully written. Let’s see what
we can make of it. Hullo! what’s this?” He read from the scrap of
paper he was holding: “‘Such men as you ought not to be allowed to
live.’ That’s a strong assertion. And written by a woman, too, in a
good, bold hand. I think I should recognise that caligraphy if I saw
it again; wouldn’t you?”

He handed me the fragment. The clear, characteristic writing was
certainly a woman’s. I felt that I should know it again if I saw it.
The words were as he had stated them. He went on.

“If the intention of the person who tore up this letter was to conceal
its purport, he did his work with very little skill. Here’s another
fragment which is plain enough. ‘To-night I will give you a last
chance.’ To-night! I wonder if that was yesternight? If so he had his
last chance--his very last. Here, on still another piece, is part of a
signature. ‘Bessie.’ It certainly is Bessie. I know a Bessie.” He
smiled, not too pleasantly. “I wonder if--it’s scarcely likely, though
I shouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be the work of feminine
fingers. I seem to scent a woman in it somewhere.”

“It’s incredible!” I cried. “How could such violence have been used by
any woman?”

“How do you know that much violence has been used?--though there are
women who are capable of as much violence as men. But, in this case,
so far, there is nothing to show that much strength has been exerted.
It is a question of what instrument has been employed. Obviously it is
one of a most extraordinary and most deadly kind, and one which I
should imagine would be as likely to be found in a woman’s possession
as a man’s; indeed, I should say more likely, because I should expect
to find a man preferring to trust to his own right hand. Let me tell
you this, Ferguson. You are making a serious mistake in endeavouring
to associate Philip Lawrence with this matter. I know him well. He is
a man of high position and noble character; as incapable of such a
deed as you. Indeed, I know him well enough to be aware that he is
incapable; I have not sufficient knowledge of you to say, with
certainty, of what you may be capable.”

“Your language is quite unwarranted. I have made no endeavour of the
kind.”

“Are you perfectly candid? Are you sure that there is nothing at the
back of your mind? My position here is quasi-official. It is my duty
to ascertain how this man came to his death. Yet, while you refuse to
answer my inquiries, questioning my right to make them, you volunteer
some tittle-tattle about Philip Lawrence, and produce, with something
very like a flourish of triumph, a collar with his name on, which, you
say, you found upon the floor. I warn you again that, if you attempt
to drag in Philip Lawrence’s name, you will be guilty of a serious
injustice, the consequences of which will inevitably recoil on your
own head.”

“Listen to me, Hume, in your turn. In the first place, I don’t
understand why you show me such an aggressive front. And, anyhow, you
exaggerate the importance of your position. You merely happen to be
the first doctor of whom I could think. Your business is to make a
medical examination; so far, in that direction, I cannot say that I
have seen you make any undue exertions. To suggest that your office
is, in any sense, judicial, is sheer absurdity. We will stop at that.
Some men would have regarded the questions which you have put to me as
intentionally impertinent. I have enough acquaintance with you to know
that it is your unfortunate manner which is to blame, and that your
intention was innocuous.

“But let me add this: I know nothing of Mr. Philip Lawrence; I have
never seen the man in my life. But, since he was seen to leave the
building at an early hour this morning, in a somewhat curious fashion,
exhibiting all the marks of haste; and since his brother has now been
found here lying dead, I think, in spite of your ardent championship,
he will be called upon to give some sort of explanation.”

Why Hume behaved as he immediately did is beyond my comprehension. He
came close up to me, looking me full in the face, in distinctly
unfriendly fashion.

“Then I say you lie.”

He said it quietly--it is not his custom to speak loudly--but he said
it with unmistakable decision. While I was wondering whether or not I
should knock the fellow down, Atkins came in with a policeman at his
heels. It was time.




 CHAPTER V.
 A CURIOUS CASE

I had only just returned to my own rooms when Mrs. Peddar appeared.

“The young lady is up, sir, and wishes to see you, if it would be
quite convenient.”

Her words, her tone, her manner, told me that the housekeeper had not
yet heard of what had happened to the occupant of No. 64. Atkins had
explained that he had experienced some difficulty in finding a
constable, and, apparently, had said nothing of his errand to any one
upon the way. The story of Edwin Lawrence’s ending had not yet been
told. I was not disposed to be the first to inform Mrs. Peddar.

“How is the young lady?” I asked.

“Well, sir, she seems all right, bodily, if I may say so, and she
certainly has slept sound, and looks better than ever; but that
there’s something the matter with her mind, I feel sure.”

“Have you found out her name, or anything about her?”

“No, sir, not a word. I looked at her linen when she was in bed, and
it’s marked ‘E.M.’”

“‘E.M.’?”

“Yes, sir, ‘E.M.’ And there’s a purse in her pocket with eighteen
shillings; but that’s all--no cards or anything. I was wondering if
you wouldn’t like Dr. Hume to see her. He’s a clever gentleman, and
might find out what’s wrong with her; because, as I’ve said, that
there’s something wrong I’m sure.”

I turned my back, being unwilling to let the woman see how strongly
her reference to Hume had moved me. The idea that that man should have
an opportunity to play any of the pranks, which he pretended were
experiments, made in the interests of science, upon that helpless
girl, made my blood boil.

“I don’t think we will trouble Dr. Hume just yet, Mrs. Peddar.”

“Very good, sir. I don’t believe myself in doctors--not as a general
rule; it’s their bill they’re thinking of, and not you, most of the
time; but the young lady’s seems such a curious case, and Dr. Hume has
the reputation of being so clever, that I thought I’d just mention
it.”

“It’s very kind of you, Mrs. Peddar. I cannot tell you how obliged I
am to you for the interest you are taking in the matter; but then I
know your good heart. Will you inform the young lady that I will come
to her as soon as I have finished dressing?”

When I entered Mrs. Peddar’s rooms the girl was standing by the
window. As she turned to greet me I was positively startled by her
loveliness. It filled me with a curious sense of exhilaration. Her
face was illumined by that radiant smile which had struck me overnight
as being one of her most striking characteristics. She extended both
her hands.

“So it’s you at last. I thought you were never coming.”

“I have been detained, or I would have been here before. I hope you
slept well, and that Mrs. Peddar’s bed was as comfortable as she
predicted.”

“Slept! I seem to have slept all my cares away. Do you know, I think
that something must have happened to me last night.”

“What do you think it was?”

“That’s just it--I can’t think. I wonder if anything’s the matter with
my head.”

“Perhaps you had some kind of a shock; try to remember.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t remember. And yet--I don’t know. There’s something in my head
like a blot. It makes me feel so stupid.”

“Can’t you even remember your name?”

“No. I don’t believe I have a name. Yet I suppose I ought to have a
name, everybody does have a name; doesn’t everybody have a name?”

She put this question with a little air of hesitation, as if she
propounded a doubtful proposition.

“I should say so, as a general rule. It is rather an uncomfortable
position for a young lady to be in--not to know her own name, nor the
whereabouts of her home, nor who her friends are.”

“Do you think so? Does it make me seem--silly?” She looked at me with
a wistful expression, like a puzzled child. “I seem to remember people
shouting; they were shouting at me. And clapping their hands--I can
see them clapping their hands; then something happened.”

“Where were the people--and why did they shout at you?”

“I can’t think. I believe it’s in my head somewhere, if I only knew
where to find it; but I don’t know where it is.”

“Can’t you remember what happened to you, and where you were just
before you came to my room?”

“I remember coming through your window; I remember that quite well.” A
faint flush came to her cheeks. “But that is all. Everything seems to
have begun then; nothing seems to have happened before.”

I took a pair of white kid gloves out of my coat pocket.

“Are these your gloves?”

She eyed them askance.

“I don’t know--are they? Where did you get them from?”

I did not care to tell her that I found them on a chair in the room in
which Edwin Lawrence lay dead.

“You should know better than I, if they are yours.”

“They may be--I can’t tell. I’ll try them on and see if they fit.” She
did try them on, and they did fit--to perfection. She held out her
gloved hands. “They look as if they were mine--they must be; don’t you
think they are?”

“I have not a doubt that they are yours.”

I turned my face away. A weight had become suddenly attached to my
heart. There was a choking something in my throat. She was quick to
perceive the alteration in my demeanour.

“Why do you turn your face away from me? Have I said or done anything
wrong? Aren’t the gloves mine?”

I replied to her with another question.

“Do you know any one named Lawrence?”

“Lawrence? Lawrence? I can’t remember. Is it a woman’s name?”

“No; it is not a woman’s name, it’s a man’s name. Edwin Lawrence.”

“Why do you ask? Do you know him?”

“I do; and so do you.”

“I! How do you know I know him?”

“Because, last night, it was from his room you came to mine.”

I regarded her with what quite possibly were accusatory glances; but
if I expected my words to take her by surprise, or to cause her to
betray signs of guilt, I was mistaken. She met my glances with
serenely untroubled countenance, as if she were wondering what exactly
my meaning might chance to be.

“I came to your room from his? What was I doing in his room?”

“Think! Try to think! You must remember what happened in Edwin
Lawrence’s room to cause you to fly through his window, taking refuge
anyhow and anywhere.”

“You say that I came from his room to yours; how did I come?”

“Along the balcony. You must have rushed through his window straight
to mine; whether you tried other windows as you passed I cannot say.
Perhaps mine was the first which you found open.”

“Then his room is in this house?”

“Of course it is; it’s on the same floor as mine.”

“Then take me to it--now! At once! If I were to see the room, and to
see Edwin Lawrence, it might all come back to me.”

“Take you to see Edwin Lawrence?”

“Yes; why not?”

“Why should I not take you to see Edwin Lawrence? You know why!”

I gripped her roughly by the wrist. She gave a cry of pain. I loosed
her, ashamed. She eyed me as if bewildered.

“Why did you take hold of me like that? You hurt me.”

“You should not play with me.”

“Play with you? I was not playing. I only asked you to take me to see
this room, and this Edwin Lawrence, of whom you keep on speaking--that
was all.”

“Yes, that was all.”

“Why do you look at me like that. You make me afraid of you. I thought
you were my friend.”

“How can I be your friend, to act a real friend’s part, if you will
not trust me?”

“Trust you? Don’t I trust you? I thought I did.”

She spoke like a child, and she was a lovely woman. I knew not what to
make of her, what to answer. I had a hundred things to say, which,
sooner or later, would have to be said. How was I to express them in
words which would reach her understanding? Was she, naturally,
mentally deficient? I could not believe it. Hers was not the face of
an imbecile. Intellect, intelligence was writ large in every line.
What then was the meaning of the cloud which had temporarily paralysed
the active forces of her brain? Where was the key to the puzzle? As I
hesitated she, coming closer, drawing up the sleeve of her dress,
showed me her wrist, on which were the marks of my fingers.

“See how you have hurt me.”

I was shocked; I had not supposed that I had used such force.

“I did not mean to do it--I beg your pardon. But this morning I’m
afraid I am impatient; things have tried me.”

“What things? Am I one of them? I am so sorry--please forgive me! I
want you to be my friend, and more than my friend. You see how I am
all alone.”

“I see; I do see that.”

The appeal which was in her eyes as they looked into mine stirred my
pulses strangely. I know not what wild words were trembling on my
lips; before they had a chance of getting spoken Mrs. Peddar put her
head through the door and called to me--

“Mr. Ferguson, can I speak to you for a minute, please?”

I went to her at once. I perceived that the news had reached her. Her
first words showed it.

“You have heard, sir, of the dreadful thing which has happened to Mr.
Lawrence?”

“I have.”

“From what I’m told”--we were in a small room which served her as a
sort of ante-chamber; she looked about her furtively, as if she feared
that walls had ears; the hand which she had laid upon my arm was
trembling--“from what I’m told it seems that it must have been done
just before the young lady--came--to your room.”

“Such seems to be the case, from what I’m told.”

“What shall we do?”

“At present, nothing. ‘Sufficient,’ Mrs. Peddar, ‘unto the day is the
evil thereof.’”

“Do you think she knows?”

“Just now, I am sure that she does not.”

She came closer, speaking almost in a whisper. Her lips were
twitching. I have seldom seen a woman so disturbed.

“Do you think--she did it?”

“Mrs. Peddar! I have not yet found the key to the puzzle; but I am
going to look for it, and I, or some one else, will find it soon. And
of this I am certain now, that that child--she’s little more than a
child in years, and, at present, she’s as helpless as any child could
be--has had, of her own initiative, no hand or finger in this matter;
she is as innocent, and as blameless, as you or I. She has suffered,
but she has not sinned.”

“I hope so, I am sure.”

“Your hope is on a safe foundation. There is one thing which you might
do--keep your own counsel. Don’t tell all the world that you have a
visitor; and, in particular, tell no one how that visitor came to
you.”

“I’d rather she never had come. I--I’m beginning to wish that I’d
never taken her in.”

“Don’t say that, Mrs. Peddar. You will find that it was not the worst
action of your life when you took that young girl, when she had just
escaped, by the very skin of her teeth, unless I am mistaken--from
things unspeakable, from the very gates of hell, under the shadow of
your wing.”

Mrs. Peddar shook her head and she sighed.

“Poor thing! Whatever happens, and I tremble when I think of what may
be going to happen to her and to us, and to every one--poor young
thing!”




 CHAPTER VI.
 THE DOCTOR ACCUSES

I found it impossible to accept the conclusion to which it all
pointed. I had locked the door of my bedroom, gone to the wardrobe,
taken out that plum-coloured cloak. I had rolled it up as tightly as I
could; the blood with which it was soaked, as it dried, had glued the
folds together. I had difficulty in tearing it open. An undesirable
garment it finally appeared as I spread it out in front of me upon the
bed, discoloured, stiff as cardboard, creased with innumerable
creases. And the stiffness was horrible. When one reflected with what
it had been stiffened, and how, and when, and associated with the
reflection that fair-faced girl, with truth in her voice and innocence
in her eyes, one wondered.

That she had been in Edwin Lawrence’s room at the very moment when the
murder was taking place seemed clear. What had been her errand? What
part had she played in the tragedy? Why, instead of giving an alarm,
had she sought refuge in flight? In the answer to this latter question
would, I felt persuaded, be found the key to the riddle. What she had
witnessed had acted on her like a bolt from heaven; the shock of it
had robbed her of her senses on the instant. With the scientific term
which would describe her condition I was not acquainted; it was some
sort of neurosis, involving, at least for the time, the entire loss of
memory. If she could only describe what she had witnessed, her
innocence would be established.

Such was my personal conviction; but, at present, it was my conviction
only. The material evidence pointed the other way. Time pressed;
danger threatened. If facts, as they were known to me, became known to
others, an eager policeman, anxious to fasten guilt on some one, might
arrest her on a capital charge. Apart from the question of
contaminating hands, what might not be the effect, on one already in
so pitiful a condition, of so hideous an accusation.

That she had witnessed something altogether out of the common way was
plain. This had been no ordinary murder; the work of no everyday
assassin. The presumption was that, taken wholly by surprise, she had
seen enacted in front of her some spectacle of supreme horror; so
close had she been standing as to have been actually drenched by the
victim’s blood. My vision--if it was a vision--might not have any
legal value, but it was full of suggestion for me; and the impression
was still strong upon me that some strange creature had been present
in the room, by which the crime had been actually committed. I
recalled Edgar Allan Poe’s story of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”
in which the criminal was proved to have been a huge ape; but, though
I had no notion what the creature I had really seen was, I was
persuaded that it had had nothing in common with any member of the ape
family.

In one respect my vision seemed to have fallen short. I had seen
Lawrence and his assailant; I had seen the whirling skirts--as, in
this connection, I gazed at the plum-coloured cloak, I was conscious
of an inward pang--I had heard the woman’s laughter; but, though I had
a clear recollection of looking around me, with a view of taking in
the entire scene, I had seen no one else. Yet all the evidence went to
show that, at any rate, two other persons had been present: my visitor
of the night before, and the dead man’s brother.

I will admit at once that I had little belief in the brother’s guilt.
I had heard something of Philip Lawrence; and, apart from the known
integrity of the man’s character, I could not conceive of any cause
which could impel him to the commission of so unnatural a crime.
Still, there was Turner’s statement, quite unsuspiciously uttered,
that he had seen him go up to his brother, and seen him come down
again. As I had said to Hume, he would at least be called upon to
explain.

But, as it seemed to me, what I had at present to ascertain was, what
had been the nature of the errand which had taken a young girl, at
that hour of the night, to Edwin Lawrence’s chambers. And, as it
chanced, I immediately came upon something which seemed to throw a
light upon the matter. Turning over the cloak, with a view of
returning it to its hiding-place--for I was aware that, at any moment,
I might be interrupted, and I was resolved, at least until I saw my
way more clearly, to keep the existence of so, apparently, criminatory
a garment a secret locked in my own breast--I came upon a pocket in
the green silk lining. There was something in it, which I took out.

It was an addressed envelope. The writing I instantly recognised; I
had seen it on the scraps of paper which Hume had taken out of
Lawrence’s waste-paper basket. The envelope had been neither stamped
nor posted. The address--it could hardly have been vaguer--was “George
Withers, Esq., General Post-office, London.” Without hesitation I tore
the envelope open. I had reached a point at which I felt that, at any
and every cost, I must get out of the darkness into the light.

The contents of the letter I give verbatim.


“Dear Tom,

“I am going to see that scoundrel to-night. He had better take care,
or something will happen to him, of that I am sure. And he will be
sure before I have done with him. In any case, I’ll write you at
length to-morrow.”

                                                        “B.”


Two points struck me about this odd epistle: it contained neither a
date nor an address, and, while “George Withers” was on the envelope,
the letter itself began “Dear Tom,” the inference being that “George
Withers” was an assumed name, to which it had been arranged that
communications should be directed. The “B.” of the signature was, I
had little doubt, the “Bessie” of the scraps of paper; in which case
the “E,” which Mrs. Peddar had discovered on the linen, stood for
“Elizabeth.” There still remained the puzzle of the “M.”

The letter had scarcely a reassuring effect. That the “scoundrel”
alluded to was Lawrence, and that “to-night” was last night, I thought
was probable. If that were so, then it seemed that this young girl had
gone to Lawrence with anything but friendly intentions; and it was
quite certain that something had happened to him, as she had
predicted. One could only hope that it was not the something which she
had in her mind’s eye; and that, in any case, she had had no hand in
the happening. As a clue to the lady’s identity the letter did not
carry one much forwarder.

As I was wondering what was the next step which I should take, a
thought occurred to me--the photograph which I had taken from
Lawrence’s mantelshelf. I had it in the pocket of my coat. I took it
out. It was an excellent likeness; the operator had caught her in a
characteristic pose, and made of her a really artistic picture. But it
was not with the likeness that I was at that moment concerned. I
looked at the back of the portrait, to see by whom it had been taken.
There was the name of one of the best London photographers in London.
Eureka! the thing was done. I had only to go to the man’s
establishment to gain particulars of the original. Surely, when he had
been told the circumstances of the case, he would not refuse to let me
have them.

Filled with this idea I began to feverishly roll up the plum-coloured
cloak. As I did so there came a rapping at the door.

“Who’s there?”

“I want to speak to you.”

The voice was Hume’s. Fortunately I had locked the door, or he would
quite possibly have walked straight into the room.

“I will be with you directly.”

I returned the cloak to the wardrobe, put the portrait into my pocket,
and with it the letter, then went to Hume.

He stood with his back to the window, and his hands behind his back,
regarding me, as I entered the room, with a keenness very like
impertinence. There was something hawk-like in his attitude, as if he
was ready to pounce on me the instant he could find an opening. I had
never had much pleasure in the man’s society; but this air of open
resentment was new. It was as if out of Lawrence’s murdered body there
had come a malicious spirit, which had entered into him, and inspired
him with a sudden and unreasoning desire to work me mischief. That he
meant to be disagreeable his first words made plain. I immediately
made up my mind that, to the best of my ability, his intention should
be persistently ignored.

“No wonder, Ferguson, that you resented my inquiry as to the terms on
which you parted last night with the dead man.”

“Indeed? My dear chap, sit down. If you can manage it, don’t wear
quite such an air of gravity. This affair of poor Lawrence’s seems to
have affected you even more than it has me--which is odd.”

“It is odd.”

“Because I had always supposed that he was a more intimate
acquaintance of mine than yours.”

“Such seems to have been the case. How much did you owe him?”

“Owe him! Hume, you seem disposed to ask some very odd questions.”

“You think so? When a person is suspected of a crime, the first thing
one looks for is a motive; you understand?”

“I understand your bare words, but what is behind your bare words I do
not understand.”

“Presently you will. Before we part I will endeavour to make myself
sufficiently plain. I repeat my question: How much did you owe him?”

“Nothing.”

“You lie.”

“Hume, that is the second time you have used such language to me this
morning, and the second time I have refrained from knocking you down.”

“That is true. Perhaps my turn will come to be knocked down. I am
aware that you are the sort of person who, for less cause, will do
much more than knock a man down.” He inclined his head further towards
me, his resemblance to a bird of prey becoming still more pronounced.
“Ferguson, I’m a pathologist; a student of mental diseases. As such I
have regarded you for some time with growing interest. Unless I err
you are the victim of a form of aberration which is not so unusual as
some may suppose; you suffer from mnemonic intervals.”

“I have not the faintest notion what you mean.”

Indeed, I was beginning to wonder if the doctor himself was not stark
mad. He went on, in his quick, even tones, as if he were calculating
what the effect of each word would be before he uttered it.

“If you were to kill me where I am standing, I believe that you would
be capable of forgetting what you had done directly I was dead; and
quite possibly the consciousness of your action might never visit you
again. That is what I mean.”

“Hume!”

For some cause his words seemed to penetrate to the very marrow of my
bones, as if they had been daggers of ice.

“Now I will explain to you why I assert that, consciously or
unconsciously, you lie in stating that you owed Edwin Lawrence
nothing. You see this.” He held out a small leather-covered volume,
which was fastened by a lock. “I found it in his room after you had
gone. It’s a sort of diary--rather an unexpected volume for such a man
to have--which statement is itself only another instance of the
unwisdom of judging, on insufficient data, of the direction in which a
man’s tastes may be inclined. In it he appears to have made fairly
regular entries, the last so lately as last night, after you had left
him. Here it is:

“‘Have been playing cards with Ferguson, and winning pretty heavily.
Have long been conscious that F.’s an unusual type of man--dangerous.
The sort you would rather not have a row with. Felt it more than ever
to-night; believe if he could have torn the heart clean out of me,
without scandal, he would have done it then and there. A bad loser. He
said some things, and looked more; as good as suggesting I had not
played on the square. I did not break his head, but, though I only
laughed, I did not love him any the more. It’s eighteen hundred and
eighty that he owes me. I suspect it will be like drawing his
eye-teeth; but I’ll have it. The money will be useful.’

“That is the last entry he made in his diary. He must have been killed
before the ink had long been dry. It suggests the terms on which you
parted. What have you to say to it? Do you still assert that you owed
him nothing?”

I had listened to Hume’s readings with feelings which I am unable to
describe. In the rush of events I had, for the moment, forgotten the
game of cards which we had played together. It was not pleasant to
have it recalled in such a fashion, by such a man. The falsity of the
conclusions which he drew from my temporary forgetfulness stung me not
a little.

“I do still assert that I owed him nothing. One minute; let me finish.
But the eighteen hundred and eighty pounds which I should have given
to Edwin Lawrence will now be handed over to his estate.”

“True. As he correctly perceived, you are an unusual type of man.
Ferguson, you and I are alone together. What I am about to say will be
said without prejudice. I shall not whisper a hint of it abroad
without good and sufficient ground to go upon, but I tell you now,
quite frankly, that it is my opinion that you used some means--what
they were I do not pretend at present to understand--to compass Edwin
Lawrence’s death.”

“Hume!”

“I know that you were in his room when he was being killed.”

“You know that I was in his room!”

“I suspected it at first. Now I know it. I will tell you how. A girl,
one of the servants of the place, just stopped me to say that, at an
early hour this morning--so far as I can judge, within five minutes of
the commission of the murder--she saw you running along the corridor,
from Lawrence’s room towards your own, as if you were flying for your
life. My own impression is that you were flying from the life which
you had taken.”

“Hume! Some one saw me in the corridor! Who was it?”

“At this moment, never mind. The woman will be produced in due course.
She says that the perspiration was pouring down your cheeks; which
seems odd, considering that the morning was chilly, that you are not
of a plethoric habit, and that you were clad only in your pyjamas.”

It was with difficulty that I retained my self-control. Was it
possible that it had not been a vision after all, but that I had been
the actual spectator of that awful tragedy?

As I was endeavouring to arrange in my mind the new aspect of the case
suggested by Hume’s words, the door opened and a man came in.

“Is one of you two gentlemen Mr. Ferguson?”

“I am.”

“Then you’re the gentleman they’ve sent me to as being Mr. Edwin’s
friend. The Lord forgive me, but I believe that my poor master’s
murdered him!”




 CHAPTER VII.
 THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. MORLEY

The newcomer was a man apparently about sixty years of age, short,
and grey-haired, with old-fashioned, neatly-trimmed side whiskers. He
was dressed entirely in black, even to black kid gloves; his hat he
carried in his hand. He seemed to be in a state of considerable
agitation, and stood looking from one to the other of us as if he was
endeavouring to make up his mind as to who or what we were. Hume
recognized him at once. He went striding towards him from across the
room.

“Morley, you had better come with me. It is to me you wish to speak,
not to this gentleman.”

I interposed.

“He asked for Mr. Ferguson. I am Mr. Ferguson. It therefore seems that
it is to me that he wishes to speak.”

“Don’t talk nonsense! You’re a stranger to him; I tell you it’s a
mistake. You know me, Morley, don’t you?”

The old gentleman looked at Hume with eyes which seemed half dazed.

“Yes, sir; oh yes. You’re Dr. Hume. I know you very well.”

“You hear? Stand aside!”

“I shall not stand aside. And, Hume, take my strong advice and don’t
attempt to interfere with any visitor of mine. You hear me?”

“I hear, but I shall not pay the least attention. Morley, I forbid you
to say a word in this gentleman’s presence. You have no right to speak
of your master’s private affairs in the presence of strangers. I am
his friend; I will safeguard his interests. I tell you that by not
keeping a strict watch over your tongue you may do him a serious
mischief.”

“Very good, Hume. Evidently to remonstrate with you is to waste one’s
breath. I will try another way.” Taking him up in my arms I carried
him towards the door. “I am going to put you outside my room, and,
before you attempt to enter it again, I trust that you will have
learnt at least the rudiments of decent manners. Out you go!”

And out he went. Depositing him on the floor in the corridor, I locked
the door in his face. He banged against it with his fist.

“You shall pay for this!”

“Very good; render your account. I will render you such moneys as are
due.”

“Morley, I forbid you to say a word to him at your peril.”

I turned to my visitor.

“I beg, Mr. Morley, that you will take a seat. Pray do not heed our
excitable friend. Just now he can hardly be said to have the full
control of his senses--as you yourself perceive. As you remarked, I am
John Ferguson, the friend of Mr. Edwin Lawrence. You, I take it, are
in the service of his brother, Mr. Philip.”

Mr. Morley’s calmness had not perceptibly increased. He seemed
impressed by the way in which I had handled Hume; and, also, disposed
to be influenced by the doctor’s express commands to hold his tongue;
he was like a man between two stools.

“Yes, sir, I’m in Mr. Philip’s service; but I think that perhaps the
doctor’s right, and I oughtn’t to talk about my master.”

“Possibly, Mr. Morley; but you have spoken of him already. You have
accused him of murder.”

“No, sir, not that!”

“Just now, in the presence of Dr. Hume and myself, you expressed your
belief that Mr. Philip had killed Mr. Edwin.”

“Oh no, sir, not that; I didn’t go so far as that. I didn’t mean it if
I did.”

“What you meant is another question; that is what you said. I may tell
you, Mr. Morley, that I am not of your opinion. I do not believe that
Mr. Philip had any hand whatever in his brother’s death.”

“No, sir? I--I’m glad to hear it.”

“Very soon you will receive from his own lips an explanation which
will blow all your doubts away. I believe that he will clear the whole
thing up at once, if you will take me to him.”

Mr. Morley’s jaw dropped open.

“Take you to him? But that--that’s just it. I don’t know where he is.
Isn’t he--here?”

He looked about him as if he half expected to discover Philip Lawrence
hidden behind a curtain or under a table.

“Do I understand you to mean that your master has not returned all
night?”

“Yes, sir; that’s what I do mean, and that’s what makes me
so--concerned. He’s a gentleman of regular habits--most regular; and
I’ve never known him to stop out all night before without giving me
warning.”

I felt that, in that case, he must indeed be a gentleman of most
regular habits.

“Where does Mr. Philip Lawrence live?”

“In Arlington Street; that’s his London address.”

“When did he go out?”

“After midnight, in--in a towering rage.”

“In a towering rage? With whom?”

“Well, sir,”--Mr. Morley came closer; he cast an anxious glance around
him; he dropped his voice--“I’m not a talkative man, not as a rule, as
any one who knows me will tell you; but I’ve got something to say
which I feel I must say to some one, though you heard what Dr. Hume
said. But, perhaps, sir, as you’re Mr. Edwin’s friend, you’re Mr.
Philip’s too.”

“Mr. Morley, in making any statement to me, you will be at least as
safe as if you made it to Dr. Hume. I tell you that I believe your
master’s hands are clean. To prove it, we shall have to establish the
truth. If you have anything to say which will go to make the darkness
light, say it, like a man, before it’s too late.”

“You won’t use it to do him a disservice? And you won’t say that I
talked about him in a way I didn’t ought to have done?”

“I will do neither of these things.”

“Well, sir, I like your looks; you look like the kind of gentleman one
can trust, and I flatter myself I’m a pretty good judge of faces;
and--and the way you handled Dr. Hume was”--he coughed behind his
hand--“queer. I’ll make a clean breast of it.”

The old gentleman’s hesitation had its amusing side; I was conscious
that something very unusual had happened to throw him, to such a
degree, off his mental balance.

“That’s right, Mr. Morley; we shall soon arrive at an understanding if
we are frank with one another. Sit down.”

He sat down on the edge of a chair. His hat he placed beside him on
the floor, crown uppermost.

“Well, sir”--with his gloved fingers he stroked his chin, still
regarding me with an air of dubitation--“I’m afraid that Mr. Edwin was
not all that he ought to have been.”

“I am afraid that something similar could be said of all of us.”

“It was in money matters chiefly, though there were other things as
well; but in money matters he was most irregular--quite unlike Mr.
Philip. Mr. Philip has let him have thousands and thousands of pounds;
what he did with it was a mystery. They quarrelled dreadfully.”

“Brothers will quarrel, Mr. Morley. It’s a way they have.”

The old gentleman shook his head.

“Ah, but the fault was Mr. Edwin’s. Mr. Philip is hot-tempered, but
Mr. Edwin was always in the wrong.”

Leaning towards me, Mr. Morley whispered, under cover of his hand,
“Once Mr. Philip thrashed him--broke his stick across his back, he
did; Mr. Edwin must have been black and blue with bruises. Mr.
Philip’s very quick when he’s roused, and he’s a better man than his
brother. He was very sorry afterwards for what he had done--dear me!
how sorry he was. He went to his brother and he asked him to forgive
him, and Mr. Edwin did forgive him; I expect he got a good deal more
money out of Mr. Philip, or he never would have done. He was
unforgiving enough, was Mr. Edwin, unless it paid him to be otherwise;
he’d wait for years for a chance of returning, with good thumping
interest, what he thought was an injury; it was the only thing he ever
did return with interest.”

The expression on Mr. Morley’s face as he said this did not itself
suggest the charity which forgiveth all things.

“So it went on, for soon they were quarrelling again. But lately it
has been worse than ever.”

Looking anxiously about him, Mr. Morley again resorted to the cover of
his hand.

“There’s been--there’s been some trouble about some bills. Mr. Edwin’s
been putting some bills on the market which weren’t quite what they
ought to have been, and getting money on them. I’m afraid he’s been
making an unauthorized use of his brother’s name.”

“Are you sure of what you say? At this point it is for me to follow
Dr. Hume’s lead and warn you to be careful.”

“Oh, I’m sure enough. I’ve too much reason to be sure. Forgery, sir;
that’s what it was, rank forgery. In his rage Mr. Philip let it all
come out, so that there’s plenty of others who know of it, or I
shouldn’t be speaking of it now. Mr. Philip has gone on dreadfully
since he found it out. I’ve sometimes wondered if he was going mad.

“Yesterday afternoon Mr. Edwin came to Arlington Street; there was an
awful scene. I went into them; I didn’t think they’d come to blows in
front of me. Then Mr. Philip began at me. ‘Morley,’ he said, shouting
so that you might have heard him in Pall Mall, ‘my brother’s a thief!
That’s no news, you’ve heard it before; but he’s been robbing me
again, on fresh lines, and he’ll keep on robbing me until, in spite of
all I can do, he’ll succeed in dragging an honoured name through the
mire. But before then, Morley, I’ll kill him, for the cur he is. If
he’s found with his neck broken you’ll know who did it.’

“Then he turned to Mr. Edwin. ‘So you’ve had fair warning. And now,
you blackguard, out of this house you go before I throw you through
the window.’ And out he did go, and it was about time he did, or I
believe Mr. Philip would have thrown him through the window.”

Mr. Morley passed a red silk handkerchief carefully to and fro across
his brow. I thought of how Edwin Lawrence and I had spent the previous
evening. He certainly had not worn his troubles where others could see
them; he was generally something of a cynic, but I did not remember to
have seen him more genially inclined, or apparently in a more careless
mood. The man, as limned by Mr. Morley, was to me an entire
revelation.

The old gentleman went on. “In the evening, about nine o’clock, some
one came to see Mr. Philip. He was a big, portly party, very well
dressed, with shiny black hair, and I noticed that his fingers were
covered with rings. I set him down for a Jew. He wouldn’t give his
name, and when I told him Mr. Philip wasn’t in, he said he’d call
again. He came again, about eleven. Mr. Philip hadn’t returned; so he
gave me a letter, and told me to give it to him directly he did. It
was just past twelve when Mr. Philip did come in. I gave him the
letter, though I was in two minds as to whether I hadn’t better keep
it till the morning, for I smelt that there was mischief in it; and
now I wish I had, for directly he opened it Mr. Philip broke into the
worst rage I ever saw him in. He was like a man stark mad. ‘That
brother of mine,’ he screamed, ‘is a more infernal scoundrel even than
I thought he was; I’ll kill him if I can find him!’ And he tore out of
the house before I could move to stop him.”

Again the red silk handkerchief went across Mr. Morley’s forehead. The
mere recollection of the scene bedewed his brow with sweat.

“Well, sir, I sat up for him all night, and my wife, she sat up to
keep me company; but he never came home. We listened to every sound,
and we jumped at every footstep that came near the house, thinking it
was him. Emma--that’s Mrs. Morley--kept on snivelling pretty nearly
all the time. ‘Joe,’ she kept on saying--my name’s Joe, sir, leastways
Joseph--‘Joe, do you think that Mr. Philip’s killing him?’

“To be asked such a question made one feel like killing her; for it
was the very question which I kept putting to myself all through the
night. My feeling was that Mr. Philip had been drinking more than he
was used to, and that letter found him in an evil mood; and when he’s
in one of his rages he’s not the good, kind-hearted, fair-minded
gentleman he generally is, he’s more like a raving lunatic, although I
say it, and capable of anything.

“When morning came, and there were still no signs of him, I couldn’t
stand it any longer. So I came round to see Mr. Edwin, and directly I
came they told me he had been murdered. Murdered! Murdered!” He
repeated the word again and again, as if he found a ghastly pleasure
in the repetition.

I paced up and down, pondering the tale as he had told it. I perceived
how, from his point of view, the case looked black against his master.
Yet still I felt persuaded that there was something in the whole
business which was beyond our comprehension, and that, when we learned
what that something was, it would be conclusively shown that the
deductions which he drew were erroneous.

“Do you think that Mr. Philip killed him?”

“No, Morley, I do not. But I think that, if you get a chance, you’ll
hang him.”

“Hang Mr. Philip? Me? No, not--not if he’d killed Mr. Edwin a dozen
times over.”

“On the contrary, if you don’t take care, you’ll hang him, although he
hasn’t killed Mr. Edwin even once. If they were to put you into the
witness-box, and you were to tell that tale, your evidence would need
but the slenderest corroboration to send him to the gallows right
away.”

“Mr. Ferguson!”

“Morley, you must know that you had not the slightest right to tell me
what you have done. Fortunately your information has been imparted to
a person who will not make an injurious use of it; but, if you take my
serious advice, you will not breathe a word of it to any other living
soul. You will go straight home, and you will say nothing to any one;
and you will know nothing either.”

“But--but where is Mr. Philip, sir?”

“What business is that of yours? I take it that he is free to regulate
his movements without consulting you. Whatever concern you may feel,
you will not allow a hint of it to escape you--that is, if you have
your master’s interests at heart!”

There came an imperious rapping at the door.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s I--Inspector Symonds, of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Be so good, Mr. Ferguson, as to open the door.”

“There, Morley, is some one who will be glad to listen to what you
have been telling me, but if you have the least regard for your
master’s reputation, not to mention his neck, you will see him further
first. You’re not forced to speak a word unless you choose; I
shouldn’t choose; and here’s something to help you not to choose.”

I handed him a wine-glass full of brandy. He swallowed it so fast that
it set him coughing. There came the knocking at the door again.

“Open this door, Mr. Ferguson!”

“With pleasure. You seem to be in a hurry, sir. Possibly you are not
aware that these rooms are private, and that it is not necessary that
I should open to every person who takes it into his head to knock.”

As, opening the door, I planted myself in the doorway, Mr. Symonds
looked at me as if surprised. He was not a little man, but I was a
good head taller, and I fancy that he had not expected to find me
quite so big, or he would have hustled past me. As it was, he
refrained.

“I am informed that you have some one in your rooms who can give
important information in the matter of Mr. Edwin Lawrence’s murder.”

“Indeed. Who is your informant?”

“I am. You will find, Ferguson, that you cannot play with edged
tools.”

Hume was the speaker.

“So? Pray enter, Mr. Symonds.” Hume tried to pass in after him. “If
you don’t mind, I would rather not. I think that edged tools are
better outside.”

I shut the door in his face; he taking my cavalier treatment of him
more meekly than he was wont to do. Perhaps he remembered.

Mr. Symonds immediately assailed the lamblike Mr. Morley.

“I believe that your name is Morley; and that you are in the service
of Mr. Philip Lawrence. What information have you to give with
reference to the murder of his brother?”

“Mr. Morley has no information to give.”

It was I who answered.

“Let Mr. Morley speak for himself.”

“Permit me to repeat, Mr. Symonds, that these premises are private;
and before I allow you, on these premises, to bully a guest of mine,
I must request you to show me the authority on which you are acting.”

Inspector Symonds looked me up and down, as if he did not know exactly
what to make of me. He seemed to hesitate.




 CHAPTER VIII.
 THE RECOGNITION OF THE PHOTOGRAPH

When I had succeeded in extricating Mr. Morley from the clutches of
Inspector Symonds, after a considerable wordy warfare, during which I
had difficulty in keeping the inspector’s language within
parliamentary bounds, I started on a little errand of my own.

The inspector appeared to be under the impression that, for some
malevolent reason, I wished to interfere with the due and proper
execution of the law; and he told me, quite frankly, that so soon as
Mr. Morley was off my premises he would bring, not only the old
gentleman, but, so far as I understood, myself also, to book.
Therefore, feeling that, under such circumstances, two might be better
than one, so soon as the interview was ended, I proceeded, since his
way was mine, to escort Mr. Morley at least part of his way home.

The old gentleman was in a condition of great mental perturbation. He
was sorry, for his master’s sake, that he had said as much as he had
done to the inspector, and he was also sorry, for his own sake, that
he had not said more; for he was uncomfortably conscious that, by his
comparative reticence, he had incurred the officer’s resentment.

“Do you think, sir,” he said, as we were parting--and I thought, as he
was speaking, how old he seemed and tremulous--“that that Mr. Symonds
will hunt me up, and worry me, as he as good as said he would? Because
I know that I shan’t be able to stand it, if he does; my nerves are
not what they were, and I never dreamed that I should have trouble
with the police at my time of life.”

I endeavoured to reassure him.

“Mr. Morley, be at ease; fear nothing. You are the sole proprietor of
your own tongue, use it to preserve silence; no one can force you to
speak unless you choose.”

I was not by any means so sure of this, in my own mind; but this was a
detail. My object was to comfort Mr. Morley.

It was at the door of the house in Arlington Street that we parted;
after all, I went with him the whole way--it was practically mine. I
waited while he inquired if his master had returned. The face of the
old lady who opened the door, and who I immediately concluded was Mrs.
Morley, was answer enough; she looked as if she bore all the trouble
of the world upon her shoulders. He had not; nothing had been seen or
heard of him.

The point at which I was aiming was the photographer’s. As I walked
away from Philip Lawrence’s house, I could not but feel conscious that
every moment he remained absent made the case look blacker. What
reason could he have to stay away, save one?

An assistant came forward to greet me, as I crossed the threshold of
the building which housed that famous firm of photographers.

“I want you to tell me who is the original of one of your portraits.”

“We don’t, as a rule, sir, give the names of sitters, without their
express permission.”

“This is one of the exceptions to the rule. Here is the portrait--who
is the lady it represents?”

I handed him the photograph which I had taken off Edwin Lawrence’s
mantelshelf. So soon as he saw it he smiled; looking up at me with
what was suspiciously like a twinkle in his eye.

“As you say, this is one of the exceptions to the rule. I certainly
have no objection to tell you who this lady is; that is, if you don’t
know already. In which case I should imagine that you are one of the
few persons in London who does not.”

“What on earth do you mean? Who is the lady?”

“You are not a theatre-goer, sir?”

“Why do you say that? I suppose I go to the theatres as often as other
people.”

“You haven’t been to the Pandora lately.”

“The Pandora? I’ve been there three times within the last month or
so.”

“Then, on the occasion of your visits was Miss Bessie Moore not
acting?”

“Miss Bessie Moore!”

“This is the portrait of Miss Bessie Moore, and an excellent likeness,
too. She has honoured us several times with sittings, and this is
about the most favourable result we have had so far. It is not easy to
do justice to the lady.”

Bessie Moore! The assistant was a much smaller man than I; but if, at
that moment, he had given me a push, though ever such a gentle one, I
believe he would have pushed me over. What an idiot I had been! No
wonder that her face had seemed familiar. Bessie Moore--admittedly one
of the loveliest women in town, whose name was on every tongue, who
was honoured by all the world! At that moment her acting was drawing
all London to the Pandora Theatre. I had seen something of theatres,
whatever that assistant might suppose to the contrary, but I had never
before seen such acting as hers, nor had I ever seen so lovely a
woman! And it was Bessie Moore who had come through my bedroom window,
at dead of night, in that plum-coloured cloak. Every moment the wonder
grew.

Either the expression of my face or something else about me appeared
to afford that assistant considerable amusement. In the midst of my
bewilderment I was conscious that he grinned.

“You look surprised,” he said.

“It is possible for persons of even ripened years to feel surprised,
as you will discover when you yourself attain to years of discretion.”

I fancy that it was my intention to crush that smiling youngster,
though I suspect that the result of my little effort was only to
increase my appearance of imbecility. At any rate, his grin did not
grow less. I proceeded with my inquiries.

“What is Miss Moore’s address?”

“The Pandora Theatre.”

“Thank you; I am aware of that. It is her private address which I
require.”

“That, I am afraid, we cannot give you.”

No doubt they were pestered with similar inquiries by individuals who
were more or less idiots, and altogether impertinent; and, quite
possibly, he took me for a member of that considerable family. I gave
him my card.

“There is my name. The lady who is the original of that portrait has
met with an accident. I did not know that she was Miss Moore until you
told me, but it is important that I should be able to communicate with
her friends at once.”

“An accident? I am sorry to hear that Miss Moore has met with an
accident. If you will wait a moment I will make inquiries.”

The assistant disappeared; presently returning with an older man, who
examined my card as he came. He addressed me:

“You are Mr. Ferguson?”

“I am.”

“You say that Miss Moore has met with an accident?”

“I do.”

“What is its nature?”

“That I am not at liberty to tell you. I can only say that it is of
the first importance that I should be able to communicate with her
friends without delay.”

He hesitated, considering me attentively; then he gave me the
information I required.

“Miss Moore lives with Miss Adair, who, as you perhaps know, is also
acting at the Pandora Theatre. The address is 22, Hailsham Road, The
Boltons, Brompton.”

As I sped towards Brompton in a hansom, I tried to assimilate the
tidings I had just received. In vain. It may be that I am dull-witted,
and that my mental processes are slow; but the more I sought the
solution of the puzzle the more insoluble it seemed. It did appear
incredible that the woman who had all the world, like a ball, at her
feet, with whose fame London was ringing, should have come to me, at
such an hour, in such a fashion, from such a scene. The mystery was
beyond my finding out.

Hailsham Road proved to be a nice, wide, clean, old-fashioned street,
and No. 22 a nice, clean, old-fashioned house. It was not large, but
the impression which its exterior made upon me was a distinctly
pleasant one. It was detached; it stood back, behind railings, at a
little distance from the pavement; in the sunshine it looked as white
as snow; there was a flower-bed in front, and flowers made the
window-sills resplendent. My ring was answered, on the instant, by a
maid who was quite in keeping with the house; she was unmistakably
neat, and I have no hesitation in affirming she was pretty.

“Can I see Miss Adair? I have brought news of Miss Moore.”

The maid left me in the hall--it was the daintiest hall I remembered
to have seen, and very prettily papered--while she conveyed my message
up the stairs.

It appeared that I could see Miss Adair; for, presently, a lady came
flying down the stairs, about seven steps at a time, and all but flung
herself into my arms.

“You’ve brought me news of Bessie? Oh, I am so glad! I’ve been
half-beside myself; I haven’t slept a wink all night. I was really
just wondering if I hadn’t better communicate with the police. Oh,
please will you step in there?”

I stepped in there. “There” was a sitting-room. From the wall looked
down on me, as I entered, a life-size portrait of my visitor of the
plum-coloured cloak. The face was turned directly towards me; the eyes
seemed to be subjecting me to a serious examination. I did not care to
meet them; in their presence I was conscious of a vague discomfort.
The atmosphere was redolent of a feminine personality. On every hand
were the owner’s little treasures. I pictured her flitting here and
there among them, touching this, altering the position of that, dumbly
inquiring of me all the time, with, in her air, a touch of resentment,
what I did in her apartment.

Miss Adair perceived that I was not so ready with my tongue as I might
have been. There was a sharp note of anxiety in her voice.

“There’s nothing wrong with Bessie, is there?”

I stammered, like an ass, “I--I’m afraid there is.”

“She’s not--dead?”

“Dead! Good gracious, no! Nothing of the kind.”

“Then what has happened to her? Tell me! Quick! Don’t you see that I’m
on tenterhooks?”

“First of all let me be certain of my ground. I take it that that is
Miss Moore.”

I handed her the, by this time, historical photograph.

“Of course it is. What do you mean by asking? Where is she? Who are
you? What have you done to her? Don’t stand there as if you were
afraid to open your mouth!”

“The truth is, Miss Adair, that I am rather at a loss for words with
which to express myself. But, if you will bear with me, I will
endeavour to make myself as plain as I can; it is rather a difficult
task which I have to perform.”

It was a difficult task, nor was it made easier by the two shrewd eyes
which were regarding me as if I were some curious and unnecessary kind
of creature.




 CHAPTER IX.
 THE REVELATIONS OF “MR. GEORGE WITHERS”

Miss Adair was a tall, commandingly built young woman, with about
her more than a suggestion of muscularity. I had recognized her at
once. On the stage she was accustomed to play the part of the dashing
adventuress; the sort of person who could not, under any possible
circumstances, be put down. I realized that she might be disposed to
carry something of her stage manner into actual life. She confronted
me as if I were some despised, but lifelong enemy, whose attacks she
was prepared to resist at every point.

“When are you going to tell me what has happened to Bessie? In the
first place, where is she?”

“She’s at Imperial Mansions.”

“What’s she doing there?”

“She’s in charge of the housekeeper--Mrs. Peddar.”

“In charge! What do you mean?”

“Miss Moore is not--not herself.”

“You men have been playing some trick on her. You shall pay for it
dearly if you have!”

I caught her by the arm; she evincing a strong inclination to rush off
to Imperial Mansions there and then.

“Miss Moore came through my bedroom window, at an early hour this
morning, in--a curious condition.”

“Your bedroom window! This morning! She must have been in a curious
condition!”

“A man was murdered in the building about the same time that she
appeared at the window. His set of chambers are on the same floor as
mine; they communicate by the balcony along which she came. When she
entered the cloak she wore was soaked in blood, and her hands were wet
with it.”

Miss Adair drew back, staring at me with distended eyes.

“Man! Are you a man, or are you a devil? Do you dare to hint that
Bessie, my Bessie Moore, could by any possibility be guilty of
murder!”

“I simply state to you the facts. That she was in the dead man’s room
there is irrefutable evidence to show; that she had anything to do
with his murder I do not for a moment believe--I am as convinced of
her innocence as you can be. My theory is that she was an unwilling
witness of what took place, and that the horror of it temporarily
unhinged her brain.”

“Is she--mad?”

“No; but she suffers from entire loss of memory. Her life might have
commenced with her entrance through my window; she can remember
nothing of what occurred before, not even her own name. I believe that
if she could be brought to recall what she actually saw take place,
her innocence would be at once made plain.”

“What is the name of the man who was--murdered?” I told her.
“Lawrence? Edwin Lawrence? I don’t remember ever having heard the
name.”

“She said nothing to you last night about having an appointment with
him? Or with any one?”

She hesitated.

“Are you--Bessie’s friend?”

“I am. At least, I hope I may call myself her friend, although I never
spoke to her before last night. I do not think that there is anything
which I would not do to save her from misconstruction.”

She eyed me--quizzically.

“I think I’ll trust you, Mr. Ferguson, though I never trusted a man
yet without regretting it. I hope you won’t feel hurt, but there is
something about you which reminds me of a St. Bernard. You’re
big--very big; you look strong--awfully strong; you’re hairy.” I
involuntarily put my hand up to my beard. “Oh, I don’t mean that
you’re too hairy, the beard’s becoming; but you are hairy. You look
simple; somehow one associates simplicity with trustworthiness; and
now you’re blushing.” She would have made any one blush! “The blush
settles it; I will repose my confidence in you, as I have done in
others!”

Her manner changed; she became serious.

“The truth is that last night Bessie did seem worried, frightfully
worried; and that’s what’s been worrying me. She was not like her
usual self a bit; I couldn’t make her out at all. I hadn’t the
faintest notion what was wrong; when I asked her if she was ill she
snapped my head off. And for Bessie to be snappish was an unheard-of
thing; her temper’s not like mine, always going off, she’s the
gentlest, sweetest soul. She dressed herself, and walked out of the
theatre, without saying a word to me; I only ran against her in the
street, by accident, just as she was getting into a cab.

“I said, ‘Bessie, aren’t you coming home with me?’--because we always
do come home together. But she answered, quite huffishly, that she was
not--she had an appointment to keep. I did not dare to ask with whom,
or where; though it did seem odd that she should have made an
appointment, at that hour of the night, without saying a word of it to
me; but I did venture to inquire when I might expect her to return.
Leaning her head out of the cab, just as it was starting, she called
out to me, ‘Perhaps never.’ I didn’t suppose that she was entirely in
earnest, but somehow I couldn’t help feeling that, about the answer,
there was something which might turn out to be unpleasantly
prophetic.”

“One thing is plain, Miss Adair, you must come with me at once to
Imperial Mansions. Your presence may restore to your friend her
memory. But, whether or not, you must bring her home, or at any rate
you must take her away from the Mansions, and that immediately.”

“Your manner, Mr. Ferguson, is autocratic. You don’t ask me, you
command; but I’ll obey. That is, if you’ll condescend to wait while I
put a hat on.”

She went upstairs. Almost immediately she had done so there came a
ring at the front door. The door was opened and shut again. After it
had been shut, Miss Adair called down the stairs:

“Ellen, who was that?”

The maid’s voice replied, “It was some one who wished to see Miss
Moore. He said his name was Withers--Mr. George Withers.”

“George Withers!” I shouted.

Without a moment’s hesitation I rushed out of the sitting-room, flung
open the front door, and dashed into the street. I dare say that
Ellen, and Miss Adair, too, thought that I had suddenly become a
raving lunatic. But Ellen’s mention of the caller’s name recalled to
me the fact that the peculiar letter which I had found in the pocket
of the plum-coloured cloak had been addressed to “George Withers.”

A young man was going down the street, walking rather quickly. I
shouted to him.

“Hallo! Mr. George Withers!”

He stopped and turned with something of a start; then stared, as if
uncertain what to make of me or what to do. I called to him again.

“I want you!”

As I spoke I moved towards him, intending, since he seemed indisposed
to come to me, to go to him and then explain. But no sooner had I
started than he swung round on his heels, tore off at full speed, and,
before I realised what it was that he was doing, had vanished round
the corner. Although I was unable to guess why he should run away from
me as if I were the plague, I had no intention, if I could help it, of
being run away from; so, as hard as I could pelt, I went after him.

It was a lively chase while it lasted; I must have presented an
elegant figure as, hatless, my coat tails flying, I raced through
those respectable streets. Fortunately, he was no match for me in
pace; I had him before he reached the Fulham Road. He must have been
in shocking condition, for he had already run himself right out, and,
gasping for breath, was panting like a blown rabbit.

Saying nothing--I felt that that was not the place in which to carry
on the sort of conversation I had in my mind’s eye--I took him by the
shoulder and marched him back again. He, on his part, was equally
mute, and made not the slightest effort at resistance. Miss Adair
received us at the door.

“What on earth is the matter? Where have you been? And who is this
man?”

Her trick of speaking in italics reminded me of her manner on the
stage. I led my companion into the sitting-room. There I introduced
him.

“This is Mr. George Withers. I fancy he can give us information on a
subject on which, at this moment, information is very much needed.”

“Mr. George Withers” was a mere youth, scarcely more than a boy. I was
not prepossessed by his appearance, though he was well dressed and had
a handsome face. He had proved himself a cur; I felt sure that he was
a sneak, and perhaps something worse as well. I handed him the letter
which I had taken from the lady’s pocket.

“I believe, Mr. Withers, that this letter is for you.”

He seemed at first reluctant to take it, as if fearful that it
contained something which might disturb his peace of mind. He eyed it
doubtfully; read the address; perceived that the envelope had been
opened. A disagreeable look came upon his handsome countenance; he
turned on me with a snarl.

“Who are you? What do you mean by treating me as you have done? And
how dare you open a letter that’s addressed to me?”

“First read your letter, Mr. Withers. Put your questions afterwards.”

He scanned the brief epistle with looks which did not improve as he
went on. Then he snapped at me as if he would have liked to bite as
well.

“You stole it; you must have stolen it! I’ve half a mind to give you
in charge; you don’t know what mischief you mayn’t have done.”

“Is the person alluded to as ‘that scoundrel’ in the letter which you
are holding Mr. Edwin Lawrence of Imperial Mansions?”

“What do you want to know for? What do you mean by meddling in my
affairs? What business is it of yours?”

“Because, if it is, Mr. Edwin Lawrence is dead.”

“Dead!”

“He was murdered last night.”

“Murdered!” The fashion of his countenance changed. “Then she--she
killed him.”

He staggered back till he staggered against a chair. A pitiful object
he presented as he perched himself upon the edge. Neither Miss Adair
nor I said a word. After a moment’s interval, during which the muscles
of his face twitched as if he had become suddenly possessed with St.
Vitus’ Dance, he went rambling on, apparently not altogether conscious
of what it was that he was saying.

“I knew there’d be mischief--I knew there would. I said if she would
meddle in my affairs she’d make a mess of it. I told her she didn’t
know what she was going in for, that he was dangerous. But she’s as
obstinate as a mule; she never would take my advice, never!”

“Which shows that she is a lady of considerable discretion. What
connection, Mr. Withers, have you with Miss Moore?”

He started forward on the chair, casting a frightened look about him.

“Is she--taken? And are you a policeman?”

“No, I am not a policeman; I have not that honour. And she is not
taken--as yet. I repeat my inquiry. What connection, Mr. Withers, have
you with Miss Moore?”

“Never mind! That’s my business, not yours. She’s got into this mess
by herself, and she must get out of it by herself; I wash my hands of
her. I’ve got an appointment which I must keep. You let me go.”

He got up with a little air of bluster which was pitiful; it was such
a poor attempt at make-believe.

“Listen to me, Mr. Withers--correct me if I am wrong; but you seem to
be a nice young man--a very nice young man. And it’s because you’re
such a very nice young man, always attending, Mr. Withers, your
correction, that I desire to inform you that if you don’t answer my
questions, as truthfully as your nature will allow you, there’ll be
trouble. You understand? Trouble. So be so good as to tell me at once
what there can possibly be in common between a lady of Miss Moore’s
class and a person of yours?”

“‘Yours’ is good. I don’t see what difference there can be between our
classes, considering that she’s my sister.”

Miss Adair interposed.

“Your sister? Bessie’s your sister. Then you’re Tom Moore, her
vagabond of a brother, who’s robbed her of hundreds and hundreds of
pounds. I thought I knew your face, it’s like a bad copy of Bessie’s,
with all her goodness left out and your own wickedness put in. You
ungrateful scamp, to speak of her in that cold-blooded manner, when
she has done all that she possibly could for you, and you, in return,
have been to her the one trouble of her life.”

He confronted the frank-spoken lady with looks which were alive with
impudence. I perceived that he was a better match for a woman than a
man.

“I know who you are; you call yourself ‘Miss Adair.’ ‘Adair!’ Go on!
Sure that’s your proper name? I know more about you than you perhaps
think. And for Bessie to let out things to you about me shows the sort
she is; telling a pack of lies about her only relative.”

“Her only relative! It’s her misfortune that she has you.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Then from this day forward she hasn’t got me;
tell her so, with my kind regards. As I’ve said already, I wash my
hands of her; I cut the relationship. Willingly I’ll never own to
bearing her name again. It’s not a name I ever have been particularly
proud of, and now it’s one of which I shall have less cause to be
proud than ever, from what I’m told. Good-day to you, Miss Adair!”

He was now actually marching from the room. I had to give him a gentle
hint in order to detain him. He winced under my touch like a hound
which fears punishment.

“What was the nature of your business, Mr. Moore, which took your
sister last night to Mr. Edwin Lawrence?”

“That’s my business; it’s none of yours.”

“Answer my question.”

He actually whimpered. It was beginning to dawn on me that I might be
constrained to wring his neck before he went.

“Don’t! You hurt! It was about some bills.”

“Some bills of yours which you had given to Mr. Lawrence?”

“No, it wasn’t then. Don’t! It was about some bills which he got me
to--to fake.”

“I see. And might some of them have borne the name of Mr. Philip
Lawrence?”

“Who told you? How do you know?”

“Never mind who told me. Answer!”

“It was all his fault! I should never have thought of such a thing if
it hadn’t been for him; he egged me on. I--I owed him a few pounds,
and he said if I were to fake up some bills, with his brother’s name
on them, he’d let me off.”

“And put the forgeries on the market, dividing the proceeds of the
fraud with you?”

“Nothing of the kind, I’ll take my oath to it; I swear I never had a
penny. I never dreamt that he’d discount them, not for a moment! I
thought it was a game he was going to play off on his brother--some
sort of joke.”

“Keen sense of humour yours, Mr. Moore.”

“That’s where he had me; he must have gone straight off and cashed the
bills. Then his brother found it out, and then he came to me and
threatened to tell his brother that it was I who’d done it.”

“And then you went to your sister and asked her, probably on your
bended knees, to save you from exposure.”

“There was no bended knees about it; you’re very much mistaken if you
think there was. I’m not that kind. But I--I certainly mentioned to
her something about it--she’s my own flesh and blood.”

“Being your own flesh and blood she, possibly, offered to do her best
to square it for you.”

“That’s the mistake she made. She talked about giving him a hundred or
two, as though that would be of any use. I said to her that if she’d
give the money to me I could go abroad and start afresh, and it might
be the making of me. But she never would take my advice, never!”

“So your sister, a young, unprotected girl, at your urgent
solicitation, went alone to this man at that hour of the night, at the
risk of--a good many things; and, in order to save you from the
well-merited consequences of your being a cowardly rascal, offered to
hand over to him her hard-won savings, and, in all probability, to
pledge to the fullest extent her future earnings. And when, in the
morning, he is found to have been murdered, you immediately jump to
the conclusion that she killed him. With you, Mr. Moore, the sense of
gratitude takes a peculiar form. In a state of civilisation in which
logic prevailed, the breath would be crushed out of your body; sharing
the fate of other vermin, you would not be allowed to exist.
Unfortunately for you, this is not a moment in the world’s history in
which logic does prevail.”

So I shook him--gently. I did not treat him to a thousandth part of
his deserts, for his sister’s sake. Yet, when I dropped him back on to
the floor, to judge from his looks and his behaviour, he might have
been used with considerable severity. He seemed to be under the
impression that I had murdered him.

“That was good!” said Miss Adair. “I feel better.”

I don’t know what prompted her to make such a remark, but I felt
better too.




 CHAPTER X.
 WHERE MISS MOORE WAS GOING

It was a relief to cease breathing the atmosphere of an apartment
which was contaminated by the presence of Mr. Tom Moore. At least,
that was what I felt when I was being driven with Miss Adair towards
Imperial Mansions. Apparently that was her own feeling.

“Nice sort of brother that. He’s a man.”

“But what a sister! She’s a woman.”

She seemed to suspect me of a satirical intention.

“I don’t fancy, Mr. Ferguson, that all women are built exactly on
Bessie’s lines.”

“Would that they were. Miss Moore is of the stuff of which our mothers
should be made.”

She looked at me a little sideways; I was conscious of it, though I
myself looked straight ahead.

“Are you married, Mr. Ferguson?”

I do not know why she should have asked me such a question at that
particular moment, nor why the blood heated my cheeks. I answered
shortly:

“No. I am not so fortunate.”

“Ah! I shouldn’t be surprised if you were so fortunate, a little later
on.”

Her tone conveyed a world of meaning; though what was its
signification I could not tell. I suspected her of hinting at
something which I should resent; but how to set about the discovery of
what she meant I did not know. She continued:

“Suppose--I say suppose, just for the sake of argument--suppose it
turns out that Bessie has killed this--man, I wonder what would
happen.”

“I decline to suppose the impossible.”

“But how can you say that it’s impossible? You’re not in a position to
judge; you know nothing of her character, her disposition. She’s a
stranger--to you.”

“I know enough of her to be sure that she is incapable of anything
unworthy.”

“But how do you know?--my dear sir, how? From what you tell me, she
hasn’t said an intelligent thing to you; she’s been in a condition of
_non compos mentis_ ever since you set eyes upon her. After an hour’s
exchange of conversational bonbons with a lunatic woman, how can you
tell what she’s like when she’s sane?”

“Miss Adair, if you are coming as Miss Moore’s friend, be her friend;
if not, I will stop the cab--you shall go back again.”

She was silent for a second or two. I suspected her of stifling a
smile.

“Thank you. You need not stop the cab.” She looked at me, mischief in
her eyes. “I believe, Mr. Ferguson, that you’re a Scotchman.”

There is Scotch blood in my veins; I did not see why she should charge
it against me as a fault. I told her so. She laughed outright. Miss
Adair was a charming woman, but I will own that I was glad when we
reached our destination. She was in a provoking mood, as she showed by
the remark she made as she got out of the cab.

“Now to interview this ideal conception of what our mothers should
be.”

I did not reply. I followed her into the lift.

“The top floor,” I said.

But as we were passing the first floor, she started from her seat.

“There’s Bessie!” she cried.

From where I sat, as I turned my head, I was just in time to see my
last night’s visitor vanish round the corner of the staircase. We were
still ascending. I told the lift-man to return. When he had done so,
and we were out upon the landing, the lady was already some distance
along the corridor. She had passed my rooms, and was moving rapidly
towards No. 64.

“Where is she going?” asked Miss Adair. “Bessie!”

Her call went unheeded. Apparently the other did not hear. She
continued to hasten from us as if she were making for a particular
goal, with a well-defined purpose in view. I thought it probable that
the dead man’s body was still somewhere in his chambers, and certainly
all the plain evidences of the tragedy would have been studiously left
untouched.

“Quick!” I exclaimed. “She doesn’t know what she is doing; she is
going to Lawrence’s room, where he lies murdered. We must stop her
before she gets there.”

We hurried in pursuit, but had only gone a few yards when some one
caught me by the arm. I had previously realised that some one else was
standing in the corridor, but my attention had been too much engrossed
by Miss Moore to permit of my noticing who it was. I now perceived
that it was Hume. He gripped my arm with what seemed unnecessary
force, his countenance betraying a degree of agitation of which I had
not thought him capable.

“Ferguson!” he cried. “Miss Adair! What is Miss Moore doing here?”

His recognition surprised me, even at such a moment.

“Do you know her?”

“I believe I have that pleasure.” His words sounded like a sneer, they
were so bitterly uttered. “But what’s the meaning of it all? I spoke
to her, but she passed without a sign of recognition. What’s the
matter with her? She looks ill; where’s she going?”

“She’s going to Lawrence’s room.”

“Ferguson!” The increased pressure of his grasp showed that his
strength was greater than I imagined.

“What’s she--going there for?”

“My business is to stop her going at all, not to stand here answering
idiotic questions.”

I broke from him. The delay, brief though it had been, was sufficient
to baffle my intentions. Miss Moore had arrived at No. 64. A policeman
was standing without, seemingly acting as guardian of the portal.

“Is this the room in which Mr. Edwin Lawrence was killed?”

Although I was still at some distance from her, I could hear her ask
the question with the direct simplicity of a little child. The officer
stared at her as if he could not make her out.

“Yes, miss. But you can’t go in; my orders are to admit no one without
instructions. What’s your name and your business?”

“Let me pass!”

Putting out her arm, touching him on the chest, she waved him aside
with an imperious gesture, as if she were a sovereign queen. In an
instant she was through the door. I was on him directly she had passed
from sight.

“You idiot! Why did you let her enter?”

The man seemed bewildered.

“Let her! There wasn’t much letting about it. For a lady she’s about
as cool a hand as ever I saw.”

He perceived that my intention was to follow.

“Now then, none of that! You can’t go in there! Don’t you hear me say
it?”

“You ass!”

I must have taken him by the shoulders more vigorously than I
intended; he went spinning down the passage until the wall brought him
to a standstill. Then I went after Miss Moore into the dead man’s
room, Miss Adair and Hume hard upon my heels.




 CHAPTER XI.
 IN THE ONE ROOM--AND THE OTHER

Edwin Lawrence was one of the most finical men I had ever met on the
subject of draughts. A properly ventilated apartment set him
shivering, even in the middle of summer. The faintest suspicion of a
healthy current of air made him turn up the collar of his coat. No
room could be too stuffy for him. All his doors and windows he
screened with heavy hangings. Behind the curtains which veiled the
entrance into his dining-room I lingered, for a moment, to glance
between the voluminous folds. Miss Moore was standing about the centre
of the room. Something in the expression of her face, and in her
attitude, caused me to hesitate. I checked the advance of Miss Adair
and Hume, who pressed on me behind.

“Wait!” I whispered. “I want to see what she is going to do.”

I would rather have been unaccompanied; Hume’s society in particular I
could have done without. But I could hardly induce him to withdraw
without disturbing the girl within. That, all at once, I felt
indisposed to do. At any and every risk I wanted light; to bring her
back into the full possession of her reason. It needed but a brief
glance to perceive that, in her present environment, she might pass
through some sort of crisis which would bring about the result I so
ardently desired. The constable had followed us into the room. He
showed a disposition to require our retreat. I took him by the
shoulder.

“Be still, man; you will do your duty best by holding your tongue.”

He perceived that there was reason in what I said. He held his tongue,
and I held his shoulder.

Miss Moore was looking round as if something in the appearance of the
room struck a chord in her memory, and she was endeavouring to
discover what it was. She put her hand up to her forehead with the
gesture with which I had become familiar.

“I have been in this room before--surely I have. I seem to know it all
quite well; but I can’t think when I saw it, or how. I can’t make it
out at all.”

She was glancing about her with bewildered eyes, as if seeking for
some familiar object which would serve as a clue towards the solution
of the puzzle. At last something arrested her attention; it was the
tell-tale stain upon the carpet. She was standing within a yard or two
of the spot on which I had discovered Lawrence lying. His body was
gone, but his blood remained behind--a lurid disfigurement of the
handsome floorcloth. She started at it.

“What is it?” She stooped down; she touched it with her finger tips;
an odd little tremor seemed to come into her voice. “It--it’s dry. Why
shouldn’t it be dry? What--what is it?” Still stooping, she covered
her face with her hands, as if struggling to rouse her dormant memory.
“It seems to bring something back to me. Something--something horrid.
What can it be? Oh!”

She started upright, with a little exclamation. A new look came on her
face; a suggestion of fear, of horror. She was all at once on the
alert, as if in expectation of something of which she had cause to be
afraid.

“This is where Mr. Edwin Lawrence was killed--killed!” Again that look
of puzzlement. “That means that he was--murdered! Murdered! He fell
like that.”

She made a sudden movement, as if to hurl herself headlong to the
floor, which was so realistic that I started forward to save her from
a fall. It was only a feint; in an instant she was back in her
original position.

“Let me see how it was. He was here, and I was there.”

She moved from one place to another, as if endeavouring to recall a
scene in which she had taken part. It seemed to come back to her in
fragments.

“I said, ‘I’ll kill you;’ because I felt like killing him. And
then--then he laughed. He said, ‘Kill me! How will you be better off
for that?’ And that made me worse. I made up my mind that--that I’d
kill him.”

She paused. I shuddered, clutching the curtains tighter. Although I
did not turn to look at them, I knew that there was something strange
on the faces of Miss Adair and Hume; that even the constable was moved
to a display of unusual interest. A faint whisper reached me from the
lady:

“Stop her! Don’t let her go on!”

I was conscious of a weakness in my throat, which made my voice sound
as if I were hoarse, as I whispered a reply.

“I shan’t attempt to stop her. I shall let her say all that she has to
say. I’m not afraid.”

I felt her pull at my coat sleeve, as a dog might do to show its
sympathy.

The girl within continued. She had put her hands up to her brow again,
and seemed battling with her torpid faculties. Through all that
followed, in spite of the emotion which sometimes would grip me by the
throat, I was conscious of the singular quality of her beauty, which
caused it to increase as her agitation grew. Strangely out of keeping
with the dreadful nature of some of the things she said was the air of
innocence which accompanied them. She depicted herself as playing a
leading part in a hideous tragedy, with the direct simplicity of a
little child who confesses to faults of whose capital importance it
has not the faintest notion.

“Did I kill him? Did I? Not then--no, not then. Then he came in, and
it began all over again, right from the beginning; and--we quarrelled.
We both said we would kill him, both of us; and he laughed. The more
we said that we would kill him the more he laughed. And that--that
made us worse. Then--then it came in. It! It!”

She shuddered. A look of abnormal terror came on her face. She covered
her hands, uttering cries of panic fear.

“Don’t! Don’t! I won’t! I won’t! You mustn’t make me, you mustn’t!
Don’t let it come near me! Don’t let it touch me! I can’t bear to
think of its touching me! Oh!”

With a gasp, uncovering her eyes, she stared, affrightedly, at
something which she seemed to see in front of her.

“What is it? I’m not afraid. Why should I be afraid? There is nothing
the matter. I am not so easily frightened. I said I would kill him,
but not like that, not like that. Did I say I’d kill him? Yes. And I
did! I did! But I didn’t mean to. Did I mean to? I don’t know. Perhaps
I meant to. He says I meant to, and perhaps he knows.”

She stood staring in front of her, with blank, unmeaning gaze. Then,
giving herself a little shake, she seemed to wake out of a sort of
dream; and to be surprised at finding herself where she was.

“What is the matter with me? Am I going mad? This is the room, and
yet, although I know it, I can’t think what room it is. Something
happened to me here which haunts me; and though I’m afraid to try to
think what it was, I can’t help trying. Why did I come here? It was
very silly. It was because he--he told me that--Edwin Lawrence was
killed here.

“Edwin Lawrence? What had that man to do with me? Lawrence? I feel as
if I ought to know the name. There were two of them, and one--one was
killed. Oh, I remember all! I can hear that horrid noise. I can see
the knives--the knives! And I can see the blood, as he falls right
down upon his face, and the hack, hack, hacking! I didn’t do it! I
didn’t do it! Did I--do it?”

She looked about her with an agony of appeal which it was terrible to
witness. My heart sank within my breast. At that moment I could not
have gone to her even had I tried.

“Let me see--how did it happen? He stood here, and--the other laughed;
and then there came the knife--the long, gleaming knife--and struck
him in the back; and he looked round, and--I saw his face. His face!
What a face! It was as if he were looking into hell. Don’t look at
me--not like that. I can’t help you! It’s too late! Turn your face
away; don’t let me see it; it isn’t fair. It was the devil did it--the
devil! It wasn’t I. And then it took him by the throat with a dozen
hands, and with a hundred knives cut at his face, until, before my
eyes, I saw him losing his likeness to a man. And then it loosed him,
and the great knife struck him from the back, and he fell on his
face--what was his face, and then the hack, hack, hacking! And all the
time that horrid noise.”

She held up her arms in an anguish of supplication.

“Oh Lord, in what have I offended that this thing should come upon me?
If I have sinned, surely my punishment is greater than my sin. That
you should lay this burden on me, to bear for ever, and for ever, and
for ever! Take it from me, let me wake to find it is a dream--the
nightmare of a haunted night! For if it should be true, if it should
be true, what is there for me but the torture fires of an eternal
hell? Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy!”

She broke into a paroxysm of sobbing. She shed no tears, hers were dry
sobs; but it seemed as if they were tearing her to pieces. Then they
ceased. Again a shudder went all over her, and again she seemed to
come back to a curious wakefulness, out of a fevered dream.

“I’m not well; I can’t be; I wish I were. It is as if I were two
persons, and each keeps losing the other. Can there be two persons in
one body? My brain seems blurred--as if it were in two parts. When I
am using one part, the other--the other’s all confused. It’s not as it
should be. I feel sure that I haven’t always been like this; something
must have happened to make me so. When I try to think what it is, I’m
afraid; and yet I can’t help trying. I know--I know it was in this
room it happened; but what could it have been? What brought me to this
room at all? When was it that I came?

“There’s something in my head that I can’t catch hold of--it keeps
eluding me. If I only could get hold of it, I’d understand--I’m sure I
should.--What would it be that I should understand? I’m afraid to
think! It’s awful that I should be afraid of what would come to me if
understanding came, especially as I want it so much to come. I seem to
be haunted; is it by a vision, or by something which really happened?
I wish I could sit down and quietly think it out. If I could put the
pieces of the puzzle together I might know what it means. But I can’t;
I’m all restless; I can’t keep still.

“Why is it that I am always seeing this man lying dead upon the floor?
Why do I seem to be striking at his back? It is so strange. It is not
a knife I’m striking with, not a common knife; it is something
different--and worse. It comes out of nothing; and, all the time,
there’s the noise. It is not I who make the noise, no, I don’t
speak--I can’t--I daren’t--it’s It. But it keeps on strike, strike,
striking, and the blood all comes upon my cloak. I know I had a cloak
on, I remember how it kept getting in my way. And then--he falls. And
that’s all--until it begins all over again, and I am standing in a
room, in the moonlight, and he sits up in bed and looks at me--he, my
friend.”

She held out her hands in front of her, with a pleasant inflection on
the final word.

“And I can’t think of what took place before. I feel that I ought to
know who I am, and what brought me here; but I can’t quite lay my hand
on it. The people are there, but I can’t quite make out their faces,
or who they are, or what they want with me. They all look at me, and I
can hear them clapping. Then it all comes back to the man lying dead
upon the floor; that’s where it all seems to begin and end. I wonder
if I killed him. I wish I knew. It is so strange that I may have
killed him and yet not know. I know that he deserved to be killed, but
did I do it?”

Glancing round, her eyes rested on the door in the opposite corner
which led into Lawrence’s bedroom. She crossed to it.

“What’s in here?”

She turned the handle and went in. I was at the door within five
seconds of her passing through it; Miss Adair, Hume, and the constable
still at my heels. We must have presented a spectacle which was not
without its comic side as we went scurrying across the carpet. But
what I saw as I looked into that bedchamber banished from my mind all
thoughts of the incongruous; it must, for the time being, have
paralysed the muscles of the body; or I do not think that I should
have remained for even so long as I did a silent witness of that
piteous scene.

One of the first things I realised was the presence in the room of
Inspector Symonds. He, in company with a colleague, was submitting the
contents of the apartment to an official examination. As Miss Moore
entered the two men turned and stared--as well they might. She, on her
part, paid them no attention; they were at her back, in an alcove,
formed by the bay of the window, in which stood a bureau, whose
drawers they were ransacking. Her eyes saw one thing, and one thing
only--something which lay under a sheet upon the bed.

“What’s that?” she asked herself. “What’s under the sheet?”

She went towards the bed doubtfully, as if uncertain as to the
direction which her adventure might be taking. We watched her, silent.
The officials, I take it, were for the moment too much taken aback by
her appearance to know what to make of her. While for me, that was one
of the occasions in my life on which I lost my presence of mind. If I
had known what to do I could not have done it; my nerves were all in a
flutter, like so many loose strings. She went close up to the bed;
then stood still, looking down at the something whose shape she saw
outlined.

“What is it under the sheet?”

She lifted up a corner, then let it fall. “It’s the man I saw lying
dead.” I saw her tremble. A new look came on her face--half curiosity,
half awe. “I wonder if I should know him if I saw him now? If it would
all come back to me? I wonder if it would?”

She turned down the sheet so as to expose the dead man’s head and
face. She stared at him with looks of growing horror. The terror of
the sight seemed to be gradually forcing itself upon her brain.
Stooping a little forward, she began to move farther and farther from
the bed. Her voice became husky.

“I killed him; it hacked, hacked, hacked; his blood is on my cloak and
hands; the dead man lying on the floor.”

She stopped. The something on the bed apparently had for her a
dreadful fascination. She seemed to be in two minds as to whether or
not to go close to it again, as if she would, and yet would not. Miss
Adair touched me on the arm.

“Stop! Don’t let her go to it! Don’t!”

Her words and touch woke me from a sort of trance. I awoke to a clear
realisation of the full horror of the situation--the young girl, with
her poor, numbed brain, trying experiments on the man just murdered.

“You go to her,” I said. “See if she knows you.”

It was time some friendly hand was interposed. Inspector Symonds and
his colleague showed signs of intervention on their own account, and
on lines of their own. Miss Moore began to turn slowly towards the
bed.

“I wonder if I could make out where I struck him, and where it
hacked.”

Miss Adair moved forward.

“Bessie!” she cried.

The girl turned and saw her, and appeared to struggle with the
darkness which was in her brain. The contest seemed physical as well
as mental; she swayed to and fro; I thought that she would fall. Then
reason got the upper hand; a wave of consciousness swept over her. She
drew herself upright, and she ran to Miss Adair.

“Florrie!” she exclaimed.

She burst into tears--real tears this time, not the dry sobs which, a
few minutes before, seemed to be tearing her to pieces. She cried like
a child.




 CHAPTER XII.
 WHAT WAS ON THE BED

And we--we five men--remained for a moment or two, in silence,
looking on. In our breasts, I imagine, were widely different emotions.
Surprise, and something else, was, apparently, the dominant feeling of
Inspector Symonds and his colleague. They exchanged a few whispered
words. Then the Inspector made a movement towards Miss Moore, with
something in his mien I did not like. I placed myself in front of him.

“Well, sir,” I inquired, “what do you want?”

He looked at me askance; then turned towards the policeman who had
been placed in the passage to guard the outer door.

“What is the meaning of these people being here? I thought I told you
to admit no one. Is this the way you obey orders?”

The policeman was apologetic.

“Well, sir, that young lady was through before I knew what she was up
to. Then this gentleman sent me flying down the passage, and the rest
of ’em got in; it was more than I could do to stop them.”

The Inspector showed himself indisposed to accept his satellite’s
excuses.

“Tell that for a tale, my man; you will hear of this again. I will
only have men with me who are able to carry out to the letter the
instructions I give them.” He addressed himself to me. “Mr. Ferguson,
if you are not careful you will get yourself into trouble. You appear
not to realise the serious nature of your conduct. It is not what I
should have expected from a gentleman in your position. Surely you
cannot wish to place yourself in opposition to the law?”

“Thank you for your warning; and don’t you trouble yourself about my
wishes. Let me advise you not to step out of the four corners of your
province; men circumstanced as you are sometimes take liberties, which
is a mistake.”

“Stand on one side, Mr. Ferguson. I do not take my instructions from
you. I wish to speak to that young lady.”

“Then speak to her from where you are--though what you can have to say
to her is more than I am able to imagine. She is not well, and does
not want to be brought into too close contact with undesirable
strangers.”

“Not well? What is the matter with her?”

“I might reply by inquiring what affair that is of yours; but I don’t
mind informing you that she suffers from hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations? Oh, they’re hallucinations, are they?”

There was something in his tone for which I could have knocked him
down. He spoke to her across the room.

“What is your name?”

“My name? I don’t know what my name is.”

“Not know your name? Come, that won’t do. Tell me what your name is.”

“The lady does not know her name; do you not hear her say so? You will
doubt the lady’s word, Mr. Symonds, at your peril.”

“Remove your hand; do you wish to dislocate my shoulder? You forget
your own strength, as well as other things, Mr. Ferguson. If you will
not tell me who this lady is, and she herself cannot, then I must
detain her till inquiries have been made.”

“Detain her? What do you mean?”

“This lady has forced her way into this room, and I have myself heard
her, with my own ears, accuse herself, at least, of participation in
the murder of this unfortunate man.”

His colleague chimed in: “There can be no sort of doubt upon that
point. I heard her too. She said, ‘I killed him.’”

He went to the other side of the bed, and replaced the sheet over the
dead man’s head and face. The policeman put in his word.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but she’s been behaving in the most
extraordinary manner in the other room. It seems, from what she’s been
saying, and doing, that she was there when the gentleman was being
murdered, and she’s been acting it all over to herself again as it
were. Struck him with a great knife, she said she did.”

“You heard her admit that she struck him with a knife?”

“I did--more than once; and these two gentlemen, and that lady heard
her, too. She said that she meant to kill him all along; and then she
said she struck him in the back with a great knife, and he fell
forward on his face; and she acted how she struck him, and how he
fell.”

“In face of that statement my duty’s plain; the lady must be
detained.”

He was going on, but I cut him short.

“Then I say that the lady shall not be detained; I will save you, Mr.
Symonds, from making one of the most serious mistakes you ever made in
your life. Miss Adair, escort the lady from the room. I will see that
no one touches her. Now, constable, out of the way.”

I moved towards the policeman, who did not wait for me to touch him.
He slipped aside. The Inspector interposed.

“Now, Mr. Ferguson, I warn you to be careful. May I ask you, Dr. Hume,
to explain to this gentleman what are the consequences of impeding the
police in the execution of their duty. You might also point out to him
how worse than futile such attempts always are.”

Hume was standing near the door. Now he came into the middle of the
room. I was surprised by the alteration which had taken place in his
appearance since I had observed him last. He seemed to have all at
once grown old. Outwardly he was cool and calm; but I, who had some
knowledge of the man, perceived that he was making a strenuous effort
to retain the mastery of himself in face of some most unusual emotion.
He spoke with an exaggeration of his usual deliberative manner.

“You are aware, Mr. Symonds, that I am not a likely person to
interfere with the police in the execution of their duty; but it
happens, in this case, that I am acquainted with this young lady, and
am sure that she has had no more to do with this crime than”--he
paused, he drew in his lips, as if to moisten them--“I have. The
account which your officer has given you of her behaviour in the
adjoining room is very far from being an accurate representation. She
is at present suffering from an obscure mental disease. If you were to
proceed to arrest her you would run an imminent risk of permanently
disturbing the balance of her brain, and of driving her stark mad. The
act, and the responsibility for the consequences of the act, would be
yours. Let me finish, Inspector. I quite understand that if you were
to allow her to pass entirely from your purview you would be assuming
a weighty responsibility in a different direction. I am therefore
prepared to give you my personal guarantee that she shall remain at
your disposal as witness, or in any other capacity, until it has been
made plain that she has had no connection whatever with this most
unfortunate affair.”

“First of all, what is the lady’s name, who is she, and where does she
live?”

“She is Miss Bessie Moore, the well-known actress, and she lives with
this other lady, Miss Florence Adair, at 22, Hailsham Road, Brompton.”

“I’m not much of a theatre-goer, but I have heard of Miss Bessie
Moore. I wasn’t aware that she was----” He finished his sentence by
touching his forehead with his finger.

“I am prepared to certify that, at present, she is mentally incapable;
and that to place her under arrest would be to imperil not only her
sanity, but her life.”

“Very good. And in the presence of these witnesses you undertake to
produce her whenever she’s required.”

“I do.”

“And does Mr. Ferguson join you in that undertaking?” I informed him
that I did. “And where is Miss Moore going now?”

“To her own home.”

“One of our men ought to go with her.”

“One of your men will do nothing of the kind,” I observed.

Hume said the same thing with a greater flow of language.

“If you give me notice of Miss Moore’s being required, for any purpose
whatever, I will undertake to produce her within the hour. More, if I
have reason to suspect my capacity to continue that guarantee I will
advise you on the instant.”

“Good. On that understanding Miss Moore is at liberty to go--for the
present.”

We four went out of the room, the two women in front, Hume and I
behind. Miss Moore had not spoken while the argument was being carried
on with the inspector. When we reached the corridor she turned to me.

“Where am I going to be taken? I want to speak to you.”

“You had better return with Miss Adair to Mrs. Peddar’s room--for the
present, at any rate. I will come to you immediately.”

“You will be sure to come?”

She laid her hand upon my arm.

“Certain. I will be there almost as soon as you are.”

Hume came forward.

“I also wish to speak to you.”

“You? No! I don’t wish to speak to you--not to you!”

She shrank from him as if he had been some leprous thing. When they
had gone he turned to me with eyes in which there was a strange
something, whose meaning, just then, I did not attempt to decipher;
though I was dimly conscious, as my eyes looked into his, of an odd
sensation of wonder as to whether the doctor himself might not be
going mad.

“What is it which actuates your moves in this game which you are
playing? To save your neck, do you propose to hang her, as well as
Philip Lawrence?”

That is what he said to me. To save my neck! The words rang in my ears
as I mounted towards the housekeeper’s room. They were to me as the
germ of an idea.




 CHAPTER XIII.
 SHE AND I

The girl was changed. I perceived it as soon as I was in Mrs.
Peddar’s room. She stood behind the table, and, as I entered, turned
her face away. Her attitude suggested doubt, hesitation, even shame.
It was so different to the spontaneous burst of friendship which,
hitherto, when she saw me, had brought her to my side.

Miss Adair was seated with her hands lying open on her knee; in her
bearing there was also dubiety, and in Mrs. Peddar’s as, leaning
against her sideboard, she fidgeted with the fringe of her black
apron. The air was so charged with the spirit of uncertainty that, as
soon as I entered, it affected me. We each of us seemed to be
unwilling to meet the other’s glances. It was with an effort I broke
the uncomfortable silence.

“I don’t think, Miss Moore, that I should lose any time in going home
with Miss Adair.”

“Going home? Where is my home? Yes, I know I ought to know, and I do
know more than I did, but--I can’t just find it.”

“Never mind about that, Miss Adair will see you’re all right. Now put
your hat on, and off you go. I’m afraid that I must hurry you.”

I was thinking of Inspector Symonds down below, and how extremely
possible it was that he might change his mind. She made no movement,
but continued looking down on to the floor, her brow all creased in
lines of pain.

“Do you think--I--killed that man?”

“I am sure that you did not.”

She glanced up at me, her brow smoothed out, light in her eyes.

“You are sure? Oh? What makes you sure?”

“My own common sense. I have seen your brother, and I have heard from
him what was the errand which took you to Edwin Lawrence. I can
understand how your mind was strained, and what a very little more was
needed to make that strain too much. But that in what took place you
did nothing of which you have cause to be ashamed, I am convinced.”

“But she thinks I did it, and so does she; and--I’m not sure.”

She pointed first to Miss Adair and then to Mrs. Peddar.

“You’re dreaming. Miss Adair knows you too well to suppose the
incredible.”

“But she does think I did it. Don’t you?”

In reply Miss Adair put her elbows on the table and her face on her
hands, and burst into tears.

“Bessie!” she cried.

I was dumfounded.

“You see. And she thinks so too. And that man, he thinks so; he wanted
to lock me up. Will he--lock me up?”

She asked the question with a little gasp, so expressive of loneliness
and terror, that it cut me to the heart. I tried to speak with a
confidence I did not feel.

“The police are famous for their blunders. In cases such as this, if
they had their way, they’d lock up every one they could lay their
hands on. There’s one question I want to ask you before you go--was
there no one else present in that room last night except you and Edwin
Lawrence?”

“Yes--you were there.”

“I!”

She said it with a directness which struck me as with a crowbar.

“Yes, you were there. I thought, when I saw you sitting up in bed, in
the moonlight, that I had seen your face before, and I’ve been
thinking so all the time; and now it’s all come back to me--you were
there. Don’t you remember that you came into the room?”

She spoke with a touch of sudden excitement. Mrs. Peddar resented her
words with unusual heat.

“You wicked girl! To say such a thing, after all that he has done for
you! You’ll be saying next that I was there.”

I endeavoured to appease my enthusiastic partisan.

“Gently, Mrs. Peddar. I am not at all sure that what Miss Moore says
is not correct. I, too, suffered last night from dreams. I dreamed
that I went to Edwin Lawrence’s rooms, and saw him murdered; whether I
saw with the actual or the spiritual eye, I cannot tell; but, in any
case, all that I did see was seen as in a glass darkly.”

“Did you see me?”

“I cannot be certain. I saw some one who I now believe to have been
you.”

“Did you see It?”

“It?”

“The--the creature--the dreadful thing!”

“My vision was blurred; I saw nothing plain, it had all the
indistinctness of a nightmare, but--I was oppressed by the
consciousness of some hideous presence in the room. What was--the
thing?”

“I don’t know; I can’t think. I’m afraid to try! It did it all.”

“Wasn’t it--a wild beast? It made a noise like one, or--was it my
imagination?”

“The dreadful noise! I’ve heard it ever since. I hear it all the
time--I hear it now. Can’t you--hear it now?”

She looked about her with frightened eyes.

“That certainly is your imagination; there’s not a sound. But was
there no one else there in the room besides you, and Edwin Lawrence,
and--I?”

“There was the other man.”

“Was that other man his brother?”

“I don’t just know; I can’t quite think. But, if I saw him again, I
should know him, I feel sure I should, as I’ve known you.”

“Did they quarrel, the two men?”

She shook her head.

“It will all come back to me, perhaps, piece by piece; but not yet,
not yet. But you were there, and you saw I did not kill him?”

“What I saw I cannot tell; as with you it was all a blur. But that you
did not kill him I am as sure as that the sky is above.”

“I am so glad. You have made me so happy.”

“It needs but a little thing to make your happiness.”

“What is your name?”

“You have heard it more than once. My name is Ferguson--John
Ferguson.”

“John!” Returning to her former self, she said it with the simplicity
of a little child. She nestled close up to me, as if for comfort. My
pulses throbbed. “Why is it that I feel safe when I am near you, and
that the nearer I am to you the safer I feel?”

“God grant that you may always feel safe when you are near to me.”

My voice was husky.

“I believe that I always shall feel safe when you are near; I believe
I always shall.”

She looked up at me with eyes in which there was something which
seemed to burn into my soul. It was with difficulty I kept myself from
putting my arm about her. When I spoke, it was awkwardly enough, and
with a lumbering choice of ungainly words.

“The tangle is greater than I thought. It seems to be drawing us
together. God moves in a mysterious way, and it maybe His purpose
that, under this blood-red shadow, our lives shall draw closer to each
other. For my part, I am content.” I waited for her to speak; she was
still; but she rested one hand upon my arm, and I trembled. “Don’t let
yourself be troubled by fantastic fears. Rest assured that your heart
is stainless as are your hands. I know. Look up, the light is coming!
Your innocence will be made plain to all the world, and to yourself.
For it seems that of yourself you’re chief doubter.”

“I did doubt; I’m easier now. I don’t doubt at all when you are near.
I wonder why?”

“I wonder, too. But, come, there are a dozen things which I must do.
You must be bundled off. Mrs. Peddar, where is this young lady’s hat?”

Mrs. Peddar passed into an inner room, presently returning with a hat.
While its owner was putting it on, Miss Adair came up to me. I had
been aware that the two women had been watching us with wide-open eyes
and gaping mouths; now one of them gave partial expression to her
feelings.

“What on earth is there between you two? Have you known each other all
your lives, or did you meet for the first time last night?”

“That is a question for the metaphysicians. I seem to have known her
all my life.”

“And has she known you all hers? Is that what I’m to think?”

“There is one thing you are not to think--you are not to think that
she had any hand in what was done.”

“But it’s all so awful! It’s all come upon me in an instant: it’s
taken me unawares. What am I to think after what she said, and did, in
that room?”

“You are to be sure that she is as innocent as a child.”

“But what am I to think? It seems now that you both were there. I have
no doubt whatever that the man quite deserved being killed; if she
didn’t kill him, then did you?”

“God forbid!”

Miss Moore had her hat on. She made a discovery.

“I had a cloak. I feel sure I had a cloak. Where’s it gone?”

“Never mind about your cloak; it’s warm enough to-day, you’ll be able
to do quite well without it.”

I caught Miss Adair’s glance; plainly she remembered what I had said
about the condition of that garment; there was renewed suspicion in
her eye. I turned to Mrs. Peddar.

“We don’t want to go through the main entrance; isn’t there another
way?”

“There is the service lift, and there are the service stairs.”

“The very thing; show us where they are.”

She showed us where they were; and we three went down the servants’
staircase, through a back door, into a side street, no one saying us
nay. I saw the two girls into a cab. As they were starting Miss Moore
leaned her head out. She looked at me with eyes which were, to me,
like magnets. Her lips formed a single word:

“John!”

As the hansom drove off, and, turning the corner, passed from sight, I
felt as if something had gone out of my life.




 CHAPTER XIV.
 HE AND I

As I returned to my chambers my whole being seemed to be a
battlefield on which conflicting thoughts and feelings were fighting
to a finish. I had not supposed that my nature could have been utterly
disorganized by occurrences such as those which had come crowding upon
me during the last few hours.

I am a hard man. My life has been lived, for the most part, in odd
corners of the world, where, single-handed, I have fought the fight
for fortune; in places where human life is not held of much account,
and where one would have thought as little of killing such a man as
Edwin Lawrence appeared to have been, as destroying any other noxious
animal. I have ever been a fighter. Men have called me “Fighting
John.” I have had to defend my own life, and have not hesitated, when
circumstances required, to take the lives of others. I learnt, long
ago, that there are occasions when killing is not alone the best, but
the only cure.

But I have had nothing to do with women. I have never been on familiar
terms with one of them. I have always been aware that they are better
than I, and that consciousness has made me shy of them, as of a
church. But while one knows that a church is a place for sinners,
one’s sense of decency tells one that evil ought not to come into
contact with a woman. So I have kept clear. Until that night.

Now Providence alone knew what had happened. Since I had seen her
standing in the moonlight at my window, the foundations of my life
seemed to have been going under. It was absurd; yet true. What could
she care for such as I--an adventurer from the four corners of the
world, soiled with something of the grime from each of them. What
right had I to think of such as she--a young girl, in the first
fulness of her wondrous beauty, mentally, morally, socially far above
my reach; the idol of the town, with, at her feet, some of the
greatest in the land. It was midsummer madness; which, in my case, was
the less excusable since, for me, it was the time of autumn.

But she had called me “John.” That was in her hour of sorrow, of which
I had taken advantage. The hour would pass, and then I should not even
be “Mr. Ferguson,” but simply one of the crowd in the street. I might
take a seat at the theatre, to watch her play, but she would not even
glance to see if I was in it. That would be a black hour for me. But
with her all would be well.

But would the hour of her sorrow quickly pass? Back in my own room I
tried to think; but, like her, I was afraid. I had been an idiot to
let her return to Hailsham Road. What kind of an ass would he be who
placed his trust in Inspector Symonds. I had had my experiences of the
police. In all countries of the world they were the same--fools when
they were not knaves. If he, or any of his myrmidons, laid a hand on
her, what could I do? I was in a country where, even if you knocked a
policeman down, it was regarded as a crime. And Miss Adair--she had
her doubts. Great powers! what could the woman be made of, to have
lived so long with such an angel, and yet doubt her perfect innocence!
Apart from such thick-headedness on the part of a woman of common
sense, it was dreadful to think of the girl living in an atmosphere of
suspicion, when complete confidence was the one thing needful.

Why had I let her return to Hailsham Road? She would have been safer
with Mrs. Peddar, or--God forgive me for thinking that she would have
been safer still with me.

On what did the woman found her doubts? And the Inspector his? That
was the mischief. On the surface the thing looked doubtful; if I were
to speak of certain things, I knew they might look worse. A dozen knew
now that she was present in the room. She could be dragged into the
witness-box, at any rate, and then--then what might she not be forced
to say. She had gone with unfriendly intentions; he had been killed
while she was there; she ran away without a whisper to any one of what
had been done. What deductions might not be drawn, by an unfriendly
critic, from that bare statement of the facts. I dared not think of
the risks she would run till all the truth was told.

“What is the truth?” I cried.

Unconsciously, I spoke aloud. Though, had I thought, I should not have
hesitated, since I supposed I was alone. But, no sooner had I spoken,
than my bedroom door was opened, and some one stood on the threshold,
looking out at me.

“It’s you, is it? Come here!”

Hume was the speaker. He spoke and looked as if I were the intruder;
not he. His presence took me by surprise; so that at first, in my
bewilderment, I could only stare. Then I moved towards him.

“What are you doing there?”

“Come, and you shall see.”

I pushed past him into the room. As I looked round, in my amazement at
the man’s audacity, I was speechless. The whole place was in
confusion. He had been turning my belongings topsy-turvy--searching
drawers, examining cupboards, scrutinising everything of mine which he
could lay his hands upon. My property was scattered everywhere--on
chairs, on tables, on the floor. On the rail of the bed were laid my
pyjamas and a towel; and on the bed itself was displayed, at its
widest, the plum-coloured cloak.

When I realised that he had unearthed that piece of apparently damning
evidence, it was enough.

“You hound!”

I would have taken him by the throat; but, springing back, he pointed
a revolver at my face.

“Stop that! I’ve had to deal with men like you before, John Ferguson.
Attempt to touch me, and I’ll save the hangman his pains.”

I, also, on previous occasions had had to deal with men like him; more
dangerous men than he was, free from all the restraints of
civilisation, whom use had made handy with a pistol. There was
something in the way in which he gripped his weapon which told me that
he was not yet acquainted with all its capabilities. I dodged; struck
up; the pistol went flying through the air. I took him by the waist;
lifted him off his feet; held him tight; and shook him. If you have
the trick of it, it is surprising how quickly you can shake the breath
clean out of a man’s body, or, if you wish to go so far, by shaking
him you can break his back, and make an end. My desires were less
extensive. I shook him till I had him quiet; then I lowered him till
his face was on a level with mine.

“Now, Dr. Hume, please tell me why I shouldn’t kill you?”

He could but gasp, and that with pain.

“You can--kill me--if you like. You killed him. Killing’s--your line.”

“And what’s your line? Sneaking, like a thief, into a man’s room, and
prying into his possessions like some dirty nigger? However, since you
are here, we’ll come to an understanding, you and I, before you go.”

I dropped him on to the floor, where he lay like a log, struggling to
get back some of his breath. I picked up his revolver. It was a natty
little thing, though not of the kind one carries where a gun is one of
the chief necessities of existence. There a gun, to be worth anything,
should send a bullet through an inch board at the distance of a dozen
yards; it was all his would do to send a bullet through the skin of a
man, I locked the door, and I waited for him to get his breath again.

“When you are ready, Dr. Hume.”

I sat and watched him. He had followed me with his eyes as I moved
about the room; starting as I picked up his pistol. Now he returned me
glance for glance. He was getting the better of his breathlessness;
and presently raised himself to a sitting posture.

“You should be in a freak museum, Ferguson.”

“Indeed. Why?”

“You’re a prodigy of bone and muscle.”

“You should remember it.”

“I’ve but just now made the discovery. I shall have to refurbish my
faith in the labours of Hercules and the story of Samson.” He was, as
it were, arranging himself inside his clothes. “I don’t resent your
physical configuration; it’s educative, as showing what the strength
of a man may be. It’s a pity you should be a----Are you only a fool,
or are you something else as well?” He stood up, still arranging
himself inside his clothes. He pointed to the plum-coloured cloak.
“What’s this?”

“It’s what I’m going to wring your neck for.”

“Is that so? I don’t doubt your capacity, but why exercise it in this
particular instance?”

“Then you must satisfy me that, though the heavens fall, no one
outside this room shall ever learn there is such a garment in
existence--and that you’ll find it difficult to do.”

“You wish me to tell no one of what I’ve found?”

“It’s not an affair of a wish.”

“Ferguson, you’re stark mad.”

“You’ve told me so before. You’re a specialist. You should know that a
homicidal lunatic is not the sort to trifle with. Label me like that.”

“But you’re mad in the wrong direction.”

“What’s the right direction to be mad?”

“That cloak’s Miss Moore’s.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Let me inform you that to save her from harm I’d give my life.”

“Say that again.”

“To save her from harm I’d give my life. It sounds like bombast, but
it’s plain truth.”

“Hume, I may be mad, but I’m not so mad as you think.”

“You’re madder, if you don’t believe me I don’t know why I should make
a confidant of you, of all men; but there are illogical moments in
which men feel constrained to strip themselves bare. Perhaps this is
such a moment in my life. Miss Moore is the only woman I ever loved.
That’s a line from a play, but it’s true, for all that.”

“Why do you say it to me?”

“What’s the meaning of that cloak being in your wardrobe?”

“Why did you go to my wardrobe to look for it?”

“Man, I wasn’t looking for that. I was looking for something with
which to hang you. And I found this, and those. This is a towel.
There’s blood on it. See! The marks of bloody fingers. You wiped your
hands on it when, last night, you came from Lawrence’s room.”

“That is what you make of it. I see.”

“Those are the pyjamas which you were wearing. There are stains on
them. See here, on the front of the jacket; on the breeches, too.”

“What is the deduction which you draw from that?”

“I don’t know. I did know. But now I don’t.”

His tone was one of intense dejection. He looked towards the bed. I
considered for a moment. Then I spoke.

“You’re quite right, Hume. The cloak is Miss Moore’s.”

He turned round quickly.

“Do you want to hang her now instead of Philip? Or do you want to hang
them both?”

“You talk too much of hanging. I mean you and I to understand each
other before you leave this room; and we shan’t get there by blinking
facts. I say that the cloak’s Miss Moore’s. You perceive that it’s
caked with blood.”

“I see.”

“I believe that blood to be Edwin Lawrence’s. The proof is easy; you
have only to subject it to a microscopical examination you will know.
The stain on my pyjamas came off her cloak. That on the towel was
where she wiped her hands, not where I wiped mine. The water in which
she washed them I threw into the road. It was bright red. Not only
were her hands reeking wet, there were smears upon her face as well.”

“Ferguson!”

“Those are the facts. I’ve made it a rule of my life never to dodge a
fact which I don’t like; I hit at it. And it’s because I hit at those
facts that I know they don’t mean she killed him; I know she didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

I laughed.

“Because I know her; perhaps you don’t.”

“I’ve known her the better part of my life.”

“And I only since last night, when she came through my window with
shining hands.”

“But how can you know she didn’t, unless you know who did? Did you?”

I laughed again.

“I did not. Lawrence sharped me; I suspected it last night, now I’m
sure; but I shouldn’t have killed him merely because he was too
clever; at least, not like that. You’re a poor judge of character if
you suppose I should.”

“I care nothing for you, or for your character. It’s of her I’m
thinking. She might have done it in a fit of temporary insanity.”

“She might; but she didn’t.”

“Then what was the meaning of her conduct in his room just now?”

“You’re a mental pathologist; you should know better than I.”

“It’s because I’m a mental pathologist that I--fear. Symonds suspects.
I shouldn’t be surprised if he arrests her within four and twenty
hours. He’ll hang her if he finds this cloak.”

“Oh no, he won’t. Nor, if Symonds is the idiot you suppose--he may be,
since you’re a judge of idiots--will she remain long under arrest. I
shall free her.”

Hume had been pacing up and down like an unquiet spirit. Now he
stopped to snarl at me like an angry wolf.

“If you think brawn and muscle can prevail against the police you are
a fool.”

“As it happens I am not a fool on those particular lines, because I
think nothing of the kind. I shall use other means to free her.”

“What other means?”

“I shall confess.”

“But I thought you said you didn’t do it.”

“Nor did I; nor did she. If Symonds must have a victim, better I than
she. To go to the gallows for her sake would be heaven well won.”

Hume stared. I might have been shaking him again, his breath came so
hardly.

“What--do you mean?”

“My good Hume, don’t you be afraid for Miss Moore. I assure you she’s
in no danger.”

“You say you only saw her for the first time last night.”

“But that’s a century ago. A myriad things have taken place since, so
now it’s just as if I’d known her all my life.”

He kept his head averted, looking at me sideways; it was the first
time he had shown an indisposition to meet me face to face.

“It’s like that? I see.” He drew in his lips to moisten them. “A case
of the world well lost for her.”

“You’ve hit it, Hume.”

“Suppose, for illustration’s sake, that this and that were fitted
together so as to make it seem--only seem, you understand--that you
actually did kill Lawrence, what then?”

“I don’t know what it is, but, in this instance, something seems to be
warping your natural intelligence, or I’m persuaded that you’d
perceive, as I perceive, that the truth will out, and that before very
long.”

“Then am I to take it you’ll walk away with banners flying?”

“I don’t know about the banners flying, but I’ll walk away.”

“With her?”

“You’ve no right to say that.”

“And what right do you suppose you have to say what you’ve been
saying, when you know that she’s to me the light of my eyes, the
breath of my nostrils? when, these dozen years and more, since she was
a little child in little frocks, I’ve waited on her will, won for her
a place upon the stage I hate because she loved it, blazoned abroad
her fame, because to be famous was her pleasure, although I knew that
every cry of applause took her farther from me still, and farther! And
now you come and say that you saw her for the first time last night,
yet talk glibly of having known her all your life, and brag of being
ready to sacrifice yourself for her. Do you think if she were herself
she’d accept your sacrifice?--you speak of knowing her, and yet think
that? Go to!--But, see here, if you burn with a desire to make
yourself a scapegoat, I am willing.”

“You are willing?”

“She’ll never be. But if we put together here a little, there a
little, line upon line, we’ll make out your guilt so clearly that
there’s not a jury which wouldn’t see it, nor a judge who wouldn’t
hang you. Shall we arrange it between us, you and I?”

“You are very good.”

“That she’ll be in gaol by this time to-morrow is pretty positive; I
shouldn’t be surprised if Symonds was applying for a warrant at this
moment. If you think that you will free her by merely going and
saying, ‘I did it, it wasn’t she,’ you are under a delusion. She’ll
not be freed like that; they’ll need chapter and verse. You’ll have to
tell a plain tale plainly; how you planned the thing, how you did it,
how you sought to hide your guilt by throwing the blame of it on her.

“Your tale will want corroboration; the support of independent
evidence. I could say a thing or two, with perfect truth, which would
go some way towards hanging you. Your concealment of the fact that you
were in the room would look ugly, if treated well, and there’s the
girl who saw you flying from it as if the devil were behind you.
There’s the tell-tale marks upon the towel, on the pyjamas; there are
a dozen things, without invention. And with--oh, we could manufacture
a good round tale which would bear the strictest investigation, and
which, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, would set her free for
ever. Shall we set about it now?”

I was silent.

“There’s some one knocking at my door.”

Some one was beating a tattoo upon the panel.

“So there is; and some one in a hurry, it would seem. Perhaps it’s
Symonds. If so, you might make a clean breast of it at once. I’ll
corroborate with what I know. Then she need never fear arrest at all.”




 CHAPTER XV.
 THE LETTER

But it was not Symonds. It was a messenger-boy--an impertinent young
rascal.

“Mr. John Ferguson? I thought every one was out, I’ve been knocking
for the last ten minutes.”

“Have you indeed? I trust the delay has caused you no serious
inconvenience. Yes, I am Mr. John Ferguson.”

“No answer.”

He thrust an envelope into my hand, and, turning on his heel, was
about to march away. I caught him by the shoulder.

“Pardon me--one second! From whom does this communication come?”

“I say there’s no answer.”

He wriggled in my grasp.

“I hear you--still, if you could manage to wait for a moment, I think
it might be worth your while. Let me beg of you to enter.”

Drawing him into the room, I shut the door. He surveyed me with
indignation.

“My orders are that when there’s no answer I’m not to wait.”

“Good boy! Always obey orders.”

The address on the envelope was typewritten; as were the sentences on
the sheet of paper it contained.


“Because Edwin Lawrence is dead, don’t suppose that the £1880 are
paid. You have not hit on a new way to pay old debts. A knife in the
back is not a quittance. You are wrong if you suppose it is. Have the
money ready; hard cash--notes and gold; all gold preferred. NO CHEQUE.
Edwin Lawrence has left an heir; to whom all that he had belongs, your
debt among the rest. Be prepared to pay when asked. If the request has
to be made a second time it will come in a different form.

                                                    “The Goddess.”


That was what the envelope contained--an anonymous letter.

“Who sent this?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read it.”

“Possibly not; and yet you might know who was the sender.”

“I don’t see how. I’d just been on an errand right over to Finchley.
As soon as I came in that was given me. All I was told was that there
was no answer.”

The messenger spoke in a tone of resentment, as if suffering from a
grievance. He was a small youth, with crisp black hair and sharp black
eyes; combativeness writ large all over him.

“You didn’t see who brought this to the office?”

“I did not.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Victoria.”

“What’s your name?”

“George Smith. Though I don’t see what that’s got to do with you.”

“Then that only shows that your range of vision’s limited. Because,
Mr. George Smith, although there’s no answer to this little
communication, you’re likely to hear of it again. Good-day.”

The young gentleman withdrew with something like a sniff of scorn. I
read the letter through again. As Hume stood watching me, his
curiosity got the upper hand.

“What is it?”

“I was wondering if I should tell you. I don’t see why not.” I handed
him the sheet of paper. He scanned it with eager eyes. “What do you
make of it?”

“It is for me, rather, to put that question to you.”

“I’ll tell you one thing I make of it--that the typewriter, from the
anonymous letter-writer’s point of view, is an excellent invention. In
the case of a written letter, one can occasionally guess what kind of
person it is from whom it comes; but, when it’s typewritten, the Lord
alone can tell.”

“‘The Goddess.’ Does the signature convey no meaning to your mind?
Think.”

“I’m thinking. The Goddess? I certainly don’t know any one who’s
entitled to write herself down like that. Let me look at the thing
again.” He returned me the sheet of paper. “This seems to suggest that
some one else is disposed to take a hand in the game--some person at
present unknown.”

“But who knows that you owed Lawrence £1880? And--who knows how much
besides?”

“Just so. I wonder!”

Hume eyed me as if he were endeavouring to decipher, on my face, the
key to a riddle.

“If some one applies to you for the money what shall you do?”

“Hang him, or her, straight off. That is, I should hand the gentleman,
or lady, over to Symonds, with that end in view. Don’t you see what
such an application would imply? Lawrence was murdered within an hour
or two of our playing that game of cards. How comes any one to know
what was the amount he claimed to have won? No one saw him between the
finish of the game and his death, except the man who murdered him.”

“Miss Moore saw him--and you.”

“Are you suggesting that Miss Moore wrote this letter--or I?”

“I see your point. You infer that whoever did write it killed
Lawrence, because it discloses knowledge which could only be in
possession of his murderer. There is something in the inference. But,
if the thing’s so plain, isn’t it an act of rashness to have written
you at all--rashness which is almost inconceivable?”

“‘_De l’audace_’--you know the wise man’s aphorism. I don’t say the
thing is plain. On the contrary, I believe it’s more obscure than you
think. Granting that whoever wrote that letter killed Lawrence--and I
fancy you’ll find that is the case--the question is who wrote it. It’s
signed ‘The Goddess.’ I believe ‘The Goddess’ was the writer. Query,
who’s ‘The Goddess’? There’s the puzzle.”

“Are you intentionally speaking in cryptograms? May I ask what you
mean?”

“I’m not quite sure that I know myself. I don’t go so far as to say
that there is anything supernatural about the business, but--it’s
uncommonly queer.”

“Supernatural! You had better make that suggestion to the police. The
English law does not recognise the supernatural in crime.”

“Possibly not. You say it was a man, Symonds thinks it was a woman; I
believe both of you are wrong--that Lawrence was killed neither by a
man nor a woman. Who or what is ‘The Goddess’? Find that out, you’ll
have found the criminal!”

His lips curled in an ironic smile.

“I really wonder if you think that you can successfully play a game of
bluff with me.”

I laughed. The man was so full of verjuice that he could not resist an
opportunity of squirting a drop or two in my direction. His intentions
had not been over and above friendly before. Now that the shadow of a
woman had come between us, I felt that he would stop at little which
would help him hang me. That my innocence might be shown was a matter
which would concern him not at all--so long as he had hung me first.

While I hesitated what to answer, for, though, I hoped, at the proper
time, to take him by the neck and drop him from the window, my desire
was, in the mean time, to treat him with the utmost courtesy--some one
came rushing into the room. It was Turner, the night-porter. He seemed
to have been in the wars. He held his handkerchief to his nose, and
his uniform was disarranged as if he had just emerged from a
scrimmage.

“There’s Mr. Philip Lawrence just gone down the service stairs.”

We stared at him--not, at first, gathering what he meant. Our thoughts
had been occupied with other themes, as, for instance, our love for
one another. He, perceiving that we did not understand, went on, like
a man in a rage--

“Yes, he just went down the service stairs, did Mr. Philip Lawrence,
and a nice sort of a gentleman he is! I was standing in the doorway,
finishing my pipe, when I saw him coming. ‘Mr. Lawrence,’ I said,
‘this is a very sad thing about your brother. I’ve only just come, so
I’ve only just heard of it;’ which I had, and it had took me quite
aback. He never said a word; he gave me no warning, but, as soon as I
opened my mouth, he came at me like a mad bull, hit me right on the
nose, and sent me crashing down on to the back of my head in the road.
It’s a wonder he didn’t knock me senseless, I was so unprepared, and
he hit me so hard. As soon as I could pick myself together I saw him
rushing down the street, and tear round the corner as if he was
running for his dinner. And well he might run, for a nice sort of
gentleman he seems to be.”

Hume and I looked at Turner, then at each other.

“Are you sure that it was Mr. Philip Lawrence?”

Turner gazed at me resentfully.

“Am I sure? Do you think I’d say a thing like that of a gentleman if I
wasn’t sure that it was him? Not likely!”

Hume interposed.

“Do you wish us to understand that Mr. Philip Lawrence attacked you in
the manner you describe without having, first of all, received
provocation from you?”

“I don’t know what you call provocation. All I said to him I’ve said
to you. I don’t know what provocation there was in saying that it was
a sad thing about his brother.”

“You did not say, or do, anything else?”

“I didn’t do anything at all--he did all the doing; and what I’ve said
I’ve told you.”

“Turner, I know Mr. Philip Lawrence intimately. He is not a man to
commit an unprovoked assault. Either you have mistaken some one else
for him, or, consciously or unconsciously, you have kept back from us
something which appeared to him to be a sufficient justification for
what he did.”

In his surprise Turner removed his handkerchief from his nose. The
blood trickled on to his waistcoat.

“Well! That beats anything! I suppose my word’s worth nothing. If you
ask those who know me perhaps better than you do Mr. Philip Lawrence
they’ll tell you I’m no liar. I say that he hit me like a coward, for
nothing at all, and then took to his heels; and it was well for him he
did, for if I do get within reach of him I’ll perhaps give him as good
as he sent, though it’ll be after I’ve given him warning first. I’ll
let you know, Dr. Hume, that though I am a porter I’m not going to let
a gentleman knock me about as it suits him, even though he is a friend
of yours; and I don’t think any the better of you for taking his
part.”

Going up to Turner, I clapped him on the shoulder.

“That’s right! That’s how I like to hear a man speak out. Don’t think
that I doubt you in one little jot or tittle. Mr. Philip Lawrence hit
you like a coward because he was a coward. He was afraid of you; and
had good reason for his fear, as Dr. Hume knows very well.”

“You--you----”

Hume stopped; looking as if he were allowing “he dare not” to wait
upon “he would.”

“Well, Hume, go on. Your friend did not give Turner an opportunity to
punish him for his bad behaviour. If you behave badly, I assure you
that I shall avail myself of any chance which may offer to punish you.
Pray finish the remark you were about to make.”

Hume said nothing. He did not even glance in my direction. But he
looked at Turner, and walked out of the room.

“He looks like killing some one himself,” said Turner, when he was
gone.

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

I wonder how much he would have given, at that moment, to have made
sure of killing me--for choice, upon the gallows.




 CHAPTER XVI.
 MY PERSUASIVE MANNER

I went at once to the house in Arlington Street. The door was opened
by Mr. Morley.

“Have you heard anything of Mr. Philip? Is he at home?”

Mr. Morley had opened the door about six inches, peeping through the
crevice as if he expected to see some dreadful object on the doorstep.
The sight of me seemed to reassure him. He addressed me in a
sepulchral whisper.

“Would you mind stepping inside for a moment, sir?”

I went into a front room on the ground floor. Mr. Morley came in after
me, and, behind him, Mrs. Morley. I was conscious that the room was
filled with old oak furniture. It is, perhaps, because I am not a man
of taste that I would not have an apartment in which I proposed to
live filled with that funereal wood. Old black oak furniture reminds
me of an African swamp. It is dark and sombre--heavy, stiff, ungainly.

Without, the shadows had deepened; in the house it was darker still.
The room was still unlighted. The figures of the old man and woman,
revealed in the half light, harmonised with the ancient blackness of
the furniture. As they stood side by side, as close together as they
could get, with, on them both, an air of timidity which the darkness
could not hide, I felt that there was a blight upon them, and on the
room, and on the house; that it was a place of doom.

“I take it that Mr. Philip has not returned.”

They looked at one another; as if each was unwilling to incur the
responsibility of a reply. At last the husband took it on himself.

“No, sir; he’s not returned, but----”

“Well, but what?”

For the old gentleman had paused. He spoke to his wife, in a whisper
which was perfectly audible--

“Shall I tell him, Emma?”

“It’s not for me to speak. That, Joe, is for you to say.”

“This is Mr. Ferguson; he’s Mr. Philip’s friend.”

“If he’s Mr. Philip’s friend----”

“Come,” I said, “I see you’ve heard from him.”

“Yes, sir, we’ve heard from him. That--that’s the trouble.”

“What is it you’ve heard?”

Again the reference to his wife.

“Shall I--shall I tell him, Emma?”

“I’ve already told you, Joe, that that’s for you to say. It’s not for
me to speak.”

Plainly Joe hesitated, then arrived at a sudden decision.

“Well, sir, this is what we’ve heard.”

He took a sheet of paper out of his pocket, which he gave to me.

“I can’t see what’s on this, man, without a light! Mine are not cat’s
eyes; it’s dark as pitch in here.”

“Before I light up, sir, I’ll lower the blind. There’s no need for
folks to see what’s going on in here.”

He not only lowered the blind, he drew the curtains, too, leaving a
darkness which might have been felt; then started groping for a match
upon the mantelshelf. When he had found one he lit the gas--a single
burner. By its radiance I examined the paper he had given me. In
shape, size, appearance, it was own brother to the sheet which had
come to me. On it was a typewritten letter; which, however, in this
case, was not anonymous.


“To Joseph Morley,
“Dear Morley,

“I’m in a bad scrape. I can’t come home. And I’ve no clothes, and no
money. I send you my keys. Look, you know where, and send me all the
money you can find; and my cheque-book, and my dressing-case, and two
or three trunks full of clothes. As you know, I took nothing away with
me except what I stood up in. I don’t know when I shall be able to
send, but it will be as soon as I possibly can. Have everything ready,
for when I do send I shan’t want my messenger to be kept waiting. And
keep a sharp look-out; it may be in the middle of the night.

                                                “Philip Lawrence.

“Tell any one who asks that I shall be home in about a week; and that
you’ve instructions to send all letters on. I don’t want people to
think that you’re not in communication with me, or that everything’s
not all right. And you’re not to listen to any tales which you may
hear; and you’re not to worry, or people will notice it. You
understand?”


The eyes of the two old people did not leave my face while I was
reading. So soon as I lowered the paper Mr. Morley faltered out his
question.

“Well, sir, what--what do you think of it?”

“That it’s a curious epistle. Who brought it?”

“That’s more than I can say. There was a knock at the door, and I saw
that in the letterbox. I looked out into the street, but there was no
one in sight who seemed a likely person to have dropped it in.”

“No messenger-boy?”

“No, sir, no one of the kind.”

“And the keys came with it?”

“Yes, sir, in a small brown-paper parcel.”

“Addressed to you?”

“No, the parcel was addressed to no one. There was nothing on it at
all.”

“You are sure they are Mr. Philip’s keys?”

“Of course they are. Whose should they be? Why--why do you say that?”

“Has Mr. Philip been in the habit of sending you typewritten letters?”

“He has never done such a thing in his life before.”

“In this even the signature is typed--as if he had made up his mind
that you should not have a scrap of handwriting which you could
recognise. I don’t see why he need to have had such a letter typed at
all. Is he himself a typist?”

“Not that I know of; I never heard him speak of it.”

“Then to have had such a letter typed by some one else was to add to
his risk. Why couldn’t he have trusted you with a letter written by
his own hand?”

“I can’t say.”

“Are you yourself sure that this letter is from Mr. Philip?”

“Not a doubt of it. I wish there were. Because it shows that he’s in
hiding; and what should he be in hiding for, except one thing?
What--what are we to do? If--if he has his brother’s blood upon his
hands.”

“Joe!”

“Well, Emma, if he has, he has! And where’ll he find a place big
enough, and out-of-the-way enough, for him to hide in? All the world
will soon know what he’s done, and all the world will be in search of
him. He won’t dare to come here--he daren’t already; soon he won’t
dare to write to me; the police will be watching me like cats a mouse.
He’ll be an outcast, shunning the places which he knew and the friends
who loved him--and he the most sociable gentleman who ever lived, who
never could bear to be alone; with a host of friends, and not a single
enemy. And--and what are we to do--the wife and I, here, in his house
alone? To whom are we to look for help--for guidance--for orders?
We--we’re almost afraid to stop in the place as it is; it--it’s as if
it were haunted. We seem to see him wherever we turn; we hear his
footstep on the stairs--his voice--his laughter.”

“Joe!”

“Well, Emma, so we do. Our nerves won’t stand it. We--we’re getting
all broken up; we’re not so young as we were, and used to regular
ways, and--and this sort of thing’s beyond us. Every knock at the door
starts us trembling. Who--who’s that?”

As Mr. Morley was speaking, there came an assault on the front-door
knocker which seemed to shake the house. I do not think I ever heard
quite such a clatter made by a similar instrument before. That the
nerves of the old folks were in a curious condition was immediately
made plain; the attack might have been made on them, instead of on the
knocker. They drew closer together, clinging to each other for
support; consternation was written large all over them. Their
behaviour was not that of persons on whom I should have cared to lay
the burden of a great responsibility; especially one in which coolness
and presence of mind were necessary factors.

The visitor was in a hurry. There had hardly been time to reach the
front door when the knocking began again--crash, smash, crash, crash,
crash, crash! I really thought the door would have been broken down.
The faces of the proper guardians of the house grew whiter, their
limbs more tremulous.

“Hadn’t you better go and see who’s there? Or shall I?”

They let me go. On the doorstep I found an individual who had his own
notions of propriety. With scant ceremony he endeavoured, without a
word of explanation, to force his way into the house. I am not a man
with whom every one finds it easy to play that kind of game. When I am
pushed, I push. Placing my hand against his chest, he went backwards
across the pavement at a run.

“Manners, sir! Manners!” I observed.

He seemed surprised--as a man is apt to do, who, proposing to play the
bully, finds himself bullied instead. His hat had fallen off; he
himself had almost fallen too.

“Who the devil are you, sir?”

“Saving a reference to any acquaintance of yours, that is the question
which I should like to put to you, sir.”

Picking up his hat, he came towards me, with a blusterous air.

“I want to see Philip Lawrence--at once.”

“Do you indeed! That’s unfortunate. You have come to the wrong place
for your want to be supplied. Mr. Philip Lawrence doesn’t happen to be
in.”

“Tell that tale to some one else; don’t try it on me; I’ve heard it
before. I’ll wait till he is in.”

“By all means; let me show you the way inside.”

Taking him by the collar of his coat, I conducted him through the
doorway, across the hall, and into the front room--where Mr. and Mrs.
Morley were still clinging to each other, as if under the impression
that the end of the world at last had come. The visitor was a big,
black-haired man, inclined to puffiness, whose whiskers and moustache
seemed to have been blackleaded, they shone with such resplendence. He
was clad in gorgeous attire.

“What do you mean by such disgraceful behaviour?” I inquired.

“On my word, that’s good!” He was settling in its place the collar of
his coat. “Seems to me that the boot’s upon the other foot.” He turned
to Mr. Morley. “Who is this man?”

“This man,” I explained, to save Mr. Morley trouble, “is a person who
is competent to resent any impertinence which you may offer. So, if
you have come to play the bully, you will have every opportunity
afforded you to play your very best.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, sir, you don’t know who I am. If I’d
liked I might have made Philip Lawrence bankrupt four and twenty hours
ago; only I thought I’d give him a chance. But I’m not going to stand
that sort of thing from you.”

“Pray how could you have made Mr. Philip Lawrence bankrupt?”

“I hold overdue bills of his for £5000. Some men would have made him
bankrupt on the nail, and run him up a tidy bill of costs. I’m too
soft-hearted; I gave him a chance. But I’ve had enough bother already;
I’m not going to have any more. If a satisfactory arrangement isn’t
made before I leave this house, there’ll be trouble.”

“So you are the person who habitually trades in forged acceptances.”

“Forged acceptances! What--what the devil do you mean, sir?”

Unless I was mistaken, he increased in puffiness.

“You know. You were aware that they were forged, and by whom. You had
a hand in arranging the whole matter; buying them for a song, with the
intention of securing as much out of Mr. Philip Lawrence as you
possibly could.”

The gentleman began to bluster. Plainly he was not happy.

“I--I don’t know who you are to talk to me like that, sir. Your
behaviour’s altogether most extraordinary. I’ll let you know that I’m
not going to have you speak to me like that: I’m not going to have
such language addressed to me. I came into possession of these bills
in the ordinary course of business.”

“How much did you pay for them?”

“I paid---- Never mind what I paid for them! What’s it got to do with
you?” So far he had been wearing his silk hat. Now he took it off to
wipe the brim. “As I say, I’m a soft-hearted man, and if it’s not
convenient to Mr. Lawrence to pay up all at once, why, I’m willing to
do my best to meet his conveniences; but I--I’m not going to be talked
to like that, certainly not!”

“Hand them over.”

“Hand what over?”

“The bills.”

“Against money.”

“Hand over those bills.”

“I haven’t got them on me; they’re in the safe at my office, under
lock and key. Do you think I carry about with me documents of that
value? You never know what sort of characters you may encounter.”

This with a meaning glance in my direction.

“Hand over those bills.”

“Help! Murder! Thieves!”

As he showed a disposition to make a noise, I took him by the throat.
Lifting him on the big oak table, and laying him flat upon his back,
I kept him quiet while I went through his pockets. As I expected, I
found in the inside breast-pocket of his coat a leather case. In this
were five promissory notes for £1000 each, purporting to have been
drawn by Philip Lawrence, and to have been endorsed by his brother
Edwin. I let him get up.

“I hope I have put you to no inconvenience. Since you left the bills
in your office safe, under lock and key, no doubt you will find them,
still under lock and key, on your return.”

“Give me back those bills!”

“They will be quite safe with me.”

I put them into my coat pocket. He turned to the Morleys.

“I call you to witness that the man has robbed me, with violence!
Mind, with violence!” Then to me: “You give me back those bills, this
moment, or it will be a case of penal servitude for you; and I
shouldn’t be surprised if there were the cat thrown in.”

“And what will it be for you? Judges and juries are not apt to look
with lenient eyes upon gentlemen who habitually traffic in forged
acceptances for the purposes of levying blackmail.”

“Don’t talk to me like that; I tell you that I won’t have it!”

“You won’t have it!”

“Upon my word, I don’t know who you are, but I believe you’re
a----highwayman. Give me back those bills, or I go to the front door,
and I call a constable.”

“Call one--do. I will give him the bills, with an explanation of what
they are, pointing out to him that you will presently have to stand
your trial on a charge of conspiracy; and that, also, you are
disagreeably associated with a case of murder.”

“The man’s stark mad. I never heard any one talk like he does--never!”

“Possibly you are not aware that Edwin Lawrence was murdered last
night.”

“Edwin Lawrence murdered?”

The man turned a greenish hue.

“Beyond doubt his death was the direct result of the crime which you
incited him to commit. The whole story’s known. I heard myself, this
morning, a confession from the lips of the miserable tool who actually
concocted the fraudulent documents. You will find him quite willing to
turn Queen’s Evidence. The bills will be produced in Court, when you
will have an opportunity to tell your story.”

He put his hand up to his collar, as if it had suddenly become tight.

“It’s a lie that Edwin Lawrence was murdered last night. It’s a lie.”

“By the way, sir, what is your name?”

“What’s it to do with you?”

“Chancing to notice in your letter-case some visiting-cards, I
ventured to abstract one. We will refer to that.” I produced it from
my waistcoat pocket. “From this it appears that you are Mr. Isaac
Bernstein, of 288, Great Poland Street. Very good, Mr. Bernstein. Your
bills are in safe keeping. You will hear of them again, never fear.
Their history will be threshed out to your complete satisfaction--when
you will be wanted again. Until then you can go.”

“It’s a lie that he was murdered--it’s a lie.”

“On that point you may be able to obtain information from Mr. and Mrs.
Morley, or from the first policeman you meet in the street.”

“God help us all!” groaned Mr. Morley.

Apparently there was something in the old gentleman’s ejaculation
which carried sufficient corroboration to Mr. Bernstein’s alert
intelligence. He quitted the room to presently return.

“Who--who killed him?”

“In due course that will be made plain; also your association with the
motive which was in the murderer’s mind, causing him to compass the
death of the man whom you had incited to the perpetration of a hideous
and unnatural crime.”

Mr. Bernstein went out of the house without another word. When I heard
the door bang, I turned to the old people.

“You see? That is the way in which to treat impertinent persons who
presume upon your master’s absence to traduce his name and to take
liberties with the establishment which he has left in your charge.”

The old gentleman shook his head.

“It’s easy talking, but we haven’t all got your persuasive manner,
sir.”

It was an absurd thing for him to say, for no one knows better than
myself that my manner is rude and awkward, and that I am unskilled in
all those arts which go to make the master of persuasion. As I
followed Mr. Bernstein out of the house, almost immediately, I had an
illustration of how true that is. And again, in a more serious matter,
a little later on.




 CHAPTER XVII.
 MY UNPERSUASIVE MANNER

As I left the house a man came across the pavement as if with the
intention of knocking at Philip Lawrence’s door. At sight of me coming
down the steps he stopped short. It was young Moore. His appearance
set the blood tingling in my veins; his hat was cocked at an acute
angle on one side of his head; a cigar was stuck in the corner of his
mouth. There was something in his bearing, and about the way in which
he spoke, which showed that he had been drinking.

“What are you doing in that house? You answer me that! Seems to me
that you’ve got a finger in every pie.”

He addressed me in tones which were probably audible in Piccadilly.

“Might I ask you, Mr. Moore, to pitch your voice a little lower?”

“You may ask, but as for paying attention to anything you ask--not me.
I’m not afraid of any one hearing what I’ve got to say. This is the
public street, this is, and if you so much as lay a hand on me----
Here, drop that! Help! Police!”

As I moved towards him, he sprang out of my reach, shouting in a
fashion which could not fail to attract attention. Indeed a man,
apparently a respectable artisan, who had passed us a few seconds
before, turned to look at us.

“What’s the matter there?”

Mr. Moore was quite at his ease.

“Nothing--at least, not yet there isn’t. But there will be soon, if he
so much as lays a finger on me.”

The man went on.

“You seem to be a pretty sort of idiot,” I observed.

He flicked the ash off his cigar with a jeering laugh.

“We can’t all be as wise as you, nor as big. Size goes for something,
you great overgrown monster. Barnum’s museum is where you ought to be,
not walking about the streets.”

I hardly knew what to make of him. If I had had him in a room I might
have taught him manners; out in the street he had me at an advantage.
He was plainly disposed to court, rather than avoid, a public scandal,
while I was anything but inclined to find myself an object of interest
to a curious crowd. While I hesitated he went on:

“A nice sort you seem to be, all round. A pretty lot of lies you
stuffed me with this morning--Adair and you together. On my honour!
Making out that Eddie Lawrence had had his throat cut, and the Lord
knows what! Setting me thinking that my sister’d cut it for him--my
goodness! What is your little game? I wish she had!” He burst into
boisterous laughter. “Bessie cut Eddie Lawrence’s throat!--that would
be an elegant joke! I only wish she’d done it! D’ye hear? I say I only
wish she’d done it! You can put that into your pipe and smoke it.”

He swaggered off up the street. I made no attempt to stop
him--crediting him with the wild utterances of a drink-fuddled brain.
I did wonder what errand had brought him to Philip Lawrence’s; for
that he had been going there when I interrupted him I felt sure. But
that, in his present condition, I should get no information on that
point, or any other, from him was evident.

I returned home. As soon as I entered the sitting-room, I became
conscious that some one was in the bedroom beyond.

“If that is Hume again----”

It would have gone hard with him, if it had been; but it was not. It
was Inspector Symonds and a colleague. It came upon me, with a rush of
sickening recollection, that I had actually gone out without putting
the room to rights, but with all my possessions lying about just as
Hume and I had left them. On the bed was still that irrepressible
cloak. Why had I not burnt the thing? Or torn it into rags? Or got rid
of it somehow? Anything would have been better than allowing it to
continue in existence. The two men were examining it minutely from top
to bottom.

“What--what are you doing here?”

There was a choking something in my throat. They had taken me by
surprise; and I was conscious that this was not a case in which
physical force could be advantageously employed.

“Our duty, Mr. Ferguson. We are acting within the limits of our
authority. I have a search-warrant in my pocket. Shall I read it to
you, sir?”

“What are you searching for in my room?”

“For something that will throw light upon the murder of your friend,
Mr. Edwin Lawrence. As that is an object for which you will, no doubt,
be willing to do anything which lies in your power, you will be glad
to hear that we have come upon what looks like a very important piece
of evidence. Whose cloak is this, Mr. Ferguson?”

“Cloak? What cloak? Oh, that! That’s my cousin’s.”

“Indeed. What is your cousin’s name?”

“Mary--Miss Mary Ferguson. She was here a few days ago, and, as her
nose bled very badly, she left her cloak behind.”

My wits were wool-gathering. It was the first invention I could think
of.

“And were these marks upon the cloak made by your cousin’s nose
bleeding?”

“Exactly.”

“She must have almost bled to death. Did a blood-vessel break?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“That is, I’m sure. She has suffered very badly from bleeding at the
nose her whole life long; some people do--as you are perhaps aware.”

“How long is it since she was your visitor?”

“Oh, some days. Quite a week--if not more.”

“Is that so? It’s odd that the blood should have continued in a liquid
state so long. Some of it is not dry yet.”

“Well, perhaps it wasn’t so long as that.”

“So I should imagine.”

“If you’ll give it to me I’ll pack it up and send it to her at once. I
meant to have done so before.”

“Let me have her address, and I will send it to her. Or, rather, I
will take it to her at once. That will save both time and trouble.”

“You are very good, Symonds, but I won’t put you to so much
inconvenience. I prefer to take it to her myself.”

“You are sure that your cousin’s name isn’t Moore--Miss Bessie Moore?”

“What do you mean? Are you presuming again?”

“Are you prepared to assert, Mr. Ferguson, that this cloak was not
worn by Miss Bessie Moore when, last night, she came out of Mr. Edwin
Lawrence’s room?”

“I’ll swear it.”

“You will have an opportunity of doing so in the witness-box. Though I
warn you to consider what are the pains and penalties of committing
perjury, because I shall bring trustworthy witnesses who will prove
not only that she wore this cloak, but that the fact of her wearing it
was well within your knowledge.”

He began to roll it up.

“You are not going to take it away, Symonds--my cousin’s property.”

“Your cousin’s property! Listen to me, Mr. Ferguson. I’m told that
you’ve lived a good deal abroad. I don’t know what may be the manners
and customs in those parts, but I can assure you that, at home, you
cannot do a more serious disservice to a person suspected of crime
than to resist, on his or her behalf, due process of law. And I may
add that, in the eyes of judge and jury, a prisoner is not assisted by
the discovery that a witness has been endeavouring to bolster up his
or her cause by swearing to a series of unmistakable falsehoods. I
know that Miss Bessie Moore was wearing a cloak when she went to see
Mr. Edwin Lawrence. Mrs. Peddar says that she had on nothing of the
kind when you hid her in her apartment. What has become of it? In the
interval, between her leaving Lawrence and going up to Mrs. Peddar,
she was in your room. I search your room. In it I discover the cloak
which Miss Moore has been described as wearing. You will do that lady
a very serious injury by endeavouring to persuade me, or anybody else,
that this garment is the property of a suppositious cousin, who never
existed except in your imagination.”

As he continued to speak in his measured, emotionless tones, I felt as
if something was being drawn tighter about my throat; something
against which it was vain to struggle. I endeavoured to collect my
thoughts. But, somehow, all at once, I had grown stupid; more stupid,
even, than I was wont to be. I could not get my ideas into proper
order. They eluded me. My brain was in confusion. I could not see what
was the wisest thing to do. I came to a desperate resolve, which I put
into execution with sufficient clumsiness.

“You’re on the wrong tack, Mr. Symonds.”

“I’ve not said what tack I am on.”

“You police are famous for your blunders. I’ll save you from making
another.”

“That’s kind.”

“I killed Edwin Lawrence.”

They looked at me, then at each other, smiling. The inspector’s
colleague gave a short, dry laugh.

“It’s a little too thin,” he said.

“I repeat that I killed Edwin Lawrence.”

The inspector gazed at me with twinkling eyes.

“What do you propose to gain by that?”

“Gain? Nothing; except, I suppose, the gallows. But I don’t care. Life
has no longer any charms for me, with this--this upon my soul. His
blood is on my hands. I admit it.”

“With a view, I presume, to getting his blood off the hands of
somebody else, eh?”

“What on earth do you mean? You seem to be some sort of
monomaniac--possessed with but one idea. I tell you that I am the
man’s murderer. You can take your prisoner. And there’s an end of it.”

“Hardly. What we want to know just now is, how you account for these
stains upon Miss Moore’s cloak.”

“I know nothing at all about it.”

“They are not the results of your cousin’s bleeding at the nose?”

“----you, Symonds!”

“Thank you, Mr. Ferguson. That’s scarcely a matter which is likely to
come within your province. You must take us for a pair of really
remarkable simpletons, Gray and I, to wish us to believe that you know
so much about the one thing and nothing at all about the other. It is
odd.”

“As you please. I have admitted my guilt If you decline to arrest me,
I certainly shouldn’t be the one to grumble.”

“You shouldn’t be, but it seems that you are. Tell us the story of
these stains. It may be that the explanation will make your guilt
clear. Then we’ll arrest you with the greatest pleasure.”

I thought about what Hume had said about the advisability of
concocting a plausible story which could hold water. I wished heartily
that I had availed myself of his assistance to frame one there and
then. I am one of the worst liars living. More than once, when the
situation could have been saved by a lie, I have made a mess of
things. I am without the knack which some men have; no one would
mistake a lie of mine for truth. I felt that the two officers were
watching me, with keenly observant eyes, incredulity written large all
over them. I was conscious that I must say something. If Hume had only
been there to prompt me! Bracing myself together, I made a plunge.

“I will tell you everything. I’ll keep back nothing. What would be the
use? You’d be sure to find out.”

“Quite so.”

“She saw me kill him. She tried to save him. She rushed forward, as he
fell back into her arms, so that his life’s blood dyed her cloak.”

“That was the way of it--as he fell back. From the position in which
he was found, the idea was that he fell forward.”

“Well, it might have been forward. I--I was hardly in a state of mind
to pay close attention to every detail.”

“With what did you kill him?”

“With--with a knife which I brought home with me from a tribe of
negroes on the West Coast of Africa.”

“Might I see the weapon?”

I had an armoury of such things, but was conscious that there was
nothing among them which could have been responsible for the injuries
which had been inflicted on Edwin Lawrence.

“I haven’t it. I took it out with me just now, and--threw it into the
river.”

“That’s unfortunate. Because, apart from anything else, it must have
been a truly extraordinary weapon--worth looking at, since the doctors
were under the impression that at least fifty knives were used, of
varying sizes.”

“My knife had several blades.”

“Is that so? All of the same length?”

“All lengths.”

“But fitted into one handle?”

“Yes; but it was a peculiar handle.”

“So I should imagine. I’m afraid, Mr. Ferguson, that you’ll have to
make a drawing of this knife of yours, in order to make the judge and
jury and the doctors understand what kind of article it was. When you
entered the room, was Miss Moore already there?”

“Yes; she was there on an errand of mercy.”

“Indeed. Did she stop the proceedings in order to tell you so?”

“I know.”

“I have already remarked that you seem to know a good deal about some
things and nothing at all about others. How long was it after your
entrance that the murder began?”

“I rushed at him instantly, without a word of warning.”

“Describe how the crime was committed--in detail.”

“He was standing with his back to me. I stabbed him before he had a
chance to turn; when he did turn, I stabbed him in the chest.”

“And then in the face?”

“Yes; and then in the face.”

“What was Miss Moore doing all this time?”

“She was taken by surprise. So soon as she understood what was
happening she rushed to the rescue.”

“I suppose, by then, you had stabbed him thirty or forty times. The
corpse is disfigured by hundreds of wounds.”

“I can’t say.”

“And, after the rescue, did you continue stabbing him?”

“I did.”

“And what did Miss Moore do--nothing?”

“She tried to prevent me--she did all that she could.”

“Struggled with you, for instance?”

“Yes.”

“Do you say that Miss Moore struggled with you?”

“Look here, Symonds, confound you, and confound your questions! Do you
know that I’m beginning to feel like killing you?”

“Steady! Keep a little farther off. You’re not the sort of man with
whom I should care to struggle; especially as now, for the first time,
I believe you. I have no doubt that, at the present moment, you feel
much more like killing me than you ever felt like killing Edwin
Lawrence. No, Mr. Ferguson, I’ve an inkling of what you’re driving at,
and I’m not sure that, policeman though I am, in a sort of a way I
don’t admire you. But you’re no hand at a game like this. You’re no
fictionist, it’s not your line; your plots don’t dovetail. We still
have to find out how these stains came upon the lady’s cloak.”

“Aren’t you--aren’t you going to arrest me?”

“I am not, at present. Perhaps, when you are in the witness-box, you
may succeed in inducing the judge to order your arrest; but, in that
case, I’m afraid that it will be for perjury. Come along, Gray. If I
were you, Mr. Ferguson, I’d let things take their course; they will,
however you may try to stop them. If the lady is innocent, it will be
made plain; if she is not, that also will be made plain; and, you may
take my word for it, that it’s just as well for every one concerned
that it should be.”

The Inspector went out of the room with the cloak rolled up under his
arm--I making no sort of effort to prevent him. The truth is that I
was conscious that I had succeeded in making an ass of myself, and in
nothing else, that the backbone had all gone out of me, and I felt as
limp as a rag.

And yet that imbecile old Morley had prated of my persuasive manner!




 CHAPTER XVIII.
 I AM CALLED

Had I had my way, that night, Miss Moore would have sought a place
of refuge, where she could have lain hidden till the cloud passed over
and her integrity was made clear. Anything, to my mind, was better
than that she should run even a momentary risk of a policeman’s
contaminating hands. But Hume would have none of it.

Some one knocked at the door, while I was sitting on the side of the
bed, wondering, since I had failed to do murder, if suicide was not
the next best thing. It was Hume. He gave me one of his swift, keen
glances as he came in.

“Anything fresh?”

“Man, I’ve made an idiot of myself--an idiot.”

“Ah! But what I said was. Is there anything fresh?”

I told him the story of my interview with Symonds. He kept on smiling
all the time, as if it had been a funny tale. When I had finished he
rubbed his chin.

“You’ve burned your boats, that’s clear. You’ll never hang for the
lady. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put that
murder story of yours together again. You’ve managed very well, my
dear Ferguson.”

I cared nothing for his sneers. Other thoughts were racking me.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s gone off to arrest her right away,
and all because of my--my cursed blundering.”

“I think not. The lady’s safe for to-night. The police don’t always
move so fast as you appear to think. They’ll know where to find her
when they want her.”

“That’s it! Hume, couldn’t--couldn’t she be induced to go where they
wouldn’t know where to find her?”

“I hope she’s not so foolish. To run away would be about equivalent to
pleading guilty. She’d have all England hot-foot after her. Better
stay and face the music. The inquest’s for to-morrow. As one of the
most important witnesses, you will be able to make the whole thing
clear, and establish her innocence in the eyes of all men.”

The inquest! I had never thought of it. And for to-morrow? The idea
came with a shock of surprise. That was what Symonds had meant by his
ironical allusions to my conduct in the witness-box. In my present
state of mind, with my muddled head, and stumbling tongue, an expert
heckler might goad me into saying anything--into hanging her with the
words out of my own mouth.

I had a wild notion of flying myself, so that there might be no risk
of doing her an injury by my inability to hold my own in a
tongue-match with the lawyers. But I remembered what she had said
about feeling safe when I was near; and I myself had a sort of
suspicion that, if the worst came to the worst, I still might do her
yeoman’s service. So, as I could not keep still at home and think,
instead of going farther from her I went closer to her. After I had
swallowed a hurried dinner I took a cab Bromptonwards, and hung about
Hailsham Road for hour after hour.

I passed and repassed the house. A light was burning in the window of
an upper room. I wondered if the room was hers. I would have given a
good deal for the courage to inquire, but my nervous system was
disorganised. I was as afraid of being seen as if I had been there for
an improper purpose.

When any one came into the street from either direction I quickened my
pace and almost bolted. Once, when some one raised a corner of a
blind, with the apparent intention of peeping out into the street, I
fairly took to my heels and ran.

On one point I derived some negative satisfaction--so far as I could
judge, the house was not being watched by the police. The lady was
free to come or go. I was the only person who was taking an obvious
interest in her proceedings.

Perhaps that was in some degree owing to the weather, which was bad,
even for London. There was a delightful fog, which, for some
inscrutable reason, was seemingly not at all affected by a cutting
east wind; and a filthy rain. I had on an overcoat; but was conscious
that I was not getting drier as the night wore on. What I was waiting
for I could not have told myself, until, towards midnight, a hansom
dashed into the street, in which, as it passed, I saw the face of Miss
Adair. I was after it like a flash, catching it just as it reached the
door of No. 22.

“Miss Adair!” I cried, as the lady was preparing to descend into the
mud and rain.

“Good gracious, Mr. Ferguson, is that you? Whatever are you doing here
at this time of night?”

“I--I thought I’d call and inquire how--how Miss Moore was getting
on.”

“Well, and have you called?”

“No, I--I thought I’d wait till you came home from the theatre
and--and ask you.”

From her post of vantage in the cab Miss Adair looked me up and down,
perceiving that I was neither so well groomed nor so dry as I might
have been.

“And, pray, how long have you been waiting for me to come home from
the theatre?”

“Oh, some--some few minutes.”

“A good few minutes, I should imagine. And where have you been
waiting?”

“Oh, I--I’ve been hanging about.”

“In the mud, I should say, from the look of you. You are a
disreputable object. So I cannot but hope that you’ve enjoyed your
vigil. I may tell you, for your satisfaction, that when I left home
Miss Moore was ill.”

“Ill! Not--not really ill?”

“Really ill. This time there’s not a doubt about it. She’s in bed. Dr.
Hume says that it’s the result of the breakdown from the overstrain
which might have been naturally expected.”

“Hume! Has Hume been here?”

“Certainly. And another medical man.”

“But--what did Hume want?”

“My good sir! Dr. Hume’s a doctor; and a very clever one.”

“Yes; but only in special cases. This sort of thing is not his line.”

“I think you are mistaken. I should say that everything was in his
line. Besides, he is a very old and a very intimate friend of Miss
Moore’s.”

“Oh--I--I wasn’t aware that he was quite--quite so intimate as that.”

I felt that the woman was regarding me out of the corner of her eye.
She knew that she was torturing me.

“Oh dear, yes. Not that I fancy that Bessie’s very fond of Dr. Hume.
Indeed, it’s rather the other way. It’s my belief that she can’t bear
the sight of the man. Though I don’t know why. He’s most charming--and
so clever. Don’t you like clever people?” No, I did not, I never did,
and never shall. “Should I ascertain how Bessie’s progressed since I
went out, or don’t you care to stay?”

“If--if you would let me know how she is!”

Letting herself in with a latchkey, she made inquiries of the maid who
appeared in the hall.

“How is Miss Moore?”

“I don’t think she’s quite so well, miss. I sent for Dr. Nockolds, and
I did think of sending for Dr. Hume.”

“Hume!” I cut in. “I shouldn’t send for Hume. The other man’s as good,
if not better.”

Miss Adair turned to me.

“But, my dear Mr. Ferguson, Dr. Hume is a most skilful practitioner.”

“Yes; but not--not in these sort of cases. I’m sure the other man’s
better. And, if you like, I’ll send in a man; I--I know a most
wonderful man.”

“And what did Dr. Nockolds say?”

“He seemed to think she was going on all right, only a little
feverish. But he sent in a nurse, who’s going to sit up with her
to-night.”

“She’ll be all right with the nurse, not a doubt of it. Good night,
Mr. Ferguson. So good of you to call.”

That woman showed me to the door without giving me a chance to slip a
word in edgeways. I went home in the cab which had brought her from
the theatre. Hume indeed! Why had I not been trained to be a doctor?
If there was a more miserable man in London that night than I was, I
should have liked to have seen him.

And on the morrow it was worse! They held the inquest, after the
agreeable English custom, in a public-house--the Bolt and Tun--the
sort of place no decent person would have entered in the ordinary way.
There, in a long room, with a sanded floor, the coroner sat with his
jury. The witnesses hung about as if they did not know what to do with
themselves. The police were very much in evidence. And a heterogeneous
collection of doubtful-looking men, women, and children represented
the general public.

The coroner was a man named Evanson--a Dr. Reginald Evanson. A small,
thin, sharp-faced man with sandy hair, who looked as if he drank. I am
very much mistaken if it was not only because he failed as a medical
practitioner that he got himself elected coroner. I disliked the
fellow directly I caught a glimpse of him; and I do not think that he
took an inordinate fancy to me. As for his jury, he and they were a
capital match; there was not one man among them to whom, on the
strength of his appearance, I would have lent a five-pound note.

They commenced proceedings by viewing the body. Edwin Lawrence still
lay on his own bed, so that they had a walk of a hundred yards or
more. It seemed as if they enjoyed the little excursion, for two or
three of them were sniggering and joking together when they returned;
I should not have been surprised to learn that they had refreshed
themselves with a glass of something at the bar, on the way upstairs.
Then evidence was called. George Atkins.

It was Atkins and I who had discovered the tragedy. They did not keep
him long. He said his say in a crisp, business-like manner, which I
only hoped that I might be able to imitate when my turn came. He told
how he had taken his morning cup of coffee to Lawrence’s bedroom door;
how he had failed to receive an answer; how he had brought my coffee
to me, telling me of his inability to make the man hear; how I had
gone along the balcony, looked through the window, called to him; how
we had entered the room together, and what we had seen lying on the
floor.

When Atkins had told them so much they let him go.

“Call John Ferguson.”

It was unnecessary. John Ferguson was waiting, close at hand,
completely at their service--or, at least, as much at their service as
he was ever likely to be.

I stepped up to the table.

“Large size in blokes, ain’t he?” whispered one idiot to another, as I
passed through the little crowd.

The other idiot chuckled. I could have hammered their heads together,
so sensitive was I at that moment to everything and anything, and so
calmly judicial was my frame of mind, in excellent fettle to cut a
proper figure on an occasion when everything--happiness, honour, life
itself--might hang upon a word!




 CHAPTER XIX.
 I LEAVE THE COURT

As for the coroner, he was prejudiced against me directly I took up
my stand at the table; he being one of those diminutive opuscula who
instinctively object to a man who is of a reasonable size. My height
has been against me more than once. It placed me at a disadvantage
then. There was not a creature present in the room who did not look
upon me as a sort of raree-show, and who was not prepared to enjoy the
spectacle of my being put to confusion. Nor had they long to wait for
the sort of pleasure they desired; I made a hash of things almost from
the start.

A little fellow, who had informed us that he had been instructed by
the Treasury, took me in hand. He might have been a cousin of the
coroner’s; he, too, had sandy hair and the same peevish countenance.
His questions at first were not particularly objectionable, but ere
long they became of a kind which, if I had had my way, I would have
been careful not to answer in any fashion save one. He had a trick of
holding his hands in front of him, fidgeting a piece of paper between
his fingers. His voice was, like himself, small and insignificant;
but, when he chose, it had a singularly penetrating quality, which,
for some reason, reminded me of the sound of sawing wood. He kept his
eyes fixed almost continually on my face, glancing hungrily from
feature to feature, as if desirous not to miss the movement of a
muscle. Altogether he was like some pertinacious terrier who worried,
not only in the way of business, but also for sport. I should like to
have taken him by the scruff of the neck and shaken him.

He wanted to know if Edwin Lawrence had been a friend of mine; how
long I had known him, what I knew about him, when I had seen him last.
I told him about the game of cards, but, somewhat to my surprise, he
made no allusion to my loss, nor the terms on which we parted.

And here began my blundering. I wished the Court to understand that,
at parting, we were on the worst possible terms, and that I was in
just the proper mood for committing murder. But Jordan--that was the
little terrier fellow--would have none of it. He told me to confine
myself to answering his questions; and that I would have an
opportunity of making any statement, on my own account, which the
Court might think fit to allow, when he had done with me. I wished to
make my statement then; but with him against me, and the coroner, and
an ass of a foreman, who said that the jury were unanimously of
opinion that I was wasting time, I never had a chance.

He had his way. Then began the real tug-of-war with his very next
question. He asked me if, after I had retired to rest, I had been
disturbed in the night. Then I saw a chance to score, after all. I
said I had, by a dream; but when I was about to tell them of that
mysterious vision, he stopped me.

“Never mind about the dream. Dreams are not evidence.”

Some of the audience tittered. I have not the faintest notion what at.
I should have liked to supply them with an adequate reason.

“But my dream is evidence--very much evidence. If you will let me tell
it you, it will throw more light----”

“Thank you. But were you disturbed by nothing beside a dream?--for
instance, by some one coming through your bedroom window?”

“I was not.”

“Mr. Ferguson, take care. Do you say that no one came through your
window?”

“I say that I was not disturbed by any one.”

“I see. You are particular about the form in which the question is
put. I will alter it. I ask you--did any one come through your bedroom
window after you had retired to rest?”

“I decline to answer. It’s no business of yours. I suppose I can have
what visitors I choose.”

“Do you suggest that the visit was intended for you--in your bedroom,
alone, at that hour of the night? Consider what your suggestion
implies.”

“I never said that any one came.”

“You as good as said so. But we will have it from you in another form.
Who was it, Mr. Ferguson, who came through your bedroom window?”

Beads of perspiration were already standing on my forehead.

“I have told you,” I shouted, “that I decline to answer!”

Jordan turned to the coroner.

“Perhaps you will allow me to explain, Mr. Coroner, that the police
are in possession of a body of evidence which tends to implicate a
particular person. This fact the witness is aware of and resents. He
has not only thrown obstacles in the way of the police, but has gone
so far as to assert his own guilt. That this assertion rests on no
basis of truth there can be no sort of doubt. Its only purpose can be
to throw dust in the eyes of the police; and, especially, to render
his own evidence ineligible. His own evidence is of capital
importance. And I ask your assistance, Mr. Coroner, in my endeavour to
prevent a miscarriage of justice, owing to Mr. Ferguson’s refusal to
answer any questions which I may put to him.”

“Certainly. Witness, you will answer any proper questions which are
put to you, at once, and without any beating about the bush.”

“I rather fancy that that’s a point on which I shall please myself.”

The coroner banged his hand upon the table.

“Don’t speak to me like that, sir, or you’ll find yourself in the
wrong box. If you don’t answer the questions which are put to you,
I’ll commit you for contempt of Court.”

“Commit.”

I should have liked to commit an assault upon the coroner. But he
thought proper to ignore my challenge, and addressed himself to Mr.
Jordan.

“Put your question again. I am amazed to find a person of the apparent
position of the witness behaving in so discreditable a manner.”

“Now, Mr. Ferguson. I ask you again: Did any one come through your
bedroom window after you had retired to rest?”

“And I say to you, Mr. Jordan, that you have my sympathy in the
position in which you find yourself. Don’t you think if I were to put
one or two questions to you, it might vary the monotony?”

“You hear, Mr. Coroner, what the witness says?”

“I do. And I regret to find that such conduct can be treated with
levity.” A titter had gone round the room. “If there is that sound
again, I will immediately have the court cleared. Witness, look at
me.”

“If you desire it, with the greatest pleasure. Though there doesn’t
seem to be much to look at.”

“How dare you speak to me like that?”

“No offence, my dear Mr. Coroner. A plain statement of a plain fact.”

“Have you been drinking, sir?”

“That is said with an insolent intention. Is it impossible for an
official person to be courteous?”

“Your behaviour is most extraordinary. You evidently cannot realise
the serious nature of the occasion which brings us here. Are you
aware, sir, that if you decline to answer the questions which are put
to you, I can commit you to prison for contempt of Court?”

“I am not aware of any reason why impertinent questions should be
answered under one set of circumstances rather than another.”

“Don’t argue with me. Will you answer the question which counsel has
put to you?”

“My good Mr. Coroner----”

“I commit you for contempt. Officer, arrest this man.”

“If the gentleman in question is wise enough to take my seriously
offered advice, he will not attempt to do anything so foolish.”

Hume, who was sitting opposite, rose and leaned towards me across the
table.

“Are you stark mad? What useful purpose do you propose to serve by
going to gaol? Or what good do you suppose you will do her by fumbling
with the questions? You will have to speak out sooner or later. Speak
out now! Tell the truth! That is the only way in which you can do her
a service.”

Jordan struck in; still twirling the scrap of paper into spirals with
his fingers:

“Might I ask you, Mr. Coroner, to request your officer to refrain for
a moment from carrying out your instructions? Perhaps Mr. Ferguson may
be disposed to listen to this gentleman’s wise and friendly counsel.
Don’t you think, sir, that you had better?”

I laughed.

“I do. I am prepared to answer any questions which you may put to me.”

“That is more promising. I assure you that I have no desire to do or
say anything to hurt your feelings. I believe I know what they are,
and I respect them. But I must do my duty and you must do yours; and I
do not think that you will hurt any one by doing it.”

“Don’t lecture me, man.”

“Now, tell me; did any one come through your bedroom window after you
had retired to rest?”

“No one.”

“That you swear.”

“Miss Bessie Moore did not come through your window?”

“Certainly not. How dare you drag in that lady’s name?”

“Was she in your rooms at all that night?”

“She was not.”

“Did you go up, between one and two in the morning, to tell the
housekeeper that she had come through your window?”

“I did not.”

“Did the housekeeper come down and find her in your room?”

“She did not.”

“Did Miss Bessie Moore spend the night in the housekeeper’s
apartments?”

“I can’t say.”

“Can’t--or won’t?”

“Can’t.”

“Are you aware that you have sworn to speak the truth?”

“I am.”

“Are you acquainted with the pains and penalties of perjury?”

“My good man, pray don’t, even by inference, attempt to measure
others’ ignorance by the standard of your own.”

“As you will. So long as we know that we are not dealing with one who
is wholly illiterate. Have you seen this cloak before, Mr. Ferguson?”

From a bag which Inspector Symonds produced from beneath the table he
took, as I had expected, the plum-coloured cloak.

“I have.”

“Where?”

“In my room. And on my cousin’s back.”

“On your cousin’s back? Not on Miss Moore’s?”

“Certainly not.”

“You have never seen Miss Moore wearing it?”

“Never.”

“To the best of your knowledge and belief is this not Miss Moore’s
cloak?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“That you swear?”

“You have already reminded me that I am on my oath.”

“It is necessary to keep that fact always before you, Mr. Ferguson.
Then if Miss Moore says that this cloak is hers she will be stating
what is false?”

“When Miss Moore makes such a claim it will be time to discuss it.
Don’t let us be suppositious.”

“Very well. I will not put to you any more questions, Mr. Ferguson, at
present; though don’t suppose for a moment that I have done with you.
I have to inform you, Mr. Coroner, that this witness has been uttering
a series of perjuries, well knowing them to be perjuries, for the
obvious purpose of defeating the ends of Justice. And I have to ask
that, at the very least, a watch be kept upon his movements.”

“He shall be detained.”

“Detained!”

I laughed. I buttoned my coat across my chest, and I walked out of the
room. The people made way to let me pass as if I had been the plague.
Possibly it was because they saw something in my appearance which they
did not altogether like. A constable stood at the entrance. I motioned
him, with my hand, to move on one side. He moved aside, I saw that
there was a key in the lock, on the outer side of the door. I had an
inspiration. It was a solidly constructed door, not one of your flimsy
constructions made of matchwood, but a good, honest piece of woodwork,
not to be easily forced from the inside. I drew it to, locked it, and,
slipping the key into my pocket, I walked down the stairs out into the
street.

The Court, for all I knew, continued sitting.




 CHAPTER XX.
 A JOURNEY TO NOWHERE

It was between three and four o’clock in the afternoon. Already the
lamps were lighted. The fog still hung over the city. From the
appearance of things it might have been night.

“To her!” I said to myself. I called a cab. “To Hailsham Road--the
Boltons!”

I examined my possessions. Time pressed. Return to Imperial Mansions
was out of the question. Of what crime I had been guilty I did not
know; that there would be a disposition to make me smart for it I felt
persuaded. I have lived in places where, as much as possible, a man
carries his valuables upon his person, for safety. The habit has clung
to me a little. As a rule I carry more money than, I believe, the
average Englishman is apt to do. I had in my letter-case over £100 in
notes, in my pockets nearly £20 in sovereigns; a sufficiency for my
immediate requirements. It was enough to take two people out of reach
of the storm.

As we entered Hailsham Road I saw that a man was standing at the
corner. Turning, as we passed, he closely scrutinised both the cab and
me. The maidservant answered my knock. Miss Moore was in--Miss Adair
out. Miss Moore was better, thank you. She would inquire if I could
see her.

She showed me into the sitting-room. A bright fire was blazing. The
apartment was redolent of a particular aroma, perceived of my
imagination, perhaps, rather than my senses. It was an aroma I loved.
I had never seen a room I liked so much. While I was considering that
it might turn out unfortunately for the gentleman at the corner,
should he show too pertinacious an interest in my movements, she came.
With a little flutter, and a little laugh--the sound of which was
good--she held out both her hands.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come. If you’d been much longer, I should have
come to you. Where have you been?”

“For some part of last night I was out in the street, watching your
window.”

“Out in the street! But--why didn’t you come in?”

“It was too late to pay a call. Besides--I did make inquiries, and
they told me you were in bed, and ill.”

“I was not very well. I believe I was light-headed. But I’m better
now; my own proper self--not the person you have known.”

“Indeed.”

“And--I know.” She drew back a little, looking down at her foot, which
peeped out from under the hem of her gown, as if it were a curious
thing--which it was, for beauty. “I know all that you did for me, how
good you were.”

“Then you know nothing.”

She looked up at me with a sudden flashing in her eyes.

“I know all. I know that I didn’t do it. Aren’t you glad?”

“I never supposed you had a finger in the matter.”

“That is strange. Appearances were all against me; you knew not what I
was, or anything at all. I came into your room in--in a most
disreputable way, with an impotent tale--which was none at all. My
cloak was wet with blood. You have it now.”

“I had it.”

“You must have suspected me of at least some sort of hand in it; it
would have been only natural.”

“To me it seems that it would have been most unnatural.”

“That’s odd. I believe I’m suspected by all sorts of people; by some
of the very worst. And you never doubted me at all?” She breathed a
little quickly as if she sighed. “I am glad. So long as you know that
it was not a murderess who came through your window like a thief, I do
not seem to care what others think, which is absurd. For I had no hand
in it, nor had you; nor had Mr. Lawrence’s brother.”

“But--who then?”

“That, as yet, I can’t quite see. There was something strange about
it; something like a conjuring trick, which I am not sure that I
understood, even at the time. It was all done by some dreadful
creature, the mere horror of whose presence drove me from my senses. I
can’t think what it can have been.”

When, stopping, she stood before me, with shining eyes; her lips
parted with a smile, so as to show the small white teeth within, I was
at a loss how to enter on the subject of my errand. So, as usual, I
blundered.

“Unfortunately, men are mostly fools, and blind.”

There my tongue stuck fast. She looked at me a little anxiously.

“How do you mean?”

“There are those of them who cannot see the noses on each other’s
faces.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s a fact. Some of them are idiots enough to believe that--that you
knew something about that scoundrel’s death.”

“I see.” Her face lightened as if she began to perceive my drift. “You
mean that they suspect me of having murdered him. That’s no news.”

“But I fear they go beyond suspicion.”

“Beyond suspicion? Do you mean that they can prove it?”

“Miss Moore! You are severe. I mean that--they may try to arrest you.”

“Arrest me! Arrest me!” She drew herself straight up, her small fists
clenched at her sides. “But they mustn’t arrest me. You mustn’t let
them.”

“I won’t.”

“How--how can you stop them?”

“I shall be only too glad to act as your guardian, if you care to try
a trip abroad until they perceive their own stupidity.”

“A trip abroad--with you.”

The suggestion which the words conveyed, as she pronounced them, had
not entered my thick skull. I was thunderstruck.

“Or--or I could stay behind; or come on by the next train.”

“I don’t see what good that would do me.”

“I’d take care that they didn’t lay their sacrilegious hands upon
you.”

“I don’t see how--if you weren’t there.”

I began to stamp about the room. I had forgotten that the fact of her
being a woman made a difference in all sorts of ways. The situation
was more complicated than I had allowed for.

“Miss Moore, I’m an idiot.”

“Yes?”

There was something in the way in which she laid emphasis on the note
of interrogation which robbed the word of its sting.

“But I’m not, in some respects, such an idiot as you might suppose.”

“Oh.”

This was said with a twinkle of laughter.

“Can you trust me?”

“With my life; with what is dearer.”

“Will you do as I tell you?”

“Implicitly.”

“Go upstairs, put your hat and coat on, and some things in a bag.”

“How many things? In what sized bag?”

“Enough to take you to Paris.”

“To Paris? Am I going to Paris? Oh, but I’m wanted at the theatre;
they’re clamouring for me.”

“Let them clamour. Will you be so kind as to do what I tell you?
Excuse me, Miss Moore, one moment! Do you mind my bringing a man in
here, and making him comfortable, till after we are gone?”

“Please explain.”

“Well, there’s a man in the street who, I believe, is watching the
house.”

“Is he going to try to arrest me? Has he a warrant in his pocket?”

“Nothing of the kind. Only he might try to follow us to see where we
went, and that wouldn’t be convenient.”

“Do you propose to hurt him?”

“Not a hair of his head! I promise you.”

“Are you going to try on him the effect of a little reasoning? You
certainly have, beyond other men, the persuasive manner. You might
induce him to see things in a proper light. If you think it necessary,
you can try.”

Her words reminded me of what old Morley had said. I thought the
sarcasm was a little hard. I winced.

“There is one other thing, Miss Moore. How many servants have you in
the house?”

“One at present. The cook is out.”

“Could you send that one out on an errand which would detain her, say,
an hour. We don’t want her to know that we left the house together--or
indeed anything.”

“You have an eye for details. I perceive that I’m entering on another
adventure. If you will take a stroll for a quarter of an hour, when
you return you will find her gone. I shall have my hat and coat on,
and some things in a bag.”

“Good. When you are ready, go out as softly as you can, without coming
in here, and without taking any notice of me at all. Leave your bag in
the passage; I’ll carry it. Go into the Fulham Road, and stroll
towards Walham Green. I’ll come to you as soon as I’m able.”

“You won’t hurt him?”

“I’ll not do him the slightest damage.”

I opened the door for her to leave the room. She passed upstairs; I
went out into the street. The man was still at the corner; he eyed me
intently as I passed. I paid no attention to him whatever. Strolling
leisurely, I crossed the Fulham Road, and, through some devious and
dirty by-streets, I gained the King’s Road. At an oilman’s shop I
purchased a dozen yards of stout clothes line. Looking at my watch, I
found that I had been absent nearly ten minutes. With the same
leisurely gait I retraced my steps. The man was still at his corner.

He was an out-size in policemen; all of five foot ten, well set up,
with a carriage which denoted muscle. Fortunately for my purpose, his
face did not point to a surplus of brains; he struck me as being as
stupid as I was. I marched straight up to him with an air of
brusqueness.

“You’re from the Yard. Why on earth didn’t you give me the tip when I
drove past you at first? You saw me staring at you hard enough. I’ve
been on a wild goose chase, all because of your stupidity; you shall
hear of it again!” He touched his hat. “I’ve just come from the court;
Inspector Symonds is detained; I’m on this job at present. Has anybody
come out of 22 since I did?”

“A young woman, sir.”

“A young woman. And you let her go?”

“It was only the servant.”

“Only the servant! Which way did she go.”

“She came out into the road here, and then got on to a Piccadilly
’bus. My instructions were to keep an eye on the young lady. I wasn’t
told anything about the servant.”

“Oh, weren’t you? Then a pretty mess you seem to be making. Come into
the house; I may want you. So keep your eyes and ears well open.”

I started off at a smart pace. He hesitated, then fell in at my side.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but do you mind telling me your name? I don’t
seem to remember your face.”

I strode on, unheeding.

“Now, in you come. And mind what I told you about keeping your eyes
and ears wide open.”

I pushed him through the gate. The lady’s wits had been on the alert;
she had left the door open.

“Hallo! the door’s open,” I cried. “That looks suspicious. I shouldn’t
be surprised if the bird had flown. Servant-girl you thought she was.
That’ll be a bit of all right for you. Come into this room.”

I led the way into the sitting-room. So soon as we were in, I began to
undo the packet of rope.

“Just look out of the window and see if that’s any one coming in.”

He seemed as if he could not quite make me out, or the whole
proceeding. But, after a moment’s delay, he did as he was told. He
went to the window. In buying the clothes line, I had tied a slip-knot
at one end, so as to form a rudimentary lasso. So soon as his back was
turned I had this over his head, tightening the knot: his arms were
pinioned to his sides. He struggled fiercely.

“It is a plant, is it?----if I didn’t think it was! So this is your
little game!”

“This is my little game; and, if you take my advice, my lad, you’ll
own you’re beaten. Because you are.”

He was. I ran the rope about him, pulling him off his feet with a
jerk. As he lay on the floor, I trussed him hand and foot. I have had
some experience in the handling of ropes, and can tie a knot or two. I
was prepared to guarantee that, unaided, he would never move again.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asked.

“Nothing, my good man. It’s surely more comfortable in here than out
in the street in such weather as this? The unfortunate part of the
business is that I am so anxious that you should not make a noise that
I’m afraid I shall have to take measures to keep you still.”

“You are not going to gag me?”

“I fear I must. But, to prove that I regret having to subject you to
inconvenience, I am going to slip two five-pound notes into the breast
pocket of your coat. When you’re untied you will be able to drink my
health with them.”

“Drink your health! My God, I will!”

“Just so. But not with so much strenuosity. Such language should not
be used.”

I had bought, at the same shop as the clothesline, some cotton
wadding. I thrust as large a piece of this into his mouth as it could
conveniently hold. Then, lifting him, I laid him carefully on the
floor in a corner of the room behind a couch. As the couch hid him,
and he could neither move nor utter a sound, it was possible that he
might remain there for some considerable time without his presence
being discovered.

I went out of the room. In the passage was a bag. Picking it up, I
passed out of the house. On the pavement, just outside the door, was
the lady. She was full of concern about the gentleman I had left
behind.

“Have you--have you hurt him?”

“Not in the least. I have simply tied him up, so as to prevent him
following us to see where we go.”

I did not think it was necessary to say anything about the gagging.

“Have you tied him very tight?”

“Not I.”

“Is he strong?”

“I never asked.”

“But you could see. How big is he?” I told her. We were moving towards
the Fulham Road. She repeated her little trick of drawing a hurried
breath. “I wish I were a strong man!”

“You are stronger than any man I ever knew.”

“How can you say such a thing? Am I as strong as you?”

I sighed--in earnest.

“Are you as strong as I?”

“You choose to talk in riddles. You know very well that in your hands
I should be like a baby. Where are you taking me?”

“I hardly know. I hope out of the shadow into the sunshine.”

“Suppose a policeman--see, there is one over the road--were to come up
now, and say I was his prisoner. What should you do?”

“I should explain that he was mistaken.”

“Explain!” She laughed. “But you can’t explain to every one, in the
same fashion, for ever.”

I was startled. Her question had a little startled me. To tell the
truth, I was wondering myself where I was taking her. The Paris boat
train did not start till nine. It was barely five. To stay in London
for another four hours would be to run a risk. By that time, too, a
watch might have been set upon the boat express.

We were walking towards the Brompton Road. I was just thinking of
calling a cab, being only restrained from doing so by the doubt as to
where I should tell him to drive us, when my attention was diverted by
an exclamation from the lady.

“Mr. Ferguson! Look! There’s Mr. Lawrence!”

I glanced in the direction she was pointing. In front, just far enough
off to cause the outlines to be a little obscured by the mist, was a
figure I seemed to recognise. I quickened my steps.

“Lawrence! Philip Lawrence!”

Although his back was turned to us, I could not but suspect that he
had seen us first. Because, scarcely had I spoken, than, darting into
the road, he sprang into a passing cab without troubling to stop it,
shouted some direction to the driver, which I could not catch, and in
an instant was away. To pursue and leave the lady there was out of the
question. I waited till she came up.

“Are you sure that it was Lawrence?” I inquired.

“Certain! I have only seen him once, but then under circumstances
which make it impossible that I ever could mistake him. There is a
portrait of the man upon my brain--life-size. Wherever and whenever I
see him I shall know that it is he.”

“It is odd that he should have run away.”

I was puzzled; not only by his flight, but by the rapidity with which
it had been performed.

“Yes, it is odd. What’s that?”

A note of fear was in her voice. She came closer to me. I saw that her
face had suddenly grown white. The hand which she had placed on my arm
was trembling.

Through the mist, out there in the Fulham Road, there came the sound
of a woman’s laughter. It was that curious laughter which I had heard
in Edwin Lawrence’s room--soft, low, musical; yet within it,
indefinable, yet not to be mistaken, a quality which was pregnant with
horrible suggestion.

At the sound, for some cause, my heart stood still.




 CHAPTER XXI.
 A CHECK AT THE START

We looked each other in the face.

“You heard it?” Her voice quavered.

“I heard something. It was only a woman’s laughter. She is somewhere
close at hand, but is hidden from us by the fog.”

“It was That which did it. Do you think I can be wrong? It is with Mr.
Lawrence. It is his shadow: it follows close behind him.”

She was shivering from head to foot. Her eyes were distended, her face
white; I was fearful of I knew not what. Hailing a passing hansom, I
had practically to lift her into it. She seemed to have all at once
grown helpless. I told the driver to take us to Victoria--fast. An
idea had occurred to me. The Ostend boat train left at half-past five.
We might be able to catch it. Anything was preferable to inaction. The
sooner we were out of London the better it would be. She was still
trembling as she sat beside me in the cab. I tried to calm her.

“You are too sensitive. It was only a trick of your imagination, you
let it run away with you. If you are not careful you will be ill; then
what shall I do?”

She came closer to me still.

“Save me! You will save me!”

It was like the pleading of a frightened child. The contact of her
person with mine set me shivering, too; it was as if I were thrilling
with a delicious pain.

“At present there is nothing from which to save you. When there is,
I’ll not be wanting, rest assured.”

“Put your arm about me.” I did as I was told, wondering if she were
mad, or I. “How is it that I only feel safe when I am close to
you--and the closer the safer?”

“It is because God is very good to me.”

“To you? God is good to you?”

“Has He not put it into your heart to feel safe with me?”

“You think so? Take your arm away. I am better now. I am not--not such
a coward. You think it is God who has put it into my heart to feel
safe with you. I wonder!”

“I am sure.”

“You are a strange man.”

“I pray that you may not always think so.”

“Have you--have you had many friends among women?”

“Never one; unless I may count you as a friend.”

“Oh yes, you may count me--as a friend. Do you care for women?”

“I did not know it until now.”

She laughed. I was glad to have lightened her mood.

“You are odd--you are really very quaint.” She leaned out of the cab.
“Where are we? I have not the least idea where you are taking me.”

“To Victoria; to try to catch the Ostend boat.”

“Ostend? Are we going there?”

“I think we’d better.”

“But---- Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, but I really was not
anticipating a trip to Ostend quite so soon. Just now you talked of
Paris.”

“And it may be Paris after all; only the Ostend boat goes first.”

“And time’s the essence of the matter. I see. Between this and the
departure of the Paris train I run a risk of being arrested. That is
to bring it very close.”

I was still, hardly knowing what to say. What she said was true; this
was a case in which, at any moment, truth might decline to be trifled
with. She, too, was silent. Leaning back in her own corner, as far as
possible from me, she looked forward into the fog. Starting for the
other end of the world at a moment’s notice was a commonplace event
with me. An unexpected run to Brussels was to her a thing so strange
as to be almost awful. I looked at my watch; called to the driver.

“Can’t you press on a little faster? We shall lose our train.”

“Why such hurry? Let us lose it.”

On that point we disagreed; I was not disposed to lose it. But I said
nothing. The man whipped up his horse. Presently he began to insinuate
his way into the station yard, which was blocked with vehicles. I saw
that for him to thread his way between them would be a work of time.
Moments were precious.

“Come!” I said. “Let’s get out. We shall reach the pavement quicker
than he will, and the train is already due to start.”

We descended into the road. Picking our steps between the horses’
heads, we gained the station. I tore to the booking-office, she,
laughing, close at my heels, as if the whole thing were a delightful
jest.

“Two firsts to Brussels!”

“Too late, sir; train’s just off.” As the clerk spoke a whistle
sounded. “There she goes. Platform’s closed; you won’t be able to
catch her.”

The lady’s face was alive with smiles.

“There! After all our hurry! Isn’t that annoying?”

She didn’t look as if she thought it was annoying in the least. Boys
were shouting out the editions of the evening papers. Placards were
displayed on the bookstall close at hand. I saw her glance at one,
which had already caught my own attention.

“‘Imperial Mansions Murder. Extraordinary Scene at the Coroner’s
Inquest.’ Has the inquest been held? And what has happened there? What
does it mean by ‘extraordinary scene’?”

I felt as if every one was on the point of calling out, “Here’s the
man who locked up the coroner’s court! Here’s the woman he’s spiriting
away!” The sudden sight of that placard had got on my nerves. I was
brusque, brutal.

“Bother the inquest! What we’ve got to think about’s that train.”

“Indeed? So you can be bad-tempered if you like, and civil too. I was
wondering if you were always a model of lamblike decorum.”

“I beg your pardon, but--the fact is, I’d made up my mind to catch
that train.”

“Had you? And you’d also made up your mind that I shouldn’t know what
was in the papers. You’re very considerate, Mr. Ferguson.”

I glanced round, startled. Her outspoken mention of my name took me
aback. No doubt all the world was talking of John Ferguson; looking
for him; wondering where he was. I did not want that crowd to learn
that he was in its midst. My appearance of discomfiture she seemed to
find amusing.

“Might I ask you just one question?”

“You are too hard on me; you may ask a thousand.”

“Did you propose to take me all the way to Ostend without giving me
anything to eat? Perhaps you’re not aware that four o’clock is the
actor’s dinner-hour. I’ve not had a morsel of food all day.”

“Miss Moore!”

Mine was the blunder then; I could have bitten my tongue off for
uttering the name. A man behind turned towards us as if he had been
struck by it--or I thought so. Had he known it, he was never so near
having his head twisted off his shoulders. Had he allowed a sign of
recognition to have escaped him, there would have been murder done.
But he was a mild-looking, grey-haired person, and the sight of the
expression with which I regarded him seemed to fill him with such
astonishment, to say nothing else, that he retreated precipitately
backwards, as if fearful that I was about to devour him then and
there. I stumbled on.

“I entreat your forgiveness, but I--I hadn’t the faintest notion you
were hungry.”

“No--you wouldn’t have.”

“Meaning that I am the sort of person who never does know anything?
You are right; I am. But where shall we go? I believe there’s some
sort of place in the station where we can get something to eat.”

“The nearest, please.”

“But--I’m afraid that’s horrid.”

“Don’t you know any place which isn’t horrid?”

Scarcely ever before had my constitutional stupidity been so much to
the front. The missing of the train, the discovery that I had actually
proposed to take my companion to Ostend foodless, and in a state
approaching to starvation, the fact that the paper-boys were
repeating, under my very nose, their parrot cry, “Extraordinary scene
at an inquest!”--these things, joined to the confusion around, seemed
to addle my brain. For the moment I could not think where I could take
her to get something decent to eat. Still doubtful, I was making for
the station restaurant when some one caught me by the arm. It was Mr.
Isaac Bernstein. He seemed to be half-beside himself with excitement;
he grasped me with a vigour which was perhaps unconscious.

“Have the goodness, Mr. Bernstein, to release my arm.”

He burst into voluble speech.

“This is more than I can stand, and I’m not going to have it. Don’t
touch me, or I’ll call for help. There are policemen close by and I’m
not without protection! Even a worm will turn, and now I’m going to;
so just you listen to what I’ve got to say.”

“Your affairs, Mr. Bernstein, have no interest for me. Did you hear me
ask you to release my arm?”

“It’s as much your affair as it is mine--every bit as much.” He waved
his umbrella. “There’s Lawrence there.”

“Who?”

“Lawrence! He’s been trying to do a bolt--to Ostend or some infernal
place or other, the other side of the world, for all I know--meaning
to dish me as he’s done the rest of you. But I was on to him. He’d
have been off in spite of me only he was drunk, or mad, or something,
and they wouldn’t have him in the train. Now he’s behaving like a
howling lunatic.” Releasing my arm, Mr. Bernstein took off his hat to
wipe his brow. “I believe he’s raving mad. That’s him! Did you ever
hear anything like the row he’s making?”

As a matter of fact, while the excited gentleman was speaking, I had
become conscious that something interesting was taking place on the
platform from which the boat-train had departed. The thing was
becoming more obvious every second. Apparently the railway officials
were taking more or less vigorous measures to induce somebody to quit
the station precincts. This person, who was the centre of a curious
and rapidly increasing crowd, was announcing his opinions on divers
subjects, and on the subject of railway men in particular, at the top
of his voice and in strident tones with which I seemed familiar.

A sudden premonition swept upon me that matters were rushing to a
head; that a few hours, a few minutes, even, would see the whole
mystery made clear. Though even then I had not an inkling of the form
which the explanation would take. As my eyes wandered I saw, peeping
at us from out of the crowd, my companion’s precious relative, Mr.
Thomas Moore. For some reason the young gentleman looked as if he were
half beside himself with fear; he was pasty white. When he perceived
that I had recognised him he slunk out of sight like a frightened cur.

I glanced at the lady to learn if she also had observed her brother.
From her bearing I judged not, though as I eyed her I understood that
she also had seen the signs of the times, the shadows which coming
events were casting before, and that she, too, realised that the hour,
the moment, was big with her fate and mine.




 CHAPTER XXII.
 A MIRACLE

The hustling throng came quickly forward. In its midst some one was
being propelled towards the entrance. Although he was shouting at the
top of his voice, he appeared to be offering no actual resistance, but
seemed rather to be regarding the proceedings as a joke. In spite of
the hubbub Mr. Bernstein’s accents reached my ear.

“Did you ever hear anything like him? Isn’t he a beauty? And that’s
the man who’s had I don’t know how much cash out of me--a hatful! And
that’s how he goes on!”

I was indifferent to Mr. Bernstein’s lamentations. As the crowd came
nearer I was beginning to ask myself if I was dreaming; if, again, I
was about to become the victim of a nightmare imagining. I turned to
Miss Moore.

“Hadn’t you--better go? Hadn’t I better--get you out of this?”

I was conscious that my voice was a little hoarse. Hers was clear and
resonant. Although she did not speak loudly, it seemed to ring above
the din.

“Go? Now? When it’s coming face to face, the light is breaking, I’m
beginning to see clear, and it’s my call? No; now I’ll stay and play
the scene right through until the curtain drops. It was God who made
us miss that train.”

The crowd was drawing very close. Was I asleep or waking? Were my eyes
playing tricks, my senses leaving me? What suddenly made the world
seem to spin round and round? Who was it in the midst of the
people--the man they were hustling--who raved and screamed? Was he a
creature born of delirium, or a thing of flesh and blood?

It was from the girl at my side that recognition first came.

“It’s he!” she cried. “It’s he!”

It was he--the wretch who had set us all by the ears; who had fooled
and duped us; who had played upon us, as a last stroke, a trick whose
nature, even yet, I did not understand. I strode into the crowd.

“Let me pass! Make way for me!”

They made way. It was well for them they did; the strength of a dozen
Samsons was that moment in my arms. I planted myself in front of him.

“How is it that you’ve come back--from the gates of hell?”

“Ferguson! It’s you!” He broke into a peal of laughter, which spoke of
pain, not pleasure. “But I’ve not come back! They’re still stoking the
fires!” He threw out his arms as if referring to the jeering mob,
which pressed upon us. “Here are the attendant demons--can’t you see
them?”

I continued standing still, regarding him.

“It is Edwin Lawrence, as I live. Edwin--not Philip.”

“Yes; not Philip--Edwin!” He laughed again. “Would you like to see the
strawberry mark? It’s there.”

“What is this game in which you have been taking a hand?”

“It’s a game of my own invention--and hers!” He made an upward
movement with his hand. “It was from her the inspiration came. She
named the stakes, framed the rules, started the game, watched the
play--and with both eyes she’s watched it ever since. Those eyes of
hers! They never sleep, and never blink or wink, but watch, watch,
watch all the time. They’ve watched me ever since the game began.
They’re watching now! She haunts and hounds me--into the train and out
of it. She’s here now--enjoying the joke. Hark! Can’t you hear her?”
He stopped to listen. I heard nothing out of the common, though it
seemed he did. “That’s her laughter!” He broke into discordant
merriment. “I play the part of Echo. She has me, body, soul, and
spirit; and she thinks it such a jest!”

He spoke as men do in fevers. I could see that there were some about
us who set him down as mad. There were those who jeered, as fools will
at the sight of a man’s anguish, when, in the abandonment of his
shame, he trails his soul in the dust. I had seen persons in his case
before. He was not mad, as yet, but on the border line, where men
fight with demons. He had been drinking, to drive them back; but they
had come the more, threatening, on every hand, to shut him in for
ever. He knew what it was they threatened. It was the anguish of the
knowledge which caused the sweat to stand in beads upon his brow.

The railway officials, I fancy, took it to be a case of incipient
delirium tremens. A person in authority addressed himself to me.

“Are you a friend of this gentleman’s, sir?”

“I know him well.”

“Are you willing to undertake the charge of him? You see he’s not in a
fit state to go about alone.”

“I’ll take charge of him.”

“Then you’ll be so good as to remove him from the station at once.
He’s already given us more than sufficient trouble.”

Lawrence interposed with what he intended to be an assumption of the
grand manner.

“My good Mr. Railway-porter, or whatever you may be, I will remove
myself from your objectionable station without any hint from you. My
destination was Ostend, and is now Pimlico. This is an acquaintance of
mine who owes me £1880; but I don’t require him to take charge of me.
There already is somebody who does that. Can’t you hear her? That’s
her laughing.”

“Come,” I said. “Let’s get into a cab.”

“Thank you, I prefer walking. Nothing like exercise when you are
liverish. Are you alone?”

Miss Moore came through the crowd.

“No; I am with him.”

He stared at her as if in doubt; then with sudden recognition--

“Ah! It is the sister of the brother--the affectionate relative of our
dear Tom--the beautiful Miss Moore! It is like a scene out of one of
the plays in which you are the bright, particular star. The ghosts are
gathering round. You were there; you saw her?”

“Who?”

“The Goddess!”

“Was it--a Goddess?”

“That’s a demon!”

“What do you mean?” She took me by the arm. “Ask him what he means.”

Lawrence answered.

“It’s not a thing the meaning of which can be clarified by words.
Come, and you shall see; come together--Mr. Ferguson and you.”

She looked at me, inquiry in her eyes. I questioned him.

“Where do you propose to take us?”

“To a little place of mine, where the Goddess is.”

“What is this stuff about the Goddess?”

“Come, and you shall see.”

I glanced at her.

“Let’s go,” she said.

He caught her words.

“There speaks the lady who would learn; the woman possessed of the
spirit of inquiry.”

I repeated my former suggestion.

“Let’s get into a cab.”

But he declined.

“No; I’ll have none of your cabs, I’ll walk. I’m cribb’d, cabined, and
confined out in the open; in a cab I’d stifle. There’s a hand upon my
heart, a grip upon my throat, a weight upon my head; they make it hard
to breathe. I’ll be in close quarters soon enough; I’ll keep out of
them as long as I can.”

I turned to the officials. “Can’t you keep these people back? I don’t
want to have them following us through the streets. The man’s not
drunk, he’s ill.”

“I should get him into a cab.”

Lawrence, hearing what the fellow said, rushed at him in a fit of
maniacal fury, repeating, in a crescendo scale--

“You’d get me into a cab! You’d get me into a cab! You’d get me into a
cab! I’d kill you first.” The man shrank back as if fearful that his
last hour had come.

We went out of the station, a motley crowd--Lawrence with Miss Moore,
and me close at his heels; behind, before, on either side, a
miscellaneous assemblage of fools. I would have prevented her from
coming had I had my way. I told her so at starting; but she whispered
in my ear--

“I’m not afraid. Are you?”

“I am afraid for you--of these blackguards; of the mood he’s in; of
where he’s taking us; of what may happen. I don’t know what devil’s
trick it is he has been playing, but I’m sure it is a devil’s trick,
and there may be worse to come.”

“I’m safe with you.”

“I doubt it.”

“But I am sure. The light is coming; I’d like to see the brightness of
the day, for mine honour’s sake, which I thought might be a
consideration, perhaps, with you. Still, I’m under orders. If you bid
me I will go. But--mayn’t I come?”

I could deny her nothing which she asked in such a tone, though it
were an apple out of Eden. But I was gruff.

“Then take my arm.”

“I’d like to.”

I know I was a fool, and should have forbidden her to go with us, nor
have allowed her, wheedle as she might, to have run the risk of what
might be to come; but when I felt her little hand upon my arm, I would
not have had her take it off again, not--not for a great deal.

When we had gone a little way from the station, Mr. Bernstein,
corkscrewing his way through the crowd, reached Lawrence’s side.
Apparently, although he had made an effort to screw his courage to the
sticking point, he was still not quite satisfied as to the sort of
reception which he might receive; he spoke with such an air of
deprecation.

“Now, Ted, dear boy, don’t be shirty, it’s only me. Do take my
advice--be careful! Don’t go too far! Be reasonable, and I’ll be the
best friend you ever had, as I always have been; only--do pull up
before it’s too late!”

Lawrence, standing still, addressed himself to the crowd.

“Gentlemen--and ladies!--because I believe there are some ladies among
you--real ladies!--allow me to introduce to you Mr. Isaac Bernstein,
usurer, Jew, who makes a speciality of dealing in forged bills. He
keeps a school for forgers, where young penmen are trained in the
delicate arts of imitating other people’s signatures. He’s been the
cause of many a good man’s being sent to gaol; where, one day, as sure
as he’s alive, he’ll go to join them.”

Mr. Bernstein stammered and stuttered.

“Don’t--don’t talk to me like that! The--the man’s stark mad!”

“Not yet. Still sane enough to make the world acquainted with Isaac
Bernstein, trafficker in forgeries.”

With his open palm he struck the Jew a resounding blow on either
cheek. The people roared with laughter. I turned to the lady.

“You see? I must go to him. I shall have to leave you.”

“We will go together.”

She kept close to my side as I went forward. I expected to see
Lawrence repeat his assault. Bernstein stood looking at him,
motionless, gasping for breath, as if he were on the verge of an
apoplectic fit. Taking him by the shoulder I sent him spinning off the
pavement.

“Leave him alone. The fellow will get his deserts elsewhere.”

Lawrence clapped his hands like a child.

“Bravo! Twirl him round--roll him in the mud! She enjoys it; can’t you
hear how she’s laughing?”

He raised his hand in an attitude of attention.

“I can hear nothing.”

“But I can.” Miss Moore spoke from behind my shoulder. “I can hear
It.”

“What do you mean?”

“It which was present in the room; It which did it all; the sound
which we heard in the Fulham Road just now. Listen! Can’t you hear it,
too?”

It might have been my imagination--probably was--but, as she spoke, I
certainly did think that I recognised, as if it issued from the lips
of some one who was within reach of where we stood, the woman’s
laughter which had in it so singular and disagreeable a quality. It
had on me a most uncomfortable effect. I returned to Lawrence, fearful
lest, if I was not careful, the proceedings might take a shape in
which I might relish them less even than I did at present.

“Come. Let’s be moving.”

“With pleasure. Life is movement, and exercise is the thing for the
liver.”

“What is the address of the place to which you are taking us?”

He laid his finger against his nose.

“That’s a secret which I wouldn’t divulge for worlds. There’s a lady
there--a goddess! And a demon! Would you have me tell all the world
where she’s to be found, as if she were a person of no reputation.
She’s with me all the time; she never leaves me for a moment alone;
and yet, all the while, she waits for me at home. That’s to have a
familiar in attendance, if you please.”

I made no reply. That his words had meaning, and were not the mere
ravings which they seemed, I did not doubt. I was asking myself what
was the solution of the problem to which they pointed, and was still
obliged to own that I had no notion. I had, also, my attention partly
occupied by my efforts to keep the rabble from a too close attendance
on the lady, whose little hand again caressed my arm.

Lawrence was swinging along at a good round pace, his hat a little at
the back of his head; his eyes, lips, every muscle of his face were in
constant motion. His arms were as if they had been hung on wires,
which continually thrust them this way and that. He was not for a
moment still. If not speaking aloud, he muttered to himself. Presently
he began upon a theme which I would have thanked him to have avoided.

“So, Ferguson, you’re a humorist--practical and actual. I’ve been
reading the news--still sane enough to read the papers--how you locked
the coroner in his court. I’d have given one of Bernstein’s forged
bills to have been there to see, though it was on me that they were
sitting. I thought I never should have done laughing. And she--the
Goddess--she’s laughing still.”

The lady put a question.

“What’s that he’s saying?”

“He’s telling about some nonsense which he saw in the papers.”

Lawrence interposed.

“Nonsense, he calls it! And excellent nonsense, too! Haven’t you
heard? Has no one told you? Don’t you know? Charming sister of my dear
friend Tom, to-day the coroner’s been sitting on my corpse--as I live,
upon my corpse! Ferguson’s been there as witness. They wanted him to
say, it seems, that you had killed me--yes, you, with your own two
small hands; but he wouldn’t. He said he’d see them--warmer first; as
warm as I am now. I can’t think where, at this time of the year, the
heat can come from. I’m on fire inside and out. So they talked of
sending him to gaol.

“But, bless their simple souls, they didn’t know their man; how that
he was a fellow of infinite jest. For when they talked of locking him
up, he locked them up instead; marched straight out, turned the key in
the lock, with them on the other side of the door--coroner and jury,
counsel and witnesses, audience and policeman--the whole noble,
gallant company. And so he left them, sitting on my corpse.”

As might have been expected, the rabble, which still hung round us
like a fringe, hearing what he said, caught something of his meaning.
They bandied it from mouth to mouth.

“That’s Ferguson, that there tall bloke. He’s the cove as locked the
coroner up this afternoon, Imperial Mansions murder case. Didn’t you
hear the other bloke a-saying so? No lies! I tell you it is!”

While the gutter-snipes wrangled, playing fast and loose with my
name--with my reputation, too--the lady whispered in my ear. Despite
the noise they made I heard her plain.

“So that’s why you came to fetch me? Now I understand; the secret’s
out. It’s another service you have done me! Aren’t you afraid that the
weight of obligation will be more than I can carry? Yet you needn’t
fear! They’re the kind of debts I don’t at all mind owing--you, since
one day I hope to pay them every one.”

“You exaggerate. And Lawrence is a fool.”

“Yes. So are we all fools; perhaps that’s why some of us are wise.”

I liked to hear her voice; to feel her hand upon my arm. Yet, every
moment, my concern was getting greater. The crowd was growing, both in
numbers and in impudence. Any second they might make an ugly rush,
then there would be trouble; and that was not a scene in which I
should wish the lady to play a part. Lawrence was marching on as if he
meant to march for ever. I began seriously to ask myself if he was not
playing us still another of his tricks; if he was not leading us he
himself did not know where. On a sudden, he determined the question by
stopping before a building which, outwardly, was more like a warehouse
than a private residence.

“At last,” he cried, “we are arrived. The Goddess waits for us
within.”

“Is this your place?”

“It is--and hers. _Enter omnes!_”

He threw open the door as if he were offering the whole crowd the
freedom of the premises. I placed myself in front of it.

“I’m hanged if it shall be _enter omnes!_ In you go.” I thrust him in.
“Now you and I together!”

The lady and I were across the threshold. I was about to slam the door
in the face of the rabble, when some one came hurrying through the
crowd. A voice exclaimed--

“Stop that! Don’t shut that door! Let me in!”

It was Inspector Symonds; with, as it seemed, a friend or two.




 CHAPTER XXIII.
 IN THE PASSAGE

The inspector I dragged in by the collar of his coat. I slammed the
door in the faces of his friends, keeping my foot against it while I
shot the bolts.

“This won’t do! I’m not going to stand any more of your nonsense! You
let my men in!”

There was a flaming gas-bracket in the passage. By its flare I eyed
the inspector.

“You be so good as to understand, Mr. Symonds, that I’m going to have
no more of your nonsense.” He put his hand up to his mouth--a whistle
between his fingers. Gripping his wrist, I pinned him by the throat
against the wall. “If you are not careful, you’ll get hurt.”

He gasped out, between his clenched teeth, “I’ll make you pay for
this! You let my men in!”

“I’ll not let your men in--until you and I have had an explanation.”

The lady interposed. “Don’t hurt him!”

“I’ll not hurt him--unless he compels me. Look here, Symonds, there’s
been a mystification--a hideous blunder.”

“I don’t want to have anything to say to you. You open that door!”

His hands returned to his lips. Again I had to pin him against the
wall; this time I wrenched the whistle from between his fingers.

“If you give any sort of signal, you’ll be sorry.”

“You’ve broken my wrist!”

“I haven’t; but I will if you don’t look out. I tell you, man, that
we’ve been on the wrong scent; you and I, and all of us. It isn’t
Edwin Lawrence who’s been murdered; he isn’t even dead.”

“Don’t tell your tales to me.”

“Tales! I tell you tales! Here’s Mr. Edwin Lawrence to tell his own.”

Lawrence was standing a few steps farther down the passage, an
apparently interested spectator of what had been taking place. Symonds
turned to him.

“This man? Who is this man?”

Lawrence thrust his thumbs into his waistcoat armholes.

“I’m the corpse on whom the coroner’s been sitting.”

“Don’t play your mountebank tricks with me, sir.”

“I’m the murdered man.”

“Indeed? And pray what may be your name?”

“Edwin Lawrence--at your service, entirely to command. Though I may
mention that that’s only a form of words; since, at present, I’m
really, and actually, in the service of another--a lady. Bound to her
hand and foot by a tie there’s no dissolving.”

Symonds perceived that in his manner, to say the least, there was
something curious. As he looked at me I endeavoured to give him the
assurance which I saw that he required.

“It is Mr. Edwin Lawrence, you may safely take my word for it. The
lady can confirm what I say.”

Which the lady did upon the instant. The inspector was still, plainly,
in a state of uncertainty; which, under the circumstances, was
scarcely strange.

“I don’t know if this is a trick which you have got up between you,
and which you think you can play off on me; but, anyhow, who do you
say the dead man is?”

Lawrence chose to take the question as addressed to him. He chuckled;
there was something in the chuckle which suggested the maniac more
vividly than anything which had gone before.

“Who’s the dead man? Ah! there’s the puzzle--and the joke! The dead
man must be me. It’s in the papers--in people’s mouths--it’s the talk
of the town. The police are searching for the wretch that slew me--the
coroner and his jury have viewed my body. It’s plain the dead man must
be me. And yet, although it’s very odd, he isn’t. It’s the rarest jest
that ever yet was played--and all hers.” He pointed with his thumb
along the passage. “It’s all her doing, conception and execution,
both. And how she has enjoyed it! Ever since she has done nothing else
but laugh. Can’t you hear her? She’s laughing now!”

There did seem to come, through the door which was at the end of the
passage, the sound of a woman’s laughter. We all heard it. The lady
drew closer to me; I gritted my teeth; the inspector, with whom, as
yet, it had no uncomfortable associations, treated it as though it
were nothing out of the way.

“Who’s it you’ve got in there?”

Lawrence raised his hands as if they had been notes of exclamation.

“A goddess! Such an one!--a pearl of the pantheon! A demon!--out of
the very heart of hell!” He fingered his shirt-collar as if it were
tight about his neck. “That’s why she relished her humorous conception
more than I have. The qualities which go to the complete enjoyment of
the jokes she plays, I lack. The laughter she compels has
characteristics which I do not find altogether to my taste. It gets
upon my brain; steals my sleep; nips my heart; fills the world
with--faces; grinning faces, all of them--like his. And so I’m
resolved to tell the joke, and I promise that it shan’t be spoilt in
telling.” This with a smile upon his lips, a something elusive in his
eyes, which, to my mind, again betrayed the lunatic. He threw out his
arms with a burst of sudden wildness. “Let them all come in--the whole
street--the city-ful! So that as many as may be may be gathered
together for the enjoyment of the joke!”

Symonds and I exchanged glances. I spoke to him in an undertone.

“If you take my advice, you will listen to what he has to say. Before
he’s finished, the whole story will have come out.”

All the time there had been knockings at the door. Now some one
without made himself prominent above the others. A shout came through
the panels.

“Symonds! Is that you in there? Shall we break down the door?”

The voice was Hume’s. I proffered a suggestion to the inspector.

“There is no reason why Dr. Hume should not come in. He will be able
to resolve your doubts as to whether or not this is Mr. Edwin
Lawrence. Your men I should advise you to keep outside. They will be
close at hand if they are wanted.”

He regarded me askance, evidently still by no means sure as to the
nature of the part which I might be playing.

“You are a curious person, Mr. Ferguson. You have your own ideas of
the way in which justice is administered in England. However, you
shall have your own way. Let Dr. Hume come in. My men can wait outside
till they are wanted.”

I unbolted the door, keeping my foot against it, to guard against a
sudden rush. The crowd was still in waiting. It had evidently grown
larger. As the people saw that the door was being opened, there were
cries and exclamations. Hume was standing just outside. It seemed that
it had been his intention to make a dart within; but the spectacle of
me in the doorway caused him to hesitate. By him were the inspector’s
friends. Misunderstanding the situation, they made an effort to force
the door wider open. It was all I could do to hold it against them.

“Hume, you can come in. Inspector Symonds, give your men their
instructions.”

“Gray, are you there?”

“Yes, sir! Do you want us?”

“Not just now. I may do shortly; keep where you are. Send along for
some one to keep those people moving.”

“Very good, sir. Are you all right in there?”

“For the present I am. Keep a sharp look-out. If you hear me give the
word, come in at once--if you have to break down the door to do it.”

“Right, sir!”

I rebolted the door, boos and groans coming from the crowd as they
perceived themselves being shut out from the sight of anything which
there might be to see. Hume had entered. He was looking about him as
if the position of affairs were beyond his comprehension.

“Symonds, what does all this mean? Ferguson, what new madness have you
been up to? Miss Moore, you here! This is no place for you!”

“I think it is.”

“I say it’s not. You ought to be in bed. Who gave you permission to
leave your room?”

“I gave myself permission, thank you. I am quite able to take care of
myself. And, if I’m not, here’s Mr. Ferguson.”

“Mr. Ferguson! Mr. Ferguson stands in need of some one to take care of
him.” He turned to me. “If you’ve had a hand in bringing Miss Moore
here, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, if you’re capable of shame,
which I’m beginning to doubt. Surely your own sense of decency,
embryonic though it may be, ought to have told you that it is no place
for her. What is this den which you have brought her to?”

“Here is some one who can tell you better than I. Ask him, not me.”

Lawrence broke into laughter.

“That’s it, Ferguson. Hume, ask the corpse.”

Hume stared at the speaker, as if he had been a spectre; which,
apparently, he was more than half disposed to believe that he was.

“Lawrence! Edwin Lawrence! Is it a living man, some demoniacal
likeness, or is it a ghost? My God! is it a ghost?”

Again Lawrence laughed. He went closer to the bewildered doctor; his
eyes flaming, his manner growing wilder as he continued speaking.

“A ghost, Hume, write it down a ghost! I wonder if I could cheat
myself into believing I’m a ghost? Hume, you’re an authority on
madness. Look at me; do you think I’m mad? It’s a question I’ve been
putting to myself since--she began to be humorous. I see things--I
hear things--like the men who’ve been--thirsty. There’s a face which
looks into mine--a face all cut and slashed and sliced into ribbons;
and, as the blood streams down the cheek-bones, which are laid all
bare, its teeth grin at me, inside the torn and broken jaws, and it
says, ‘After all I’ve done, this is the end!’ I strike at it, with
both my fists, where the eyeballs ought to be, but I can’t knock it
away; it won’t go, it keeps on being there. I can’t sleep, though I’d
give all the world to. I’m afraid to try, because, when I shut my
eyes, I see it plainer. The blood gets on my hands; the taste gets
into my mouth; the idiot words get on my brain, ‘After all I’ve done,
this is the end!’ I can’t get away from the face and the words;
whatever I do, wherever I go, they’re there. I seem to carry them with
me. I’ve been drinking, but I can’t drink enough to shut them out; I
can’t get drunk. And, Hume, do you think I’m mad? I hope I am. For
while I’m being tortured she laughs; she keeps laughing all the time.
It’s her notion of a jest. I hope that it’s but a madman’s fancy, what
I see and hear; and that, when I get my reason back again, they’ll
go--the face and the words. You’re a scientific man. Tell me if I’m
mad.”

Hume turned towards me. His countenance was pasty-hued.

“What devil’s trick is this?”

Lawrence answered, in his own fashion, as if the question had been
addressed to him.

“That’s what it is--a devil’s trick! Hers! The Goddess’s! She’s a
demon! I’ll--I’ll tell you how it was done. She’s got me--by the
throat; bought me--body and soul. But I don’t care, I’ll be even. She
shan’t do all the scoring; I will play a hand, although, directly
afterwards, she drags me down to hell with her. Let her drag! I’m in
hell already. It can’t be worse--where she has sprung from.”

Taking Hume by the shoulder with one hand, with the other he pointed
to the door which was at the end of the passage. He was dreadful to
look at. As he himself said, he already looked as if he were suffering
the torments of the damned.

“She’s in there--behind that door. But although she is in there she’s
with me here. She’s always with me, wherever I am; she, the face, and
the words. You think I’m romancing, passing off on you the coinage of
a madman’s brain. I would it were so. I wish that they were lies of my
own invention, a maniac’s imaginings. Come with me; judge for
yourself. You shall see her. I will show you how the devil’s trick was
done.”

He led the way along the passage. We followed. I know not what
thoughts were in the minds of the others. I do know that I myself had
never before been so conscious of a sense of discomfort. The lady
slipped her hand into mine. It was cold. Her fingers trembled. Even
then I would have stayed her from seeing what we were to see if I
could; but I could not. It was as if we were being borne onward
together in a dream. All the while I had a suspicion that, of us all,
Inspector Symonds was most at his ease, while it seemed to me that
Hume carried himself like a man who moved to execution.




 CHAPTER XXIV.
 IN THE ROOM

A large, bare, barn-like room. The walls were colour-washed; as seen
by gaslight, an uncertain shade of grey. The floor was bare. At one
end was a wooden daïs. This, and a large skylight overhead, suggested
that the apartment had been intended for a studio. Artistic properties
there were none. The furniture was scanty. In one corner was a camp
bedstead, the bedclothes in disorder. It had evidently not been made
since it was slept in. There were two small tables, one at the side
against the wall, the other in the centre of the room. Bottles and
glasses were on both. Bottles, indeed, were everywhere; designed, too,
to contain all sorts of liquids--wines, spirits, beers. Champagne
appeared to have been drunk by the gallon. On the floor, in the
corner, opposite the bedstead, were at least seven or eight dozen
unopened bottles, of all sizes, sorts, and shapes. Three or four
chairs, of incongruous design, completed the equipment of the room;
with the exception, that is, of a tall screen covered with crimson
silk which stood upon the daïs. This screen was the first object
which caught the eye on entering. One wondered if an artist’s model
were concealed behind.

Lawrence placed his finger against his lips as he held the door open
for us to enter.

“Ssh! She’s there, behind the screen! Listen! Can’t you hear her
laughing?”

This time I, for one, heard nothing. There was not a sound. And, since
every sense was at the acutest tension, had there been, it would
scarcely have escaped my notice. Scarcely were we all in, than a door
on the opposite side of the room was opened, gingerly, and seemingly
with hesitation, as if the opener was by no means sure of his welcome.
Through it came the pertinacious Mr. Bernstein, and, of all persons,
young Tom Moore. At the sight of her brother the lady shrank closer to
my side. The inspector appeared to regard the advent of the newcomers
with suspicion, as though doubtful lest there were more to follow.

“Who are these men? Where do they come from?”

Lawrence explained.

“Inspector Symonds, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Isaac
Bernstein--dealer in forged bills and patron of penmen. Surely you
have heard of Bernstein.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard of Bernstein. So you are Mr. Isaac Bernstein.
Who’s the other man?”

“The other man is”--this with a glance towards the lady--“merely a
thief.”

“I’m no thief! I’ll let you know I’m not to be called
thief--especially by you!”

Young Moore’s disclaimer was half whine, half snarl. Bernstein took up
his tale.

“Mr. Symonds, I’m glad to meet you, sir. Our--our friend here is fond
of his joke. You mustn’t take him seriously. It--it’s his way to say
things which he doesn’t mean. I just stepped in to say a word to him
in private--just one word; so I hope you’ll forgive me if I seem to be
intruding. Lawrence, I--I came with our young friend here along the
little back passage, which the models used to use, because I--I wanted
to speak one word to you in private. Would you mind stepping on one
side just--just for half a moment.”

“No, Bernstein, I won’t. Anything you have to say to me, you’ll say in
public; at the top of your voice; out loud. I’m going to say my say so
that every one may hear me--she and they.”

“Now, Lawrence, be reasonable, I do beg of you. Let me make to you
just this one remark.”

Drawing closer, Mr. Bernstein dropped his voice to a whisper. Taking
him by both shoulders, Lawrence began to shake him to and fro.

“Speak up, Bernstein, speak up! Shout, man, shout!”

“Don’t Lawrence, you’ll hurt me!”

“Hurt you! Hurt you! If I could only hurt you as you’ve hurt me, you
pretty fellow! Why didn’t you save your skin by taking to your heels?
For me there’s no salvation, because of her, and the face, and the
words. But for you there was a chance. Now there’s none! Now there’s
none!”

He flung the Jew away from him, so that he went reeling half across
the room. Mr. Bernstein addressed himself, with stammering lips, to
the inspector.

“Mr. Symonds, he’s--he’s not right in his head; he’s excited--he’s
been drinking; look at those bottles!”

Lawrence threw out his arms with a laugh.

“Look at those bottles! Evidences of a giant’s thirst! I’ll have
another!”

Taking a bottle of champagne out of the collection in the corner, with
what looked like a palette knife he struck the neck off with a
cleanness and dexterity which denoted practice. The wine foamed up. He
filled a soda-water tumbler, emptying it at a draught.

“That’s the stuff! It’s got a sting in it! I like my drink to have a
sting!”

Bernstein drew the inspector’s attention to his proceedings.

“You see. That’s how he goes on--drink! drink! drink! He does nothing
else but drink. You wouldn’t pay any attention to his ravings when
they reflect upon a respectable man?”

“Respectable man! Isaac Bernstein, respectable man?”

He tossed the bottle he was holding towards the Jew. If the other had
not ducked, it would have struck him.

“He’s a liar, that’s what he is; a liar to his finger-tips. No one who
knows him would believe him on his oath.”

This was young Moore. Lawrence pointed at him with his tumbler.

“A Solomon risen to judgment! See truth’s imaged superscription on his
brow.”

The lady stepped forward before I had guessed her intention.

“What he is he in great part owes to you--and to him!”--pointing to
the Jew. “You are an older man than he, with a wider knowledge of the
world. You have used him as a tool with which to save yourselves. You
found him in a ditch--in the same ditch in which you were yourselves.
Instead of helping him out you dragged him farther in, pressing him
down in the mire, so that, by dint of standing on his body, you might
yourselves reach the bank, at the cost of his entire destruction.
Though he is guilty, your guilt is a thousand times as great.”

“There speaks the actress. Your sentiments, Miss Moore, do you credit;
though, being of the stage, they’re stagey. They suppose that you can
make a good man bad. I doubt it, be he old or young. All that you can
do, is to bring to a head the badness which is in a bad one.
Bernstein, your brother, and I, were born with a twist in us; a moral
malformation; a trend in the grain which, as we got our growth, gave a
natural inclination in a particular direction. I doubt if we could
have gone straight if we had tried. You may take it for granted that
we did not weary ourselves with vain efforts. I know that I did not.
The things I liked had to be, like ginger, hot in the mouth; my
pleasures had all to be well peppered. Your insipidities I never
relished; nor was the fact that they happened to be virtuous a
sufficient sauce.

“As it happens, in this best of all possible worlds, spice costs
money. And there’s the rub. For I had none--or as good as none. But
I’d a brother who had. An all-seeing Providence and an
indiscriminating parent, had caused him to be amply dowered with
worldly goods. I made several efforts with my own hands and brains to
supply myself with money. Sometimes they’d succeed; oftener they would
fail. When they failed, in the most natural possible manner, I looked
to my brother--my only brother--to make good the deficiency. To do
this he now and then objected; which was odd. Until, one day, I came
upon a man named Bernstein.”

The Jew, who had been listening with parted lips and watchful,
troubled eyes, to what the other had been saying, now went forward to
him, cringingly.

“Lawrence, good old friend, remember all I’ve done for you, and--and
be careful what you say.”

“I’ll remember, and so shall you; you never will be able to accuse me
of forgetting. This man, Bernstein, was a Jew--an usurer.”

“I lend money to gentlemen who are in need of it, that’s all; there’s
no harm in it. If I didn’t some one else would.”

“He negotiated loans on terms which varied--as I quickly learned. I
had had some experience of usurers; but this was a new type.”

“How new? Circumstances compel one to alter one’s terms--it’s only
business.”

“He lent me a little money on what he considered reasonable terms.”

“And so they were--most reasonable. You know yourself they were.”

“‘When you want more,’ he said, ‘you must bring me another name upon
the bill.’ I asked, ‘Whose name?’ He said, ‘Your brother’s.’ ‘Do you
think my brother would back a bill of mine? He’d see me farther
first!’ ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a pity.’ And so it was a pity. Brothers
should be friendly; they should help each other; it’s only right.

“‘Come,’ he said, ‘and dine with me.’ I dined. After dinner he began
again about the bill. ‘I’ll give you £700 for a three months’ bill
for a thousand with your brother’s name on it.’ ‘I tell you that
nothing would induce my brother to back a bill of mine.’ ‘If you were
to bring me such a bill I shouldn’t ask how it got there.’ Then he
looked at me, and I saw what he meant. ‘That’s it, is it? I’ve sailed
pretty close to the wind, but I’ve never got quite so far as that.’ He
filled himself another glass of wine. ‘You say you want the money
badly. The sooner you let me have the bill, the sooner your wants will
be relieved.’ I let him have the bill in the morning. At the end of
three months there was a storm in the air.”

“I knew nothing of it--he invents it all. The bill was duly met when
it was presented.”

“After my brother and I had come pretty near to murder, I was still,
as ever, in want of money. But this time it was Bernstein who came to
me.

“‘I hear you’re pressed.’ I complimented him on the correctness of his
information. ‘It’s no good,’ said he, ‘peddling with hundreds. It’s a
good round sum you want to set you clear.’ I admitted it; and wondered
where the good round sum was coming from. ‘I tell you what I’ll do,’
he said. ‘You bring me five bills for a thousand each, with your
brother’s name on them, and I’ll give you two thousand five hundred
for the lot.’ I told him that it couldn’t be done. I’d promised my
brother that I wouldn’t play any more tricks with his name, and I
meant to keep my word. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s a pity.’”

“I said nothing of the kind. It is not to be believed; those who know
me will tell you it is not to be believed. It is against my nature.”

“‘I think,’ he continued, ‘I know how it can be managed. I know a
young fellow whom I’ll introduce to you. You may find him of use. He’s
a first-rate penman.’ ‘Do you mean that he’s an expert forger?’
‘Lawrence,’ cried Mr. Bernstein, ‘you shouldn’t use such words--you
really shouldn’t.’”

“You hear him admit it? I said, ‘You should not use such words.’ I
have always said it--always.”

“He made me known to this expert penman, getting up a three-cornered
dinner for that especial purpose. The expert penman was our young
friend here--Tom Moore.”

“I never wanted to know you--never. I told him that I didn’t.”

Mr. Bernstein contradicted the young gentleman’s disclaimer.

“Now, Moore, that is not so. You were always willing to make his
acquaintance; why not? He was a gentleman of family, of fortune. Why
should you not have been willing to know such an one?

“He didn’t turn out like that, did he? Look how he served me!”

“Ah, that is another matter. We could not have foreseen how he was to
turn out. We supposed him to be a gentleman of reputation--of
character.”

“Innocent-minded Bernstein! Ingenuous Tom Moore! After dinner Moore
returned with me to my rooms.”

“You invited me.”

“I did--that’s true; and you came. I said to him, ‘I hear you’re a bit
of a penman.’”

“I didn’t know what you meant.”

“You wouldn’t. I laid five bill-stamps in front of him.”

“There was nothing on them.”

“True again; there wasn’t. I showed him my brother’s signature at the
bottom of a letter, and I asked him if he thought that he could make
a nice clean copy of it in the corner of each stamp.”

“You never said what you were going to do with it.”

“Still correct--I didn’t. But you said, ‘How much are you going to
give me?’”

“Well, you were a stranger to me; you didn’t expect I was going to do
you a favour for nothing?”

“Hardly. I said I’d give you a hundred pounds, which I thought was
pretty fair pay for a little copying. But you said, ‘I want five
hundred.’”

“You didn’t give me five hundred pounds, not you! You know you didn’t!
Or anything like!”

“Accurate as ever. I couldn’t see my way to quite as much as that. I
said you should have two hundred.”

“That night you never gave me any money at all.”

“No. But in the morning I carried to Mr. Isaac Bernstein five bills
for a thousand pounds apiece, with, on each, my brother’s endorsement
in the corner. In exchange, Mr. Bernstein presented me with two
thousand five hundred pounds, and out of that you had two hundred.”

“I took it as a friendly present.”

“Precisely--from a perfect stranger. Time went on. The three months
slipped by. I began to fidget. Luck was most consummately against me.
Two thousand five hundred pounds went no way at all; I had lost it,
pretty nearly every penny, before I really realised that I had ever
had it. When it was gone, I knew that breakers were ahead; a pretty
nasty lot of rocks. As I say, I began to fidget. I knew my brother,
and was well aware that, since last time it had been nearly murder,
this time it would come as near as possible to quite. Philip’s temper,
my friends, Philip’s temper was distinctly bad. We had had a few
fights together, he and I, and out of them it had not been my general
custom to come out best. Now I foresaw that the biggest fight of all
our fights was drawing comfortably close; and when I asked myself in
what condition I should probably emerge from it, I was not able to
supply my question with an answer which gave me entire satisfaction.

“I began to hate my brother. As the days stole by, I began to hate him
more and more--to fear him. The two things together, the hatred and
the fear, took such a hold of me that I began to cast about in my mind
how I could get the best of him, when the game was blown upon and the
fight began. And at last I thought of something which I had chanced
upon in India.

“It was one night when I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep. I had been
drinking. The drink had been bad. Among the goblins which it brought
to my bedside were thoughts of my brother. I thought of how the luck
had all been his; of what a grip he had; of his bone and muscle; of
how, in our quarrels, it always had gone hard with me; of how, in the
next one, which was close at hand, it would go harder still. He was
more than a match for me all round. In peace or war he was the
stronger man. How could I get even with him? How?

“Then I thought of the Goddess. It was from herself that the first
inspiration came; she precipitated herself, as the occultists have it,
into my mind. I suspected it then; I know it now. She had remained,
till then, in the packing-case in which I brought her home. She had
never been out of it, not once. I had never taken the trouble to
unpack her. She might have feared she was forgotten; felt herself
slighted. No; that’s not her way. She knows she’ll never be forgotten;
and as for slights, she never will be slighted when there’s need of
her. She had been waiting; that was all--waiting for her time. Now her
time had come. She knew it. So she reminded me that she was there.

“It struck me, at first, as a humorous idea--The Goddess. It always is
her humorous side which appeals to one at first. Indeed, it is that
side of her which continues to the front; only--the character of the
humour changes. I laughed to think that her existence should occur to
me at such a moment. And, as I laughed, she laughed too. It was the
first time I had heard her laughter. The sound of it had an odd effect
on the marrow in my bones. Even then I asked myself if by any
possibility I could be going mad. She was in the cupboard on the other
side of my dressing-room. All other considerations apart, it was an
odd thing that I should hear her so plainly from where I lay.

“‘I’ll go and look at her,’ I said. I went. As I opened the cupboard
door she laughed again--a little, soft, musical laugh, suggestive of
exquisite enjoyment. It drew me on. ‘Why,’ I cried, ‘I didn’t know
that you could laugh. Where are you? Let’s free you from your prison.
If you’re as pretty as your laughter, you should be well worth looking
at.’

“There was the packing-case, all nailed and corded, exactly as it had
been when placed on shipboard. As I touched it, she laughed again. Now
that I had become more used to it, I found that there was something in
the sound which braced me up; a quality which was suited to my mood. I
drew the case into my dressing-room. I unpacked it. There she was
inside, in the best possible condition; as ready, as willing, as
happy, as on the day when I first saw her, in the place where she was
born. She had borne her voyage and subsequent confinement surprisingly
well; neither in her bearing nor appearance was there anything which
even hinted at a trace of resentment for the treatment which she had
received. As she showed me what she could do, laughing all the time, I
said to myself, ‘With her aid I shall be more than a match for my
brother.’

“I had got her out, but, like the genie the fisherman released in the
Arabian story, she was not easy to put back again. Without her consent
it was impossible to replace her in the packing-case. Her consent she
refused to give. When I persisted in my attempts to do without it, she
brought me nearer to a sudden end than I had ever been before.
Whereupon I desisted. I left her where she was. That display of her
powers, and of her readiness to use them, compelled me to the
reflection that in her I had found not only a collaborator, but
possibly something else as well. One thing I certainly had found--an
inseparable companion.

“From that hour, when, in the silence of the night, and because I
could not sleep, being troubled by thoughts of my brother, I took her
from her packing-case, she has never left me for one moment alone. She
has become part and parcel of my life; grown into the very web of my
being; into the very heart of me; until now she holds me, body, soul,
and spirit, with chains which never shall be broken. And to her it’s
such an exquisite jest. Listen! She is laughing now.”




 CHAPTER XXV.
 THE GODDESS

I had been wondering, while Lawrence had been speaking, where,
exactly, in what he said, was the dividing line between truth and
falsehood; between sanity and madness. I could not satisfy myself upon
the point; either then or afterwards. That the wildness of his speech
and manner was an indication of the disorder of his mind was obvious;
that in his brain there were the fires of delirium was sure; that the
tale which he told was not all raving was as certain. It is probable
that the life of dissipation which he had led had told upon his
physical health; and that, as usual, the body had reacted on the mind.

Yet there was such an air of conviction in his bearing, and so much
method in his madness, that even in his most amazing statements one
could not but suspect, at least, a basis of fact. And it was because
this was so that we listened, fascinated, to assertions which savoured
of a world of dreams; and hung, with breathless interest, on words
which told, as if they were everyday occurrences, of things of which
it is not good to even think as coming within the sweep of
possibility.

He held up his finger, repeating his last words in the form of an
inquiry.

“Hark! don’t you hear her laughing now?”

I know not what we heard; I know not. We had been following, one by
one, the steps which marked the progress of disorder in this man’s
brain, until our own minds had become unbalanced too. But I thought
that I heard the sound of a woman’s laughter, and it was because it
appeared to come from behind the screen that I stepped forward to move
the barrier, so that we might learn what it concealed. Lawrence sprang
in front of me.

“Don’t!” he cried. “She’s there! You shall see her; I’ll show you her
at the proper time.”

I could have thrust him aside, but there was that about him which
dissuaded me. And when the lady, laying her hand upon my arm, drew me
away from him, I let him tell his tale in his own fashion. He passed
his fingers across his brow, as if in an effort to collect his
thoughts.

“Well, the time went, forgetting to bring me ease of mind, until
Bernstein wrote to ask my brother where it would best meet his
convenience to have the bills presented, which were on the point of
falling due.”

“It was the usual custom,” struck in the Jew.

“It’s the usual custom, Bernstein says, and I’m not denying it. When
Philip got the letter, he came red-hot to me, asking what it meant. I
had had a bad day or two, and some unpleasant nights, and was feeling
hipped just when he came. Besides, his coming took me unawares; I was
not expecting him--for the present. When I perceived what was in his
voice, and in his eyes, and in the twitchings of his hands, I was
afraid. I lied to him; pretending that I had no notion of what it was
that Bernstein wrote; protesting that any bills which he might hold
had nothing at all to do with me. I could see he doubted, but having
no proof positive that what I said was false, he went, warning me what
I might expect if it turned out that I had lied. It was good hearing,
to know what I might expect--from him--if it turned out that I had
lied.

“I went to Bernstein, to implore him to have mercy; though I knew that
in him mercy was less frequent than water in a rock.”

“I am a man of business! You had had my money! I am a business man!”

“He would have none. I found young Moore. I told him that certain
bills had been discounted which bore my brother’s name, and since he
had put it there I should be compelled, in self-defence, to tell the
simple truth.”

“When I put it there there was nothing on the bills--not a word; I
declare it. They were nothing but five blank slips of paper, on my
sacred word of honour, I will swear to it. He filled them up himself;
then he wanted to put it on to me.”

“Yes, it was odd how I wanted to put it upon every one except myself;
very odd indeed. That night I was not happy. I had some conversation
with The Goddess; from which I derived comfort, of a kind, though it
was not much, either for quantity or quality. The next day I had
brought myself closer to the sticking point; as, I fancy, men are apt
to do when they know that the music really is about to play. In the
evening I had a game of cards with Ferguson. You remember?”

“I do. You cheated me.”

“I did. Which, again, was odd. For it was the first time I ever had
cheated at cards, and it was the last. You went out of the room
believing that you would have to pay me £1880, and with, at the
bottom of your heart, the knowledge that the man whom you had supposed
to be your friend was, after all, a rogue. The consciousness that you
had this knowledge was, for me, the top brick. I had chosen to carry
myself well in your eyes, and believed I had succeeded; yet, after
all, I’d failed. When you had gone I turned for consolation to The
Goddess.

“Bringing her from my bedroom, I placed her on her own particular
stand. I was just about to request her to go through one of her
unrivalled performances when, turning, I saw in the open doorway of my
room a lady. Here is that lady now.”

He waved his hand towards Miss Moore. She gave what seemed to be a
start of recollection.

“I remember. I had knocked at the door again and then again; no one
answered. I tried the handle; the door opened; you were there.”

“Which was most fortunate for me. It was an entrancing figure which I
saw, in a cloak all glory; with a face--a face which would haunt the
dreams of a happier man than I. It was a late hour for so enchanting a
vision to pay a first call upon a single gentleman, but, when I
learned that this was the sister of the ingenuous Tom, I understood; I
understood still more when the lady’s tongue was once set wagging, for
sometimes even charming visions do have tongues. Dear Tom had told his
tale on his own lines.”

“It was gospel truth, every word I said to her. I’ll take my oath it
was.”

“There’s not a doubt you will. But as the tale came from the lady’s
lips to me, it seemed surprising. I’d no idea, until she told me, that
I was so old in sin and dear Tom so young. It seemed that I had
corrupted the boy’s fresh innocence; that I had even taught him how to
write--especially other people’s names. To me it sounded odd. I had
met young Tom; I was beginning to wonder if his sister ever had. I
knew something of his history; one could scarcely credit that she knew
anything at all. However, one was glad to learn that so fair a lady
had so excellent a brother, though it seemed unfortunate that he
should have such curious associates. Of one of them she was giving her
opinion, to the extent of several volumes, when once more the door was
opened, this time, I really think, without any preliminary knocking;
for I am incapable of suggesting that the lady’s voice could by any
possibility have drowned even a rapping of the knuckles. My brother
was the interrupter--the uninvited, unwelcome interrupter, of our
_tête-à-tête_.

“Then I knew that the end had come; that the game was blown upon; that
the music would have to be faced. I knew this in an instant. It was
written large all over him. He had a trick, when he was in a rage, of
seeming to swell; as if the wind of his passion had distended him. I
had never seen him look so large before. He was trembling--not with
fear. His fingers were opening and closing--as they were apt to do
when the muscles which controlled them reached the point of working by
themselves. His lips were parted; he drew great breaths; his eyes had
moved forward in his head. It did not need more than a single glance
at him to enable me to understand that he had learned that I had lied,
and that now had come the tug of war.

“I cannot say if he noticed that I was with a lady. He did not
acknowledge her presence if he did, not even by so much as the removal
of his hat. So soon as he saw me he began to edge his way into the
room, with little, awkward, jerky movements, which experience had
taught me were the invariable preliminaries to an outburst of
insensate fury. ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’ He
repeated the three words, as if he were speaking half to himself and
half to me, in a husky voice, which was not nice to hear.

“My first thought was of The Goddess!”

As if he had had, from the beginning, an eye to what would be the
proper dramatic effect, when he got so far, Lawrence, with a hasty
movement towards the daïs, struck the crimson screen, so that it came
clattering forward on to the floor. Extending his arms on either side
of him, he cried: “Behold! The Goddess!”

I do not know what the others were prepared to find revealed, nor even
what it was which I had myself expected. There had been in my mind a
vague anticipation of some incredible horror; something neither human
nor inhuman, neither alive nor dead. What I actually did see
occasioned me, at first sight, a shock of surprise. A moment’s
reflection, however, disclosed my own stupidity. Much that had gone
before should have prepared me for exactly this. Only my mental
opaqueness could have prevented my seeing to what Lawrence’s words
directly pointed. And yet, after all, this that I saw did not provide
an adequate explanation; did not, for instance, shed light on what I
had seen in my dream.

The downfall of the screen had revealed an idol; apparently a Hindoo
goddess. She was squatted on what looked like an ebony pedestal,
perhaps a foot or eighteen inches from the floor. The figure was
nearly four feet high. It represented a woman squatting on her
haunches. Her arms were crossed upon her breast, her fingers
interlaced. Two things struck me as peculiar. One, that the whole
figure was of a brilliant scarlet; the other, that its maker had
managed to impart to it a curious suggestion of life. To this fact
Lawrence himself drew our attention.

“You see how alive she is? She only needs a touch to fill her with
impassioned frenzy. It is for that touch that she waits and watches.”

It was exactly what I had myself observed. The figure needed only some
little thing to give it at least the semblance of actual life. I could
not make out of what substance it was compounded; certainly neither of
wood nor stone.

“As Philip came at me across the room I moved towards The Goddess.
‘Take care,’ I said. ‘Don’t be a fool! Don’t you see that there’s a
lady here?’ He did not; or if he did he showed no signs of doing so. I
doubt even if he saw The Goddess. It was his way. In his fits of
passion he was like some maddened bull; he had eyes only for the
object of his rage. ‘I’ll kill you!’ he kept on muttering, in a voice
which fury had made husky. ‘Don’t be an ass!’ I cried. But he was an
ass. Presently there came the rush which I was looking for. He went
for me as the bull goes for the toreador. And instead of me he met The
Goddess. It had to be, or I should not have lived to tell the tale.

“As it chanced The Goddess was between us. I had in my fingers this
little cord--you see I have it here. My scarlet beauty was an obstacle
of which he took no account at all. He made as if he would dash her
into splinters and scatter them about the room. But The Goddess is not
so easily to be brushed aside. As he rushed at her she leaped at
him--like this.”

Suddenly throwing out his arms he cried, in a loud voice, “Take me,
for I am yours, O thou Goddess of the Scarlet Hands.”

How exactly it all happened, even now I find it hard to say. As
Lawrence sprang forward, the figure rose to its feet, and in an
instant was alive. It opened its arms; from its finger-tips came
knives. Stepping forward it gripped Lawrence with its steel-clad
hands, with a grip from which there was no escaping. From every part
of its frame gleaming blades had sprung; against this
_cheval-de-frise_ it pressed him again and again, twirling him round
and round, moving him up and down, so that the weapons pierced and
hacked back and front. Even from its eyes, mouth, and nostrils had
sprung knives. It kept jerking its head backwards and forwards, so
that it could stab with them at his face and head. And, all the while,
from somewhere came the sound of a woman’s laughter--that dreadful
sound which I had heard in my dream.




 CHAPTER XXVI.
 THE LEGACY OF THE SCARLET HANDS

We could do nothing for him. The shock of the surprise, for a
moment, held us motionless. But so soon as we realised that the man
was being hacked to death before our eyes, we rushed to his
assistance. It was of no avail. Death had, probably, been
instantaneous, so much mercy the creature showed. A sharp-pointed
blade, more than eighteen inches long, which proceeded from its
stomach, had pierced him through and through. The writhing, gibbering
puppet held him skewered in a dozen places. To have released him we
should have had to tear him into pieces. When I tried to drag him
free, I only succeeded in bringing the whole thing over. Down he came,
with his assailant sticking to him like a limpet. Pinning him on to
the floor, it continued its extraordinary contortions, lacerating its
victim with every movement in a hundred different places. It was
difficult to believe that it was not alive. Perceiving that it was not
to be persuaded by any other means to loosen its embrace, I struck it
on the back, again and again, with a heavy wooden chair.

Presently it was still; its movements ceased; it became again
inanimate. As if its lust for blood was glutted, it rolled over,
lethargically, upon its side, leaving its handiwork exposed--a
horrible spectacle. A grin--as it were a smile, born of repletion--was
on the creature’s face.

Later, the thing was torn to pieces; its anatomy laid bare.
Examination showed that its construction had been diabolically
ingenious. It was simply a light steel frame, shaped to resemble a
human body, to which was attached a number of strong springs, which
were set in motion by clockwork machinery. The whole had been encased
in scarlet leather, so that, when completed, it resembled nothing so
much as an artist’s lay figure. In the leather were innumerable
eyelet-holes. Through each of these holes the point of a blade was
always peeping. So soon as the clockwork was set in motion each of
these blades leaped from its appointed place, and continued leaping,
ceaselessly, to and fro, till the machinery ran down. In the head was
an arrangement somewhat on the lines of a phonograph; it was from this
proceeded the sound resembling a woman’s gentle laughter, which was
not the least eerie part of its horrible performance.

Inquiries seemed to show that the creature had originally been
intended for sacrificial purposes. Lawrence had apparently purchased
it at Allahabad; probably from the workshop of a native who was
suspected of the manufacture of contrivances, whose ingenuity was
almost too conspicuous, which were used in the temples. On certain
days such a puppet would be produced by the priests, with a flourish
of trumpets. One could easily believe that miraculous power would be
claimed for it; it was even likely that, as a proof of the
substantiality of these claims, it would go through its gruesome
performance in the presence of the assembled congregations. Of what
might have been the objects on which it exhibited its powers one did
not care to think. Some queer things still take place in India.

Edwin Lawrence could hardly have been perfectly sane when he purchased
such a plaything. It was not a possession which a perfectly
healthy-minded man would have cared to have had at any price; and
Lawrence must have paid an enormous sum for it, or that wily native
would never have allowed such a curio to leave his hands. It was shown
that the brothers had been in the habit of quarrelling their whole
lives long. Edwin would do something to arouse Philip’s passion,
whereon Philip would attack him with unreasoning violence. The fit of
fury past, and the mischief done, repentance came. In these moods
Philip must have expended thousands of pounds in his attempts to
soothe the feelings of the brother whom he had just been battering.
One of these scenes had taken place just before Edwin’s departure for
India; it was the usual plaster which had enabled him to start upon
his travels. That his brother’s treatment of him rankled, there was
scarcely room for doubt; the purchase of the scarlet puppet was,
probably a firstfruit of his morbid brooding.

At the very last, possibly, the crime had been the result of a
moment’s impulse--as he himself had said. But that it had been
prepared for, as likely to happen some time, was clear. He had
obtained a suit of clothes, which was exactly like those which his
brother was in the habit of wearing. These he secreted in his bedroom.
So soon as his “goddess” had done her work, he stripped what was left
of his brother bare--an awful task it must have been. He arrayed the
body in a suit of his own clothes, oblivious of the fact that they
showed no signs of the cutting and the hacking, and the suit which he
had prepared he himself put on.

Whether or not he saw me--or even if I was actually there to see--is
not clear to this day. But either he did not notice the departure of
his lady visitor, or he was indifferent to what it might portend;
under the circumstances, after the tragedy had actually taken place,
his movements were marked by curious deliberation. The probability is
that the catastrophe finally overturned the brain whose equilibrium
was already tottering. No other hypothesis can adequately explain the
manner in which he retained his self-possession, expecting every
moment that the alarm would be raised, and that he would be caught
red-handed.

Not only did he make himself up to resemble as much as possible his
brother, but, rolling the “goddess” up in a cloth, he bore the
blood-stained puppet out with him into the street. It was that which
Turner had seen him carrying, under the impression that he was himself
the man who was, at that moment, lying on the floor of his room, a
mutilated corpse. As, by sight, Turner knew both men well, the fact
that he mistook one man for the other shows that the imitation must
have been well and carefully done.

No action was taken against Mr. Isaac Bernstein. Except the dead man’s
words, there was no evidence against him in that particular. But that
the tale told of him by Edwin Lawrence was true, and that he had some
sort of a conscience, after all, was suggested by the fact that a few
days afterwards he disappeared from his London premises and from his
usual haunts. So far as I know, nothing has been seen or heard of him
since. Whether he was afraid that other shady transactions, in which
he had had a hand, would be brought home to him, or whether he was
haunted by memories of the dual tragedy for which he had been, at any
rate in part, responsible, I cannot say. The fact remains, that so far
as the police can learn, large sums of money, which at the time of his
disappearance were due to him, he has never made the slightest attempt
to claim.

As the two brothers were the last of their race, and no one has laid
claim to Philip’s estate, in due course it reverted to the Crown. It
is among the large number of those for which heirs-at-law are still
wanting. Old Morley and his wife had not been in a good service for so
many years for nothing; they would have retired from it long before
had it not been for antiquated notions of fidelity. Their master’s
death found them comfortably off, and in the possession, as it turned
out, of a little property among the Surrey hills. On that property
they are residing to this day. When it first came into their hands the
neighbourhood was wild and rural; others, since, have discovered that
it was beautiful. Building is taking place on every side; quite a town
is springing up. Though this materially adds to the monetary value of
their property, the old couple are a little restless amidst their new
surroundings.

Hume is still unmarried. He becomes less and less engaged in the
active practice of his profession. But he remains an authority on the
obscure diseases of the brain. He has written more than one book upon
this special subject. I have not read them--I am no reader, and such
works would, in any case, be hardly in my way--but I understand that
he seeks to show that we are, all of us, more or less mad, and that he
goes far towards the proof of this thesis. He has not materially
altered his estimate of my mental equipment. Indeed, he once assured
me that he was becoming more and more convinced that men whose
physical and muscular development went beyond a certain limit were,
_ipso facto_, mad; and, _ergo_, I must be insane. However, we are
tolerable friends, and he seems not unwilling to allow that I am as
well out of an asylum as in.

It has been rumoured that Miss Adair intends, shortly, to retire from
the stage; and the whisper is that Hume, who for some time has been
her constant attendant, has something to do with her intention. In
that case, they will make a well-matched pair, for in my opinion they
both have tongues.

Bessie--I think that at this point in these pages I am entitled to
call her Bessie--Bessie never acted again. After that hideous night
brain fever supervened. For weeks she lay between life and death. More
than once the doctors gave her up. Fortunately, doctors are not
omniscient. After all, God was merciful--to me.

Almost her first words, when the darkest hour had given place to the
first glimmerings of dawn, took the shape of a question: “Where is
Tom?” Her scamp of a brother! After all she had suffered for him, he
was foremost in her thoughts.

“I hope that he is on the road to fortune.”

Looking up at me with her big eyes, which had grown bigger, and sunk
farther in her head, she asked me what I meant. I explained. I had
supplied Young Hopeful with the wherewithal which would enable him to
seek for gold in what was then the new El Dorado--the Klondyke region.
He had started on his quest. But he never found what, at least
nominally, he had gone to look for. Some months afterwards I learnt
that he had died; fallen at night into the waters of the Yukon river
and been drowned. My correspondent went on to explain that he was dead
drunk at the time; which explanation I kept from his sister. I did not
wish her to think that his end had been unbecoming to a man.

Bessie and I have been married just long enough to enable me to begin
to realise my happiness. I am ever slow, so I will not say what is the
tale of the years which that statement implies; though the sight of
our youngsters is apt to give away the secret of their father’s
dulness. There was no question between us of courtship. I knew, as I
watched by her bedside, that if she came back to life she was mine;
and that in any case I was hers. And so it was. So soon as she was
strong enough we were married. And we have been lovers ever since. As
I sit, with her hand clasped tightly, watching her children and mine,
I am sometimes disposed to suspect that our courtship is beginning. I
know it will never cease.

The goodness of God has been very great in giving me my wife. By what
seemed accident, but was indeed the act of Providence, I have come to
have for my very own the woman of my dreams. Sleeping and waking she
is mine. So true is it that some men’s good fortune is out of all
proportion to their deserts.

 THE END




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Alterations to the text:

[Chapter XIX] Change “to serve by going to _goal_” to _gaol_, and
delete an unnecessary quotation mark from the last paragraph of this
chapter.

[Chapter XXI] Change “the world was talking of John _Furguson_” to
_Ferguson_.

Minor spelling and hyphenization inconsistencies have been left as is.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64930 ***