THE HAUNTED MAN
While I stood there in that country lane, looking after the woman who
was going from me for the last time, I had time for many thoughts. For
now I stood in the world more absolutely alone than I had ever been;
there was no hand I could touch again in friendship, for even this dear
hand that I loved most of all was withheld from me. I had killed a man
once, long ago; it was my strange fate to take the place of another man
who had killed his fellow--to bear the blame for that, even in the eyes
of the woman I loved--to suffer death for it, if necessary.
So much I owed to my memories--so much I owed to the new Barbara, and to
the boy who loved her, and whom I must save from the fate that had
befallen a certain Charlie Avaline.
But a strange thing was to happen--something showing the very irony of
Fate--before I left that old life behind me for ever. Some mad desire to
see again these people for whom, in a sense, I was laying down my
life--or so much of it as mattered--came upon me; I went on, unsteadily
and hesitatingly, towards the house. It was a bleak winter day, with a
rough and surly wind playing havoc with the dead leaves in the grounds,
and whirling them up in clouds, and tossing them upon the terrace, and
against the windows. As I pushed open the gate--to look into that place
of my dreams for the last time--I saw a little picture before me that
seemed, as it were, to round off all that had happened there, or all
that might happen in the future.
I saw young Arnold Millard and the girl standing, arm in arm; the girl's
disengaged hand was stretched out to the woman who was her mother. That
elder Barbara seemed to be saying something to them both, and pointing
to the house. The girl was smiling; and suddenly she turned, and drew
the elder woman towards the terrace, with the boy following. Scarcely
knowing what I did, I crept through the neglected garden, and went
towards the terrace after them; they did not turn their heads, and they
did not see me.
I knew, of course, that the woman who was supposed to have died so many
years before was but keeping her promise to me, and was on her way to
confront her husband. I felt that I must know what happened--must
understand under what circumstances, whether of possible happiness or of
misery, I left her. I crept nearer until, as the girl and Arnold Millard
opened the narrow door at the end of the terrace, and passed into that
room I knew so well, I was close at hand. The elder Barbara waited
outside, looking into the room, and evidently hesitating what to do. I
was within a dozen yards of her.
Inside the room I saw Lucas Savell seated; the girl was on her knees
beside him, talking to him. In the silence I heard her voice quite
clearly.
"Dear father--only a good, kind friend, who has been almost like a
mother to me--who has helped and protected me. I want you to see her."
Even as Lucas Savell feebly got to his feet, and stared in bewilderment
at his daughter, I understood that Barbara had not told her child of the
relationship between them; that was to be left for the moment when she
should greet her husband. The elder Barbara had passed through the
doorway, and was now inside the room; Lucas Savell was still staring in
a dazed fashion at his daughter.
"I--I don't understand," I heard him say.
The elder woman stepped forward into the room. "Lucas!--Lucas Savell!"
she said falteringly; and stood still.
I was totally unprepared for what happened; it was all over in a mere
matter of seconds. Savell swung round quickly, with a cry, and then took
a step towards the woman who stood just within the doorway of the room;
cried out her name in a terrible voice, and dropped to his knees--
"Barbara! Oh!--my God!--Barbara!"
She made a swift movement towards him; I saw him put up his hands, as
though he would beat her off; then he plunged forward on his face at her
feet. The girl was the first to reach him, and she raised him, and
called to him wildly. But he hung limply in her arms.
"Father!--you called me, father!"
He slowly raised his head; I saw his mouth open, the while he made a
frantic effort to speak; he even smiled, and seemed to try to raise
himself in the girl's arms. As the elder woman moved towards him, he
shrank away from her, with horror written in every line of his face, and
seemed to dread that she might touch him; when she did, in order to
assist the girl to raise him, it was curious to see the way in which he
looked at her, like a dumb stricken thing that did not understand. By
that time I was in the room, and my presence seemed to stir young
Millard at once to action.
"I'll go and get a doctor," he said. "He's had a stroke."
The elder woman and I contrived to get him upstairs to his room,
assisted by the woman who acted as servant in the house. And while we
moved him he strove always to keep his eyes fixed on the wife who had so
mysteriously come back to him from the grave; he watched her
incessantly. More than once he contrived to move a hand, to touch hers;
and again that puzzled expression would come over his face. Now and
then, too, his mouth would slowly open, in that effort to speak, and
then would close again.
The doctor came at last, and very gravely shook his head; muttered
something to the boy about old habits and Time's revenges; predicted
that the man might live for a long time, or might die at any moment.
"One thing is very certain," said the doctor, as he pulled on his
gloves--"he'll never speak again."
There was nothing that I could do there, and there was work waiting for
me in London. I felt that I must not then leave ragged ends; I must
settle firmly upon my shoulders the burden I had taken up. I whispered
to the elder Barbara that I was going; she came with me out of the
house, and only left me at the gate.
"This is the end for us, Charlie," she said; and yet she spoke quite
bravely. "My place is here, and I shall not leave him again. I come here
as the unknown woman--the friend of my own child; for he will never be
able to say who I am, and I shall never tell any one on my own account.
And you, my dear"--she wound her fingers about mine for a moment, and
looked at me with the old steadfast look--"what will you do--alone?"
"I don't know, Barbara," I said. "I shall go back, to meet whatever fate
is in store for me--and it does not really matter, after all. I have
been greatly blessed; I have seen the dear woman I love again, and I
hold her hands now; and I once looked upon a dreary world that held her
not, because she was supposed to be dead. And the child you love is near
you, and happiness beckons her with a sure hand. It might have been ever
so much worse, Barbara."
"If it should never happen that we meet again, Charlie, let it at least
be understood that I have forgotten and forgiven and understood all that
you have done," she said. "And now good-bye--good-bye--for the last
time!"
I did not dare to look back, although I knew that she stood there,
watching me as I went. It might have unnerved me had I seen her again;
and I had need of all my nerve for what was before me. I got to the
station, and once more took train for London. For I felt that, in the
first place, I must solve the mystery of the steamer tickets.
I blamed myself bitterly that I had not destroyed them, as I had first
intended. The thought that they had got into other hands, or had even
been dropped by me in that closed room in Lincoln's Inn Fields, haunted
me; I seemed to see them found, and inquiries made about them; and so a
gradual tracing back, to find a certain Mr. Murray Olivant who should
have sailed on the _Eaglet_. I had two causes for dread: the one, so far
as Jervis Fanshawe was concerned, because I knew that he believed I had
killed Olivant; the second, as regarded the boy, because I feared that
he would not hesitate to fling the blame upon me, if it happened that he
was driven into a tight corner. And, above all things, I wanted to know
what had happened behind the door of that room in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
or if any discovery had yet been made.
When I got to London I found myself in the position again of that poor
Charlie Avaline who had wandered about with the shadow of murder hanging
over him, watching for newspaper placards. I scanned each one I came
across, expecting every moment to see a flaring headline that should
seem to point directly to me; but I saw nothing.
I bought a morning paper, thinking that it might be possible for
something to be in that; but again I saw nothing. And then it struck me
that, even if the body had not been found yet, I might be running my
neck into the noose if I went back to those rooms, and was discovered
there. I remembered horribly enough that I had a key of the outer door,
and that the only other keys were doubtless in the pocket of the dead
man. And yet I must go back there--I must know what had happened, or if
anything had yet been discovered.
Exactly how many times I walked up and down the stones of Lincoln's Inn
Fields, and round about the neighbourhood, I should not like to say. For
I knew that behind the windows of one particular set of rooms that I
could see from the pavement on the opposite side there lay a dead man;
and already some one might have been hammering at the door of those
rooms--might even have beaten it in, and cried out what was there for
all men to see. Twice I actually walked to the door of the house, and
twice turned back, for no better reason than that a clerk or a whistling
office boy marched in at the door, and began to climb the stairs to some
office above. Once, as I stood there irresolutely, a policeman sauntered
along towards me; stopped for a moment to look in at the doorway of the
house, and then turned his back and stood there, staring at the cab rank
opposite, as though waiting. Sick and faint, I hurried away, and went
again on that round I had taken so many times already.
It was dark, and the lamps had long been lighted, and the last clerks
and office boys had dashed out of the various doorways, with letters for
post, or intent upon trains to be caught, when at last I summoned up
courage to creep in at that doorway, and to begin to climb the stairs.
Even then I looked back, again and again; paused as I got to each
landing, with the absolute certainty in my own mind that some one was
following me stealthily. Once, as I stopped like that, a door was flung
open within a yard of me, and a man, after staring at me for a moment,
slammed the door, and raced off down the stairs. Almost I think I
shrieked after him to stop, and to listen to what I had to say. But that
shriek was only, fortunately for me, in my own imagination.
I reached the door at last; it seemed that I had been travelling for
hours to get to it. I listened intently for a minute or two; then I
slipped my key into the lock, and opened the door. The little lobby in
which I stood after I had closed that outer door was in complete
darkness; for a second or two I know that I stood there afraid to open
the door of the inner room, and yet afraid to remain where I was.
I opened the door at last, and stepped in boldly. You may perhaps have
some faint idea of what my feelings were when I saw that the candle
standing on the table was alight, and the whole room flooded with the
glow from it!
I know that I stood for quite half a minute, staring at the thing
stupidly, and wondering what had happened, or if I were going mad. I had
found the outer door locked, and now, when I was in the room, a
death-like silence reigned; yet here was the candle alight. When at last
I mustered courage to take a step or two into the place, and to look
round the corner of the table, I think I fully expected to see the man
with the knife in him gone, and to know, in some horrible fashion, that
he was in that inner room, waiting for me. It took me a long time, even
after I had seen him lying there, with that stiff hand still gripping
the hilt of the knife, to realize that he was dead, and that he could
not possibly have lighted the candle. Even in the horror of that moment,
when it dawned upon me slowly and dreadfully that some one else was
hidden in those rooms, I know that I laughed softly at the absurdity of
the notion that the dead man could have lighted the candle.
There was no sound in the place--no movement of any kind. The chambers
were very small--just the lobby outside, and the little sitting-room,
and a bedroom beyond. The lobby was empty; the sitting-room contained
only the dead man and myself; whoever was there must be in the bedroom
beyond. I began to form conjectures as to who might be hidden
there--going over in my mind this one and that, who might by any
possibility be interested in this matter, or in me. Once, as I watched
the door of that inner room, there was a mad feeling in my mind that I
would blow out the candle, and make a bolt for it; for the door of the
bedroom was closed, and whoever was there could not have seen me.
Finally I did nothing at all, but just to stand very still, wondering
what I should do. In those few minutes I seemed to live a lifetime--to
touch the depths of hope and fear, and life and death, and even madness.
My horror was not decreased by seeing the door of the bedroom begin
slowly to open. It took a long time; because whoever was opening that
door half repented of their purpose more than once. For the door would
jerk an inch or two open, and then an inch or two back, and then would
close again entirely--and all this quite noiselessly. The thing was
getting on my nerves to that extent that I know I was on the verge of
screaming out, when I saw a hand grasp the lintel of the doorway--a thin
bony hand, that gripped the wood tenaciously. Then the door flew open
with startling suddenness, and a face--ghastly white, and with a
dropping jaw--was thrust out into the room--the face of Jervis Fanshawe.
Even while he stared at me, I found it suddenly necessary that I should
rearrange all my ideas. Jervis Fanshawe had not entered into my
considerations at all in regard to the murder. I had fixed inevitably
upon Arnold Millard--had followed in imagination his every action in the
matter; had reasoned out why he should do this or that to the point of
actual certainty. And here, in these rooms that I had left locked, was
Jervis Fanshawe, whom by no possibility could I believe had had anything
to do with the matter. I leaned upon the table, and stared at him; and
after a moment or two he came slowly out into the room.
He was so afraid of me, and so appalled at the fact of my coming there
at all, that he came slowly towards me, never taking his eyes from my
face, and looking at nothing else. It was only when, horribly enough, he
stumbled over the feet of the dead man, that he jumped back with a cry,
and seemed to recover himself. Then he looked at me again, and over his
face stole a smile.
"Why, Charlie--what's wrong?" he whispered; and the whisper seemed to
shatter the silences of the place, and to bring us both back in a moment
to the hard and stern realities of things.
"How did you get in here?" I demanded.
He did not answer in words; he stared down at the dead man for a moment
or two, and while he did so he fumbled in his pockets. Very slowly he
drew out something that jingled; still looking at the dead man, he
dropped on the table the three keys, tied together with a piece of black
tape. I recognized them in a moment as the keys that had been given me
when I first paid for the rooms.
He looked at me as though he did not understand the question; looked
again at the keys. Then he pointed to the dead man--and I understood. It
seemed then as though some extraordinary process went on in my mind, so
that old carefully constructed ideas were hurled out of it, and new ones
hastily formed. I gasped, and looked at Fanshawe, and looked at the
keys; then I cried out at him.--"My God!--you?"
He nodded slowly; it seemed as though he stood there, thinking about
something else, and only coming back slowly and with difficulty to the
situation he had to face. When at last he began to speak, it was at
first in a slow dull whisper, like a man talking to himself, and not
realizing that another is listening. It was only later, after the first
moment or two, that he began, as it were, to take me into his
confidence.
"She seemed to call to me to do it. You remember when she went past me
like a spirit in the dark garden--the night we knew the girl was in
peril; I first thought of it then. I put it aside for a time; I never
had any real courage for such a matter as this. Then I saw the spirit of
her again in London here--that Barbara we both had loved, and who died
years and years ago. And then I knew clearly enough what I had to do."
He stopped, and looked down at the dead man; it seemed almost as though
he went on talking to that ghastly thing that lay at his feet.
"I don't think I killed you out of any real hatred of you; it was only
because I was afraid for myself. I saw that you, if only with your lips
and your lying tongue, would harm this child, just as another man long
ago had harmed the Barbara who was dead; and I felt that you would have
to die for it, just as that other man had died. I did not kill you
because I was afraid of what you might do; I killed you to save my own
soul. Yes--that was it; to save my own soul."
He had been speaking very slowly, and quite without emotion; but now his
manner suddenly changed, and he turned to me, and gripped my arm, and
went on speaking eagerly, in a pathetic, wistful desire to make me
understand.
"Yes, Charlie--I saw in that the only way to atone. Look at me, Charlie:
an old man that has suffered, and behind whom lie so many years that are
broken and unhallowed, and worse than useless. I felt that
someday--quite soon--I might be called to meet my God; and that
there--radiant, as we knew her years ago, Charlie, in her young and
innocent beauty--there might rise up against me the woman we both loved.
She's dead, but she had nothing to fear from death. I knew that when _I_
died it would be different; there were accusing eyes that would spring
alive with old fires to stare at me--accusing hands that would point at
me out of the darkness into which I was going. And I prayed, or tried to
pray, that God would show me some way--some sacrifice to be offered up
in the old Bible fashion--that should atone. I pushed that thought away
from me more than once--the thought of killing him; but I could not get
rid of it. It was always with me--and that was why I tried to learn from
you, who had done the thing once, what it was like, and how best to set
about it. For I felt that if I could kill this man--if I could cry to
the uneasy spirit of the dead woman--'This have I done to make
atonement; this man have I killed, who would have harmed the child so
like yourself in the old years that are gone'--why, then I felt that all
would be well for me, and that I should not see always her accusing eyes
in the darkness, or in my dreams when I slept."
I stared at him for what seemed a long time; it was difficult at first
for my mind to grasp this thing, to realize what he had done. At last I
asked: "Why have you come back here?"
"I could not stay away," he whispered. "I wanted to know what had
happened--whether they had found him; I was even afraid that the blow
might not have been strong enough, and that he might have crept
out--bloody and horrible--to cry out what had been done, and to tell men
who had done it. It has taken me a long time to get back here; I've been
afraid."
"What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going away--far away," he said, looking at me cunningly. "I haven't
your courage, Charlie; I couldn't face what they might do to me if they
found out anything about it. When I was coming here first to kill him I
did not think of that; but now I can't bear even to try to understand in
my own mind what the rope would be like about my neck--and the cap
pulled over me--and the grey morning shut out--and then----No--no--I
can't bear to think of that. I shall escape."
"I think you possibly may escape unsuspected," I assured him gravely. "I
do not think there is any one likely to point a finger at you, and
suggest that you did it."
"You think not, Charlie?" His voice was eager, and something very like a
smile was on his face. "Do you think I might get away? I think so too;
I'm going to try. And when you come to think of it, Charlie," he went
on, with rising spirits--"it was bravely done--finely done. For I'm a
weak old man--see these thin hands and arms of mine--and he full of life
and vigour. Yet look at him now."
"Tell me how you did it," I said.
"It was after I had talked to you, Charlie--when I spoke about a knife,
you know--that I made up my mind how best it could be done. I bought the
knife--a long way from here, where no one would be likely to know
me--and I chose the very night of his coming here. It was a simple
matter, after all. I came up the stairs, and knocked at the door; after
a moment or two he opened it, cursed me for disturbing him, and went in,
with his back to me. The knife was in my breast pocket, and I had my
hand upon it; I could have done it then--easily. But I was afraid; I did
not know where to strike. Then, when he came into the room, and I was
there with him, he suddenly turned round, and asked me what I wanted.
And courage came back to me. I stepped up close to him, and I said
suddenly that this was what I wanted; and I drove it in with all my
force. He stood staring at me for quite a moment, with that thing
sticking in him--staring stupidly, as if he didn't understand what had
happened. And then he laughed (or so it seemed to me), and dropped, and
died. It was horrible."
"And then?"
"It suddenly occurred to me that I might need to come back here again; I
must have that power, at least. I did not dare go near him; but I found
that he had dropped the keys on the table, just where they are now. So I
took them--and I went away."
I picked up the keys, and looked at them; I was thinking deeply. For now
it seemed to me that I had to face a new problem: the problem of what
this man Jervis Fanshawe would do. That he would not give himself up for
the crime I was certain; but I wanted to understand whether he had
determined, in the event of discovery, to shift the blame on the boy
Arnold Millard, or on myself. I had suffered once for this man, twenty
years before--had been drawn on to murder, practically at his bidding; I
did not mean to play the scapegoat again. In the case of the boy it had
been different; while I had believed him guilty I had been willing
enough, out of that old romantic feeling, to take the burden on my own
shoulders. But not for Jervis Fanshawe.
"What are you going to do now?" I asked for the second time. "What plans
have you in your mind?"
He looked at me again, with that cunning expression on his face I had
seen before. "There is a vessel to sail, on which Murray Olivant took
passages for himself and for you," he said in a whisper. "What if I took
his place, Charlie--and you came with me?"
"Too late," I said--"even if you had the tickets."
Still keeping his eyes fixed upon my face, he dived into one of his
pockets, and brought out an envelope; opened it, and pulled out the
tickets. I started, and stared at him, and made a movement to take them
from him; but he closed the envelope quickly, and thrust it back into
his pocket.
"Ah!--you didn't know that, did you?" he said. "I stole them from you
while you slept; I saw my chance there. It only occurred to me, after I
had seen you show them to Dawkins, that I might slip away like that, and
never be heard of again; I might drop off at some foreign port, and be
lost."
"You're too late," I reminded him, with a laugh. "The _Eaglet_ sailed
this morning."
"You're wrong," he exclaimed, dragging the envelope out again. "Either
you made a mistake in the date, or the clerk did; the _Eaglet_ sails
to-morrow morning."
"Are you sure?" I asked in amazement.
For answer he carefully pulled the tickets out, and, keeping a grip on
them, let me read the date. Sure enough some one had blundered, for the
date was that of the following day.
"Now, Charlie," he whispered, laying an impressive hand on my arm--"the
way is clear. Come with me, Charlie--Tinman, the servant, travelling with
Murray Olivant. Murray Olivant is expected on board, and his passage is
taken; Tinman, his servant, goes with him. As for this thing that lies
here"--he jerked his head to indicate the dead man--"who is ever to say
that this is Murray Olivant. A chance, Charlie; but all the world is
made up of chances, isn't it? Come, Charlie--the road lies clear before
us."
"No," I said--"I have other work to do. If you can escape, do so by all
means; I will not leave England."
He got his hat from that inner room, and prepared to depart. I had put
the keys back on the table, and I saw him eyeing them; I took the key I
had from my pocket, and dropped it with the others. "It's a great game
of chance," I whispered to him, "and you may never be discovered, after
all. Come away--and leave him there; you are safe so far as I am
concerned."
He went to the door and opened it; at a sign from me he waited at that
outer door, to be certain that no one was about. Then I blew out the
candle, and crept out to join him; and for a moment we stood close
together, listening. Then he opened the door, and slipped out, and I
came after him. I pulled the door, and heard the lock click; and knew
that the ghastly thing inside was safely shut in, until some one should
break down the door, and find it.
We stood for a moment or two listening, and then crept down into the
quiet of Lincoln's Inn Fields. As our feet touched the pavement Jervis
Fanshawe stopped, and looked over his shoulder back into the dark house.
"Don't you hear anything, Charlie?" he whispered.
"Nothing," I replied. "What should we hear?"
"No door opening quietly?--no soft pad, pad of feet down the stairs?
Quick!--don't you hear it?"
"Come away," I said abruptly; for the horror of the thing was creeping
over me again.
Yet before we were out of the place he had turned--not once but many
times--to look over his shoulder, whispering to me more than once that
something was creeping along the other side--there--in the shadow of the
railings!--and didn't I see that hand against the breast, gripping
something?--and was I sure that the door had been closed?--and would it
not be better if we went back, and listened again outside it?
We were well on our way back to his lodging when he stopped, and gripped
me, and cried out suddenly that the candle had been left alight; he was
sure of it--sure that some one would see it shining through the chinks
of the door. But that I gripped him firmly he would have set off then
and there, perhaps to burst into the place in some mad fashion, to see
what had happened. But I got him back to his lodging, and saw him
presently stretched upon the bed, muttering and moaning to himself, and
starting up every now and then to ask me if there wasn't a footstep on
the stairs, or a hand knocking at the door.
But in the morning he was calmer, and I made him as respectable as
possible, and took him down presently to the docks. There we found the
_Eaglet_, in the midst of much bustle and excitement, getting ready to
start; and I sent him on board, and left him there. The last I saw of
him was when the vessel was moving away into the river, and I was
standing at the dock side, watching. And Jervis Fanshawe was leaning
over the side, with that nervous hand of his plucking at his lips, and
with his haunted eyes staring straight through me and behind me, as
though at the last he saw Murray Olivant, with the knife in his breast,
rushing to stop him.