The Ivory Gate, a new edition Part 55

'He's mad,' said Mr. Dering. 'Poor man! Age makes some men forgetful, but it has driven Checkley mad.'

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE THREE ACCOMPLICES

On that same evening the three accomplices--probably on the proceeds of their iniquities--were dining together at the _Savoy_. After dinner they sat on the verandah overlooking the river and the embankment. 'Tis sweet, what time the evening shades prevail, while one is still in the stage of physical comfort and mental peace attendant upon an artistic little banquet, to view from the serene heights of a balcony at that hotel the unquiet figures of those who flit backwards and forwards below. They--alas!--have not dined so well, or they could not walk so fast, or drag their limbs so hopelessly, or lean over the wall so sadly.

Elsie leaned her head upon her hands, looking down upon this scene, though not quite with these thoughts. Young ladies who are quite happy, and are going to be married next week, do not make these comparisons.

Happiness is selfish. When one is quite happy, everybody else seems quite happy too--even Lazarus and the leper. We must never be happy if we do not wish to be selfish.

Coffee was on the table. Athelstan had a cigar. They were all three silent. During dinner they had talked gaily, because everybody knows that you cannot talk with strange people listening. After dinner they sat in silence, because it is only when the waiters are gone that one is free to talk.

'Elsie,' said George presently, 'you have something to tell us--something you have discovered. For my own part, since I handed the case over to anybody else, I feel as if I were not interested in it. But still, one would like to know--just for curiosity's sake--when Checkley is to be "run in."'

'Yes,' said Elsie, 'I must tell you. Perhaps I ought to have told you before. Yet there was a reason. Now--you will be greatly astonished, George.'

'Before you begin, Elsie '--Athelstan removed his cigar--'I must tell you that yesterday evening I, too, made a discovery--what the Americans call a pivotal discovery--a discovery that discovers everything. I should have told you last night, but you announced your communications for this evening, and I thought we would expose our discoveries at the same time.'

'You have found out too!' Elsie cried. 'I see by your face that you have. Well, Athelstan, so much the better. Now, tell your discovery first, and I will follow.'

'It is this. I have discovered Edmund Gray. I have sat with him and discoursed with him, in Freddy Carstone's Chambers. He came in, sat beside me, and conversed for more than an hour.'

'Oh!' said Elsie. 'Then you know all--as much as I know.'

'Observe,' George interposed, 'that I know nothing as yet.'

'Wait a moment, George. Learn that I have myself known Mr. Edmund Gray for a fortnight. You will think, perhaps, that I ought to have told you before. Well--but there is a reason--besides, the way, to begin with, did not lie quite clear before me. Now the time has come when you should advise as to the best course to follow.'

'You have certainly been more mysterious than any oracle, Elsie. Yet you will bear witness, if it comes to bearing witness, that I accepted your utterances and believed in them.'

'You certainly did, George.--And now, Athelstan, tell him the whole.'

'In one word then--Edmund Gray, the man we have been looking after so long, is none other than Edward Dering, of 12 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, Solicitor.'

'I don't understand,' said George, bewildered. 'Say it all again.'

Athelstan repeated his words.

'That is my discovery, too,' said Elsie. 'Now you know all, as you understand.'

'But I don't understand. How can one man be another man?'

'I sat beside one man,' Athelstan added, 'for an hour and more; and lo!

all the time he was another man.'

'And still I am fogged. What does it mean?'

'It means, George, what you would never suspect. The one man received me as a stranger. He knew nothing about me: he had never heard my name, even. Yet the other man knows me so well. It was very odd at first. I felt as if I was talking to a sleep-walker.'

'Oh!' cried George, 'I know now. You have seen Mr. Dering in a kind of sleep-walking state-- I too have seen him thus. But he said nothing.'

'You may call it sleep-walking if you like. But, George, there is another and a more scientific name for it. The old man is mad. He has fits of madness, during which he plays another part, under another name.

Now, do you understand?'

'Yes--but--is it possible?'

'It is more than possible; it is an actual certainty. Wait. Let Elsie tell her story.'

Then Elsie began, with a little air of triumph, because it is not given to every young lady to find out what all the men have failed to find.

'Well--you see--I was always thinking over this business, and wondering why nothing was found out about it, and watching you look this way and that, and it occurred to me that the first thing of all was to find out this Mr. Edmund Gray and lay hands upon him. At first I thought I would just go and stand outside his door all day long and every day until he came. But that seemed a waste of time. So I remembered how you found his door open, and went in and spoke to the laundress. I thought that I would do the same thing, and sit down there and wait until he should come. But I was afraid to sit in the rooms of a strange man all alone--no, I could not do it. So I just found out the old woman--the laundress--as you did, George, and I gave her money, and she told me that Mr. Gray was at his Chambers almost every Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Very well; if anybody chose to wait for him all Sat.u.r.day afternoon, he would certainly be found. So on Sat.u.r.day afternoon I took a cab and drove to Holborn, and got to the place before his arrival. But again, as it was not quite nice to stand at an open doorway in a public Square, I thought I would wait on the stairs. So I mounted--the doors were all closed--n.o.body was left in the place at all--I thought I should be perfectly safe and undisturbed, when I heard the noise of footsteps overhead--a tramp, tramp, tramp up and down, with every now and then a groan--like a hungry creature in a cage. This kept on for a long time, and frightened me horribly. I was still more frightened when a door overhead opened and shut and the footsteps came down-stairs. They belonged to a man--an elderly man--who seemed as much frightened at seeing me as I was at seeing him. He asked me whether I wanted any one; and when I said I wanted Mr. Edmund Gray, he said that he was a friend of Mr. Gray's, and that, since I was a friend too, I might act for Edmund Gray and lend him some money. He looked desperately poor and horribly hungry and thin and shabby, the poor old man!'

'So you acted for Edmund Gray. That was old Langhorne. He is a barrister, who lives in the garret, and is horribly down on his luck.--Go on.'

'Poor Elsie!' said George. 'Think of her, all alone on the staircase!'

'When he was gone, there was no sound at all. The place was perfectly quiet. The time pa.s.sed so slowly--oh! so slowly. At last, however, I heard a step. It came up the stairs. Oh! my heart began to beat. Suppose it should be Mr. Edmund Gray. Suppose it was some other person. Suppose it was some horror of a man! But I had not long to wait, because Mr.

Edmund Gray himself stood on the landing. He stared at me, rather surprised to find a young lady on the stairs, but he showed no sign of recognition whatever. I was a complete stranger to him.'

'And was the man Mr. Dering?'

'He was--Mr. Dering. There was just the least little change in him. He wore his coat open instead of b.u.t.toned. He had no gloves, his hat was not pulled over his eyes, and his face was somehow lighter and brighter than usual.'

'That is so,' said Athelstan. 'Exactly with these little changes he presented himself to me.'

'Perhaps there is another man in the world exactly like him.'

'Futile remark!--Go on, Elsie.'

'Then I guessed in a moment what it meant. I stepped forward and asked him if he was Mr. Edmund Gray. And then I followed him into his rooms.--George, there is no manner of doubt whatever. Mr. Dering has periods, whether regular or not I cannot tell, when he loses himself and becomes in imagination another man. He is mad, if you like, but there is method in his madness. The other man is just himself turned inside out.

Mr. Dering believes in the possible wickedness of everybody: the other man believes in the actual goodness of every man. Mr. Dering considers Property the only stable foundation of Society: the other man considers Property the root of all evil. Mr. Dering is hard and jealous: the other man is full of geniality and benevolence. Mr. Dering is Justice: the other man is Mercy.'

'Very neatly put, Elsie. There is quite an eighteenth-century balance about your sentences and sentiments. So far'--Athelstan contributed his confirmation--'so far as I could judge, nothing could be more true. I found my man the exact opposite of himself.'

'Can such a thing be possible? If I were to speak to him, would he not know me?'

'You forget, George. You have seen him in that condition, and he did not know you.'

'Nothing is more common'--Athelstan the Journalist began to draw upon the encyclopaedic memory which belongs to his profession--'than such a forgetfulness of self. Have you ever been into a Lunatic Asylum? I have--for professional purposes. I have discoursed with the patients, and been instructed by the physicians. Half the time many of the patients are perfectly rational: during the other half they seem to a.s.sume another mind with other memories. It is not real possession, as the ancients called it, because they never show knowledge other than what they have learned before. Thus, a sane man who cannot draw would never in insanity become an artist. So Mr. Dering, when he is mad, brings the same logical power and skill to bear upon a different set of maxims and opinions. Said a physician to me at this asylum of which I speak: "There are thousands of men and women, but especially men, who are mad every now and then, and don't know it. Most of the crimes are, I believe, committed in moments of madness. A young fellow steals money--it is because at the moment he is so mad that he even persuades himself that borrowing is not stealing: that he is only borrowing: that he can get it back, and put it back before it is found out. What is uncontrollable rage but sudden madness? There are the men who know that they are mad on some point or other, and cunningly hide it, and are never found out. And there are the men who are mad and don't know it. In their mad times they commit all kinds of extravagances and follies, yet somehow they escape detection." So he talked; and he told me of a man who was a lawyer in one town with a wife and family, and also a lawyer in another with a different wife and family. But one lawyer never found out the other; and the thing was only discovered when the man got a paralytic stroke and died in a kind of bewilderment, because, when the time came for him to be the other man, he found himself lying in a strange bedroom with a strange family round him. I had long forgotten the asylum. I did the place for my paper three or four years ago, and scored by the description. Since last night I have been recalling my experience and applying it. You see there can never be any physical change. This is no Hyde and Jekyll business. Whatever happens must be conducted with the same body and the same mind. The same processes of mind in which the man is trained remain, but his madness requires a new setting.'

'One cannot understand,' said Elsie.

'No. But then one cannot understand everything. That's the real beauty of this world: we are planted in the midst of things: we can give names to them--Adam began that way, didn't he?--but we can't understand any of them; and most people think that when we have given a name we have succeeded in understanding. Well, Elsie--we don't understand. But we may find out something. I take it that the other man grew up by degrees in his brain, so that there is no solution in the continuity of thought and recollection. The Edmund Gray developed himself. He has been developed for nearly ten years, since he has occupied the same Chambers all the time.'

'But about the forgeries?' George sprang to his feet. 'I declare,' he cried, 'that I had quite forgotten the real bearing on our case.'