The Woman with One Hand (and) Mr. Ely's Engagement Part 8

That was what I said to him; but already, before I had said my say right out, I perceived that I was wrong: that the man I had hold of was not the man I thought he was. This man was shorter and of slighter build, and he showed more signs of fight than, within my experience, the other had evinced. He wriggled in my grasp like an eel, but, holding tightly on to him, I dragged him a little into the light.

When I succeeded in getting a glimpse at him there came from between my lips a series of interjections:--

"You!--James Southam!--Mr. Barnes! Good G.o.d!"

I had hardly spoken when he knocked me down. I was so taken by surprise that I was unable to offer the least resistance; he felled me again, as he had felled me before, as if I had been a ninepin. By the time I had realised what had happened I was lying on my back on the pavement. His hand was on my throat, and his knee was on my chest. He was peering closely into my face--so closely that I could feel his breath upon my cheeks.

"It's you again, is it? I thought it was. Don't you make a noise, or I'll choke the life right out of you. You tell me, straight out, what it is you want with me--do you hear?"

As if to drive his question well home, he gave my head a sharp tap against the pavement. His strength must have been prodigious. I was conscious that, with him above me thus and with that iron grasp upon my throat, I was wholly at his mercy. The hour was late. Although almost within a stone's throw of the Strand, the place was solitary; not a creature might pa.s.s just where we were the whole night through.

"Take your hand from my windpipe--I cannot speak--you are choking me,"

I gasped.

"Give me your word you will make no noise if I do. See here!"

He was clutching a knife--as ugly a looking knife as ever I saw. He brandished it before my eyes.

"I give my word," I managed to utter.

He relaxed his hold. It was a comfort to be again able to freely inflate my lungs, though the continued presence of his knee on my chest was none too pleasant. With the point of his knife he actually p.r.i.c.ked my nose.

"Don't you try to move, or I will cut your throat as if you were a pig. Lie still and answer my questions--and straight, mind, or you'll be sorry. What is it you want with me?"

"I want nothing from you--I have never wanted anything. You have been under an entire misapprehension throughout."

Once more, with gruesome sportiveness, he tickled my nose with his knife.

"Stow that, my lad! It's no good trying to catch this bird with salt.

How did you come to know that my name was James Southam?"

"I never did know it. The simple truth is that that name happened to be mine."

"What's that?"

"I say that that name happens to be mine--I am James Southam."

Bending down he glared at me with eyes which seemed to glow like burning coal.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean precisely what I say. If you choose to examine the contents of my pockets--they are at your mercy--you will find ample proof of the truth of what I say. Besides, I take it that you have had truth of this proof from the contents of the papers."

"The contents of the papers--what papers?"

I looked at him to see if his seeming ignorance of what I meant was real. It appeared to be.

"You and I, Mr. Southam, or Mr. Barnes, or whatever your name is, have been, and it would seem still are, at cross purposes. I take no more interest in your affairs than you take in mine--perhaps not so much.

The mention of my name seems to have awoke uncomfortable echoes in your breast, which fact is of the nature of an odd coincidence."

"You are not a policeman, or a detective, or a private inquiry agent, or anything of that kind--you swear it?"

"Very willingly. I am simply a poor devil of a clerk out of a situation. Why you should object to me, or, still more, why you should fear me, I have not the faintest notion."

He hesitated before he spoke again--then his tone was sullen.

"I don't know if you are lying: I expect you are: but anyhow, I'll chance it. I fancy that I'm about your match, if it's tricks you're after. If I let you get up, can I trust you?"

"You can: again I give you my word for it."

He let me rise. When I had done so, and was brus.h.i.+ng the dust off my clothes, I took his measure. Even by the imperfect light I could see how shabby he was, and how hollow his cheeks were. He seemed to have shrunk to half his size since that first short interview I had had with him.

"You will excuse my saying you don't look as if you have been living in clover."

"I haven't. I am nearly starving. It is that which has brought me back."

"Why did you ever go? Mrs. Barnes tells me that you are her husband. I should imagine that you had a pretty comfortable birth of it."

He glowered at me with renewed suspicion. "Oh, she has told you so much, has she? What has she told you more?"

"Very little. She has been half beside herself trying to think what has become of you, especially since this affair of Duncan Rothwell."

We had crossed the road and were on the Embankment, walking towards the City side by side. Although I had made the allusion of set purpose, I was scarcely prepared for the effect which it had on him.

Plainly, he was a person of ungovernable impulses. He stopped, swung, round, again the knife was gleaming in his grasp, and his hand was at my throat. But this time I succeeded in warding him off.

"What is the matter with you, man? Are you stark mad?"

He was breathing in great gasps. "What name--was that--you said?"

"Surely the name must be a familiar one to you by now. It has been to the front enough in all the papers."

"The paper! What papers?"

"The newspapers, man, of course!"

"How do I know what is in the newspapers? I never look at them. There is nothing in them which is of interest to me. What name was that you said? Tell me if you dare!"

He made a threatening gesture with his knife, seeming to be half frenzied with excitement.

"Duncan Rothwell--the man who was murdered at your wife's front door."

"Duncan Rothwell! Murdered--at my wife's--front door!"

The knife fell from his hand. He gave such a backward lurch that I half expected to see him fall down after it. In an instant, stooping, I had the knife in my grasp. I felt strongly that such a weapon was safer in my possession than in his. He did not seem for the moment to be conscious of what it was which he had lost and I had gained. He stood staring in front of him with an air of stupefaction. He repeated his own words over to himself, stammeringly, as if he were unable to catch their meaning: "Murdered--at my wife's--front door!"

"Where have you been living not to have heard of it? It has been the topic of every tongue."

I could see that he was struggling to collect his scattered senses. He spoke at last as if he were waking from a dream.