There was one person in the crowd surrounding the medicine-man’s wagon
who had none of that superstitious thrill which had scattered the
habitants into little awe-stricken groups, and then by twos and threes
to their homes; none of that fear which had reduced the quack-doctor to
such nervous collapse that he would not spend the night in the village.
Jo Portugais had recognised the voice--that of Charley Steele the lawyer
who had saved him from hanging years ago. It was little like the voice
of M’sieu’! There was that in it which frightened him. He waited until
he had seen the quackdoctor start for the next parish, then he went
slowly down the street. There were people still about, so he walked on
towards the river. When he returned, the street was empty. Keeping in
the shadow of the trees, he went to Charley’s house. There was a light
in a window. He went to the back door and tried it. It was not locked,
and, without knocking, he stepped inside the kitchen. Here was no light,
and he passed into the hallway and on to a little room opening from the
tailorshop. He knocked; then, not waiting for response, opened the door
and entered.
Charley was standing before a mirror, holding a pair of scissors. He
turned abruptly, and said forbiddingly: “I am at my toilet!”
Then, turning again to the mirror, with a shrug of the shoulders, he
raised the shears to his beard. Before he could use them, Jo’s hand was
on his arm.
“Stop that, M’sieu’!” he said huskily.
Charley had drunk nearly a whole bottle of cheap whiskey within an hour.
He was intoxicated, but, as had ever been the case with him, his brain
was working clearly, his hand was steady; he was in that wide dream
of clear-seeing and clear-knowing which, in old days, had given him
glimpses of the real life from which, in the egotism of the non-intime,
he had been shut out. Looking at Jo now, he was possessed by a composed
intoxication like that in which he had moved during that last night at
the Cote Dorion.
But now, with the baleful crust of egotism gone, with every nerve of
life exposed, with conscience struggling to its feet from the torpor of
thirty-odd vacant years, he was as two men in one, with different lives
and different souls, yet as inseparable in their misery as those poor
victims of Gallic tyranny, chained back to back and thrown into the
Seine.
Jo’s words, insistent and eager, suddenly roused in him some old memory,
which stayed his hand.
“Why should I stop?” he asked quietly, and smiling that smile which had
infuriated the river-drivers at the Cote Dorion.
“Are you going back, M’sieu?”
“Back where?” Charley’s eyes were fixed on Jo with a penetrating
intensity, heightened to a strange abstraction, as though he saw not Jo
alone, but something great distances beyond.
Jo did not answer this question directly. “Some one came to-day--he is
gone; some one may come to-morrow--and stay,” he said meaningly.
Charley went over to the fire and sat down on a bench, opening and
shutting the scissors mechanically. Jo was in the light, and Charley’s
eyes again studied him hard.
His memory was industriously feeling its way into the baffling distance.
“What if some one did come-and stay?” he urged quietly.
“You might be recognised without the beard.”
“What difference would it make?” Charley’s memory was creeping close to
the hidden door. It was feeling-feeling for the latch.
“You know best, M’sieu’.”
“But what do you know?” Charley’s face now had a strained look, and he
touched his lips with his tongue. “What John Brown knows, M’sieu’.”
There flashed across Charley’s mind the fatal newspaper he had read on
the day he awakened to memory again in the but on Vadrome Mountain. He
remembered that he had put it in the fire. But Jo might have read it
before it was spread upon the bench-put it there of purpose for him to
read. Yet what reason could Jo have for being silent, for hiding his
secret?
There was silence for a space, in which Charley’s eyes were like
unmoving sparks of steel. He did not see Jo’s face--it was in a mist--he
was searching, searching, searching. All at once he felt the latch of
the hidden door under his finger; he saw a court-room, a judge and jury,
and hundreds of excited faces, himself standing in the midst. He saw
twelve men file slowly into the room and take their seats-all save one,
who stood still in his place and said: “Not guilty, your Honour!” He
saw the prisoner leave the box and step down a free man. He saw himself
coming out into the staring summer day. He watched the prisoner come to
him and touch his arm, and say: “Thank you, M’sieu’. You have saved my
life.” He saw himself turn to this man:
He roused from his trance, he staggered to his feet, the shears rattled
to the floor. Lurching forward, he caught Jo Portugais by the throat,
and said, as he had said outside the court-room years ago:
“Get out of my sight. You’re as guilty as hell!”
His grip tightened--tightened on Jo’s throat. Jo did not move, though
his face grew black. Then, suddenly, the hands relaxed, a bluish
paleness swept over the face, and Charley fell sidewise to the floor
before Jo could catch him.
All night, alone, the murderer struggled with death over the body of the
lawyer who had saved his life.