The Threatening Eye Part 23

"What do you mean by saying such things--are you mad, man?"

"I mean what I say."

"Very good. You know a woman can never forget or forgive such words as you have spoken to me."

"I don't care a d.a.m.n, if you don't!" cried Hudson.

She took up her cloak and hat, stood for a few moments looking fixedly at him, the very picture of intense hate, and hissed through her teeth, "I leave you--madman! Idiot! You will have the horrors soon, and perhaps then you will see faces more pitiless and loathsome than even mine--I leave you to enjoy yourself with them. Good-bye, dear, good-bye!" and she left his rooms.

When she had got out of the gate at the top of Middle Temple Lane into Fleet Street, she did not immediately leave the spot, but stood a few moments considering her position. She knew the man she had left was on the verge of a severe attack of delirium tremens. She thought it highly probable that in his present condition he would not remain alone in his chambers, but would soon be driven out by the fever within him once more into the deserted streets. She would wait and watch his proceedings from a safe distance. It would be amusing. So with this object in view she crossed to the other side of the road and stood there.

Her surmise was correct. She had not to wait many minutes. The gate swung open, and the barrister staggered out. The porter looked out after him for a few seconds, and then closed the door again.

Hudson did not perceive her. A new mood was on him. He walked slowly along Fleet Street westwards, his eyes turned to the ground.

Suddenly a fantastic idea seized his ever-changing mind. He would go down Devereux Court. He would look at the doorway in which he had first found Mary Grimm.

Susan Riley followed him afar off, like a vulture waiting till its prey fall.

At last he came to the dark doorway, and then followed a strange scene, which the observer, not having the clue to it, merely set down to the unreasoning frenzy of one mad with drink.

The poor wretch sobbed aloud. He threw out his arms towards the door, and kissed the panels against which the young girl had crouched in that summer evening long ago. Then with a cry he cast himself on the ground and kissed the stones on which her feet had trod.

It often happens that when a mind is in the condition his was in then, exalted by disease, it will for a moment become unnaturally clear and acute, capable of suffering impossible to the sane. So there arose suddenly to his crazed mind so vivid a vision of his past--of what might have been--of what was, so terrible a contrast, that in his anguish and despair he deliberately dashed his head violently three times against the stone column of the house; then he rose up to his full height, the blood streaming down his features, gazed wildly round for a few seconds, and fell down on his face, insensible.

Susan Riley, pale, calm, with a bitter smile on her mouth, watched all this. Then she went to him, turned his face upwards, and gazed at it with the same unmoved expression; that once n.o.ble face, now distorted, hideous, with the locks steeped with blood lying on the brow, and the red stream trickling over it.

"Faugh!" she said to herself, "what a beast a man can make of himself!"

Then she deliberated for a short time what she should do next.

Of a sudden, a triumphant smile broke out on her face; she laughed low: "Oh, it is too good," she thought, "what a capital idea--what a scene we will have!"

She looked around her stealthily to see that no one was by; then she drew a small hypodermic syringe from her pocket, and standing under the lamp by the Temple gate carefully filled it from a bottle of straw-coloured fluid. After another careful look up and down the two streets, and at all the windows that commanded a view of the scene, she approached the insensible man. She stooped down and bared his left arm, then with one hand she took up a bit of the fleshy part of it, with the other she pushed the fine tube under the skin, and slowly pressed down the piston.

She held it there for a few seconds, then withdrew it, and placed it again in her pocket.

"Number one!" she muttered to herself. "Ah, Mary! so quiet and yet so sly; I shouldn't have thought it of you. You have robbed me of this fool. I believe you are trying to rob me of that prig, Dr. Duncan. We shall see, my girl, who wins in this game. I never liked you; now I hate you, and that's bad for you. I flatter myself I'm a dangerous person to make an enemy of--subtle and unscrupulous enough anyhow. Yes, Susie dear, you are decidedly dangerous."

Then she walked up to Fleet Street and found a policeman. She informed him that there was a man who had been seized by a fit at the bottom of the court.

The policeman accompanied her to the spot, and examined the prostrate form by the light of his bull's eye.

"He's only drunk," he said at last. "He's fallen down and cut his face a bit; nothing serious. We'll take him to the lock up."

Susan stooped and pretended to feel the barrister's pulse. "Policeman,"

she cried, "you must do nothing of the kind. He is not drunk, but seriously ill. I am an hospital nurse, and understand this case. He must be removed to the hospital at once, and without delay; do you hear? It is a question of life and death! Get a cab and drive him to the ---- hospital; it is my hospital. There will be a doctor in attendance there who will save him, if any one can."

The constable still hesitated; but when the sergeant came up her earnestness overcame the doubts of both, and her advice was followed.

She saw her lover carried off, and then she walked away to a lodging where she was known, and where they would put her up for the night. She was too excited to feel any fear for the consequences of her act as yet.

"Yes, it will be too delightful," she said to herself as she went along.

"I will send Miss Mary her old sweetheart."

The barrister had not been so far from being the prophet of his own fate, when he penned those verses to "La Fille de Marbre."

CHAPTER XIV.

SUSAN BRINGS MARY TO AN OLD LOVER.

On losing sight of the barrister, Dr. Duncan returned to the hospital, hurried over certain professional duties which he could not neglect, and then went off to Hudson's rooms in the Temple in the hope that his friend had found his way home. He did not forget to take with him some sedative drugs, which he knew the unfortunate man would most certainly be in need of.

He did not reach the Temple until three in the morning.

On mounting the stairs he found both doors of the chambers wide open, for Hudson had not thought of closing them after him when he rushed out in his mad frenzy.

The doctor entered the rooms; they were deserted. He looked around him and saw the half empty brandy bottle on the table. The mirror over the mantel-piece was broken, and fragments of the gla.s.s were lying on the floor; the madman, after Susan had left him, seeing his own image in the mirror, had mistaken it for some other person, and had thrown a chair at it. The candle was still burning, a fact which proved to the doctor that his friend had been in his chambers, since he left him outside the Albion.

Dr. Duncan went out, and on inquiring of the porter at the Middle Temple gate learned that Hudson had left the Temple nearly two hours before.

Alarmed for his friend's safety, he returned to the chambers, and pa.s.sed the rest of the night there, vainly waiting for him.

Morning came, and he could stay no longer; he would be soon due at the hospital, so he called on a barrister whom he knew to be a friend of Hudson's, put the whole circ.u.mstances before him, and persuaded him to watch for the return of the man to his chambers, and see that the proper steps were taken for his safety.

On going out, he found that he had still some little time to spare, and it occurred to him that he would not walk directly to the hospital, but take a road on which he thought he might probably meet Mary Grimm on her way to the same destination. He knew it was about the hour that she usually started from home.

He had been very anxious to find an opportunity of speaking again to her in private. He determined to discover what were her objections to accepting his love, and whether they were really insuperable.

He walked on, until he reached the street in which she lived without encountering her; so he stood at the end of it, waiting till she came out, his heart beating with excitement.

He stood there several minutes, then looking at his watch he saw it was later than he had imagined; and thinking that he must have missed her, he was about to turn away sick at heart with disappointment, when suddenly he perceived her well-known figure approaching him.

When she saw him, her feelings were as strongly stirred as were his own, and her face lost all its colour.

They shook hands in silence, each conscious that the other was too deeply moved for language.

Then the doctor spoke words simple in themselves, and with a calm voice; but yet they seemed to her to breathe forth all the pa.s.sion that a human being under that fiercest spell of love can feel.

"I knew that you walked by this road to the hospital. I have come here to meet you, Miss King."

Mary answered nothing. He continued, "I have come to see you, to speak to you. No, let us go this way," and he turned off into a road, which was not the direct one to the hospital, but which led through the neighbouring park, and was little frequented by pedestrians at that early hour, so afforded opportunity for undisturbed conversation.

They walked on side by side for some minutes without either speaking.

"Mary!" then said the doctor--"you must let me call you Mary, even if I am only to be your friend--I have so longed to see you by yourself, to learn from your lips what my fate is to be!"