"There is a copper at the door, sir; here he comes," said Susan, the young woman who had called Barton from the _Hit or Miss_.
The helmet of the guardian of the peace appeared welcome above the throng.
And still the pale woman in white sat as motionless as the stricken girl at her feet--as if she had not been an actor, but a figure in a _tableau_.
"Policeman," said Barton, "I give that woman in charge for an attempt at murder. Take her to the station."
"I don"t like the looks of her," whispered the policeman. "I"d better get her knife from her first, sir."
"Be quick, whatever you do, and have the house cleared. I can"t look after the wounded girl in this crowd."
Thus addressed, the policeman stole round toward the seated woman, whose eyes had never deigned, all this time, to stray from the body of her victim. Barton stealthily drew near, outflanking her on the other side.
They were just within arm"s reach of the murderess when she leaped with incredible suddenness to her feet, and stood for one moment erect and lovely as a statue, her fair locks lying about her shoulders. Then she raised her right hand; the knife flashed and dropped like lightning into her breast, and she, too, fell beside the body of the girl whom she had stricken.
"By George, she"s gone!" cried the policeman. Barton pushed past him, and laid his hand on the woman"s heart. She stirred once, was violently shaken with the agony of death, and so pa.s.sed away, carrying into silence her secret and her story.
Mr. Cranley"s hopes had been, at least partially, fulfilled.
"Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start!" remarked the policeman, sententiously; and then, while Barton was sounding and stanching the wound of the housekeeper"s victim, and applying such styptics as he had within reach, the guardian of social order succeeded in clearing __The Bunhouse__ of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending a message (by the direction of the girl who had summoned Barton, and who seemed not devoid of sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that lady was being expected, the girl, who now took a kind of subordinate lead, was employed by Barton in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, and in generally restoring order.
When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St John Delo-raine"s house with Barton"s brief note, and with his own curt statement that "murder was being done at _The Bun-house_," he found the Lady Superior rehearsing for a play. Mrs. St. John Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room representation of "Nitouche," and the terrible news found her in one of the costumes of the heroine. With a very brief explanation (variously misunderstood by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John Deloraine hurried off, "just as she was," and astonished Barton (who had never seen her before) by arriving at _The Bunhouse_ as a rather conventional shepherdess, in pink and gray, rouged, and with a fluffy flaxen wig.
The versatility with which Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all worlds occasionally let her into _inconsequences_ of this description.
But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had also, not only a kind heart, but a practical mind. In five minutes she had heard the tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her wig, and settled herself as nurse by the bedside of Margaret. The girl"s wound, as Barton was happily able to a.s.sure her, was by no means really dangerous; for the point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part.
But the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene of violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young women) had affected most perilously a const.i.tution already weakened by sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, a.s.sisted by the most responsible of _The Bun-house_ girls, announced her intention to, sit up all night with the patient. Barton--who was moved, perhaps, as much by the beauty of the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as by professional duty--remained in attendance till nearly dawn, when the Lady Superior insisted that he should go home and take some rest. As the danger for the patient was not immediate, but lay in the chances of fever, Barton allowed himself to be persuaded, and, at about five in the morning, he let himself out of _The Bunhouse_, and made sleepily for his lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his share of adventures--which, like sorrows, never "come as single spies, but in battalions"--was by no means exhausted.
The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the _Hit or Miss_, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.
"There"s the gray beginning, Zooks," he muttered to himself, in half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still steps along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind was walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the lamplights dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was just pa.s.sing the locked doors of the _Hit or Miss_--for he preferred to go homeward by the riverside--when a singular sound, or mixture of sounds, from behind the battered old h.o.a.rding close by, attracted his attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not pa.s.sed a _nuit blanche_. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make before quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a great whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its economy, and was laboring "without a conscience or an aim." Whir, whir, flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them, the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer, whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all his might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms of the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a half-superst.i.tious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the accents of pain.
Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats--the time during which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the h.o.a.rding: they were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken, and next moment, with torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within the palisade.
Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things--big, black, formless--were dimly seen; but nearer the h.o.a.rding than the middle of the waste open ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed, flaming vapors fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached in some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the ground, now dashed to earth again, now caught in and now torn from the teeth of the flying wheel.
Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, "Hold on!" or some other such encouragement, and ran in the direction of the sufferer. But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, piles of wood, old baskets, outworn hats, forsaken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste land, the movement of the flying fans began to slacken, the wheels ran slowly down, and, with a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased moving, as a heart stops beating. Then, just when all was over, a voice came from the crumpled ma.s.s of humanity in the centre of the hideous mechanism:
"Don"t come here; stop, on your peril! I am armed, and I will shoot!"
The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible.
Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes (the old Irish duelling days being over) at least to know _why_ he is to be shot at.
"What"s the matter with you?" he said. "What on earth are you doing? How can _you_ talk about shooting? Have you a whole bone in your body?"
To this the only reply was another groan; then silence.
By this time there was a full measure of the light "which London takes the day to be," and Barton had a fair view of his partner in this dialogue.
He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak and distorted like a victim of the rack--scattered, so to speak--in a posture inconceivably out of drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The man"s head was lowest, and rested on an old battered box; his middle was supported by a beam of the engine; one of his legs was elevated on one of the fans, the other hung disjointedly in the air. The man was strangely dressed in a close-fitting suit of cloth--something between the uniform of bicycle clubs and the tights affected by acrobats. Long, thin, gray locks fell back from a high yellow forehead: there was blood on his mouth and about his beard.
Barton drew near and touched him: the man only groaned.
"How am I to help you out of this?" said the surgeon, carefully examining his patient, as he might now be called. A little close observation showed that the man"s arms were strapped by buckles into the fans, while one of his legs was caught up in some elastic coils of the mechanism.
With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the victim, whose stifled groans proved at once the extent of his sufferings and of his courage.
Finally, the man was free from the machine, and Barton discovered that, as far as a rapid investigation could show, there were no fatal injuries done, though a leg, an arm, and several ribs were fractured, and there were many contusions.
"Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, while I go round to the police-office and get men and a stretcher," said Barton.
The man held up one appealing hand; the other was paralyzed.
"First hide all _this,_" he murmured, moving his head so as to indicate the fragments of his engine. They lay all confused, a heap of spars, cogs, wheels, fans, and what not, a puzzle to the science of mechanics.
"Don"t let them know a word about it," he said. "Say I had an accident--that I was sleep-walking, and fell from a window--say anything you like, but promise to keep my secret. In a week," he murmured dreamily, "it would have been complete. It is the second time I have just missed success and fame."
"I have not an idea what your secret may be," said Barton; "but here goes for the machine."
And, while the wounded man watched him, with piteous and wistful eyes, he rapidly hid different fragments of the mechanism beneath and among the heaps of rubbish, which were many, and, for purposes of concealment, meritorious.
"Are you sure you can find them all again?" asked the victim of misplaced ingenuity.
"Oh yes, all right," said Barton.
"Then you must get me to the street before you bring any help. If they find me here they will ask questions, and my secret will come out."
"But how on earth am I to get you to the street?" Barton inquired, very naturally. "Even if you could bear being carried, I could not lift you over the boarding."
"I can bear anything--I will bear anything," said the man. "Look in my breast, and you will find a key of a door in the palings."
Barton looked as directed, and, fastened round the neck of the sufferer by a leather shoe-tie, he discovered, sure enough, a kind of skeleton-key in strong wire.
"With that you can open the gate, and get me into the street," said the crushed man; "but be very careful not to open the door while anyone is pa.s.sing."
He only got out these messages very slowly, and after intervals of silence broken by groans.
"Wait! one thing more," he said, as Barton stooped to take him in his arms. "I may faint from pain. My address is, Paterson"s Kents, hard by; my name is Winter." Then, after a pause, "I can pay for a private room at the infirmary, and I must have one. Lift the third plank from the end in the left-hand corner by the window, and you will find enough. Now!"
Then Barton very carefully picked up the poor man, mere bag of bones (and broken bones) as he was.
The horrible pain that the man endured Barton could imagine, yet he dared not hurry, for the ground was strewn with every sort of pitfall.
At last--it seemed hours to Barton, it must have been an eternity to the sufferer--the h.o.a.rding was reached, and, after listening earnestly, Barton opened the door, peered out, saw that the coast was clear, deposited his burden on the pavement, and flew to the not distant police-station.
He was not absent long, and returning with four men and a stretcher, he found, of course, quite a large crowd grouped round the place where he had left his charge. The milkman was there, several shabby women, one or two puzzled policemen, three cabmen (though no wizard could have called up a cab at that hour and place had he wanted to catch a train;) there were riverside loafers, workmen going to their labor, and a lucky penny-a-liner with his "tissue" and pencil.
Pushing his way through these gapers, Barton found, as he expected, that his patient had fainted. He aided the policemen to place him on the stretcher, accompanied him to the infirmary (how common a sight is that motionless body on a stretcher in the streets!), explained as much of the case as was fitting to the surgeon in attendance, and then, at last, returned to his rooms and a bath, puzzling over the mystery.
"By Jove!" he said, as he helped himself to a devilled wing of a chicken at breakfast, "I believe the poor beggar had been experimenting with a Flying-Machine!"