“Drink, I suppose, as usual. A rummy start!” remarked the policeman, sententiously; and then, while Barton was sounding and stanching the wound of the housekeeper’s victim, and applying such styptics as he had within reach, the guardian of social order succeeded in clearing __The Bunhouse__ of its patrons, in closing the door, and in sending a message (by the direction of the girl who had summoned Barton, and who seemed not devoid of sense) to Mrs. St. John Deloraine. While that lady was being expected, the girl, who now took a kind of subordinate lead, was employed by Barton in helping to carry Margaret to her own room, and in generally restoring order.
When the messenger arrived at Mrs. St John Delo-raine’s house with Barton’s brief note, and with his own curt statement that “murder was being done at The Bun-house,” he found the Lady Superior rehearsing for a play. Mrs. St. John Deloraine was going to give a drawing-room representation of “Nitouche,” and the terrible news found her in one of the costumes of the heroine. With a very brief explanation (variously misunderstood by her guests and fellow-amateurs) Mrs. St. John Deloraine hurried off, “just as she was,” and astonished Barton (who had never seen her before) by arriving at The Bunhouse as a rather conventional shepherdess, in pink and gray, rouged, and with a fluffy flaxen wig. The versatility with which Mrs. St. John Deloraine made the best of all worlds occasionally let her into inconsequences of this description.
But, if she was on pleasure bent, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had also, not only a kind heart, but a practical mind. In five minutes she had heard the tragic history, had dried her eyes, torn off her wig, and settled herself as nurse by the bedside of Margaret. The girl’s wound, as Barton was happily able to assure her, was by no means really dangerous; for the point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part. But the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene of violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young women) had affected most perilously a constitution already weakened by sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most responsible of The Bun-house girls, announced her intention to, sit up all night with the patient. Barton—who was moved, perhaps, as much by the beauty of the girl, and by the excitement of the events, as by professional duty—remained in attendance till nearly dawn, when the Lady Superior insisted that he should go home and take some rest. As the danger for the patient was not immediate, but lay in the chances of fever, Barton allowed himself to be persuaded, and, at about five in the morning, he let himself out of The Bunhouse, and made sleepily for his lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his share of adventures—which, like sorrows, never “come as single spies, but in battalions”—was by no means exhausted.
The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the Hit or Miss, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.
“There’s the gray beginning, Zooks,” he muttered to himself, in half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still steps along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind was walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the lamplights dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was just passing the locked doors of the Hit or Miss—for he preferred to go homeward by the riverside—when a singular sound, or mixture of sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed a nuit blanche. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make before quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a great whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its economy, and was laboring “without a conscience or an aim.” Whir, whir, flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them, the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer, whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all his might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms of the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the accents of pain.
Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats—the time during which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken, and next moment, with torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he was within the palisade.
Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things—big, black, formless—were dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of the waste open ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed, flaming vapors fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached in some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the ground, now dashed to earth again, now caught in and now torn from the teeth of the flying wheel.
Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, “Hold on!” or some other such encouragement, and ran in the direction of the sufferer. But, as he stumbled over dust-heaps, piles of wood, old baskets, outworn hats, forsaken boots, and all the rubbish of the waste land, the movement of the flying fans began to slacken, the wheels ran slowly down, and, with a great throb and creak, the whole engine ceased moving, as a heart stops beating. Then, just when all was over, a voice came from the crumpled mass of humanity in the centre of the hideous mechanism:
“Don’t come here; stop, on your peril! I am armed, and I will shoot!”
The last words were feeble, and scarcely audible.