"I will not excite her; I am her greatest friend, and I know that she has been longing to see me," I pleaded.
"But she has a visitor with her now," the young doctor urged. "That visitor is her guardian."
I was now more than ever determined that I would see Debora; I pleaded again that one extra visitor, under the circumstances, could surely make no difference. "Besides," I added, "I know Dr. Just very well."
So at last I had my way, and I followed the young doctor through the quiet place until I came to the little private room where Debora lay – a room formed by raising walls nearly to the ceiling in a great ward, leaving a corridor down the centre. I went in, with my heart beating heavily; and the first person I faced was Dr. Just.
I never saw a man so astonished in all my life; I was afraid he was going to lose his presence of mind, and have me bundled out then and there, after making something of a scene. But I will do him the justice to say that his conduct was admirable; he accepted the inevitable, and bowed slightly in my direction as the doctor left me inside the little room and closed the door.
Then, for the first time, I saw Debora, lying white-faced among her pillows. I noted with gratitude how her eyes lighted up as she turned slightly in my direction, and held out a white hand towards me. I could not help it; I fell on my knees beside the bed, and put the hand to my lips as the tears sprang to my eyes.
"Thank God!" I said, "thank God!"
"So you don't heed warnings," said the doctor, in a sarcastic tone. "It is only for the sake of this dear girl that I have not had you turned out of the place; I can't understand how in the world you found out where she was."
I took no notice of him. I turned to the girl, and, still holding her hands, began to speak earnestly.
"Debora," I said, "my sweet Debora, I want you to listen to me, and not to this man. I have found you, and I do not mean to lose sight of you again. You will soon be well and strong, and then you will go away from this place – with me."
"Yes, with you," she answered, with her eyes turned to mine, and her hands gripping mine convulsively. "With you!"
I knew that the time was short, and that at any moment the young doctor or a nurse might appear, and might cut short our interview. I saw, too, that Debora was getting excited, and I judged that Bardolph Just might take it upon himself to act the part of doctor as well as guardian, and have me turned away. Therefore I said what I had to say quickly.
"You will wait for me here, Debora; you will not let anyone take you away without letting me know. See, I am writing my address here, and that I will give to the doctor I saw just now – he can send for me if necessary. You are not to go away with anyone else."
"I promise," she said, weakly.
"And now listen to me," broke in the harsh voice of Bardolph Just. "This is a crisis in the lives of the three of us, and I am not to be set aside. When the time comes that you can be removed, Debora, you are going away with me!"
"I am not! I am not!" she cried, still clinging to my hand.
"You are going away with me, or else your friend there goes back to his prison. Choose!" He stood looking at her, and I saw as well as she did that now his mind was made up.
"You wouldn't do that?" she said breathlessly.
"I would," he said. "You go away with me, or I follow this man when he leaves this place, and I give him in charge to the first constable I meet, as the escaped convict, Norton Hyde. And I follow that charge up until I see him back within his prison walls, with something more than nine years of servitude before him. If you want him to keep his liberty, send him away now."
She began to weep despairingly, while I, on the horns of this new dilemma, did my best to comfort her. And suddenly, with all her heart set on my welfare, she announced her decision.
"I promise that I will go with you," she said to Bardolph Just in a whisper.
"No – no! you must not promise that!" I urged, springing to my feet, and facing the other man. "You shall not!"
"I must, I must, for your sake!" she answered. "My dear, it will all come right in time, if you will be patient. We shall meet when all this is over and done with. Good-bye!"
I would have said more then, but at that moment the door opened, and the young doctor came in. One glance at the girl was sufficient; with an impatient gesture he ordered Bardolph Just and myself to go, and hastily summoned the nurse. So we marched out, side by side, without a word until we reached the street.
"Understand me," said Bardolph Just quietly, "I shall keep my word."
"And I shall keep mine," I retorted, as I turned on my heel and left him.
Brave words, as you will doubtless think; yet even as I said them I realised how helpless I was. Debora, for my sake, would go back to that horrible house, there to live, perhaps, in safety for a time, until the doctor could devise some cunning death for her. And I supposed that in due course I should hear of that; and should know the truth, and yet should be able to say nothing. Almost I was resolved to risk my own neck in saving her; almost I determined to put that old threat into execution, and kill the man. But I had no stomach for murder when I came to think of the matter: I could only beat my brains in a foolish attempt to find some way out of the tangle.
Thus nearly a week went by – a miserable week, during which I haunted the neighbourhood of the hospital and wandered the streets aimlessly, turning over scheme after scheme, only to reject each one as useless. Then, at last, one day I went to the hospital, and enquired for Miss Debora Matchwick, and asked if I might see her.
I was told that she was gone. Her guardian had called on the previous day with a carriage, and had taken her home; he had made a generous donation to the funds of the hospital, in recognition of his gratitude for the kindness the young lady had received. So I understood that he had succeeded, and that I had failed.
The man had succeeded, too, in putting the strongest possible barrier between the girl and myself, in invoking that bogey of my safety. I knew that he could hold her more strongly with that than with anything else; I felt that she would refuse, for my sake, to have anything to do with me. Nevertheless, I came to the conclusion that I must make one last desperate effort to see her, or to see Bardolph Just. In a sense, I was safe, because I knew I was always a standing menace to the man, and that he feared me.
I went straight from the hospital to the house at Highgate. I had no definite plan in my mind; I determined to act just as circumstances should suggest. I rang the bell boldly, and a servant whom I knew appeared at the door. He was in the very act of slamming it again in my face, when I thrust my way in and closed the door behind me.
"Don't try that game again," I said sternly, "or you'll repent it. Where's your master?"
"I have my orders, sir," he began, "and I dare not – "
"I'll see you don't get into trouble," I broke in. "I want to see Dr. Just."
"But he's not here, sir," said the man, and I saw that he was speaking the truth. "Dr. Just and the young lady have gone away, sir."
"Do you know where they've gone?" I asked; but the man only shook his head.
I stood there debating what to do, and wondering if by chance the doctor might have carried out his original intention of going abroad. Then a door opened at the end of the hall, and Martha Leach came out and advanced towards me. She stopped on seeing who the intruder was; then with a gesture dismissed the servant, and silently motioned to me to follow her into another room. It was the dining-room, and when I had gone in she shut the door, and stood waiting for me to speak. I noticed that she seemed thinner than of old, and that there were streaks of grey in her black hair. She stood twisting her white fingers over and over while she watched me.
"I came to see the doctor," I said abruptly. "Where is he?"
"Why do you want to know?" she demanded. "You've been turned out of this place; you ought not to have been admitted now."
"I do not forget the assistance you rendered in turning me out," I said. "Nevertheless I am here now, and I want an answer to my question. I want to find the girl Debora Matchwick."
She stood for a long time, as it seemed to me, in a rigid attitude, with her fingers twining and twisting, and with her eyes bent to the floor. Then suddenly she looked up, and her manner was changed and eager.
"I wonder if you would help me?" was her astonishing remark.
"Try me," I said quietly.
"I suppose you love this slip of a girl – in a fashion
you
call love," she flashed out at me. "I can't understand it myself – but then, my nature's a different one. You would no more understand what rages here within me" – she smote herself ruthlessly on the breast with both hands – "than I can understand how any man can be attracted by a bread-and-butter child like that. But, perhaps, you can grasp a little what I suffer when I know that that man and that girl are together – miles away from here – and that I am here, tied here by his orders."
"I think I can understand," I said quietly, determined in my own mind to play upon that mad jealousy for my own ends. "And I am sorry for you."
"I don't want your sorrow, and I don't want your pity!" she exclaimed, fiercely brushing away tears that had gathered in her eyes. "Only I shall go mad if this goes on much longer; I can't bear it. He insulted me to my face before her on the day they left for Green Barn together – yesterday that was."
"And yet you love him – you would get this girl out of his hands if you could?"
"I would kill her if I could," she snarled. "I would tear her limb from limb; I would mark her prettiness in such a fashion that no man would look at her again. That's what I'd do."
"You want me to help you," I reminded her.
"Why don't you have some pluck?" she demanded fiercely. "Why don't you tear her out of his hands, and take her away?"
"There are reasons why I cannot act as I would," I said. "But I'll do this; I'll go down to Green Barn, and I'll try to persuade her to go away with me. You've fought against that all the time, or I might have succeeded before."
"I know – I know!" she said. "I hoped to please him by doing that; I hoped that some day he might get tired of her, and might look at me again as he looked at me in the old days. But now I'm hopeless; I can do nothing while she is with him. I'm sorry – sorry I fought against you," she added, in a lower tone.
"I'll do my best to help you – and the girl," I said. "It may happen that you may get your wish sooner than you anticipated; I believe that Bardolph Just means to kill her."
"If he doesn't, I shall!" she snapped at me as I left the house.
So far I had done no good, save in discovering where Bardolph Just and Debora had gone. It was a relief to me to know that they had not gone abroad; for then I should have been helpless indeed. I determined that I would go at once down into Essex; it would be some satisfaction at least to be near her.
I was walking rapidly away from the house when I heard someone following me; I turned suspiciously, and saw that it was the man Capper. He came up to me with that foolish smile hovering over his face, and spoke in that strange, querulous whisper I had heard so often.
"Forgive an old man speaking to you, sir," he said – "an old man all alone in the world, and with no friends. I saw you come from Dr. Just's house – good, kind Dr. Just!"
I felt my suspicions of him beginning to rise in my mind again, despite the fact that the face he turned to me was that of a simpleton. I recalled Debora's words to me when she had wondered if this man would ever speak.
"What do you want?" I asked him, not ungently.
"I want to find Dr. Just – good, kind Dr. Just," he whispered. "I have followed him a long time, but have been so unfortunate as to miss him. I missed him in a crowd in a street; now I find that he is not at his house."
"You are very devoted to Dr. Just," I observed. "What do you hope to gain by it?"
"To gain?" He stared at me with that curious smile on his face. "What should I gain?"
"I don't know," I answered him, "but it seems to me that you may some day gain what you want."
"God grant I may!" The answer was given in an entirely different voice, and I looked at him in a startled way as I realised at last the truth that for some time at least he had been shamming. I dropped my hand on his shoulder, and spoke sternly enough.
"Come now, let this pretence be ended," I said. "You're as sane as I am – you have all your wits about you. Your brain is clear; you remember everything."
We were in a quiet lane near the house, and there was no one in sight. He clasped his hands, and raised his face – a changed face, stern-set, grim and relentless – to the sky. "Dear God!" he exclaimed passionately, "I do remember! I do remember!"
"What?" I asked.
He looked at me for a moment intently, as if debating within himself whether to trust me; then at last he laid a hand tremulously on my arm, and stared up into my face.
"I have shammed, sir," he said. "I have lied; I have plotted. I shall not fail now; I have come out of the darkness into the light. I have come to life!"
His excitement, now that he had once let himself go, was tremendous; he seemed a bigger and a stronger man than I had imagined. He stood there, shaking his clenched fists above his head, and crying out that he was alive, and almost weeping with excitement.
"What are you going to do?" I asked him, breathlessly.
"I am going to kill Bardolph Just, as he killed my young master, Mr. Gregory Pennington! I have tried twice; the third time I shall succeed!" he replied.
CHAPTER XV.
I BID THE DOCTOR FAREWELL
I did my best to calm the man Capper. I feared that in his excitement he might betray his purpose to someone else, and someone not so well disposed towards him. I soothed him as well as I could, and presently got him by the arm and walked him away. For a long way we went in silence, until at last, having climbed to Hampstead Heath, I led him into a by-path there, and presently sat beside him on a seat, prepared to listen to his story. He was calmer by this time; the only evidence of the passions, so long suppressed and now working in him, was shown when, every now and then, he ground his right fist into the palm of his other hand, as though in that action he ground the face of his enemy.
"I want you to tell me, if you will, sir," he said at last, "where the man has gone. I was a fool when I lost him; I have not done my work well."
"I will tell you presently, when I have heard your story," I said. "You have made a threat of murder. I don't think it would be quite wise on my part to let you loose on anyone in your present frame of mind."
"Then hear me, and judge for yourself, sir," he answered solemnly.
"What I know is this," I said. "I know that Mr. Gregory Pennington went to the doctor's house on one particular night, and that he hanged himself in a room there. I, who found him hanging, found you in the room, apparently dazed."
"I have to think back a long way," said Capper, leaning forward on the seat, and resting his elbows on his knees, and his head in his hands. "It's all so much like a dream, and yet all so clear. Let me try to tell you, sir, what happened that night."
He sat for a long time in that attitude, as though striving to piece together all his recollections of that time; as though even yet he feared that his memory might play him false.
"I don't need to say anything about myself, sir, except just this: that Mr. Pennington picked me out of the gutter, and made a man of me. If ever one man worshipped another on this earth, I worshipped him; I would have died for him. He made me his servant, and yet his friend. He knew that I had been something better in the days before he found me; he made me something better again. He was quite alone in the world, and his income was administered by a trustee, a lawyer. That's all you need know about it. We wandered about all over the world. He thought nothing of starting off for the other side of the world, taking me with him always, at a moment's notice – which, perhaps, accounts for the fact that no one has made any enquiries about him.'"
I did not answer that; perhaps the time was coming when I should have to tell him the sequel to what he was now telling me.
"Then he met the young lady – Miss Debora Matchwick – and he used often to go and see her. One night he came home raging, and told me that Dr. Just had turned him out of the house, and had told him he was not to go there again. He was very much in love with the young lady, and the affair upset him a lot. But he told me that he had made up his mind to go there as often as he thought fit; he meant to defy the doctor."
He paused so long again that I was almost minded to speak to him; he seemed to be brooding. All at once he sat upright, and folded his arms, and went on again. His voice had taken on a new sternness.
"I took to going with him – or rather following him without his knowledge," he said slowly. "I didn't like the look of the doctor; I knew that he meant mischief. Night after night, when Mr. Pennington went to the house, I hid myself in the grounds, and waited and watched; then I followed him home again. You see, sir, he was everything to me, all I had in the world; it drove me mad almost to think that anything might happen to him. So the time went on, until at last that night arrived when, as it seemed, I fell asleep and forgot everything. But I remember that night now perfectly."
In his rising excitement he got up, and began to pace about, stopping every now and then to clap his hands together softly, and to nod his head as some point in the story recurred to his memory. At last he came back to me, and sat down, and faced me.
"He had told me before he went out that he intended to see the doctor that night. 'I'll have a turn-up with him,' he said to me, and laughed. I dreaded that; I made up my mind that I would be very near to him, indeed, that night. It was difficult, because if once he had discovered that I was following him, and watching him like that, he might have been angry, and might have ordered me to remain at home. So, you see, I had to be discreet. I went ahead of him on that occasion, and I concealed myself in the grounds quite near to the house. There I waited, and waited so long that I came almost to think that he had changed his mind, and would not come at all."
"Did you see no one else in the grounds?" I asked, thinking of my own unceremonious coming on that wonderful night.
He stared at me, and shook his head. "No one," he said. "Presently Mr. Pennington arrived, and the young lady crept out of the house to meet him; I saw them talking together for a long time. Then I saw Mr. Pennington go towards the house, and enter it."
I remembered how I had lain in the grass that night, and had seen the same scene he now described, although from a different point of view. I knew that Capper must have been between them and the house, whilst I, for my part, had been on the other side of them, so that they were between me and this man.
"Now, I will tell you, as well as I can recollect, exactly what happened," he said, speaking slowly, and ticking off his points one by one on his fingers. "I was so nervous that night – nervous for him, I mean – that I thought, sir, I would go into the house, so as to see that all was well with him. Everything was very silent, except that I could hear the murmur of voices – of men talking. You will understand, sir, that I did not know what the house was like, nor my way about it; but I found a door unfastened at the back, and I went in. I went towards where the voices were sounding, and I recognised Mr. Pennington's voice, and then the doctor's. Both the voices were loud and angry; I guessed that they were quarrelling."
"And what did you do then?" I asked him quickly.
"God help me!" he cried, wringing his hands. "I could not find the room. The place was in darkness, and I was afraid to make a noise, lest I should disturb some of the servants, and perhaps be turned out. I groped my way about among the passages, opening first one door and then another, and hearing the voices now near to me, and now further away; it was as though I had been in a maze. And then the voices ceased suddenly, and I heard the sound of a blow."
"What sort of blow?" I asked him breathlessly.
"It was like the sound of a weapon striking a man's head. It was followed by a sort of quick cry; and then there was silence. In my agitation I must have turned away from the spot; and I had now nothing to guide me, as the voices had guided me before. I could only stand there, waiting, and hoping to hear something. It was all so horrible, and I so helpless, that I wonder I did not go mad then. I was near to it when presently I heard a sound as though someone were dragging a heavy body across a room. I began again to move in the direction of that sound, and presently came to a door, and after listening to another sound I did not understand, opened it, and went in. I must be quick now to tell you what I saw, for it is at this point that the darkness falls upon me, and I seem to sink down and down into the depths that swallowed me up for so long a time."
I was really afraid that he might, indeed, forget before he could tell me; I watched him eagerly. After but a little pause he went on again, and now the horror was growing in his face, and stamping it, so that I could not take my eyes from him.
"As I opened the door of the room the doctor had his back to me, and he was hauling on something. I did not understand at first, until I saw that he was pulling on a rope that ran over a hook in the ceiling. That which he pulled was hidden from me by himself; I could not see what it was. It all happened in a second, because as I opened the door he swung away from me, still clinging to the rope – and then, dear God! – I saw what it was. Only for a flash did I see up there before me the dead face of my master – the master I loved, and for whom I would have given my life; then, as I put up my hand to hide the sight, everything went from me; and I seemed to fall, as I have said, into some great blackness, with all my life blotted out! That," he said, with a little, quick, helpless gesture of the hands – "that is all."
I felt my blood run cold at the horror of his tale; the whole scene seemed to be enacted before me, as though I had myself been present. "And did you really forget everything until a little time ago?" I asked.
"Everything, sir," he assured me solemnly. "I was like one groping in the dark. People I had known I knew again – as with Miss Debora; but I could not remember anything else. I had a vague idea that I had lost my master somewhere about that house; that made me cling to it. The rest was a blank. And then one day, when I saw the doctor raise his stick to strike a man down, it was as though something had been passed across my brain, and I remembered. If I can make myself clear, sir," went on Capper eagerly, "it was as though I had gone back to that night; that was why I sprang at the doctor, and wanted to kill him."
"And you tried again in the train," I reminded him. "But why on each occasion did you sham madness? – why did you pretend you were still the simple creature everyone supposed you to be?"
"Because I knew that if once Dr. Just guessed that I remembered the events of that night, he would take means to have me shut up; I might have been taken for a lunatic, and disposed of for the rest of my life. I knew that if I could once deceive him into believing that my mind was gone, he would not be suspicious of me. Unfortunately for my plan, I gave the game away when I tried to throw him out of that train."
"How was that?" I asked.
"I had managed things very well up to that point," he said. "I knew pretty well how the trains ran, and I knew that if I could throw him out on the line at a certain spot between the stations it would look like an accident, and the train on the other line would cut him to pieces. I was so sure of success that I threw off that disguise I had worn so long, and I cried out to him that I remembered he had killed my master, and that I meant to kill him. I dare say you remember, sir, that you asked him what I had said, and he would not tell you."
I remembered it distinctly, and I remembered how the doctor had watched that little drooping figure in the corner of the railway carriage, and how he had refused to tell me what the man had said before attacking him.
"After that, you see, there was no more chance of doing the thing secretly," went on Capper, speaking of the appalling business in the most easy and natural fashion. "He shut me out of the house; he would not let me come near him. Twice I followed him, and the second time I lost him. Now, sir," – he clasped his hands, and looked at me with an agony of entreaty in his eyes – "now, sir, will you let me know where I can find him?"
"Answer me one question first," I said, looking into his eager eyes. "If you kill this man, what will become of you?"
He spread out his hands, and smiled the strangest smile I have ever seen. "What does that matter?" he asked simply. "If I am found out they may say that I am a madman; they may shut me away for life. They may even hang me. It will not matter – my life finished when the man who saved me from myself died."
I did not hesitate any further; I told Capper that Dr. Bardolph Just was living down at a place called Green Barn, near Comerford, in Essex. He thanked me in the strangest fashion, with the tears in his eyes; he asked if he might shake hands with me. I had a weird feeling that he felt he might be going to his own death as I gripped his hand and let him go. I watched him for a long time while he went across the heath; he walked quickly, and without once looking to right or left, or even looking back at me. And I wondered what manner of death was preparing for Dr. Just.
Let it be understood clearly that I was so amazed by the whole business that for some time I could not decide what to do. There was no thought in my mind of saving Bardolph Just, or of warning him; I felt that in this grim business I had no right to interfere. The man who had meted out death to another man, and had striven so hard to kill an innocent girl, was no subject for pity. If I had desired to do anything to stop the business, it would have been on account of the man Capper; and so far as he was concerned, I knew that I might as well try to turn some strong river from its course as hold him back.
But I thought now of Debora. Strange as it may appear, in my own mind I regarded the death of Dr. Just as something inevitable – something arranged and settled. Capper had given away his secret to me; I knew that in some fashion Dr. Just would meet his death at Green Barn, unless by a miracle it happened that he had already gone away. And even then Capper was capable of following him, in that deadly hunt, to the other side of the world. I determined that I must go to Green Barn – not with any intention of standing between Capper and his intended victim, but in the hope to be of s