THE DUMPLING
[Illustration: THE OPIUM DEN.]
THE DUMPLING
A DETECTIVE LOVE STORY
OF A GREAT LABOUR RISING
BY
COULSON KERNAHAN
Author of
"GOD AND THE ANT," Etc.
Illustrated by
STANLEY L. WOOD
New York
B.W. DODGE AND COMPANY
1907
Copyright, 1906
By WILLIAM T. BELDING
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1907
B.W. DODGE AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
To
LORD AND LADY NORTHCLIFFE:
WITH SINCERE REGARD.
29, Cannon Place,
Brighton
_June 6th, 1906._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Prologue 1
CHAPTER I.
The Opium Den 15
CHAPTER II.
The Man with the Picture Eyes 26
CHAPTER III.
The Lucifer that Saved my Life 33
CHAPTER IV.
Criminals, Chemicals, and a Crucible 40
CHAPTER V.
A Pair of Handcuffs 46
CHAPTER VI.
The Millionaires' Club 55
CHAPTER VII.
I am Snubbed by Scotland Yard 65
CHAPTER VIII.
"Wanted" by the Police 73
CHAPTER IX.
"Dead Man's Point" 83
CHAPTER X.
I turn Burglar 92
CHAPTER XI.
"What's your little game?" 103
CHAPTER XII.
John Carleton's Burglar Alarm 112
CHAPTER XIII.
The Face at the Broken Window 120
CHAPTER XIV.
Miss Clara "Saves my Life" 126
CHAPTER XV.
My Friend the Dumpling 138
CHAPTER XVI.
The Ghost in the Garden 145
CHAPTER XVII.
The Man with Gorilla Arms 152
CHAPTER XVIII.
I Play the Craven 159
CHAPTER XIX.
The Dumpling's Secret 176
CHAPTER XX.
The New Napoleon 187
CHAPTER XXI.
The Kindness--and Unkindness--of Kate 192
CHAPTER XXII.
The Inexplicable Conduct of Miss Clara 201
CHAPTER XXIII.
Kate's Confession 211
CHAPTER XXIV.
I Discover the Identity of the Dumpling 216
CHAPTER XXV.
John Carleton's Double 221
CHAPTER XXVI.
"Only Starving" 229
CHAPTER XXVII.
Re-enter the Dumpling 243
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Mutiny and a Mesmerist 249
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Mystery of the Third Man 257
CHAPTER XXX.
Forty Miles in a Perambulator! 267
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Great Insurrection Begins 279
CHAPTER XXXII.
Bloodshed 287
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Battle of Tower Hill 292
CHAPTER XXXIV.
London in Revolution 299
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Great Fight in Fleet Street 303
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Prince Dumpling 313
CHAPTER XXXVII.
The Man in the Cellar 319
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The Mantle of Napoleon 325
CHAPTER XXXIX.
"God Save the King!" 333
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
In the Opium Den _Frontispiece_
"There peered through a broken pane of
glass ... the white and wicked face
of the Dumpling." _To face p._ 126
"The Dumpling was making a desperate
dash for liberty" " 190
"I fell back in incredulous horror" " 324
THE DUMPLING.
PROLOGUE.
It was an impudent thing to do!
No matter how scorching the July sun, no matter how alluring the
thought of paddling out to ascertain whether the richly wooded
lake-side looked equally lovely from the water; no matter how cunningly
old Satan had spread his snare of mischief "for idle hands to do,"
by guiding me to the very spot where the little boat lay moored at
the water's edge; no matter with what sophistry these, and many other
excuses which I pleaded to a pricking conscience, seemed to mitigate
the offence, the fact remains that I acted in a way which was as
impudent as it was unpardonable.
The owner of the property generously allowed the public to use a
particular footpath through the park. Hence my offence in straying
from the permitted footpath and in exploring unpermitted copses and
woodlands, until I came to this beautiful sheet of water, was for that
very reason all the more graceless and heinous.
But in July, when the holiday spirit is in one's blood, and when all
the world is holiday-making with us, the conventionalities exist only
to be set aside. Chaste matrons who, in chill December, would consider
that to exhibit more than two inches of stocking above the ankle
would be to pass the high-water mark of propriety, and even, to save
a new skirt from being muddied, would hesitate to hitch that garment
higher by another inch, will, in demoralising July, discard these same
stockings altogether, and disport and display themselves, knee-bare,
with never a blush, upon the beach at Margate or at Brighton.
And I who, when in my proper mind and in dress-coated, white-chokered
garb, would not so much as pass a lady in the stalls of a theatre
without first apologising for troubling her and asking for her
permission, acted on this occasion, and under the demoralising spell of
holiday-making and midsummer madness, as any other bounder would act
on a Bank Holiday. No hand had pulled aside the drawn lodge-blind to
gaze at the intruder as I entered the park gates; no surly keeper had
pointed me to a notice board, warning all and sundry that the public
must keep to the footpath, as I strolled along; no tradesman's cart had
rattled briskly up the drive to receive or to deliver orders; and when
between an avenue of trees I caught a glimpse of the house, it looked
so shuttered and sleepy, that I was persuaded "the family"--whoever the
family might be--was away, and that none would come to warn me of my
trespass. Then the path I had taken, between the trees, had led me down
to the water's edge and to the very spot where the boat lay moored.
Thrusting conscience and the conventionalities aside, I seated myself
and sculled lightly out to the middle of the lake. For a good half-hour
I pulled hither and thither as my fancy prompted, and as the various
views to be obtained from the water seemed most alluringly to open; and
then, shipping the sculls, I lay down full length in the bottom of the
boat, my arm under my head as a pillow, and my face turned skyward to
the sun.
I suppose I must have dropped off into a doze, from which I was
aroused by a slight rippling of the water. Being only half awake I
did not trouble myself greatly about the matter. "A swan passing," I
murmured sleepily; "or possibly a water-rat or moor-hen. Let 'em pass.
They're quite welcome, and I'm too comfortable to stir."
But stirred I soon was, and to some purpose. Had my boat been lying at
the wooded lake-side, instead of in the centre of this beautiful sheet
of water, I should have thought at first that a wind-blown branch of
July's own roses had dipped down to rest her unopened blossoms upon the
frail craft's side. For suddenly, upon the gunwale of the boat--just as
if a handful of blush rose-buds had shyly peeped over--there appeared
four of the tiniest, daintiest, most exquisitely tapered finger-tips
that ever were seen upon mortal hand. Pink, petite, faultlessly formed
and finely proportioned, with pearly, oval nails, as symmetrically
cut, as perfectly set and polished as rare opals, the finger-tips upon
which I looked were so lovely that a king might have craved, as a royal
boon, permission to stoop his lips to kiss them. In all the wide world
I was ready to swear there was only one other set of finger-tips as
beautiful, and the very next instant that other set, like love-bird
hastening to perch beside its mate, was laid upon the edge of the boat,
which now began to rock sideways, as if someone in the water were
working up impetus for a spring.
"Lazy bones! lazy bones! Wake up! wake up!" cried a merry voice; and
then--Venus rising from the foam was not half so beautiful--there
bobbed up, framed in clinging golden hair, at the side of the boat, the
fairest young face, the most lovely head and neck and shoulders I have
ever seen.
My awakening had come; and the whole thing had happened so suddenly
that I do not know which of us was more surprised. All I do know is
that the shame and consternation on her face at seeing me were so comic
that, but for my anxiety to spare her blushes, I should have laughed
outright. Small time, however, had I to laugh; small time had she to
blush; for, in her dismay, she suddenly let go her hold of the edge of
the boat, which, released from her weight, rolled over like a turning
porpoise, as neatly tilting me out of the other side and into the water
as if I had been a left crust shaken out of an up-gathered tablecloth
by a housewife's hand.
That those who begin by playing the fool generally end by finding
the fat in the fire is proverbial. In making free with other folk's
property I had behaved not only like a fool, but like a mannerless
schoolboy; and now, if the fat could not exactly be said to be in the
fire, the fool was undoubtedly in the water. Fortunately for this
particular fool he happened to be an expert swimmer, or my silly
holiday escapade might have ended tragically for my fair capsizer as
well as for myself. She, however, showed herself as what, in sporting
parlance, is known as "a good pluck'd 'un."
A moment's hysterical screaming and frantic beating of the water may be
passed by as no more than a concession to her sex, an acknowledgment
of a woman's weakness, and can in no way be said to detract from the
courage which she afterwards displayed. In the next instant she had
grabbed me (somewhat painfully for me, I admit) by the hair, and
manfully--if I may use that word of a woman--raising my head out of the
water, had gasped agitatedly, "Can you swim?"
I do not deny that I behaved abominably. I was already as over head and
eyes in love with this peerless Lady of the Lake as I had a moment ago
been over head and ears in water; and to swim unromantically ashore,
there perhaps to be handed over to the care of the local constable,
with the prospect of being brought up before my fair capsizer's father
(who was very possibly a magistrate) as a common trespasser, if not as
a common thief, did not appeal to me as either romantic or as likely
to further my suit. But to appear to owe my life to her, to be in a
position to hail her as a heroine and as my preserver, and myself
henceforth and for ever her grateful and adoring slave, who, even if
he devoted all his remaining years to her service, could never hope to
repay her for thus snatching him from a watery grave--to do this was
to put myself in a very different light. Were I to admit that I could
swim, she would, without the shadow of a doubt, haughtily point me in
one direction, while she with equal haughtiness would swim away in the
other. But to proclaim myself no swimmer, and consequently helpless,
would constitute an appeal to her womanhood which she, being clearly
an expert in the water, could not and would not refuse. To do so would
at once establish a relationship between us more intimate than I could
hope to attain in a twelvemonth spent or misspent in meeting her at
her own home (even could I get invited there), or at the houses of
mutual acquaintances, supposing such mutual acquaintances to exist.
Frankly, I would have pawned my soul for another five minutes in her
company. To speak the unpalatable truth meant that the five minutes
would undoubtedly be denied me;--meant that she and I must part, never
perhaps to meet again. To lie, meant not only making that coveted five
minutes my own, but possibly meant more--immeasurably, infinitely more,
than this. The thought of what that lie might mean, might win for me,
turned my love-sick soul well-nigh delirious. It _might_ mean (and to
one man, at least, on earth Paradise seemed possible again) that a hand
so soft, so delicate that I could have crushed a dozen such hands in
my own huge grasp as easily as one crumples up a score of rose-leaves,
yet so fateful for all its feebleness that, even as easily as one could
crush the rose-leaves, so more easily could that tiny hand crush and
kill the joy which was upspringing in my heart;--a hand so small that
it could not span the half of my wrist, yet could hold the whole of my
hopes and my heaven--a lie might mean that this tiny hand would for
full five paradisiacal minutes be given into my care and keeping, while
its owner should be my guardian angel, a wingless angel in a bathing
dress, to guide me safely ashore!
Which was it to be--Truth or Falsehood?
"Speak the truth and you'll shame the Devil!" thundered Duty.
"Tell a falsehood, and you won't make a fool of yourself," whispered
Desire.
Unhesitatingly I plumped for falsehood.
"I can't swim a stroke," I said.
* * * * *
We got ashore--or nearly so, at least; and that I in no way assisted
to accelerate the journey will be plain, as the phrase goes, to the
meanest intelligence.
But sit down in cold blood--if not, fortunately as I was then, in wet
clothes--to describe that elysian passing, I may not.
Spirit readers of mine--if spirit readers of mortal book there be--who
have been borne on angel pinions to heaven, may be able to enter into
my feelings at being thus wafted through magic waters by an angel hand.
Gross mortals of flesh and blood may not. But spirit readers have this
advantage over me--that whereas they, at the end of their journey,
saw the gates of Heaven open, I, at the end of mine, saw the gates of
Paradise too rudely closed.
When we were some ten yards from the shore, and while I was rehearsing
to myself the touching scene of our landing--I falling on my knees
before her, and, in a voice which I intended doing my best to make
appear broken with emotion, calling the heavens to witness that but
for her I should now be weltering in my grave (I was not exactly sure
what "weltering" meant, but it sounded wet and weedy and watery, and,
as Milton had used the word in a similar sense, it could not be far
wrong)--she, her beautiful eyes suffused with tears, one or two of
which, I arranged, should drop upon my upturned worshipping face,
would then bend over me and, laying a hand tenderly on my head, would
sob, "My poor fellow! Do not give way. You are safe. The danger is
past!"--while I was rehearsing this pretty and touching picture, she
suddenly stopped. Thus far she had been swimming, and swimming strongly
on her breast, striking out with her left arm and supporting my head
with her right. Now, as I say, she stopped, and I feared that she was
becoming exhausted.
"Put down your feet," she said, "and see if you can feel the ground."
I did so, and found that we were in water sufficiently shallow to allow
me to stand upright with my chin well above the surface.
"Yes," I said, "we're safe. My feet are on the ground. How can I ever
thank you? How can----"
"Then wade the rest of the way," she cut me short, cruelly. "Don't
trespass any more! Don't take boats that don't belong to you, and don't
get out of your depth again until you have learned to swim."
The next instant she had dived under and was gone, the flick of her
tiny heels, as they came together when she threw them up, seeming like
the snap of a derisive finger in my face.
Feeling, and looking, more foolish than I remember ever to have felt
and looked before, I waded clumsily to the bank, telling myself,
by way of comfort, that her curt dismissal and her sharp words were
the result only of the inevitable reaction which comes after a time
of tension and nerve strain. But from a clump of rushes, behind
which I had reason to think my late rescuer lay hidden, came a sound
suspiciously like suppressed laughter; and in somewhat of a temper--for
no one likes to be ridiculed by a beautiful woman--I clambered up the
bank, an ungainly figure, on all fours.
Again came that rippling music from behind the rushes; so, with a very
scarlet face, and with as upright a carriage of head and body as I
could assume--a carriage, which I may say for the benefit of the reader
was intended to express wounded dignity, but which I had a sneaking
suspicion savoured more of self-conscious stiffness and injured
pride--I walked angrily away, some verses by Austin Dobson running in
my head:
"And that's how I lost her--a jewel,
_Incognita_--one in a crowd,
Nor prudent enough to be cruel,
Nor worldly enough to be proud."
"Only _my_ Incognita," I said to myself as I entered the hotel, "is
'prudent enough to be cruel' and 'worldly enough to be proud.' Never
mind! I've found her, and by heaven! if mortal man can do it, I'll win
her yet. How lovely she looked! How divinely lovely! And was there ever
a woman since the world began with such beautiful hands?"
At this point my meditations were interrupted by the entrance of the
waiter with an express letter in his hand for me, marked "Very Urgent."
It was from the editor of the _Charing Cross Magazine_.
"Dear Mr. Rissler," it ran. "Waldorf, the American millionaire, has
bought the magazine. He's got a friend who has done some rather bad
drawings of what he thinks looks like the inside of an Opium Den. But
the chief has bought them, and has promised his friend to have an
article written up to them, to go into the next number.
"You're the man to do it, and I want you to come back by first train,
so as to root out an East End Opium Den this very night, and let us
have copy to-morrow. Don't fail."
"H'm!" I said to myself, twiddling the letter between my fingers. "What
a nuisance! I shall never rest till I have found out all about my Lady
of the Lake, and I meant to have begun investigations this very night.
But a poor devil of a writer of magazine articles and detective stories
can't afford to offend the powers that be--especially so influential an
editor as Harrison, or so wealthy a proprietor as Waldorf. So to London
I must go, worse luck: to London I must go!"
Within half an hour I had changed my clothes, packed, paid my bill, and
was in the train.
"Good-bye, my lovely Lady Disdain, my dear and lovely Lady of the
Lake," I said, kissing my hand in the direction of my late escapade, as
we puffed out of the station; "or rather _au revoir_, for soon, very
soon, we shall meet again."
CHAPTER I.
THE OPIUM DEN.
I did not half like the look of things.
Of the two Chinamen who were placidly smoking opium in a corner of the
opium den I had no fear. Though their bodies lay immovable as logs, the
eyes of these Chinamen turned continually in their sockets, following
my movements about the room. But they were merely idly curious, not
threatening, in the intentness of their stare. They reminded me of
pigs lolling on a muck-heap in the sunshine, too lazy to move, too
lazy almost to blink, but keeping meanwhile a watchful eye upon the
movements of an intrusive terrier.
What I did not like was the curious behaviour of the half-dozen men
whom I had found knocking their heads together in a corner when I had
entered. My appearance upon the scene had caused them to start apart so
guiltily that I was convinced the conference they were holding was for
no good purpose; and when, after a few whispered words, two of them
stole softly out, and stationed themselves at the foot of the staircase
as if to cut off my retreat, while two others got between me and the
door, I could not but feel uneasy.
The two who remained--one of whom seemed to be the leader of the
gang--were now holding a conference, the subject of which was evidently
myself, and, judging by the lowering looks they cast in my direction,
they were not about to move a resolution according me a vote of welcome.
On my road from Poplar Station to Limehouse Causeway I had not passed
a single policeman, and no one, except the old negro to whom I had
offered a couple of shillings if he would take me to a place where they
"smoked the opium," had seen me enter the house. Accepting my offer, he
had turned at right angles out of Limehouse Causeway, and walked for
some distance till we came to a narrow court.
Out of this he had piloted me at right angles into another narrower
and quite unlighted court, blocked up at the end by lath palings,
and so forming a _cul-de-sac_. At the darkest and farthest corner he
had stopped in front of what appeared to be an unlighted house, and
pushing open a door which led into a dark and evil-smelling passage,
had said: "In thar, sah!" had spat upon and pocketed my florin, and
taken himself off.
I entered, and encountering no one, groped my way along the passage
until it ended at a closed door, with a staircase immediately on the
right. In my groping I chanced to put my fingers upon the handle.
Turning it, I pushed open the door, and found myself in what seemed
like a disused kitchen. There was a dresser along one side, and a
copper for boiling clothes stood in a corner. The only light came from
a small window opening upon a yard, and as the room was practically
empty and unfurnished, I tiptoed out, and, closing the door silently,
made my way up the staircase to the first landing. Here were two doors,
under each of which a chink of feeble light was to be seen. I knocked
at the nearest door, and receiving no answer, turned the handle. It
was locked, but a scuffling noise within, and the prompt extinguishing
of the light, told me that the room was not untenanted. Knocking at
the second door, a gruff voice commended me so whole-heartedly and
enthusiastically to the care and protection of one who, in polite
circles, goes generally unmentioned, that, not desiring the further
acquaintance of the party or parties on the other side of the door, I
continued my way upstairs.
On the second landing was a window, immediately below which was the
small walled-in yard that I had seen from the kitchen, and beyond this
a patch of waste land. Just then the moon, which, like a cruiser with
"lights down," had been gliding silently and unseen across the dark sea
of the sky, came out for a moment from behind the clouds to sweep her
searchlight over this enclosed patch of ground, as over alien waters;
and, in the white surprise of the searchlight, I saw that dead cats,
cabbage stalks, and offal of all sorts were rotting and festering on
the unsavoury spot, and that beyond, on the other side of a dilapidated
fence, was the river.
"From the point of view of a criminal," I said to myself, "this
staircase offers unique advantages. For the committal of a crime, here,
surely, is a vantage ground which is ideal and ready-made to hand. A
stranger, ascending the staircase, as I am, in the dark, could be
knocked on the head with impunity, and nobody be the wiser. Under cover
of night, the body could be dropped out of the window, conveyed across
that fever-breeding piece of waste land, and hoisted over yonder fence
into the river. In an hour a corpse would be borne miles away from the
scene of the crime, leaving never so much as a trace behind to tell
how, and by whose hand, it came there."
The thought was not reassuring; and when, the next instant, I arrived
at the topmost landing, and, on opening a door and entering the den,
saw two evil-looking rascals hurry out to cut off my retreat by the
staircase, while two others got between me and the door, as already
described, I began to realise that the hospitality which seemed likely
to be pressed upon me would not be of the nature of an invitation to
stay to tea.
Just at this moment I was aware of a dull noise in the distance. There
was a slight but ever-increasing vibration in the boards beneath me,
a gathering rumble and roll as of approaching thunder, and with a
hoarsely discordant shriek, an ear-splitting babel-tumult and roar,
which seemed to shake the house to its foundations, an express train
hurtled by, almost outside the very windows.
Under the present condition of electric communication, and with no
apparatus, the sending of a telephonic message for help to the police
office would have been scarcely less impossible of accomplishment than
making known my present danger to anyone on board the train; yet so
unreasoning are we in the causes which arouse or allay our nervousness,
that the consciousness of my near presence to the railway did more to
bolster up my courage than all my philosophy. "With the trains and
their living freights so near at hand, I don't feel altogether cut off
from the outside world," I said to myself; and as the two men in the
corner were still whispering together, I plucked up heart to take stock
of my surroundings.
The den was lit by a single paraffin lamp, to the unassisted industry
of which I was at first inclined to ascribe the vile atmosphere of the
place.
"That light we see is burning in my hall.
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world,"
says Portia. The light which I saw burning in the den did not shed
its beams very far; but in the matter of shedding smells in a world,
nice or naughty, I judged its capacity at a low estimate as forty
horse-power! An ordinary motor-car, in its most perfumed moments,
leaves trailing clouds of glory and cherry blossom in its wake compared
to that lamp's distribution of oily odours on the atmosphere.
Add to this the insufferable and sickening stench of opium--a stench
which I can only compare to a choice blending of onions and bad
tobacco--and the reader will not wonder when I say that my stomach
signalled for full speed astern, by retching rebelliously under my
breast-bone.
Greasy as was the atmosphere, the dirty yellow distempering of the
walls was in places even greasier. The chief articles of furniture were
two raised mattresses, the bare wall behind them being literally coated
with dirt and grease, rubbed from the chaste persons and fastidious
clothes of many smokers. Above these mattresses a crudely coloured and
revolting representation of the Crucifixion was incontinently fastened,
and upon the mattresses lay the Chinamen of whom I have already spoken.
Of the two men still whispering in the corner, the leader was of
singular appearance. In figure he was dumpy and comfortably rounded,
which was, I suppose, the reason of the nickname, "The Dumpling," which
I afterwards heard applied to him. His neck was so short, and his huge
head was set so closely upon his high shoulders, and thrust forward
so prominently, as almost to suggest the hunchback. But if the figure
was grotesque, the clean-shaven face was striking and powerful. It was
absolutely grey in hue, like the face of a dead or dying man; but so
far from being spare and haggard, as one would have expected from so
unhealthy and colourless a complexion, the face, like the neck, was
full, and the features of the fleshly aquiline type. The forehead was
high and intellectual, but the eyes were his most singular feature.
Accustomed as I am, as the phrase goes, "to read character," this man
utterly baffled me, for the eyes of two totally different men looked
out from the same head. On the occasion of which I am speaking his
eyes, when they rested upon me, seemed the incarnation of all that is
cunning, cruel, treacherous. Yet in the eyes of this same man, as I
came to know him thereafter, I have seen the most singular and gentle
melancholy.
Even on this eventful evening, when I saw him at his worst, his eyes,
as he turned from me to the fellow to whom he was speaking, and for
whom he seemed to entertain something like affection, softened as if in
response to some inner workings of his mind, and I saw in their depths
a dumb, inarticulate look like that one sees sometimes in the eyes of a
dog.
As he was talking he turned suddenly--perhaps because of something
which his companion had said--and looked me straight in the eyes. I
shall no doubt be laughed at when I say that I was suddenly seized by
the most singular sense of helplessness. My powers seemed paralysed at
their centre. Minded as I was to struggle or to cry out against the
influence he was exerting upon me, I could do neither. Then--whether
the result of mesmerism or of thought suggestion on his part, or of a
sort of second sight on mine, I cannot say; but I saw, as in a tableau,
myself lying helpless upon my back, with this man kneeling on my chest,
his eyes looking into mine as they were looking now, and an upraised
knife in his hand.
What could it mean?
I am not a nervous, neurotic person, but a healthy, normal, open-air
being, who has never dabbled in the mysteries of spiritualism,
hypnotism, second-sight, or clairvoyance; nor had such tableaux as I
saw when looking into this man's eyes ever before presented themselves
to me.
For a moment he held me thus, and then there was the sound of a laugh.
Whether it was the man then standing before me in the opium den who
thus laughed, or whether it was the man I had seen kneeling on my
chest, a knife in his hand and my life at his mercy, I do not know, and
matters nothing, for the face was the same. Then suddenly he turned
from me, another being altogether.
"No, don't, old man; think of the risk you run," I heard him say to his
friend, laying a hand affectionately on the other's shoulder, those
inscrutable eyes of his--all the cunning and cruelty gone--becoming
liquid and appealing.
But to myself I said: "One day--perhaps within the next hour, perhaps
to-morrow, perhaps in the far future--this man, knife in hand, will
kneel over my prostrate and helpless figure, as I saw him kneel just
now; and when that moment comes--come it to-night, to-morrow, or come
it ten years hence--one of us two must leap the barrier which fences
this world from the next, ere he shall escape. Which of us two shall it
be? And when shall that moment come?"
As I so spoke the two men turned to me. Evidently they had arrived
at some decision, and that they meant to do me a mischief, if not to
murder me outright, I knew as surely as if someone had whispered their
plans in my ear. Once again their leader fixed me with his eyes. Once
again I was conscious of the same strange feeling of helplessness;
and once again figures shaped themselves before me as in a tableau.
Two men were lying in wait on a dark staircase to brain yet another
man--myself--as he groped his way out.