I went back to my lodging at the little inn, more perplexed than ever as to what I should do. I knew that this was a new danger which threatened the girl, because she would prove an easier victim in any new scheme which might be maturing, by reason of her belief in the man who meant to kill her; her trust in him would make her utterly unsuspicious. The thought of that drove me almost frantic, and I raged up and down my little room in the inn, tormented by doubts and fears, and seeing my own helplessness loom more largely before me with every moment. Late in the afternoon I went out into the village of Comerford, undecided whether to go back to London, or whether to remain in that place. I wandered aimlessly about the streets, and finally seated myself on a gate a little way out, and propped my chin in my hands and gave myself up to the gloomiest thoughts.
I became aware, in a curious, detached fashion, of a small country boy, with a very freckled face and very light hair, who had walked past me twice, and had observed me narrowly; now I came to think of it, I had seen him loitering along on the other side of the street some half-hour previously. I looked at him with a frown now, and asked him what he wanted.
To my surprise he asked me if I was Mr. John New. I sat up and looked at him, and said that I was. From one of his pockets the boy drew out a twisted piece of paper, flattened it with one grubby hand upon the other, and spelled out the name. Then to my amazement, he handed the note to me.
"Where did you get this from?" I demanded.
He told me that a lady had given it to him, and had given him also a shilling to find me. She had told him what I was like, and that I was a stranger in the village; my aimlessly wandering about the streets had done the rest, and had shown me to him. I added another shilling to the boy"s new wealth on the spot, and he went away happy. Then I untwisted the note, and read what was written on it.
"_I want to see you, and I must see you to-day. There is a place at the other side of the wood where you lay this morning--an old chalk-pit, half filled with water. At one side of that is a little ruined hut. I shall be there this evening at a little after six. I beg, that you will not fail me._
"_DEBORA._"
So much had I been tricked, and so little faith had I in man or woman then, that for a moment I believed that this was another trap set, into which my feet should stumble. But the next moment, I told myself that surely this village boy would not have lied to me over the matter. A woman had sent the note, and it could be but one woman. I thrust the precious paper into my pocket, and set off then and there, with my heart singing within me, to the place appointed.
I came to it well before the time, and found it to be just as the note described. I had kept well away from the wood, and I came easily to the old disused chalk-pit, which had in it a small pond of stagnant water, formed by the rains of many seasons. Half-way up one side of it was the little hut to which Debora had referred. I made my way to it at once.
Sitting down on an old bench, I looked through the open door, and so could command the way by which she would come.
The time drew on, and still I saw nothing of her. I was beginning to think that some one had discovered that she had communicated with me, or else that, after all, this might be a trap set for me. I blamed myself that I was here in this lonely place without a weapon. And then suddenly, far off, I saw what it was that had delayed her.
The evening was very still and very fine; I could see a long way.
Presently, in the distance, I made out a figure walking backwards and forwards on the edge of the wood; after quite a long time I made it out to be the doctor. I knew in a moment that the man stood as a barrier between the girl in the house and me in the hut, and that while he kept unconscious guard there it was impossible for us to meet. Yet I was as helpless as she must be, and I could only wait until it pleased the man to go back to the house.
He must have walked there backwards and forwards for more than half an hour before I suddenly saw him in the clear light stop, and snap the fingers of his uninjured hand together, with the action of a man coming to a sudden quick resolution; then he turned, and went off with long strides in the direction of the house. I wondered what he was going to do.
I endured another period of waiting that seemed interminable; and then I saw her coming quickly through the wood and down towards the chalk-pit.
She skirted the edge of it, and came on quickly towards where I stood in the doorway of the hut waiting for her. After her declaration in the house, in the presence of the two men, I could not know in what mood she came, and I was puzzled how I should greet her. About that, however, I need not have thought at all, for the miracle of it was that she came straight towards me, with her eyes shining, and her hands stretched out towards me, so that in the most wonderful way, and yet in a way most natural, I took her suddenly in my arms. And she broke at once into a torrent of prayers and excuses.
"Oh, my dear! my dear! I was so afraid you would not meet me. I have not deserved that you should; it might have happened that you would not understand, and would believe that all the hateful things I said were meant by me. You didn"t believe that, did you?"
"Well--yes, I did," I stammered. "What else could I believe?"
"Don"t you understand that I should have had no chance at all with those men, unless I had thrown them off their guard? I hated myself afterwards, when they laughed and joked about you; I could have killed them. Then I made up my mind that I must send and find you."
"It was wonderful that the boy should know me so easily," I answered.
"How did you describe me?"
She hung her head, and I saw the colour mount from neck to brow. "I told the boy to look for a man with the mark of a blow across his face," she whispered; and then, before I could prevent her, even had I wished, she had put her arms about my neck and had drawn my head down, and was kissing me pa.s.sionately on the mark itself. "That"s to heal it--and that--and that--and that!" she whispered.
We were both more composed presently, and were seated side by side on the old bench inside the hut. We had no fear of being surprised by anyone; the side of the chalk-pit went up sheer behind the hut, and from the edge of it all was open country. Before us, as I have said, stretched the chalk-pit itself, and the wood, and beyond that the grounds of the house. So we sat contentedly, and looked into each other"s eyes, and said what we wanted to say.
"It came upon me suddenly," began Debora, "this morning when I turned and saw Dr. Just on his knees, holding his wrist. I seemed to know instinctively that you had shot him. I knew, dear, that you would not run away, and I had time before they sent for me to make up my mind what to do. I had not quite realised what he had meant to do. I did not think he would be daring enough to shoot me in that fashion. But I am glad, for your sake, that you did not kill him."
"So am I--now," I replied. "And you do believe, my dearest girl, that he has really tried on these three occasions to take your life?"
"I know it," she answered, with a little shiver. "But it is for the last time. See"--she placed her hands in mine, and looked fearlessly into my eyes--"for the future you shall look after me--you shall take care of me. Is that too bold a thing to say?"
I drew her close to me. "No, Debora mine," I whispered, "because I love you. I am what you called me--a thing without a name, but in my heart I am honest; in my heart I love the name that has been given me, because by that you first knew me."
I told her of my plans: that we should go away then and there, and that for that night I would give her the room I had taken at the inn, and would find a lodging in another place. Then, quite early, before anyone we need fear was awake, we would start off into the world, on some impossible mission of making a fortune, and living happily for ever afterwards.
"But you forget, John dear--I have a fortune already," she reminded me.
"That belongs to me--that we must get."
I was troubled at the thought of that, troubled lest she might believe, even for one fleeting moment, that I set that fortune as of greater value than herself. I was about to speak of it when she suddenly turned to me, and began to speak with the deepest earnestness of quite another matter.
"There is something I must say to you--now, before we leave this place,"
she said. "I want first of all to tell you that I never loved Gregory Pennington; he was only my dear friend--my brother."
"I am glad," I answered simply.
"And I want to tell you now that I am absolutely certain in my own mind that the boy never killed himself."
I was so startled that for a moment I could not answer her. She glanced out of the door of the hut, as though fearing that even in that place she might be overheard, and then went on speaking at a great rate:
"It was the last thing he would have done; there was no reason for it at all. He was happy, because he had always the mistaken hope that he might persuade me to love him. On the very night of his death--the night when you came there--he, too, had tried to persuade me to leave the house, and go away with him; like yourself, he believed that I was not safe with Dr. Just. Do you believe for a moment that, having said that to me, he would walk into the house and put a rope about his neck? No, I won"t believe it!"
"But, my darling, how else could he have died?" I asked.
She answered me quite solemnly, and with the same deep earnestness I had heard in her tones before. "He was killed--murdered--by Dr. Just!"
"But why?" I asked stupidly.
"For the same reason that would prompt the man to seek your death, if he could," she said. "Bardolph Just knew that Gregory Pennington wanted to get me to go away; Gregory probably told him so that night. If I went away and married anyone, my fortune went with me, and it is my horrible fortune that has come near to losing me my life. I know, as surely as if I had seen it done, that the doctor killed Gregory Pennington. That he hanged him afterwards, to give colour to the idea of suicide, I quite believe; that would account for his anxiety to let you change places with the dead man."
"Another thought occurs to me," I said, after a pause. "Poor Gregory Pennington"s servant--the man Capper--must have seen what happened; the shock of it has left his mind a blank."
"I wonder," said Debora slowly, "I wonder if Capper will ever speak!"
That thought had been in my mind too, but I had been too startled at what I had heard to speak of it. We left the matter where it was, and as the twilight was now coming on, came out of the hut and took our way by a circuitous route back towards the village. I took the girl to the inn, and left her in charge of the kindly landlady, giving the woman instructions that under no circ.u.mstances was she to let anyone know that the girl was there. I think the landlady scented a runaway match, for she smiled and nodded, and put a finger on her lips in token of silence.
Nothing happened, however, during that night; and in the morning quite early Debora stepped out of the little inn into the village street, and we went off happily together to the railway station. There, by an early market train, we got to London, coming to it just as all the people were pouring into the busy city for the day. I took Debora to a little, old-fashioned hotel that I had heard of near the Charterhouse, and left her there while I set off on a mission of my own. I had determined that, before ever I saw my uncle, or availed myself of his promise to look after the girl, I would go again to that solitary house in which Gregory Pennington had died, and would find the man Capper. For now I had the threads of the thing strongly in my fingers; I knew from what point to start, and I could put certain questions to Capper that he might be able to answer.
I came to the house soon after mid-day, and opened the gate in the fence and went in. Lest I should be refused admission for any reason, I determined that I would, if possible, slip into the house by the back way; and I made my way cautiously round there. So it happened that I came in sight of that open window, on the window-seat of which I had left Mr. George Rabbit reclining while he kept guard over the little grey-headed man called Capper. And I was in time to see a curious scene enacted before my eyes at that very window, just as though it had been a scene in some play. I was hidden among the trees, so that no one saw me, but I could both see and hear distinctly.
Standing with his back to the window, and with his arms folded, was George Rabbit, and his att.i.tude was evidently one of defiance. Leaning against the side of the window-frame, watching him, and glancing also at someone else within the room, stood Capper, with nervous fingers plucking at his lips, and with that vacant smile upon his face. The man Rabbit was speaking.
"I know too much to be turned aht, or to be told to do this or to do that. I"m much too fly for that, guv"nor, an" so I tell yer. Money"s my game, "an money I mean to "ave."
The voice that replied, to my very great surprise, was the voice of Bardolph Just. "We"ll see about that, you dog!" he shouted. And with that I ran round at once through the back door, into the house, and made for the room.
I darted in, in time to see the doctor with a heavy stick raised in his right hand; he was in the very act of bringing it down with all his force, in a very pa.s.sion of rage, on the head of George Rabbit. The man put up his arm in time to save his head, and drew back with a cry of pain, and stopped dead on seeing me. The doctor swung round, too, and lowered the stick.
But the strangest thing of all was the sight of the man Capper. As that blow had fallen, his eyes had been fixed upon the doctor; and I had seen a great change come suddenly over his face. It was as if the man had been turned into another being, so strangely had the face lighted up. He gave what was nothing more nor less than a scream, and leapt straight for the doctor. As the doctor swung about at the sound, the man Capper caught him by the throat, and held on, and swayed about with him, and seemed to be striving to choke him.
"Murder!" he shrieked, and again yet louder, "Murder!"