Tom Ossington's Ghost Part 25

At the sound of her voice the man turned again, and stared.

"I beg your pardon. Were you speaking to me?"

"I was, and am. Mr. Graham has spoken to me of you, and I am quite certain that in doing so he has told us nothing but the exact and literal truth. In the light of what he has said, I know that I am giving expression to our common feeling in saying that we shall feel obliged to you if you will come in."

The man hesitated, fumbling with his hands, as if nonplussed.

"It's a good many years since I was spoken to like that."

"Possibly it's a good many years since you deserved to be spoken to like that. As a rule, that sort of speech is addressed to us to which we are ent.i.tled."

"That's true. By G.o.d, it is!"

"I believe I asked you to moderate your language."

"I beg your pardon; but it's a habit--of some standing."

"Then if that is the case, probably the time is come that it should die. Please let it die--if for this occasion only. Must I repeat my invitation, and press you to enter, in face of the eagerness to effect an entrance which it seems that you have already shown?"

Mr. Ballingall continued to exhibit signs of indecision.

"This isn't a trap, or anything of that kind?"

"I am afraid I hardly understand you. What do you mean by a trap?"

"Well"--his lips were distorted by what was possibly meant for a grin--"it doesn't want much understanding, when you come to think of it."

"We ask you to come in. If you accept our invitation you will of course be at liberty to go again whenever you please. We certainly shall make no effort to detain you, for any cause whatever."

"Well, if that's the case, it's a queer start, by----" He seemed about to utter his accustomed imprecation; then, catching her eyes, refrained, adding, in a different tone, "I think I will."

He did, pa.s.sing first one leg over the sill, and then the other. When the whole of his body was in the room he removed his hat, the action effecting a distinct improvement in his appearance. The departure of the disreputable billyc.o.c.k disclosed the fact that his head was not by any means ill-shaped. One perceived that this had once been an intelligent man, whose intelligence was very far from being altogether a thing of the past. More, it suggested the probability of his having been good-looking. Nor did it need a keen observer to suspect that if he was shaven and shorn, combed and groomed, and his rags were exchanged for decent raiment, that there was still enough of manliness about him to render him sufficiently presentable. He was not yet of the hopelessly submerged; although just then he could scarcely have appeared to greater disadvantage. His clothes were the scourings of the ragman's bag--ill-fitting, torn, muddy. His boots were odd ones, whose gaping apertures revealed the sockless feet within. In his whole bearing there was that indefinable, furtive something which is the hall-mark of the wretch who hopes for nothing but an opportunity to s.n.a.t.c.h the wherewithal to stay the cravings of his belly, and who sees an enemy even in the creature who flings to him a careless dole. This atmosphere which was about him, of the outcast and the pariah, was heightened by the obvious fact that, at that very moment, he was hungry, hideously hungry. His eyes, now that they were more clearly seen, were wolfish. In their haste to begin their treasure-hunting they had not even waited to take away the tea-things. The man's glances were fastened on the fragments of food which were on the table, as if it was only by an effort of will that he was able to keep himself from pouncing on them like some famished animal.

Madge perceived the looks of longing.

"We are just going to have supper. You must join us. Then we can talk while we are eating. Ella, help me to get it ready. Sit down, Mr.

Ballingall, I daresay you are tired--and perhaps you had better close the window. Ella and I shall not be long."

They made a curious trio, the three men, while the two girls made ready. Ballingall closed the window, with an air half sheepish, half defiant. Then placed himself upon a seat, in bolt upright fas.h.i.+on, as if doubtful of the chair's solidity. Jack took up a position in the centre of the hearthrug, so evidently at a loss for something appropriate to say as to make his incapacity almost pathetic--apparently the unusual character of the situation had tied his tongue into a double knot. Graham's att.i.tude was more complex. The portion of the wainscot which he had undertaken to displace not having been entirely removed, resuming his unfinished task, he continued to wrench the boards from their fastenings as if intentionally oblivious of the new arrival's presence.

Nor was the meal which followed of a familiar type. The resources of the larder were not manifold, but all that it contained was placed upon the table. The _piece de resistance_ consisted of six boiled eggs.

"If you boil all those eggs," Ella declared, when Madge laid on them a predatory hand, "there'll be nothing left in the house for breakfast."

"The man is famished," retorted Madge with some inconsequence.

"What does breakfast matter to us if the man is starving." So the six were boiled. And he ate them all. Indeed he ate all there was to eat--devoured would have been the more appropriate word. For he attacked his food with a voracity which it was not nice to witness, bolting it with a complete disregard to rules which suggest the advisability of preliminary mastication.

It was not until his wolf-like appet.i.te was, at least, somewhat appeased by the consumption of nearly all the food that was on the table, that Madge approached the subject which was uppermost in all their thoughts.

"As I was saying, Mr. Ballingall, Mr. Graham has told us of all that pa.s.sed between you."

At the moment he had a piece of bread in one hand and some cheese in the other--all the cheese that was left. The satisfaction of his appet.i.te seemed to have increased his ferocity. Cramming both morsels into his mouth at once, he turned on her with a sort of half-choked snarl.

"Then what right had he to do that?"

"It seems to me that he had a good deal of right."

"How? Who's he? A lawyer out of a job, who comes and offers me his services. I'm his client. As his client I give him my confidence.

Looking at it from the professional point of view only, what right has he to pa.s.s my confidence on to any one?--any one! He's been guilty of a dirty and disgraceful action, and he knows it. You know it, you do."

He snarled across the board at Graham. "If I were to report him to the Law Society they'd take him off the rolls."

"I question it."

Madge's tone was dry.

"You may question it--but I know what I'm talking about. What use does he make of the confidence which he worms out of me?"

"I wormed nothing out of you." The interruption was Graham's.

"Whatever you said to me was said spontaneously, without the slightest prompting on my part."

"What difference does that make?--Then what use does he make of what I said spontaneously? He knows that I am a poor driven devil, charged with a crime which I never committed. I explain to him how it happened that that crime comes to be laid against me, how I've been told that there's money waiting for me in a certain place, which is mine for the fetching, and how, when I went to fetch it, I was snapped for burglary. I'm found guilty of what I never did, and I get twelve months. In this country law and justice are two different things.

What does my lawyer--my own lawyer, who pressed on me his services, mind!--do, while I'm in prison for what I never did? He takes advantage of my confidence, and without a word to me, or a hint of any sort, he goes and looks for my money--my money, mind!--on his own account--and for all I know he's got it in his pocket now."

"That he certainly has not."

This was Madge.

"Then it isn't his fault if he hasn't. Can you think of anything dirtier? not to speak of more unprofessional? Why one thief wouldn't behave to another thief like that--not if he was a touch above the carrion. Here have I, an innocent man, been rotting in gaol, think, think, thinking of what I'd do with the money when I did come out, and here was the man who ought to have been above suspicion, and whom I thought was above suspicion, plotting and planning all the time how he could rob me of what he very well knew was the only thing which could save me from the outer darkness of h.e.l.l and of despair."

Graham motioned Madge to silence.

"One moment, Miss Brodie. You must not suppose, Mr. Ballingall, that because I suffer you to make your sweeping charges against me without interruption, that I admit their truth, or the justice of the epithets which you permit yourself to apply to me. On the contrary, I a.s.sert that your statements are for the most part wholly unjustifiable, and that where they appear to have some measure of justification, they are easily capable of complete explanation. Whatever you may continue to say I shall decline to argue with you here. If you will come to my rooms I will give you every explanation you can possibly desire."

"Yes, I daresay,--and take the earliest opportunity of handing me over to the first convenient copper. Unless I'm mistaken, that's the kind of man you are."

Madge caught the speaker by the sleeve of his ragged coat, with a glance at Graham, whose countenance had grown ominously black.

"If you will take my advice, Mr. Ballingall, since it is plain that you know nothing of the mind of man Mr. Graham really is, instead of continuing to talk in that extremely foolish fas.h.i.+on you will listen to what I have to say. The night before last we were the victims of an attempted burglary----"

"I did it--you know I did it. I give myself away--if there's any giving about it. You can whistle for a constable, and give me into charge right off; I'm willing. Perhaps it'll turn out to be the same bobby I handled before, and then he'll be happier than ever."

"I am sorry to learn that you were the burglar--very sorry. My friend, Miss Duncan, and I were alone in the house, a fact of which you were probably aware." That Mr. Ballingall might still be possessed of some remnants of saving grace was suggested by the fact that, at this point, he winced. "Other considerations aside, it was hardly a heroic action to break, at dead of night, into a lonely cottage, whose only inmates were a couple of unprotected girls."

"There was a revolver fired."

"As you say, there was a revolver fired--by me, at the ceiling. Does that tend to strengthen the evidence which goes to show that the deed, on your part, was a courageous one?"

"I never said that it was."