for a minute or more i must have stood gazing down on the damning words, unmoving, breathless almost. then i glanced at the quiet face on the pillow and back again to the tablet i held in my hand.
i am glad to know—proud, in the little pride i may call mine—that at that supreme moment i stood stanch; that i cried to myself: “it is a lie, born of his disease! he never did it!” that i dashed the tablet back upon the bed and that my one overwhelming thought was: “how may i defend this poor soul from himself?”
that he might die in peace with his conscience—that was the end of my desire. yet how was i, knowing so little, to convince him? disproof i had none, but only assurance of sympathy and a moral certainty that a nature so constituted could never lend itself to so horrible a deed.
in the midst of my confusion of thought a sudden idea woke in me and quickened into a resolve. i went swiftly out of the room, down the stairs, and walked in upon old peggy mumbling her bread and milk in the kitchen. i was going out for awhile, i told her, and bade her listen for any sound upstairs that might betoken uneasiness on the part of the patient.
for the time being there was no rain to greet me as i stepped outside, but the wind still blew boisterously from the east, and the sky was all drawn and wrapt in a doleful swaddle of cloud. sternly and without hesitation i made my way to the house of dr. crackenthorpe. an anaemic, cross-looking servant girl was polishing what remained of the handle of the front door with a tattered doeskin glove.
“is the doctor inside?” i said to her.
she left the glove sticking on the handle like a frouzy knocker, and stood upright looking down upon me.
“what do you want with him?” she said.
“i wish to see him on private business.”
“he’s at his breakfast. he won’t thank you for troubling him now.”
“i don’t want him to thank me. i wish to see him, that’s all.”
“well, then, you can’t—and that’s all.”
i pushed past her and walked into the hall and she followed me clamoring.
the ugly voice i knew well called from a back room i had not yet been into: “what’s that?”
i turned the handle and walked in. he was seated before a stained and dinted urn of copper, and a great slice of toast from which he had just bitten a jagged semicircle was in his hand.
“i told him you was at breakfast,” said the cross girl, “but nothing ’ud suit his lordship but to drive his elbow into my chest and walk in.”
she emphasized her little lie with a pressure of her hand upon the presumably wounded part.
“assault and battery,” said the doctor, showing his teeth. “get out of my house, fellow.”
“after i’ve had a word with you.”
“eh? edith, go and fetch a constable.”
“certainly,” i said. “the very thing i should like. i’ll wait here till he comes.”
he called to the girl as she was running out: “wait a bit! leave the fellow with me and shut the door.”
she obeyed sulkily and we were alone together.
he went on with his breakfast with an affectation of unconcern and took no notice of me whatever.
“i believe you wished me to let you know, dr. crackenthorpe, if i should be in further need of your services?”
he swallowed huge gulps of tea with an unpleasant noise, protruding his lips like a gargoyle, but answer made he none.
“i am in need of your services.”
he dissected the leg of a fowl with professional relish, but did not speak. in a gust of childish anger that was farcical i nipped the joint between finger and thumb and threw it into the fire.
for an instant he sat dumfounded staring at his empty plate; then he scrambled to his feet and ran to the mantelshelf all in a scurry of fury and began diving among the litter there and tossing it right and left.
“the pistol—the pistol!” he muttered, in a cracked voice. “where is it? what have i done with it?”
“never mind. you expect a fee for your services, i suppose?”
he slackened in his feverish search and i saw he was listening to me.
“you don’t want to kill the goose with the golden eggs, i presume?” said i, coolly.
he twisted round and faced me.
“you have a rude boorish insistence of your own,” he cried at me hoarsely. “but i suppose i must value it for what it’s worth. it’s the custom to ask a fee for professional services.”
“you volunteered yours, you know.”
he shrugged his shoulders.
“quite so,” he said. “the matter lies with you.”
“with you, i think. in visiting my father the other night you had no secret hope, i suppose, that we should pay you in the sort of coin you have already had too much of?”
“you insult me, sir.”
“unwittingly, i assure you. will you answer me one question? is there the remotest chance of my father recovering from this attack?”
“not the remotest—not of his definitely rallying even, i should say.”
“is that only an opinion?”
“bah! miracles don’t occur in surgery. he is practically a dead man, i tell you.”
“why do you adopt this attitude to me, then, if you have an eye to a particular sort of fee?”
“perhaps i wanted proof that the old man was past levying toll on.” a wicked smile wrinkled his mouth. “perhaps i satisfied myself he was, and from you i expected no consideration or justice.”
“you can leave that out of the question. a mere business contract is another matter, and that is what i come to propose.”
“oh, indeed!”
he said it with a sneer, but moved nevertheless nearer the table, so that we could talk without raising our voices.
“may i ask the nature of this stupendous contract?”
“i will tell you without asking. i make you this offer—to hand over to you all that remains of the treasure on one condition.”
“and that is?”
“that you tell me how my brother modred came by his death.”
he gave a little start; then dropped his eyes, frowning, and drummed with his fingers on the table. i saw he understood; that he was groping in his mind for some middle course, whereby he could satisfy all parties and secure the prize for himself.
“if your father didn’t do it,” he was beginning, but i took him up at the outset.
“you know he didn’t! it is a foul lie of such a man. dr. crackenthorpe”—my voice, despite my stubborn resolve, broke a little—“he is lying there on his deathbed, despairing, haunted with the thought that it was he who in a fit of drunken madness strangled the life in his own son. it is all hideous—monstrous—unnatural. you know more about it, i believe, than any man. you were sitting with him that night.”
“but he left me awhile.”
“you know it wasn’t in his nature to do such a thing!”
“pardon me. i have always looked upon your father as a dangerous, reckless fellow.”
“i won’t believe it. you know more than you will say—more than you dare to tell. oh, if that churchyard fellow had only lived i would have had the truth by now.”
“i hope so, though you do me the honor to hold me implicated with him in some absurd and criminal secret, and on the strength of a little delirious raving—not an uncommon experience in the profession, trust me.”
“i don’t appeal to your charity or your mercy. there’s a rich reward awaiting you if you tell what you know and ease the old dying man’s mind. further than that—if you withhold the truth and let him pass in his misery, i swear that i’ll never rest till i’ve dragged you down and destroyed you.”
he bent his body in a mocking and ungainly bow.
“i really can’t afford to temporize with my conscience for any one living or dead. as it is, i have allowed myself to slip into the position of an accomplice, which is an extreme concession on my part of friendly patronage toward a family that has certainly never studied to claim my good offices.”
i looked at him gloomily. i could not believe even now that he would dismiss me without some by-effort toward the prize that he saw almost within his grasp; and i was right.
“still,” he went on, “i don’t claim infallibility for my deduction. i shall be pleased, if you wish it, to return with you and if possible to question the patient.”
i was too anguished and distraught to reject even this little thread of hope. perhaps it was in me that at the last moment the sight of that stricken figure at home might move the cold cynicism of the man before me to some weak warmth of charity.
he bade me wait in the hall while he finished his breakfast and i had nothing for it but to go and sit down under the row of smoky prints.
he kept me a deliberate while, and then came forth leisurely and donned his brown coat, that was hanging like a decayed pirate beside me. we walked out together.
the mill greeted us with no jarring thunder as we entered its door, for the discord of its phantom grinding i had myself silenced.
i listened as we climbed the wooden stairs for any sound from the room above, but only the echo of our footfalls reverberated in the lonely house.
no sign of old peggy had i seen, but, when i pushed open the door of my father’s room there she was standing by his bed and leaning over.
at the noise of our entrance she twisted her head, gave a sort of sudden pee-wit cry and tumbled upon the floor in a collapsed heap, the tablet from the bed in her hand.
