First Person Paramount Part 12

The girl left her lover and hurried forward. She stooped over the patient and looked into his eyes. "Ah, my poor fellow!" she murmured soothingly in English, "you are awake at last, I see. It is all over now--all over--nothing more to fear now. Soon you will be well and strong. Stronger than you have ever been in your life before--for you are cured."

He looked up at her with a dull, vacant stare, then uttered a little gasp of pain, for Dr. Fulton had plunged the hypodermic needle in his arm.

The injection's effect was miraculous. Within three minutes his face flushed crimson, his dull eyes brightened, and he actually attempted to sit up. Marion, however, gently pressed him back, but she allowed his head to rest upon her arm.

"I--I--feel fine!" he gasped.

"Hus.h.!.+" said Marion; "you must not talk. You must be very good and keep still, for that is the only way you can get better."

Sir Charles Venner pressed a gla.s.s into her hand.

"Try and drink this," she proceeded. "It is not medicine, only a little brandy and water. Ah! that's right. You'll do splendidly now. There, my boy, shut your eyes, and try to sleep. You'll soon sleep, and you'll wake well and strong."

The poor lad obeyed her, and he seemed to sleep immediately, but Marion's prophecy was not fulfilled. He never opened his eyes again.

For a long hour we watched him, the hearts of us all racked with anxiety. Every few minutes Dr. Fulton injected some drug into his arm, and by degrees the full force of the battery was applied. But all in vain.

"He is dead!" said Dr. Fulton at last, stepping dejectedly from the gla.s.s stool. "Turn off the battery, Vernet, please."

"Our nineteenth failure!" observed Sir Charles Venner, folding his arms and looking down at the corpse with a face of stone. "And they have all died of shock. Nothing else."

Mr. Cavanagh started forward. "How can you be sure of that?" he demanded. "How do you know that your accursed solution did not poison him?" The young man's face was the hue of ivory, but his big eyes were ablaze with pa.s.sion.

Sir Charles Venner gave a wintry smile. "We have proved it beyond doubt," he replied. "We have tested the blood a hundred times."

"Bah!" retorted Cavanagh with a savage sneer. "A fig for your tests.

But even if they are reliable, how do you know that he did not bleed to death from the wound you made in his heart?"

"Test again, autopsy. Would you care to see? Look here!" He caught up a knife and approached the corpse. "I'm willing, Cavanagh, to bet you a thousand pounds that not one drop of blood has pa.s.sed my puncture in the ventricle!"

"Done!"

"Venner," cried Dr. Fulton, "Venner, you are betting on a certainty."

"Then I'll pay the stake I win to any charity you like to name." Sir Charles Venner bent over the body, but even as he poised the knife to cut, Mr. Cavanagh cried out in strangled tones: "Stop! I--I withdraw."

Venner looked up with a cold sneering laugh. "Then pay!" said he.

"No--no! I--I--can't afford it." Mr. Cavanagh put his right hand into his breast pocket. His countenance was perfectly livid. He stepped back a pace and looked at Marion.

"George!" she cried, "what ails you, dear?" She was trembling like a leaf in the wind.

"Life!" he answered, and uttered a laugh that still echoes in my ears.

Next instant he produced a revolver and before our eyes put the muzzle to his mouth. There followed a click, a sharp report, and he fell at our feet a corpse.

There are periods of crisis in human happenings when a cycle of years may be compressed into a few minutes of ordinary time, and such a period was that which succeeded the tragedy I have described. I felt my soul grow cold and hard and more old than all my previous life had made it. I stood like a frozen image gazing at the artist's clay, waiting in an agony of expectation for Marion to scream. But she made no cry, and after a long, most dreadful pause, something impelled me to look at her. She was swaying to a fall and already insensible. I took her in my arms and bore her senseless body from the awful room. At the door, however, I was obliged to halt, for the threshold was occupied with the two negroes and the wrinkled old woman I had seen in the kitchen the first night I had visited the hospital. They were transfixed with horror, and I had to force a pa.s.sage for my burden. In doing so, involuntarily I turned. Dr. Fulton was kneeling beside Mr. Cavanagh examining his wound. Sir Charles Venner stood at a little distance puffing calmly at a cigarette. I shuddered and pa.s.sed on. Where I would have gone, Providence alone knows. But the old woman followed me, crying out in a cracked voice in French: "But, M'sieur, why not come this way, to Mademoiselle's own room."

She led me to a prettily furnished little chamber at the very end of the corridor. I laid Marion very gently down upon the bed, and turned to the old woman, who was already fussing at my side with salts and sal volatile.

"Don't touch her!" I commanded sternly. "Let her sleep as long as G.o.d wills. She will awake too soon in any case to the misery this night has brought her."

"As Monsieur pleases!" replied the beldame, and with a look of ghoulish delight she hurried off, doubtless to gloat over the corpses in the operating room.

Left alone, I leaned over the unconscious girl, and softly pressed my lips upon her beautiful, but clay cold brow. An angel could not have been the worse for that caress, for in my heart there was no thought save of pitiful and tender reverence.

A moment later I was traversing the pa.s.sage, on my way to the staircase. Someone called to me as I pa.s.sed the chamber of death, but I paid no heed, and I descended the steps as quickly as I could. The hall door stood before me. The latch yielded to my touch. Issuing forth I banged it shut, and ran out into the night as though I were pursued with furies. On alighting from my cab at the Marble Arch I glanced at my watch. To my astonishment it pointed barely to midnight. I thought it must have stopped, but the public-houses were still open.

A second cab took me to Bruton Street, whence having changed my attire, I drove to my master's house. As I entered I noted upon the floor at my feet a paste-board visiting card, which had evidently been slipped beneath the door by a disappointed caller. I picked it up and held it to the light, uttering, as I read, a long, low whistle of surprise. It was inscribed with three printed words: "Mr. Sefton Dagmar."

V

THE CAMPAIGN OPENS

That paste-board gave me a shock; it sent a chill, creepy feeling down my spine. It smelt dangerous. I read the name again: "Mr. Sefton Dagmar!" So, while my master was away journeying down to Newhaven to keep the appointment, I had fabricated, with his nephew; by a snarl of chance, his nephew had called at his house in London. Perhaps they had pa.s.sed each other on the road.

I turned over the card and received a second shock. Across it was scrawled in pencil:--"Will call to-morrow morning at 10. Urgent."

"Curse the luck!" I muttered. "Uncle and nephew will meet and my master will learn that, in spite of his injunction not to leave the house, I disobeyed him. Subsequent discoveries will infallibly re-excite his first and easily smothered distrust of myself!" It seemed to be more than ever important that the secret of the ident.i.ty of my master's impersonator should be preserved and that not the remotest breath of suspicion should attach to me. Otherwise it would be impossible to improve my fortunes without a.s.suming the naked and hideous character of a blackmailer, the very idea of which was bitterly repugnant to my disposition. I hurried into Sir William Dagmar's library, lit the gas and caught up a time-table. It informed me that the first pa.s.senger train from Newhaven would arrive in London on the following morning at 10.15. I made a hasty calculation. It would take Sir William fifteen minutes to drive from the station, and the train might be a little late, trains often are. If Mr. Sefton Dagmar therefore might be relied on to be punctual, I should have at least half an hour wherein to smoothe out the snarl of fate arranged for my undoing. Much might be done in half an hour! Relieved by the reflection, I put out the light and went upstairs to bed. I was very tired, but I cannot truthfully declare that I slept. Whenever my eyes closed I saw horrid visions. Mr.

Cavanagh lying on the floor with his skull shattered and blood oozing from the hole in his head; or a white faced man stretched upon a marble slab with a dreadful b.l.o.o.d.y cavity in his chest; sometimes a hairy chested ape similarly situated! G.o.d defend me from such another night!

At dawn I arose from my bed of torture and lay for an hour in a plunge bath filled with hot water. A subsequent ice cold shower and a careful toilet restored to my appearance its pristine freshness, but there were many grey hairs about my temples which I had never seen before. I am not a lover of wine, but I dared not face the day without support, and I derived the stimulus I needed from a bottle of my master's champagne.

Afterwards I felt better, but I also felt that I should never be able to smile light-heartedly again. The hours that followed I devoted to thoughts of Marion Le Mar. I admitted to myself that I loved her, and deep down in my heart I knew that for her sake and at her bidding I would sacrifice, if need arose, anything, even my life. It was a strange conviction that, to be entertained by a man like me--a man whose motto had ever been--"First person paramount." And yet I speedily recognized that it was as much a part of me as my hand, and might only as easily be combated or parted with. I had no hope of winning her, however, no hope at all, hardly even a wish. She seemed set as far beyond my reach as the stars, and her contemplation inspired me with a realization of my unworthiness and her divinity which was neither humiliating nor discomforting. "For," thought I, "the stars s.h.i.+ne upon us all, the n.o.ble and the base alike, and who shall say that they discriminate between the ardent looks of wors.h.i.+ppers?"

The bell rang and I opened the door for Mr. Sefton Dagmar. In one second I comprehended why Sir William disliked his nephew. My master, for all his faults, was a deep-natured man of large mental mould.

Before me stood his absolute ant.i.thesis. I saw a small, shallow, smiling, cunning face, that betrayed to the keen observer every emotion of the mind. The features were regular, even handsome, yet puny, and the soul that looked out of his eyes was facile, treacherous and sycophantic. He wore a slight yellow moustache, and his eyebrows were white. He looked too young. I judged him to be twenty-five. He was tall and very slight; he wore a pale brown overcoat and a suit beneath of tasteless checked tweed.

"Mr. Sefton Dagmar?" I asked with deference.

He nodded, looking me swiftly up and down. "Uncle in?" he airily demanded.

"No, sir; but I expect him shortly. Will you step inside?"

"Might as well," he drawled, but he entered with alacrity, and I led the way to the ante-chamber.

"Where is my uncle?" he enquired, as I removed his overcoat.

"I do not know, sir?"

"He got my card, I suppose?"

"Not yet, sir. He has been away."

"All night?"

"Yes sir."