Dead Man's Love Part 38

"You're not afraid of the man?" was my somewhat contemptuous greeting of him.

"What are _you_ doing here?" he demanded. "Are you in the plot?"

"I've done with plots," I said. "I am merely a spectator."

He said nothing about Debora, and I rightly guessed that he had not yet discovered her absence, but had merely concluded that she had retired for the night. After looking at me for a moment or two doubtfully, he took a step or two in my direction, and lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Look here," he said, with a nervous glance towards the man in the doorway, "I'm all alone in this house except for a weak girl, and I'm afraid of this fellow. What shall I do?"

"He's smaller than you are," I reminded him. "Turn him out!"

"I'm half afraid to go near him," he said. "You've seen him fly at me on two occasions; he can be like a wild beast when he likes."

"He has said that he will offer you no violence," I replied. "I don't know what he's got in his mind, but it seems to me, if you're afraid to turn him out, you've got to put up with him. He seems very fond of you,"

I added caustically.

He shot a glance at me, as though wondering what I meant; then turned and walked towards the house. I saw Capper retreat before him, so as to give him free entry to the place. On the door-step he turned, and called out into the darkness to me.

"You, at any rate, can stop outside; one madman is bad enough." Then the door was shut, and I was left to wonder what was going on inside.

I was not to be left long in doubt. In something less than half an hour, while I was hesitating whether to go, or whether to stay, the door was pulled open again, and a voice so querulous and nervous that I scarcely recognised it for that of the doctor called out into the darkness,

"John New! John New, are you there?"

I showed myself at once, and he ran down the steps to me. I saw that he was shaking from head to foot; the hand with which he gripped me, while he stared over his shoulder back into the house, was a hand of ice.

"For the love of G.o.d," he whispered, "come into the house with me! I shall go mad if this goes on. I can't shake him off."

"Lock yourself in your room, and go to bed," I said disdainfully.

"I can't; he's taken every key of every lock in the house and hidden them. I can't shut a door against him anywhere; upstairs and downstairs, wherever I go he is there, just behind me. Will you come in?"

I went in; the sheer fascination of the thing was growing on me. Capper took not the faintest notice of me; he was waiting just inside the door, and he followed us into a room. There he seated himself, with his hands on his knees, and waited. The doctor made a pretence of drinking, and even of lighting a cigar, but he set the gla.s.s down almost untasted, and allowed the cigar to go out. No words were exchanged between us, and still Capper kept up that relentless watch.

At last Bardolph Just sank down into a chair, and closed his eyes. "If he won't let me go to bed, I'll sleep here," he murmured.

But in a moment Capper had sprung up, and had gone to the man and shaken him roughly by the shoulder. "Wake up!" he ordered. "You'll sleep no more until you sleep at the last until the Judgment Day."

I saw then with horror what his purpose was. I knew not what the end was to be, but I saw that his immediate purpose was to wear the other man down until he could do what he liked with him. I thought he was a fool not to understand that in striving to break down the strength of the other he was breaking himself down too; but that never seemed to occur to him. For the whole of that night he kept Bardolph Just awake, followed him from room to room in that house where no door would lock, and where he gave his victim no time to barricade himself in; he never left him for a moment. More than once Bardolph Just turned on him, and then the eyes of Capper flashed, and he drew back as if about to spring; and the doctor waited. He threw himself on his bed once, in sheer exhaustion, and Capper made such a din in the room by overturning tables and smas.h.i.+ng things that the wretched man got up and fled downstairs, and out into the grounds. But Capper fled with him.

For my part, I slept at intervals, dropping on to a couch, or into a deep chair, and closing my eyes from sheer weariness. I found myself murmuring in my sleep sometimes, incoherently begging Capper to give the game up, and to let the man alone; but he took no notice of me, and I might indeed have been a shadow in the house, so little did he seem to be aware of my presence. When I could, after waking from a fitful sleep, I would stumble about the house in a search for them, and even out into the grounds; and always there was the man striving for rest, and the other man keeping him awake.

Once Bardolph Just armed himself with a stick, and ran out of the house; Capper s.n.a.t.c.hed up another, and ran after him. I thought that this was the end; I ran out too, crying to Capper to beware what he did. When I got to them--and this was the noon of the following day--Bardolph Just had flung aside his stick, and stood there in a dejected att.i.tude, looking at his persecutor.

"It's no good," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "I give in. Do what you will with me; ask what you will; this is the end."

"Not yet," said Capper, leaning upon the stick and watching him. "Not yet."

That strange hunt went on for the whole of that day, and during the next night. I only saw part of it all, because, of course, I fell asleep, and slept longer than I had done at first. But I saw once the wretched man fall upon his knees before Capper, and beg for mercy; saw him struggle with Capper with his uninjured arm, so that the two of them swayed about, dazed with want of sleep; saw him fall to the ground, and try to sleep, and the other kick him viciously into a wakeful state again. And at last came the end, when the doctor went swaying and stumbling up the stairs towards his bedroom, muttering that the other man could do his worst, but that he must sleep. So utterly worn out was he that he got no further than the landing; there he fell, and lay as one dead.

The sun was streaming in through a high window; it fell upon the exhausted man, and upon Capper standing beside him. Capper was swaying a little, but otherwise seemed alert enough.

"This will serve," he muttered as if to himself. "This is the end."

He went away, and after a little time came back with a rope and a hatchet. In my horror at what he might be going to do, I would have taken the hatchet from him; but now he threatened me with it, with a snarl like that of a wild beast; and I drew away from him, and watched.

He proceeded to hack away the rails of the landing, leaving only the broad bal.u.s.trade; he cut away six rails, and tossed them aside. Then he made a running noose in the rope, and fastened the other end of it securely to the bal.u.s.trade. There was thus left a s.p.a.ce under where the rope was fastened, and sheer down from that a drop into the hall below.

He knelt down beside the unconscious man, and lifted his head, and put the noose about his neck. He tightened it viciously, but the sleeping man never even murmured.

Then I saw him begin to push the sleeping man slowly and with effort towards the gap he had made in the staircase rail.

When I could look (and it was a long time before I could make up my mind to do so), the body of Bardolph Just swung high above me, suspended by the neck. On the landing, p.r.o.ne upon the floor, lay William Capper, sleeping soundly.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BOY WITH THE LONG CURLS.

The suicide of that brilliant and cultured man, Dr. Bardolph Just, caused, as you will remember, a very great sensation at the time, and there was much wonder expressed as to why the man had hanged himself at all. But there was no doubt about the question of suicide, because the whole thing had been so deliberately and carefully planned.

He had taken care to send everyone away from him--even an old and trusted friend like Mr. Harvey Scoffold--and had left himself absolutely alone in that great house. Various theories were put forward as to how he had managed to tie the knot so successfully, in making that running noose for his neck; but it was universally agreed that that had been a matter of teeth and his one uninjured hand. Shuddering accounts, wholly imaginary, were given of what the man's last hours must have been, and in what determined fas.h.i.+on he must have hacked away the rails, in order to make a s.p.a.ce through which he could push his way. Everyone seemed to be perfectly agreed on that matter, and there it ended.

For the rest, let me say that I waited in that house until, in due course, William Capper woke up. He went about what he had to do after that in the most methodical way, restoring all the keys to the doors, and putting in order such things as had been disturbed during those long, weary hours when he had followed the other man round the house. He said but little to me, and at last we came out of the place, and stood together, with the doors of the house closed upon us. Only when we had gone through the grounds, and had come out upon the high road did he speak again, and then without looking at me.

"This is where we part, sir," he said quietly. "You will be making for London, and I----"

"Where will you go?" I asked him as he hesitated.

"I don't know, and it doesn't matter," he replied, looking out over the landscape that stretched before him. "I'm an old man, and there may not be many years for me. It does not matter much where or how I spend them.

If," he added whimsically, "I could be sure that they would send me to that prison from which you came"--for I had told him that part of the story--"I would do something that would cause me to be sent there; but it might be another prison, and that wouldn't do. I should like to be near him."

I stretched out my hand to him, on an impulse, in farewell, but he shook his head. "You might not like to think afterwards that you took my hand, after what I have done," he said quietly. Then, with a quick nod, this singular creature turned away and walked off down the road. I lost him at a turn of it, and I saw him no more.

I went back to London that night, and at my old lodging found Andrew Ferkoe awaiting me. I had the task before me of writing to Debora, and that task, as you may suppose, was not an easy one. Nevertheless I contrived to put my case before her clearly and without brutality.

I told her that I should love her all my life; I blessed her for all she had unconsciously done for me; I told her I was grateful for the sweet memory of herself that she had left with me. But I reminded her that I had no name, and no position, and no hopes, and if by any unfortunate chance my real name was thrust upon me in the future, it would only be to bring shame and degradation upon me and upon any one with whom I was a.s.sociated. And I added that she would have news very soon concerning the doctor, and I thought it improbable that he would ever trouble her again.

I sealed the letter and directed it, and gave it to Andrew Ferkoe. "Run out and post that," I said. "And never speak to me about the matter again. You and I are alone together in the world, Andrew, and we shall have to be sufficient for each other."

The lad weighed the letter in his hand, studying the address, and looking from it to me and back again. "I know what you've done," he said; "you've had a row with the young lady--that's what you've done."

"You simpleton!" I laughed; "what do you know about such matters? I've had no row with the young lady, as you express it. I'm only trying to do the right thing."

"Isn't she fond of you?" he asked wistfully.