Miss Halifax, with a motion of infinite pity, touched his mutilated arm. Her intuition had already guessed the truth. He looked up at her with a faint smile.
“Yes, Miss,” he said—“the day that I began work, I was standing by a printing machine, when I heard one of my companions read out that very description of the suicide I showed you, and learnt for the first time of the clue I had left. I was again wearing my thumb-stall, and, not out of courage, but in a simple impulsive frenzy, I thrust my hand among the moving machinery, and the next moment fainted. When I came definitely to my senses, it was to find myself—with joy and relief—secure for ever from the witness I most feared. But, heaven help me, it was only a respite.
“The firm were very good to me, and kept me on, as having been injured, accidentally as it was supposed, in their service. And I tried to repay them by devotion to my work. In time the capacities of my two hands seemed all concentrated in the one left, and I became expert with it as I had never been with my right. Months past, and nothing happening to alarm me further, I grew by degrees to a certain confidence, and to a hope that the police had ceased to interest themselves in the matter of the thumb-marks. And then one day, all in an instant, my silly self-delusion was scattered to the winds. I received a visit in my lodgings from an enemy I had never conceived or dreamed of.”
He passed a hand across his damp forehead. Gilead patted his shoulder reassuringly.
“You remember, sir,” continued the young man, “my reference to money-lenders? There was one of these, a Mr Raphael Colfox, of Great Queen Street, who was often with my employer Mr Lerroux. I think he not only bled him pretty freely, but, with an eye to future possibilities, was in the habit of acquiring from him at nominal prices works of his. Among those that had passed into his possession was, it appeared, that very piece which I had risked my soul to obtain. He had come to tell me so, with the intimation that his late appearance in the matter was due to nothing more than the difficulty he had found hitherto in running me to earth. He had seen, he said, the thumb-mark on the post, and had at once identified it with another in his possession; and he offered me his silence at a price. All my explanations and protests were in vain, and he ended by convincing me that he held my life in his hands.”
The narrator, whose voice had sunk lower and lower, gave a little choke here, and stopped.
“I see,” said Gilead, “I am beginning to see very clearly. Tell me only, if you can, what was this article you desired so much to get into your own possession.”
“It was a cast of my right hand, palm uppermost, sir, that Mr Lerroux had taken most beautifully in wax. And my name was on it.”
There followed a short silence; and then Gilead spoke in the soft ominous voice that it always thrilled Miss Halifax to hear.
“This is all quite plain, Mr Dobell, and I thank you for coming to us in your difficulty. I should like to ask you a final question or so. This first visit of Mr Colfox’s—when did it occur?”