The Man with a Shadow

“Ah, North! Why, you seem better. Let me get you a chair. You want no introductions, and I’ll leave you together.”

He approached North with a chair, and the latter took it, gazing keenly at the visitors the while; but as Thompson was passing he caught him by the collar and checked him, holding him fast, as he threw the chair from him with a crash.

Thompson turned white as so much curd, and tried for a moment to extricate himself, but his cousin’s grasp was like iron, and he turned a pitiable face to the two visitors, the taller of whom advanced quickly.

“My dear Dr North,” he said, “pray be calm. Another seat, my dear sir; pray sit down.”

North seemed as if he had not heard him. He had searchingly gazed from one to the other, and then his eyes appeared to blaze as his left hand joined his right at Thompson’s throat.

“You cursed, treacherous, cowardly hound!” he literally yelled, and dashing him backward, so that he fell with a crash against a table, which was overturned, North strode from the room without another word, and made the house echo with the bang he gave the door.

Thompson did not attempt to rise till the visitors held out their hands to assist him to a couch.

“My dear sir, are you hurt?” asked the first man.

“Hurt!” cried Thompson savagely. “Could you be half strangled and then thrown down without being hurt? But you see now. You doubted before: you see now.”

“Yes, perfectly,” said the second visitor calmly. “Oh, yes, I think that we are quite satisfied now. What do you say?”

“Perfectly,” said the first slowly; and as soon as the lawyer had satisfied himself that he was not seriously hurt, they adjourned to the library, where Mrs Milt was summoned to provide sherry and biscuits; and soon after the two visitors re-entered their carriage, and were driven back to King’s Hampton in time to catch the first train back to town.

Volume Three – Chapter Thirteen.

Mrs Milt Takes up Lunch

“The last hope gone!” cried North, as he rushed upstairs and entered his room, to close and lock the door, overcome, as it were, with a despairing dread.

“I might have known it,” he panted excitedly. “The cruel, treacherous hound! I might have known that he had some hidden meaning in what he was doing. Friend from town – no faith in any one but me, forsooth! And I such a miserable, easily deceived child that I was ready to believe it all.”

Without thinking of what he did, he seated himself at the dressing-table, rested his elbows thereon, and gazed straight before him in the glass, but without seeing his distorted, haggard face.

“And it has come to that!” he groaned.

He, in his cunning, is taking all the necessary steps, such as a legal practitioner would know to be necessary, and I am to be carried off on these men’s certificates to some death in life, while my affectionate Cousin Thompson takes possession here.

“And he could,” he mused; “everything has been arranged for him. I am not mad; I am perfectly sane, but, Heaven knows, I am acting like a madman – like one possessed. I go always with this terrible shadow enveloping me, and I cannot shake it off, try how I may.

“What shall I do?

“Salis! No, I cannot tell him. Mr Delton? No, no, no! I could not speak out. What would they say? They must declare it to be a mania if I tell them the simple truth, and how dare I confess to having instituted those experiments on Luke Candlish?

“Was ever man so cursed for his endeavours? I have branded myself as one who is mad, and I must bear the stigma.”

He clenched his fist and glared before him, recalling the scene in his drawing-room, and burst into a scornful laugh – a laugh so full of savage anger that he started and looked wildly about him in dread.

He calmed down though in a few minutes, and sat repeating the words that had passed.

“I must have been blind not to have seen it before,” he cried aloud; “and now what is to follow?”

He looked up at the light shining down through the drawn curtain, and hurriedly shut it out, to reseat himself and think.

Flight! Yes, he could easily escape from his cousin and his machinations – the Continent – America – or he might boldly face him, and prove that the charge of lunacy was without basis.

But how, when he dared not show his face anywhere lest he should betray himself before his fellow-men?

“It is of no use,” he sighed bitterly; “I am conquered and I must succumb.

“But Cousin Thompson?

“Curse him!” he cried passionately, as he rose and began his old wild-beast tramp again. “What fate is too bad for such a man? Why did I not keep my hold when I had him by the throat?”

He stopped short, and in a paroxysm of mental agony threw himself upon a chair, nerveless, helpless, ready to give up and think that his cousin was right, and that the sooner he was placed under restraint the better, or else sought that other way of escape from his troubles.

As he writhed there in his agony, Mrs Milt was coming up the stairs with a tray covered with a fair white napkin, and on which was a covered dish exhaling an odour which the old dame had settled in her own mind would be certain to tempt her master.

“Poor fellow!” she said to herself; “he’s half starving himself, and perhaps I’ve done wrong in letting him have his own way. I ought to have gone up and made him eat. He’d have scolded and abused me, but I should have done him good.”

Mrs Milt had nearly reached the room, when she uttered an ejaculation of horror, and, setting down the tray upon the carpet, ran swiftly back to close a baize door.

“If he heard it,” she half sobbed, “he would think poor master mad, and heaven knows what would happen then.”

She hurried again to where she had left the tray, and then on to the door, as from within she heard a wild burst of boisterous laughter, and then a fierce oath, and the sounds of a struggle, ending in a crash as of a table being overturned.

“What shall I do?” groaned the poor woman, as, for the moment, she clapped her hands to her face, and stopped her ears, but only to snatch them down wildly, as the strange sounds continued. “He must be alone here, and if I call for help they’ll say he’s mad.”

She stood wringing her hands for a time as a terrible scene appeared to be taking place within that closed room. There was the trampling of feet – the sound as of a struggle. North’s voice in angry denunciation of some one who kept bursting forth into mocking peals of laughter, and then shouting as men shout when excited with the chase, till the room re-echoed. Then again North’s voice came, as if speaking furiously in a low voice, which changed directly afterwards to one of piteous appeal, breaking off into a moan. As the doctor’s voice ceased there was another mocking laugh, apparently from close by the door, and directly after came a crash as if a chair had been used as a weapon, a blow had been struck, and the chair shivered. While vividly painting the scene in her own mind, helped as she was by the sounds, the old housekeeper seemed to see her master hurl the portion of a broken chair which remained in his hands into the corner of the room, where it rattled upon the floor.

“There’s murder being done,” panted the old woman, as she caught at the handle of the door now, and stood clinging to it, while she pressed her other hand upon her heaving bosom.

As if in answer to her words, there was another coarse burst of laughter, and the sound of some one bounding to the door, two hands seeming to shake the panel, and her master’s voice came through, muffled but distinct.

“Curse you! I have you now! Is there no way of forcing you back into your grave?”

A loud rustling sound as of a struggle which was continued to the other side of the room, and the housekeeper’s hair felt to her as if something cold and strange were moving it, while a deathly perspiration broke out upon her face.

“Who is in there with him?” she thought. “What does it mean? There must be some one there, and murder is being done. Help! help!” she shrieked in her agony of fear, as she rattled the handle of the door, and beat upon the panels. “Help! help!” and then in her horror she turned and staggered towards the stairs, as the door was flung open, she felt herself seized from behind and dragged into the room, the door swinging to, and she was forced backwards in the utter darkness, listening to the hoarse sound of the hot breath which fanned her cheek as a hand was pressed heavily over her mouth.

Volume Three – Chapter Fourteen.

An Opportune Arrival

“Silence, you mad woman! Do you want to bring them here? Do you want to have me dragged away like some miserable prisoner?”

“Oh, master – dear master,” sobbed the frightened woman piteously, as the hand was removed from her lips, and she sank at North’s knees and embraced them. “What does it all mean? – what does it all mean?”

“What does all what mean?”

“All that noise – that noise?” sobbed the housekeeper in a broken voice. “Have you – have you killed him?”