He smiled a little pityingly, I thought; but then, to the very end the man retained some contempt for me. "Come and see for yourself," he said.
So I went back with him into that room where we had left the dead man, and there I saw a miracle. For while I slept the doctor had been at work, and the head of poor Gregory Pennington was cropped as closely as my own. I shuddered and turned away.
"How you ever contrived to escape puzzles me," said Bardolph Just. "You haven"t half my courage."
The man was certainly amazing. He met everything blandly; he was firm, and quiet, and dignified with this official and with that. He told me afterwards all that he did, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. For my own part, of course, I had to keep out of the way, and I spent most of my time in the s.p.a.cious grounds surrounding the house. There was an old ruined summer-house at one corner, under a high wall; and there, fortified with a few of the doctor"s cigars, I awaited quietly the turn of events. According to the doctor"s description to me afterwards, what happened was this:
In the first place, the puzzle fitted so neatly together that there was no feeling of suspicion. A tall, well-built, dark-haired man, in the clothes of a convict, was roaming over the country; by a miracle a man answering that description, and dressed in those clothes, and having the necessary number upon him, had got to this house on the northern heights above London, and there, in despair of escaping further, had hanged himself. Dr. Bardolph Just was a man of standing in the scientific world--a man who had made discoveries; there was no thought of calling his word in question. This dead man was undoubtedly the escaped convict--Norton Hyde.
A very necessary inquest was held, and twelve good men and true settled that matter once and for all. There had been one curious point in the evidence, but even that was a point that had been miraculously explained. The doctor spoke of it airily, and I wondered a little why he did not explain the matter with more exact.i.tude.
"It seems," he said, "that they discovered on the head of the unfortunate man the mark of a blow--a blow which had undoubtedly stunned him--or so, at least, they thought. It"s impossible for me to say how the unfortunate Gregory Pennington came by such an injury, but at all events even that was accounted for in the case of Norton Hyde."
"How?" I asked.
Dr. Just laughed. "A certain motorist put in an appearance, and frankly explained that he had picked you up on the roadside near Penthouse Prison, and had given you a lift as far as this very house. Then there was an accident, and he and his pa.s.senger were both pitched out; he was convinced that in that way you got your injury. The thing was as simple as possible--you had recovered consciousness before he did, and had scrambled over the fence here."
"But did they swallow the story of my being in the house--of my breaking in?" I asked.
"I had thought of that," said the doctor. "So my tale was that you had hanged yourself from a beam in an outhouse--probably because you failed in your purpose of breaking into my dwelling. As a doctor, the moment I discovered you I cut you down, and carried you in, and did my best to restore animation, but in vain. You will like to know, Mr. Norton Hyde, that my humanity was warmly commended by the jury and coroner."
I laughed in a sickly fashion. "But I am not Norton Hyde any longer," I reminded him.
"True--and I have thought of a name for you that shall, in a fashion, mark your entry into another phase of existence. A nice name, and a short one. What do you say to the t.i.tle of John New, a personal friend of my own?"
I told him that any name would suit me that was not the old one, and so that matter was settled.
He displayed so great an anxiety to see the matter ended, and was altogether so sympathetic with that poor convict who in his despair had hanged himself, that he even attended the funeral. Which is to say, that he carried the fraud so far as to go to Penthouse Prison, what time that disguised body of G.o.dfrey Pennington was carried there, and to see it interred with all due solemnity within the prison precincts; I believe he lunched with the governor of the prison on that occasion, and, altogether, played his part very well.
It is left to me to record here one other happening of that time, and one which made a deep impression upon me. On the night of that strange finishing of the fraud, when Dr. Bardolph Just returned, I was sitting smoking in the summer-house, and enjoying the evening air, when I heard what seemed to be the quick, half-strangled cry of a woman. I tossed aside my cigar and started to my feet and came out of the summer-house.
It was very dark in that corner of the grounds, and the summer-house in particular had great deep shadows inside it.
There came towards me, flying among the trees, and looking back in a scared fashion over her shoulder, the girl I had seen with Gregory Pennington--the girl he had called Debora. She came straight at me, not seeing me; and in the distance I saw Bardolph Just running, and heard him calling to her. On an instinct I caught at her, and laid a finger on my lips, and thrust her into the summer-house. Bardolph Just came running up a moment later, and stopped a little foolishly on seeing me.
And by that time I was stretching my arms and yawning.
He made some casual remark, and turned back towards the house. When he had gone I called to the girl, and she came out; she was white-faced and trembling, and there were tears in her eyes. I felt that I hated Bardolph Just, with a hatred that was altogether unreasonable.
"I saw you here yesterday," she said, looking at me earnestly. "I need friends badly--and you have a good, kind face. Will you be my friend?"
I do not know what words I said; I only know that there, in the dark garden, as I bent over her little hands and put them to my lips, I vowed myself in my heart to her service.
CHAPTER III.
THE MISSING MAN.
I find it difficult to write, in my halting fashion, of what my sensations were at that time. G.o.d knows what good was in me, and only G.o.d and time could bring that good out of me; for I had had no childhood, and my manhood had been a thing thwarted and blighted.
You have to understand that in a matter of a few days I had lived years of an ordinary life; had been in prison, and had escaped; had come near to death; had found myself buried and done with, and yet enlisted on life under a new name; and, to crown it all, now come face to face with someone who believed in me and trusted me--broken reed though I was to lean upon.
I stood in the dark grounds, holding the girl"s hands and looking into her eyes: and that was a new experience for me. I remembered how someone else--dead, and shamefully buried in the precincts of a prison--had held her hands but a little time before, and had begged that he might help her. Well, he was past all that now; and I, with my poor record behind me, stood, miraculously enough, in his place. Yet there were things I must understand, if I would help her at all: I wanted to know why she had fled from her guardian, and why, in his turn, he had chased her through the grounds.
"What were you afraid of?" I asked her gently; and it was pleasant to me that she should forget to take her hands out of mine.
"Of him," she said, with a glance towards the house; and I thought she shivered. "I wonder if you can understand what I feel, and of what I am afraid?" she went on, looking at me curiously. "I do not even know your name."
I laughed a little bitterly. "You must indeed be in need of friends if you come to me," I answered.
"But my name is John New, and I am a--a friend of Dr. Just."
"Oh!" She shrank away from me with a startled look. "I did not understand that."
"I am a friend of Dr. Just," I repeated, "because it happens that I am very much in his power, and I must be his friend if I would live at all.
If that is your case, too, surely we might form some small conspiracy together against him. You"re not fond of the man?" I hazarded.
She shook her head. "I hate him--and I"m afraid of him," she said vehemently. "And yet I have to look to him for everything in the world."
"Sit down, and tell me about it," I said; and I drew her into the summer-house, and sat by her side while she talked to me. She was like a child in the ease with which she gave me her confidence; and as I listened to her, years seemed to separate me from my prison and from the life I had led. For this was the first gentle soul with whom I had yet come in contact.
"You must first tell me," she urged, "why you are in the doctor"s power.
Who are you? and what have you done, that he should be able to hold you in his hands? You are a man; you"re not a weak girl."
It was difficult to answer her. "Well," I began, after a pause, "I did something, a long time ago, of which the doctor knows; and he holds that knowledge over me. That"s all I can tell you."
She looked straight into my eyes, and I found, to my relief, that I was able to look at her with some frankness in return. "I don"t believe it was anything very wrong," she said at last.
"Thank you," I answered, and I prayed that she might never know what my sin had been.
"You see," she went on confidentially, while the shadows grew about us; "I am really all alone in the world, except for Dr. Just, who is my guardian. He was made my guardian by my poor, dear father, who died some two years ago; my father believed in the doctor very much. They had written a scientific treatise together--because the doctor is very clever, and father quite looked up to him. So when he died he left directions that I was to be taken care of by the doctor. That was two years ago, and I have lived in this house ever since, with one short interval."
"And the interval?" I asked.
"We went down to a country house belonging to the doctor--a place in Ess.e.x, called Green Barn. It"s a gloomy old house--worse than this one; the doctor goes there to shoot."
"But you haven"t told me yet why you were running away from him," I reminded her.
She bent her head, so that I could not see her face. "Lately," she said in a low voice, "his manner to me has changed. At first he was courteous and kind--he treated me as though I had been his daughter. But now it"s all different; he looks at me in a fashion I understand--and yet don"t understand. To-day he tried to put his arm round me, and to kiss me; then when I ran away he ran after me."
I felt that I hated the doctor very cordially; I had an insane desire to be present if by any chance he should repeat his conduct. I felt my muscles stiffen as I looked at the girl; in my thoughts I was like some knight of old, ready to do doughty deeds for this fair, pretty girl, who was so ready to confide in me. I forgot all about who I was, or what had happened to me; I had only strangely come out into the world again--into a world of love.
But the fact that it was a world of love reminded me that I had had a rival--another man who had held her hands and looked into her eyes, and pleaded that he might help her. I could not, of course, ask about him, because I held the key to his fate, and that fate intimately concerned my own safety; but I was consumed with curiosity, nevertheless.
Strangely enough, she voiced my thoughts by beginning to speak of him.
"There is something else that troubles me," she said earnestly. "I have one friend--a dear, good, loyal fellow; but he has unaccountably gone away, and I can hear nothing of him."