When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 17

"Been on his back like that for fifteen years, has he?" So says the officer looking at the prostrate figure of the old man on the couch. He is not asleep now--far from it. His mouth begins to move, uttering jargon. His one living eye has light in it. There is something he wants to say and struggles for in vain. "Can't make much out of that," is the verdict of his male hearer. His daughter can say that he is asking his visitor's name and what he wants. He can understand when spoken to, she says. But the intruder is pointing at the door leading to the roof.

"Where does that go to?" he asks.

"Out on the tiles. I'll see for the key and let you through, if you'll stop a minute." It is the only good bit of acting she has done. Perhaps despair gives histrionic power. She sees a chance of deferring the breaking-down of that door, and who knows what may hang on a few minutes of successful delay? Before she goes she suggests again that the paralysed man will understand what is said to him if spoke to plain.

Clearly, he who speaks plain to him will do a good-natured act.

Whether the officer's motives are Samaritan or otherwise, he takes the hint. As the woman gets out of hearing, he says:--"You are the master of this house, I take it?" And his hearer's crippled mouth half succeeds in its struggle for an emphatic a.s.sent. He continues:--"In course you are.

I'm Sub-Inspector Cardwell, N Division. There's a man concealed in your house I'm after. He's wanted.... Who is he?"--a right guess of an unintelligible question--"You mean what name does he go by? Well--his name's Daverill, but he's called Thornton or Wix as may be. P'r'aps you know him, sir?" Whether or no, the name has had effect electrically on its hearer, who struggles frantically--painfully--hopelessly for speech.

The officer says commiseratingly:--"Poor devil!--he's quite off his jaw"; and then, going to the open window, calls out to his mates of the river-service, below in the garden:--"Keep an eye on the roof, boys."

Then he goes out on the stair-landing. That woman is too long away--it is out of all reason. As he pa.s.ses the paralytic man, he notes that he seems to be struggling violently for something--either to speak or to rise. He cannot tell which, and he does best to hasten the return of the woman who can.

Out on the landing, Miss Hawkins, who has not been looking for keys, but supplying her first Sunday customers in their own jugs, protests that she has fairly turned the house over in her key-hunt--all in vain! Her interest seems vivid that these police shall not be kept off her roof.

She suggests that a builder's yard in the Kew Road will furnish a ladder long enough to reach the roof. "Shut on Sunday!" says Sub-Inspector Cardwell conclusively. Then let someone who knows how be summoned to pick the lock. By all means, if such a person is at hand. But no trade will come out Sunday, except the turn-c.o.c.k, obviously useless. That is the verdict. "You'll never be for breaking down the door, Mr. Inspector, with my father there ill in the room!"--is the woman's appeal. "Not till we've looked everywhere else," is the reply. "I'll say that much. I'll see through the cupboards in the room, though. _That_ won't hurt him."

Little did either of them antic.i.p.ate what met their eyes as the door opened. There on the couch, no longer on his back, but sitting up and gasping for clearer speech, which he seemed to have achieved in part, was the paralysis-stricken man. The left hand, powerless no longer, was still uncertain of its purpose, and wavered in its ill-directed motion; the right, needed to raise him from his pillow, grasped the level moulding of the couch-back. Its fingers still showed a better colour than those of its fellow, which trembled and closed and reopened, as though to make trial of their new-found power. His eyes were fixed on this hand rather than on his daughter or the stranger. His knees jerked against the light bondage of a close dressing-gown, and his right foot was striving to lift or help the other down to the floor. Probably life was slower to return to it than to the hand, as the blood returns soonest to the finger-tips after frost. Only the face was quite changed from its seeming of but ten minutes back. The voice choked and stammered still, but speech came in the end, breaking out with a shout-burst:--"Stop--stop--stop!"

"Easy so--easy so!" says the police-officer, as the woman gives way to a fit of hysterical crying, more the breaking-point of nerve-tension than either joy or pain. "Easy so, master!--easy does it. Don't you be frightened. Plenty of time and to spare!"

The old man gets his foot to the floor, and his daughter, under no impulse of reason--mere nerve-paroxysm--runs to his side crying out:--"No, dear father! No, dear father! Lie down--lie down!" She is trying to force him back to his pillow, while he chokes out something he finds it harder to say than "Stop--stop!" which still comes at intervals.

"I should make it easy for him, Miss Hawkins, if I was in your place.

Let the old gentleman please himself." Thus the officer, whose sedateness of manner acts beneficially. She accepts the suggestion, standing back from her father with a stupid, bewildered gaze, between him and the exit to the roof. "Give him time," says Sub-Inspector Cardwell.

He takes the time, and his speech dies down. But he can move that hand better now--may make its action serve for speech. Slowly he raises it and points--points straight at his daughter. He wants her help--is that it? She thinks so, but when she acts on the impulse he repels her, feebly shouting out: "No--no--no!"

"Come out from between him and the clock, missis," says the officer, thinking he has caught a word right, and that a clock near the door is what the old man points at. "He thinks it's six o'clock."

But the word was not _six_. The daughter moves aside, and yet the finger points. "It's nowhere near six, father dear!" she says. "Not one o'clock yet!" But still the finger points. And now a wave of clearer articulation overcomes a sibilant that has been the worst enemy of speech, and leaves the tongue free. "Wix!" That's the word.

"Got it!" exclaims the officer, and the woman with a shriek falls insensible. He takes little notice of her, but whistles for his mate below--a peculiar whistle. It brings the man who was keeping watch in the lane. "Got him all right," says his princ.i.p.al. "Out here on the tiles. That's your meaning, I take it, Mr. Hawkins?" The old man nods repeatedly. "And he's took the key out with him and locked to the door.

That's it, is it?" More nods, and then the officer mounts the short ladder and knocks hard upon the door. He speaks to the silence on the other side. "You've been seen, Mr. Wix. It's a pity to spoil a good lock. You've got the key. We can wait a bit. Don't hurry!"

Footsteps on the roof, and a shout from the garden below! He is seen now--no doubt of it--whatever he was before. What is that they are calling from the garden? "He's got a loose tile. Look out!"

"Don't give him a chance to aim with it," says Jacomb below to his chief on the ladder. Who replies:--"He's bound to get half a chance. Keep your eyes open!" A thing to be done, certainly, with that key sounding in the lock.

The officer Cardwell only waited to hear it turn to throw his full weight on the door, which opened outwards. He scarcely waited for the back-click to show that the door, which had no hasp or clutch beyond the key-service, was free on its hinges. Nevertheless, he was not so quick but that the man beyond was quicker, springing back sharp on the turn of his own hand. Cardwell stumbled as the door gave, unexpectedly easily, and nearly fell his length on the leads.

Jacomb, on the second rung of the step-ladder, feels the wind of a missile that all but touches his head. He does not look round to see what it strikes, but he hears a cry; man or woman, or both. In front of him is his princ.i.p.al, on his legs again, grasping the wrist of the right hand that threw the tile, while his own is on its owner's throat.

"All right--all right!" says Mr. Wix. "You can stow it now. I could have given you that tile under your left ear. But the right man's got the benefit. You may just as well keep the snitchers for when I'm down.

There's no such * * * hurry." Nevertheless, the eyes of both officers are keen upon him as he descends the ladder under sufferance.

On the floor below, beside the bed he lay on through so many weary years, lies Miss Julia's old father, stunned or dead. Her own insensibility has pa.s.sed, but has left her in bewilderment, dizzy and confused, as she kneels over him and tries for a sign of life in vain.

At the ladder-foot the officers have fitted their prisoner with handcuffs; and then Cardwell, leaving him, goes to lift the old man back to his couch. But first he calls from the window:--"Got him all right!

Fetch the nearest doctor."

Through the short interval between this and Daverill's removal, words came from him which may bring the story home or explain it if events have not done so already. "The old * * * has got his allowance. _He_ won't ask for no more. Who was he, to be meddling? You was old enough in all conscience, July-ar!" His p.r.o.nunciation of her name has a hint of a sneer in it--a sneer at the woman he victimised, some time in the interval between his desertion of his wife and his final error of judgment--dabbling in burglary. She might have been spared insult; for whatever her other faults were, want of affection for her betrayer was not among them, or she would not have run the risks of concealing him from the police.

Her paralytic father's sudden reanimation under stress of excitement was, of course, an exceptionally well-marked instance of a phenomenon well enough known to pathologists. It had come within his power to avenge the wrong done to his daughter, and never forgiven by him.

Whether the officers would have broken down the door, if he had not seized his opportunity, may be uncertain, but there can be no doubt that the operative cause of Daverill's capture was his recovery of vital force under the stimulus of excitement at the amazing chance offered him of bringing it about.

The affair made so little noise that only a very few Sunday loiterers witnessed what was visible of it in the lane, which was indeed little more than the unusual presence of two policemen. Then, after a surgeon had been found and had attended to the injured man, it leaked out that a malefactor had been apprehended at The Pigeons and taken away in the police-boat to the Station lower down the river.

That singular couple, Michael Ragstroar and his great-aunt, had got to the cherry-tart before a pa.s.sing neighbour, looking in at their window, acquainted them what had happened. If after Michael come from the bake-'us with the meat, which kep' hot stood under its cover in the sun all of five minutes and no one any the worse, while the old lady boiled a potato--if Michael had not been preoccupied with a puppy in this interim, he might easy have seen the culprit took away in the boat. He regretted his loss; but his aunt, from whom we borrow a word now and then, pointed out to him that we must not expect everything in this world. Also the many blessings that had been vouchsafed to him by a Creator who had his best interests at heart. Had he not vouchsafed him a puppy?--on lease certainly; but he would find that puppy here next time he visited Hammersmith, possibly firmer in his gait and nothing like so round over the stomach. And there was the cherry-tart, and the crust had rose beautiful.

Michael got home very late, and was professionally engaged all the week with his father. He saw town, but nothing of his neighbours, returning always towards midnight intensely ready for bed. By the time he chanced across our friend Dave on the following Sat.u.r.day, other scenes of London Life had obscured his memory of that interview at The Pigeons and its sequel. So, as it happened, Sapps Court heard nothing about either.

The death of Miss Hawkins's father, a month later, did not add a contemptible manslaughter to Thornton Daverill's black list of crimes.

For the surgeon who attended him--while admitting to her privately that, of course, it was the blow on the temple that brought about the cause of death--denied that it was itself the cause; a nice distinction. But it seemed needless to add to the score of a criminal with enough to his credit to hang him twice over; especially when an Inquest could be avoided by accommodation with Medical Jurisprudence. So the surgeon, at the earnest request of the dead man's daughter, made out a certificate of death from something that sounded plausible, and might just as well have been cessation of life. It was n.o.body's business to criticize it, and n.o.body did.

CHAPTER XV

THE BEER AT THE KING'S ARMS. HOW UNCLE MO READ THE _STAR_, LIKE A CHALDEAN, AND BROKE HIS SPECTACLES. HOW THE _STAR_ TOLD OF A CONVICT'S ESCAPE FROM A JUG. HOW AUNT M'RIAR OVERHEARD THE NAME "DAVERILL," AND WAS QUITE UPSET-LIKE. HER DEGREES AND DATES OF INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MAN AND HIS ANTECEDENTS. UNCLE MO'S IGNORANCE ABOUT HERS. HOW SHE DID NOT GIVE THE _STAR_ TO MRS. BURR INTACT

The unwelcome visitor who, in the phrase of Uncle Mo, had made Sapps Court stink--a thing outside the experience of its inhabitants--bade fair to be forgotten altogether. Michael, the only connecting link between the two, had all memory of the Hammersmith arrest quite knocked out of his head a few days later by a greater incident--his father having been arrested and fined for an a.s.sault on a compet.i.tor in business, with an empty sack. It was entirely owing to the quality of the beer at the King's Arms that Mr. Rackstraw lost his temper.

But Daverill's corruption of the Court's pure air was not destined to oblivion. It was revived by the merest accident; the merest, that is, up to that date. There have been many merer ones since, unless the phrase has been incorrectly used in recent literature.

One day in July, when Uncle Moses was enjoying his afternoon pipe with his old friend Affability Bob, or Jerry Alibone, and reading one of the new penny papers--it was the one called the _Morning Star_, now no more--he let his spectacles fall when polis.h.i.+ng them; and, rashly searching for them, broke both gla.s.ses past all redemption. He was much annoyed, seeing that he was in the middle of a sensational account of the escape of a prisoner from Coldbath Fields house of detention; a gaol commonly known the "The Jug." It was a daring business, and Uncle Mo had just been at the full of his enjoyment of it when the accident happened.

"Have you never another pair, Mo?" said Mr. Alibone. And Uncle Mo called out to Aunt M'riar:--"M'riar!--just take a look round and see for them old gla.s.ses upstairs. I've stood down on mine, and as good as spiled 'em. Look alive!" For, you see, he was all on end to know how this prisoner, who had been put in irons for violence, and somehow got free and overpowered a gaoler who came alone into his cell, had contrived his final escape from the prison.

Mr. Alibone was always ready to deserve his name of Affability Bob.

"Give me hold of the paper, Mo," said he. "Where was you?... Oh yes--here we are!... 'almost unparalleled audacity.' ... I'll go on there." For Uncle Mo had read some aloud, and Mr. Alibone he wanted to know too, to say the truth. And he really was a lot better scollard than Mo--when it came to readin' out loud--and tackled "unparalleled" as if it was just nothing at all; it being the word that brought Moses up short; and, indeed, Aunt M'riar, whom we quote, had heard him wrestling with it through the door, and considered it responsible for the accident. Anyhow, Mr. Jerry was equal to it, and read the remainder of the paragraph so you could hear every word.

"What I don't make out," said Uncle Mo, "is why he didn't try the same game without getting the leg-irons on him. He hadn't any call to be violent--that I see--barring ill-temper."

"That was all part of the game, Mo. Don't you see the game? It was putting reliance on the irons led to this here warder making so free.

You go to the Zoarlogical Gardens in the Regency Park, and see if the keeper likes walking into the den when the Bengal tiger's loose in it.

These chaps get like that, and they have to get the clinkers on 'em."

"Don't quite take your idear, Jerry. Wrap it up new."

"Don't you _see_, old Mo? He shammed savage to get the irons on his legs, knowing how he might come by a file--which I don't, and it hasn't come out, that I see. Then he spends the inside o' the night getting through 'em, and rigs himself up like a picter, just so as if they was on. So the officer was took in, with him going on like a lamb. Then up he jumps and smashes his man's skull--makes no compliments about it, you see. Then he closes to the door and locks it to enjoy a little leisure.

And then he changes their sootes of cloze across, and out he walks for change of air. And he's got it!"

Uncle Mo reflected and said:--"P'r'aps!" Then Aunt M'riar, who had hunted up the gla.s.ses without waking the children, reappeared, bringing them; and Uncle Mo found they wouldn't do, and only prevented his seeing anything at all. So he was bound to have a new pair and pay by the week.

A cheap pair, that would see him out, come to threepence a week for three months.

The discovery of this painful fact threw the escaped prisoner into the shade, and the _Morning Star_ would have been lost sight of--because it was only Monday's paper, after all!--unless Aunt M'riar she'd put it by for upstairs to have their turn of it, and Mrs. Burr could always read some aloud to Mrs. Prichard, failing studious energy on the part of the old lady. She reproduced it in compliance with the current of events.

For Uncle Moses, settling down to a fresh pipe after supper, said to his friend, similarly occupied:--"What, now, was the name of that charackter--him as got out at the Jug?"