by F.W. Robinson, author of "Grandfather's Money," "The Courting of Mary Smith," etc.
As published in Strange Doings in Strange Places (Cassell & Company, Ltd.; 1890), originally published in Cassell's Saturday Journal.
I.
It is not a great many months ago since it was my ill fate to break my leg at lawn tennis, and to be carted summarily away, and, by my own express request, to St. Augustine's Hospital, N.W. I knew that I should be better cared for there than in my lonely chambers in Gray's Inn, and be less a nuisance to those friends, relations, and acquaintances, who might consider it their duty to grope their way towards me in my dusty rooms on the third floor. I felt that they would be less a trouble to me too if I could receive them in a private ward at certain stated times, and be prepared for all their questions, all their sympathy, and all their good wishes for my ultimate recovery. The hospital, which I term here St. Augustine's, and which is one of the biggest and busiest of London institutions, places a ward or two at the disposal of its paying patients, each ward containing a certain number of rooms wherein three or four unfortunate mortals are quietly stowed away in odd corners, and are treated with every consideration that is at the disposal of the ruling powers. There was accommodation for four paying patients in Ward 2 of St. Augustine's—my ward—but during the whole of my enforced stay therein the beds were completely occupied. At an early period of my introduction there were two patients beside myself, one of whom died and was carried off surreptitiously the first week after my arrival; and the second departed proud of a better condition of liver, and promising to give me a look up now and then, and see how I was getting on, "old man," which he never did. For seven or eight days, I remember, I had the room to myself, with heaps of books for company; and then another patient was borne in with exceeding care, and put to bed on the other side of a big fireplace.
He was followed quickly by two doctors, who had been interested in the case, and had been previously attending to him in the operating room, and who now inspected, advised, soothed, and warned him with an extra degree of earnestness and interest that seemed a little remarkable to me. But I soon understood it. This was an important case, intricate, interesting, and yet embarrassing; full of details, and bad joins, and no "consolidation"—the second edition, as I discovered presently, of an old case that had not come right, and had considerably puzzled the faculty. The man's leg had had to be broken afresh and reset, and here he was again, in his old bed, and in the old ward into which he had been first inducted some six or seven weeks ago; before "my time," that is to say.
A man is naturally interested in one who is to live and breathe and eat and drink and sleep in the same apartment as himself for an uncertain number of weeks, and I regarded my new companion with furtive interest when the doctors had departed, and
only the nurses were flitting noiselessly about the room, previous to taking their departure also for awhile. He was a young man of about my own age, and had been a handsome fellow in his health and strength; but he was very pale and thin and haggard, as if many weeks of sickness and of suffering had pulled him down considerably. What struck me almost immediately were the size and lustre of two restless eyes—foreign eyes, I was disposed to think them, by their depth of blackness and their extra piercing quality. Ill as he was, and at a crisis of life and death as he might be for the next four-and-twenty hours, I was impressed with his keen glance in my direction, at the first opportunity which presented itself, to take stock of me in his turn.
This was immediately that we were left alone together.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked, abruptly.
"A broken leg," I replied.
"How did it come about?"
"Lawn tennis."
"Pity a man has nothing better to do than jump about in a harlequin suit with a bat and a ball," he said, scornfully and almost insolently.
This was a gentleman who was destined to be far from a pleasant companion for an indefinite time, I considered, unless he was not quite himself yet.
"Well, you have paid for your gambols; and here you are, like me, in the purgatory of broken bones," he added with excitement; "and if you don't get on any better than I, you are one of the most unlucky wretches in the world."
"When did you break your leg?" I ventured to inquire.
"Months ago."
"A long case?"
"A hard case. Everything wrong, and the martyr broken on the wheel over again, for the amusement of the students, and to give the operator a specimen and a subject to gabble over. May he —"
And then, to my surprise and alarm, he fainted. clean away, and I had to ring a bell handy at my bedside, and summon the nurses to the rescue.
He was delirious that night, I remember, and needed that constant attention which kept me restless and wakeful. The nurses paid no heed to his distracted manner, but he was a new subject to me, and I was interested in him. No one suggested my removal to another ward whilst this raving fit was on him; "he will be bad presently—tire himself out; perhaps die," it was whispered to me by way of consolation. He babbled of green fields as Falstaff did at the Old Boar's Head. His confused thoughts were, at first, of summer wanderings, and of fair landscapes in the imaginary company of one Katie, whose name rang out with startling distinctness. "See there, Katie: is not that lovely? Oh! to be able to paint like that," he said, even with rapt enthusiasm. Katie was woman or a child on his mind; a dream figure altogether perhaps; although when his imaginings took a fresh turn of terror and alarm, as of fierce conflicts and terrible onslaughts, of pursuers and of being pursued, of murders most foul and escapes most marvellous, of captives and of prayers for mercy in his own captivity, this Katie was still upon his mind. It was she who was alone with him in his troubles, escaping with him or from him, saving him or betraying him- ever the central figure of his ever-wild conceptions. Before he fell into a deep sleep, his quivering lips whispered, "Poor Kate!" as a wind-up to the evening's proceedings.
The following day he was very weak, and lay in a helpless and critical state. He was so terribly prostrated at night that the question was softly put to him—
"Is there any one whom you would like to see?"
He shook his head.
"No mother—sister—wife?" urged the nurse—or Sister Alice, as she was called in the hospital, and who was an earnest and religious woman.
"No. Why do you ask?" Am I in danger?" he whispered.
"Life is uncertain at the best," was the evasive answer.
"I am going to die?"
"I do not say so. I have no right to say so."
"Ah, well, it does not matter if I do," he said, carelessly.
"Matter!" exclaimed the sister.
"Don't preach to me, please. I hate preaching, and I am past praying for."
"Oh, no!" was the quiet answer of the nurse, who, however, thought it wise to say no more just then. When she had left the room, my companion looked across at me.
"As if that woman could do me any good," he said.
"She will not do you any harm."
He was silent again, and I did not attempt to encourage any further conversation in his present state of weakness.
II.
The third day he was considerably stronger and better. A letter came to him with a foreign post mark. It was brought to me first by a new orderly—a clumsy young fellow who had been recently appointed to his post—and I took it from his hands unconsciously. A glance at the superscription assured me it was for Mr. Frank Linford, but the orderly had abruptly vanished and left me with the letter in my hand.
"It is not for me," I said; "possibly for you—a Mr. Linford."
"Yes, it is my letter," he answered; "what on earth did the idiot mean by giving it to you?"
I could not pass the letter to him. He was half a dozen yards from me; and to sling it in his direction might lead to its falling between the bed and wall.
"Shall I ring?" I asked.
"To be sure. Do you think I am to be tortured by delay like this—to suffer for the stupidity of that hospital jackal? I who have waited for that letter as for my salvation."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, indeed!" he said, mockingly; "what an infernal time they keep people waiting. Ring again, please. Ring—oh, here you are! The same fool, too," he exclaimed, as the orderly reappeared; "here, you sir, how dare you pass my letter to him, you dolt, you—?"
"I beg your pardon," said the scared attendant, taking the note from my hands; "I didn't know which was the right gentleman. I have only just come."
"And the sooner you are off again the better," Linford growled, snatching the letter from the man's hand; "you are no use here: you are only a miserable encumbrance on the face of the earth. Get out!"
The man departed much aggrieved, and Mr. Linford lay and read his letter carefully and critically. I affected to be interested in my newspaper, but I was keeping furtive watch upon him. I was beginning to be interested in this man, to wonder at his excitement, and at the cause that there might be for it—to think, also, that it was not a very good sign of convalescence.
It was a long letter, in a woman's handwriting, crossed and recrossed, after the fashion of feminine epistles—a missive on foreign paper. Of that I was conscious without feeling myself in any way a spy, although he seemed almost to regard me as such when he was tearing up his letter into very small pieces—a sure sign of a fear that the letter might bear witness against him.
"Your newspaper does not seem to interest you this morning," he said, sharply.
"Oh, yes, it does," I replied; "it's from Melbourne, where I have friends; Australian news is always interesting to me."
"Why are you looking at me so critically?"
"I beg your pardon," said I, half laughing; "was I?"
"Yes, you were," he answered, sullenly; "and you know you were."
"Perhaps I might have been--unconsciously almost," I condescended to confess, despite my companion's manner being extremely irritating to me; "yours was a foreign letter, and it crossed my mind--don't laugh at me--that the lady had a long explanation to make."
He dropped the pieces of letter on the floor and regarded me malevolently. My last remarks had not pleased him, I was sure; but he did not reply to them. He lay thinking them over, a man who was perplexed, or had seen a double meaning, which in no way had been intended. I liked his looks worse than ever after this; and I disliked him, too, for the first time, very completely. If his health and strength should show signs of coming back to him, doubtless we should not agree together for any length of time. "Easy going" had been my characteristic amongst my friends--"Slow old Jack" I had even been called at uncomplimentary times, but I felt already that I could not take this stranger's manner with my usual philosophy. He vexed me--possibly we irritated each other, and were both inclined to be just a little aggravating. My companion, before the week was out, had become stronger, although his case still appeared to contain features of interest that did not appertain to my own ordinary compound fracture. The doctors were longer in the examining of him. They brought strange doctors to see him, but for what reason I did not know, nor could I find an opportunity of inquiring.
He was far more curious concerning the friends who came by turns, in visiting hours, to see me. He would watch them from his bed closely, and appeared to be always interested in the conversation between them and myself, putting down his book indeed more than once to listen. Sometimes a few words were addressed to him by my friends, and as a matter of courtesy, but he did not always respond. At most times he was sullen and unsympathetic. His long affliction had perhaps soured him, and he did not take the ills of life with anything like a fair amount of composure; at times he seemed to envy me the attention that I received--he who seemed wholly destitute of friends. I thought so when he said one day, bitterly--
"You are a man with troops of acquaintances. Do they run after you as much as this when you are at home?"
"About the same."
"You have money to lend, perhaps?" was the cynical comment to this.
"Oh, no!"
"What are you?"
"A barrister."
"Any briefs?"
"Very few."
"I thought as much. Lawn tennis is more in your line than law courts," he said, with a hard little laugh, totally devoid of any semblance of hilarity.
"Yes," I said, "I get on rapidly at tennis, and I don't at law. What are you?"
"A Londoner."
"I mean, what profession?"
He, so ready with his own questions, did not appear to relish mine. His eyebrows lowered over his dark eyes, as though he actually resented such a leading question in his own case. He answered me, however--
"A commercial traveller," he said. "Not such a dignified occupation as your own, but one sees life, has change of scene, and keeps his head above water."
"Ye-es," I said.
"What do you mean by 'Ye-es,' in that drawling fashion?" he asked.
"I should not have taken you for a commercial traveller," I said.
"What would you have taken me for?" he asked.
"A soldier--some one who knows his drill, at any rate."
"What put that in your head?"
"Oh, you talk in your sleep. You do a lot of marching, and quick marching; then you fight your battles over again, and--"
"Well!"
"And kick up a confounded row generally."
"Why don't you throw one of your books at me and wake me?" he inquired. "I would oblige you in that way, pretty quickly."
"You are very kind. I would prefer to dream on."
"And I would prefer to dream never. I don't dream nicely," he cried, scoffingly. "I see the fires of hell about me in my sleep, and mocking fiends, and horrible despair; and so I go mad and rave. Don't I rave?"
"At times awfully."
"And wake you?"
"Occasionally."
"What do I rave about?"
"Oh, all kinds of things. The country sometimes, but generally of battles, murder, sudden death, and--"
"Go on," he said, as I paused.
"And--Katie," I concluded.
He pulled himself into a half-sitting position by means of the stout cord hanging above his head, and sat upright, looking across at me, all eyes. Then he sank back prostrate once more.
"I do not know any woman of the name of Katie," he said. "What are you driving at?"
"I am not driving at anything. I am simply answering your questions."
"You will not have any more to answer," he said, gruffly. "Go on with your Australian news, and let me be."
It was a fresh number of an Australian newspaper that had reached me that morning; the nurse had passed my other papers to him during the week, and he had evinced considerable interest in their perusal, despite certain disparaging remarks on colonial newspapers in general. I had asked him once if he had been to Australia, but he had not been out of England, he said.
On this occasion I remarked--"I shall not be long with this newspaper. Nurse shall give it to you when she comes in."
"I don't want to see it."
"Oh, very well." Do you think every one is as interested in your confounded Melbourne paper as you are?"
"No. But, oh!--here's the old murder and jewel robbery affair to the front again. Another arrest, by Tove?"
"What case is that?"
"Burnand's case, in Capitol Street, West Melbourne; the jeweller who was murdered. It got into the English papers. Don't you remember?"
"There are enough murders in this benighted country without my looking up records of Australian crime for my amusement," he said. "Ten to one they haven't got the right man: these wonderful police blunderers."
"It appears to be a woman this time."
"What?"
"A woman has been arrested, one Katherine Edmistoun, and the missing jewellery has been found in her possession."
"Why was it not telegraphed to the London papers, I wonder, weeks ago?" he said; "such glorious news too! So thoroughly satisfactory!"
"Perhaps it has been."
"No," he interrupted, "it hasn't. We should have seen it."
"Perhaps it was not considered of sufficient importance."
"What makes you so interested in it then?" he asked, snappishly. "What are you worrying about it for?"
"I am not worrying," I replied; "it is no business of mine."
We did not exchange further conversation. He closed his eyes, and presently was sleeping soundly, or feigning sleep, and I was left to the consideration of my murder case and of Australian news in general. Here was a new feature of interest in the arrest of Katherine Edmistoun, wife of a young fellow who had been in the mounted constabulary, and who, it was rumoured, had gone away on business to Queensland. It was supposed that this was a false report to account for the absence of the husband, who, it was thought now, was the prime mover in the burglary, and possibly the murderer of the shop-keeper. At all events, urgent inquiries, it seemed, were being made for Edmistoun in the big Australian cities and in the inland towns. It was said that he was still in the colony. Indeed, there were folk who were prepared to swear to having seen him a week or two before. At all events, suspicion was directed in this quarter, and Melbourne was alert and busy in a new direction. The woman had confessed nothing, and accounted for the possession of the jewellery by saying that her husband was holding the articles in trust, for the debt of a spendthrift friend of his, of the name of Poulson. That was all, she said. Had her husband been in any way connected with the robbery, surely he would not have left the jewellery with her, but have taken it away with him; and, still more surely, he would not purpose returning to Melbourne in a few more weeks. She did not know his address: he was a traveller, and went from town to town.
This was the story so far as it went. It had set me thinking. It had stirred my imaginative faculties. It had associated this Frank Linford with the man lying in the opposite corner of the room. In another part of the paper--amongst the advertisements—I came by chance upon a description of Frank Edmistoun, prefaced by a reward for his apprehension, and the sketchy description of the criminal was like the man yonder; so very like him that my blood ran cold in thinking how close I might be to murder.
I put my paper aside and thought over the position. What could I do? What was it my duty to do? Respect for the majesty of the law I might have--my profession had taught me that--but it was beyond my power to direct attention to this man, and sow the first suspicion which should hand him presently over to the executioner. I could not play the part of sleuthhound, the spy, the detective. I was too ready with my doubts of him--mere shreds of doubts as they were, hanging upon a woman's Christian name, muttered now and then in fever-haunted dreams.
III.
He was very reticent the rest of the day, answering me only in monosyllables when I spoke to him. At something which I had said in reply to one of his numerous rude speeches, he had evidently taken offence, and I did not admire his steady stare in my direction. His persistent watch upon me was not pleasant; for I knew that I was watched now, that he listened to every word which was said to me by the nurse, the doctor, the old college chum who looked me up in the afternoon, and lightened my weariness by his cheery words and hearty laughter. I felt that he was afraid of what I might say, of what ill-effect a chance word of mine might produce.
He did not ask for the Australian newspaper, which lay on my coverlet all day. I let it lie there, being curious to see if he would ask for it. But he did not; towards evening he read a book of his own, and was very self-possessed, and to his doctor and nurse almost inclined to jest.
"I shall be free of this place long before the time you give me, doctor," he said, laughing; "I am twice as strong as any of you imagine."
"You are getting on well now," was the reply; "time and patience, remember."
"Ah, I'm not a patient subject," he said. At ten o'clock that night we were both asleep. At twelve o'clock the nurse awoke me--noiseless as her footsteps were--by coming into the room, after the usual custom, to make sure that all was well with both of us. There was a little jet of gas burning from a swing branch over the mantelpiece, and by this light she saw that I was not asleep.
"You are wakeful. You do not sleep so soundly as he," she said.
"As a rule I do. But I do not dream as hard."
She smiled, and passed across the room to survey him keenly for a moment. Her presence there seemed to affect him in his sleep, for he murmured at once--
"Katie- I am so sorry, Katie--so dreadfully sorry for your trouble!"
The nurse withdrew and closed the door; but before she went from the room she turned suddenly, looked towards me, and put her fingers to her lips. It was an ordinary gesture not to disturb him by the slightest noise, so that he might drift into a deeper slumber and one less disturbed; but it impressed me very strangely that night. I was more imaginative than usual. I took it, for a moment, as a warning that I was to be on my guard against him.
A few minutes afterwards I was smiling at this to myself, for my own folly was an excessively amusing subject to me. Two men tied to their beds--prostrate, helpless, half inanimate, and wary of each other. The whole thing was preposterous, and I dozed off, smiling at the absurdity.
When I woke up again I was very much astonished. I was aghast with astonishment. Linford was lying wide awake in his bed reading my Australian newspaper. The gas jet over the mantelpiece had been turned up, and he was holding the paper in such a way that the full light might fall upon it. I could see that his hands were shaking as he read.
I lost my presence of mind here, and blurted out--
"How on earth did you get hold of that paper Linford?"
The paper was laid down, and the face that had been behind it looked across at me.
"I couldn't sleep. I wanted something to read--anything--even this wretched paper I thought would do."
"Yes. But how did you get it?"
"Nurse Alice gave it to me."
"No. I was awake when she came in."
"The first time, I suppose. She gave it to me half an hour ago. I asked her to pass it to me."
"Strange!"
"What's strange?" he insisted.
"That you should want to read my Australian paper--the paper you specially dislike--in the middle of the night."
"Oh, that's strange, is it?"
"There must be some news therein in which you are especially interested?"
"You think so?"
"I think it is not unlikely."
"You are a fool!" he exclaimed; "a prying, ignorant, meddling fool, and I have always thought so. What news could interest me especially?"
"You know best."
"Why don't you say the quarrel in the Australian Parliament between those two overgrown boobies--Swilt and Flaxman--both idiots. I know them well enough—that is, I have heard of them somewhere--or the jewel robbery, or—"
"Or the murder of the old man who came down to look after his goods, and was robbed of his life as well--why not?"
I said this as an experimental essay--a test question--to make sure; but I was not prepared for my own success. The paper dropped from his hand and slid off the bed-clothes to the floor, and the man looked dying as he lay there, so grey a hue had his face assumed.
"Are you in the police? Is all this a--a plant?" he gasped.
"I am not in the police."
"You are a dangerous man," he said in a low tone, almost in a whisper, to himself; "most dangerous--very."
He said no more, but lay breathing heavily. The lids closed over the dark eyes, and I thought, after awhile, he was asleep.
Matters had approached a crisis swiftly, and I wondered how we should get on together for the rest of the time we were enforced to share a room in a ward of St. Augustine's? What would the morrow bring forth, or the day following that morrow? An explanation that might clear up every doubt, or a confirmation of one's worst suspicions? A confession even, for this Katie's sake?
I dropped off to sleep at last, thinking of all this. It had been upon my mind, and for some inexplicable reason, to be extra watchful; but I gave way. I was very weak. The figure of Nurse Alice, with her finger to her lips, flitted before me like a vision in the dreamland to which I had gone--a vision without the power to wake me or to help me. And then suddenly I was wide awake and staring again, and wondering for a moment passively why the gas was out and I lying there in the darkness, until a second and sharper thought suggested that there was a necessity to be on guard--that there was danger close at hand--that all was not as it should be in St. Augustine's.
I lay and listened for the breathing of the man in the other bed. I fancied I could hear him: then I fancied I could not; and then that he was holding his breath lest I should hear. How had the gas gone out, and by whose hand? Had Linford contrived to leave his bed, as he had done probably some time before in order to obtain possession of the newspaper, and was he away from it again and in the room some- where in the dark? And why?
Was I really "dangerous" to his mind, as a some one who had discovered his secret, and who might bring him and Katie--his Katie--to justice, and was it not worth the risk to--
I held my breath in turn. Something or somebody was scuffling slowly across the floor towards me; a somebody dragging a dead weight with him: just as I might have done had I had had the nerve or the rashness to slide from my bed to the floor, and crawl towards the door or window.
"Linford!" I could not help exclaiming in sharp, ringing tones.
There was no answer, but I could hear the breathing now, and very close to me, and a hard and awful dog-like panting it was. I stretched out my hand towards the bell rope, and it came in contact with Linford's. He was drawing himself up with great difficulty by the side of my bed. He was close to me; his hands between me and the bell rope; his hot breath was on my face.
"You shall not tell!" was hissed in my ears, as by the voice of a serpent endowed with human speech, and I struck out wildly in the dark, and in my horror, at him. There was a sense of weight upon me, of hands at my throat, of suffocation; then I remembered no more. All was blank.
When I came round, there were half a dozen men and women in the room, and the gas was burning brightly again. Faces--anxious faces--were bending over me, and on the opposite bed lay a figure, very still, its face covered with a white sheet.
"Linford!" I gasped, "is he —"
"Yes--dead, poor fellow. Carried off in delirium. We found him out of bed lying on the floor.
"They did not offer any further explanation then, or thought it unsafe to tell me all the facts. They did not think I knew what had happened, or remembered. And I knew more than any of them, and kept the secret to myself long after I had left the hospital. I know not why. Perhaps for the sake of that man's wife, perhaps for his own sake, having gone red-handed to his Maker. I don't know for certain even now.