The Shadow of the Rope Part 35

"I must know!" he said.

Langholm rose, laughing.

"I'll tell you who I thought it was at first," said he, heartily. "I don't mind telling you that, because it was so absurd; and I think you'll be the first to laugh at it. I was idiot enough to think it might be you, my poor, dear chap!"

"And you don't think so still?" asked Severino, harshly. He had not been the first to laugh.

"Of course I don't, my dear fellow."

"I wish you would sit down again. That's better. So you know it is some one else?"

"So far as one can know anything."

"And you are going to try to bring it home to this man?"

"I don't know. The police may save me the trouble. I believe they are on the same scent at last. Meanwhile, I have given him as fair a warning as a man could wish."

Severino lay back yet again in silence and deep twilight. His breath came quickly. A shiver seemed to pa.s.s through the bed.

"You needn't have done that," he whispered at last.

"I thought it was the fair thing to do."

"Yet you needn't have done it-because-your first idea was right!"

"I'll tell you who I thought it was at first," said he, heartily.

"Right?" echoed Langholm, densely. "My first idea was-right?"

"You said you first thought it was I who killed-her husband."

"It couldn't have been!"

"But it was."

Langholm got back to his feet. He could conceive but one explanation of this preposterous statement. Severino's sickness had extended to his brain. He was delirious. This was the first sign.

"Where are you going?" asked the invalid, querulously, as his companion moved towards the door.

"When was the doctor here last?" demanded Langholm in return.

There was silence for a few moments, and then a faint laugh, that threatened to break into a sob, from the bed.

"I see what you think. How can I convince you that I have all my wits about me? I'd rather not have a light just yet-but in my bag you'll find a writing-case. It is locked, but the keys are in my trouser's pocket. In my writing-case you will find a sealed envelope, and in that a fuller confession than I shall have breath to make to you. Take it downstairs and glance at it-then come back."

"No, no," said Langholm, hoa.r.s.ely; "no, I believe you! Yes-it was my first idea!"

"I hardly knew what I was doing," Severino whispered. "I was delirious then, if you like! Yet I remember it better than anything else in all my life. I have never forgotten it for an hour-since it first came back!"

"You really were unconscious for days afterwards?"

"I believe it was weeks. Otherwise, you must know-she will be the first to believe-I never could have let her-"

"My poor, dear fellow-of course-of course."

Langholm felt for the emaciated hand, and stroked it as though it had been a child's. Yet that was the hand that had slain Alexander Minchin! And Langholm thought of it; and still his own was almost womanly in the tender pity of its touch.

"I want to tell you," the sick lad murmured. "I wanted to tell her-G.o.d knows it-and that alone was why I came to her the moment I could find out where she was. No-no-not that alone! I am too ill to pretend any more. It was not all pretence when I let you think it was only pa.s.sion that drove me down here. I believe I should have come, even if I had had nothing at all to tell her-only to be near her-as I was this afternoon! But the other made it a duty. Yet, when she came this afternoon, I could not do my duty. I had not the courage. It was too big a thing just to be with her again! And then the other lady-I thanked G.o.d for her too-for she made it impossible for me to speak. But to you I must ... especially after what you say."

The man came out in Langholm's ministrations. "One minute," he said; and returned in two or three with a pint of tolerable champagne. "I keep a few for angel's visits," he explained; "but I am afraid I must light the candle. I will put it at the other side of the room. Do you mind the tumbler? Now drink, and tell me only what you feel inclined, neither more nor less."

"It is all written down," began Severino, in better voice for the first few drams: "how I first heard her singing through the open windows in the summer-only last summer!-how she heard me playing, and how afterwards we came to meet. She was unhappy; he was a bad husband; but I only saw it for myself. He was nice enough to me in his way-liked to send round for me to play when they had anybody there-but there was only one reason why I went. Oh, yes ... the ground she trod on ... the air she breathed! I make no secret of it now; if I made any then, it was because I knew her too well, and feared to lose what I had got. And yet-that brute, that bully, that coa.r.s.e-"

He checked himself by an effort that stained his face a sickly brown in the light of the distant candle. Langholm handed him the tumbler, and a few more drams went down to do the only good-the temporary good-that human aid could do for Severino now. His eyes brightened. He lay still and silent, collecting strength and self-control.

"I was ill; she brought me flowers. I never had any const.i.tution-trust a Latin race for that-and I became very ill indeed. With a man like you, a chill at worst; with me, pneumonia in a day. Then she came to see me herself, saw the doctor, got in all sorts of things, and was coming to nurse me through the night herself. G.o.d bless her for the thought alone! I was supposed not to know; they thought I was unconscious already. But I kept conscious on purpose, I could have lived through anything for that alone. And she never came!

"My landlady sat up instead. She is another of the kindest women on earth; she thought far more of me than I was ever worth, and it was she who screened me through thick and thin during the delirium that followed, and after that. She did not tell the whole truth at the trial; may there be no mercy for me hereafter if the law is not merciful to that staunch soul! She has saved my life-for this! But that night-it was her second in succession-and she had been with me the whole long day-that night she fell asleep beside me in the chair. I can hear her breathing now.

"Dear soul, how it angered me at the time! It made me fret all the more for-her. Why had she broken faith? I knew that she had not. Something had kept her; had he? I had hoped he was out of the way; he left her so much. He was really on the watch, as you may know. At last I got up and went to the window. And all the windows opposite were in darkness except theirs."

Langholm sprang to his feet, but sat down again as suddenly.

"Go on!"

"What is it that you thought, Langholm?"

"I believe I know what you did. That's all."

"What? Tell me, please, and then I will tell you."

"All those garden walls-they connect."

"Yes? Yes?"

"You got through your window, climbed upon your wall, and ran along to the lights. It occurred to you suddenly; it did to me when I went over the house the other day."

Severino lay looking at the imaginative man.

"And yet you could suspect another after that!"

"Ah, there is some mystery there also. But it is strange, indeed, to think that I was right in the beginning!"

"I did not know what I was doing," resumed the young Italian, who, like many a clever foreigner, spoke more precise English than any Englishman; that, with an accent too delicate for written reproduction, alone would have betrayed him. "I still have very little recollection of what happened between my climbing out of our garden and dropping into theirs. I remember that my feet were rather cold, but that is about all.

"It was near midnight, as you know, and the room it happened in-the study-had the brightest light of all. An electric lamp was blazing on the writing-table at the window, and another from a bracket among the books. The window was as wide open as it would go, the lower sash thrown right up; it was just above the scullery window, which is half underground, and has an outside grating. The sill was only the height of one's chin. I can tell you all that now, but at the time I knew very little until I was in the room itself. Thank you, I will take another sip. It does me more good than harm to tell you. But you will find it all written down."