I AM HANGED--AND DONE FOR.
So soon as I could get my eyes away from that thing that swung horribly
above the table, I forced them to find the window. But even then I could
not move. It was as though my limbs were frozen with the sheer horror of
this business into which I had blundered. You will own that I had had
enough of sensations for that day; I wonder now that I was able to get
back to sane thoughts at all. I stood there, with my teeth chattering,
and my hands clutching at the grey coat I wore, striving to pull myself
together, and to decide what was best to be done. To add to the horror
of the thing, the man who lay half across the table began to stir, and
presently sat up slowly, like one waking from a long and heavy sleep. He
sat for some moments, staring in front of him, with his hands spread out
palms downwards on the table. He did not seem to see me at all. I
watched him, wondering what he would do when presently he should look
round and catch sight of me; wondering, for my part, whether, if he
cried out with the shock of seeing me, I should grapple with him, or
make for the window and dash out into the darkness.
He did a surprising thing at last. He raised his eyes slowly, until they
rested upon what gyrated and swung above him, and then, as his eyes
travelled upwards to the face, he smiled very slowly and very gently;
and almost on the instant turned his head, perhaps at some noise I made,
and looked squarely at me.
"Good evening, sir!" he said in a low tone.
Think of it! To be calmly greeted in that fashion, in a room into which
I had blundered, clad grotesquely as I was, and with that dead thing
hanging above us! Idiotically enough I tried to get out an answer to the
man, but I found my tongue staggering about among my teeth and doing
nothing in the way of shaping words. So I stared at him with, I suppose,
a very white face, and pointed to that which hung above us.
"He's very quiet, sir," said the old man, getting to his feet slowly. "I
was afraid at first--I didn't understand. I was afraid of him. Think of
that!" He laughed again with a laughter that was ghastly.
"Cut--cut him down!" I stammered in a whisper, holding on to the edge of
the mantelshelf and beginning to feel a horrible nausea stealing over
me.
He shook his head. "I can't touch him--I'm afraid again," said the old
man, and backed away into a corner.
What I should have done within a minute or two I do not really know, if
by chance I could have kept my reason at all, but I heard someone moving
in the house, and coming towards the room in which I stood. I did not
think of my danger; everything was so far removed from the ordinary that
it was as though I moved and walked in some dream, from which presently,
with a shudder and a sigh of relief, I should awake. Therefore, even
when I heard footsteps coming towards the room I did not move, nor did
it seem strange that whoever came seemed to step with something of a
jaunty air, singing loudly as he moved, with a rather fine baritone
voice. In just such a fashion a man flung open the door and marched
straight into the room, and stopped there, surveying the picture we
made, the three of us--one dead and two alive--with a pair of very
bright, keen eyes.
He was a tall, thin man, with sleek black hair gone grey at the temples.
He had a cleanly-shaven face, much lined and wrinkled at the corners of
the eyes and of the mouth; and when he presently spoke I discovered that
his lips parted quickly, showing the line of his white teeth, and yet
with nothing of a smile. It was as though the lips moved mechanically in
some still strong mask; only the eyes were very much alive. And after
his first glance round the room I saw that his eyes rested only on me.
"Who are you? What do you want?" he demanded sharply.
I did not answer his question; I pointed weakly to the hanging man.
"Aren't you going--going to do anything with him?" I blurted out.
He shrugged his shoulders. "He's dead; and the other one,"--he let his
eyes rest for a moment on the old man--"the other one is as good as dead
for anything he understands. The matter is between us, and perhaps I'd
better hear you first."
"I can't--not with that in the room!" I whispered, striving to steady my
voice.
He shrugged his shoulders again, and drew from his pocket a knife.
Keeping his eyes fixed on the swaying figure above him, he mounted to a
chair, and so to the table, deftly and strongly lifted the dead man upon
one shoulder while he severed the rope above his head. Then he stepped
down, first to the chair and then to the floor, and laid the thing, not
ungently, on a couch in the corner. I was able now to avert my eyes from
it.
"Does that please you?" he asked, with something of a sneer. "Get
forward into the light a little; I want to see you."
I stepped forward, and he looked me up and down; then he nodded slowly,
and showed that white gleam of his teeth. "I see--a convict," he said.
"From what prison?"
"Many miles from here," I answered him. "I escaped early this morning;
someone brought me as far as this on a motor-car. I broke in--because I
wanted food and a change of clothing. I was desperate."
"I see--I see," he said, in his smooth voice. "A change of clothing, and
food. Perhaps we may be able to provide you with both."
"You mean you'll promise to do so, while you communicate with the
police, I suppose?" I answered sullenly.
He smiled, and shook his head. "That is not my way of doing things at
all," he said. "You are desperate, you tell me, and I have no particular
interest in your recapture. If it comes to that, I have trouble enough
of my own." He glanced for a moment at the body behind him. "I should
like to know how it comes about that you are a convict--for what
particular crime, I mean?"
I told him, as briefly as I could, the whole story, not painting myself
too black, you may be sure. He listened with deep attention until I had
finished, and then for a minute or two he stood still, with his arms
folded, evidently considering some point deeply. I waited, forgetful of
all else but the man before me, for he seemed to hold my fate in his
hands. All this time the old man I had found in the room stood in a
corner, smiling foolishly, and nibbing his hands one over the other. The
other man who dominated the situation took not the faintest notice of
him.
"How long have you been hanging about this place, waiting to break in?"
demanded the man who had come into the room last. "Speak the truth."
"I don't exactly know," I answered. "I fell asleep while I lay in the
grounds, and lost count of time. But I saw him,"--I nodded my head
towards that prone figure on the couch--"I saw him in the grounds."
"Alone?" He jerked the word out at me.
"No, there was a lady."
"Since you know that, you may as well know the rest," he replied. "This
young man has had a most unhappy attachment for a young lady in this
house, who is my ward. He has persecuted her with his attentions; he has
come here under cover of the darkness, over and over again, against my
wishes. She liked him----"
"I heard her say that," I broke in, incautiously.
"Then you only confirm my words," he said, after a sharp glance at me.
"Perhaps you may imagine my feelings when to-night I discovered that the
unhappy boy had absolutely taken his revenge upon me, and upon her, by
hanging himself in this very room. So far I have been able to keep the
knowledge from my ward,--I think there's a possibility that I may be
able to keep it from her altogether."
I did not understand the drift of his thought then, nor did I see in
what way I was to be concerned in the matter. He came a little nearer to
me, and seated himself on the table, and bent his keen glance on me
before going on again. I think I muttered something, for my own part,
about being sorry, but it was a feeble mutter at the best.
"Perhaps you may wonder why I have not sent at once, in the ordinary
course, for a doctor," he went on. "That is quite easily explained when
I tell you that I am a doctor myself. The situation is absurd, of
course. Perhaps I had better introduce myself. I am Dr. Bardolph Just."
He paused, as though expecting that I should supply information on my
side.
"My name is Norton Hyde," I said brusquely.
"And you speak like a gentleman, which is a passport at once to my
favour," he assured me, with a bow. "Now, let us get to business. A
young man comes here to-night and hangs himself in my house. I have a
deep respect and liking for that young man, although I am opposed to the
idea of his aspiring to the hand of my ward. He hangs himself, and at
once scandal springs up, bell-mouthed, to shout the thing to the world.
The name of an innocent girl is dragged in; my name is dragged in;
innocent people suffer for the foolish act of a thoughtless boy. The
question in my mind at once is: Can the penalty be averted from us?"
I must own the man fascinated me. I began to feel that I would do much
to help him, and to help the girl I had seen that night in the grounds
of the house. Fool that I was then, I did not understand and did not
know what deep game he was playing; indeed, had I known, how could I
have stood against him?
"I am, I trust, always a friend to the friendless and the helpless," he
went on. "You are friendless, I take it, and very helpless, and although
I am no opponent of the law, I have yet the instinct which tells me that
I should help a fugitive. Now let us understand one another."
At this point we were interrupted, horribly enough, by a cry from the
old man in the corner--a cry like nothing earthly. He advanced a few
steps towards where we stood, and looked from one to the other of us,
with his hands plucking nervously at his lips.
"I don't understand, gentlemen--I don't understand," he said, in a
feeble voice. "He was alive and well and strong this morning; he clapped
me on the shoulder, and said--what was it that he said?" The man put
one hand to his head and looked at me in a lost fashion. "I forget what
it was; something seems to have gone here!" He struck his forehead
sharply with his knuckles, and again looked at us with that feeble
smile.
"Get out of the way!" said Dr. Just fiercely. "Take no notice of him,"
he added to me. "He babbles about things he doesn't understand."
The old man slunk away, and sat down on a chair in the corner and
dropped his forehead in his hands. And from that time he did not move
until my strange interview with Dr. Just was over.
"Now, what I suggest is this," the doctor said, leaning towards me and
impressing his points upon me by stabbing one white forefinger into the
palm of his other hand. "We will say that you have suffered for a crime
which was not morally a crime at all. We will put it that you, by all
the laws of humanity, had a right to escape from the hideous doom to
which you had been consigned. You have escaped, and by the strangest
chance you have found a friend at the very outset."
He smiled at me, if that quick baring of his teeth could be called a
smile, and I tried to thank him with broken words. Then he went on
again--
"Before you can enter the world again it is necessary that you should
have clothing which does not brand you as that dress does," he said.
"Therefore I want for a moment to put a case clearly to you--to let you
see what is in my mind. Suppose that this convict, fleeing from pursuit,
haunted by the thought that he may be recaptured, and may have to serve
a yet longer period for his escapade--starving, and fainting, and
hopeless; suppose this convict enters a house, and, finding the means
ready to his hand, puts an end to the business once for all, and throws
up the sponge. In other words, suppose that convict hangs himself, and
so gets the laugh of those who are hunting him down. Do you follow me?"
I was so far from following him that I shook my head feebly, and glanced
first at my own clothes and then at the man who had hanged himself, and
who now lay on the couch. Then I shook my head again.
The doctor seemed to lose patience. "I'm afraid you haven't a very quick
brain," he exclaimed testily. "Let me make myself more clear. A young
man of good family and good standing in the world, comes in here
to-night and commits suicide; soon after an outcast, flying from
justice, follows him, and breaks in also. In appearance the two are
something alike; both are tall, and strong, and dark; each man--the one
from compulsion--has closely cropped dark hair. Suppose I suggest that,
to avoid a scandal, it is the convict who has hanged himself, and that
the other man has not been here at all. In other words, as you need a
change of clothing, I propose you change with that!"
I gasped at the mere horror of the idea; I shuddered as I looked at the
dead man. "I couldn't--I couldn't!" I whispered. "Besides, what would
become of me?"
"I don't ask you to take the place of the other man; that would be too
risky, and would, in fact, be impossible," he said quietly. "I am merely
asking you to assist me to cover up this unfortunate business and at the
same time to save yourself."
There was no time for me to think; I was like a rat in a trap.
Nevertheless, on an impulse, I refused to have anything to do with so
mad a notion. "I won't do it; it's impossible!" I said.
"Very good, my friend!" He shrugged his shoulders and moved quietly
across the room towards the bell. "Then my duty is clear--I give you up
to those who must be anxious concerning your safety. I've given you your
chance, and you refuse to take it."
His hand was on the bell when I called to him, "Stop! is there no other
way?"
He shook his head. "No other way at all," he replied. "Come, be
reasonable; I'm not going to land you into a trap. Put the matter
clearly to yourself. You are a pariah, outside the pale of civilised
things; I offer you a fresh start. Mr. Norton Hyde, the convict, commits
suicide--I pledge my word to you that the fraud shall not be discovered.
A certain young girl is saved from much trouble, and sorrow, and
anxiety; I also am saved from the consequences of a very rash act,
committed by our dead friend here. So far as you are concerned, you can
start afresh, with your record wiped out. Come--yes or no?
"I don't trust you," I said. "What do you want to do with me? what
purpose have you in this, apart from the hushing up of a scandal?"
He became thoughtful at that; presently, looking up, he answered me with
what seemed to be a charming frankness, "You have the right to ask, and
although I might refuse to reply, I want to treat you fairly," he said.
"In a certain business in which I am interested--a certain scheme I have
on hand--I want help. You will be a man who has thrown everything, as it
were, into the melting-pot of life: you will have everything to win, and
nothing to lose. In other words, you are just the creature I want--the
man ready to my hand, to do anything I may suggest. You haven't answered
me yet; is it to be yes or no?"
I said, "No!" quickly, and he moved towards the bell with an impatient
frown. He had only three steps to take, but in that brief moment I had a
vision of myself handcuffed and going back to my prison; I could not
bear it. He was within an inch of the bell, when I cried out the word
that was to change all my life, and was to set me upon the most
desperate venture I had yet had anything to do with. I cried out, "Yes."
He smiled, and came back to me. "You should learn to make up your mind
more quickly," he said. "Now, let us see what we have to do. You've
nothing to be afraid of, and you need take no notice of that creature in
the corner there; he knows nothing, and will remember nothing. Strip
yourself to the skin."
As I began to undress, I glanced at the old man in the corner; he sat in
the same attitude, with his head sunk in his hands. "What is wrong with
him?" I asked.
Dr. Bardolph Just was bending over the body of the man on the couch; he
did not look round. "Something snapped in his brain a little time ago,"
he answered me. "It is as though you had snapped the mainspring of a
watch; the brain in him died at that moment."
"What caused it?" I asked, still shedding my clothes.
"Shock. Get your clothes off, and don't talk so much," he snapped.
He tossed certain garments to me one by one, and I flung him my own in
return. So the change was made, and I presently stood up and looked down
at myself, and saw myself as that young man who had stood in the garden
and had talked to the girl. For, indeed, I was something like him in
figure, and height, and appearance. When the doctor moved away from the
couch I gasped, for there I lay, in the dress I had worn for a year,
branded and numbered--and dead. It was not a pretty sight; I turned away
from it, shuddering.
But the doctor laughed softly. "It is not given to every man to see
himself as he will one day be," he said.
"What was his name?" I whispered.
"Gregory Pennington," he answered, looking at the body. "So you see at
one stroke we get rid of Gregory Pennington, and of a certain
unfortunate convict, named Norton Hyde. So far as your further
christening is concerned, we must arrange that later, for this matter
must be taken with a certain boldness, or weak spots may be discovered
in it. I think you said you were hungry, and I daresay you've had enough
of this room for the present."
"More than enough," I replied.
"Then come along, and let us see if we can find something to put better
courage into you," he said. And gratefully enough I followed him from
the room in that new disguise.
The house was a very large one. We traversed a number of corridors
before coming to a room which seemed to be half-study and half-surgery.
I should not have known as to the latter half of it, but for the fact
that the doctor, who did not seem to care to summon any servants there
may have been, left me there while he went in search of food. I peeped
behind a screen at one end of the room, and saw an array of bottles, and
test tubes in stands, and other paraphernalia. At the further end of the
room were great book cases reaching to the ceiling, and a big desk with
a reading-lamp upon it. But even here, though the furniture was
handsome, the room had a neglected appearance, as, indeed, I afterwards
found every room in that house had.
Bardolph Just came back in a little while, carrying food and a decanter.
After he had set the food out on a table, and I had fallen to with a
relish, he laughed softly, and said that, after all, he had forgotten
to bring me a glass. He declared, however, that that was a matter soon
remedied, and he went behind the screen, and came out with a tall
measuring-glass in his hand. It seemed an uncanny thing to drink wine
out of; but I had no choice.
He presently pulled open a drawer in the desk, and took out a cigar, and
lighted it; as I had finished my meal, he tossed one to me, and I
gratefully began to smoke. The man was evidently still turning over some
matter in his mind, for he said nothing while he sat twisting the cigar
round between his lips and looking at me. His back was turned towards
the door of the room, and presently in that house of horror I saw the
door begin slowly to open.
I suppose I ought to have cried out, but once again I was fascinated by
what might happen at any moment, and perhaps in sheer wonder as to what
was coming in. It was nothing worse, as it turned out, than the little,
old grey-haired man I had seen in the further room, and who had
evidently followed us. He crept in now, step by step, with that curious
smile upon his face, and when he was fairly in the room closed the
door--I noticed that it closed with a sharp little click, as though it
had a spring lock.
Dr. Bardolph Just did a curious thing. As the lock clicked he suddenly
sat rigid, gripping the arms of his chair, and staring at me as though
from my face he would learn what was behind him. Seeing, I suppose,
nothing in my expression to guide him, he suddenly swung sharply round
and faced the little old man; and I thought at that moment that a quick
sigh broke from him, as of relief. I wondered what he had expected to
see.
"What the devil do you want?" he demanded, in a voice raised but little
above a whisper. "Why do you follow me about?"
The old man spread out his hands in a deprecating fashion, and shook his
head. "Nothing, sir," he said, "nothing at all. But he won't speak to
me--and he has never been like that before. I don't understand it. I
knelt beside him just now, and his dress was different--and--and--" I
saw his hands go up to his lips, and pluck at them in that strange
fashion--"and he won't speak to me."
The doctor turned from him to me, and shrugged his shoulders. "This is a
nice apparition to be following a man about," he said petulantly. "I
can't make him out at all."
"Who is he?" I ventured to ask in a whisper.
"The servant of the dead man--one of those faithful old fools that
attach themselves to you, and won't be shaken off, I suppose. He came
here to-night, following his unfortunate master. What the deuce am I to
do with him?"
"He seems harmless enough," I whispered. "But isn't it rather dangerous
to have him about here, after the fraud that has been committed. Won't
he speak? Won't he say that this dead man is not the escaped convict,
but his master?"
"There's no fear of that," replied the other. "I tell you something has
snapped in his brain; he doesn't understand. If I turned him out into
the world now, he would remember nothing, and would have no story to
tell, even if he were questioned. But I don't want to turn him out--and
yet he haunts me."
"You say he changed in a moment?" I asked.
Dr. Just nodded. "When he saw his master dead, he simply cried out, and
afterwards remained as you see him now. I must dispose of him for the
night, at least," he said, getting to his feet, and approaching the old
man. "Come, Capper, I want you."
The little old man looked round at him as he said that name, and I saw a
faint fear come into his eyes. He shrank away a little, but the doctor
grasped his arm quickly, and drew him towards the door. He went out in
that grasp passively enough, and I was left alone again.
I had almost fallen asleep, worn out with the excitements of the day,
when the doctor came back again. I started to my feet drowsily, and
faced him.
"Good-night!" he said, and held out his hand to me--a cold hand, but
firm and strong in its touch. "You may see and hear strange things in
this house," he added, "but it is not your business to take any notice
of them. You will be, I hope, properly grateful to me--the man who has
saved you, and given you a new lease of life."
"Yes, I shall be grateful," I promised him.
He conducted me to a room in what seemed to be an outlying wing of the
house, and left me to my own reflections. In truth, I was too tired to
give much time to thought. I slipped off my clothes and got into bed,
and was asleep in five minutes.
But I was not destined to sleep well, after all. In the first place, I
was troubled most unaccountably by dreams, in which I saw myself going
through the most extraordinary adventures, and finally hanging to what
seemed to be the roof of Penthouse Prison, with the little old man of
the grey hair grinning up at me from the ground below. And through my
dreams there appeared always to go the light, quick figure of that girl
I had seen in the grounds of the house; and always she went searching
for someone. I dreamed at last that she came straight to me, and took me
by the arms, and stared at me, and cried out that she had found the man
she wanted. And so I sat up in bed in the darkness, struggling with
someone very real, who was gripping me.
I almost shrieked, as I rolled out of bed, and tried to disengage myself
from the arms of a man who was clinging to me. I contrived to drag him
towards the window, where, by the faint light of the stars outside, I
saw that it was the man Capper--that seemingly half-witted creature who
had been the servant of the dead man.
"What do you want?" I ejaculated.
"I've been dreaming," said Capper.
"Well, what of that?" I demanded testily, "I've been dreaming, too."
"Yes, but not dreams like mine," whispered the old man, looking
fearfully over his shoulder. "Tell me, do you think they'll come true?"
"I don't know what they were," I reminded him.
He clutched me by the arm, and stared up in my face. There seemed almost
a light of madness in his eyes. "I dreamed that it happened a long time
ago--before my head went wrong. I dreamed of a blow struck in the dark;
I thought someone (it might have been myself, but I'm not sure even of
that)--I dreamed that someone screamed, 'Murder!'"
In a growing excitement he had raised his voice almost to a scream; I
clapped my hand over his lips as he got out the dreadful word. I felt my
hair stirring on my scalp. I wondered if by chance something dreadful
had happened in that house, of which this old man knew, and the memory
of which was locked away in that closed brain of his.
"Let me stay here to-night," he pleaded, clinging to me. "I'll be still
as a mouse; I'll lie in this corner on the floor."
So I let him lie there, and I went back to my bed. For a long time I
lay awake, watching him and thinking about him; but gradually towards
the morning I fell asleep, and slept heavily. When I awoke at last, with
the sun shining in at my window, the man was gone, and my door stood
open.
That was to be a day of happenings. Even now my mind holds but a
confused memory of them, in which I seem to be now myself, and now some
other man; now living on hope, and now sunk into the depths of fear and
despair. For what I have to tell seems so incredible, that only by some
knowledge of the man who carried the plot boldly through can any idea of
how the business was arranged be arrived at.
Dr. Bardolph Just acted with promptness and decision that day. A
messenger flew down towards London to summon the police; and a telegram
sped over the wires back to Penthouse Prison. The missing convict had
been found; all the world might come to the house of Dr. Bardolph Just,
and see this thing for themselves. At the last, when we actually
expected the enemy to arrive at our gates, as it were, I nervously
plucked the doctor's sleeve, and whispered a question.
"What about his hair? They'll be sure to notice that."
He smiled a little pityingly, I thought; but then, to the very end the
man retained some contempt for me. "Come and see for yourself," he said.
So I went back with him into that room where we had left the dead man,
and there I saw a miracle. For while I slept the doctor had been at
work, and the head of poor Gregory Pennington was cropped as closely as
my own. I shuddered and turned away.
"How you ever contrived to escape puzzles me," said Bardolph Just. "You
haven't half my courage."
The man was certainly amazing. He met everything blandly; he was firm,
and quiet, and dignified with this official and with that. He told me
afterwards all that he did, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. For
my own part, of course, I had to keep out of the way, and I spent most
of my time in the spacious grounds surrounding the house. There was an
old ruined summer-house at one corner, under a high wall; and there,
fortified with a few of the doctor's cigars, I awaited quietly the turn
of events. According to the doctor's description to me afterwards, what
happened was this:
In the first place, the puzzle fitted so neatly together that there was
no feeling of suspicion. A tall, well-built, dark-haired man, in the
clothes of a convict, was roaming over the country; by a miracle a man
answering that description, and dressed in those clothes, and having the
necessary number upon him, had got to this house on the northern heights
above London, and there, in despair of escaping further, had hanged
himself. Dr. Bardolph Just was a man of standing in the scientific
world--a man who had made discoveries; there was no thought of calling
his word in question. This dead man was undoubtedly the escaped
convict--Norton Hyde.
A very necessary inquest was held, and twelve good men and true settled
that matter once and for all. There had been one curious point in the
evidence, but even that was a point that had been miraculously
explained. The doctor spoke of it airily, and I wondered a little why he
did not explain the matter with more exactitude.
"It seems," he said, "that they discovered on the head of the
unfortunate man the mark of a blow--a blow which had undoubtedly stunned
him--or so, at least, they thought. It's impossible for me to say how
the unfortunate Gregory Pennington came by such an injury, but at all
events even that was accounted for in the case of Norton Hyde."
"How?" I asked.
Dr. Just laughed. "A certain motorist put in an appearance, and frankly
explained that he had picked you up on the roadside near Penthouse
Prison, and had given you a lift as far as this very house. Then there
was an accident, and he and his passenger were both pitched out; he was
convinced that in that way you got your injury. The thing was as simple
as possible--you had recovered consciousness before he did, and had
scrambled over the fence here."
"But did they swallow the story of my being in the house--of my breaking
in?" I asked.
"I had thought of that," said the doctor. "So my tale was that you had
hanged yourself from a beam in an outhouse--probably because you failed
in your purpose of breaking into my dwelling. As a doctor, the moment I
discovered you I cut you down, and carried you in, and did my best to
restore animation, but in vain. You will like to know, Mr. Norton Hyde,
that my humanity was warmly commended by the jury and coroner."
I laughed in a sickly fashion. "But I am not Norton Hyde any longer," I
reminded him.
"True--and I have thought of a name for you that shall, in a fashion,
mark your entry into another phase of existence. A nice name, and a
short one. What do you say to the title of John New, a personal friend
of my own?"
I told him that any name would suit me that was not the old one, and so
that matter was settled.
He displayed so great an anxiety to see the matter ended, and was
altogether so sympathetic with that poor convict who in his despair had
hanged himself, that he even attended the funeral. Which is to say,
that he carried the fraud so far as to go to Penthouse Prison, what time
that disguised body of Godfrey Pennington was carried there, and to see
it interred with all due solemnity within the prison precincts; I
believe he lunched with the governor of the prison on that occasion,
and, altogether, played his part very well.
It is left to me to record here one other happening of that time, and
one which made a deep impression upon me. On the night of that strange
finishing of the fraud, when Dr. Bardolph Just returned, I was sitting
smoking in the summer-house, and enjoying the evening air, when I heard
what seemed to be the quick, half-strangled cry of a woman. I tossed
aside my cigar and started to my feet and came out of the summer-house.
It was very dark in that corner of the grounds, and the summer-house in
particular had great deep shadows inside it.
There came towards me, flying among the trees, and looking back in a
scared fashion over her shoulder, the girl I had seen with Gregory
Pennington--the girl he had called Debora. She came straight at me, not
seeing me; and in the distance I saw Bardolph Just running, and heard
him calling to her. On an instinct I caught at her, and laid a finger on
my lips, and thrust her into the summer-house. Bardolph Just came
running up a moment later, and stopped a little foolishly on seeing me.
And by that time I was stretching my arms and yawning.
He made some casual remark, and turned back towards the house. When he
had gone I called to the girl, and she came out; she was white-faced and
trembling, and there were tears in her eyes. I felt that I hated
Bardolph Just, with a hatred that was altogether unreasonable.
"I saw you here yesterday," she said, looking at me earnestly. "I need
friends badly--and you have a good, kind face. Will you be my friend?"
I do not know what words I said; I only know that there, in the dark
garden, as I bent over her little hands and put them to my lips, I vowed
myself in my heart to her service.