Chapter Thirty Nine.Guest’s Suggestion.Stratton did not move, but stood as if lost in thought, while involuntarily Guest’s eyes were directed toward the door on his left.A key had always been visible, in old times, by the handle—a key about which Guest had bantered his friend and cut jokes in which the spirit-stand and Mrs Brade’s name were brought into contact. But there was no key there now, and he recalled how Stratton had endeavoured to keep him away from that door. A trifle then, but looking singularly suggestive now.A dozen little facts began to grow and spread into horrors, all pointing to the cause of Stratton’s sudden change, and strengthening Guest’s ideas that there must have been a quarrel on the morning appointed for the wedding, possibly connected with money matters, and then in a fit of rage and excitement—disappointment, perhaps, at not willingly receiving the help he had anticipated—a blow had been struck, one that unintentionally had proved fatal.All Guest’s ideas set in this direction, and once started everything fitted in exactly, so that at last he felt perfectly convinced that his friend had killed Brettison and in some way disposed of the body.For a moment he was disposed to cast the ideas out as utterly absurd and improbable, but the ideas would flow back again; and, try how he would to find some better solution of the puzzle, there seemed to be only that one way.Stratton stood there by the fireplace, pale, haggard, and wrapped in thought, apparently utterly unconscious of his friend’s presence, till Guest took a step or two forward and rested his hand upon the table.Here he remained for a few minutes, trying to think out his course. For he felt now full of a guilty knowledge, and in that knowledge, if he did not make it known, a sharer—an accomplice—in a murder. For so the law and the world would judge it. And then there was Edie!A shiver of dread and misery ran through him as her bright little face crossed his mind, and he saw that by keeping silence till the discovery—for that must come—he would be so implicated that he would share his friend’s arrest; and, even if matters did not turn out serious with him as far as the law was concerned, his position with the admiral’s family would be the same as Stratton’s—everything would be at an end—his love affair like that of the miserable man before him; the man who now turned to him with a scared, horrified, hunted look in his eyes, startled by Guest’s advance.It was time to speak, Guest thought, but the words would not come at first, and he could only gaze wildly at the wretched being before him, and think of their old schooldays together, then of their first fresh manhood, and always together, sharing purses, pleasures, troubles, full confidence always till this trouble had come.For the moment he hated and loathed the man before him; but the feeling was momentary. Stratton would not wilfully have thrust himself into such a position. He felt that there must be something more than he knew, and, softening down, he said huskily:“Well, Stratton, what have you to say?”There was no answer. Stratton gazed at him with a far-off, fixed stare, full of helpless misery, which drew his friend far nearer in heart, and he spoke more freely now.“Come,” he said; “speak out. In spite of everything, I am your old friend. I want to help you. Will you trust me?”“Trust you? Yes,” said Stratton slowly.“Tell me, then, everything, beginning from the morning when you were to be married.”Stratton slowly shook his head.“Come, man; this is no time for reticence. Tell me all,” cried Guest excitedly; and he spoke in a hoarse whisper, and glanced to door and window, as if afraid of being overheard.There was the same desponding movement.“Am I not worthy of your confidence? I tell you I am ready to share it—ready to help you if you will only be honest with me, and tell me frankly everything.”There was no reply.“Stratton, old fellow,” cried Guest piteously, “you must speak. I do not believe that you could have been intentionally guilty.”Stratton glanced at him quickly, but the eager look died out.“I tell you that you are injuring me as well as yourself. You have blighted your life; for God’s sake don’t blight mine, too.”“What—what do you mean?” cried Stratton, who started as if stung at his friend’s reference to his future, and when the appeal came, took a step or two forward.“That, knowing what I do, compelled from our old associations to be silent, I cannot—dare not go near her again.”“Guest!”“I have said it. How can I take her innocent hand?”“Because you know nothing,” cried Stratton excitedly; “because you shall know nothing. One is enough to bear a crime, if crime it was.”“Ah! You confess!” cried Guest; “then you did—kill him.”Stratton made no reply, but looked firmly and sorrowfully in his eyes.“I knew it—I was sure—your manner betrayed you when we were in that room. I see all, now. You closed that door.”“I will not be dragged into any confession,” said Stratton fiercely. “It is my secret, and I will tell it to none. I have a right to keep my own counsel. You have a right to denounce me if you like. If you speak, you can force me to no greater punishment than I suffer now.”“Then it is all true?” groaned Guest. “You killed him, and hid him there?”Stratton uttered a mocking laugh.“That door!” said Guest huskily. “Twice over you have stopped me from going there. Your manner has been that of a guilty man, and I am forced to share the knowledge of your crime.”“No,” said Stratton, speaking now with a look of calm contempt; “you share no knowledge—you shall share no knowledge. You say I killed him and hid him there; where are your proofs? You have brought in the police, and they have searched. What have you found? Again, I say, where are your proofs?”Guest looked at him wildly, and his lips parted, but he uttered no sound.“Let me rest, my good fellow, let me rest. You are warring against your own happiness in trying to pry into matters that are naught to you. I will not blight your future, Percy Guest, by letting you share any secrets of mine. There, good-night. I want to be alone.”Guest tried to recommence the argument, and to master the man who looked so pitifully weak, but somehow the other’s will was too powerful, and he had to yield, leaving the chambers at last with a shudder of horror, and feeling that he could never take Stratton by the hand again.For the man seemed changed. There was a mocking, almost triumphant, look in his eyes as he took the lamp from the table, and followed Guest out on to the landing to stand there, holding the light over the massive balustrade for his friend to descend.As Guest reached the bottom, he looked up, and there, by the light which fell full upon Stratton’s face, was the strange, mocking air intensified, and with a shiver he hurried across the inn, feeling that the mystery had deepened instead of being cleared.His intention was to hurry back to his own chambers, feeling that it was impossible for him to go near Bourne Square, knowing what he did, but the yearning for one to share his knowledge proved too strong.“And I promised that she should share every secret,” he said to himself. “Whom am I to trust if I don’t trust her!”The result was that, with his brain in a whirl of excitement, and hardly knowing what he did, he leaped into the first cab, and urged the man to drive fast, while he sank back into the corner, and tried to make plans.“I won’t tell her,” he decided at last. “I’ll see the admiral, and he will advise me what to do.”He altered his mind directly. “It will be betraying poor Malcolm,” he thought; but swayed round again directly after.“I ought to tell him,” he said. “It is a duty. He stood to him almost in the position of a father, and, for Myra’s sake, ought to know; and Heaven knows I want someone to advise me now.”He changed his plans half a dozen times before he reached the square; but that of telling the admiral under a pledge of secrecy was in the ascendant when the cab drew up at the door.It was opened by Andrews.“The admiral in?” he asked.“Yes, sir, but he’s asleep in the library. Miss Myra is in her chamber, sir—not very well to-night, but Miss Edith is in the drawing room.”Guest went upstairs, and, upon entering, Edie rushed at him, when all his plans went for naught.“Oh, how long you have been,” she panted, as she caught his hands. “Have you seen him?”“Yes.”“Have you found out anything?”“Yes.”“Is it dreadful?”“Too dreadful to tell you, dearest,” he replied sadly.“Then I won’t know,” she said, with a sob. “Oh, my poor, darling Myra! She will die of a broken heart, I know, I know.”Guest tried to comfort her, and she grew more calm.“It was good and honest of you to come straight to me, to tell me, Percy,” she said, submitting to his embraces; and Guest felt horribly guilty, and wished he had not come. “It is dreadful, you say?”“Terrible, little one,” he whispered.“Too terrible for me to know? Then I must not hear it, I suppose?”“No.”“But you know it, Percy,” she said piteously; “it’s too terrible, then, for you.”“I have been trying hard to find out the cause of his conduct.”“And you have found it out now?”“Yes; and I’d give anything to be as ignorant as I was yesterday.”“Oh, but, Percy, dear,” she whispered excitedly, “I must know that.”“I cannot—I dare not tell you.”“Not tell me—and you said you loved me!”“As I do with all my heart.”“Then you cannot keep anything from me.”“I’ll tell your uncle, and ask his opinion first.”“No, no, Percy. I must know now—I must, indeed. No matter how terrible, you cannot keep it from me.”“But it is like betraying the man whom I’d give anything to save.”“Save? Save from what?”“Don’t press me, dearest,” he said tenderly. “Trust me that it is best for you not to know.”“Percy, dear,” she said gently, as she laid her hand upon his arm; “you can trust me. I always knew there must be something very terrible to make Mr Stratton behave toward poor Myra as he did, and you and I have been plotting and planning to find it out, in the hope that it would prove to be a trouble we could bridge over, and bring them together again. You have discovered it all then at last?”“Yes.”“Then tell me.”“I cannot—I dare not.”Edie was silent for a few moments, as she sat gazing straight before her into the dimly lit back drawing room, her eyes suffused with tears, as she at last said in a whisper:“You asked me the other day if I would be your wife.”“And you promised me an answer when I knew all,” said Guest, cutting the ground from beneath his feet.“And now you know, and I’ll tell you,” she said, hardly above her breath. “Yes, Percy, some day when we have made poor Myra happy.”“Then it will never be,” he said despairingly.“Let me judge,” she whispered. And he told her all.“But—but I don’t quite understand,” she faltered; “you think, then—oh, it is too horrible—you think, then, he had killed poor Mr Brettison, his friend?”“Yes,” said Guest slowly and thoughtfully. “It must have been that. I cannot see a doubt.”“Ah!”They started to their feet at the piteous sigh which came from the back drawing room, and it was followed by a heavy fall.Myra had entered in time enough to hear the terrible charge, and for her life seemed to be at an end.Meanwhile Stratton had stood motionless, gazing down into the dark pit formed by the staircase, with the light of the lamp he held shining full on his haggard face, made more painful by the smile which contracted the lower parts of his countenance, till the last echo of his friend’s steps died out, when he turned slowly and walked into his room, closing and fastening both doors.Then his whole manner changed.He rushed to the table, set down the lamp so that the glass shade rattled and nearly flew out of the holder; then, crossing quickly to a cabinet, he took out a decanter and glass, poured out a heavy draught of brandy, and gulped it down.The glass almost dropped from his hand to the table, and he clasped his brow, to stand staring before him fighting to recall his thoughts.Twice over he threw his head back, and shook it as if something compressed his brain and confused him. Then the stimulant he had taken began to act, and he went to a drawer and took out a new screw-driver, with which, after seeing that the blinds were down and the curtains drawn over the window, he crossed to the door on the left of the fireplace; but only to turn away again, and take up the lamp and place it on a stand, so that it should light him in the work he had in hand.He was alert and eager now, as, with deft touches, he forced the screw-driver under a piece of moulding at the top and front edge of the door, wrenched them off, and bared some half dozen screw-heads. These he rapidly turned and withdrew, laying them down one by one till all were out, when, from an inner pocket, he took out a key, unlocked the door, threw it open, and went into the bathroom, lamp in hand.Placing it on the polished lid, he rapidly toiled on till these screws were taken out in turn, when, lifting the lamp with his left hand, he threw up the lid with his right, and stood staring down into the bath with a shudder, which rapidly passed away.The lid fell with a heavy, dull sound, and, with a curious, wondering look, he turned and went slowly back to his table, set down the lamp, caught it up again, and walked into the bathroom, where he again set down the lamp, tore a fly-leaf from a letter in his pocket, folded it into a spill, and lit it at the lamp chimney.“Will it burn slowly or explode at once?” he said, with a reckless laugh. “Let’s see!” and once more he threw up the lid.
Stratton did not move, but stood as if lost in thought, while involuntarily Guest’s eyes were directed toward the door on his left.
A key had always been visible, in old times, by the handle—a key about which Guest had bantered his friend and cut jokes in which the spirit-stand and Mrs Brade’s name were brought into contact. But there was no key there now, and he recalled how Stratton had endeavoured to keep him away from that door. A trifle then, but looking singularly suggestive now.
A dozen little facts began to grow and spread into horrors, all pointing to the cause of Stratton’s sudden change, and strengthening Guest’s ideas that there must have been a quarrel on the morning appointed for the wedding, possibly connected with money matters, and then in a fit of rage and excitement—disappointment, perhaps, at not willingly receiving the help he had anticipated—a blow had been struck, one that unintentionally had proved fatal.
All Guest’s ideas set in this direction, and once started everything fitted in exactly, so that at last he felt perfectly convinced that his friend had killed Brettison and in some way disposed of the body.
For a moment he was disposed to cast the ideas out as utterly absurd and improbable, but the ideas would flow back again; and, try how he would to find some better solution of the puzzle, there seemed to be only that one way.
Stratton stood there by the fireplace, pale, haggard, and wrapped in thought, apparently utterly unconscious of his friend’s presence, till Guest took a step or two forward and rested his hand upon the table.
Here he remained for a few minutes, trying to think out his course. For he felt now full of a guilty knowledge, and in that knowledge, if he did not make it known, a sharer—an accomplice—in a murder. For so the law and the world would judge it. And then there was Edie!
A shiver of dread and misery ran through him as her bright little face crossed his mind, and he saw that by keeping silence till the discovery—for that must come—he would be so implicated that he would share his friend’s arrest; and, even if matters did not turn out serious with him as far as the law was concerned, his position with the admiral’s family would be the same as Stratton’s—everything would be at an end—his love affair like that of the miserable man before him; the man who now turned to him with a scared, horrified, hunted look in his eyes, startled by Guest’s advance.
It was time to speak, Guest thought, but the words would not come at first, and he could only gaze wildly at the wretched being before him, and think of their old schooldays together, then of their first fresh manhood, and always together, sharing purses, pleasures, troubles, full confidence always till this trouble had come.
For the moment he hated and loathed the man before him; but the feeling was momentary. Stratton would not wilfully have thrust himself into such a position. He felt that there must be something more than he knew, and, softening down, he said huskily:
“Well, Stratton, what have you to say?”
There was no answer. Stratton gazed at him with a far-off, fixed stare, full of helpless misery, which drew his friend far nearer in heart, and he spoke more freely now.
“Come,” he said; “speak out. In spite of everything, I am your old friend. I want to help you. Will you trust me?”
“Trust you? Yes,” said Stratton slowly.
“Tell me, then, everything, beginning from the morning when you were to be married.”
Stratton slowly shook his head.
“Come, man; this is no time for reticence. Tell me all,” cried Guest excitedly; and he spoke in a hoarse whisper, and glanced to door and window, as if afraid of being overheard.
There was the same desponding movement.
“Am I not worthy of your confidence? I tell you I am ready to share it—ready to help you if you will only be honest with me, and tell me frankly everything.”
There was no reply.
“Stratton, old fellow,” cried Guest piteously, “you must speak. I do not believe that you could have been intentionally guilty.”
Stratton glanced at him quickly, but the eager look died out.
“I tell you that you are injuring me as well as yourself. You have blighted your life; for God’s sake don’t blight mine, too.”
“What—what do you mean?” cried Stratton, who started as if stung at his friend’s reference to his future, and when the appeal came, took a step or two forward.
“That, knowing what I do, compelled from our old associations to be silent, I cannot—dare not go near her again.”
“Guest!”
“I have said it. How can I take her innocent hand?”
“Because you know nothing,” cried Stratton excitedly; “because you shall know nothing. One is enough to bear a crime, if crime it was.”
“Ah! You confess!” cried Guest; “then you did—kill him.”
Stratton made no reply, but looked firmly and sorrowfully in his eyes.
“I knew it—I was sure—your manner betrayed you when we were in that room. I see all, now. You closed that door.”
“I will not be dragged into any confession,” said Stratton fiercely. “It is my secret, and I will tell it to none. I have a right to keep my own counsel. You have a right to denounce me if you like. If you speak, you can force me to no greater punishment than I suffer now.”
“Then it is all true?” groaned Guest. “You killed him, and hid him there?”
Stratton uttered a mocking laugh.
“That door!” said Guest huskily. “Twice over you have stopped me from going there. Your manner has been that of a guilty man, and I am forced to share the knowledge of your crime.”
“No,” said Stratton, speaking now with a look of calm contempt; “you share no knowledge—you shall share no knowledge. You say I killed him and hid him there; where are your proofs? You have brought in the police, and they have searched. What have you found? Again, I say, where are your proofs?”
Guest looked at him wildly, and his lips parted, but he uttered no sound.
“Let me rest, my good fellow, let me rest. You are warring against your own happiness in trying to pry into matters that are naught to you. I will not blight your future, Percy Guest, by letting you share any secrets of mine. There, good-night. I want to be alone.”
Guest tried to recommence the argument, and to master the man who looked so pitifully weak, but somehow the other’s will was too powerful, and he had to yield, leaving the chambers at last with a shudder of horror, and feeling that he could never take Stratton by the hand again.
For the man seemed changed. There was a mocking, almost triumphant, look in his eyes as he took the lamp from the table, and followed Guest out on to the landing to stand there, holding the light over the massive balustrade for his friend to descend.
As Guest reached the bottom, he looked up, and there, by the light which fell full upon Stratton’s face, was the strange, mocking air intensified, and with a shiver he hurried across the inn, feeling that the mystery had deepened instead of being cleared.
His intention was to hurry back to his own chambers, feeling that it was impossible for him to go near Bourne Square, knowing what he did, but the yearning for one to share his knowledge proved too strong.
“And I promised that she should share every secret,” he said to himself. “Whom am I to trust if I don’t trust her!”
The result was that, with his brain in a whirl of excitement, and hardly knowing what he did, he leaped into the first cab, and urged the man to drive fast, while he sank back into the corner, and tried to make plans.
“I won’t tell her,” he decided at last. “I’ll see the admiral, and he will advise me what to do.”
He altered his mind directly. “It will be betraying poor Malcolm,” he thought; but swayed round again directly after.
“I ought to tell him,” he said. “It is a duty. He stood to him almost in the position of a father, and, for Myra’s sake, ought to know; and Heaven knows I want someone to advise me now.”
He changed his plans half a dozen times before he reached the square; but that of telling the admiral under a pledge of secrecy was in the ascendant when the cab drew up at the door.
It was opened by Andrews.
“The admiral in?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, but he’s asleep in the library. Miss Myra is in her chamber, sir—not very well to-night, but Miss Edith is in the drawing room.”
Guest went upstairs, and, upon entering, Edie rushed at him, when all his plans went for naught.
“Oh, how long you have been,” she panted, as she caught his hands. “Have you seen him?”
“Yes.”
“Have you found out anything?”
“Yes.”
“Is it dreadful?”
“Too dreadful to tell you, dearest,” he replied sadly.
“Then I won’t know,” she said, with a sob. “Oh, my poor, darling Myra! She will die of a broken heart, I know, I know.”
Guest tried to comfort her, and she grew more calm.
“It was good and honest of you to come straight to me, to tell me, Percy,” she said, submitting to his embraces; and Guest felt horribly guilty, and wished he had not come. “It is dreadful, you say?”
“Terrible, little one,” he whispered.
“Too terrible for me to know? Then I must not hear it, I suppose?”
“No.”
“But you know it, Percy,” she said piteously; “it’s too terrible, then, for you.”
“I have been trying hard to find out the cause of his conduct.”
“And you have found it out now?”
“Yes; and I’d give anything to be as ignorant as I was yesterday.”
“Oh, but, Percy, dear,” she whispered excitedly, “I must know that.”
“I cannot—I dare not tell you.”
“Not tell me—and you said you loved me!”
“As I do with all my heart.”
“Then you cannot keep anything from me.”
“I’ll tell your uncle, and ask his opinion first.”
“No, no, Percy. I must know now—I must, indeed. No matter how terrible, you cannot keep it from me.”
“But it is like betraying the man whom I’d give anything to save.”
“Save? Save from what?”
“Don’t press me, dearest,” he said tenderly. “Trust me that it is best for you not to know.”
“Percy, dear,” she said gently, as she laid her hand upon his arm; “you can trust me. I always knew there must be something very terrible to make Mr Stratton behave toward poor Myra as he did, and you and I have been plotting and planning to find it out, in the hope that it would prove to be a trouble we could bridge over, and bring them together again. You have discovered it all then at last?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me.”
“I cannot—I dare not.”
Edie was silent for a few moments, as she sat gazing straight before her into the dimly lit back drawing room, her eyes suffused with tears, as she at last said in a whisper:
“You asked me the other day if I would be your wife.”
“And you promised me an answer when I knew all,” said Guest, cutting the ground from beneath his feet.
“And now you know, and I’ll tell you,” she said, hardly above her breath. “Yes, Percy, some day when we have made poor Myra happy.”
“Then it will never be,” he said despairingly.
“Let me judge,” she whispered. And he told her all.
“But—but I don’t quite understand,” she faltered; “you think, then—oh, it is too horrible—you think, then, he had killed poor Mr Brettison, his friend?”
“Yes,” said Guest slowly and thoughtfully. “It must have been that. I cannot see a doubt.”
“Ah!”
They started to their feet at the piteous sigh which came from the back drawing room, and it was followed by a heavy fall.
Myra had entered in time enough to hear the terrible charge, and for her life seemed to be at an end.
Meanwhile Stratton had stood motionless, gazing down into the dark pit formed by the staircase, with the light of the lamp he held shining full on his haggard face, made more painful by the smile which contracted the lower parts of his countenance, till the last echo of his friend’s steps died out, when he turned slowly and walked into his room, closing and fastening both doors.
Then his whole manner changed.
He rushed to the table, set down the lamp so that the glass shade rattled and nearly flew out of the holder; then, crossing quickly to a cabinet, he took out a decanter and glass, poured out a heavy draught of brandy, and gulped it down.
The glass almost dropped from his hand to the table, and he clasped his brow, to stand staring before him fighting to recall his thoughts.
Twice over he threw his head back, and shook it as if something compressed his brain and confused him. Then the stimulant he had taken began to act, and he went to a drawer and took out a new screw-driver, with which, after seeing that the blinds were down and the curtains drawn over the window, he crossed to the door on the left of the fireplace; but only to turn away again, and take up the lamp and place it on a stand, so that it should light him in the work he had in hand.
He was alert and eager now, as, with deft touches, he forced the screw-driver under a piece of moulding at the top and front edge of the door, wrenched them off, and bared some half dozen screw-heads. These he rapidly turned and withdrew, laying them down one by one till all were out, when, from an inner pocket, he took out a key, unlocked the door, threw it open, and went into the bathroom, lamp in hand.
Placing it on the polished lid, he rapidly toiled on till these screws were taken out in turn, when, lifting the lamp with his left hand, he threw up the lid with his right, and stood staring down into the bath with a shudder, which rapidly passed away.
The lid fell with a heavy, dull sound, and, with a curious, wondering look, he turned and went slowly back to his table, set down the lamp, caught it up again, and walked into the bathroom, where he again set down the lamp, tore a fly-leaf from a letter in his pocket, folded it into a spill, and lit it at the lamp chimney.
“Will it burn slowly or explode at once?” he said, with a reckless laugh. “Let’s see!” and once more he threw up the lid.
Chapter Forty.For his Sake.Edie rushed to her cousin where she lay prone on the carpet, her face turned toward the shaded lamp, which threw its soft light upon her face, and, even then, in her horror, the girl thought it had never looked so beautiful before; while, as Guest, full of remorse, joined her, he felt ready to bite out his tongue in impotent rage against himself for a boyish babbler in making known to two gentlewomen his fearful discovery at the chambers.“Shall I ring?” he said excitedly; and he was half-way to the bell before Edie checked him.“Ring? No; you absurd man!” she cried impatiently. “Lock the doors. Nobody must know of this but us. Here, quick, water.”Guest was hurrying to obey the businesslike little body’s orders about the doors when she checked him again.“No, no; it would make matters worse. Nobody is likely to come till uncle leaves the library. Water. Throw those flowers out of that great glass bowl.”Guest obeyed, and bore the great iridescent vessel, from which he had tossed some orchids, to her side.“That’s right. Hold it closer. Poor darling! My dearest Myra, what have you done to have to suffer all this terrible pain?”There were drops other than the cold ones to besprinkle the white face Edie had lifted into her lap, as she sat on the floor, bending down from time to time to kiss the marble forehead and contracted eyelids as she spoke.“Percy, dear,” she said, as he knelt by her, helpful, but, in spite of the trouble, full of mute worship for the clever little body before him.His eyes met hers, and flashed their delight, as the second word seemed to clinch others which she had spoken that night.“This is all a secret. Even uncle must not know yet till we have had a long talk with aunt. She can be quite like a lawyer in giving advice.”“But, Edie!”“No, no; we can have no hesitation. What I say is right. I’m very fond of Malcolm Stratton; and, if he has done this dreadful thing, his punishment must not come through us.”“You’re a little Queen of Sheba,” he whispered passionately.“Hush! That’s not behaving like Solomon. Be wise, please. O Myra, Myra! Stop; there are some salts on the chimney-piece in the front room. No, no; stay! She is coming to.”For Myra turned her head slightly on one side, and muttered a few incoherent words in a low, weary tone; and at last opened her eyes to let them rest on Guest’s face as he knelt by her.There was no recognition for a few moments, as she lay back, gazing dreamily at him. Then thought resumed its power in her brain, and her face was convulsed by a spasm.Starting up, she caught his arm.“Is it all true?” she cried, in a low, husky whisper.Guest gave her a pitying, appealing look, but he did not speak.“Yes, it must be true,” she said, as she rose to her feet, and stood supporting herself by Guest’s arm, while Edie held her hand. “You have not told anyone?” she said eagerly.“No; I came here as soon as I knew.”“Where is Mr Stratton?”“At his chambers.”“And you, his friend, have left him at such a time?”“It was at his wish,” said Guest gently; “his secret is safe with me.”“Yes. He trusts you. I trust you. Percy Guest, Edie, even if he is guilty, he must be saved. No, no, it could not be guilt. I must not be weak now. He may be innocent, and the law can be so cruel. Who knows what may be the cause!”She pressed her hands to her temples for a few moments, and then the power to think grew clearer.“Go to him—from me. Tell him I bid him leave England at once. Leave with him, if you can be of help. Stop. He is not rich. Edie, all the money you have. Mr Guest, take this, too, and I will get more. Now go, and remember that you are his friend. Write to me and Edie, and we will send; but, though all is over, let me know that his life is safe.”Guest caught the hand she extended with her purse and Edie’s, kissed it reverently, and closed the fingers tightly round the purses, and gently thrust them from him.“What!” Myra cried passionately; “you refuse?”“I want to help you both,” he replied gravely.“O Percy!” cried Edie, with the tears starting to her eyes, and her tone of reproach thrilled him.“Don’t speak to me like that,” he said. “You mean well, but to do what you say is to condemn him at once in everybody’s sight. It is all so foreign to my poor friend’s nature that, even knowing what I do, I cling to the belief in his innocence.”“Yes; he must be innocent,” cried Myra. “He could not be what you say.”“Then should I be right in taking money and your message, saying to him, though not in words—‘Fly for your life, like a hunted criminal’? I could not do it. Myra, Edie—think, pray, what you are urging. It would be better advice to him to say—‘Give yourself up, and let a jury of your fellow-countrymen decide.’”“No, no,” cried Myra; “it is too horrible. You do not know; you cannot see what he is suffering—what his position is. I must act myself. It cannot, it cannot be true!”“Myra!” whispered Edie, clinging to her.“What? And you side against me, too?”“No, no, dear! How can you speak such cruel words? You know I would do anything for your sake.”Half-mad with mental agony, Myra repulsed her with a bitter laugh.“Anything but this,” she cried. “There it is, plain enough. He speaks, and you cry ‘Hearken! is he not wise.’ He says, ‘Let him be given up to justice for the mob to howl at him and say he must die.’ Die? Oh, no, no, no, it is too horrible! He must—he shall be saved!”In her agony she made a rush for the door, but before she was half-way there, she tottered, and would have fallen but for Guest’s ready arm. He caught her just in time, and bore her to a couch, where she lay back sobbing hysterically for a few moments, but only to master her emotion, draw her cousin to her breast, and kiss her again and again before holding out her hand to Guest.“Forgive me!” she whispered. “These long months of suffering have made me weak—half-mad. My lips spoke, not my heart. You are both wiser than I am. Help me, and tell me what to do.”“I will help you, and help him, in every way I can,” said Guest gently, as he held the thin white hand in his. “Now let me talk coolly to you—let us look the matter plainly in the face, and see how matters stand. I am speaking now as the lawyer, not as the friend—yes, as the friend, too; but our feelings must not carry us away.”Myra struggled with her emotion, and pressed the hand which held hers firmly.Guest was silent for a few moments and stood as if collecting his thoughts and reviewing his position.“There is no need for taking any immediate steps,” he said. “The scene that took place to-night was forced on by my precipitancy, and the danger to Stratton has passed away. To-morrow I will see him again, and perhaps he will be more ready to take me into his confidence, for there is a great deal more to learn, I am sure.”“It is not so bad as you imagined.”“After what took place to-night I can’t say that,” Guest replied sadly; “but there are points I have not yet grasped. An accident—a fit of passion—a great deal more than I have yet learned.”“Then go to him to-night,” said Myra eagerly. “I will go with you. He shall not think that all who love forsake him in the hour of his need.”“Myra!”“I cannot help it,” she cried, springing up. “Did I not go to him when that suspicion clung to him—that he was treacherous and base? Even then in my heart I felt it could not be true. Yes, I know what you say; he has tacitly confessed to this dreadful crime, but we do not know all. I saw that Malcolm Stratton could not be base. If he has taken another’s life, I know, I feel all the horror; but he has not been false or treacherous to the woman he loved, and it was on account of this horror that he shrank back that day. To insult—to treat me with contempt? No; to spare me, Edie; and my place is at his side.”“No, not now,” said Guest firmly. “I will go back to-night. Trust me, please, and have faith in my trying to do what is for the best.”There was a few moments’ silence, and then Myra spoke again faintly, but with more composure.“Yes, we trust you, Mr Guest. Don’t think any more about what I said. Come to me again soon with news. I shall be dying for your tidings. Yes,” she said, with a weary sigh, as she clung to his hand, “dying for your news. Only promise me this; that you will not deceive me in any way. If it is good or bad, you will come.”“You must know,” said Guest quietly, “sooner or later. I will come and tell you everything.”“Then go now—go to him.”“Your father? He will think it strange that I have been and gone without seeing him.”“No; you have been to see us. I will tell him everything when we are alone. Good-night.”“Good-night.”Guest hurried back to the inn, but all was dark there; and, on going on to Sarum Street, he knocked at the door in vain.“I can do no more,” he said; and he went slowly back to his own rooms.
Edie rushed to her cousin where she lay prone on the carpet, her face turned toward the shaded lamp, which threw its soft light upon her face, and, even then, in her horror, the girl thought it had never looked so beautiful before; while, as Guest, full of remorse, joined her, he felt ready to bite out his tongue in impotent rage against himself for a boyish babbler in making known to two gentlewomen his fearful discovery at the chambers.
“Shall I ring?” he said excitedly; and he was half-way to the bell before Edie checked him.
“Ring? No; you absurd man!” she cried impatiently. “Lock the doors. Nobody must know of this but us. Here, quick, water.”
Guest was hurrying to obey the businesslike little body’s orders about the doors when she checked him again.
“No, no; it would make matters worse. Nobody is likely to come till uncle leaves the library. Water. Throw those flowers out of that great glass bowl.”
Guest obeyed, and bore the great iridescent vessel, from which he had tossed some orchids, to her side.
“That’s right. Hold it closer. Poor darling! My dearest Myra, what have you done to have to suffer all this terrible pain?”
There were drops other than the cold ones to besprinkle the white face Edie had lifted into her lap, as she sat on the floor, bending down from time to time to kiss the marble forehead and contracted eyelids as she spoke.
“Percy, dear,” she said, as he knelt by her, helpful, but, in spite of the trouble, full of mute worship for the clever little body before him.
His eyes met hers, and flashed their delight, as the second word seemed to clinch others which she had spoken that night.
“This is all a secret. Even uncle must not know yet till we have had a long talk with aunt. She can be quite like a lawyer in giving advice.”
“But, Edie!”
“No, no; we can have no hesitation. What I say is right. I’m very fond of Malcolm Stratton; and, if he has done this dreadful thing, his punishment must not come through us.”
“You’re a little Queen of Sheba,” he whispered passionately.
“Hush! That’s not behaving like Solomon. Be wise, please. O Myra, Myra! Stop; there are some salts on the chimney-piece in the front room. No, no; stay! She is coming to.”
For Myra turned her head slightly on one side, and muttered a few incoherent words in a low, weary tone; and at last opened her eyes to let them rest on Guest’s face as he knelt by her.
There was no recognition for a few moments, as she lay back, gazing dreamily at him. Then thought resumed its power in her brain, and her face was convulsed by a spasm.
Starting up, she caught his arm.
“Is it all true?” she cried, in a low, husky whisper.
Guest gave her a pitying, appealing look, but he did not speak.
“Yes, it must be true,” she said, as she rose to her feet, and stood supporting herself by Guest’s arm, while Edie held her hand. “You have not told anyone?” she said eagerly.
“No; I came here as soon as I knew.”
“Where is Mr Stratton?”
“At his chambers.”
“And you, his friend, have left him at such a time?”
“It was at his wish,” said Guest gently; “his secret is safe with me.”
“Yes. He trusts you. I trust you. Percy Guest, Edie, even if he is guilty, he must be saved. No, no, it could not be guilt. I must not be weak now. He may be innocent, and the law can be so cruel. Who knows what may be the cause!”
She pressed her hands to her temples for a few moments, and then the power to think grew clearer.
“Go to him—from me. Tell him I bid him leave England at once. Leave with him, if you can be of help. Stop. He is not rich. Edie, all the money you have. Mr Guest, take this, too, and I will get more. Now go, and remember that you are his friend. Write to me and Edie, and we will send; but, though all is over, let me know that his life is safe.”
Guest caught the hand she extended with her purse and Edie’s, kissed it reverently, and closed the fingers tightly round the purses, and gently thrust them from him.
“What!” Myra cried passionately; “you refuse?”
“I want to help you both,” he replied gravely.
“O Percy!” cried Edie, with the tears starting to her eyes, and her tone of reproach thrilled him.
“Don’t speak to me like that,” he said. “You mean well, but to do what you say is to condemn him at once in everybody’s sight. It is all so foreign to my poor friend’s nature that, even knowing what I do, I cling to the belief in his innocence.”
“Yes; he must be innocent,” cried Myra. “He could not be what you say.”
“Then should I be right in taking money and your message, saying to him, though not in words—‘Fly for your life, like a hunted criminal’? I could not do it. Myra, Edie—think, pray, what you are urging. It would be better advice to him to say—‘Give yourself up, and let a jury of your fellow-countrymen decide.’”
“No, no,” cried Myra; “it is too horrible. You do not know; you cannot see what he is suffering—what his position is. I must act myself. It cannot, it cannot be true!”
“Myra!” whispered Edie, clinging to her.
“What? And you side against me, too?”
“No, no, dear! How can you speak such cruel words? You know I would do anything for your sake.”
Half-mad with mental agony, Myra repulsed her with a bitter laugh.
“Anything but this,” she cried. “There it is, plain enough. He speaks, and you cry ‘Hearken! is he not wise.’ He says, ‘Let him be given up to justice for the mob to howl at him and say he must die.’ Die? Oh, no, no, no, it is too horrible! He must—he shall be saved!”
In her agony she made a rush for the door, but before she was half-way there, she tottered, and would have fallen but for Guest’s ready arm. He caught her just in time, and bore her to a couch, where she lay back sobbing hysterically for a few moments, but only to master her emotion, draw her cousin to her breast, and kiss her again and again before holding out her hand to Guest.
“Forgive me!” she whispered. “These long months of suffering have made me weak—half-mad. My lips spoke, not my heart. You are both wiser than I am. Help me, and tell me what to do.”
“I will help you, and help him, in every way I can,” said Guest gently, as he held the thin white hand in his. “Now let me talk coolly to you—let us look the matter plainly in the face, and see how matters stand. I am speaking now as the lawyer, not as the friend—yes, as the friend, too; but our feelings must not carry us away.”
Myra struggled with her emotion, and pressed the hand which held hers firmly.
Guest was silent for a few moments and stood as if collecting his thoughts and reviewing his position.
“There is no need for taking any immediate steps,” he said. “The scene that took place to-night was forced on by my precipitancy, and the danger to Stratton has passed away. To-morrow I will see him again, and perhaps he will be more ready to take me into his confidence, for there is a great deal more to learn, I am sure.”
“It is not so bad as you imagined.”
“After what took place to-night I can’t say that,” Guest replied sadly; “but there are points I have not yet grasped. An accident—a fit of passion—a great deal more than I have yet learned.”
“Then go to him to-night,” said Myra eagerly. “I will go with you. He shall not think that all who love forsake him in the hour of his need.”
“Myra!”
“I cannot help it,” she cried, springing up. “Did I not go to him when that suspicion clung to him—that he was treacherous and base? Even then in my heart I felt it could not be true. Yes, I know what you say; he has tacitly confessed to this dreadful crime, but we do not know all. I saw that Malcolm Stratton could not be base. If he has taken another’s life, I know, I feel all the horror; but he has not been false or treacherous to the woman he loved, and it was on account of this horror that he shrank back that day. To insult—to treat me with contempt? No; to spare me, Edie; and my place is at his side.”
“No, not now,” said Guest firmly. “I will go back to-night. Trust me, please, and have faith in my trying to do what is for the best.”
There was a few moments’ silence, and then Myra spoke again faintly, but with more composure.
“Yes, we trust you, Mr Guest. Don’t think any more about what I said. Come to me again soon with news. I shall be dying for your tidings. Yes,” she said, with a weary sigh, as she clung to his hand, “dying for your news. Only promise me this; that you will not deceive me in any way. If it is good or bad, you will come.”
“You must know,” said Guest quietly, “sooner or later. I will come and tell you everything.”
“Then go now—go to him.”
“Your father? He will think it strange that I have been and gone without seeing him.”
“No; you have been to see us. I will tell him everything when we are alone. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
Guest hurried back to the inn, but all was dark there; and, on going on to Sarum Street, he knocked at the door in vain.
“I can do no more,” he said; and he went slowly back to his own rooms.
Chapter Forty One.At Fault.It was from no dread of the consequences likely to ensue that Malcolm Stratton paused with the burning paper in his hand. He knew that he had but to drop it into the clear fluid beneath, for this to burst out into a dancing crater of blue and orange flames. He knew, too, that the old woodwork with which the antique place was lined would rapidly catch fire, and that in a short time the chambers would be one roaring, fiery furnace, and the place be doomed before the means of extinction could arrive. He had no fear for self, for he felt that there would be time enough to escape if he wished to save his life. But he did not drop the blazing paper; letting it burn right to his fingers, and then crushing it in his hand.“There is no reason,” he muttered, as he turned slowly back to his room. “It would be madness now; there is nothing to conceal.”He sank into his chair, and sat back thinking and trying to piece together all that had passed since the day when, full of life, joy, and eagerness, he was ready to hurry off to the church. But his long confinement, with neglect of self, and the weary hours he had passed full of agony and despair, had impaired his power of arranging matters in a calm, logical sequence, and he had to go twice to his bedroom to bathe his burning head.There was one point at which he sought to arrive—his present position, and what he should do next. It came to him at last, and then he worked himself up to the grasping of the facts, till a mist came over his brain, and all glided away, leaving his mind blank.For it was all one terrible confusion, mainly due to the fearful mental strain to which he had been exposed during the past few hours; and at last he sat there holding his throbbing brow, feeling that he could think of everything but the one point to which he strove.At one moment Guest’s horrified face was before him, and in a puzzled way he felt that his friend had left him with the idea that he had slain Brettison, and that he ought to have made that portion of his trouble clear to him; but at that time it was as if he were fettered by the horrors of a nightmare-like dream.But he waved these thoughts aside. They were as nothing to the terrible perplexity he had to master, and the first step toward that mastery was to find Brettison, whom he had last seen on the morning appointed for the wedding, wishing him happiness and every good thing which could fall to a bridegroom’s lot.And now? What did it all mean? How could he clear up the chaos which bade fair to wreck his brain. Brettison could not have returned; and yet how strange it all was! What could he do?One thing shone out, however, clearly; and that was the knowledge that he could come back here and stay without being haunted by the presence of a great horror close at hand. He even began to grasp the fact that, for a long time past, he had been needlessly shunning his rooms and living away in a morbid state, always dreading discovery; and opening his doors at every visit, fully expecting to find himself face to face with the police, waiting to trap him in his lair.How he had suffered! How he had stolen to his chambers at night, creeping up to his door furtively, and, after entering, examining the closet, and making sure that it had not been tampered with and opened in his absence.It had been a terrible period of agony, such as had turned him old before his time; and now he had discovered that his suffering and dread had been vain and empty; that he had stayed away from the inn for naught, unless all this was imagination; another of the horrible nightmare dreams by which he had been haunted ever since that dreadful day.At last he grew calmer, and felt able to look matters in the face. The great horror had passed away, and in so passing it had roused him to action. There was work to do, a strange complication to solve; and he settled in his own mind how that was to be done.He must find Brettison at once; and the great question was: Where could he be?Here was a grand difficulty at once. Where would a man like Brettison be likely to sojourn?—a man who ranged through the length and breadth of the country in pursuit of his specimens.In an ordinary way. But what would he be doing now and what had he done?Stratton shuddered, and pictured a strange scene, one upon which he dare not dwell; and, leaping up, he took matches and a candle with the intention of going to his friend’s room to try and pick up the clue there; but by the time he reached his door he was face to face with the first obstacle. Brettison’s door was locked again, and, without re-summoning the help they had had that evening, entrance was impossible.Taking the lamp he entered the bath-closet to try the old door at the end; but this was firmly screwed up again, and unless he broke through one of the panels, entrance was impossible that way.Stratton returned to his chair, hesitating to take so extreme a course; and sitting down he tried to think out a likely place for Brettison to have gone.As he thought, he called to mind various places where he knew him to have stayed in the past; and selecting one at haphazard—an old-world place in Kent—he determined to start for there at once, perfectly aware of the wildness of the scheme and how easily he might spend his life in such a chase, but there was nothing else to be done. He could trust no one—get no help. It must be his own work entirely. Brettison was master of his secret, and there could be no rest for him until the old man was found.He started at once, hurrying away from his carefully closed-up chambers by the northern gate, so that he should not be seen at the porter’s lodge, and was half-way to the station when a thought assailed him, which made him turn back, suffering all the agony of a guilty man in dread of discovery.Brettison could not have taken that body away from the chambers; such a task was impossible without discovery. It must, after all, be hidden somewhere within his rooms.He turned into an embayment over a pier of the bridge he was crossing, and sat down to think. He knew Brettison’s rooms so well—as well as his own. Where could the body be concealed?He mentally wandered from one room to the other, and paused in a little pantry-like place, peering into each nook and corner, and searching every article of furniture likely to contain a bulky object; but all in vain.Then he recalled the fact that the police officer—a man of experience—had searched carefully and given the matter up. Still Brettison must have practiced a great deal of cunning for his friend’s sake, and there was no knowing what he might have done. There were the floors of the rooms—boards might have been taken up, and concealment made between the joists; or there was the wainscot; some panel might have been taken out in front of a recess, and the body placed there.But Stratton shook his head, and his chin went down upon his chest in despair. There were sufficient reasons, for Brettison not choosing such a hiding-place as that. Detection in a short time was certain.“Seems impossible,” thought Stratton; “but he must have taken it away.”“Hadn’t you better go home?” said a gruff voice.Stratton looked up, to find a burly policeman had stopped by his side, and was watching him keenly.“Go—go home?” stammered Stratton.“Yes, sir; that’s what I said. You don’t look well, and when people come and sit down here, feeling as you do, they sometimes lets their feelings get the better of ’em and jump off. Next moment they’re sorry for it, and call for help, often enough when no help can come. You go home, sir, and have a day or two in bed. You’ll come out again like a new man.”Stratton frowned.“You are making a mistake,” he said quietly. “I had no such thought as you imagine.”“Glad of it, sir. You’ll excuse me. You know that sort of thing happens here so often that we’re obliged to keep a sharp lookout.”Stratton’s mind was made up once more, and he hastened off to the station, caught a later train, and in two hours was down in the old village, with its quaint ivy-covered hostelry and horse-trough ornamented with the mossy growth that dotted the boles of the grand old forest trees around.The landlady met him with a smile of welcome which faded after his questions.Oh, yes, she remembered Mr Brettison, and his green tin candle-box and bright trowel very well. He was the gentleman who used to bring home weeds in his umbrella; but it was a long time since he had been down there. It was only a week ago that she was saying to her master how she wondered that that gentleman had not been down for so long. But wouldn’t he come in and have some refreshment?No, Stratton would not come in and have some refreshment, for he went back to town instantly.This was an example of many such blind ventures; all carried out in the face of the feeling of despair which racked him; and the time glided on, with hope goading him to fresh exertions in the morning, despair bidding him, in the darkness of the night, give up, and accept his fate.In course of time, Stratton visited every place in England that he could recall as one of Brettison’s haunts, but always with the same result; and then in a blind, haphazard way, he began to wander about town.The consequence was that he was rarely at his rooms, and letter after letter was left for him by Guest, who reiterated his demands to see him, and asked for appointments in vain.But, in spite of the constant checks to which he was subjected, the desire to find his old friend only increased; and, after sitting half the night thinking what to do next, Stratton would snatch a few hours’ sleep, and start off again, feeling sure that he had hit upon the right clue at last.For there was always some place that he had not searched. The greater museums and institutes he had visited again and again, and at all hours, hoping to find the old man buried in some book, or closely examining some specimen; but the minor places only came to mind by degrees, and day succeeded day in which he went about, haggard and weary-eyed, always looking for the slight, grey old man from whom he had parted on what was to have been his wedding day.And all the time he had a kind of presentiment that the old man was aware of the search being carried on after him, and was, consequently, hiding away, but, perhaps, keeping an eye upon his proceedings.It was impossible to give up, for he felt that the old man must at any cost be found; and at last he spent his days wandering dreamily about the streets, trying to solve the difficulty—watching the passers-by, and asking himself whether there were any means he had left untried—whether there was any friend or acquaintance he could question as to his whereabouts.But Brettison had no friends or acquaintances, as far as he knew. He had been to his solicitor, who smiled, and said that his client was, in all probability, studying mosses or lichens in the Alps, and would come back some day; to his banker, who was reticent at first, and then, upon seeing his visitor’s anxiety, readily stated that his cheques had been cashed quite lately, which proved him to be about, but where he could not say.Everything seemed to have been done, but still day after day Stratton traversed London streets in a never wearying search, trusting to chance to help him, though perfectly aware that he might go on for years and never meet the man he sought.Chance did aid him at last; for one day he had turned out of Fleet Street to go northward, and as he passed along the broad highway—wishing that he could explain everything to Guest and bring other wits to his help, instead of fighting the weary battle in silence alone—he suddenly stepped out into the road to cross to the other side, to an old bookseller’s shop, where the man made a specialty of natural history volumes. It was a shop where he and Brettison had often spent an hour picking out quaint works on their particular subjects, and he was thinking that possibly the man might have seen Brettison and be able to give him some information, when there was the rattle of wheels, a loud shout, and he sprang out of the way of a fast driven hansom.The driver yelled something at him in passing, by no means complimentary; but Stratton hardly heard it. He stood, rooted to the spot, gazing after the cab; for, in the brief moment, as he started away, he had caught sight of the pale, worn face of Brettison, whose frightened, scared gaze had met his. Then he had passed without making a sign, and Stratton was gazing after the cab in speechless horror, for upon the roof, extending right across, and so awkwardly placed that the driver half stood in his seat and rested his hands upon it with the reins, was a large, awkward-looking deal box, evidently heavy, for the cab was tilted back and the shafts rose high, as if the balance was enough to hoist the horse from the pavement.At last! And that scared look of the pale-faced man, and the strange, heavy case on the cab-roof, with every suggestion of haste, while he stood there in the middle of the road as if a victim to nightmare, till the quickly driven vehicle was too far off for him to read the number.Suddenly the power to move came back, and, dashing forward in the middle of the road, Stratton shouted to the man to stop.“He won’t stop—not likely,” growled another cabman, who had seen Stratton’s escape. “Shouldn’t loaf across the—Here, sir,” he cried suddenly, as a thought flashed across his brain. “Hi! guv’nor; jump in—I’ll ketch him for you.”He whipped his horse up alongside of Stratton, who caught at the idea, and, seizing the side of the cab, sprang in.“Quick! Five shillings if you keep that cab in sight.”The wide road was open, and pretty free from vehicles, and the horse went fast, but the cab in which Brettison was seated had a good start, reached the cross street, and entered the continuation of that which he was pursuing. Stratton’s man drove up as a number of vehicles were crowding to go east and west, and the flow of those from north and south was stopped by a stalwart policeman; while raging at the sudden check, Stratton ground his teeth with rage.“All right, sir,” came down through the little trap in the roof; “he’ll let us go acrost directly, and I’ll ketch up the cab in no time.”They were not arrested much above a minute, but the interval was sufficient to give Brettison’s cab a good start, and when leave was given to go, the case on the roof was invisible, and the question arose in Stratton’s mind—which way had it gone? into one of the station yards, or straight on over the bridge into South London?He raised himself a little to peer over the horse’s head, but he could see nothing, and turning round, he thrust up the trap.“Faster—faster!” he cried. “You must overtake it. Faster!”“All right, sir,” shouted the man hoarsely; and crack! crack! went the long heavy whip on one and then on the other side of the well-bred but worn-out screw between the shafts.The result was a frantic plunge forward, and though the driver dragged at and worked the bit savagely, the horse tore on at a gallop for about fifty yards, with the cab swaying from side to side; then the tiny flash of equine fire died out, and the horse’s knees gave way. Down it went with a crash. Stratton was dashed forward heavily against the curved splash-board, to which he clung, and the next thing he saw was the driver rising from somewhere beside the horse, that lay quite still now on its side, while shouts, the faces of people who crowded up, and the vehicles that passed on either side, all seemed dim, confused, and distant. Then bells of a curiously sharp, quick tone were ringing loudly in his ears.“Hurt, sir?”“Yes—no; I think not. Quick, stop that cab,” said Stratton huskily; but, as he spoke, he knew it was in a confused way, and that for his life he could not have explained what cab.“It’s far enough off by this time, sir,” said a voice beside, him, “and if you ain’t hurt, I am. Never went in training for a hacrobat. Here, Bobby, help us up with the fiery untamed steed. That’s the second time he’s chucked me over the roof. Wait a moment, sir, and I’ll drive you on; we may ketch ’em yet. Don’t do a man out of his fare.”“Too late,” was all Stratton could think of then. “I could not overtake it now.”And in a dim, misty way he seemed to be watching Brettison hurrying away with that heavy, awkward case which contained—“Yes,” he muttered with a shudder, “it must be that.”
It was from no dread of the consequences likely to ensue that Malcolm Stratton paused with the burning paper in his hand. He knew that he had but to drop it into the clear fluid beneath, for this to burst out into a dancing crater of blue and orange flames. He knew, too, that the old woodwork with which the antique place was lined would rapidly catch fire, and that in a short time the chambers would be one roaring, fiery furnace, and the place be doomed before the means of extinction could arrive. He had no fear for self, for he felt that there would be time enough to escape if he wished to save his life. But he did not drop the blazing paper; letting it burn right to his fingers, and then crushing it in his hand.
“There is no reason,” he muttered, as he turned slowly back to his room. “It would be madness now; there is nothing to conceal.”
He sank into his chair, and sat back thinking and trying to piece together all that had passed since the day when, full of life, joy, and eagerness, he was ready to hurry off to the church. But his long confinement, with neglect of self, and the weary hours he had passed full of agony and despair, had impaired his power of arranging matters in a calm, logical sequence, and he had to go twice to his bedroom to bathe his burning head.
There was one point at which he sought to arrive—his present position, and what he should do next. It came to him at last, and then he worked himself up to the grasping of the facts, till a mist came over his brain, and all glided away, leaving his mind blank.
For it was all one terrible confusion, mainly due to the fearful mental strain to which he had been exposed during the past few hours; and at last he sat there holding his throbbing brow, feeling that he could think of everything but the one point to which he strove.
At one moment Guest’s horrified face was before him, and in a puzzled way he felt that his friend had left him with the idea that he had slain Brettison, and that he ought to have made that portion of his trouble clear to him; but at that time it was as if he were fettered by the horrors of a nightmare-like dream.
But he waved these thoughts aside. They were as nothing to the terrible perplexity he had to master, and the first step toward that mastery was to find Brettison, whom he had last seen on the morning appointed for the wedding, wishing him happiness and every good thing which could fall to a bridegroom’s lot.
And now? What did it all mean? How could he clear up the chaos which bade fair to wreck his brain. Brettison could not have returned; and yet how strange it all was! What could he do?
One thing shone out, however, clearly; and that was the knowledge that he could come back here and stay without being haunted by the presence of a great horror close at hand. He even began to grasp the fact that, for a long time past, he had been needlessly shunning his rooms and living away in a morbid state, always dreading discovery; and opening his doors at every visit, fully expecting to find himself face to face with the police, waiting to trap him in his lair.
How he had suffered! How he had stolen to his chambers at night, creeping up to his door furtively, and, after entering, examining the closet, and making sure that it had not been tampered with and opened in his absence.
It had been a terrible period of agony, such as had turned him old before his time; and now he had discovered that his suffering and dread had been vain and empty; that he had stayed away from the inn for naught, unless all this was imagination; another of the horrible nightmare dreams by which he had been haunted ever since that dreadful day.
At last he grew calmer, and felt able to look matters in the face. The great horror had passed away, and in so passing it had roused him to action. There was work to do, a strange complication to solve; and he settled in his own mind how that was to be done.
He must find Brettison at once; and the great question was: Where could he be?
Here was a grand difficulty at once. Where would a man like Brettison be likely to sojourn?—a man who ranged through the length and breadth of the country in pursuit of his specimens.
In an ordinary way. But what would he be doing now and what had he done?
Stratton shuddered, and pictured a strange scene, one upon which he dare not dwell; and, leaping up, he took matches and a candle with the intention of going to his friend’s room to try and pick up the clue there; but by the time he reached his door he was face to face with the first obstacle. Brettison’s door was locked again, and, without re-summoning the help they had had that evening, entrance was impossible.
Taking the lamp he entered the bath-closet to try the old door at the end; but this was firmly screwed up again, and unless he broke through one of the panels, entrance was impossible that way.
Stratton returned to his chair, hesitating to take so extreme a course; and sitting down he tried to think out a likely place for Brettison to have gone.
As he thought, he called to mind various places where he knew him to have stayed in the past; and selecting one at haphazard—an old-world place in Kent—he determined to start for there at once, perfectly aware of the wildness of the scheme and how easily he might spend his life in such a chase, but there was nothing else to be done. He could trust no one—get no help. It must be his own work entirely. Brettison was master of his secret, and there could be no rest for him until the old man was found.
He started at once, hurrying away from his carefully closed-up chambers by the northern gate, so that he should not be seen at the porter’s lodge, and was half-way to the station when a thought assailed him, which made him turn back, suffering all the agony of a guilty man in dread of discovery.
Brettison could not have taken that body away from the chambers; such a task was impossible without discovery. It must, after all, be hidden somewhere within his rooms.
He turned into an embayment over a pier of the bridge he was crossing, and sat down to think. He knew Brettison’s rooms so well—as well as his own. Where could the body be concealed?
He mentally wandered from one room to the other, and paused in a little pantry-like place, peering into each nook and corner, and searching every article of furniture likely to contain a bulky object; but all in vain.
Then he recalled the fact that the police officer—a man of experience—had searched carefully and given the matter up. Still Brettison must have practiced a great deal of cunning for his friend’s sake, and there was no knowing what he might have done. There were the floors of the rooms—boards might have been taken up, and concealment made between the joists; or there was the wainscot; some panel might have been taken out in front of a recess, and the body placed there.
But Stratton shook his head, and his chin went down upon his chest in despair. There were sufficient reasons, for Brettison not choosing such a hiding-place as that. Detection in a short time was certain.
“Seems impossible,” thought Stratton; “but he must have taken it away.”
“Hadn’t you better go home?” said a gruff voice.
Stratton looked up, to find a burly policeman had stopped by his side, and was watching him keenly.
“Go—go home?” stammered Stratton.
“Yes, sir; that’s what I said. You don’t look well, and when people come and sit down here, feeling as you do, they sometimes lets their feelings get the better of ’em and jump off. Next moment they’re sorry for it, and call for help, often enough when no help can come. You go home, sir, and have a day or two in bed. You’ll come out again like a new man.”
Stratton frowned.
“You are making a mistake,” he said quietly. “I had no such thought as you imagine.”
“Glad of it, sir. You’ll excuse me. You know that sort of thing happens here so often that we’re obliged to keep a sharp lookout.”
Stratton’s mind was made up once more, and he hastened off to the station, caught a later train, and in two hours was down in the old village, with its quaint ivy-covered hostelry and horse-trough ornamented with the mossy growth that dotted the boles of the grand old forest trees around.
The landlady met him with a smile of welcome which faded after his questions.
Oh, yes, she remembered Mr Brettison, and his green tin candle-box and bright trowel very well. He was the gentleman who used to bring home weeds in his umbrella; but it was a long time since he had been down there. It was only a week ago that she was saying to her master how she wondered that that gentleman had not been down for so long. But wouldn’t he come in and have some refreshment?
No, Stratton would not come in and have some refreshment, for he went back to town instantly.
This was an example of many such blind ventures; all carried out in the face of the feeling of despair which racked him; and the time glided on, with hope goading him to fresh exertions in the morning, despair bidding him, in the darkness of the night, give up, and accept his fate.
In course of time, Stratton visited every place in England that he could recall as one of Brettison’s haunts, but always with the same result; and then in a blind, haphazard way, he began to wander about town.
The consequence was that he was rarely at his rooms, and letter after letter was left for him by Guest, who reiterated his demands to see him, and asked for appointments in vain.
But, in spite of the constant checks to which he was subjected, the desire to find his old friend only increased; and, after sitting half the night thinking what to do next, Stratton would snatch a few hours’ sleep, and start off again, feeling sure that he had hit upon the right clue at last.
For there was always some place that he had not searched. The greater museums and institutes he had visited again and again, and at all hours, hoping to find the old man buried in some book, or closely examining some specimen; but the minor places only came to mind by degrees, and day succeeded day in which he went about, haggard and weary-eyed, always looking for the slight, grey old man from whom he had parted on what was to have been his wedding day.
And all the time he had a kind of presentiment that the old man was aware of the search being carried on after him, and was, consequently, hiding away, but, perhaps, keeping an eye upon his proceedings.
It was impossible to give up, for he felt that the old man must at any cost be found; and at last he spent his days wandering dreamily about the streets, trying to solve the difficulty—watching the passers-by, and asking himself whether there were any means he had left untried—whether there was any friend or acquaintance he could question as to his whereabouts.
But Brettison had no friends or acquaintances, as far as he knew. He had been to his solicitor, who smiled, and said that his client was, in all probability, studying mosses or lichens in the Alps, and would come back some day; to his banker, who was reticent at first, and then, upon seeing his visitor’s anxiety, readily stated that his cheques had been cashed quite lately, which proved him to be about, but where he could not say.
Everything seemed to have been done, but still day after day Stratton traversed London streets in a never wearying search, trusting to chance to help him, though perfectly aware that he might go on for years and never meet the man he sought.
Chance did aid him at last; for one day he had turned out of Fleet Street to go northward, and as he passed along the broad highway—wishing that he could explain everything to Guest and bring other wits to his help, instead of fighting the weary battle in silence alone—he suddenly stepped out into the road to cross to the other side, to an old bookseller’s shop, where the man made a specialty of natural history volumes. It was a shop where he and Brettison had often spent an hour picking out quaint works on their particular subjects, and he was thinking that possibly the man might have seen Brettison and be able to give him some information, when there was the rattle of wheels, a loud shout, and he sprang out of the way of a fast driven hansom.
The driver yelled something at him in passing, by no means complimentary; but Stratton hardly heard it. He stood, rooted to the spot, gazing after the cab; for, in the brief moment, as he started away, he had caught sight of the pale, worn face of Brettison, whose frightened, scared gaze had met his. Then he had passed without making a sign, and Stratton was gazing after the cab in speechless horror, for upon the roof, extending right across, and so awkwardly placed that the driver half stood in his seat and rested his hands upon it with the reins, was a large, awkward-looking deal box, evidently heavy, for the cab was tilted back and the shafts rose high, as if the balance was enough to hoist the horse from the pavement.
At last! And that scared look of the pale-faced man, and the strange, heavy case on the cab-roof, with every suggestion of haste, while he stood there in the middle of the road as if a victim to nightmare, till the quickly driven vehicle was too far off for him to read the number.
Suddenly the power to move came back, and, dashing forward in the middle of the road, Stratton shouted to the man to stop.
“He won’t stop—not likely,” growled another cabman, who had seen Stratton’s escape. “Shouldn’t loaf across the—Here, sir,” he cried suddenly, as a thought flashed across his brain. “Hi! guv’nor; jump in—I’ll ketch him for you.”
He whipped his horse up alongside of Stratton, who caught at the idea, and, seizing the side of the cab, sprang in.
“Quick! Five shillings if you keep that cab in sight.”
The wide road was open, and pretty free from vehicles, and the horse went fast, but the cab in which Brettison was seated had a good start, reached the cross street, and entered the continuation of that which he was pursuing. Stratton’s man drove up as a number of vehicles were crowding to go east and west, and the flow of those from north and south was stopped by a stalwart policeman; while raging at the sudden check, Stratton ground his teeth with rage.
“All right, sir,” came down through the little trap in the roof; “he’ll let us go acrost directly, and I’ll ketch up the cab in no time.”
They were not arrested much above a minute, but the interval was sufficient to give Brettison’s cab a good start, and when leave was given to go, the case on the roof was invisible, and the question arose in Stratton’s mind—which way had it gone? into one of the station yards, or straight on over the bridge into South London?
He raised himself a little to peer over the horse’s head, but he could see nothing, and turning round, he thrust up the trap.
“Faster—faster!” he cried. “You must overtake it. Faster!”
“All right, sir,” shouted the man hoarsely; and crack! crack! went the long heavy whip on one and then on the other side of the well-bred but worn-out screw between the shafts.
The result was a frantic plunge forward, and though the driver dragged at and worked the bit savagely, the horse tore on at a gallop for about fifty yards, with the cab swaying from side to side; then the tiny flash of equine fire died out, and the horse’s knees gave way. Down it went with a crash. Stratton was dashed forward heavily against the curved splash-board, to which he clung, and the next thing he saw was the driver rising from somewhere beside the horse, that lay quite still now on its side, while shouts, the faces of people who crowded up, and the vehicles that passed on either side, all seemed dim, confused, and distant. Then bells of a curiously sharp, quick tone were ringing loudly in his ears.
“Hurt, sir?”
“Yes—no; I think not. Quick, stop that cab,” said Stratton huskily; but, as he spoke, he knew it was in a confused way, and that for his life he could not have explained what cab.
“It’s far enough off by this time, sir,” said a voice beside, him, “and if you ain’t hurt, I am. Never went in training for a hacrobat. Here, Bobby, help us up with the fiery untamed steed. That’s the second time he’s chucked me over the roof. Wait a moment, sir, and I’ll drive you on; we may ketch ’em yet. Don’t do a man out of his fare.”
“Too late,” was all Stratton could think of then. “I could not overtake it now.”
And in a dim, misty way he seemed to be watching Brettison hurrying away with that heavy, awkward case which contained—
“Yes,” he muttered with a shudder, “it must be that.”
Chapter Forty Two.By a Ruse.Such a chance did not come in Stratton’s way again. “If I had drunk that when Guest came and interrupted me—when was it? Two years and more ago,” sighed Stratton one night, “what an infinity of suffering I should have been spared. All the hopes and disappointments of that weary time, all the madness and despair of the morning when that wretched convict came, all my remorse, my battles with self, the struggles to conceal my crime—all—all spared to me; for I should have been asleep.”A curious doubting smile crossed his face slowly at these thoughts; and, resting his cheek upon his hand, with the light full upon his face, he gazed straight before him into vacancy.“How do I know that?” he thought. “Could I, a self-murderer, assure myself that I should have sunk into oblivion like that—into a restful sleep, free from the cares I had been too cowardly to meet and bear? No, no, no; it was not to be. Thank God! I was spared from that.”“But mine has been a cruel lot,” he continued; “stroke after stroke that would have been kinder had they killed; for the misery has not been mine alone. I could have borne it better if it had been so. Poor Myra—poor girl! Yours has been a strange fate, too.”And his thoughts were filled by her pain-wrung features, and wild, appealing look last time they met, when she had clung to him there, and appealed to him to forget the past, for she would forgive everything and take him to her heart and face with him the whole world.He shuddered.“Poor, blind, loving heart! ready to kiss the hand wet with her husband’s blood.” It was too horrible—too terrible to bear.He hid his face in his hands for a few minutes, but grew calmer as he went on reviewing the past; and from time to time a slight shiver ran through him, as he thought of what he had done, and the mad plan he had made to utterly conceal his crime by fire.“But that’s all past now,” he said at last, with a sigh of relief. “That horror has been taken from my load, and I will, as a man, fight hard to meet whatever comes. Heaven knows my innocence, and will find me strength to bear it all; and, perhaps, some day, give me—give her forgetfulness and rest.”He looked sharply up and listened, for he fancied that he heard a sound; but a step faintly beating on the paving outside seemed to accord with it, and he went on musing again about Brettison, wondering where he could be, and how he could contrive to keep hidden away from him as he did.“If we could only meet,” he said, half aloud—“only stand face to face for one short hour, how different my future might be.”“No,” he said aloud, after a thoughtful pause, “how can I say that?L’homme propose et Dieu dispose. We are all bubbles on the great stream of life.”He half started from his chair, listening again, for he felt convinced that he heard a sound outside his doors, and going across, he opened them softly and looked out, but the grim, ill-lit staircase and the hall below were blank and silent, and satisfied that he had been mistaken, he went back to his seat to begin musing again, till once more there was a faint sound, and as he listened he became conscious of a strange, penetrating odour of burning.Stratton’s face grew ghastly with the sudden emotion that had attacked him, and for a few moments he sat trembling, and unable to stir from his seat.“At last!” he said in a whisper; “at last!” and, conscious that the time had come for which he had longed and toiled so hard, he felt that the opportunity was about to slip away, for he would be unable to bear the encounter, if not too much prostrated by his emotion to rise from his seat.It was only a trick of the nerves, which passed off directly; and he rose then, firm and determined, to cross gently to first one and then the other door by his mantelpiece, where he stood, silent and intent, breathing deeply.Yes; there was no doubt now. He was inhaling the penetrating, peculiar odour of strong tobacco; and at last Brettison must have returned, and be sitting there smoking his eastern water-pipe.Stratton drew softly back, as if afraid of being heard, though his steps were inaudible on the thick carpet, and he stood there thinking.“If I go,” he said to himself, “he will not answer my knock.” And feeling now that Brettison might have been back before now unknown to him, he tried to think out some plan by which he could get face to face with his friend.A thought came directly, and it seemed so childish in its simplicity that he smiled and was ready to give it up; but it grew in strength and possibility as he looked round and took from a table, where lay quite a little heap that had been thrust into his letter-box from time to time, four or five unopened circulars and foolscap missives, whose appearance told what they were; and armed with these he opened his doors softly and passed out, drawing the outer door to, and then stole on tiptoe downstairs and out into the dimly lit square.“He will not notice that it is so late,” he said to himself, as he looked up and saw just a faint gleam of light at Brettison’s window, where the drawn curtain was not quite closed.Stratton paused for a moment, and drew a long breath before attempting to act the part upon which he had decided. Then, going on some twenty or thirty yards, he turned and walked back with a heavy, decided, businesslike step, whistling softly as he went, right to the entry, where, still whistling, he ascended the stairs to his door, thrust in and drew out a letter-packet thrice, making the metal flap of the box rattle, gave a sharp double knock, and then crossed the landing and went the few steps, whistling still, along the passage to Brettison’s door. Here he thrust in, one by one, three circulars, with a good deal of noise, through the letter-flap, gave the customary double knock, went on whistling softly, and waited a moment or two; and then, as he heard a faint sound within, gave another sharp double rap, as a postman would who had a registered letter, or a packet too big to pass through the slit.The ruse was successful, and with beating heart Stratton stood waiting a little on one side, as there was the click and grate of the latch, and the door was opened a little way.That was enough. Quick as lightning, Stratton seized and dragged it wide, to step in face to face with Brettison, who started back in alarm and was followed up by his friend, who closed both doors carefully, and then stood gazing at the bent, grey-headed, weak old man, who had shrunk back behind the table, whereon the pipe stood burning slowly, while the unshaded lamp showed a dozen or so of freshly opened letters on the table, explaining their owner’s visit there.Stratton did not speak, but gazed fiercely at the trembling old man, who looked wildly round as if for some weapon to defend himself, but shook his head sadly, and, with a weary smile, came away from his place of defence.“Your trick has succeeded, sir,” he said quietly. “Seventy-two! Has the time come? I ought not to fear it now.”Stratton uttered a harsh sound—half-gasp, half-cry.“Well,” continued Brettison, who looked singularly aged and bent since they had last stood face to face, “you have found me at last.”Stratton’s lips parted, but no sound came; his emotion was too great.“It will be an easy task,” said Brettison, with a piteous look at Stratton. “No sounds are heard outside these chambers—not even pistol shots.”There was an intense bitterness in those last words which made the young man shrink, and as Brettison went on, “I shall not struggle against my fate,” he uttered a cry of bitterness and rage.“Sit down!” he said fiercely. “Why do you taunt me like this? You have been here before from time to time. Why have you hidden from me like this?”“I have my reasons,” said Brettison slowly. “Why have you come?”“You ask me that!”“Yes. You have hunted me for months now, till my life has been worthless. Have you come to take it now?”“Why should I take your life?”“To save your own. You believe I heard or witnessed—that.”He paused before uttering the last word, and pointed to the door on his left.Stratton could not suppress a shudder; but, as he saw the peculiar way in which the old man’s eyes were fixed upon his, a feeling of resentment arose within him, and his voice sounded strident and harsh when he spoke again.“I had no such thoughts,” he said. “You know better, sir. Come, let us understand one another. I am reckless now.”“Yes,” said Brettison coldly.“Then, if you have any fear for your life, you can call for help; that is, for someone to be within call to protect you, for what we have to say must be for our ears alone.”Brettison did not answer for a few moments, during which time he watched the other narrowly.“I am not afraid, Malcolm,” he said; and he seated himself calmly in his chair. Then, motioning to another, he waited until Stratton was seated.“Yes,” he said quietly, “I have been here from time to time to get my letters.”“Why have you hidden yourself away?” cried Stratton fiercely.“Ah! Why?” said Brettison, gazing at him thoughtfully from beneath his thick, grey eyebrows. “You want a reason? Well, I am old and independent, with a liking to do what I please. Malcolm Stratton, I am not answerable to any man for my actions.”Stratton started up, and took a turn to and fro in the dusty room before throwing himself again in his chair, while the old man quietly took the long, snake like tube of his pipe in hand, examined the bowl to find it still alight, began to smoke with all the gravity of a Mussulman, and the tobacco once more began to scent the air of the silent place.Stratton’s lips parted again and again, but no words would come. In his wild excitement and dread of what he knew he must learn, he could not frame the questions he panted to ask in this crisis of his life, and at last it was with a cry of rage as much as appeal that he said:“Man, man, am I to be tortured always? Why don’t you speak?”“You have hunted me from place to place, Malcolm Stratton, in your desperation to find out that which I felt you had better not know; and now you have found me—brought me to bay—I wait for you to question me.”“Yes, yes,” said Stratton hoarsely; and, with a hasty gesture, as he clapped his hand to his throat, “I will speak—directly.”He rose again and paced the room, and it was while at the far end that he said in a low voice:“Yes; you know all.”“All.”“Tell me, then—why have you done this? Stop! I am right—it was you.”“You are right; it was I,” said Brettison, smoking calmly, as if they were discoursing upon some trivial matter instead of a case of life and death—of the horror that had blasted a sanguine man’s life, and made him prematurely old.“Tell me, then; how could you—how could you dare? Why did you act the spy upon my actions?”The old man rose quickly from his chair, brought his hand down heavily upon the table, and leaned forward to gaze in Stratton’s eyes.“Answer me first, boy. Me—the man who loved you and felt toward you as if you were a son! Why did you not come to me for help and counsel when you stood in danger—in peril of your life?”The gentle, mild face of the old botanist was stern and judicial now, his tone of voice full of reproof. It was the judge speaking, and not the mild old friend.“Did you think me—because I passed my life trifling, as some call it, with flowers, but, as I know it to be, making myself wiser in the works of my great Creator—did you think me, I say, so weak and helpless a creature that I could not counsel—so cowardly and wanting in strength of mind and faith in you, that I would not have stood by you as a father should stand by his son?”Stratton groaned.“Forgive me,” he said feebly; “I was half-mad.”“Yes.”“How could I, crushed by the horror of having taken a fellow-creature’s life, cursed by the knowledge that this man was—But you cannot know that.”“Take it, boy, that I know everything,” said the old man, resuming his seat.“Then have some pity on me.”“Pity for your folly? Yes.”“Folly! You are right. I will take it that you know everything, and speak out now. Brettison—”He paused—he could not speak. But by a mighty effort he mastered his emotion.“Now think, and find some excuse for me. I was in my room there, elate almost beyond a man’s power to imagine; in another hour the woman whom I had idolised for years was to be my wife. Recollect that, two years before, my hopes had been dashed to the ground, and I had passed through a time of anguish that almost unhinged my brain, so great was my despair.”“Yes,” said Brettison, “I recall all that.”“Then that man came, and I was face to face with the knowledge that once more my hopes were crushed, and—he fell.”Stratton ceased speaking, and sat gazing wildly before him into the past.It was in a husky whisper that he resumed:“I stood there, Brettison, mad with horror, distraught with the knowledge that I was the murderer of her husband—that my hand, wet with his blood, could never again clasp hers, even though I had made her free.”The old man bent his head; and, gathering strength of mind and speech, now that he was at last speaking out openly in his defence, Stratton went on:“It was horrible—horrible! There it is, all back again before my eyes, and I feel again the stabbing, sickening pain of the bullet wound which scored my shoulder, mingled with the far worse agony of my brain. I had killed her husband—the escaped convict; and, above the feeling that all was over now, that my future was blasted, came the knowledge that, as soon as I called for help, as soon as the police investigated the matter, my life was not worth a month’s purchase. For what was my defence?”Brettison satin silence, smoking calmly.“That this man had made his existence known to me, shown by his presence that his supposed death was a shadow—that, after his desperate plunge into the sea, he had managed to swim ashore and remain in hiding; the dark night’s work and the belief that he had fallen shot, being his cloak; and the search for the body of a convict soon being at an end. You see all this?”Brettison bowed his head.“Think, then, of my position; put yourself in my place. What jury—what judge would believe my story that it was an accident? It seemed to me too plain. The world would say that I slew him in my disappointment and despair. Yes, I know they might have called it manslaughter, but I must have taken his place—a convict in my turn.”“You thought that?”“Yes, I thought that—I think it now. I could not—I dared not speak. Everything was against me, and in my horror temptation came.”Brettison looked at him sharply.“The hope was so pitiful, so faint, so weak, Brettison; but still it would linger in my maddened brain that some day in the future—after years, maybe, of expiation of the deed—I might, perhaps, approach her once again. I thought so then. The secret would be between me and my Maker, and in his good time he might say to my heart: ‘It is enough. You have suffered all these years. Your sin is condoned—your punishment is at an end.’ I tell you I thought all that, and in my madness I dared not let the thing be known. She would know it, too, and if she did I felt that hope would be dead indeed, and that I had, too, better die.”Stratton ceased speaking, and let his head fall upon his hand.“Put yourself in my place, I say. Think of yourself as being once more young and strong—the lover of one whom, in a few short hours, you would have clasped as your wife, and then try and find excuse for my mad action—for I know now that it was mad, indeed.”“Yes, mad indeed,” muttered Brettison.“Well, I need say no more. You know so much, you must know the rest. They came to me, fearing I had been killed—robbed and murdered. They found me at last, when I was forced to admit them, looking, I suppose, a maniac; for I felt one then, compelled to face them, and hear the old man’s reproaches, in horror lest they should discover the wretched convict lying dead, and no word to say in my defence. Nature could bear no more. My wound robbed me of all power to act, and I fainted—to come to, fearing that all was discovered; but their imaginations had led them astray. They had found my wound and the pistol. It was an attempt at suicide. Poor Guest recalled the first—I do not wonder. And they went away at last, looking upon me as a vile betrayer of the woman I loved, and sought in their minds for the reason of my despair, and the cowardly act I had attempted to escape her father’s wrath. Brettison, old friend, I make no excuses to you now; but was I not sorely tried? Surely, few men in our generation have stood in such a dilemma. Can you feel surprised that, stricken from my balance as a man—a sane and thoughtful man—I should have acted as I did, and dug for myself a pit of such purgatory as makes me feel now, as I sit here making my confession, how could I have gone through so terrible a crisis and yet be here alive, and able to think and speak like a suffering man.”The silence in the room was terrible for what seemed an age before Brettison stretched out his trembling hand and took that of the man before him.“Hah!”Malcolm Stratton’s low cry. It was that of a man who had long battled with the waves of a great storm, and who had at last found something to which he could cling.There was another long and painful pause before Stratton spoke again, and then he slowly withdrew his hand.“No,” he said; “we must never clasp hands again. I must go on to the end a pariah among my kind.”Brettison shook his head.“I have put myself in your place often,” he said slowly, “and I have felt that I might have acted much the same.”Stratton looked at him eagerly.“Yes; my great fault in you is that you should not have trusted me.”There was again a long silence before Stratton spoke.“I felt that I was alone in the world to fight my own battle with all my strength,” he said wearily.“And that strength was so much weakness, boy. Mine, weak as it is, has proved stronger far.”Stratton looked at him wonderingly.“Yes; how much agony you might have been spared, perhaps, if you had come to me. But I don’t know—I don’t know. You acted as you thought best; I only did the same, and, not knowing all your thoughts, I fear that I have erred.”Stratton sat thinking for a few moments, and then, raising his eyes:“I have told you all. It is your turn now.”Brettison bowed his head.“Yes,” he said, “it is better that I should speak and tell you.”But he was silent for some time first, sitting back with the tips of his fingers joined, as if collecting his thoughts.“You remember that morning—how I came to say good-bye?”“Yes, of course.”“I started, and then found that I had forgotten my lens. I hurried back, and had just entered my room when I heard voices plainly in yours. My book-closet door was open, that of your bath room must have been ajar. I did not want to hear, but the angry tones startled me, and the words grew so fierce—you neither of you thought of how you raised your voices in your excitement—that I became alarmed, and was about to hurry round to your room, when a few words came to my ears quite plainly, and, in spite of its being dishonourable, I, in my dread that you were in danger, hurried into the book-closet and was drawn to the thin, loose panel at the end.“There I was enchained; I could not retreat, for I heard so much of the piteous position in which you were placed. My mind filled in the blanks, and I grasped all.“I need not repeat all you know—only tell you that, unable to master my curiosity, I placed my eye to one of the cracks in the old panelling, and could see the man’s face—her husband’s features—and I saw him glance again and again at the money, and felt that he meant to have it, though you seemed ignorant of the fact; and, dreading violence, I drew back to go for help. But I could not leave. It meant a terribleexposéand untold horror for your promised wife. I tell you I could not stir, and the fact of my being a miserable eavesdropper died out in the terrible climax you had reached.”Brettison paused to wipe his brow, wet with a dew begotten by the agony of his recollections, before he continued:“I stayed there then, and watched and listened, almost as near as if I had been a participator in the little life drama which ensued. There, I was with you in it all, boy—swayed by your emotions, but ready to cry out upon you angrily when I saw you ready to listen to the wretch’s miserable proposals, and as proud when I saw your determination to sacrifice your desires and make a bold stand against what, for your gratification, must have meant finally a perfect hell for the woman you loved. Then, in the midst of my excitement, there came the final struggle, as you nobly determined to give the scoundrel up to the fate he deserved so well. It was as sudden to me as it was horrible. I saw the flash of the shot, and felt a pang of physical pain, as, through the smoke, I dimly saw you stagger. Then, while I stood there paralysed, I saw you fly at him as he raised his pistol to fire again, the struggle for the weapon, which you struck up as he drew the trigger.”“Yes,” said Stratton, “I struck up the pistol as he drew the trigger; but who would believe—who would believe?”“And then I saw him reel and fall, and there before me he lay, with the blood slowly staining the carpet, on the spot where I had so often sat.”He wiped his brow again, while Stratton rested his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands, as if to hide from his gaze the scene his friend conjured up from the past.“Malcolm Stratton,” continued the old man, rising to lay his hand upon the other’s head, “you were to me as a son. As a father loves the boy born unto him, I swear I felt toward you. I looked upon you as the son of my childless old age, and I was standing there gazing at you, face to face with the horror of that scene, while, with crushing weight, there came upon me the knowledge that, come what might, I must summon help. That help meant the police; and, in imagination, I saw myself sending you to the dock, where you would perhaps, from the force of the circumstances—as you have told me you might—stand in peril of your life. But still I felt that there was nothing otherwise that could be done; and, slowly shrinking back, I was on my way to perform this act of duty, when I heard a low, deep groan. That drew me back, and, looking into your room once more, a mist rose between me and the scene, my senses reeled, and I slowly sank down, fainting, on the floor.”
Such a chance did not come in Stratton’s way again. “If I had drunk that when Guest came and interrupted me—when was it? Two years and more ago,” sighed Stratton one night, “what an infinity of suffering I should have been spared. All the hopes and disappointments of that weary time, all the madness and despair of the morning when that wretched convict came, all my remorse, my battles with self, the struggles to conceal my crime—all—all spared to me; for I should have been asleep.”
A curious doubting smile crossed his face slowly at these thoughts; and, resting his cheek upon his hand, with the light full upon his face, he gazed straight before him into vacancy.
“How do I know that?” he thought. “Could I, a self-murderer, assure myself that I should have sunk into oblivion like that—into a restful sleep, free from the cares I had been too cowardly to meet and bear? No, no, no; it was not to be. Thank God! I was spared from that.”
“But mine has been a cruel lot,” he continued; “stroke after stroke that would have been kinder had they killed; for the misery has not been mine alone. I could have borne it better if it had been so. Poor Myra—poor girl! Yours has been a strange fate, too.”
And his thoughts were filled by her pain-wrung features, and wild, appealing look last time they met, when she had clung to him there, and appealed to him to forget the past, for she would forgive everything and take him to her heart and face with him the whole world.
He shuddered.
“Poor, blind, loving heart! ready to kiss the hand wet with her husband’s blood.” It was too horrible—too terrible to bear.
He hid his face in his hands for a few minutes, but grew calmer as he went on reviewing the past; and from time to time a slight shiver ran through him, as he thought of what he had done, and the mad plan he had made to utterly conceal his crime by fire.
“But that’s all past now,” he said at last, with a sigh of relief. “That horror has been taken from my load, and I will, as a man, fight hard to meet whatever comes. Heaven knows my innocence, and will find me strength to bear it all; and, perhaps, some day, give me—give her forgetfulness and rest.”
He looked sharply up and listened, for he fancied that he heard a sound; but a step faintly beating on the paving outside seemed to accord with it, and he went on musing again about Brettison, wondering where he could be, and how he could contrive to keep hidden away from him as he did.
“If we could only meet,” he said, half aloud—“only stand face to face for one short hour, how different my future might be.”
“No,” he said aloud, after a thoughtful pause, “how can I say that?L’homme propose et Dieu dispose. We are all bubbles on the great stream of life.”
He half started from his chair, listening again, for he felt convinced that he heard a sound outside his doors, and going across, he opened them softly and looked out, but the grim, ill-lit staircase and the hall below were blank and silent, and satisfied that he had been mistaken, he went back to his seat to begin musing again, till once more there was a faint sound, and as he listened he became conscious of a strange, penetrating odour of burning.
Stratton’s face grew ghastly with the sudden emotion that had attacked him, and for a few moments he sat trembling, and unable to stir from his seat.
“At last!” he said in a whisper; “at last!” and, conscious that the time had come for which he had longed and toiled so hard, he felt that the opportunity was about to slip away, for he would be unable to bear the encounter, if not too much prostrated by his emotion to rise from his seat.
It was only a trick of the nerves, which passed off directly; and he rose then, firm and determined, to cross gently to first one and then the other door by his mantelpiece, where he stood, silent and intent, breathing deeply.
Yes; there was no doubt now. He was inhaling the penetrating, peculiar odour of strong tobacco; and at last Brettison must have returned, and be sitting there smoking his eastern water-pipe.
Stratton drew softly back, as if afraid of being heard, though his steps were inaudible on the thick carpet, and he stood there thinking.
“If I go,” he said to himself, “he will not answer my knock.” And feeling now that Brettison might have been back before now unknown to him, he tried to think out some plan by which he could get face to face with his friend.
A thought came directly, and it seemed so childish in its simplicity that he smiled and was ready to give it up; but it grew in strength and possibility as he looked round and took from a table, where lay quite a little heap that had been thrust into his letter-box from time to time, four or five unopened circulars and foolscap missives, whose appearance told what they were; and armed with these he opened his doors softly and passed out, drawing the outer door to, and then stole on tiptoe downstairs and out into the dimly lit square.
“He will not notice that it is so late,” he said to himself, as he looked up and saw just a faint gleam of light at Brettison’s window, where the drawn curtain was not quite closed.
Stratton paused for a moment, and drew a long breath before attempting to act the part upon which he had decided. Then, going on some twenty or thirty yards, he turned and walked back with a heavy, decided, businesslike step, whistling softly as he went, right to the entry, where, still whistling, he ascended the stairs to his door, thrust in and drew out a letter-packet thrice, making the metal flap of the box rattle, gave a sharp double knock, and then crossed the landing and went the few steps, whistling still, along the passage to Brettison’s door. Here he thrust in, one by one, three circulars, with a good deal of noise, through the letter-flap, gave the customary double knock, went on whistling softly, and waited a moment or two; and then, as he heard a faint sound within, gave another sharp double rap, as a postman would who had a registered letter, or a packet too big to pass through the slit.
The ruse was successful, and with beating heart Stratton stood waiting a little on one side, as there was the click and grate of the latch, and the door was opened a little way.
That was enough. Quick as lightning, Stratton seized and dragged it wide, to step in face to face with Brettison, who started back in alarm and was followed up by his friend, who closed both doors carefully, and then stood gazing at the bent, grey-headed, weak old man, who had shrunk back behind the table, whereon the pipe stood burning slowly, while the unshaded lamp showed a dozen or so of freshly opened letters on the table, explaining their owner’s visit there.
Stratton did not speak, but gazed fiercely at the trembling old man, who looked wildly round as if for some weapon to defend himself, but shook his head sadly, and, with a weary smile, came away from his place of defence.
“Your trick has succeeded, sir,” he said quietly. “Seventy-two! Has the time come? I ought not to fear it now.”
Stratton uttered a harsh sound—half-gasp, half-cry.
“Well,” continued Brettison, who looked singularly aged and bent since they had last stood face to face, “you have found me at last.”
Stratton’s lips parted, but no sound came; his emotion was too great.
“It will be an easy task,” said Brettison, with a piteous look at Stratton. “No sounds are heard outside these chambers—not even pistol shots.”
There was an intense bitterness in those last words which made the young man shrink, and as Brettison went on, “I shall not struggle against my fate,” he uttered a cry of bitterness and rage.
“Sit down!” he said fiercely. “Why do you taunt me like this? You have been here before from time to time. Why have you hidden from me like this?”
“I have my reasons,” said Brettison slowly. “Why have you come?”
“You ask me that!”
“Yes. You have hunted me for months now, till my life has been worthless. Have you come to take it now?”
“Why should I take your life?”
“To save your own. You believe I heard or witnessed—that.”
He paused before uttering the last word, and pointed to the door on his left.
Stratton could not suppress a shudder; but, as he saw the peculiar way in which the old man’s eyes were fixed upon his, a feeling of resentment arose within him, and his voice sounded strident and harsh when he spoke again.
“I had no such thoughts,” he said. “You know better, sir. Come, let us understand one another. I am reckless now.”
“Yes,” said Brettison coldly.
“Then, if you have any fear for your life, you can call for help; that is, for someone to be within call to protect you, for what we have to say must be for our ears alone.”
Brettison did not answer for a few moments, during which time he watched the other narrowly.
“I am not afraid, Malcolm,” he said; and he seated himself calmly in his chair. Then, motioning to another, he waited until Stratton was seated.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “I have been here from time to time to get my letters.”
“Why have you hidden yourself away?” cried Stratton fiercely.
“Ah! Why?” said Brettison, gazing at him thoughtfully from beneath his thick, grey eyebrows. “You want a reason? Well, I am old and independent, with a liking to do what I please. Malcolm Stratton, I am not answerable to any man for my actions.”
Stratton started up, and took a turn to and fro in the dusty room before throwing himself again in his chair, while the old man quietly took the long, snake like tube of his pipe in hand, examined the bowl to find it still alight, began to smoke with all the gravity of a Mussulman, and the tobacco once more began to scent the air of the silent place.
Stratton’s lips parted again and again, but no words would come. In his wild excitement and dread of what he knew he must learn, he could not frame the questions he panted to ask in this crisis of his life, and at last it was with a cry of rage as much as appeal that he said:
“Man, man, am I to be tortured always? Why don’t you speak?”
“You have hunted me from place to place, Malcolm Stratton, in your desperation to find out that which I felt you had better not know; and now you have found me—brought me to bay—I wait for you to question me.”
“Yes, yes,” said Stratton hoarsely; and, with a hasty gesture, as he clapped his hand to his throat, “I will speak—directly.”
He rose again and paced the room, and it was while at the far end that he said in a low voice:
“Yes; you know all.”
“All.”
“Tell me, then—why have you done this? Stop! I am right—it was you.”
“You are right; it was I,” said Brettison, smoking calmly, as if they were discoursing upon some trivial matter instead of a case of life and death—of the horror that had blasted a sanguine man’s life, and made him prematurely old.
“Tell me, then; how could you—how could you dare? Why did you act the spy upon my actions?”
The old man rose quickly from his chair, brought his hand down heavily upon the table, and leaned forward to gaze in Stratton’s eyes.
“Answer me first, boy. Me—the man who loved you and felt toward you as if you were a son! Why did you not come to me for help and counsel when you stood in danger—in peril of your life?”
The gentle, mild face of the old botanist was stern and judicial now, his tone of voice full of reproof. It was the judge speaking, and not the mild old friend.
“Did you think me—because I passed my life trifling, as some call it, with flowers, but, as I know it to be, making myself wiser in the works of my great Creator—did you think me, I say, so weak and helpless a creature that I could not counsel—so cowardly and wanting in strength of mind and faith in you, that I would not have stood by you as a father should stand by his son?”
Stratton groaned.
“Forgive me,” he said feebly; “I was half-mad.”
“Yes.”
“How could I, crushed by the horror of having taken a fellow-creature’s life, cursed by the knowledge that this man was—But you cannot know that.”
“Take it, boy, that I know everything,” said the old man, resuming his seat.
“Then have some pity on me.”
“Pity for your folly? Yes.”
“Folly! You are right. I will take it that you know everything, and speak out now. Brettison—”
He paused—he could not speak. But by a mighty effort he mastered his emotion.
“Now think, and find some excuse for me. I was in my room there, elate almost beyond a man’s power to imagine; in another hour the woman whom I had idolised for years was to be my wife. Recollect that, two years before, my hopes had been dashed to the ground, and I had passed through a time of anguish that almost unhinged my brain, so great was my despair.”
“Yes,” said Brettison, “I recall all that.”
“Then that man came, and I was face to face with the knowledge that once more my hopes were crushed, and—he fell.”
Stratton ceased speaking, and sat gazing wildly before him into the past.
It was in a husky whisper that he resumed:
“I stood there, Brettison, mad with horror, distraught with the knowledge that I was the murderer of her husband—that my hand, wet with his blood, could never again clasp hers, even though I had made her free.”
The old man bent his head; and, gathering strength of mind and speech, now that he was at last speaking out openly in his defence, Stratton went on:
“It was horrible—horrible! There it is, all back again before my eyes, and I feel again the stabbing, sickening pain of the bullet wound which scored my shoulder, mingled with the far worse agony of my brain. I had killed her husband—the escaped convict; and, above the feeling that all was over now, that my future was blasted, came the knowledge that, as soon as I called for help, as soon as the police investigated the matter, my life was not worth a month’s purchase. For what was my defence?”
Brettison satin silence, smoking calmly.
“That this man had made his existence known to me, shown by his presence that his supposed death was a shadow—that, after his desperate plunge into the sea, he had managed to swim ashore and remain in hiding; the dark night’s work and the belief that he had fallen shot, being his cloak; and the search for the body of a convict soon being at an end. You see all this?”
Brettison bowed his head.
“Think, then, of my position; put yourself in my place. What jury—what judge would believe my story that it was an accident? It seemed to me too plain. The world would say that I slew him in my disappointment and despair. Yes, I know they might have called it manslaughter, but I must have taken his place—a convict in my turn.”
“You thought that?”
“Yes, I thought that—I think it now. I could not—I dared not speak. Everything was against me, and in my horror temptation came.”
Brettison looked at him sharply.
“The hope was so pitiful, so faint, so weak, Brettison; but still it would linger in my maddened brain that some day in the future—after years, maybe, of expiation of the deed—I might, perhaps, approach her once again. I thought so then. The secret would be between me and my Maker, and in his good time he might say to my heart: ‘It is enough. You have suffered all these years. Your sin is condoned—your punishment is at an end.’ I tell you I thought all that, and in my madness I dared not let the thing be known. She would know it, too, and if she did I felt that hope would be dead indeed, and that I had, too, better die.”
Stratton ceased speaking, and let his head fall upon his hand.
“Put yourself in my place, I say. Think of yourself as being once more young and strong—the lover of one whom, in a few short hours, you would have clasped as your wife, and then try and find excuse for my mad action—for I know now that it was mad, indeed.”
“Yes, mad indeed,” muttered Brettison.
“Well, I need say no more. You know so much, you must know the rest. They came to me, fearing I had been killed—robbed and murdered. They found me at last, when I was forced to admit them, looking, I suppose, a maniac; for I felt one then, compelled to face them, and hear the old man’s reproaches, in horror lest they should discover the wretched convict lying dead, and no word to say in my defence. Nature could bear no more. My wound robbed me of all power to act, and I fainted—to come to, fearing that all was discovered; but their imaginations had led them astray. They had found my wound and the pistol. It was an attempt at suicide. Poor Guest recalled the first—I do not wonder. And they went away at last, looking upon me as a vile betrayer of the woman I loved, and sought in their minds for the reason of my despair, and the cowardly act I had attempted to escape her father’s wrath. Brettison, old friend, I make no excuses to you now; but was I not sorely tried? Surely, few men in our generation have stood in such a dilemma. Can you feel surprised that, stricken from my balance as a man—a sane and thoughtful man—I should have acted as I did, and dug for myself a pit of such purgatory as makes me feel now, as I sit here making my confession, how could I have gone through so terrible a crisis and yet be here alive, and able to think and speak like a suffering man.”
The silence in the room was terrible for what seemed an age before Brettison stretched out his trembling hand and took that of the man before him.
“Hah!”
Malcolm Stratton’s low cry. It was that of a man who had long battled with the waves of a great storm, and who had at last found something to which he could cling.
There was another long and painful pause before Stratton spoke again, and then he slowly withdrew his hand.
“No,” he said; “we must never clasp hands again. I must go on to the end a pariah among my kind.”
Brettison shook his head.
“I have put myself in your place often,” he said slowly, “and I have felt that I might have acted much the same.”
Stratton looked at him eagerly.
“Yes; my great fault in you is that you should not have trusted me.”
There was again a long silence before Stratton spoke.
“I felt that I was alone in the world to fight my own battle with all my strength,” he said wearily.
“And that strength was so much weakness, boy. Mine, weak as it is, has proved stronger far.”
Stratton looked at him wonderingly.
“Yes; how much agony you might have been spared, perhaps, if you had come to me. But I don’t know—I don’t know. You acted as you thought best; I only did the same, and, not knowing all your thoughts, I fear that I have erred.”
Stratton sat thinking for a few moments, and then, raising his eyes:
“I have told you all. It is your turn now.”
Brettison bowed his head.
“Yes,” he said, “it is better that I should speak and tell you.”
But he was silent for some time first, sitting back with the tips of his fingers joined, as if collecting his thoughts.
“You remember that morning—how I came to say good-bye?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I started, and then found that I had forgotten my lens. I hurried back, and had just entered my room when I heard voices plainly in yours. My book-closet door was open, that of your bath room must have been ajar. I did not want to hear, but the angry tones startled me, and the words grew so fierce—you neither of you thought of how you raised your voices in your excitement—that I became alarmed, and was about to hurry round to your room, when a few words came to my ears quite plainly, and, in spite of its being dishonourable, I, in my dread that you were in danger, hurried into the book-closet and was drawn to the thin, loose panel at the end.
“There I was enchained; I could not retreat, for I heard so much of the piteous position in which you were placed. My mind filled in the blanks, and I grasped all.
“I need not repeat all you know—only tell you that, unable to master my curiosity, I placed my eye to one of the cracks in the old panelling, and could see the man’s face—her husband’s features—and I saw him glance again and again at the money, and felt that he meant to have it, though you seemed ignorant of the fact; and, dreading violence, I drew back to go for help. But I could not leave. It meant a terribleexposéand untold horror for your promised wife. I tell you I could not stir, and the fact of my being a miserable eavesdropper died out in the terrible climax you had reached.”
Brettison paused to wipe his brow, wet with a dew begotten by the agony of his recollections, before he continued:
“I stayed there then, and watched and listened, almost as near as if I had been a participator in the little life drama which ensued. There, I was with you in it all, boy—swayed by your emotions, but ready to cry out upon you angrily when I saw you ready to listen to the wretch’s miserable proposals, and as proud when I saw your determination to sacrifice your desires and make a bold stand against what, for your gratification, must have meant finally a perfect hell for the woman you loved. Then, in the midst of my excitement, there came the final struggle, as you nobly determined to give the scoundrel up to the fate he deserved so well. It was as sudden to me as it was horrible. I saw the flash of the shot, and felt a pang of physical pain, as, through the smoke, I dimly saw you stagger. Then, while I stood there paralysed, I saw you fly at him as he raised his pistol to fire again, the struggle for the weapon, which you struck up as he drew the trigger.”
“Yes,” said Stratton, “I struck up the pistol as he drew the trigger; but who would believe—who would believe?”
“And then I saw him reel and fall, and there before me he lay, with the blood slowly staining the carpet, on the spot where I had so often sat.”
He wiped his brow again, while Stratton rested his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands, as if to hide from his gaze the scene his friend conjured up from the past.
“Malcolm Stratton,” continued the old man, rising to lay his hand upon the other’s head, “you were to me as a son. As a father loves the boy born unto him, I swear I felt toward you. I looked upon you as the son of my childless old age, and I was standing there gazing at you, face to face with the horror of that scene, while, with crushing weight, there came upon me the knowledge that, come what might, I must summon help. That help meant the police; and, in imagination, I saw myself sending you to the dock, where you would perhaps, from the force of the circumstances—as you have told me you might—stand in peril of your life. But still I felt that there was nothing otherwise that could be done; and, slowly shrinking back, I was on my way to perform this act of duty, when I heard a low, deep groan. That drew me back, and, looking into your room once more, a mist rose between me and the scene, my senses reeled, and I slowly sank down, fainting, on the floor.”