"Now, my dear Harvey, let"s understand what bee you have in your bonnet.
What"s this about an escaped convict--and in my house? If I didn"t know you better, I should suggest that my wine had been too much for you."
"Don"t bluff, doctor: it would be far better to ask our friend there to show us his face clearly. If a man"s honest he doesn"t turn his back on his friends."
At that I threw discretion to the winds; I faced round upon him savagely. "Friends!" I exclaimed bitterly. "When were you ever a friend to me, Harvey Scoffold?"
The man laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. "Truly you are indiscreet,"
he said, with a triumphant glance at the doctor. "But youth is ever impatient, and one cannot expect that you, of all men, should be cautious. You never were. Come--can"t we sit down and talk quietly, and see what is to be done?"
"There is nothing to be done--at least nothing that concerns you," said Bardolph Just quickly, as he stopped in the act of pulling open that drawer in his desk which held the cigars. "What in the world is it to do with you?"
"Oh-o! so _you_ are in the swim, too, eh?" exclaimed Scoffold, turning upon him with raised eyebrows. "I thought it possible that you might have been deceived--that our friend here might have come upon you suddenly, and induced you to help him, without your knowing who he was."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, and took out a cigar. In the act of biting the end of it with his sharp white teeth he looked at the other man with a smile that was deadly--it was as though he snarled over the cigar. "I knew all about our friend here from the beginning," he said.
"Be careful, Harvey; you know me by this time, and you know it"s better to have me for a friend than an enemy. Once more I warn you not to ask questions, and not to interfere in what does not concern you. Take a cigar, and sit down and smoke."
Scoffold took the cigar, and stood for a moment or two, while he lighted it, looking from one to the other of us, as though weighing the matter carefully in his mind. He voiced his feelings as he put the match to the cigar, and puffed at it.
"Norton Hyde escaped from prison"--puff--"Norton Hyde hangs himself"--puff--"Norton Hyde is duly sat upon by a coroner and a jury"--puff--"Norton Hyde is buried in a prison grave." He looked at the lighted end of his cigar carefully, and tossed the match from him. "And yet my dear friend, Norton Hyde, stands before me. Any answer to that puzzle?" He looked at me and at the doctor, and laughed quietly.
Truly the game appeared to be in his hands, and I knew enough of him to know that he was a man to be feared. It was, of course, a mere coincidence that the man who had helped me to my ruin was a friend of this man upon whose hospitality I had so unceremoniously flung myself; nor did it mend matters to know that he was a friend of the dead boy. I think we both waited for his next remark, knowing pretty well what it would be.
"A natural answer springs up at once to the puzzle," he went on, seeming literally to swell his great bulk at us in his triumph. "Some man was buried as Norton Hyde--some man who must have been able to pa.s.s muster for him. What man could that have been?"
"You"re getting on dangerous ground: I tell you you"d better let it alone," broke in the doctor warningly.
But the other man went on as though the doctor had not spoken. "Some man lies in that grave, who has disappeared, and for whom no enquiry has been made. Now, who can that man be? What man is there that hasn"t been seen for some days--what man is there that is being looked for now?"
In the tense silence of the room, while the man looked from one to the other of us, absolutely dominating the situation, there came an interruption that was so terrible, and so much an answer to what the man was asking, that I could have shrieked out like a frightened woman.
Behind him, where he stood, I saw the door of the study slowly opening, and then the smiling face of the little grey-haired man looked round it.
Scoffold did not see him; only the doctor and I turned our startled faces to the smiling face of Capper. And Capper spoke--
"Forgive me, gentlemen"--and Scoffold swung round on the words and faced him--"I"m looking for my master, Mr. Pennington."
"Gregory Pennington, by the Lord!" shouted Harvey Scoffold, with a great clap of his hands together.
The doctor turned quickly to the door. I saw him thrust Capper outside, and close the door, and turn the key in it. He put the key in his pocket, and his eyes looked dangerous; he was as a man driven at bay.
"Well, you think you"ve made some great and wonderful discovery," he snapped. "Perhaps you have--at all events, you shall know the truth of the matter from beginning to end. I"ll keep nothing back."
"You can"t, you know," sneered the other, dropping his great bulk into an arm-chair, and puffing luxuriously at his cigar.
I stood with my back to the window while the doctor told the story. He told it from beginning to end, and quite clearly. Of the coming of the disappointed Gregory Pennington to the house, after an interview with the girl; of that mad, rash act of the unsuccessful lover; of the finding of him hanging dead. He told of my coming, and painted a little luridly my desperate threats and pleadings; told of how he had given way, and had dressed poor Gregory Pennington in my shameful clothes.
When he had finished the narrative Harvey Scoffold nodded, as if satisfied with that part of it, and sat for a time smoking, while we awaited what he had to say.
"It never struck me that it was in this house the convict (as the newspapers called him) hanged himself," he said at last. "Upon my word, the puzzle fits together very neatly. But what happens, my friends, when someone enquires for young Pennington? For instance, myself."
"You"ve no purpose to serve," I broke in quickly.
He laughed, and shook his head gaily. "Not so fast, my young friend, not so fast!" he answered me. "I may have an axe to grind--I have ground many in my time. Besides--putting me right out of the question--what of the girl? How do you silence her?"
"I can find a way even to do that," replied the doctor in a low voice.
"Only let me warn you again, Harvey Scoffold, we are desperate men here--or at least one of us--fighting for something more even than liberty. I am fighting to keep this innocent girl"s name out of the business, and to keep scandal away from this house. Let Norton Hyde rest in his grave; Gregory Pennington is not likely to be enquired for. He was young and restless; he may have gone abroad--enlisted--anything.
That"s our tale for the world, if questions are asked."
"It only occurs to me that the virtuous uncle of our young friend here--the man who was robbed so audaciously--would give a great deal to know that the nephew who robbed him was at large," suggested Harvey Scoffold musingly over his cigar.
I took a quick step towards him. "You wouldn"t dare!" I exclaimed threateningly.
He held up a large protesting hand. "My dear boy, I am your friend; I was always your friend. You are quite safe with me," he said. Yet I knew that he lied.
He made one other comment on the matter before wisely leaving the subject alone. "It seems to me strange," he observed, with a furtive look at the doctor, "that you should be so willing to help our young friend here--a man you have never seen."
"I do that," replied the other quickly, "because in that way I can cover up the miserable business of young Pennington. Unless you speak, it is scarcely likely that anyone else will ever drag that business into the light of day. Both Gregory Pennington and our friend here happen to have been particularly alone in the world: in neither case is there anyone who is likely to make awkward inquiries."
"Always excepting the girl," Harvey Scoffold reminded him. "So far as I am concerned, you have nothing to fear from me; I shall merely be an amused spectator of the little comedy; I don"t know yet exactly how it"s going to end."
He was tactful enough to say nothing more then, and we presently drifted, almost with cheerfulness, into some more ordinary conversation.
Yet I saw that the man watched us both from between half-closed eyelids while he smoked and lounged in his chair; and I was far from comfortable. It was late when the doctor rose, and with a glance at the clock said that he had still much work to do before he could sleep. He unlocked the door; at which hint Harvey Scoffold and I left him for the night.
The excitement of the meeting had quite thrust out of my mind the question whether the man was stopping in the house or had merely come there as a chance visitor; but the question was answered now, when Harvey Scoffold told me that he had a long walk before him, and was glad that the night was fine. I felt some sudden uplifting of the heart at the thought that at least I should be relieved of his presence, only to feel that heart sinking the next moment, at the remembrance that he would be free to spread his news in the outer world, if he cared to do so. For it must be understood that my public trial, and all the disclosures thereat, had given to the world the address of my uncle, and my own movements on those secret expeditions of mine; it was possible for Harvey Scoffold to put that veiled threat of his into instant execution.
I knew, moreover, that he was a dangerous man, by reason of the fact that he was chronically in want of money, and had never hesitated as to the methods employed to obtain it. However, there was no help for it now; the murder was out, and I could only trust to that extraordinary luck that had befriended me up to the present.
I walked with him out into the grounds, and he shook hands with me at parting, with some cordiality. "You have had a miraculous escape, dear boy," he said, in his jovial fashion, "and you are quite a little romance in yourself. I shall watch your career with interest. And you have nothing to fear--I shall be as silent as the grave in which you ought to be lying."
He laughed noisily at that grim jest, and took his way down the road in the direction of London. I went back into the house and went to my room, and slept heavily until late the next morning.
The doctor had left the house when I went down to breakfast, and I had a dim hope that I might see the girl alone. But she did not put in an appearance, nor did I see anything of her until the evening, when the doctor had returned, and the three of us sat down to dinner. I had been roaming desolately about the grounds, smoking the doctor"s cigars, and inwardly wondering what I was going to do with the rest of the life that had been miraculously given back to me; and I did not know at what hour Bardolph Just had returned. Yet I had a feeling that there had been some strange interview between the doctor and the girl before I had come upon the scene--and a stormy interview at that. Bardolph Just sat at his end of the table, grim and silent, with his brows contracted, and with his habitual smile gone from his lips; the girl sat white and silent, sipping a little wine, but touching no food. During the course of a melancholy meal no single word was heard in the room, for the doctor did not even address the servants.
At the end of the meal, however, when the girl rose to quit the room, the doctor rose also, and barred her way. "Stop!" he said quickly. "I"ve got to speak to you. We"ll have this matter cleared up--once and for all."
"I have nothing more to say," she replied, looking at him steadily. "My answer is what it has always been--No!"
"You can go, John New," said the man harshly, turning towards me. "I want to talk to Miss Matchwick alone."
"No, no!" exclaimed the girl, stretching out her hands towards me; and on the instant I stopped on my way to the door, and faced about.
But the doctor took a quick step towards me, and opened the door, and jerked his head towards the hall. "I am master here," he said. "Go!"
I saw that I should not mend matters by remaining, but I determined to be within call. I pa.s.sed quickly along the hall after the door was closed; I knew that just within the great hall door itself was another smaller door, opening to a verandah which ran round the front of the dining-room windows, on the old-fashioned early Victorian model. I knew that the windows were open, and I thought that I might by good fortune both see and hear what went on in the room.
And so it turned out. I slipped through that smaller door, and came on to the verandah; and so stood drawn up in the shadows against the side of the window, looking in and listening.
"I have given you the last chance," the doctor was saying, "and now I shall trouble you no more. There is another way, and perhaps a better one. I have treated you well. I have offered to make you my wife--to place you in the position your father would have been glad to see you occupy. Now I have done with you, and we must try the other way. Look into my eyes!"
Then I saw a curious thing happen. At first, while the man looked intently at her with those extraordinarily bright eyes of his, she covered her own with her hands, and strove to look away; but after a moment or two she dropped her hands helplessly, and shivered, and looked intently at him full. It was like the fascination of some helpless bird by a snake. I saw her sink slowly into a chair behind her; and still she never took her eyes from those of the doctor, until at last her lids fell, and she seemed to lie there asleep. Then I heard the man"s voice saying words that had no meaning for my ears at that time.
"You will not sleep well to-night, little one," he said, in a curious crooning voice. "You will rise from your bed, and you will come out in search of something. Is it not so?"