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“Done for me! What have you ever done for me except what you couldn’thelp doing? It was for your good name, not for my safety, that youcared. But enough cackle! I must get on my way before morning. Will youopen your safe or will you not?”
“Oh, James, how can you use me so?” cried a wailing voice, and thenthere came a sudden little scream of pain. At the sound of that helplessappeal from brutal violence I lost for once that temper upon which I hadprided myself. Every bit of manhood in me cried out against any furtherneutrality. With my walking cane in my hand I rushed into the study. AsI did so I was conscious that the hall-door bell was violently ringing.
“You villain!” I cried, “let him go!”
The two men were standing in front of a small safe, which stood againstone wall of the Doctor’s room. St. James held the old man by the wrist,and he had twisted his arm round in order to force him to produce thekey. My little head master, white but resolute, was struggling furiouslyin the grip of the burly athlete. The bully glared over his shoulder atme with a mixture of fury and terror upon his brutal features. Then,realizing that I was alone, he dropped his victim and made for me with ahorrible curse.
“You infernal spy!” he cried. “I’ll do for you anyhow before I leave.”
I am not a very strong man, and I realized that I was helpless if onceat close quarters. Twice I cut at him with my stick, but he rushed in atme with a murderous growl, and seized me by the throat with both hismuscular hands. I fell backwards and he on the top of me, with a gripwhich was squeezing the life from me. I was conscious of his malignantyellow-tinged eyes within a few inches of my own, and then with abeating of pulses in my head and a singing in my ears, my senses slippedaway from me. But even in that supreme moment I was aware that thedoor-bell was still violently ringing.
When I came to myself, I was lying upon the sofa in Dr. McCarthy’sstudy, and the Doctor himself was seated beside me. He appeared to bewatching me intently and anxiously, for as I opened my eyes and lookedabout me he gave a great cry of relief. “Thank God!” he cried. “ThankGod!”
“Where is he?” I asked, looking round the room. As I did so, I becameaware that the furniture was scattered in every direction, and thatthere were traces of an even more violent struggle than that in which Ihad been engaged.
The Doctor sank his face between his hands.
“They have him,” he groaned. “After these years of trial they have himagain. But how thankful I am that he has not for a second time stainedhis hands in blood.”
As the Doctor spoke I became aware that a man in the braided jacket ofan inspector of police was standing in the doorway.
“Yes, sir,” he remarked, “you have had a pretty narrow escape. If we hadnot got in when we did, you would not be here to tell the tale. I don’tknow that I ever saw any one much nearer to the undertaker.”
I sat up with my hands to my throbbing head.
“Dr. McCarthy,” said I, “this is all a mystery to me. I should be gladif you could explain to me who this man is, and why you have toleratedhim so long in your house.”
“I owe you an explanation, Mr. Weld—and the more so since you have, inso chivalrous a fashion, almost sacrificed your life in my defence.There is no reason now for secrecy. In a word, Mr. Weld, this unhappyman’s real name is James McCarthy, and he is my only son.”
“Your son?”
“Alas, yes. What sin have I ever committed that I should have such apunishment? He has made my whole life a misery from the first years ofhis boyhood. Violent, headstrong, selfish, unprincipled, he has alwaysbeen the same. At eighteen he was a criminal. At twenty, in a paroxysmof passion, he took the life of a boon companion and was tried formurder. He only just escaped the gallows, and he was condemned to penalservitude. Three years ago he succeeded in escaping, and managed, inface of a thousand obstacles, to reach my house in London. My wife’sheart had been broken by his condemnation, and as he had succeeded ingetting a suit of ordinary clothes, there was no one here to recognizehim. For months he lay concealed in the attics until the first search ofthe police should be over. Then I gave him employment here, as you haveseen, though by his rough and overbearing manners he made my own lifemiserable, and that of his fellow-masters unbearable. You have been withus for four months, Mr. Weld, but no other master endured him so long. Iapologize now for all you have had to submit to, but I ask you what elsecould I do? For his dead mother’s sake I could not let harm come to himas long as it was in my power to fend it off. Only under my roof couldhe find a refuge—the only spot in all the world—and how could I keep himhere without its exciting remark unless I gave him some occupation? Imade him English master therefore, and in that capacity I have protectedhim here for three years. You have no doubt observed that he neverduring the daytime went beyond the college grounds. You now understandthe reason. But when to-night you came to me with your report of a manwho was looking through his window, I understood that his retreat was atlast discovered. I besought him to fly at once, but he had beendrinking, the unhappy fellow, and my words fell upon deaf ears. When atlast he made up his mind to go he wished to take from me in his flightevery shilling which I possessed. It was your entrance which saved mefrom him, while the police in turn arrived only just in time to rescueyou. I have made myself amenable to the law by harbouring an escapedprisoner, and remain here in the custody of the inspector, but a prisonhas no terrors for me after what I have endured in this house during thelast three years.”
“It seems to me, Doctor,” said the inspector, “that, if you have brokenthe law, you have had quite enough punishment already.”
“God knows I have!” cried Dr. McCarthy, and sank his haggard face uponhis hands.
THE BROWN HAND
Every one knows that Sir Dominick Holden, the famous Indian surgeon,made me his heir, and that his death changed me in an hour from ahard-working and impecunious medical man to a well-to-do landedproprietor. Many know also that there were at least five people betweenthe inheritance and me, and that Sir Dominick’s selection appeared to bealtogether arbitrary and whimsical. I can assure them, however, thatthey are quite mistaken, and that, although I only knew Sir Dominick inthe closing years of his life, there were none the less very realreasons why he should show his goodwill towards me. As a matter of fact,though I say it myself, no man ever did more for another than I did formy Indian uncle. I cannot expect the story to be believed, but it is sosingular that I should feel that it was a breach of duty if I did notput it upon record—so here it is, and your belief or incredulity is yourown affair.
Sir Dominick Holden, C.B., K.C.S.I., and I don’t know what besides, wasthe most distinguished Indian surgeon of his day. In the Armyoriginally, he afterwards settled down into civil practice in Bombay,and visited as a consultant every part of India. His name is bestremembered in connection with the Oriental Hospital, which he foundedand supported. The time came, however, when his iron constitution beganto show signs of the long strain to which he had subjected it, and hisbrother practitioners (who were not, perhaps, entirely disinterestedupon the point) were unanimous in recommending him to return to England.He held on so long as he could, but at last he developed nervoussymptoms of a very pronounced character, and so came back, a broken man,to his native county of Wiltshire. He bought a considerable estate withan ancient manor-house upon the edge of Salisbury Plain, and devoted hisold age to the study of Comparative Pathology, which had been hislearned hobby all his life, and in which he was a foremost authority.
We of the family were, as may be imagined, much excited by the news ofthe return of this rich and childless uncle to England. On his part,although by no means exuberant in his hospitality, he showed some senseof his duty to his relations, and each of us in turn had an invitationto visit him. From the accounts of my cousins it appeared to be amelancholy business, and it was with mixed feelings that I at lastreceived my own summons to appear at Rodenhurst. My wife was socarefully excluded in the invitation that my first impulse was to refuseit, but the interests of the children had to be considered, and so, withher consent, I set out one October afternoon upon my visit to Wiltshire,with little thought of what that visit was to entail.
My uncle’s estate was situated where the arable land of the plainsbegins to swell upwards into the rounded chalk hills which arecharacteristic of the county. As I drove from Dinton Station in thewaning light of that autumn day, I was impressed by the weird nature ofthe scenery. The few scattered cottages of the peasants were so dwarfedby the huge evidences of prehistoric life, that the present appeared tobe a dream and the past to be the obtrusive and masterful reality. Theroad wound through the valleys, formed by a succession of grassy hills,and the summit of each was cut and carved into the most elaboratefortifications, some circular and some square, but all on a scale whichhas defied the winds and the rains of many centuries. Some call themRoman and some British, but their true origin and the reasons for thisparticular tract of country being so interlaced with entrenchments havenever been finally made clear. Here and there on the long, smooth,olive-coloured slopes there rose small rounded barrows or tumuli.Beneath them lie the cremated ashes of the race which cut so deeply intothe hills, but their graves tell us nothing save that a jar full of dustrepresents the man who once laboured under the sun.
It was through this weird country that I approached my uncle’s residenceof Rodenhurst, and the house was, as I found, in due keeping with itssurroundings. Two broken and weather-stained pillars, each surmounted bya mutilated heraldic emblem, flanked the entrance to a neglected drive.A cold wind whistled through the elms which lined it, and the air wasfull of the drifting leaves. At the far end, under the gloomy arch oftrees, a single yellow lamp burned steadily. In the dim half-light ofthe coming night I saw a long, low building stretching out two irregularwings, with deep eaves, a sloping gambrel roof, and walls which werecriss-crossed with timber balks in the fashion of the Tudors. The cheerylight of a fire flickered in the broad, latticed window to the left ofthe low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of myuncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to makemy host’s acquaintance.
He was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumnhad set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glowof the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian noseand cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinistermarks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance withsomething of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst.At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that itwas a very critical pair of light-blue eyes which looked out at me fromunder shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that thisoutlandish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with allthe ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world.
For my part I looked at him, and looked again, for I had never seen aman whose appearance was more fitted to hold one’s attention. His figurewas the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away his coat dangledstraight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and bonyshoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could nottake my gaze from his knobby wrists, and long, gnarled hands. But hiseyes—those peering light-blue eyes—they were the most arrestive of anyof his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it theambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which Iread in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were masterful,and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his eyes, butinstead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed andcrushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has takenthe whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon oneglance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he wasstricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed tosudden death, and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgment—afalse one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you torealize the look which I read in his eyes.
My uncle’s welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an houror so I found myself seated between him and his wife at a comfortabledinner, with curious pungent delicacies upon the table, and a stealthy,quick-eyed Oriental waiter behind his chair. The old couple had comeround to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband andwife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, findthemselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and theend nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness andlove, who can change their winter into a gentle Indian summer, have comeas victors through the ordeal of life. Lady Holden was a small, alertwoman, with a kindly eye, and her expression as she glanced at him was acertificate of character to her husband. And yet, though I read a mutuallove in their glances, I read also a mutual horror, and recognized inher face some reflection of that stealthy fear which I detected in his.Their talk was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, but there was a forcednote in their merriment and a naturalness in their sadness which told methat a heavy heart beat upon either side of me.
We were sitting over our first glass of wine, and the servants had leftthe room, when the conversation took a turn which produced a remarkableeffect upon my host and hostess. I cannot recall what it was whichstarted the topic of the supernatural, but it ended in my showing themthat the abnormal in psychical experiences was a subject to which I had,like many neurologists, devoted a great deal of attention. I concludedby narrating my experiences when, as a member of the Psychical ResearchSociety, I had formed one of a committee of three who spent the night ina haunted house. Our adventures were neither exciting nor convincing,but, such as it was, the story appeared to interest my auditors in aremarkable degree. The
y listened with an eager silence, and I caught alook of intelligence between them which I could not understand. LadyHolden immediately afterwards rose and left the room.
