house of horror I saw the door begin slowly to open.
I suppose I ought to have cried out, but once again I was fascinated by what might happen at any moment, and perhaps in sheer wonder as to what was coming in. It was nothing worse, as it turned out, than the little, old grey-haired man I had seen in the further room, and who had evidently followed us. He crept in now, step by step, with that curious smile upon his face, and when he was fairly in the room closed the door – I noticed that it closed with a sharp little click, as though it had a spring lock.
Dr. Bardolph Just did a curious thing. As the lock clicked he suddenly sat rigid, gripping the arms of his chair, and staring at me as though from my face he would learn what was behind him. Seeing, I suppose, nothing in my expression to guide him, he suddenly swung sharply round and faced the little old man; and I thought at that moment that a quick sigh broke from him, as of relief. I wondered what he had expected to see.
"What the devil do you want?" he demanded, in a voice raised but little above a whisper. "Why do you follow me about?"
The old man spread out his hands in a deprecating fashion, and shook his head. "Nothing, sir," he said, "nothing at all. But he won't speak to me – and he has never been like that before. I don't understand it. I knelt beside him just now, and his dress was different – and – and – " I saw his hands go up to his lips, and pluck at them in that strange fashion – "and he won't speak to me."
The doctor turned from him to me, and shrugged his shoulders. "This is a nice apparition to be following a man about," he said petulantly. "I can't make him out at all."
"Who is he?" I ventured to ask in a whisper.
"The servant of the dead man – one of those faithful old fools that attach themselves to you, and won't be shaken off, I suppose. He came here to-night, following his unfortunate master. What the deuce am I to do with him?"
"He seems harmless enough," I whispered. "But isn't it rather dangerous to have him about here, after the fraud that has been committed. Won't he speak? Won't he say that this dead man is not the escaped convict, but his master?"
"There's no fear of that," replied the other. "I tell you something has snapped in his brain; he doesn't understand. If I turned him out into the world now, he would remember nothing, and would have no story to tell, even if he were questioned. But I don't want to turn him out – and yet he haunts me."
"You say he changed in a moment?" I asked.
Dr. Just nodded. "When he saw his master dead, he simply cried out, and afterwards remained as you see him now. I must dispose of him for the night, at least," he said, getting to his feet, and approaching the old man. "Come, Capper, I want you."
The little old man looked round at him as he said that name, and I saw a faint fear come into his eyes. He shrank away a little, but the doctor grasped his arm quickly, and drew him towards the door. He went out in that grasp passively enough, and I was left alone again.
I had almost fallen asleep, worn out with the excitements of the day, when the doctor came back again. I started to my feet drowsily, and faced him.
"Good-night!" he said, and held out his hand to me – a cold hand, but firm and strong in its touch. "You may see and hear strange things in this house," he added, "but it is not your business to take any notice of them. You will be, I hope, properly grateful to me – the man who has saved you, and given you a new lease of life."
"Yes, I shall be grateful," I promised him.
He conducted me to a room in what seemed to be an outlying wing of the house, and left me to my own reflections. In truth, I was too tired to give much time to thought. I slipped off my clothes and got into bed, and was asleep in five minutes.
But I was not destined to sleep well, after all. In the first place, I was troubled most unaccountably by dreams, in which I saw myself going through the most extraordinary adventures, and finally hanging to what seemed to be the roof of Penthouse Prison, with the little old man of the grey hair grinning up at me from the ground below. And through my dreams there appeared always to go the light, quick figure of that girl I had seen in the grounds of the house; and always she went searching for someone. I dreamed at last that she came straight to me, and took me by the arms, and stared at me, and cried out that she had found the man she wanted. And so I sat up in bed in the darkness, struggling with someone very real, who was gripping me.
I almost shrieked, as I rolled out of bed, and tried to disengage myself from the arms of a man who was clinging to me. I contrived to drag him towards the window, where, by the faint light of the stars outside, I saw that it was the man Capper – that seemingly half-witted creature who had been the servant of the dead man.
"What do you want?" I ejaculated.
"I've been dreaming," said Capper.
"Well, what of that?" I demanded testily, "I've been dreaming, too."
"Yes, but not dreams like mine," whispered the old man, looking fearfully over his shoulder. "Tell me, do you think they'll come true?"
"I don't know what they were," I reminded him.
He clutched me by the arm, and stared up in my face. There seemed almost a light of madness in his eyes. "I dreamed that it happened a long time ago – before my head went wrong. I dreamed of a blow struck in the dark; I thought someone (it might have been myself, but I'm not sure even of that) – I dreamed that someone screamed, 'Murder!'"
In a growing excitement he had raised his voice almost to a scream; I clapped my hand over his lips as he got out the dreadful word. I felt my hair stirring on my scalp. I wondered if by chance something dreadful had happened in that house, of which this old man knew, and the memory of which was locked away in that closed brain of his.
"Let me stay here to-night," he pleaded, clinging to me. "I'll be still as a mouse; I'll lie in this corner on the floor."
So I let him lie there, and I went back to my bed. For a long time I lay awake, watching him and thinking about him; but gradually towards the morning I fell asleep, and slept heavily. When I awoke at last, with the sun shining in at my window, the man was gone, and my door stood open.
That was to be a day of happenings. Even now my mind holds but a confused memory of them, in which I seem to be now myself, and now some other man; now living on hope, and now sunk into the depths of fear and despair. For what I have to tell seems so incredible, that only by some knowledge of the man who carried the plot boldly through can any idea of how the business was arranged be arrived at.
Dr. Bardolph Just acted with promptness and decision that day. A messenger flew down towards London to summon the police; and a telegram sped over the wires back to Penthouse Prison. The missing convict had been found; all the world might come to the house of Dr. Bardolph Just, and see this thing for themselves. At the last, when we actually expected the enemy to arrive at our gates, as it were, I nervously plucked the doctor's sleeve, and whispered a question.
"What about his hair? They'll be sure to notice that."
He smiled a little pityingly, I thought; but then, to the very end the man retained some contempt for me. "Come and see for yourself," he said.
So I went back with him into that room where we had left the dead man, and there I saw a miracle. For while I slept the doctor had been at work, and the head of poor Gregory Pennington was cropped as closely as my own. I shuddered and turned away.
"How you ever contrived to escape puzzles me," said Bardolph Just. "You haven't half my courage."
The man was certainly amazing. He met everything blandly; he was firm, and quiet, and dignified with this official and with that. He told me afterwards all that he did, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. For my own part, of course, I had to keep out of the way, and I spent most of my time in the spacious grounds surrounding the house. There was an old ruined summer-house at one corner, under a high wall; and there, fortified with a few of the doctor's cigars, I awaited quietly the turn of events. According to the doctor's description to me afterwards, what happened was this:
In the first place, the puzzle fitted so neatly together that there was no feeling of suspicion. A tall, well-built, dark-haired man, in the clothes of a convict,