A LIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF DR. PYE.
"Worry enough, in all conscience," said Dick, "and you've got a level
head, too, if any member of the force has. You're the last man I
should have expected to be scared by shadows."
"Not what you might call scared," replied Constable Applebee,
unwilling to admit as much to a layman; "put out, sir, put out--that's
the right word. A man may be put out in so many ways. His wife may put
him out--and she often does--an underdone chop may put him out--a
fractious child may put him out--likewise buttons. It's what we're
born to."
"Well, say put out," said Dick with a hearty laugh. "And by shadows,
too, of all things in the world! Still, one might be excused on such a
night as this. The mist floats, shadows rise, and there you are. All
sorts of fancies crept into my head as I walked along, and if I'd been
employed on duty as monotonous as yours I have no doubt I should have
heard sounds and seen shapes that have no existence."
"You talk like a book, sir."
"What was the nature of the flesh and blood that slipped through your
fingers like a ghost, Applebee?"
"Human nature, sir. I'll take my oath it was a woman. I had her by the
arm, and presto! she was gone!"
"A woman," said Dick, thinking of Mrs. Death. "Did she have a child
with her, a poor little mite with a churchyard cough?"
"I don't call to mind a child. It was in Catchpole Square it happened.
I shall report it."
"Of course you will," said Dick, convinced that it was Mrs. Death, but
wondering why she should have been so anxious to escape. "Talking of
Catchpole Square, have you seen anything this last day or two of Mr.
Samuel Boyd?"
"Haven't set eyes on him for a week past. To make sure, now--is it a
week? No, it was Friday night that I saw him last. I can fix the time
because a carriage pulled up at Deadman's Court, and a lady got out.
She went through the court, followed by the footman."
"Did she stop long, do you know?"
"Couldn't have stopped very long. I hung about a bit, and when I come
round again the carriage was driving away. All sorts of people deal
with Samuel Boyd, poor and rich, high and low. That house of his could
tell tales."
"So could most houses, Applebee."
"True enough, sir. There's no city in the world so full of mystery as
London. We're a strange lot, sir. I read in a book once that every
house contains a skeleton. The human mind, sir," said Constable
Applebee, philosophically, "the human mind is a box, and no one but
the man who owns that mind knows what is shut up in it."
It was a pregnant opening for discussion, but Dick did not pursue it.
He returned to the subject that was engrossing his thoughts.
"Samuel Boyd kept a clerk,----"
"And I pity the poor devil," interjected the constable.
"So do I. The name of his last clerk is Abel Death. You've noticed
him, I dare say."
"Oh, yes, I've noticed him. A weedy sort of chap--looks as it he had
all the cares of the world on his shoulders. I didn't know his name,
though. Abel Death! If it was mine, I'd change it."
"Have you seen him lately?"
"Let me think, now. It was Friday night when I saw him last. I noticed
him particularly, because he staggered a bit, walked zig-zag like, as
if he'd had a glass too much. That was what I thought at first, but I
altered my opinion when I caught sight of his face. It wasn't so much
like a man who'd been drinking, but like one who was fairly demented.
Any special reason for asking about him, sir?"
"No special reason," replied Dick, not feeling himself justified in
revealing what had passed in the police station, "You would call Mr.
Death a respectable person, I suppose?"
"When there's nothing against a man," said Constable Applebee, "you're
bound in common fairness to call him respectable. From the little I
know of him I should say, poor, _but_ respectable. If we come to that,
there's plenty of poor devils in the same boat."
"Too many, Applebee. I can't help thinking of that woman you caught by
the arm. It was a curious little adventure."
"It was, sir, and I don't know that I was ever more nonplussed.
There's nothing curious in her being in Catchpole Square. She might
have slipped in there to sleep the night out, not having money enough
to pay for a bed. Pond and me happened to meet on the boundary of our
beats, and we strolled into the Square. I could have swore that she
was creeping along the wall; perhaps she was scared at the sight of
us, and had a reason for not wanting to fall in the hands of the law."
"That will hardly hold water," said Dick. "She could have had no
clearer a sight of you than you had of her. There have been too many
bad deeds committed in dark places in the dead of the night, and
seeing something moving that she couldn't account for, she was
frightened and ran away. Did you call out to her?"
"I did. 'Now, then,' I cried, 'what are you up to?' Not a word did she
answer. Then I caught hold of her; then she vanished. Which goes to
prove," said Constable Applebee, contemplatively, "that she wasn't one
of the regular ones. If she'd been a regular one she'd have cheeked
us. Not being a regular one, what business did she have there? Anyway
Catchpole Square ain't exactly the place _I_ would choose for a
night's lodging."
"Beggars can't be choosers," remarked Dick.
"Right you are, sir. They can't."
The conversation slackened, and the men walked slowly along Shore
Street, the constable, like a zealous officer, trying the doors and
looking up at the windows.
"The people inside," he said, "are better off than we are. They're
snugly tucked up between the sheets, dreaming of pleasanter things
than tramping a thick fog."
"There's somebody there," said Dick, pointing to a first floor
window, where, through the mist, a light could be dimly seen,
"who isn't between the sheets. See how the light shifts, like a
will-o'-the-wisp."
"That's Dr. Pye's house, where the midnight oil is always burning.
Yes, he's awake, the doctor; it's my belief he never sleeps. A clever
gentleman, Dr. Pye, as chockful of science as an egg is of meat. Do
you happen to be acquainted with him, sir?"
"No."
"A strange character, sir. The things they tell of him is beyond
belief. I've heard say that he's discovered the secret of prolonging
life, and of making an old man young."
"But you haven't heard that he has ever done it."
"No, or I might have asked him what his charge was for taking ten or
twenty years off. Perhaps it's as well, though, to fight shy of that
sort of thing. What they say of Dr. Pye may be true, or it mayn't, but
you may make sure that he's always at his experiments. Pass his house
at any hour of the night you like, and you may depend upon seeing that
light burning in his window."
"Those are the men who make the wonderful discoveries we hear of from
time to time. Think of what the world was and what it is. How did
people do without reading? How did people do without gas? How did they
do without steam? How did they do without electricity? That little
light burning in Dr. Pye's window may mean greater wonders than ever
was found in Aladdin's cave. As Shakespeare says, Applebee, 'What a
piece of work is man!'"
"Ah," observed Constable Applebee, with a profound shake of his head,
"he might well say that, sir."
"Putting a supposititious case," said Dick, and as Constable Applebee
remarked to his wife next day when he gave her an account of this
conversation, "the way he went on and the words he used fairly
flabbergasted me"--"Putting a supposititious case, let us suppose that
you and I fell asleep as we are standing here, and woke up in fifty
years, what astounding things we should see!"
"It won't bear thinking of, sir."
"Then we won't think of it. Applebee, I am surprised that you have not
asked me why I am wandering through the streets on such a night and at
such an hour, when _I_ ought to be snug in bed, dreaming of--angels."
"Who am I, sir, that I should be putting a parcel of questions to
you?"
"You exhibit a delicacy for which you deserve great credit. I will
make a clean breast of it, Applebee. The fact is, I am looking for a
lodging."
"You always _was_ a bit of a wag, sir," said Constable Applebee, with
twinkling eyes.
"Was I? But I assure you I am not wagging now. Do you know of a room
to let in a decent house in the neighbourhood, where they would give
their young man lodger a latchkey?"
"Now, _are_ you serious, sir?"
"As a judge."
"Well, then, there's Constable Pond, sir. He's taken a house in
Paradise Row, and there's a room to let in it; he mentioned it to me
only to-night. If you're really in earnest he'd jump at you."
"From which metaphor," said Dick, with mock seriousness, "I judge that
he would consider me an eminently fit person to be entrusted with a
latchkey."
"That's the ticket, sir," said Constable Applebee, bursting with
laughter. "Upon _my_ word, you're the merriest gentleman I've ever
known. It's as good as a play, it is."
"Better than many I've seen, I hope," said Dick, still with his mock
serious air, which confirmed Constable Applebee in his belief that the
young fellow was having a joke with him. "Am I mistaken in supposing
that there is a Mrs. Pond?"
"To be sure there is, and as nice a woman as ever breathed. No family
at present, but my missis tells me"--here he dropped his voice, as
though he were communicating a secret of a sacred nature--"that Mrs.
Pond has expectations."
"May they be realised in a happy hour! I'll pay a visit to the Ponds
to-morrow, and if the room is not snapped up in the meantime by
another person you will hear of me as their young man lodger. Good
night, Applebee."
"Good night, sir."
Constable Applebee looked after him till he was swallowed up in the
prevailing gloom, and then resumed his duties.
"What a chap that is!" he ruminated. "You can't mention a subject he
ain't up in. That notion of his of falling asleep and waking up in
fifty years ain't half a bad one. He does put ideas into a man's head.
It's an education to talk to him."
Dick did not hesitate as to his route. Turning the corner of Shore
Street he walked to Deadman's Court, and through it into Catchpole
Square, where he paused before the house of Samuel Boyd.
"No midnight oil burning there," he mused, his eyes searching the
windows for some sign of life. "The place is as still as death itself.
I'll try Mrs. Death's dodge. If Mr. Boyd comes down I'll ask him if he
has a room to let."
He smiled at the notion, and applied himself to the knocker. But
though he knocked, and knocked vigorously again and again, and threw
stones at the upper panes of glass, and listened at the door, he heard
no movement within the house.
"There's a mystery inside these walls," said Dick, "and I'll pluck out
its heart, or know the reason why. But how to obtain an entrance? The
adjoining houses are empty. Is there a door loose in one of them?"
There was no door loose; even if there had been, Dick, upon
reflection, did not see how it would have been of assistance to him.
There was a dead wall at the back of the house.
"That way, perhaps," said Dick.
He left the Square, and groped in the direction of the dead wall. It
was about ten feet in height--a smooth expanse of cement, with not a
foothold in it by which he could mount to the top. A rope with a
grapnel at the end would meet the case, and Dick determined to procure
one, and pay another visit to the place the following night.
He lingered in the neighbourhood, sitting down on a doorstep now and
again, and closing his eyes for a few minutes' doze. During these
intervals of insensibility the strangest fancies presented themselves.
He was with Mrs. Death and Gracie in the police station, listening to
the story she had told, which now was exaggerated and distorted in a
thousand different ways. "My husband, my husband!" she moaned "What
shall I do without him? What will the children do without him?" The
police station was instantly crowded with a great number of ragged
little elfs, who, with misery in their faces, wailed, "What shall we
do without him? What shall we do without him?" And then, in the midst
of a sudden silence, Gracie's hoarse voice, saying, "You _will_ find
father, won't you?" An appeal immediately taken up by the horde of
children, "You _will_ find father, won't you? You _will_ find father!
You _will_ find father!" The vision faded, and he saw Abel Death
staggering through a deserted street in which only one sickly yellow
light was burning. He was talking to himself, and his face was
convulsed with passion. Behind him slunk the figure of Samuel
Boyd--and behind him, Mr. Reginald and Florence. Good God! What
brought _them_ into the tragic mystery? What possible or impossible
part had _they_ played in it? The torture of the dreamer's mind was
momentarily arrested by the ringing out of one dread word, clear and
shrill as from the mouth of a clarion!
"MURDER!"
Dick started to his feet, his forehead bathed in perspiration. Had the
word really been uttered, and by whom? He stood in the midst of
silence and darkness.