"He"s very quiet, sir," said the old man, getting to his feet slowly. "I was afraid at first--I didn"t understand. I was afraid of him. Think of that!" He laughed again with a laughter that was ghastly.
"Cut--cut him down!" I stammered in a whisper, holding on to the edge of the mantelshelf and beginning to feel a horrible nausea stealing over me.
He shook his head. "I can"t touch him--I"m afraid again," said the old man, and backed away into a corner.
What I should have done within a minute or two I do not really know, if by chance I could have kept my reason at all, but I heard someone moving in the house, and coming towards the room in which I stood. I did not think of my danger; everything was so far removed from the ordinary that it was as though I moved and walked in some dream, from which presently, with a shudder and a sigh of relief, I should awake. Therefore, even when I heard footsteps coming towards the room I did not move, nor did it seem strange that whoever came seemed to step with something of a jaunty air, singing loudly as he moved, with a rather fine baritone voice. In just such a fashion a man flung open the door and marched straight into the room, and stopped there, surveying the picture we made, the three of us--one dead and two alive--with a pair of very bright, keen eyes.
He was a tall, thin man, with sleek black hair gone grey at the temples.
He had a cleanly-shaven face, much lined and wrinkled at the corners of the eyes and of the mouth; and when he presently spoke I discovered that his lips parted quickly, showing the line of his white teeth, and yet with nothing of a smile. It was as though the lips moved mechanically in some still strong mask; only the eyes were very much alive. And after his first glance round the room I saw that his eyes rested only on me.
"Who are you? What do you want?" he demanded sharply.
I did not answer his question; I pointed weakly to the hanging man.
"Aren"t you going--going to do anything with him?" I blurted out.
He shrugged his shoulders. "He"s dead; and the other one,"--he let his eyes rest for a moment on the old man--"the other one is as good as dead for anything he understands. The matter is between us, and perhaps I"d better hear you first."
"I can"t--not with that in the room!" I whispered, striving to steady my voice.
He shrugged his shoulders again, and drew from his pocket a knife.
Keeping his eyes fixed on the swaying figure above him, he mounted to a chair, and so to the table, deftly and strongly lifted the dead man upon one shoulder while he severed the rope above his head. Then he stepped down, first to the chair and then to the floor, and laid the thing, not ungently, on a couch in the corner. I was able now to avert my eyes from it.
"Does that please you?" he asked, with something of a sneer. "Get forward into the light a little; I want to see you."
I stepped forward, and he looked me up and down; then he nodded slowly, and showed that white gleam of his teeth. "I see--a convict," he said.
"From what prison?"
"Many miles from here," I answered him. "I escaped early this morning; someone brought me as far as this on a motor-car. I broke in--because I wanted food and a change of clothing. I was desperate."
"I see--I see," he said, in his smooth voice. "A change of clothing, and food. Perhaps we may be able to provide you with both."
"You mean you"ll promise to do so, while you communicate with the police, I suppose?" I answered sullenly.
He smiled, and shook his head. "That is not my way of doing things at all," he said. "You are desperate, you tell me, and I have no particular interest in your recapture. If it comes to that, I have trouble enough of my own." He glanced for a moment at the body behind him. "I should like to know how it comes about that you are a convict--for what particular crime, I mean?"
I told him, as briefly as I could, the whole story, not painting myself too black, you may be sure. He listened with deep attention until I had finished, and then for a minute or two he stood still, with his arms folded, evidently considering some point deeply. I waited, forgetful of all else but the man before me, for he seemed to hold my fate in his hands. All this time the old man I had found in the room stood in a corner, smiling foolishly, and nibbing his hands one over the other. The other man who dominated the situation took not the faintest notice of him.
"How long have you been hanging about this place, waiting to break in?"
demanded the man who had come into the room last. "Speak the truth."
"I don"t exactly know," I answered. "I fell asleep while I lay in the grounds, and lost count of time. But I saw him,"--I nodded my head towards that p.r.o.ne figure on the couch--"I saw him in the grounds."
"Alone?" He jerked the word out at me.
"No, there was a lady."
"Since you know that, you may as well know the rest," he replied. "This young man has had a most unhappy attachment for a young lady in this house, who is my ward. He has persecuted her with his attentions; he has come here under cover of the darkness, over and over again, against my wishes. She liked him----"
"I heard her say that," I broke in, incautiously.
"Then you only confirm my words," he said, after a sharp glance at me.
"Perhaps you may imagine my feelings when to-night I discovered that the unhappy boy had absolutely taken his revenge upon me, and upon her, by hanging himself in this very room. So far I have been able to keep the knowledge from my ward,--I think there"s a possibility that I may be able to keep it from her altogether."
I did not understand the drift of his thought then, nor did I see in what way I was to be concerned in the matter. He came a little nearer to me, and seated himself on the table, and bent his keen glance on me before going on again. I think I muttered something, for my own part, about being sorry, but it was a feeble mutter at the best.
"Perhaps you may wonder why I have not sent at once, in the ordinary course, for a doctor," he went on. "That is quite easily explained when I tell you that I am a doctor myself. The situation is absurd, of course. Perhaps I had better introduce myself. I am Dr. Bardolph Just."
He paused, as though expecting that I should supply information on my side.
"My name is Norton Hyde," I said brusquely.
"And you speak like a gentleman, which is a pa.s.sport at once to my favour," he a.s.sured me, with a bow. "Now, let us get to business. A young man comes here to-night and hangs himself in my house. I have a deep respect and liking for that young man, although I am opposed to the idea of his aspiring to the hand of my ward. He hangs himself, and at once scandal springs up, bell-mouthed, to shout the thing to the world.
The name of an innocent girl is dragged in; my name is dragged in; innocent people suffer for the foolish act of a thoughtless boy. The question in my mind at once is: Can the penalty be averted from us?"
I must own the man fascinated me. I began to feel that I would do much to help him, and to help the girl I had seen that night in the grounds of the house. Fool that I was then, I did not understand and did not know what deep game he was playing; indeed, had I known, how could I have stood against him?
"I am, I trust, always a friend to the friendless and the helpless," he went on. "You are friendless, I take it, and very helpless, and although I am no opponent of the law, I have yet the instinct which tells me that I should help a fugitive. Now let us understand one another."
At this point we were interrupted, horribly enough, by a cry from the old man in the corner--a cry like nothing earthly. He advanced a few steps towards where we stood, and looked from one to the other of us, with his hands plucking nervously at his lips.
"I don"t understand, gentlemen--I don"t understand," he said, in a feeble voice. "He was alive and well and strong this morning; he clapped me on the shoulder, and said--what was it that he said?" The man put one hand to his head and looked at me in a lost fashion. "I forget what it was; something seems to have gone here!" He struck his forehead sharply with his knuckles, and again looked at us with that feeble smile.
"Get out of the way!" said Dr. Just fiercely. "Take no notice of him,"
he added to me. "He babbles about things he doesn"t understand."
The old man slunk away, and sat down on a chair in the corner and dropped his forehead in his hands. And from that time he did not move until my strange interview with Dr. Just was over.
"Now, what I suggest is this," the doctor said, leaning towards me and impressing his points upon me by stabbing one white forefinger into the palm of his other hand. "We will say that you have suffered for a crime which was not morally a crime at all. We will put it that you, by all the laws of humanity, had a right to escape from the hideous doom to which you had been consigned. You have escaped, and by the strangest chance you have found a friend at the very outset."
He smiled at me, if that quick baring of his teeth could be called a smile, and I tried to thank him with broken words. Then he went on again--
"Before you can enter the world again it is necessary that you should have clothing which does not brand you as that dress does," he said.
"Therefore I want for a moment to put a case clearly to you--to let you see what is in my mind. Suppose that this convict, fleeing from pursuit, haunted by the thought that he may be recaptured, and may have to serve a yet longer period for his escapade--starving, and fainting, and hopeless; suppose this convict enters a house, and, finding the means ready to his hand, puts an end to the business once for all, and throws up the sponge. In other words, suppose that convict hangs himself, and so gets the laugh of those who are hunting him down. Do you follow me?"
I was so far from following him that I shook my head feebly, and glanced first at my own clothes and then at the man who had hanged himself, and who now lay on the couch. Then I shook my head again.
The doctor seemed to lose patience. "I"m afraid you haven"t a very quick brain," he exclaimed testily. "Let me make myself more clear. A young man of good family and good standing in the world, comes in here to-night and commits suicide; soon after an outcast, flying from justice, follows him, and breaks in also. In appearance the two are something alike; both are tall, and strong, and dark; each man--the one from compulsion--has closely cropped dark hair. Suppose I suggest that, to avoid a scandal, it is the convict who has hanged himself, and that the other man has not been here at all. In other words, as you need a change of clothing, I propose you change with that!"
I gasped at the mere horror of the idea; I shuddered as I looked at the dead man. "I couldn"t--I couldn"t!" I whispered. "Besides, what would become of me?"
"I don"t ask you to take the place of the other man; that would be too risky, and would, in fact, be impossible," he said quietly. "I am merely asking you to a.s.sist me to cover up this unfortunate business and at the same time to save yourself."
There was no time for me to think; I was like a rat in a trap.
Nevertheless, on an impulse, I refused to have anything to do with so mad a notion. "I won"t do it; it"s impossible!" I said.
"Very good, my friend!" He shrugged his shoulders and moved quietly across the room towards the bell. "Then my duty is clear--I give you up to those who must be anxious concerning your safety. I"ve given you your chance, and you refuse to take it."
His hand was on the bell when I called to him, "Stop! is there no other way?"