The fact was that Mr. Jetsam’s plans had been slightly deranged. He had hoped to get through his great scene—the scene to which all his efforts had tended—during Rosie’s first absence on the river. He relied on Rosie; he had been amazed at her goodness and her fortitude; he had been still more amazed at his singular influence over her; and he naturally told her a great deal. But he did not tell her quite everything. He feared to frighten her. Hence proceeded one of his reasons for sending her to the boat, with the object of sinking the coffer further in the river as the tide fell. But she had dispatched the business with such extraordinary celerity, and he, on his part, had been so hindered by such an unexpected contretemps, that she was back again before even he had begun.
Thus, he had been obliged to invent a new errand for her, and he flattered himself that he had invented the errand, and dispatched her on it, with a certain histrionic skill—and he had the right so to flatter himself. It desolated him to deceive her, to hoodwink her; but he saw no alternative.
Having secured the house, he ascended again, this time taking less care to maintain an absolute silence, to the first floor. The affair was fully launched now, and no one could interrupt him. If Pauline awoke in her locked bedroom and heard things, so much the worse for her, he reflected. She could not go out on to her balcony because he had seen long ago to the fastening of the window. Therefore she might cry as much as she liked. He laughed as he thought of this, not having the least idea that he had so elaborately fastened the door and the window of an empty room.
He went into Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom with a slight swagger, and shut the door. A fire was burning in the grate. He cast a single glance at the bed and its mute and helpless occupant, and putting his little lantern on the mantelpiece, he walked round the room, inspecting its arrangement and its corners. Then, suddenly remembering his own burglarious exploit of forcing an entrance into the room by the window, he approached the window, flung it wide open and stepped outside on to the balcony. Far across the expanse of the Oriental Gardens, in the moonlight, he discerned a figure vaguely moving in the direction of the river. It was a woman’s figure.
“There she is,” he murmured. “Admirable creature! Why did I not meet such a woman when I was younger?”
Then he came in again, shut and fastened the window, and drew the heavy curtains across it, taking care that no chink was left through which light could be seen. Then he began to whistle softly, and he turned on all the electricity in the apartment; there were a cluster of lamps in the ceiling, and two lights over’ the dressing-table, besides the table-lamps, and his own trifling gleam of a lantern. The room was brilliantly, almost blindingly, lit, and every object stood revealed.
He stepped towards the bed, and deliberately gazed into the eyes of the stricken old woman. Mrs. Ilam’s burning orbs blinked at intervals. Otherwise she gave no sign of volition or of life. Jetsam placed his eyes in the fixed line of her gaze, so that they were obliged to exchange a glance. She appeared to be unconscious of it. Only a scarcely perceptible trémulation ran along her arms, which lay stretched, as usual, outside the coverlet, like the arms of a corpse.
“Well,” said Jetsam, “here I am at last, you see. Do you recognize me? I’ve changed, haven’t I, old hag? But you can’t be mistaken in me.”
The pent-up bitterness of a lifetime escaped from him in the tones of his voice. But the old woman showed no symptom that the terrible past was thus revisiting her in its most awful form.
“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Jetsam continued. “For over forty years you have been sure that I was dead, and that your crime was one of the thousands of crimes which go unpunished. And look here,” he went on; “if you have any doubt, murderess, as to my identity, look at this. I’ll make you look at it, by heaven!”