AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
Tearing up the steps, I almost fell into the arms of our guide of the
long, hideous night.
“Can I see it?” I cried.
“Steady, sir,” he said, staying and supporting me with a hand. “What’s
up now?”
“I want to see it--there was a letter--I----”
“All property found on the body is took possession of.”
“He saw it, I tell you.”
“Your friend, there? So he did--but he gave it over.”
“I’ll give it over. I don’t want to keep it, man. There was an address
on it--there must have been, I swear; and if you don’t let me know it,
there’ll be murder--do you understand?--murder!”
No doubt he did understand. In such matters a policeman’s mind is
intuitive.
“Come along, then,” he said; “I’ll see what can be done,” and, holding
me along the elbow in the professional manner, he led me through the
building to a sort of outhouse that stood in a gloomy yard to the
rear.
Pushing open a door, he bid me enter and wait while he went and
communicated with the inspector.
The room I found myself in was like nothing so much as a ghastly
species of scullery; built with a formal view to cleanliness and
ventilation. All down its middle ran a long zinc-covered table,
troughed slightly at the side and sloping gently like a fishmonger’s
slab. Its purpose was evident in the drenched form that lay on it
covered with a cloth.
And to this sordid pass had come she, the loving and playful, with
whom I had wandered a few short weeks ago among the green glades of
the old forest. Now more than the solemnity of death pronounced us
apart.
I shivered and drew back, and then was aware of a man washing his
hands at a sink that stood to one end of the room.
He turned his head as he washed and looked at me.
“Now, my man, what is it?” he said.
He was lean, formal-faced and spectacled--a doctor by every uninviting
sign of the profession.
I told him my business and referred shrinkingly to the thing lying
hidden there.
“There isn’t, I suppose, any--any hope whatever?”
“Oh, dear, no; not the least.”
He came toward me pruning and trimming his cold finger-nails.
“She has been in the water, I should say, quite eight hours, or
possibly nine.”
He pulled the cloth down slightly, with a speculative motion of his
hand, so as to expose the white, rigid face. I had no time to stop him
before its sightless eyes were looking up at me.
“Oh, Dolly! Dolly! Such a fearful little woman, and yet with the
courage to bring yourself to this!”
Suddenly, through the heart of my wild pity pierced a thought that had
already once before stirred unrecognized in me.
“Doctor,” I said, staring down on the poor lifeless face, “do the
drowned always look like that?”
“Certainly they do, more or less.”
“But how more? Is it possible, for instance, for a person to
half-drown and then seemingly recover; to be put to bed nearly himself
again, and yet be found dead in the morning?”
“How can I say? In such a case there must be gross carelessness or
quite unexpected complications.”
“But if I tell you I once heard of this happening--was witness,
indeed, of the fact?”
The doctor lifted his shoulder, adjusted his spectacles and shrugged
himself with an awkward posture of skepticism.
“How did he look?” he said.
“Dreadful--swollen, horribly distorted. His face was black--his hands
clenched. He seemed to have died in great pain.”
He gave a little scornful sniff.
“Do you want my opinion on that?” he cried. “Well--here it is: It was
a case for the police. No drowned man ever looked after that fashion.”
“Then you think he must have come to his death by other means, and
after he was put to bed?”
“I haven’t the least doubt about it whatsoever, if it was all as you
say.”
I gave a thin, sudden cry. I couldn’t help it--it was forced from me.
Then, of my own act, I pulled the cloth once more over the dead face.
It had spoken to me in such a manner as its love had never expressed
in life.
“You have vindicated me, my sweetheart of the old days,” I murmured.
“Good-by, Dolly, till I may witness your love that is undying in
another world.”
I think the doctor fancied that the trouble of the night had turned my
brain. What did it matter what he thought--what anybody thought now? I
stood acquitted at the bar of my own conscience. In my first knowledge
of that stupendous relief I could find no place for one other
sentiment but crazy gratitude.
As I stood, half-stunned in the shock of emotion, the officer I
awaited entered the room bearing in his hand a slip of paper.
“The letter’s detained,” he said, “but this here’s the address it’s
wrote from, and you’d better act upon it without delay.”
With a tremendous effort I swept together my scattered faculties and
took it from him.
It was not much information that the paper contained--an address only
from a certain “Nelson terrace” in Battersea--but such as it was I
held it in common with Duke, whose sole advantage was a brief start of
me.
Calling back my thanks to the friendly constable, I hurried into the
street and so off and away in wild pursuit.
Still as I ran a phantom voice went with me, crying: “You did not kill
him--your brother Modred.”
The rapture of it kept time to my hurrying footsteps; it flew over and
with me, like the albatross of hope, and brought the breeze of a
healthfuler promise on its wings; it spoke from the faces of people I
passed, as if they wished me to know as I swept by that I was no
longer in their eyes a man of blood.
“You did not kill him!” it sung in my brain--“you did not kill
him--you did not kill him”--then all in a moment, with a dying shock:
“Who did?”
I stopped, as if I had run against a wall. I swear, till then no
shadowy thought of this side of the question had darkened my heart in
passing.
Still, impelled to an awful haste, I beat the whole horror resolutely
to one side and rushed on my way. “Presently--presently,” I muttered,
“I will sit down and rest and think it over from beginning to end.”
By that time I was in a street of ugly cockney houses stretching
monotonously on either side. I was speeding down it, seeking its name,
and convinced from my inquiries that I could not be far from my
destination, when something standing crouched against a low front
garden wall, where it met the angle of a tall brick gate post, caught
the tail of my eye and stopped me with a jerk. It was Duke, and I had
run him down.
He spat a curse from his drawn, white lips, as I faced him, and bade
me begone as I valued my life.
“Duke,” I panted, watchful of him, “I do value it now--never mind why.
I value it far above his you have come to take. But he is my
brother--and you were once my friend.”
“No longer--I swear it,” he cried, blazing out on me dreadfully. “Will
you go while there’s time?”
Then he assumed a mockery more bitter than his rage.
“Harkee!” he whispered. “This isn’t the place. I came here to be out
of the way and rest. I’ll go home by and by.”
“Will you come with me now?”
“With you? Haven’t I had enough of you Trenders? I put it to you as a
reasonable man.”
As he spoke the wail of a young child came through the window of an
upper room of the house adjoining. At the sound he seized my wrists in
one of his hands with the grip of iron forceps.
“Listen there!” he muttered. “That’s his child, do you hear? He
perpetuates his wicked race without a scruple. Wouldn’t it be a good
thing now to cut down the poisonous weed root and branch?”
I stared at him in horror. Hardly till this moment had the fact of
Jason’s being married recurred to me since I first heard of it the
night before.
“His child?” I echoed.
“What’s the fool gaping at? Would his pretty deception be complete
without a wife and baby in the background to spur his fancy?”
The door of the adjoining house was opened and a light footfall came
down the steps. I saw a devil leap into Duke’s eyes, and on the
instant sprung at him.
He had me down directly, for his strength was fearful, but I clutched
him frantically as I fell, and he couldn’t shake me off.
Struggling--sobbing--warding my head as best I could from his
battering blows--I yet could find voice to cry from the
ground--“Jason, in God’s name, run! He’s going to murder you!”
Up and down on the pavement--bruised, bleeding, wrenched this way and
that, but never letting go my hold, I felt my strength, already
exhausted by the long toiling of the night, ebbing surely from me.
Then in the moment of its final collapse the dreadful incubus was
snatched from me, and I rose half-blinded to my feet to see Duke in
the grasp of a couple of stalwart navvies, who on their way to work
had come to my assistance.
Trapped and overcome, he made no further struggle, but submitted
quietly to his captors, his chest rising and falling convulsively.
“Don’t let him go!” I panted; “he means murder!”
“We’ve got him fast enough,” said one burly fellow. “Any bones broke,
master?”
“No,” said I; “I’m only a bit bruised.”
“Renny,” said the prisoner, in a low, broken voice, “have you ever
known me lie?”
“Never. What then?”
“Tell them to take their hands off and I’ll go.”
“That won’t do. You may come back.”
“Not till the inquest’s over. Is that a fair offer? I can do nothing
here now. I only ask one thing--that I may speak a word, standing at
the gate, to that skulking coward yonder. I swear I won’t touch him or
pass inside the gate.”
I turned to the two men.
“I’ll answer for him now,” I said. “He never says what he doesn’t
mean. You can let him go.”
They did so reluctantly, remonstrating a little and ready to pounce on
him at once did he show sign of breaking his parole.
He picked up his hat and walked straight to the gate. Jason, who had
been standing on the upmost step of the flight that led to the open
door, regarding the strange struggle beneath him with starting eyes,
moved a pace or two nearer shelter, with his head slewed backward in
a hangdog fashion.
“Mr. Trender,” said Duke, in a hideous, mocking voice, “Miss Dolly
Mellison sends her compliments and she drowned herself last night.”
I could see my brother stagger where he stood, and his face grow pale
as a sheet.
“I won’t discuss the matter further just now,” went on the cripple,
“as I am under promise to these gentlemen. After the inquest I may,
perhaps, have something to say to you.”
He swept him a grotesque, ironical bow, another to us, and walked off
down the street.
When he was out of sight, I turned to the men, thanked them warmly for
their assistance, recompensed them to the best of my ability and ran
up the steps to the house.
I found my brother inside, leaning white and shaky against the wall.
I shut the door and addressed myself to him roughly.
“Come,” I said. “There’s a necessity for action here. Where can we
talk together?”
“How did you find me?” he said, faintly. “It isn’t true, is
it?--no--not there”--for I was turning to the door of a back room that
seemed to promise privacy.
“Where, then?” I said, impatiently. “Hurry, man! This is no time for
dallying.”
He tried to pull himself together. For the moment he seemed utterly
unnerved.
“Jason,” cried a voice from the very room I had approached.
I dropped my stick with a crash on the floor.
“Who’s that?” I said, in a loud, wavering voice.
The handle turned. He came weakly from his corner to put himself
before me. It was too late, for the door had opened and a woman, with
a baby in her arms, was standing on the threshold.
And the woman was Zyp.