Dead Man's Love

"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 service to Debora. Debora would be alone with Bardolph Just, and Bardolph Just was marked for death!

I hurried back to my lodging, in the hope to find Andrew Ferkoe, and to let him know what I was doing; but I found that he had not yet returned to the house, and the landlady had no knowledge of his movements. There was nothing for it but for me to leave a message, saying that I was called away into the country, and hoped to be back within a day or so. I said nothing more definite than that.

I got out at Comerford Station in a heavy fall of summer rain. I had no knowledge of whether Capper was in front of me, or behind me in London; whether he had yet come face to face with the doctor, or whether that was still to happen. I was passing rapidly through the little booking-hall when I saw a big man lounging on a seat there, with his arms folded and his legs stretched out before him. It was Harvey Scoffold, and half involuntarily I stopped.

He looked up at me with a scowl, which changed the next moment to a grin. "Hullo!" he said, with an attempt at joviality, "what brings you down here?"

"You should be able to guess," I reminded him.

"There's no welcome for you – nor for anyone else," he said sourly. "Look at me, my boy; I'm turned out. Simply given my marching orders, if you please, and sent packing."

"Have you been to Green Barn?" I asked him.

He nodded. "Went down in the friendliest fashion, to see a man I've been devilish useful to – and what do I get? A meal, of course; then I'm calmly told that the doctor is in retirement, and is not receiving guests. More than that, I'll tell you something else that may not be to your liking."

He leaned forward, thrusting his heavy face towards me, and dropping a hand on each knee. I had always disliked the man; I could have struck him full in his smiling face now for the look it wore.

"I don't suppose it'll be a bit to your liking, Mr. John New, or whatever your confounded name is," he said. "But the doctor has sent everyone away – servants and all – sent 'em packing to-day. He's a bit mad, I think, over that girl – or else he really means to kill her. But there they are – just the pair of 'em – alone together in that house. If you ask me," he added with a leer, "I wouldn't mind changing places with him, and I should say – "

I waited for no more; I left the man, and almost ran out of the station in my excitement. I heard him call after me, but could not know what the words were; nor did I greatly care. One picture, and one only, possessed my mind, to the exclusion of everything else. The figure of Capper was blotted out by that more tragic figure of Debora, at the mercy of Bardolph Just, in that lonely Essex house. More than all else, I realised that my hands would be in a sense tied by Debora, because she would believe that my liberty would be endangered if she left the doctor.

I found that to be true enough. So confident was the man of his power over her that he had given her a certain amount of liberty; so that, to my surprise and my delight, I suddenly came face to face with her within an hour of my reaching Green Barn – and that, too, near to the little hut at the edge of the abandoned chalk pit.

The meeting was so surprising to both of us that for a time we could only hold hands, and talk incoherently, each in a great relief at finding the other safe and well. But at last we came down to more prosaic things, and she told me something of what was happening.

Bardolph Just had sworn to carry his threat into execution if she saw me again, or had anything further to do with me; he had determined to risk everything, and to give me up to the authorities. I tried to show her that the man would never dare proceed to that extremity, because of the danger in which he would place himself by so doing. And then I told her about Capper, and about Capper's threat.

"Capper is here!" she exclaimed, startlingly enough.

"Have you seen him?" I demanded.

She nodded quickly. "I was walking in the grounds a little while ago, and I saw him. He came up to me, and said how glad he was to see me, and asked about the doctor – all quite innocently and simply, I thought."

"There is no innocence and no simplicity about him," I said. "He means murder. I don't think anything will turn him from it. That's why I want you to leave all this behind and to go away."

"With you?" she asked.

"No, not with me," I said, reluctantly enough. I could not tell her then all that was in my mind; I might have broken down in the telling. "I must remain here until I know what Capper means to do. I must, if possible, dissuade him from that, if only for his own sake. Tell me, my dear girl," I went on earnestly, "is there no one to whom you could go, and who would befriend you? Set the doctor out of your mind altogether; I have a presentiment that, whatever happens, he will not trouble you again. Is there no one to whom you could turn?"

"No one but you in all the world," she said, looking at me curiously.

"Your father must have had some lawyer – some friend," I suggested.

"The same lawyer that Dr. Just employs," she said. "He looks after my money, as well as that of the doctor."

"I want you to promise, Debora, that if anything happens to me you will go to that man, and will see to it that he makes proper provision for you out of your money, and provides you with a settled home. He will do that for his own sake."

"But what should happen to you?" she whispered, clinging to me. "And in any case how will anyone help me if the doctor is here to interfere?"

"I am only asking you to promise something, in case something else – something quite impossible, if you like – should happen," I assured her lightly.

"Very well then, I promise," she answered.

It was a more difficult matter to persuade her to run away, and especially to run away and leave me in that place. For I could not tell her my reasons, and I saw that she did not think it possible that that weak little creature Capper could carry out his threat against the stronger man Bardolph Just; the thing was a sheer impossibility. Nevertheless, I so worked upon her terrors of the house, and of the man who had her prisoner there, that at last she consented to go. I pressed what money I had upon her, and arranged that she should go back to London that night, and should make her way to the little quiet hotel near the Charterhouse where she was known; there she could await a letter from me. I was to keep out of the way until she was gone, that I might not seem to be connected with her flight. The rest was a matter on my part of vague promises as to the future.

And then it was that I held her in my arms as I had never held her before, and as though I could never let her go. For I had made up my mind that I would not see her again; it was my purpose to keep away from her, and to take myself out of her life from that hour. It seemed to me then as though all the strange business that had brought us together was closing, and I felt now, as I had not clearly felt before, that mine was no life to link with hers. She was rich, and she was young, and she was fair; any love she might have felt for me was more a matter of gratitude than anything else. I had been able to stand her friend when no other friend was near, but I was that creature without a name, who might some day by chance be sent back to his prison. I must not link my name with hers.

However, I would not let her suspect that this was the parting of the ways. I made her repeat her promise to me to go to this lawyer, an elderly man, as I understood, and one who had dealt honestly with her father; and with that we parted. I knew that she would slip out of the house, and would go off to London. From some other place I would write to her, and would tell her of my decision. I felt also that I might have news to tell of Dr. Bardolph Just.

And now I come to that strangest happening of all – the death of that celebrated physician and scientist, Dr. Bardolph Just. Of all that was written about it at the time, and the many eulogies that were printed concerning the man, you will doubtless have heard; but the true story of it is given here for the first time, and it is only given now because the man who killed him is dead also, and is beyond the reach of everyone.

The thing is presented to me in a series of scenes, so strange and weird in their character that it is almost as though I had dreamt them, when now, after years, I strive to recollect them. The gaunt old house, standing surrounded by its grounds; the solitary man shut up alone in it, not dreaming that Debora had gone, and that I was so near at hand; and above all and before all, that strange figure of William Capper. I find myself shuddering now when I remember all the elements of the story, and how that story ended.

I was a mere spectator of the business – something outside it – and I looked on helplessly through the amazing scenes, with always that feeling that I was in a dream. Long after Debora had stolen away from the house that night, I wandered restlessly about the place, wondering a little at the silence, and remembering always that somewhere among the shadows lurked Capper, watching this man he had come to kill. I remembered also that in the strangest fashion Bardolph Just had prepared the way for him by actually sending everyone who might have protected him out of the house.

Exactly how Capper got into the place I was never able to discover. Whether Bardolph Just had grown careless, and did not think it likely that the man would discover where he was, or whether Capper, with cunning, forced an entrance somewhere, I never knew. But it was after midnight when I heard a cry in the house, and knew that what I dreaded had begun to happen. A minute or two afterwards the door opened, and Bardolph Just came out, staggering down the steps, and looking back into the lighted house. He seemed frightened, and I guessed what had frightened him.

He stopped still at a little distance from the house, and then turned slowly, and retraced his steps. Capper stood framed in the lighted doorway, looking out at him, but I saw that he appeared to have no weapon. In the dead silence all about us I heard Bardolph Just's words clearly.

"Where the devil did you come from?" he asked in a shrill voice.

"From my dead master!" came Capper's answer, clear and strong.

"Get out of my house, you madman!" exclaimed the doctor, taking a step towards him; but the other did not move. "What do you want with me?"

"I want to remain near you; I never mean to leave you again on this side of the grave," said Capper.

"Are you going to kill me?" asked the other. "Do you mean murder?"

"I don't mean to kill you – yet," replied the other. In the strangest fashion he seated himself on the top step, and folded his arms and waited.

Bardolph Just walked away a little, and then came back. I could see that, apart from his dread of the other man, he did not know what to do, nor how to meet this amazing situation. He took out a cigar from his case and lighted it, and strolled up and down there, alternately watching the little man seated above him, and studying the ground as though seeking for a solution of the difficulty. At last he decided to drop threatening, and to try if he might not win the man over.

"Look here, my good Capper," he said, "I've no reason to love you, but I think you're merely a poor, half-witted creature, who should be more pitied than blamed. I don't want to have any trouble with you, but most decidedly I don't want to be subjected to your violence. I want to come into my house.'"

"Come in by all means," said the little man, getting to his feet; "and I will not use violence."

Seeing that the doctor still hesitated, I thought I might at least show myself. I was, above all things, anxious to see the end of the business. My concern was with Capper chiefly. I could not see for the life of me what he would do in trying conclusions with a man of the physique of Bardolph Just. Above all things, I did not want it to happen that the doctor should gain a victory.

"You're not afraid of the man?" was my somewhat contemptuous greeting of him.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Are you in the plot?"

"I've done with plots," I said. "I am merely a spectator."

He said nothing about Debora, and I rightly guessed that he had not yet discovered her absence, but had merely concluded that she had retired for the night. After looking at me for a moment or two doubtfully, he took a step or two in my direction, and lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Look here," he said, with a nervous glance towards the man in the doorway, "I'm all alone in this house except for a weak girl, and I'm afraid of this fellow. What shall I do?"

"He's smaller than you are," I reminded him. "Turn him out!"

"I'm half afraid to go near him," he said. "You've seen him fly at me on two occasions; he can be like a wild beast when he likes."

"He has said that he will offer you no violence," I replied. "I don't know what he's got in his mind, but it seems to me, if you're afraid to turn him out, you've got to put up with him. He seems very fond of you," I added caustically.

He shot a glance at me, as though wondering what I meant; then turned and walked towards the house. I saw Capper retreat before him, so as to give him free entry to the place. On the door-step he turned, and called out into the darkness to me.

"You, at any rate, can stop outside; one madman is bad enough." Then the door was shut, and I was left to wonder what was going on inside.

I was not to be left long in doubt. In something less than half an hour, while I was hesitating whether to go, or whether to stay, the door was pulled open again, and a voice so querulous and nervous that I scarcely recognised it for that of the doctor called out into the darkness,

"John New! John New, are you there?"

I showed myself at once, and he ran down the steps to me. I saw that he was shaking from head to foot; the hand with which he gripped me, while he stared over his shoulder back into the house, was a hand of ice.

"For the love of God," he whispered, "come into the house with me! I shall go mad if this goes on. I can't shake him off."

"Lock yourself in your room, and go to bed," I said disdainfully.

"I can't; he's taken every key of every lock in the house and hidden them. I can't shut a door against him anywhere; upstairs and downstairs, wherever I go he is there, just behind me. Will you come in?"

I went in; the sheer fascination of the thing was growing on me. Capper took not the faintest notice of me; he was waiting just inside the door, and he followed us into a room. There he seated himself, with his hands on his knees, and waited. The doctor made a pretence of drinking, and even of lighting a cigar, but he set the glass down almost untasted, and allowed the cigar to go out. No words were exchanged between us, and still Capper kept up that relentless watch.

At last Bardolph Just sank down into a chair, and closed his eyes. "If he won't let me go to bed, I'll sleep here," he murmured.

But in a moment Capper had sprung up, and had gone to the man and shaken him roughly by the shoulder. "Wake up!" he ordered. "You'll sleep no more until you sleep at the last until the Judgment Day."

I saw then with horror what his purpose was. I knew not what the end was to be, but I saw that his immediate purpose was to wear the other man down until he could do what he liked with him. I thought he was a fool not to understand that in striving to break down the strength of the other he was breaking himself down too; but that never seemed to occur to him. For the whole of that night he kept Bardolph Just awake, followed him from room to room in that house where no door would lock, and where he gave his victim no time to barricade himself in; he never left him for a moment. More than once Bardolph Just turned on him, and then the eyes of Capper flashed, and he drew back as if about to spring; and the doctor waited. He threw himself on his bed once, in sheer exhaustion, and Capper made such a din in the room by overturning tables and smashing things that the wretched man got up and fled downstairs, and out into the grounds. But Capper fled with him.

For my part, I slept at intervals, dropping on to a couch, or into a deep chair, and closing my eyes from sheer weariness. I found myself murmuring in my sleep sometimes, incoherently begging Capper to give the game up, and to let the man alone; but he took no notice of me, and I might indeed have been a shadow in the house, so little did he seem to be aware of my presence. When I could, after waking from a fitful sleep, I would stumble about the house in a search for them, and even out into the grounds; and always there was the man striving for rest, and the other man keeping him awake.

Once Bardolph Just armed himself with a stick, and ran out of the house; Capper snatched up another, and ran after him. I thought that this was the end; I ran out too, crying to Capper to beware what he did. When I got to them – and this was the noon of the following day – Bardolph Just had flung aside his stick, and stood there in a dejected attitude, looking at his persecutor.

"It's no good," he said hoarsely, "I give in. Do what you will with me; ask what you will; this is the end."

"Not yet," said Capper, leaning upon the stick and watching him. "Not yet."

That strange hunt went on for the whole of that day, and during the next night. I only saw part of it all, because, of course, I fell asleep, and slept longer than I had done at first. But I saw once the wretched man fall upon his knees before Capper, and beg for mercy; saw him struggle with Capper with his uninjured arm, so that the two of them swayed about, dazed with want of sleep; saw him fall to the ground, and try to sleep, and the other kick him viciously into a wakeful state again. And at last came the end, when the doctor went swaying and stumbling up the stairs towards his bedroom, muttering that the other man could do his worst, but that he must sleep. So utterly worn out was he that he got no further than the landing; there he fell, and lay as one dead.

The sun was streaming in through a high window; it fell upon the exhausted man, and upon Capper standing beside him. Capper was swaying a little, but otherwise seemed alert enough.

"This will serve," he muttered as if to himself. "This is the end."

He went away, and after a little time came back with a rope and a hatchet. In my horror at what he might be going to do, I would have taken the hatchet from him; but now he threatened me with it, with a snarl like that of a wild beast; and I drew away from him, and watched. He proceeded to hack away the rails of the landing, leaving only the broad balustrade; he cut away six rails, and tossed them aside. Then he made a running noose in the rope, and fastened the other end of it securely to the balustrade. There was thus left a space under where the rope was fastened, and sheer down from that a drop into the hall below. He knelt down beside the unconscious man, and lifted his head, and put the noose about his neck. He tightened it viciously, but the sleeping man never even murmured.

Then I saw him begin to push the sleeping man slowly and with effort towards the gap he had made in the staircase rail.

When I could look (and it was a long time before I could make up my mind to do so), the body of Bardolph Just swung high above me, suspended by the neck. On the landing, prone upon the floor, lay William Capper, sleeping soundly.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BOY WITH THE LONG CURLS

The suicide of that brilliant and cultured man, Dr. Bardolph Just, caused, as you will remember, a very great sensation at the time, and there was much wonder expressed as to why the man had hanged himself at all. But there was no doubt about the question of suicide, because the whole thing had been so deliberately and carefully planned.

He had taken care to send everyone away from him – even an old and trusted friend like Mr. Harvey Scoffold – and had left himself absolutely alone in that great house. Various theories were put forward as to how he had managed to tie the knot so successfully, in making that running noose for his neck; but it was universally agreed that that had been a matter of teeth and his one uninjured hand. Shuddering accounts, wholly imaginary, were given of what the man's last hours must have been, and in what determined fashion he must have hacked away the rails, in order to make a space through which he could push his way. Everyone seemed to be perfectly agreed on that matter, and there it ended.

For the rest, let me say that I waited in that house until, in due course, William Capper woke up. He went about what he had to do after that in the most methodical way, restoring all the keys to the doors, and putting in order such things as had been disturbed during those long, weary hours when he had followed the other man round the house. He said but little to me, and at last we came out of the place, and stood together, with the doors of the house closed upon us. Only when we had gone through the grounds, and had come out upon the high road did he speak again, and then without looking at me.