WHAT LUCIUS SAW BETWIXT MIDNIGHT AND MORNING.
The sky was starless above the Shadrack-road, and the air hardly less
oppressive than it had been in the sultry noontide. That low sky
seemed to shut in the Shadrack district like an iron roof, and the
Shadrackites lounging against their doorposts, or conversing at street
corners, or congregating in small clusters outside public-houses,
bemoaned themselves that the storm had not yet come.
Lucius left Cedar House heavy-hearted, in spite of the knowledge that
he, who yesterday knew not of a creature in this universe likely to
leave him a five-pound note, was to-night heir to a handsome fortune.
The thought of Mr. Sivewright’s generosity in no manner elated him. Had
his mind been free to contemplate this fact he would, no doubt, have
rejoiced in the new sense of security which such a prospect must have
inspired; he would have rejoiced not alone for himself, but for the
sake of the woman who was to be his wife. Through the thick tangle of
his troubled thoughts no gleam of light could penetrate. He saw himself
the centre of perplexities. It seemed almost as if the avenging shade
of the man he had slain were hunting him down—tempting him to entangle
himself by some foolish confession, urging him to some folly that must
bring about his own destruction. He thought of Orestes pursued by the
Eumenides—tortured by the burden of a crime which, at the hour of its
commission, he had deemed an act of justice.
Instead of turning homewards as usual, he paused for a minute or so
outside the iron gate, and then took the opposite direction, setting
his face towards the distant country. It was only a fancy, perhaps, but
it seemed to him that the atmosphere was a shade less oppressive when
he turned his back upon Shadrack Basin and the steam factories which
encompassed it. No rain came to cool the fever-parched city, nor had
the first low note of the impending storm sounded in distant thunder.
Yet that coming storm was no less a certainty.
There was a strange bewilderment in the surgeon’s mind. That promise of
wealth, ease, security, a more speedily-won renown, all the benefits
which go hand-in-hand with the possession of ample means, had excited
his brain, although it had not elated his spirits. He saw all the
scheme of his future altered. No longer need he toil in this wretched
district. He might at once establish himself amongst the most famous
of his fellow workers; make known his new theories, his discoveries in
the vast world of medical science; do good on a scale infinitely larger
than that afforded by his present surroundings. It was not that he
wanted to turn his back upon the suffering poor. His brightest hopes,
his fondest dreams, were of the good he was to do for these. He only
desired that his light might not be for ever hidden under a bushel.
Strong in the belief that he could serve the whole race of man, he
languished to shake off those fetters, forged by necessity, which kept
him chained to this obscure corner of the earth.
With the thought of his improved prospects, and all the hopes that
went along with that thought, there mingled that ever-brooding care
about the past. He had perceived a curious change in Lucille’s manner
to-night. Could she have discovered anything? How anxious she had been
to get rid of him! She had not seemed exactly cold or unkind, but her
manner had been hurried, excited; as if her mind were occupied with
some all-absorbing thought in which he had no part.
‘If, by some fatal chance, she had discovered the true story of her
father’s fate,’ he told himself, ‘she would hardly have concealed
her knowledge; she would have surely told me the truth at once, and
dismissed me for ever. I cannot imagine her acting in any double or
underhanded manner. Yet to-night it seemed as if she had something to
hide from me.’
This fancy troubled him; and in spite of his endeavours to dismiss
the suspicion as groundless, the thought recurred to him every now
and then. He walked far along the Shadrack-road, farther than he had
penetrated for many a day; walked on, meditative, and hardly conscious
where he went, until he came to a region of deserted building-ground,
upon which a few skeleton houses lifted their roofless walls to the
blank sky, as if demanding of the gods wherefore the speculative
builder—long since stranded on the reefy shore of the bankruptcy
court—came not to finish them.
This arid plain, which had erst been pleasant meadow-land, and where
the shorn remnant of a once-beauteous hawthorn hedge still languished
here and there under a cloud of lime dust, was the nearest approach to
a rustic landscape within reach of the Shadrackites. Its beauty did not
tempt the pedestrian.
Lucius halted at sight of the skeleton houses, and having in some
measure walked down his excitement, turned back. He did not, however,
take exactly the same way by which he had come. The prospect of the
Shadrack-road, in all its dreary length, may have appalled him, or it
may have been mere vagrant fancy which led him to return by a long
narrow street, straggling and poverty-stricken, yet boasting here and
there some good old red-brick mansion, which had once been the country
seat of a prosperous City merchant, but which now, shorn of its garden,
and defaced by neglect and decay, was let off in divers tenements to
the struggling poor.
This street, with all its byways, was familiar to Lucius, who had
plenty of patients in those squalid houses, down those narrow side
streets, courts, and alleys. He knew every turn of the place, and
wandered on to-night, not troubling himself which way he went, so long
as he kept in a general manner the homeward direction. It had struck
twelve when he emerged from a darksome alley on to the wharf which
formed one side of the narrow creek whereon Mr. Sivewright’s garden
abutted.
There were the dingy barges moored side by side upon the stagnant
water; and there above them, dark against the sky, loomed the outline
of the house that sheltered all Lucius Davoren most fondly loved. He
had wandered to this spot almost unawares.
‘I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, sweet!’
murmured the lover, as he looked up at those blank windows.
There was a faint light in one, the little dressing-room next Mr.
Sivewright’s bedchamber, the room now occupied by Lucille. Yes, and
there was one more light—the yellow flame of a candle in one of the
upper windows, a window in that topmost story, which Lucille had
declared to be utterly uninhabited.
The sight struck Lucius with a vague suspicion—a feeling almost of
alarm.
How should there be a light up yonder in one of those unoccupied rooms?
Could it be Jacob Wincher, prowling about after midnight, to inspect
the treasures of which he was guardian. It was just possible there
might be some part of the bric-à-brac merchant’s collection in one
of those upper rooms. Yet Lucille had declared that they were quite
empty—and his own inspection through the keyholes had revealed nothing
worth speaking of within. And again, how foreign to Jacob Wincher’s
orderly habits to be roaming about with a candle at such an hour!
The gleam of that solitary candle amidst all those dark upper windows
mystified Lucius beyond measure.
‘If it is old Wincher who has carried the light up yonder, it will move
presently,’ thought Lucius; ‘he would not stay there long at such a
late hour. I’ll wait and see the end of the business.’
The first note of the storm sounded as he made this resolve, a rumble
of distant thunder, and then came the heavy patter of big rain-drops,
shedding coolness upon the thunder-charged air. There was an open shed
close at hand, and Lucius withdrew to its shelter without losing sight
of the dark old house opposite, with its two lighted windows.
The water and the barges lay between him and Cedar House, the
wharf—used at this time as a repository for spelter—being built upon a
narrow creek, or inlet from the river.
He stood and watched for nearly half an hour, while the rain came down
heavily and the lightning flashed across his face every now and then;
but still the light burnt steadily. What could Wincher or anybody
else be doing in yonder room at such an hour? Or could it be Homer
Sivewright himself, roaming the house like an unquiet spirit?
‘No,’ Lucius thought, ‘he has not strength enough to mount those steep
stairs without help. It cannot be Sivewright.’
Did the circumstance—trivial enough in itself, perhaps, but painfully
perplexing to that anxious watcher—mean any harm? That was the
question. Did it denote any peril to Lucille? Ought he to go round to
the front of the house, and try to arouse the sleeping household, in
order to warn them of some unknown danger? That seemed a desperate
thing to do, when the circumstance, after all, might be of no moment.
It was most likely Jacob Wincher. He might have eccentricities that
Lucius had never heard of; and to sit up late into the night was
perhaps one of his failings.
Yet that mysterious light, taken in conjunction with Mr. Sivewright’s
fancy about strange footsteps in the dead of the night, was not a fact
to be dismissed carelessly.
‘If there were any way of getting into the house without ringing people
up and frightening my patient, I would get in somehow, and find the
solution of this enigma,’ thought Lucius; ‘but I daresay the doors and
windows at the back are firmly fastened.’
A distant clock chimed the quarter before one, while Lucius was
standing irresolute under the spelter shed. While the third slow
chime was still vibrating in the silent night, the blue glare of a
lightning-flash showed that eager watcher a figure upon one of the
barges.
Until this moment he had believed them utterly empty, save of their
cargo; nor did this figure belong to either of those darksome vessels.
It was the figure of a man, tall and lithe, who moved quickly along,
bending his body as he crept from one barge to the other, as if
shrinking from the pelting rain—a stealthy figure, upon which Lucius at
once concentrated his attention.
He had not long to remain in doubt. The man lifted his head presently,
and looked up towards the lighted window; then, with the agility of
some wild animal, sprang from the barge to the garden-wall. There
Lucius lost him in the darkness.
Presently there came a long whistle—long but not loud; then a light
appeared in the lower part of the house—a light from an open door,
evidently. Lucius saw the light appear and vanish, and heard the
closing of a heavy door.
Some one had admitted that man to the house, but who was that some one?
There was foul play of some kind; but what the nature of the mystery
was a question he could not answer.
What should he do? Go round to the front gate, ring, and alarm the
household? By that means only could he solve the mystery, and prove
to Lucille that these Winchers, whose fidelity she believed in, were
deceiving her. Yet to do that might be to imperil his patient, in whose
weak state any violent shock might be well-nigh fatal.
Reflection convinced him that whatever mischief was at work in that
house was of a subtle character. It could only mean plunder; for
after all, to suppose that it involved any evil design against Homer
Sivewright’s life seemed too improbable a notion to be entertained for
a moment. The plot, whatever its nature, must mean plunder, and these
Winchers, the trusted servants, in whom long service seemed a pledge of
honesty, must be the moving spirits of the treason. What more likely
than that Jacob Wincher, who knew the value of his master’s treasures,
was gradually plundering the collection of its richest gems, and that
this stealthy intruder, who entered the house thus secretly under cover
of night, was his accomplice, employed to carry away and dispose of the
booty?
Arguing thus, Lucius decided that it would be a foolish thing to
disturb the evildoers in the midst of their work. His wiser course
would be to lie in wait, watch the house till daybreak, and surprise
the accomplice in the act of carrying off the plunder. As the man had
gone in, so he must surely come out before morning. If, owing to the
darkness of the night, he should escape the watcher’s keen gaze on this
occasion, Lucius determined that he would set one of the minions of Mr.
Otranto, the private detective, to watch to-morrow night.
Lucius waited patiently, though those hours in the dead of the night
went by with leaden pace, and every limb of the watcher became a
burden to him from very weariness. He seated himself upon an empty
cask in an angle of the shed, leaned his back against the wall, and
waited; never relaxing his watch upon those quiet barges and the low
garden-wall beyond them, never ceasing to listen intently for the least
sound from that direction. The storm abated, heaven’s floodgates were
closed again; the lightning faded to fainter flashes and then ceased
altogether; a distant rumble of thunder, like the sound of a door
shutting after the exit of a disagreeable visitor, marked the end of
the tempest. Peace descended once more upon earth, and coolness; a
pleasant air crept along the narrow creek; even the odour of the damp
earth was sweet after the heat and dryness of yesterday.
Morning came, and the aching of Lucius Davoren’s bones increased, but
there was no sign from the barges or the garden-wall. The watcher was
thoroughly wearied. His eyes had been striving to pierce the darkness,
his ears had been strained to listen for the lightest sound during four
long hours. At five o’clock he departed, not wishing to be surprised by
early labourers coming his way, or by the traffic of the wharf, which
might begin he knew not how soon. He went away, vexed and disquieted;
thinking that it was just possible the man might have escaped him after
all in the darkness.
‘I shouldn’t have seen him in the first instance without the aid of
that lightning-flash,’ he said to himself; ‘I may very easily have
missed him afterwards. I’ll go home and get two or three hours’ sleep
if I can, and then go straight to Cedar House and try to solve this
mystery.’