TOO LATE!
For now it all seemed straight and plain before me; now I saw clearly
the pointing finger of Fate, and trembled no more at the task I had to
face. Who was I, that I should ever have hung back at all, or should
ever have dreaded the road on which my feet had been firmly set from the
first. I looked down at the sleeping girl, and my heart was filled with
a great gratitude that God had snatched me from death and from prison,
and had reserved me for this. I thanked Him humbly that there was no
other man in all the wide world so trained and fitted for the task as I
was.
I saw it all clearly enough at last. The time was coming when this poor
tangled love story would be set right; when the boy would come naturally
and by instinct to the girl, and would take her in his arms, with a very
perfect understanding of her purity and her innocence; so much had been
ordained from the first. If they gave a thought to me, it would only be
as the poor unknown grey-headed man that had been called Tinman, and had
flitted into their lives for a brief hour, and flitted out again, and so
been done with. Even the woman who stood beside me--that elder
Barbara--was only mercifully permitted to look on at the completion of
the love story she and I might have lived ourselves. After all, God had
been very good to me.
"I don't understand," Barbara was saying to me, as we stood beside the
sleeping girl. "What way will you take?--what will you do?"
"You will know presently," I whispered, lest I should wake the sleeper.
"In any case, I want you to promise one thing: I want you to take the
girl back to her father, and to leave her safely in his hands. Promise
me--swear to me that nothing shall turn you from that purpose; nothing
that you hear--nothing that you suspect. All that I hope to do, and all
that I shall strive to do, will be brought to naught if you fail me in
that."
"I promise, my dear," she said solemnly. "But Olivant?"
"Will trouble her no more," I replied. "I wonder if you remember what I
said to you once--twenty long years ago?"
"I hope I remember," she whispered. "Say the words again."
"I lay under sentence of death; I was to die the next morning. You came
to me; you had travelled hard and fast to reach me before they killed
me. Do you remember?"
She bowed her head, and whispered that she did. I went on--repeating the
words I had used so long before; they had been in my mind many many
times since, and I had not forgotten them.
"This is what I said to you. 'In the years that are coming it may
happen, in God's own good time, that some child you love may stand in
need of a friend who will strike as I struck--fight as I fought--for her
honour. It may happen, long after I am dead and forgotten by all but
you, that some such an one may spring up, to do again more perfectly
what I did--springing from the dead ashes of my past to work out the
pitiful story I began.' Do you remember?"
"Perfectly," she whispered; and now she looked at me with startled eyes.
"I never thought then," I went on, "that it would fall to me to do again
what I did then; I was as one dead when I spoke those words. But all
things have fitted in so wonderfully and so strangely; there is no
drawing back for me, and there is no one else who can strike the
blow--no one with a greater right."
She drew me away out of the room, and closed the door; we stood together
on the landing outside, looking into each other's eyes--I very calm and
resolute, and she trembling and afraid.
"You must not think of it," she whispered; "you must never think of it.
There must be some other way--some better way. Not again, Charlie--for
the love of God!--not again!"
"There is no other way," I replied. "It is her soul against his body;
when you think of that, there is no question. Besides, what does it
matter? In the sight of men my hands are stained with blood----"
(She seized my hands suddenly, and put her lips to them!)
"--And at the worst it may happen that I pay the penalty I earned
before. Besides," I added solemnly, "I do not do this of myself. Step by
step--day by day--I have seen what was coming; I dare not draw back now,
whatever happens. If it is a crime, then the man himself has drawn it
down upon his own head. Think of what he has done: to get hold of this
girl he has banished himself out of the world; has played a trick, to
persuade people that he is going on a long voyage, while in reality he
is in hiding--waiting like a spider in his web--crouching ready to
spring. Think of that, Barbara; if I kill him to-night, I kill a man who
has no name, who is unknown; Murray Olivant will be in another place
altogether. For his own purposes he has covered up my footsteps--the
footsteps of the man setting out to kill him. There is a fate in this; I
dare not draw back."
She clung to me, and begged that I would think of her and of the girl;
implored me to remember that whereas the crime for which I had been shut
away before was one of personal vengeance, with the hot blood of youth
for excuse, this was a deliberate thing, done for others with whom I was
not personally concerned. Upon that point, however, I threw a new light.
"The girl sleeping there is but the image of the Barbara I loved; the
boy who would strike this blow, if I did not, represents what I
was--must represent in the future what I might have been under happier
circumstances. I strike now for the love I bore you, Barbara, and bear
you still; and because I know that if I do not this boy must step in,
and commit the crime for which I suffered through twenty long years.
There is no hope that he will turn back, any more than there is any hope
that Murray Olivant will give up his purpose."
She wept and implored me; to comfort her a little I presently promised
that if I saw any other way I would take it; but in my own heart I knew
there was no other way.
"Remember--my dear--my dear," she pleaded, "that we have both had to
suffer so much--to lose so much--to give up so much. Remember, too, what
my position is now; that it is my fate to stand as a mere kindly
stranger beside my child, and never to let her know who I really am. I
must live out my life alone, as I have lived it these many years; I
cannot go back now; the old Barbara Savell lies in the depths of the
sea. That is my punishment, Charlie; don't make it harder to bear than
it is."
I went out into the streets, and made my way to the rooms occupied by
Fanshawe. Not that I wanted to see the man: I hated him too cordially
for that; but that I felt I must be strong for the work that was before
me, and must get some proper rest. I was worn out already with that long
night spent in tramping about the streets; I knew I must sleep, if sleep
was possible; I set all my mind upon that, because so much depended on
whether my nerves served me well when the time came for what I had to
do.
Fanshawe was out when I arrived, but he came back within a few
minutes--coming into the room in some excitement, I thought, as though
he had been hurried. He tossed his hat on to the bed, and came across to
where I was seated, and clapped me on the shoulder jocosely.
"Well, my Charlie!" he exclaimed, "what's the news with you--eh?"
I looked up at him sourly enough. "No news," I replied.
"No sign of the girl yet? No whisper of where she is?"
I faced round upon him angrily. "Leave her name alone," I said. "If I
knew anything I shouldn't tell you, and I warn you that if you try to
meddle in any way in the matter, you'll have to reckon with me in a
fashion you little suspect. Mind--I mean it!"
I had half expected that he would fly into a passion, as I had seen him
do on other occasions; instead, he looked at me almost wistfully out of
his deep eyes for a moment before he turned away.
"You won't understand, Charlie," he said. "I only want to help the
girl--I only want her to think well of me."
I laughed at him openly; I thought he played the game poorly enough; I
felt that he had perhaps got a notion that if he was soft with me, I
might be led to tell him anything I knew. I hardened my heart; for I had
had too much of this man not to be able to judge him for what he really
was.
He brought out some liquor presently, and I, being faint and weary,
readily drank with him. Not a word was said for a long time; until
presently, leaning across the table, and tapping upon it with his long
bony fingers, he whispered a word or two that startled me.
"Charlie--Charlie!" Then, as I glanced up at him, and saw his hungry
eyes fixed upon me, he went on in tones little above a whisper, and with
a curious mocking grin on his face: "Charlie!--how does it feel to kill
a man?"
I turned round slowly; I saw in a moment that he had read my secret. My
fear was not that he might do anything to me; my only dread was that he
might warn Murray Olivant, if indeed he had not already done so.
"What do you mean?" I asked hoarsely.
"You're a man of evil passions, Charlie--of hot and sudden passions," he
said. "Twenty years ago you killed Gavin Hockley--struck him down, as
you might have struck any noxious beast in your way. Your blood was up,
Charlie"--he had risen excitedly to his feet, and was leaning across the
table towards me, with his hands gripping the edges, and his eyeballs
almost starting from their sockets--"you were like a man rushing into
battle, caring nothing for what you did. That was fine--that was noble;
but afterwards, Charlie--afterwards?"
"I don't understand you," I said feebly.
"When the thing was done; when you crept out into the streets, knowing
what you'd left behind you. Tell me, Charlie--tell me; did it creep down
the stairs in your wake--bloody and horrible; did you hear its feet
pattering on the stones in quiet streets; did you look over your
shoulder, and see its glazing eyes staring at you--its mouth with the
drooping jaw striving to scream 'Murder!' after you? Tell me, Charlie."
"I forget," I replied. "After all--what does it matter now?"
"But suppose, Charlie--only suppose," he went on, in that same hoarse
whisper--"imagine for a moment that you set out to do it again?"
I sprang to my feet, and confronted him. "What madman's talk is this?" I
demanded, with a glance at the door. "What are you talking about?"
"Suppose, Charlie," he went on, paying no heed to my
excitement--"suppose that this time you set out--not in the heat of
passion--not because the man had injured you--but to do it in cold
blood! Suppose you crept up his stair--and listened at his door--and
stole in upon him----"
I clapped my hand suddenly over his lips. "Silence!" I cried--"you don't
know what you're talking about. I've forgotten all I did; it's twenty
long years ago. Don't remind me of it." For I thought in that way I
might divert his thoughts into another channel; I was firmly persuaded
that in some amazing fashion he had guessed what I was about to do, and
was endeavouring to screw the truth of it out of me.
He had dropped back into his chair, and was looking at me cunningly
between half-closed lids. I had determined by that time that he should
not stop me; I was certain of that, even while I realized that the time
must surely come when he would denounce me, and cry out that I had done
this thing. The thought of that did not stay me in the least; I meant to
go on. But the natural desire to shield myself, if possible--the sheer
human instinct of self-preservation--told me that I must if possible
throw him off the scent. I began to talk to him with what ease I might.
"Come, Fanshawe--it's not for you and me to talk of murder," I said.
"Why should I do again what I have done once already? What reason would
there be in it?"
"No reason--no reason at all, Charlie," he said, plucking at his lips
with his long fingers, and watching me. "I don't know what put the idea
into my mind to-night--I don't know what made me think of it. Only I
would give something to know just what a man feels, when he creeps away,
and leaves behind him that dead thing that was but a moment before alive
and strong. It would be something to know what one feels like then. And
the weapon, Charlie--what of the weapon?"
I remembered then that I had seen that day in a marine-store dealer's,
not a hundred yards from the place where now we talked, the weapon I
meant to serve my purpose. It was a strong sailor's knife in a leather
sheath--a powerful thing, with a hilt well worn by hands that had
grasped it many times; I had stood outside the shop, and had looked at
my own hand, and had felt how perfectly it would fit round the handle. I
stared at him now as he spoke, and wondered if by any chance he had seen
me looking in at that window, and had read my thoughts.
"You know the weapon I used," I said, in a low voice. "It was an old
sword."
"I know, Charlie--I know," he said, nodding. "But if you did it
again--if you wanted to do it more quickly and more cleanly--what then?
A knife's a good weapon; what about a knife, Charlie?"
I felt sick and faint; I got up, and went to the window, and threw it
open. It was a fine night--a night of stars and of peace, even with
London throbbing in the streets down below me. I thought of the child
who had lain asleep--of the mother who watched over her; I thought of
the man who was plotting against that little Barbara, and my heart
hardened. Though a hundred Fanshawes stood in the way, I meant that this
thing should be done, and that the man should die. I had bungled it
somehow, so that Fanshawe knew; I must pay the penalty of that
afterwards. One thought was in my mind, and one only: he should not stop
me.
"Have you seen the boy--young Arnold Millard?" I asked, more for the
sake of saying something than in the hope of gaining information.
"I saw him to-day," replied Fanshawe slowly: "still hanging about that
place. I wonder what would happen if by chance he found out where
Olivant is going?"
"I'm afraid we know what would happen," I replied. "What's the use of
talking about it?"
It seemed impossible for him to get away from that subject; he came back
to it again and again. I remember that he crossed the room, and came and
stood near to me, looking down into the street, and speaking in a
whisper.
"If a man struck down another like that--for a fine noble reason,
Charlie--would that be wrong? I mean, would it be so vile as it might be
if a man did it for any worse motive? If he did it--and escaped; for how
long would it haunt him afterwards? You remember, Charlie; for how long
did you think about it--and remember it? Did the blood-stained thing
come to you in dreams--mock at you, and haunt you. One would like to
know that."
"Look here," I said roughly. "You've got some strange idea in your
head."
"No--no; not in my head, Charlie; I was only supposing--putting a case,"
he broke in hurriedly.
"Well, don't suppose--and don't put cases," I cried savagely. "All that
has been done is done with; why should you rake it up? Am I likely to do
again what I did before?--to put my neck once again in the noose?"
"No, Charlie," he faltered--"of course not."
"Very well, then--leave it alone," I urged. "I'm worn out, and I need
sleep; I mustn't be late to-morrow; there are many things to be seen
to."
He said he would sit up for a time; at his suggestion I threw myself
down on the bed, dressed as I was, and fell asleep. The last vision I
had of him was as he sat at the table, with a flaring candle throwing
ghostly shadows of him on the wall and ceiling, and with his plucking
hands for ever at his lips. He watched me, even as I watched him, out of
half-closed eyes; I wondered how much he knew, or how much he guessed.
I woke long after daylight, to find him gone. There was for a moment in
my heart that little swift pang of excitement that comes to any one of
us, when, on waking, we remember some urgent and difficult thing that
has to be done before we sleep again--a journey, or an interview, or
anything else shut in between sunrise and sunset of one particular date;
but no more than that. I had no worldly affairs to set right--no one I
need consult; no peace to make with any one. I had long ago told myself
that this was right, and that to this end I must surely come. In doing
it I was to save two people: the girl in the first place, and the boy in
the second. For I knew inevitably that young Arnold Millard would carry
out his threat, and that, too, with less hesitation if he found his
enemy hidden away, as Murray Olivant was to be hidden away that day.
I went again to the marine-store dealer's; saw with satisfaction that
the knife was still there. I had money in my pocket--part of the amount
that had been handed to me on the previous day by Olivant; I went into
the shop, and asked that I might look at the knife. A dingy old man
behind the counter adjusted his spectacles to look at me; perhaps he
wondered that a tall grey-haired man, with bowed shoulders and with a
respectable black suit on, should want such a weapon as that. But he
pulled it out of the window, and spread it out before me; I muttered
something about wanting it for a present. I pulled it out from its
sheath, and felt the edge of it; there was a deadly sharpness about it
that made me shudder involuntarily, as I remembered where that sharpness
was to be planted.
It was old and well-worn, but in good condition; the sheath was
suspended from a narrow black belt, meant to buckle round the waist. I
did not care to put it on there; I got the man to wrap it up for me,
paid him for it, and came away. Presently, in a quiet street, I tore
away the paper wrapping, and buckled the thing round my waist, setting
the sheath in such a way at my back that I could easily reach the hilt
of the knife. Then I buttoned my coat, and went on towards Lincoln's Inn
Fields.
When I got there I found that Olivant had not yet arrived; it flashed
across me in a moment that he did not even know yet that I had secured
the rooms, and that he would be waiting until I could reach him, and
give him the keys of the place. Cursing myself for my carelessness, and
fearing that he might decide after all, on some whim, not to take the
rooms, I hurried off to his flat. I climbed the stairs to reach it, and
knocked at the door.
After some little delay he opened the door himself, and peered out at
me; flung the door wide, on seeing who it was, and let me in. He was in
his dressing gown, and as he strode across the hall and into his
sitting-room I remembered suddenly that the manservant had been sent
away the night before, and that Olivant was alone there. A sudden
feeling that I might do it then swept over me, and my hand instinctively
went to the knife at my back.
I was sane enough to remember in a moment that I had been seen coming
and going from that place over and over again; to remember also that
young Millard had waited outside there, and had forced his way into
those rooms, and had been ejected from them. That momentary impulse on
my part, if carried out, might ruin everything; I must wait until Murray
Olivant had voluntarily hidden himself.
He was in a vile temper; in sending away his manservant he had forgotten
that he could get no breakfast without the man's assistance. I hurriedly
set to work to prepare coffee; he fumed about the rooms, roundly cursing
me, and declaring over and over again that he'd give up this fool's
business, and remain comfortably where he was.
"I've been in too much of a hurry," he declared. "I might have known I
should have to suffer every sort of discomfort; I ought not to have been
afraid of what Millard would do. It's absurd."
"The rooms are taken, and they're very snug and comfortable," I reminded
him. "You'll have the laugh of every one if you slip off there. The
thing has been so well planned."
"So it has," he replied, with a smile breaking over his face. "By
Jove!--you're right there, Tinman; it's been devilishly well planned. As
soon as I've had my breakfast I'll slip out--(by the back way, Tinman,
for fear of accidents)--and later in the day I'll make my way to
Lincoln's Inn Fields. I'll wander about for a bit--enjoying a new sort
of freedom; dine somewhere quietly, and go there this evening. Have you
got in a stock of what I shall need--wines and spirits, and so forth?"
I assured him that he would find everything he required; I left the keys
with him, explaining carefully which of them fitted the various doors.
One thing only I did not tell him: that I had a duplicate key of the
outer door, given to me by the agents from whom I had taken the place.
They had explained to me that the rooms had been previously occupied by
two friends, so that the second key had been necessary. I remember that
when that second key came into my hands I felt again that Fate had
played her cards well, and had given me all I asked, and more.
"I don't quite know what time I shall be there, Tinman," said Olivant,
just before I left. "You can hang about a bit if I'm not there, and wait
till I come. I'm expecting Jervis Fanshawe to come here this morning; he
may have some news for me. By the way, don't blunder over this, Tinman."
"Blunder?" I stared at him stupidly.
"Yes; don't be telling people that I'm still in London; remember that
I've sailed on the Eaglet, and that I'm not coming back for months. Tell
everybody that. And if you see Fanshawe at his lodgings, send him to me
at once."
I decided, of course, that I would not do that in any case. Already I
began to fear that what I had said I should do would not be done after
all; Fanshawe had guessed my secret, and was going that morning to see
Olivant; obviously the first thing he would do would be to put Olivant
upon his guard. I wondered how Fanshawe had come to guess what I had
believed to be so securely locked in my own heart; I blamed myself that
I had not been more careful in guarding the very expression of my face.
However, I knew that I must risk all now upon the one throw.
The events of that day are stamped clearly enough upon my recollection;
almost I seem to see myself walking again through the streets, waiting
for the hour when I could make for Lincoln's Inn Fields. Just as on that
other occasion, when I had set about a similar business, so now I found
myself going back to scenes I knew, and looking again at various places,
as it were for the last time. For I had counted my chances; and I knew
that even while every door seemed closed that could by any possibility
let suspicion in, one might be standing open, and I unable to see it. If
once Murray Olivant were recognized, that confidential servant who had
been seen about with him must be looked for; must be discovered to be a
certain Charles Avaline--who had killed a man before, and barely escaped
the gallows for his crime. I counted the chances, and the scale weighed
heavily against me.
I drifted back in the course of that long day to the rooms from which
Murray Olivant must long since have gone, and there caught a glimpse of
a lurking figure that I knew must be Arnold Millard. He did not see me;
he was doggedly pacing up and down, watching that empty cage, and
waiting for his man, who would not come out of that place again.
Then I went to the lodging where Barbara and the girl had been the night
before; I wondered if Barbara had yet kept her promise to take the girl
away, back to her father. Surely in time, I thought, young Millard must
drift back there, and meet the girl; and so round off the love story in
which I was so strongly interested.
I found I could not eat; twice I had gone into various places, and
ordered a meal, and left the food untouched. And yet I did not seem to
need food; all sensation seemed dead within me, or at all events only
sharpened to the point of what I had to do. And so at last I came in the
dusk into Lincoln's Inn Fields; found the house, and climbed the stairs.
I listened at the door for a moment or two; then softly pushed the key
into the lock, and passed into the rooms. They were in darkness, and for
a moment or two I stood listening, wondering if the man had yet arrived.
Then I called his name, and heard it echoing through the ghostly silent
place, and coming back at me as though in mockery--
"Mr. Olivant! Mr. Olivant!"
I came out again, and lingered about near the house. There were few
people about at that time; only once a pair of lovers passed me, as
another pair of lovers, twenty years before, had walked in front of me
on such a night in that place. I found myself wondering idly what had
become of that first pair; whether they had been parted, or whether they
had married, or what had become of them. Even while I thought that, I
saw Murray Olivant striding along the pavement in the distance, with his
cigar stuck in one corner of his mouth, and a thin trail of smoke
floating behind him.
I got out of the way hurriedly, and let him go into the house without
seeing me. I stood there, trying to think how he would climb the
stairs--how long it would take him to reach this landing, and now that;
so many more moments for his fumbling with a lock he did not understand;
and now he was in the place, waiting for me!
And then all at once I felt that I could not do it. I turned away, sick
at heart; I began to invent excuses why I should not do it. I had soiled
my hands once with blood in my own cause; I would not do it again for
another. I was afraid; I weakly told myself that another way would be
found, and that Murray Olivant's triumph would be cut short. But not by
me.
I went away into the busier streets, and I walked about for more than an
hour. It was quite dark when I got back at last to the place, and even
then I think I had made up my mind that I could not do it. I found
myself praying, as I went up the stairs, that he might insult me--might
even attack or strike me--so that I might be forced to do the thing, and
to do it not in cold blood. If only it might be a matter of
fighting--some desperate business that should nerve my arm for the one
necessary moment--then I would not mind.
I climbed the stairs, and reached the door of the rooms. As I fumbled
for my key, I suddenly discovered that the door was open a couple of
inches; I put my hands against it, and went quietly in. The place was in
darkness; but I remember that I had that curious feeling that one has,
even in the darkness, that there was some one there near me. I called
out the man's name again, as I had done before--
"Mr. Olivant! Mr. Olivant!"
Only the echoes floated back to me; I could not understand what the
silence meant. At last with trembling fingers I got out a match-box, and
struck a light, and looked about me.
I saw that the table had been set out with a decanter and a glass; there
was a half-smoked cigar lying there, and it had burnt a hole in the
faded table-cloth. A candlestick had been overturned, and the candle had
rolled away a few inches from it. I set them upright, and put the match
to the candle. In doing that I came to the edge of the table, and
mechanically looked over; I started back with a cry.
Murray Olivant was there in his own rooms, after all. But he lay stiff
and stark, with his face upturned to the ceiling, and his dead eyes
staring up at me. He was stone dead; his hand still gripped the knife
that had been plunged straight into his breast, as though in his death
agony he would have torn it out.
I was too late; some one had been there before me.