Larry held out his hand, and John Manning took it, and seemed to gain strength from the firm clasp.
“I knew I could rely on you,” he said, “for much or for little. And this is not much, for I have not much to leave. This worn old house, which belonged to my grandmother, and in which I spent the happiest hours of my boyhood, this and a few shares of stock here and there are all I have to leave. I do not know what the house is worth, and I shall be glad when I am gone from it. If I had not come here, I think I might perhaps have got well. There seems to be something deadly about the place.” The sick man’s voice sank to a wavering whisper, as if it were borne down by a sudden weight of impending danger against which he might struggle in vain; he gave a fearful glance about the room, as though seeking a mystic foe, hidden and unknown. “The very first day we were here the cat lapped its milk by the fire and then stretched itself out and died without a sign. And I had not been here two days before I felt the fatal influence: the trouble from my wound came on again, and this awful burning in my breast began to torture me. As a boy, I thought that heaven must be like this house; and now I should not want to die if I thought hell could be worse!”
“Why don’t you leave the hole, since you hate it so?” asked Larry, with what scant cheeriness he could muster; he was yielding himself slowly to the place, though he fought bravely against his superstitious weakness.
“Am I fit to be moved?” was Manning’s query in reply.
“But you will be better soon, and then”—
“I shall be worse before I am better, and I shall never be better in this life or in this place. No, no, I must die in my hole, like a dog. Like a dog!” and John Manning repeated the words with a wistful face, “Do you remember the faithful beast who always welcomed me here when we came up before we went to Europe?”
“Of course I do,” said Larry, glad to get the sick man away from his sickness, and to ease his mind by talk on a healthy topic; “he was a splendid fellow, too. Cæsar, that was his name, wasn’t it?”
“Cæsar Borgia I called him,” was Manning’s sad reply. “I knew you could not have forgotten him. He is dead. Cæsar Borgia is dead. He was the last living thing that loved me—except you, Larry, I know—and he is dead. He died this morning. He came to my bedside as usual, and he licked my hand gently and looked up in my face, and laid him down alongside of me on the carpet here and died. Poor Cæsar Borgia—he loved me, and he is dead! And you, Larry, you must not stay here. The air is fatal. Every breath may be your last. When you have heard what I want, you must be off at once. If you like, you may come up again to the funeral before your leave is up. I saw you had three weeks.”
Laurence Laughton moved uneasily in his chair and swallowed with difficulty. “John,” he managed to say after an effort, “if you talk to me like that, I shall go at once. Tell me what it is you want me to do for you.”
“I want you to take care of my wife and of my child, if there be one born to me after my death.”