The Second Class Passenger Part 44

"Yes?" she said encouragingly, for his lips had moved.

"I feel," he said in a whisper----

"Yes," urged Mary. "What?"

"Hope!" he said, aloud, and gave her his hand.

The cab of the village bore her to the station over roads tearful with rain, and arrived there just as the London train came to a stop.

The tall figure of Professor Fish, jumping from his compartment and turning to slam the door vehemently, struck her as oddly familiar; the man's personality stood in high relief from his surroundings. Yet there was a certain disturbance in his manner as he greeted her--a touch of the confidential, which added to her curiosity. He sat opposite to her in the cab, so that when he leaned forward to speak, with his hat pushed impatiently back, his big insistent face was thrust forward close to hers, and his great shoulders humped as though in effort.

"This is a very annoying thing, Miss Pond," he began, as the cab started back along the tree-bordered road. "A most annoying thing; privacy was absolutely essential. Here is something done, a big thing, too; and when only privacy, reticence, quiet are essential, we have this infernal fuss on our hands."

He spoke with all his habitual force and volume; but something in him suggested to Mary that he did so consciously and of purpose.

"Well," she said; "there's n.o.body about here that is likely to guess at your experiment. That isn't the trouble, you know. The trouble is that people say they recognize Mr. Smith as a man who is wanted by the police, who is supposed, too, to be dead. So, you see, the only thing wanted is an explanation."

"Explanation!" He put the word from him with a gesture of his big, smooth hands.

Mary nodded, scanning him coolly. "Yes," she said; "I can understand that an explanation might be difficult."

Professor Fish laughed shortly, a mere bark of sour mirth, and turned to look through the rain-splashed window of the cab.

"Difficult!" he repeated, and turned his face to her again. "Not at all difficult, my dear Miss Pond, but awkward. Lord! it wouldn't do at all!" His eyes behind his gla.s.ses became keen and lively. He looked at her carefully.

"He's talked to you, eh? You've heard his story?"

"Yes," answered Mary. "Once; it was very wonderful."

He nodded, still scrutinising her. "I wish I could make him talk," he said thoughtfully. "However----" he shrugged his big shoulders and was silent.

There was a pause then, while the wheels squelched through the mud below, and the rain beat rhythmically on the windows and roof of the cab. Its noise seemed to ally itself to the interior smell of the vehicle, an odor of damp leather and stale straw and ancient stables.

The Professor stared intently through the wet gla.s.s, and Mary remembered, with a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt, her first meeting with him, when she had sat beside him and occupied her thoughts with the flabby phantom of Smith.

"You know," she said, at length, "there'll have to be some sort of explanation."

"Well?" demanded the Professor.

"If I knew what you had done to Mr. Smith," she went on, "I could help you to keep things as quiet as possible."

He heard her with a frown and shook his head. "If you knew, you'd do anything but keep it quiet," he answered shortly.

"Then it was something horrible?" asked Mary quickly.

He smiled. "I expect to have many patients for the same treatment,"

he replied. "Very many; I expect half the world. Where is Smith now?"

he asked abruptly.

"At home by himself," replied Mary. "We'll be there in two minutes.

You'd like to see him first?"

"Yes, please," he said. "I must have a word or two with him."

Dr Pond had not returned when they drew up at the house, and, as soon as the Professor had rid himself of his ulster and hat, she led him upstairs to the "study."

"You'll find him in here," she said, when they came to the door. "I shall be downstairs when you want me."

The Professor nodded absently and turned the handle. Mary was at the top of the stairs when he entered. She turned even before he cried out, conscious of something happening.

"Stop!" cried the Professor sharply. "Put that down!"

Mary ran to the open door and uttered a cry. Near the window stood Smith, erect and buoyant. The contents of desk-drawers were littered on the floor--papers, old pipes, a corkscrew, various rubbish--and in his hand he held something that Mary recognized with a catch of the breath.

"Father's old pistol!" she said, and shuddered. The Professor had advanced as far as the middle of the room; the desk was between him and Smith, who was looking at him with a smile. Even in the weakness of fear that came over her, Mary wondered at the change in him. His very stature seemed to be greater; there was a grave power in that face she knew as a mask of witlessness and futility. He held the revolver in his right hand with the barrel resting in his left, and looked at the tall Professor with a smile that had no mirth in it, but something like compa.s.sion.

"Drop it!" said the Professor again. "Drop it, you fool!" But his voice of authority cracked, and he cried out: "For G.o.d's sake don't make a mess of it now."

Smith continued to look at him with that ghost of a smile on his lips, and answered with slow words. He patted the pistol.

"This'll put me out of your reach," he said. "This is what'll do it.

You won't be able to patch up the hole this'll make."

He raised the pistol, Mary, powerless to move clenched her hands and whole being for the shock of imminent tragedy.

"Wait!" cried the Professor, and cast a furtive deprecating glance back at Mary. "Wait! I tell you it's no use; you can hurt yourself and disfigure yourself and weaken and impair your body, but not the life! Not the life! I tell you--it's no good!" He flung out a long arm and his great forefinger pointed at Smith imperatively. "I'll have you back," he said. "I'll have you back. You're mine, my man; and I'll hold you. Put that pistol down; put it down, I tell you! Or else----" his arm dropped, and the command failed from his voice. He spoke in the tones of tired indifference. "Do it," he said. "Shoot yourself, if you want to. I'll deal with you afterwards."

There was a pause, measured in heart-beats. Smith showed yet his face of serene gravity. When he spoke, it was strange to hear the voice of the back-streets, the gutter's phrase, expressing that quiet a.s.surance.

"If it wasn't you," he said, "it wouldn't be n.o.body else. It's only you as can do it." He paused, with lips pursed in deliberation. "If you knowed what I know," he went on, "you'd see it wasn't right. I reckon you'll have to come too."

"Eh?" The Professor looked up quickly, and threw up an arm as though to guard a blow. Mary screamed, and the noise of the shot startled her from her posture and she fell on her knees. The Professor took one pace forward, turned sharply, and fell full length on his face.

She heard Smith say something, but the words pa.s.sed her undistinguished; then the second shot sounded, and the fire-irons clattered as he tumbled among them.

Those that ran up to the room upon the sound of the shooting found her kneeling in the door with her hand over her face.

"Bury them! bury them!" she was crying. "Bury them and let them go!"

XIV

THE CAPTAIN'S ARM

Seafaring men knew it for a chief characteristic of Captain Price-- his quiet, unresting watchfulness. Forty years of sun and brine had bunched the puckers at the corners of his eyes and hardened the lines of his big brown face; but the outstanding thing about him was still that silent wariness, as of a man who had warning of something impending. It went a little strangely with his figure of a ma.s.sive, steel-and-hickory s.h.i.+pmaster, soaked to the soul with the routine of his calling. It seemed to give token of some faculty held in reserve, to hint at an inner life, as it were; and not a few of the frank and simple men who went to sea with him found it disconcerting. Captains who could handle a big steams.h.i.+p as a cyclist manages a bicycle they had seen before; they recognized in him the supreme skill, the salt- pickled nerve, the iron endurance of a proven sailor; but there their experience ended and the depths began.

Sooner or later, most of them went to the Burdock's chief mate for an explanation of the unknown quality. "What makes your father act so?"

was a common form of the question. Arthur Price would smile and shake his handsome head.

"It's not acting," he would say. "You drop off to sleep some night on this bridge, and you'll find out what he's after. He's after you if you don't keep your weather eye liftin'; and don't you forget it!"