I saw that they hesitated; it was the doctor who put in the final word on Andrew Ferkoe"s behalf. He had been looking at the youth curiously, had even put a hand on his shoulder, and had twisted him about to look into his eyes.
"I shouldn"t think much suspicion would attach to our young friend here," he said. "A bit of a weakling, I should imagine, not very likely to do any harm to anyone. Certainly it won"t do to leave him in this place. Get dressed, my lad," he added to Andrew.
As he turned away I heard him whisper to the man with the lamp, "He"s been asleep fast enough. I doubt if the old man even cried out. The whole attack would be too sudden."
I waited with Andrew Ferkoe while he got dressed; the others went downstairs to move the body of Uncle Zabdiel. Once or twice I noticed that the boy looked at me in a furtive way. I began to think that if he had been innocent he would in all probability have said something, or have asked some question. He got into his clothes rapidly, fumbling a great deal with the b.u.t.tons, as though his fingers trembled. Once he looked up, and opened his mouth as if to speak. I shook my head at him.
"Better not say anything, Andrew," I said in a whisper.
He looked at me in a startled way, but finished his dressing without a word. We went out of the room together, and on the stairs I met the doctor and the two men, who were waiting for us. It seemed that one man was to remain in charge of the house, while the other walked with me to my lodging to see that the address I had given was a correct one. In a few minutes Andrew Ferkoe and I were walking along in silence, side by side, with the police officer a little in the rear.
In due course we came to my lodgings, and there the man left us. I roused up the landlady, something to her surprise, and told her that I must have another bed put into my room. I did not mean to lose sight of the youth until I had decided what to do with him.
The woman very obligingly got out a little camp bedstead that was stowed away in an attic, and I a.s.sisted her to rig it up in a corner of my room. Then she bade us "Good-night," and Andrew Ferkoe and I were left alone. And for a time there was silence, while I sat on the side of my bed and smoked, and looked at him.
"Why do you look at me in that queer way?" he asked at last, in a trembling voice.
"Look here, Andrew," I said solemnly, "let me say quite reverently that at the present moment there"s just G.o.d and you and me in this room, and G.o.d understands a great deal better even than I do what you have had to put up with. Don"t speak until I"ve finished," I exclaimed sternly, "because I want to give you a word of warning. If you want to tell me anything, let"s hear it; if you don"t want to tell me anything, go to bed, and try to sleep. But if you do speak--speak the truth."
He looked at me round-eyed, and with his mouth wide open, for nearly a minute; then he gasped out a question. "Do you--do you really think I did it?" he asked.
"I don"t think about it at all," I answered. "I"m waiting for you to tell me--if you feel you want to."
"I didn"t do it--I never touched him. I should never have had the strength or the courage," he began, in a shaking whisper.
"But you were shamming sleep," I reminded him.
"Of course I was," was his surprising answer. "What else could I do? I didn"t know who you were, or who was coming into the place, and I"d seen enough in the way of horrors for one night to last me all my life." He shuddered, and covered his face with his hands, and dropped down on to his bed.
"Seen enough horrors!" I echoed. "What had you seen?"
He looked up at me, and began his extraordinary story. "I went to bed a long time before old Blowfield," he said. "I think I went to sleep almost at once; I generally do, you know. At all events I didn"t hear the old man come up to his room. When I first woke up I heard a noise down below in the house, just like somebody wrenching open a shutter. I got horribly frightened, and I put my head under the bedclothes, and kept very still; it was just like that night when you broke in and came to my room. After a time the noise stopped, and I began to wonder whether someone had tried to get in and couldn"t, or whether they had really got into the house. It must have been about a quarter of an hour after that--only it seemed ever so much longer--that I first heard old Blowfield cry out."
I felt certain now that he was speaking the truth. Watching him narrowly, I saw the terror grow in his eyes at the recollection of what he had heard and seen in that grim old house. I nodded to him to go on.
"I heard old Blowfield shout out, "Who"s there?"" went on the youth. "He shouted that twice, and I got so excited that I crept out of my room in the dark, and leaned over the rail at the top of the staircase. I saw old Blowfield standing there, and just below him was a man, and the man was crouching as if he was going to spring. Old Blowfield struck at him with the stick--he was holding a candle in his left hand, so that he could see what he was doing--and the man dodged, and caught the stick, and pulled it out of his hand. The man struck old Blowfield once, and he went down and lay still; and then he struck him again."
"Why didn"t you raise an alarm?" I asked, somewhat needlessly.
"What good would that have been?" murmured Andrew Ferkoe resentfully. "I could see that the man didn"t think there was anyone else in the house.
What chance should I have had if he"d caught sight of me? I don"t know whether I made any noise, but while he stood there with the stick in his hands he looked up towards where I was, but he didn"t see me. Then he went back into the bedroom and came out, dragging the bedclothes; he threw them on top of the old man. When he went down into the house I slipped back into my room and got into bed; I simply dared not move or make a sound."
"How long did you stop like that?" I asked.
"I don"t rightly know," was his reply, as he shook his head. "It seemed a long time, and at first I could hear him moving about the house here and there, and then there was a silence. I had just got out of bed, meaning to go down, when I heard another movement in the house, and then voices. And I lay there, trembling so that I could feel the bed shaking under me, until at last, after what seemed hours, I heard people coming up the stairs, and coming into my room. And then I gave myself up for lost, and tried hard to pray. I thought if I pretended to be asleep they wouldn"t kill me, and so I pretended. You may imagine how relieved I felt when I opened my eyes and saw you."
"That"s all very well, my young friend," I said, "but why in the world didn"t you tell the truth at once, and say what you"d seen? Why did you lie, and say that you had been asleep and had heard nothing?"
He looked at me with an expression of cunning on his lean face.
"Who was going to believe me?" he asked. "Even you had heard me say how badly the old man had treated me, and how I wished I had the courage to kill him; even you believed to-night, first of all, that I had done it.
If I had told any story about a man coming into the place and killing old Blowfield, and going again, they would have laughed at me. I was in a tight corner, and the only thing I could do was to pretend that I had slept through it all."
I saw the reasonableness of that argument; it might have gone hard with the boy if for a moment suspicion had fallen upon him. "Did you see the face of the man clearly?" I asked, after a pause. "What was he like?"
"He was a small man, stooping a little," said Andrew Ferkoe. "I should think he would be about forty-five or fifty years of age. He was dressed like a labourer."
Instantly I remembered the man I had seen on the previous evening lurking outside the house; I wished now that I had taken more note of him. I began to wonder who it could be, and whether it was only some chance loafer who had selected that house as one likely to suit his purpose for burglary. It could scarcely have been anyone who knew Uncle Zabdiel"s habits well, or he would not have been surprised on the stairs as he had been; for the fact that he had to s.n.a.t.c.h a weapon from the hand of the old man proved, I thought, that he had not gone there meaning to kill. For the matter of that, few men enter a place with that deliberate intention; it is only done in the pa.s.sion of the moment, when they must strike and silence another, or suffer the penalty for what they have done.
Long after the boy was in bed and asleep I sat there watching him. Even now my mind was not clear of doubts concerning Andrew Ferkoe, smooth though his tale was. I wondered if all he had told me was true, or if, after all, he had seized that occasion to strike down the old man, and so pay off old scores. I knew that for the present I must leave the matter, and must wait for time or chance to elucidate the mystery.
It must have been about the middle of the night when I found myself sitting up in bed, very wide awake, with one name seeming to din itself into my ears. I wondered why I had not thought of it before.
"William Capper!"
It had been a little man, who walked with drooping shoulders, a man who might be forty-five or fifty years of age. Well, Capper was older than that, but then Andrew Ferkoe had only seen the man in the dim light of a candle.
And the motive? That was more difficult to arrive at, although even I thought there I saw my way. Capper I knew was determined to kill Bardolph Just if he could, and he would know that Bardolph Just had gone to the house of Zabdiel Blowfield. What more natural than that he should have seen him arrive, but should have missed him when he went away; that would explain the man in labouring clothes I had seen hanging about near the house. Capper would know that he must put on some sort of disguise in order to bring himself into the presence of the doctor, and in order to lull the other"s dread of him. I was convinced now that it was Capper who had forced his way into the house late at night, and, finding himself suddenly confronted by a man who demanded his business, had aimed a blow at him at the same time, and killed Zabdiel Blowfield on the impulse of the moment. I lay down again, firmly convinced that I had arrived at a proper solution of the matter.
I further questioned Ferkoe in the morning, and all that he told me served the more to settle the thing in my mind. I wondered if by any chance Capper would be discovered; I wondered also whether, after all, I had been mistaken in my estimate of him, and whether the sudden gusts of pa.s.sion that had swept over him on the two occasions in regard to Bardolph Just might not have been real madness, and might, in this last case, have found their victim in a man with whom Capper had nothing to do. In that case he was merely a harmful lunatic, dangerous to anyone when those gusts of pa.s.sion swept him.
I found that during the next day or two I was pretty closely watched and interrogated by one and another, and more than once I trembled for my liberty, and even for my life. For you will understand that I was surrounded now, more than ever, by dangers of every sort; if it could once have been proved or even suggested that I was that convict nephew of the dead man, it would have gone hard with me. For here was I, masquerading under another name, and actually walking up to the house on the night of the murder. And had not Zabdiel Blowfield actually stated in writing that he could tell the authorities something concerning his nephew, Norton Hyde? The motive was clear; it had been vitally necessary that I should silence Uncle Zabdiel at all costs.
So I argued the matter, and I remembered uneasily enough that that weakling, Andrew Ferkoe, knew who I really was, and might, in case of extremity, give my secret away. On the other hand it turned out that the police had found a sc.r.a.p of writing in the house, which gave the name and address of Dr. Bardolph Just, so that that gentleman was brought into the business, in order that questions might be asked of him. I had gone down to the house, and there we came face to face.
There was no necessity for me to ask him what he thought about the matter; I read in his face that he was certain in his own mind that I was the man. I should not have spoken to him at all, because when next I fought him I meant to fight with other weapons than my tongue, but he came up to me, and looked at me with that evil grin of his.
"This is a bad business," he said. "I understand that you were here almost immediately after the thing was done, eh?"
"Yes, and not before," I replied in a whisper. "You"re on the wrong track, I a.s.sure you. I"ve had nothing to do with the matter."
I saw that he had something more to say to me. When presently I left the house he strolled along by my side. His first words were startling enough, in all conscience.
"Well, so for the moment you have succeeded," he said quietly.
I turned and stared at him; I did not understand in the least what he meant. "In what have I succeeded?" I asked. "Don"t I tell you that I"m not responsible for the business we"ve just been talking about."
"You know what I"m referring to," he said, harshly. "I"m speaking of the girl."
I had learnt wisdom, and I controlled myself with an effort. "What of her?" I asked carelessly.
I saw his eyes flash, and noticed that his teeth were clenched hard as he strode along beside me. "You"ve got her!" he burst out at last, "but you shan"t keep her. You"ve been wise enough, too, to hide her away somewhere where you don"t go yourself. I"ve had you watched, and I know that. But I"ll find her, and if I don"t find her within a certain time, determined on by myself, I"ll tell my story, and you shall hang!"
I was on the point of blurting out that I knew nothing about the matter, but on second thoughts I held my tongue. I guessed in a moment that Debora must have made her escape from the house, and must be somewhere in hiding, and, of course, she would not know where to communicate with me. My heart leapt at the thought that she was free; it sank again at the thought that she might be penniless and unprotected amongst strangers. At the same time I decided that I would not give him any undue advantage over me, by letting him understand that I did not know where the girl was. I merely shrugged my shoulders and laughed.
"You can take my warning, and make the most of it," he said abruptly.
"If Debora does not return to me within the time I have mapped out--and I shall not even tell you what that time is--I tell what I know to the right people."
I remembered what Debora had said to me about her certainty that this man had caused the death of Gregory Pennington; I had a shot at that matter now. "And some explanation will be needed regarding the man you allowed to be shut away in a grave in Penthouse Prison," I said quietly.