At Large

"My old mate swears that I am mad on the subject!"

Dick folded and enclosed his note in an envelope, directed it, and got up to go. Miles followed him to the door and wrung his hand in silence.

When the door was closed upon Edmonstone, Miles sank into the armchair, and closed his eyes.

His expression was human then; it quickly hardened, and his face underwent complete transformation. A moment later it was not a pleasant face to look upon. The ugliness of crime had disfigured it in a flash. The devils within him were unchained for once, and his looks were as ugly as his thoughts.

"Curse it!" – he was thinking – "I must be losing my nerve: I get heated and flurried as I never did before. Yet it was not altogether put on, my gratitude to this young fellow: I do feel some of it. Nor were they all lies that I told him the other night; I am altered in some ways. I believe it was that spice of truth that saved me – for saved I am so far as he is concerned. Anyway, I have fooled him rather successfully, and he'll know it before he has done with me! True, I did not bargain to meet him here, after what the Colonel wrote; but I flatter myself I made the best of it – I can congratulate myself upon every step. No; one was a false step: I was an idiot to show him the passage-money receipt; it was telling him the name and line of the steamer and opening up the track for pursuit when we are gone. And yet, and yet – I could not have laid a cleverer false scent if I had tried! Instead of money flung away, that passage-money will turn out a glorious investment; we'll show a clean pair of heels in the opposite direction, while our good friends here think of nothing but that one steamer! And so, once more, everything is turning out well, if only I can keep this up three days longer; if only Jem Pound and Frank Compton do not trouble me; if only – if only I am not mistaken and misled as to the ease with which I may carry off – my prize!"

And strange to say, as he thought of that final coup, the villainy faded out of his face – though the act contemplated was bad enough, in all conscience!

All at once a creaking noise startled Miles. He rose from his chair, and crossed with swift noiseless steps over to the window. A man was lifting himself gingerly from the basket-work chair – the man was Philip Robson.

Miles leant out of the window, seized him by the collar, and drew him backward with a thud against the wall below the window.

"Eavesdropper! listener!" hissed Miles; and quick as lightning he changed his hold from the doctor's collar to the doctor's wrists, which he grabbed with each iron hand and drew upward over the sill.

The sill was more than six feet from the ground. The doctor stood on tiptoe – helpless – in a trap. The doctor's face was white and guilty. The doctor's tongue was for the moment useless.

"What were you doing there?" Miles demanded quietly, but with a nasty look about the eyes.

"I – I had been asleep. I came back early from the moors because Edmonstone insulted me. I was just awake. Let go my hands, will you? I heard something – a very little – I could not help it. What do you mean by holding my wrists like this? Leave loose of them, I say!"

"Then tell me what you heard."

"Something that I could not understand. If you don't let me go this instant, I'll sing out!"

"Will you stand and talk sensibly, and listen to what I tell you?"

"Yes, I swear I will."

"There, then, you're free. Now I'll just tell you, in effect, what you did hear," said Miles, whose inventive brain had been busy from the moment he had discovered Robson. "You heard Edmonstone speak to me as though I was a villain: well, he firmly believes I am one. You heard him read me a letter from some one 'wanting' me: he has read me many such letters. I believe you heard me asking him in effect not to tell any one, and thanking him: this is what I make a point of doing. The fact is, Edmonstone is under the delusion that I am a man who robbed him in Australia. This is what's the matter!"

Miles tapped his forehead significantly.

"You don't mean it!" cried Robson, starting back.

"I do; but not so loud, man. His friends don't suspect anything; they needn't know; it's only on this one point. What, didn't you hear our last words? I said, 'It seems like madness.' He answered, 'My old mate' – meaning the man who was with him at the time of the robbery – 'my old mate,' he says, 'swears that I am mad on that subject.'"

"Whew!" whistled the doctor. "Yes, I heard that."

"It speaks for itself, eh? But I put it to you as a medical man," said Miles, rising still more fully to the occasion, and remembering the doctor's weak point: "I put it to you as a medical man – has there not been something strange about his manner?"

Robson thought at once of the disagreeable incident of the morning.

"There has, indeed," he said, without hesitation; "I have noticed it myself!"

Even Miles marvelled at his own adroitness; he was elated, and showed it by fetching a deep sigh.

"Poor Edmonstone! he is quite touched on the point. Perhaps the affair brought on a fever at the time, for he is an excitable fellow, and that would account for it."

"But is he safe?" asked Robson, eagerly. "He can't be!"

"Oh, yes, he is; quite. I repeat, it is only on that one point, and nobody knows it here. And, mind, you are not to breathe a word of it to any single soul!"

Philip was entirely taken in for the time being; but his silence was another matter. That could only be pardoned, even on short lease, by an apology from the rude Colonial. The doctor's wrists smarted yet; his self-esteem was still more sore.

"I am so likely," said he, with fine irony, "to do your bidding after the manner in which you have treated me!"

"Call it taking my hint," said Miles, with a nasty expression in the eyes again. "You will find it a hint worth acting upon."

"You had no business to treat me as you did. It was a gross outrage!" said the doctor, haughtily.

"Come, now, I apologise. It arose from my irritation on Edmonstone's account, at the thing getting out. For his sake, you must indeed promise to hold your tongue."

"Very well," said Philip Robson, reluctantly; "I – I promise."

And he meant at the time to keep his promise, if he could. In fact, he did keep it. For a little calm reflection, away from the glamour thrown by Miles's plausibility, and in the sober light of Philip's own professional knowledge, served to weaken the case of insanity against Dick Edmonstone. At the same time, reflection strengthened Edmonstone's case against Miles, though Robson had only oblique information as to the specific nature of that case. But at any rate there was no harm in opening the letter-box (which was cleared in the morning) late at night, and sending just one anonymous line to the same name and address as those upon the envelope directed in Edmonstone's hand. If Miles was really a forger of some kind, and Edmonstone was really shielding him, then there was an excellent chance of scoring off them both at once. And Philip Robson had contracted a pretty strong grudge against both these men since morning.

Meanwhile Miles remained subdued and pensive, furtively attentive, but extremely humble, towards Miss Bristo, and talkative to one person only – Mrs. Parish. He was indeed, as he said, no fool. He was full of cunning and coolness, foresight and resource. He was biding his time – but for what?

XXIII

THE EFFECT OF A PHOTOGRAPH

Laurence Pinckney was a hopeless sportsman. When he realised this for himself he laid down his gun, and presently took up with Miss Bristo's camera as a weapon better suited to him.

Alice had made no use of the apparatus for weeks and weeks; it was sent down with other luggage without her knowledge, and she never thought of unpacking it until Mr. Pinckney pleaded for instruction; when – perhaps because Alice felt that without an occupation this visitor would be on her hands all day – he did not plead in vain. He did not, however, require many lessons. He knew something about it already, having given the subject some attention (in the reading room of the British Museum) before writing one of his rollicking articles. Nor were the lessons she did give him much of a nuisance to Alice, for when he forgot to talk about his work, and refrained from coruscation, there was no more sensible and polite companion than Laurence Pinckney.

When, therefore, he set out on that Friday's ramble, which produced one really good negative, and a number of quaint little Arcadian observations jotted down in his notebook, it was with the entire photographic impedimenta slung about his person, and some idea in his head of an article on "The North Yorkshire Dales," to be illustrated by the writer's own photographs.

His destination was a certain ancient abbey, set in gorgeous scenery, eight long miles from Gateby. But long before he got there a hollow of the plain country road tempted him, and he fell.

It was quite an ordinary bit of road; a tall hazel-hedge, and a pathway high above the road on the left; on the right, a fence with trees beyond it, one of them, an oak of perfect form, that stood in the foreground, being of far greater size than most of the trees in this district, and in strong contrast to its neighbours. That was really all. It never would have been picturesque, nor have taken our artist's fancy, but for the sunlight on the wet road and the fleecy pallor of the sky where it met the sharp line of distant dark blue hills far away over the hazel-hedge, to the left. But the sunlight was the thing. It came, as though expressly ordered, from, so to say, the left wing. It rested lightly on the hedge-tops. It fell in a million golden sparks on the shivering leaves of the old oak. But it cleared the deep-cut road at a bound, leaving it dark. Only a long way further on, where the bend to the right began, did his majesty deign to step down upon the road; and just there, because everything was wet from last night's rain, it was a road of silver.

No sooner, however, was the picture focussed than the sun, which made it what it was, disappeared behind a cloud – a favourite and mischievous dodge of his for the mortification of the amateur photographer.

Now, while Pinckney waited for the sun to come out again, which he saw was going to happen immediately, and while he held in his fingers the pneumatic ball connected with the instantaneous shutter, two figures appeared at the bend of the road that had been silver track a moment before. They were a man and a woman, trudging along with the width of the road between them. Pinckney watched them with painful interest. If the cloud cleared the sun at that moment they would be horribly in the way, for worse clouds were following on the heels of this one, and the opportunity must be seized. There was nothing, of course, to prevent his taking the tramps as they walked – no, it would spoil the picture. Stay, though; it would add human interest. But the cloud did not pass so rapidly after all, and the man and woman drew near the camera.

There was something peculiar in the appearance of the man that struck Pinckney at once as un-English. This peculiarity was difficult to localise. It was not in his clothes, which indeed looked new, but it was partly in his heavy face, smooth-shaven and suntanned, partly in his slow, slouching, methodical walk, and very much in his fashion of carrying his belongings. Instead of the pudding-like bundle of the English tramp he carried across his shoulders a long, neatly-strapped cylinder, the outer coating of which was a blanket. About the woman, on the other hand, there was nothing to strike the attention. Pinckney's first glance took in, perhaps, the fact that her black skirt was torn and draggled, and her black bodice in startling contrast to her white face; but that could have been all.

Back came the sun, in a hurry, to the hedge-top and the oak-tree, and the distant curve of the road. Pinckney had decided in favour of the tramps in his picture, but they were come too near. He requested them in his blandest tones to retrace a few steps. To his immense surprise he was interrupted by a sullen oath from the man, who at once quickened his steps forward, motioning to the woman to do the same.

"Thankee for nothing, and be hanged to you! Wait till we pass, will you?"

If Pinckney had wanted further assurance that the man was a foreign element, these sentences should have satisfied him; for your honest British rustic is not the man to reject the favours of the camera, be they never so promiscuous and his chance of beholding the result never so remote.

Pinckney's answer, however, was a prompt pressure of the pneumatic ball in his hand – a snap-shot at short range, the click of which did not escape the sharp ears of the strange-looking, heavily-built old man.