A cold March wind whistled and yelled round the twisted chimneys of
the _Hit or Miss_. The day had been a trial to every sense. First there
would come a long-drawn distant moan, a sigh like that of a querulous
woman; then the sigh grew nearer and became a shriek, as if the same
woman were working herself up into a passion; and finally a gust of
rainy hail, mixed with dust and small stones, was dashed, like a parting
insult, on the windows of the _Hit or Miss_.
Then the shriek died away again into a wail and a moan, and so _da
capo_.
“Well, Eliza, what do you do now that the pantomime season is over?”
said Barton to Miss Gullick, who was busily dressing a doll, as she
perched on the table in the parlor of the _Hit or Miss_.
Barton occasionally looked into the public-house, partly to see that
Maitland’s investment was properly managed, partly because the place was
near the scene of his labors; not least, perhaps, because he had still
an unacknowledged hope that light on the mystery of Margaret would come
from the original centre of the troubles.
“I’m in no hurry to take an engagement,” answered the resolute Eliza,
holding up and examining her doll. It was a fashionable doll, in a
close-fitting tweed ulster, which covered a perfect panoply of other
female furniture, all in the latest mode. As the child worked, she
looked now and then at the illustrations in a journal of the fashions.
“There’s two or three managers in treaty with me,” said Eliza. “There’s
the _Follies and Frivolities_ down Norwood way, and the _Varieties_ in
the ‘Ammersmith Road. Thirty shillings a week and my dresses, that’s
what I ask for, and I’ll get it too! Just now I’m taking a vacation, and
making an honest penny with these things,” and she nodded at a little
basket full of the wardrobe of dolls.
“Do you sell the dresses to the toy-shops, Eliza?” asked Barton.
“Yes,” said Eliza; “I am doing well with them. I’m not sure I shan’t
need to take on some extra hands, by the job, to finish my Easter
orders.”
“Pm glad you are successful,” answered Barton. “I say, Eliza!”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Would you mind showing me the room up-stairs where poor old Shields was
sitting the night before he was found in the snow?”
It had suddenly occurred to Barton--it might have occurred to him
before--that this room might be worth examining.
“We ain’t using it now! Ill show you it,” said Eliza, leading the way
up-stairs, and pointing to a door.
Barton took hold of the handle.
“Ladies first,” he said, making way for Eliza, with a bow.
“No,” came the child’s voice, from half-way down the stairs; “I won’t
come in! They say he walks, I’ve heard noises there at night.”
A cold stuffy smell came out of the darkness of the unused room. Barton
struck a match, and, seeing a candle on the table, lit it The room had
been left as it was when last it was tenanted. On the table were an
empty bottle, two tumblers, and a little saucer stained with dry colors,
blue and red, part of Shields’ stock-in-trade. There were, besides, some
very sharp needles of bone, of a savage make, which Barton recognized.
They were the instruments used for tattooing in the islands of the
Southern Seas.
Barton placed the lighted candle beside the saucer, and turned over the
needles. Presently his eyes brightened: he chose one out, and examined
it closely. It was astonishingly sharp, and was not of bone like the
others, but of wood.
Barton made an incision in the hard brittle wood with his knife, and
carefully felt the point, which was slightly crusted with a dry brown
substance.
“I thought so,” he said aloud, as he placed the needle in a pocket
instrument-case: “the stem of the leaf of the coucourite palm!”
Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
“Did you see him?” asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
“Don’t be childish, Eliza: there’s no one to see. Why is the room left
all untidy?”
“Mother dare not go in!” whispered the child. Then she asked in a low
voice, “Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the
night old Shields died in the snow?”
“The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you
should go on thinking about it,” said Barton, rather sternly. “You were
tired and ill, and you fancied it.”
“No, I wasn’t,” said the child, solemnly. “I never say no more about
it to mother, nor to nobody; but I did see it, ay, and heard it, too. I
remember it at night in my bed, and I am afraid. Oh, what’s that?”
She turned with a scream, in answer to a scream on the other side of
the curtained door that separated the parlor from the bar of the _Hit or
Miss_.
Someone seemed to fall against the door, which at the same moment flew
open, as if the wind had burst it in. A girl, panting and holding her
hand to her breast, her face deadly white and so contorted by terror as
to be unrecognizable, flashed into the room. “Oh, come! oh, come!” she
cried. “She’s killing her!” Then the girl vanished as hurriedly as she
had appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a
face maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that
moment Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run,
after the girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the
bar, who were besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.
“Come, doctor, come!” she screamed again, and fled out into the night,
crossing another girl who was apparently speeding on the same errand.
Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first messenger, and hear
her footfall ring on the pavement. Up a long street, down another, and
then into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a swinging sign of
the old-fashioned sort, and through a doorway. Barton, following,
found himself for the first time within the portals of _The Old English
Bun-house_.
The wide passage (the house was old) was crowded with girls, wildly
excited, weeping, screaming, and some of them swearing. They were
pressed so thick round a door at the end of the hall, that Barton could
scarcely thrust his way through them, dragging one aside, shouldering
another: it was a matter of life and death.
“Oh, she’s been at the drink, and she’s killed her! she’s killed her!
I heard her fall!” one of the frightened girls was exclaiming with
hysterical iteration.
“Let me pass!” shouted Barton; and reaching the door at last, he turned
the handle and pushed. The door was locked.
“Give me room,” he cried, and the patrons of _The Bun-house_ yielding
place a little, Barton took a little short run, and drove with all the
weight of his shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly with a
crash, and he was hurled into the room by his own impetus, and by the
stress of the girls behind him.
What he beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than
the spectacle of an accident or a crime of modern life.
By the windy glare of a dozen gas-jets (red and shaken like the flame
of blown torches by the rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane),
Barton saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded floor.
One of her arms made a pillow for her head; her soft dark hair,
unfastened, half hid her, like a veil; the other arm lay loose by her
side; her lips were white, her face was bloodless; but there was blood
on the deep-blue folds about the bosom, and on the floor. At the further
side of this girl--who was dead, or seemingly dead--sat, on a low stool,
a woman, in a crouching, cat-like attitude, quite silent and still. The
knife with which she had done the deed was dripping in her hand; the
noise of the broken door, and of the entering throng, had not disturbed
her.
For a moment even Barton’s rapidity of action and resolution were
paralyzed by the terrible and strange vision that he beheld. He stared
with all his eyes, in a mist of doubt and amazement, at a vision,
dreadful even to one who saw death every day. Then the modern spirit
awoke in him.
“Fetch a policeman,” he whispered, to one of the crowding frightened
troop of girls.
“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 passed 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 assure 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 constitution already weakened
by sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted 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 passing 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 hoarding close by, attracted his
attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed 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-superstitious 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 hoarding: 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 hoarding 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 mass 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
passing.”
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 hoarding 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!”