Dead Man's Love

He smiled, and came back to me. "You should learn to make up your mind more quickly," he said. "Now, let us see what we have to do. You've nothing to be afraid of, and you need take no notice of that creature in the corner there; he knows nothing, and will remember nothing. Strip yourself to the skin."

As I began to undress, I glanced at the old man in the corner; he sat in the same attitude, with his head sunk in his hands. "What is wrong with him?" I asked.

Dr. Bardolph Just was bending over the body of the man on the couch; he did not look round. "Something snapped in his brain a little time ago," he answered me. "It is as though you had snapped the mainspring of a watch; the brain in him died at that moment."

"What caused it?" I asked, still shedding my clothes.

"Shock. Get your clothes off, and don't talk so much," he snapped.

He tossed certain garments to me one by one, and I flung him my own in return. So the change was made, and I presently stood up and looked down at myself, and saw myself as that young man who had stood in the garden and had talked to the girl. For, indeed, I was something like him in figure, and height, and appearance. When the doctor moved away from the couch I gasped, for there I lay, in the dress I had worn for a year, branded and numbered – and dead. It was not a pretty sight; I turned away from it, shuddering.

But the doctor laughed softly. "It is not given to every man to see himself as he will one day be," he said.

"What was his name?" I whispered.

"Gregory Pennington," he answered, looking at the body. "So you see at one stroke we get rid of Gregory Pennington, and of a certain unfortunate convict, named Norton Hyde. So far as your further christening is concerned, we must arrange that later, for this matter must be taken with a certain boldness, or weak spots may be discovered in it. I think you said you were hungry, and I daresay you've had enough of this room for the present."

"More than enough," I replied.

"Then come along, and let us see if we can find something to put better courage into you," he said. And gratefully enough I followed him from the room in that new disguise.

The house was a very large one. We traversed a number of corridors before coming to a room which seemed to be half-study and half-surgery. I should not have known as to the latter half of it, but for the fact that the doctor, who did not seem to care to summon any servants there may have been, left me there while he went in search of food. I peeped behind a screen at one end of the room, and saw an array of bottles, and test tubes in stands, and other paraphernalia. At the further end of the room were great book cases reaching to the ceiling, and a big desk with a reading-lamp upon it. But even here, though the furniture was handsome, the room had a neglected appearance, as, indeed, I afterwards found every room in that house had.

Bardolph Just came back in a little while, carrying food and a decanter. After he had set the food out on a table, and I had fallen to with a relish, he laughed softly, and said that, after all, he had forgotten to bring me a glass. He declared, however, that that was a matter soon remedied, and he went behind the screen, and came out with a tall measuring-glass in his hand. It seemed an uncanny thing to drink wine out of; but I had no choice.

He presently pulled open a drawer in the desk, and took out a cigar, and lighted it; as I had finished my meal, he tossed one to me, and I gratefully began to smoke. The man was evidently still turning over some matter in his mind, for he said nothing while he sat twisting the cigar round between his lips and looking at me. His back was turned towards the door of the room, and presently in that house of horror I saw the door begin slowly to open.

I suppose I ought to have cried out, but once again I was fascinated by what might happen at any moment, and perhaps in sheer wonder as to what was coming in. It was nothing worse, as it turned out, than the little, old grey-haired man I had seen in the further room, and who had evidently followed us. He crept in now, step by step, with that curious smile upon his face, and when he was fairly in the room closed the door – I noticed that it closed with a sharp little click, as though it had a spring lock.

Dr. Bardolph Just did a curious thing. As the lock clicked he suddenly sat rigid, gripping the arms of his chair, and staring at me as though from my face he would learn what was behind him. Seeing, I suppose, nothing in my expression to guide him, he suddenly swung sharply round and faced the little old man; and I thought at that moment that a quick sigh broke from him, as of relief. I wondered what he had expected to see.

"What the devil do you want?" he demanded, in a voice raised but little above a whisper. "Why do you follow me about?"

The old man spread out his hands in a deprecating fashion, and shook his head. "Nothing, sir," he said, "nothing at all. But he won't speak to me – and he has never been like that before. I don't understand it. I knelt beside him just now, and his dress was different – and – and – " I saw his hands go up to his lips, and pluck at them in that strange fashion – "and he won't speak to me."

The doctor turned from him to me, and shrugged his shoulders. "This is a nice apparition to be following a man about," he said petulantly. "I can't make him out at all."

"Who is he?" I ventured to ask in a whisper.

"The servant of the dead man – one of those faithful old fools that attach themselves to you, and won't be shaken off, I suppose. He came here to-night, following his unfortunate master. What the deuce am I to do with him?"

"He seems harmless enough," I whispered. "But isn't it rather dangerous to have him about here, after the fraud that has been committed. Won't he speak? Won't he say that this dead man is not the escaped convict, but his master?"

"There's no fear of that," replied the other. "I tell you something has snapped in his brain; he doesn't understand. If I turned him out into the world now, he would remember nothing, and would have no story to tell, even if he were questioned. But I don't want to turn him out – and yet he haunts me."

"You say he changed in a moment?" I asked.

Dr. Just nodded. "When he saw his master dead, he simply cried out, and afterwards remained as you see him now. I must dispose of him for the night, at least," he said, getting to his feet, and approaching the old man. "Come, Capper, I want you."

The little old man looked round at him as he said that name, and I saw a faint fear come into his eyes. He shrank away a little, but the doctor grasped his arm quickly, and drew him towards the door. He went out in that grasp passively enough, and I was left alone again.

I had almost fallen asleep, worn out with the excitements of the day, when the doctor came back again. I started to my feet drowsily, and faced him.

"Good-night!" he said, and held out his hand to me – a cold hand, but firm and strong in its touch. "You may see and hear strange things in this house," he added, "but it is not your business to take any notice of them. You will be, I hope, properly grateful to me – the man who has saved you, and given you a new lease of life."

"Yes, I shall be grateful," I promised him.

He conducted me to a room in what seemed to be an outlying wing of the house, and left me to my own reflections. In truth, I was too tired to give much time to thought. I slipped off my clothes and got into bed, and was asleep in five minutes.

But I was not destined to sleep well, after all. In the first place, I was troubled most unaccountably by dreams, in which I saw myself going through the most extraordinary adventures, and finally hanging to what seemed to be the roof of Penthouse Prison, with the little old man of the grey hair grinning up at me from the ground below. And through my dreams there appeared always to go the light, quick figure of that girl I had seen in the grounds of the house; and always she went searching for someone. I dreamed at last that she came straight to me, and took me by the arms, and stared at me, and cried out that she had found the man she wanted. And so I sat up in bed in the darkness, struggling with someone very real, who was gripping me.

I almost shrieked, as I rolled out of bed, and tried to disengage myself from the arms of a man who was clinging to me. I contrived to drag him towards the window, where, by the faint light of the stars outside, I saw that it was the man Capper – that seemingly half-witted creature who had been the servant of the dead man.

"What do you want?" I ejaculated.

"I've been dreaming," said Capper.

"Well, what of that?" I demanded testily, "I've been dreaming, too."

"Yes, but not dreams like mine," whispered the old man, looking fearfully over his shoulder. "Tell me, do you think they'll come true?"

"I don't know what they were," I reminded him.

He clutched me by the arm, and stared up in my face. There seemed almost a light of madness in his eyes. "I dreamed that it happened a long time ago – before my head went wrong. I dreamed of a blow struck in the dark; I thought someone (it might have been myself, but I'm not sure even of that) – I dreamed that someone screamed, 'Murder!'"

In a growing excitement he had raised his voice almost to a scream; I clapped my hand over his lips as he got out the dreadful word. I felt my hair stirring on my scalp. I wondered if by chance something dreadful had happened in that house, of which this old man knew, and the memory of which was locked away in that closed brain of his.

"Let me stay here to-night," he pleaded, clinging to me. "I'll be still as a mouse; I'll lie in this corner on the floor."

So I let him lie there, and I went back to my bed. For a long time I lay awake, watching him and thinking about him; but gradually towards the morning I fell asleep, and slept heavily. When I awoke at last, with the sun shining in at my window, the man was gone, and my door stood open.

That was to be a day of happenings. Even now my mind holds but a confused memory of them, in which I seem to be now myself, and now some other man; now living on hope, and now sunk into the depths of fear and despair. For what I have to tell seems so incredible, that only by some knowledge of the man who carried the plot boldly through can any idea of how the business was arranged be arrived at.

Dr. Bardolph Just acted with promptness and decision that day. A messenger flew down towards London to summon the police; and a telegram sped over the wires back to Penthouse Prison. The missing convict had been found; all the world might come to the house of Dr. Bardolph Just, and see this thing for themselves. At the last, when we actually expected the enemy to arrive at our gates, as it were, I nervously plucked the doctor's sleeve, and whispered a question.

"What about his hair? They'll be sure to notice that."

He smiled a little pityingly, I thought; but then, to the very end the man retained some contempt for me. "Come and see for yourself," he said.

So I went back with him into that room where we had left the dead man, and there I saw a miracle. For while I slept the doctor had been at work, and the head of poor Gregory Pennington was cropped as closely as my own. I shuddered and turned away.

"How you ever contrived to escape puzzles me," said Bardolph Just. "You haven't half my courage."

The man was certainly amazing. He met everything blandly; he was firm, and quiet, and dignified with this official and with that. He told me afterwards all that he did, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. For my own part, of course, I had to keep out of the way, and I spent most of my time in the spacious grounds surrounding the house. There was an old ruined summer-house at one corner, under a high wall; and there, fortified with a few of the doctor's cigars, I awaited quietly the turn of events. According to the doctor's description to me afterwards, what happened was this:

In the first place, the puzzle fitted so neatly together that there was no feeling of suspicion. A tall, well-built, dark-haired man, in the clothes of a convict, was roaming over the country; by a miracle a man answering that description, and dressed in those clothes, and having the necessary number upon him, had got to this house on the northern heights above London, and there, in despair of escaping further, had hanged himself. Dr. Bardolph Just was a man of standing in the scientific world – a man who had made discoveries; there was no thought of calling his word in question. This dead man was undoubtedly the escaped convict – Norton Hyde.

A very necessary inquest was held, and twelve good men and true settled that matter once and for all. There had been one curious point in the evidence, but even that was a point that had been miraculously explained. The doctor spoke of it airily, and I wondered a little why he did not explain the matter with more exactitude.

"It seems," he said, "that they discovered on the head of the unfortunate man the mark of a blow – a blow which had undoubtedly stunned him – or so, at least, they thought. It's impossible for me to say how the unfortunate Gregory Pennington came by such an injury, but at all events even that was accounted for in the case of Norton Hyde."

"How?" I asked.

Dr. Just laughed. "A certain motorist put in an appearance, and frankly explained that he had picked you up on the roadside near Penthouse Prison, and had given you a lift as far as this very house. Then there was an accident, and he and his passenger were both pitched out; he was convinced that in that way you got your injury. The thing was as simple as possible – you had recovered consciousness before he did, and had scrambled over the fence here."

"But did they swallow the story of my being in the house – of my breaking in?" I asked.

"I had thought of that," said the doctor. "So my tale was that you had hanged yourself from a beam in an outhouse – probably because you failed in your purpose of breaking into my dwelling. As a doctor, the moment I discovered you I cut you down, and carried you in, and did my best to restore animation, but in vain. You will like to know, Mr. Norton Hyde, that my humanity was warmly commended by the jury and coroner."

I laughed in a sickly fashion. "But I am not Norton Hyde any longer," I reminded him.

"True – and I have thought of a name for you that shall, in a fashion, mark your entry into another phase of existence. A nice name, and a short one. What do you say to the title of John New, a personal friend of my own?"

I told him that any name would suit me that was not the old one, and so that matter was settled.

He displayed so great an anxiety to see the matter ended, and was altogether so sympathetic with that poor convict who in his despair had hanged himself, that he even attended the funeral. Which is to say, that he carried the fraud so far as to go to Penthouse Prison, what time that disguised body of Godfrey Pennington was carried there, and to see it interred with all due solemnity within the prison precincts; I believe he lunched with the governor of the prison on that occasion, and, altogether, played his part very well.

It is left to me to record here one other happening of that time, and one which made a deep impression upon me. On the night of that strange finishing of the fraud, when Dr. Bardolph Just returned, I was sitting smoking in the summer-house, and enjoying the evening air, when I heard what seemed to be the quick, half-strangled cry of a woman. I tossed aside my cigar and started to my feet and came out of the summer-house. It was very dark in that corner of the grounds, and the summer-house in particular had great deep shadows inside it.

There came towards me, flying among the trees, and looking back in a scared fashion over her shoulder, the girl I had seen with Gregory Pennington – the girl he had called Debora. She came straight at me, not seeing me; and in the distance I saw Bardolph Just running, and heard him calling to her. On an instinct I caught at her, and laid a finger on my lips, and thrust her into the summer-house. Bardolph Just came running up a moment later, and stopped a little foolishly on seeing me. And by that time I was stretching my arms and yawning.

He made some casual remark, and turned back towards the house. When he had gone I called to the girl, and she came out; she was white-faced and trembling, and there were tears in her eyes. I felt that I hated Bardolph Just, with a hatred that was altogether unreasonable.

"I saw you here yesterday," she said, looking at me earnestly. "I need friends badly – and you have a good, kind face. Will you be my friend?"

I do not know what words I said; I only know that there, in the dark garden, as I bent over her little hands and put them to my lips, I vowed myself in my heart to her service.

CHAPTER III.

THE MISSING MAN

I find it difficult to write, in my halting fashion, of what my sensations were at that time. God knows what good was in me, and only God and time could bring that good out of me; for I had had no childhood, and my manhood had been a thing thwarted and blighted.

You have to understand that in a matter of a few days I had lived years of an ordinary life; had been in prison, and had escaped; had come near to death; had found myself buried and done with, and yet enlisted on life under a new name; and, to crown it all, now come face to face with someone who believed in me and trusted me – broken reed though I was to lean upon.

I stood in the dark grounds, holding the girl's hands and looking into her eyes: and that was a new experience for me. I remembered how someone else – dead, and shamefully buried in the precincts of a prison – had held her hands but a little time before, and had begged that he might help her. Well, he was past all that now; and I, with my poor record behind me, stood, miraculously enough, in his place. Yet there were things I must understand, if I would help her at all: I wanted to know why she had fled from her guardian, and why, in his turn, he had chased her through the grounds.

"What were you afraid of?" I asked her gently; and it was pleasant to me that she should forget to take her hands out of mine.

"Of him," she said, with a glance towards the house; and I thought she shivered. "I wonder if you can understand what I feel, and of what I am afraid?" she went on, looking at me curiously. "I do not even know your name."

I laughed a little bitterly. "You must indeed be in need of friends if you come to me," I answered.

"But my name is John New, and I am a – a friend of Dr. Just."

"Oh!" She shrank away from me with a startled look. "I did not understand that."

"I am a friend of Dr. Just," I repeated, "because it happens that I am very much in his power, and I must be his friend if I would live at all. If that is your case, too, surely we might form some small conspiracy together against him. You're not fond of the man?" I hazarded.

She shook her head. "I hate him – and I'm afraid of him," she said vehemently. "And yet I have to look to him for everything in the world."

"Sit down, and tell me about it," I said; and I drew her into the summer-house, and sat by her side while she talked to me. She was like a child in the ease with which she gave me her confidence; and as I listened to her, years seemed to separate me from my prison and from the life I had led. For this was the first gentle soul with whom I had yet come in contact.

"You must first tell me," she urged, "why you are in the doctor's power. Who are you? and what have you done, that he should be able to hold you in his hands? You are a man; you're not a weak girl."

It was difficult to answer her. "Well," I began, after a pause, "I did something, a long time ago, of which the doctor knows; and he holds that knowledge over me. That's all I can tell you."

She looked straight into my eyes, and I found, to my relief, that I was able to look at her with some frankness in return. "I don't believe it was anything very wrong," she said at last.

"Thank you," I answered, and I prayed that she might never know what my sin had been.

"You see," she went on confidentially, while the shadows grew about us; "I am really all alone in the world, except for Dr. Just, who is my guardian. He was made my guardian by my poor, dear father, who died some two years ago; my father believed in the doctor very much. They had written a scientific treatise together – because the doctor is very clever, and father quite looked up to him. So when he died he left directions that I was to be taken care of by the doctor. That was two years ago, and I have lived in this house ever since, with one short interval."

"And the interval?" I asked.

"We went down to a country house belonging to the doctor – a place in Essex, called Green Barn. It's a gloomy old house – worse than this one; the doctor goes there to shoot."

"But you haven't told me yet why you were running away from him," I reminded her.

She bent her head, so that I could not see her face. "Lately," she said in a low voice, "his manner to me has changed. At first he was courteous and kind – he treated me as though I had been his daughter. But now it's all different; he looks at me in a fashion I understand – and yet don't understand. To-day he tried to put his arm round me, and to kiss me; then when I ran away he ran after me."

I felt that I hated the doctor very cordially; I had an insane desire to be present if by any chance he should repeat his conduct. I felt my muscles stiffen as I looked at the girl; in my thoughts I was like some knight of old, ready to do doughty deeds for this fair, pretty girl, who was so ready to confide in me. I forgot all about who I was, or what had happened to me; I had only strangely come out into the world again – into a world of love.

But the fact that it was a world of love reminded me that I had had a rival – another man who had held her hands and looked into her eyes, and pleaded that he might help her. I could not, of course, ask about him, because I held the key to his fate, and that fate intimately concerned my own safety; but I was consumed with curiosity, nevertheless. Strangely enough, she voiced my thoughts by beginning to speak of him.

"There is something else that troubles me," she said earnestly. "I have one friend – a dear, good, loyal fellow; but he has unaccountably gone away, and I can hear nothing of him."

I felt myself turning hot and cold; I blessed the darkness of the summer-house. "What was his name?" I asked.

"Gregory Pennington," she answered softly.

"He was my friend before my father died; he followed me here when the doctor took charge of me. He was afraid of the doctor – not for himself, but on my account; he had a strange idea, and one that I have tried to laugh at, that the doctor wanted to kill me."

She looked at me with smiling eyes, laughing at such a suggestion; but I, remembering the earnestness of Gregory Pennington's words to the girl on that first occasion of my coming to the house, seemed now to hear that warning as though it came indeed from the dead. And I could not answer her.

"That was foolish, wasn't it?" she said, with a little laugh. "But then, I think poor Gregory loves me, and that made him afraid for me. You have been in the house here for some days; have you seen nothing of him?"

I was obliged to lie; there was nothing else for it. I shook my head, and lied stoutly. "No," I replied, "I have never seen him."

"It's all so strange," she said, as she got to her feet. "The doctor did not like him, and had forbidden him the house, in spite of my remonstrances. As he was my friend, Gregory and I used to meet secretly in these grounds in the evening."

I remembered how I had seen them together; I remembered, with a shudder, all that had happened afterwards. But still I said nothing; for what could I say?

"It was all so strange," she went on; and her voice sounded ghostly in the darkness. I had risen, and was standing opposite to her; I seemed to feel that the air had grown suddenly very chill. "The last time I saw him he told me that he would go to the house, and would see my guardian. I did all I could," she proceeded helplessly, "to dissuade him, but he would not listen. He said he must have an understanding with Dr. Just, and must take me away; although I think I should never have consented to that, in any case – because, you see, I did not really love him. He had always been like a good, kind brother to me, but nothing more."