I HAD a very particular engagement to breakfast in the Temple. It was a
bitter north-easterly morning, and the sleet and slush lay inches deep in
the streets. I could get no conveyance, and was soon wet to the knees;
but I should have been true to that appointment, though I had to wade to
it up to my neck in the same impediments.
The appointment took me to some chambers in the Temple. They were at the
top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river. The name, MR. ALFRED
BECKWITH, was painted on the outer door. On the door opposite, on the
same landing, the name MR. JULIUS SLINKTON. The doors of both sets of
chambers stood open, so that anything said aloud in one set could be
heard in the other.
I had never been in those chambers before. They were dismal, close,
unwholesome, and oppressive; the furniture, originally good, and not yet
old, was faded and dirty,—the rooms were in great disorder; there was a
strong prevailing smell of opium, brandy, and tobacco; the grate and
fire-irons were splashed all over with unsightly blotches of rust; and on
a sofa by the fire, in the room where breakfast had been prepared, lay
the host, Mr. Beckwith, a man with all the appearances of the worst kind
of drunkard, very far advanced upon his shameful way to death.
‘Slinkton is not come yet,’ said this creature, staggering up when I went
in; ‘I’ll call him.—Halloa! Julius Cæsar! Come and drink!’ As he
hoarsely roared this out, he beat the poker and tongs together in a mad
way, as if that were his usual manner of summoning his associate.
The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through the clatter from the opposite
side of the staircase, and he came in. He had not expected the pleasure
of meeting me. I have seen several artful men brought to a stand, but I
never saw a man so aghast as he was when his eyes rested on mine.
‘Julius Cæsar,’ cried Beckwith, staggering between us, ‘Mist’ Sampson!
Mist’ Sampson, Julius Cæsar! Julius, Mist’ Sampson, is the friend of my
soul. Julius keeps me plied with liquor, morning, noon, and night.
Julius is a real benefactor. Julius threw the tea and coffee out of
window when I used to have any. Julius empties all the water-jugs of
their contents, and fills ’em with spirits. Julius winds me up and keeps
me going.—Boil the brandy, Julius!’
There was a rusty and furred saucepan in the ashes,—the ashes looked like
the accumulation of weeks,—and Beckwith, rolling and staggering between
us as if he were going to plunge headlong into the fire, got the saucepan
out, and tried to force it into Slinkton’s hand.
‘Boil the brandy, Julius Cæsar! Come! Do your usual office. Boil the
brandy!’
He became so fierce in his gesticulations with the saucepan, that I
expected to see him lay open Slinkton’s head with it. I therefore put
out my hand to check him. He reeled back to the sofa, and sat there
panting, shaking, and red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown, looking at
us both. I noticed then that there was nothing to drink on the table but
brandy, and nothing to eat but salted herrings, and a hot, sickly,
highly-peppered stew.
‘At all events, Mr. Sampson,’ said Slinkton, offering me the smooth
gravel path for the last time, ‘I thank you for interfering between me
and this unfortunate man’s violence. However you came here, Mr. Sampson,
or with whatever motive you came here, at least I thank you for that.’
‘Boil the brandy,’ muttered Beckwith.
Without gratifying his desire to know how I came there, I said, quietly,
‘How is your niece, Mr. Slinkton?’
He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him.
‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my niece has proved treacherous and
ungrateful to her best friend. She left me without a word of notice or
explanation. She was misled, no doubt, by some designing rascal.
Perhaps you may have heard of it.’
‘I did hear that she was misled by a designing rascal. In fact, I have
proof of it.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ said he.
‘Quite.’
‘Boil the brandy,’ muttered Beckwith. ‘Company to breakfast, Julius
Cæsar. Do your usual office,—provide the usual breakfast, dinner, tea,
and supper. Boil the brandy!’
The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, and he said, after a moment’s
consideration,
‘Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, and so am I. I will be plain
with you.’
‘O no, you won’t,’ said I, shaking my head.
‘I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you.’
‘And I tell you you will not,’ said I. ‘I know all about you. _You_
plain with any one? Nonsense, nonsense!’
‘I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson,’ he went on, with a manner almost
composed, ‘that I understand your object. You want to save your funds,
and escape from your liabilities; these are old tricks of trade with you
Office-gentlemen. But you will not do it, sir; you will not succeed.
You have not an easy adversary to play against, when you play against me.
We shall have to inquire, in due time, when and how Mr. Beckwith fell
into his present habits. With that remark, sir, I put this poor
creature, and his incoherent wanderings of speech, aside, and wish you a
good morning and a better case next time.’
While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled a half-pint glass with
brandy. At this moment, he threw the brandy at his face, and threw the
glass after it. Slinkton put his hands up, half blinded with the spirit,
and cut with the glass across the forehead. At the sound of the
breakage, a fourth person came into the room, closed the door, and stood
at it; he was a very quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-gray
hair, and slightly lame.
Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the pain in his smarting
eyes, and dabbled the blood on his forehead. He was a long time about
it, and I saw that in the doing of it, a tremendous change came over him,
occasioned by the change in Beckwith,—who ceased to pant and tremble, sat
upright, and never took his eyes off him. I never in my life saw a face
in which abhorrence and determination were so forcibly painted as in
Beckwith’s then.
‘Look at me, you villain,’ said Beckwith, ‘and see me as I really am. I
took these rooms, to make them a trap for you. I came into them as a
drunkard, to bait the trap for you. You fell into the trap, and you will
never leave it alive. On the morning when you last went to Mr. Sampson’s
office, I had seen him first. Your plot has been known to both of us,
all along, and you have been counter-plotted all along. What? Having
been cajoled into putting that prize of two thousand pounds in your
power, I was to be done to death with brandy, and, brandy not proving
quick enough, with something quicker? Have I never seen you, when you
thought my senses gone, pouring from your little bottle into my glass?
Why, you Murderer and Forger, alone here with you in the dead of night,
as I have so often been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol,
twenty times, to blow your brains out!’
This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to be his
imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to hunt
him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from head to
foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without any figure of
speech, he staggered under it. But there is no greater mistake than to
suppose that a man who is a calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his
guilt, otherwise than true to himself, and perfectly consistent with his
whole character. Such a man commits murder, and murder is the natural
culmination of his course; such a man has to outface murder, and will do
it with hardihood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express
surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime upon his
conscience, can so brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on his
conscience at all, or had a conscience to have it upon, he would ever
have committed the crime?
Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such monsters to be,
this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a defiance that was
sufficiently cold and quiet. He was white, he was haggard, he was
changed; but only as a sharper who had played for a great stake and had
been outwitted and had lost the game.
‘Listen to me, you villain,’ said Beckwith, ‘and let every word you hear
me say be a stab in your wicked heart. When I took these rooms, to throw
myself in your way and lead you on to the scheme that I knew my
appearance and supposed character and habits would suggest to such a
devil, how did I know that? Because you were no stranger to me. I knew
you well. And I knew you to be the cruel wretch who, for so much money,
had killed one innocent girl while she trusted him implicitly, and who
was by inches killing another.’
Slinkton took out a snuff-box, took a pinch of snuff, and laughed.
‘But see here,’ said Beckwith, never looking away, never raising his
voice, never relaxing his face, never unclenching his hand. ‘See what a
dull wolf you have been, after all! The infatuated drunkard who never
drank a fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with, but poured it
away, here, there, everywhere—almost before your eyes; who bought over
the fellow you set to watch him and to ply him, by outbidding you in his
bribe, before he had been at his work three days—with whom you have
observed no caution, yet who was so bent on ridding the earth of you as a
wild beast, that he would have defeated you if you had been ever so
prudent—that drunkard whom you have, many a time, left on the floor of
this room, and who has even let you go out of it, alive and undeceived,
when you have turned him over with your foot—has, almost as often, on the
same night, within an hour, within a few minutes, watched you awake, had
his hand at your pillow when you were asleep, turned over your papers,
taken samples from your bottles and packets of powder, changed their
contents, rifled every secret of your life!’
He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but had gradually let it
drop from between his fingers to the floor; where he now smoothed it out
with his foot, looking down at it the while.
[Picture: He had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but gradually let it
drop from between his fingers]
‘That drunkard,’ said Beckwith, ‘who had free access to your rooms at all
times, that he might drink the strong drinks that you left in his way and
be the sooner ended, holding no more terms with you than he would hold
with a tiger, has had his master-key for all your locks, his test for all
your poisons, his clue to your cipher-writing. He can tell you, as well
as you can tell him, how long it took to complete that deed, what doses
there were, what intervals, what signs of gradual decay upon mind and
body; what distempered fancies were produced, what observable changes,
what physical pain. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, that
all this was recorded day by day, as a lesson of experience for future
service. He can tell you, better than you can tell him, where that
journal is at this moment.’
Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and looked at Beckwith.
‘No,’ said the latter, as if answering a question from him. ‘Not in the
drawer of the writing-desk that opens with a spring; it is not there, and
it never will be there again.’
‘Then you are a thief!’ said Slinkton.
Without any change whatever in the inflexible purpose, which it was quite
terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of which I had
always felt convinced it was impossible for this wretch to escape,
Beckwith returned,
‘And I am your niece’s shadow, too.’
With an imprecation Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore out some
hair, and flung it to the ground. It was the end of the smooth walk; he
destroyed it in the action, and it will soon be seen that his use for it
was past.
Beckwith went on: ‘Whenever you left here, I left here. Although I
understood that you found it necessary to pause in the completion of that
purpose, to avert suspicion, still I watched you close, with the poor
confiding girl. When I had the diary, and could read it word by word,—it
was only about the night before your last visit to Scarborough,—you
remember the night? you slept with a small flat vial tied to your
wrist,—I sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept out of view. This is Mr.
Sampson’s trusty servant standing by the door. We three saved your niece
among us.’
Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or two from the place
where he had stood, returned to it, and glanced about him in a very
curious way,—as one of the meaner reptiles might, looking for a hole to
hide in. I noticed at the same time, that a singular change took place
in the figure of the man,—as if it collapsed within his clothes, and they
consequently became ill-shapen and ill-fitting.
‘You shall know,’ said Beckwith, ‘for I hope the knowledge will be bitter
and terrible to you, why you have been pursued by one man, and why, when
the whole interest that Mr. Sampson represents would have expended any
money in hunting you down, you have been tracked to death at a single
individual’s charge. I hear you have had the name of Meltham on your
lips sometimes?’
I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden stoppage come upon
his breathing.
‘When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered (you know with what
artfully made-out surroundings and probabilities you sent her) to
Meltham’s office, before taking her abroad to originate the transaction
that doomed her to the grave, it fell to Meltham’s lot to see her and to
speak with her. It did not fall to his lot to save her, though I know he
would freely give his own life to have done it. He admired her;—I would
say he loved her deeply, if I thought it possible that you could
understand the word. When she was sacrificed, he was thoroughly assured
of your guilt. Having lost her, he had but one object left in life, and
that was to avenge her and destroy you.’
I saw the villain’s nostrils rise and fall convulsively; but I saw no
moving at his mouth.
‘That man Meltham,’ Beckwith steadily pursued, ‘was as absolutely certain
that you could never elude him in this world, if he devoted himself to
your destruction with his utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he
divided the sacred duty with no other duty in life, as he was certain
that in achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the hands of
Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking you out from
among living men. I am that man, and I thank God that I have done my
work!’
If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-footed savages, a
dozen miles, he could not have shown more emphatic signs of being
oppressed at heart and labouring for breath, than he showed now, when he
looked at the pursuer who had so relentlessly hunted him down.
‘You never saw me under my right name before; you see me under my right
name now. You shall see me once again in the body, when you are tried
for your life. You shall see me once again in the spirit, when the cord
is round your neck, and the crowd are crying against you!’
When Meltham had spoken these last words, the miscreant suddenly turned
away his face, and seemed to strike his mouth with his open hand. At the
same instant, the room was filled with a new and powerful odour, and,
almost at the same instant, he broke into a crooked run, leap, start,—I
have no name for the spasm,—and fell, with a dull weight that shook the
heavy old doors and windows in their frames.
That was the fitting end of him.
When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from the room, and Meltham,
giving me his hand, said, with a weary air,
‘I have no more work on earth, my friend. But I shall see her again
elsewhere.’
It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He might have saved her, he
said; he had not saved her, and he reproached himself; he had lost her,
and he was broken-hearted.
‘The purpose that sustained me is over, Sampson, and there is nothing now
to hold me to life. I am not fit for life; I am weak and spiritless; I
have no hope and no object; my day is done.’
In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken man who then spoke
to me was the man who had so strongly and so differently impressed me
when his purpose was before him. I used such entreaties with him, as I
could; but he still said, and always said, in a patient, undemonstrative
way,—nothing could avail him,—he was broken-hearted.
He died early in the next spring. He was buried by the side of the poor
young lady for whom he had cherished those tender and unhappy regrets;
and he left all he had to her sister. She lived to be a happy wife and
mother; she married my sister’s son, who succeeded poor Meltham; she is
living now, and her children ride about the garden on my walking-stick
when I go to see her.