CHAPTER XXI.
A PROMISE TO THE DYING.
Paying no further heed to the servant, and much to the surprise of that functionary, Van Vernet turned his gaze back upon the picture, and looked long and intently, shifting his position once or twice to obtain a different view. Then taking up his hat, he silently left the house, a look of mingled elation and perplexity upon his face.
“It’s the same!” he thought, as he hurried away; “it’s the same face, or a most wonderful resemblance. Allow for the difference made by the glazed cap, the tattoo marks and the rough dress, and it’s the very same face! It seems incredible, but I know that such impossibilities often exist. What is there in common between Mr. Alan Warburton, aristocrat, and a nameless sailor, with scars upon his face and blood upon his hands? The same face, certainly, and—perhaps the same delicate hands and dainty feet. It may be only a resemblance, but I’ll see this Alan Warburton, and I’ll solve the mystery of that Francoise hovel yet.”
While Van Vernet thus soliloquizes over his startling discovery, we will follow the footsteps of Richard Stanhope.
He is walking away from the more bustling portion of the city, and turning into a quiet, home-like street, pauses before a long, trim-looking building, turns a moment to gaze about him in quest of possible observers, and then enters.
It is a hospital, watched over by an order of noble women, and affording every relief and comfort to the suffering ones within its walls.
Passing the offices and long wards, he goes on until he has reached a private room in the rear of the building. Here coolness and quiet reign, and a calm-faced woman is sitting beside a cot, upon which a sick man tosses and mutters feverishly. It is the ex-convict who was rescued from the Thieves’ Tavern by Stanhope, only a few nights ago.
“How is your patient?” queries the detective, approaching the bed and gazing down upon the man whom he has befriended.
“He has not long to live,” replies the nurse. “I am glad you are here, sir. In his lucid moments he asks for you constantly. His delirium will pass soon, I think, and he will have a quiet interval. I hope you will remain.”
“I will stay as long as possible,” Stanhope says, seating himself by the bed. “But I have not much time to spare to-night.”
The dying man is living his childhood over again. He mutters of rolling prairies, waving trees, sweeping storms, and pealing thunder. He laughs at the review of some pleasing scene, and then cries out in terror as some vision of horror comes before his memory.
And while he mutters, Richard Stanhope listens—at first idly, then curiously, and at last with eager intensity, bending forward to catch every word.
Finally he rises, and crossing the room deposits his hat upon a table, and removes his light outer coat.
“I shall stay,” he says briefly. “How long will he live?”
“He cannot last until morning, the surgeon says.”
“I will stay until the end.”
He resumes his seat and his listening attitude. It is sunset when his watch begins; the evening passes away, and still the patient mutters and moans.
It is almost midnight when his mutterings cease, and he falls into a slumber that looks like death.
At last there comes an end to the solemn stillness of the room. The dying man murmurs brokenly, opens his eyes with the light of reason in them once more, and recognizes his benefactor.
“You see—I was—right,” he whispers, a wan smile upon his face; “I am going to die.”
He labors a moment for breath, and then says:
“You have been so good—will—will you do one thing—more?”
“If I can.”
“I want my—mother to know—I am dead. She was not always good—but she was—my mother.”
“Tell me her name, and where to find her?”
The voice of the dying man sinks lower. Stanhope bends to catch the whispered reply, and then asks:
“Can you answer a few questions that I am anxious to put to you?”
“Y—yes.”
“Now that you know yourself dying, are you willing to tell me anything I may wish to know?”
“You are the—only man—who was ever—merciful to me,” said the dying man. “I will tell you—anything.”
Turning to the nurse, Stanhope makes a sign which she understands, and, nodding a reply, she goes softly from the room.
When Richard Stanhope and the dying man are left alone, the detective bends his head close to the pillows, and the questions asked, and the answers given, are few and brief.
Suddenly the form upon the bed becomes convulsed, the eyes roll wildly and then fix themselves upon Stanhope’s face.
“You promise,” gasps the death-stricken man, “you will tell them—”
The writhing form becomes limp and lifeless, the eyes take on a glassy stare, and there is a last fluttering breath.
Richard Stanhope closes the staring eyes, and speaks his answer in the ears of the dead.
“I will tell them, poor fellow, at the right time, but—before my duty to the dead, comes a duty to the living!”