19000 Pound Part 14

It was an expectation she had not realized.

The face of the dead man was utterly unknown to her.

CHAPTER X

HOW THE DEVIL TEMPTED HIM

"There, there," said the doctor; "you will be all right in a few minutes."

The woman closed her eyes again.

"It was the shock of seeing her dead husband."

The doctor spoke this in a whisper, but the woman heard. She opened her eyes. She spoke:

"Let me lie like this for half an hour. I shall be all right then. I--I am subject to fainting fits."

"Certainly. We shall be in that cabin there--there, away where you see the light. You see it? That's all right. We will leave you now, and when you feel well enough, come in, and you shall hear all the particulars."

She moved her head. They walked away.

She shifted on her back, and the eyes in the head resting on the pillow were fixed on the stars. She lay quiet--thinking.

Thinking what to do; or what had happened; how to escape; of the mistake she had made, and whether it would bear bad fruit.

For the dead man lying in the ship's cabin was not named Depew, nor was the living woman lying on the ship's deck named that way.

It was a case of lying right through, and she thought to herself that she had in a measure given the show away.

So she lay thinking. The mantle of night fell gradually and cloaked things.

Shadows were deep. She might steal off the ship in them unseen.

A boat's lantern hung at each end of the gangway, but there appeared to be no one watching her.

There was not. It was not supposed that there was the slightest chance of her running away.

A woman overcome by emotion as she had been does not run away from the recently discovered body of her dead husband.

So the police argued--argued in the dark--in ignorance of the facts, and left her in the dark in fancied possession of them.

Should she go to that cabin with the light, brave it out there, and carry the lie on further?

Or should she steal off in the gradually growing darker night, and escape home?

Home! Her home more than fifty miles away in the village of Oakville.

She determined to do that. Many reasons prompted her to the act.

Her husband had not been on the boat. Another man bearing his name filled his berth.

There was trickery somewhere--but that was no novelty where her husband was concerned. She was unprepared for it, and had made a mistake. Best rectify it by escape.

She did. Cleared the ship without a soul noticing it.

Reached the railway station, and hid herself in a corner of the ladies'

waiting room till the Oakville train started. In that train she was carried home.

Her real name? Todd--Susan Todd. Her husband? Josh Todd.

All that was left of the husband was in the cabin of the ship she had left. It had traveled in two portmanteaus.

His had been a checkered career, but at last he had handed in his checks.

How did it happen that he masqueraded before Lawyer Loide as George Depew?

Because he was the right hand of the somewhat illiterate western farmer who bore that name, or as he would himself have described it, his head cook and bottle washer.

George Depew could write his name, and his caligraphic talents ended right there. So he took for a.s.sistant Josh Todd.

Josh saw to all the correspondence, opened the letters, read and answered them. His wife, Susan, was the house help.

Between them, they were paid well, and could have put away for the rainy day. But providence was a thing unknown to Josh.

He put nothing away, except an excessive quant.i.ty of old Rye. On Sat.u.r.day nights he went into Oakville, and in the saloon there sat at the table presided over by Mr. Jack Hamblin.

Jack Hamblin was generally the richer by Josh's visits.

Frequent handling of the cards had made him expert in the dealing thereof. He usually dealt.

So Josh--as he figuratively put it--had not a feather to fly with. And he did not like it.

There was farmer George Depew--provident man--putting by a little each year. Not much, but sufficient for his wife and daughter, Tessie, if he should suddenly be beckoned into the next world.

Then one day there came a letter from a London lawyer named Loide, to George Depew.

As usual Josh opened it. He cursed the luck of Depew freely, and then paused--paused to wonder whether he could not make that luck his own.

Susan had been with the Depews when they paid a visit to England many years before. So Josh took counsel with the wife of his bosom, and learned all there was to know about George.

It was a certain thing that on the other side of that wide water--which the rapidity of our ocean grayhounds has made us come to think so narrow--not a living soul could remember George Depew.

That determined Josh. And when he had determined he always went on.

His scheme was simplicity itself. But for lawyer Loide's fears he probably would not have succeeded so well.