That was rather more than I could stand. I sprang to my feet.
"What do you mean, sir, by addressing me like that? Are you mad?"
My a.s.sumption of indignation did not seem to impress him in the least.
He returned to the ba.s.so profundo.
"Have you seen the evening papers?"
At the question something began to swim before my eyes. I had to lean against the edge of the table.
"No; what is there in the evening papers to interest me?"
"I will show you."
He began to unfold a paper which he took from his pocket. Laying the open sheet before me on the table, he pointed to a column of leaded type.
"Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest that, if you can."
The heading of the column was enough for me. It was headed, "Tragedy on the Brighton Line." I could read no farther. I dropped down into my chair again. The stranger continued to regard me with accusatory eyes.
"What"s the matter with you? You don"t seem well."
"I"ve not been feeling well all day."
"So I should imagine. Else you had been more or less than human. Since you are not able to read the paper yourself, at which I am not surprised, I will read it for you. The paper says that the body of a woman has been found on the up side of the Brighton line, just before Three Bridges Station."
"Dead?"
"Dead--murdered."
I was speechless, tongue-tied. The whole hideous folly of which I had been guilty rose in front of me, and paralysed my brain. I saw, too clearly, and too late, the dreadful nature of the error I had made. I realised the awful something which, owing to my own cowardice, now stared me in the face. It might have been bad enough if I had played the man; but it would have been better than this.
The stranger kept his eyes fixed on my countenance. I have no doubt that on it was seen some of the horror which racked me. His voice sounded to me like an echo from far away.
"That explains how it was that I saw a woman get into your carriage at Brighton, and that she was not there when we reached Victoria. You had left her on the line."
I made an effort to shake off the stupor which oppressed me. It was out of the question that I should continue to sit there pa.s.sively, and allow this fellow to jump, in his own fashion, at his own conclusions.
Better late than never! There might still be time for me to play the man. I took out my handkerchief to wipe away the moisture from my brow.
I looked at the man in front of me.
"May I ask you for your name, sir?"
"My name is immaterial."
"Excuse me, but it is not immaterial. You thrust yourself upon me last night, you thrust yourself upon me again to-day. If I am to have anything to say to you, I must know with whom I am dealing."
"You are dealing with the witness of your crime."
"That is not the case. I have been guilty of no crime."
"Why do you lie to me? Don"t you know that I could go straight from this room and hang you?" He raised his voice in a manner which told upon my nerves. I looked furtively about the room. I had to wipe the moisture from my brow again.
"Is it necessary that you should speak so loudly, sir! Do you wish to be overheard? There are clerks in the adjoining room."
"Then send them away; or don"t try to hoodwink me--me!" He struck his hand against his chest, accentuating the second "me," as if he were an individual altogether separate and apart. "If I were to follow the promptings of my bosom, I should go at once to the police, and leave you to dangle on the gallows."
"You are under a misapprehension, sir. I give you my word of honour that you are. I may have been guilty--I have been guilty--of an error of judgment, but not of a crime."
"Do you call murder an error of judgment?"
"There has been no murder--I swear it!"
He held up his hand to check me. "Let me tell you how much I know about the business before you go out of your way to lie to me." Seating himself on the edge of my writing-table, he brought his right hand down upon it now and then to emphasise his words. "Directly the train started I heard two voices in the compartment next to mine--in your compartment. The voices were raised in quarrelling. I had, by the purest accident, seen a woman get into your compartment just as we were leaving Brighton, and I knew that the voices were yours and hers. The quarrelling got worse and worse. I feared every moment that something dreadful would happen. I was just going to sound the alarm, when there was silence. Immediately after a door banged--the door of your carriage. I was afraid that something dreadful had happened. And yet, I told myself, if nothing had happened I should look foolish if I stopped the train. Unable to make up my mind what to do, I did nothing. When on reaching Victoria I made a bolt for your carriage and found that the woman was not there, I saw that my worst fears were realised. Then I understood the sudden silence, and the banging of the door."
"She had fallen out."
"Fallen out?"
"Yes."
"Who opened the door for her to fall?"
"I did." Seeing the slip I had made I endeavoured to correct myself.
"That is, I opened the door with the intention of leaving the carriage, in order to escape her violence. In trying to prevent my leaving she herself fell out."
"If, as you say, the whole thing was an accident, why did you not sound the alarm?"
"I ought to have done; I know I ought to have done. I can only say that it was all so sudden and so unexpected that I lost my head."
"To whom have you mentioned a word about the--accident, until this moment I have charged you with your crime?"
"To no one. My reticence, unfortunately, is the error of judgment to which I referred."
"You call that an error of judgment! Then, let me tell you, it was an error of judgment of a somewhat peculiar kind. A mere outsider would say that reticence was the best course you could possibly pursue."
The fellow"s way of looking at the matter made things look blacker and blacker. The moisture acc.u.mulated upon my brow so fast that I could scarcely keep it from trickling down my cheeks.
"It might have been the best course to pursue had I been guilty, but I am not guilty; I swear it. I am as innocent as you are. It was my misfortune that there were peculiar circ.u.mstances connected with the matter which I wished to keep private. I feared to be misunderstood."
"You were not misunderstood by me, I do a.s.sure you. I understood, and understand you only too well. The point is that you still seem unable to understand me. You still appear to be unable to realise that I was in the next compartment to yours, that the divisions between the compartments are thin, and that you shouted at the top of your voice. I distinctly heard you threaten to kill the woman--yes, and more than once, and in a tone of voice which sounded very much as if you meant it."
He was wrong, and he was right. That was the worst of it. Undoubtedly, there had been strong language used on either side, uncommonly strong language. A listener who was not acquainted with all the circ.u.mstances might have supposed that some of it was meant. I can only protest that, so far as I was concerned, I had never meant what I had said half so much as she had meant what she said. No, nor a quarter as much. Nor, for the matter of that, an eighth. She had aggravated me to such an extent that I undoubtedly had said something--and perhaps in rather a loud tone of voice--to the effect that I should like to kill her. But I said it metaphorically. Every one who knows me knows that in practice I am the least bloodthirsty man alive. I never could kill a cat. Even when there are kittens to drown I have to leave them to my wife.
Instead of the woman having killed herself I would infinitely rather she had killed me.
But it was no use trying to explain these things to the man in front of me. I saw that plainly. So far as he was concerned, my guilt was as if it were written in the skies. Taking up a position in front of the fire, he a.s.sumed what he possibly intended to be a judicial air, but which struck me as being a mixture of truculence with impudence.
"When a man threatens to kill a woman, and she is killed immediately afterwards, one asks who killed her. I do not ask, simply because I know. My impulse is to let the world know too. When I do get into the witness-box my evidence will hang you."