It was a direct attack and for a minute I doubted if I had not made a
mistake in making it so suddenly and without gloves. His face purpled,
the veins on his forehead started out, his great form shook with an ire
that in such domineering natures as his can only find relief in a blow.
But the right hand did not rise nor the heavy fist fall. With admirable
self-restraint he faced me for a moment, without attempting either
protest or denial. Then his blazing eyes cooled down, and with a sudden
gesture which at once relaxed his extreme tension of nerve and muscle,
he pointed toward the end of the hall and remarked with studied
politeness:
"My office is below, as you know. Will you oblige me by following me
there?"
I feared him, for I saw that studiously as he sought to hide his
impressions, he too regarded the moment as one of critical
significance. But I assumed an air of perfect confidence, merely
observing as I left the neighborhood of the front door and the proximity
of Jupp:
"I have friends on the outside who are waiting for me; so you must not
keep me too long."
He was bending to take up the lamp from a small table near the basement
stair as I threw out these words in apparent carelessness, and the flash
which shot from under his shaggy brows was thus necessarily heightened
by the glare in which he stood. Yet with all allowances made I marked
him down in my own mind as dangerous, and was correspondingly surprised
when he turned on the top step of the narrow staircase I remembered so
vividly from the experience I have before named, and in the mildest of
accents remarked:
"These stairs are a trifle treacherous. Be careful to grasp the
hand-rail as you come down."
Was the game deeper than I thought? In all my remembrance of him I had
never before seen him look benevolent, and it alarmed me, coming as it
did after the accusation I had made. I felt tempted to make a stand and
demand that the interview be held then and there. For I knew his
subterranean office very well, and how difficult it would be to raise a
cry there which could be heard by any one outside. Still, with a
muttered, "Thank you," I proceeded to follow him down, only stopping
once in the descent to listen for some sound by which I could determine
in which room of the many I knew to be on this floor the little one lay,
on whose behalf I was incurring a possible bullet from the pistol I once
saw lurking amongst bottles and corks in one of the innumerable drawers
of the doctor's table. But all was still around and overhead; too still
for my peace of mind, in which dreadful visions began to rise of a
drugged or dying child, panting out its innocent breath in darkness and
solitude. Yet no. With those thousands to be had for the asking, any man
would be a fool to injure or even seriously to frighten a child upon
whose good condition they depended; much less a miser whose whole heart
was fixed on money.
The clock struck as I put foot on the landing; so much can happen in
twenty minutes when events crowd and the passions of men reach their
boiling-point! I expected to see the old man try that door, even to
double bolt it as in the years gone by. But he merely threw a look that
way and proceeded on down the three or four steps which led into the
species of basement where he had chosen to fix his office. In another
moment that dim and dismal room broke upon my view under the vague light
of the small and poorly-trimmed lamp he carried. I saw again its musty
walls covered with books, where there were shelves laden with bottles
and a loose array of miscellaneous objects I had often handled but out
of which I never could make any meaning. I recognized it all and
detected but few changes. But these were startling ones. The old lounge
standing under the two barred windows which I had often likened in my
own mind to those of a jail, had been recovered; and lying on the table,
which I had always regarded with a mixture of awe and apprehension, I
perceived something which I had never seen there before: a Bible, with
its edges worn and its leaves rumpled as if often and eagerly handled.
I was so struck by this last discovery that I stopped, staring, in the
doorway, looking from the sacred volume to his worn but vigorous figure
drawn up in the middle of the room, with the lamp still in his hand and
his small but brilliant eyes fixed upon mine with a certain ironical
glitter in them, which gave me my first distrust of the part I had come
there to play.
"We will waste no words," said he, setting down the lamp, and seizing
with his disengaged hand the long locks of his flowing beard. "In what
respect are you a messenger from Mrs. Ocumpaugh, and what makes you
think I have her child in this house?"