We were left together to talk over this strange affair. Mr. Marx seemed to have made up his mind about it already.
“Without doubt,” he said deliberately, “it was some tramp, desperate with want or drink, who made up his mind to play the highwayman. He started well, and then, seeing two of us instead of one, funked it and bolted. I don’t think I ever had such a start in my life.”
“You came off the worst,” I remarked, pointing to his forehead.
“It wasn’t that that upset me,” he answered. “It was a horrible idea which flashed upon me just for a moment. The face which peered in at the window—you saw it—was horribly like the face of a man who is dead—whom I know to be dead. It gave me, just while the idea lasted, a sensation which I hope I shall never experience again as long as I live. It was ghastly.”
The face of the dead! It was not a cheerful thought. But I looked at the wrecked door and window of the carriage and felt immediately reassured. Our assailant, whoever he might have been, was no ghostly one. There was undeniable evidence of his material presence and strength in the shattered glass, the wrenched woodwork, and the wound on Mr. Marx’s forehead.
The carriage pulled up with a jerk. We had reached my home.
“Hadn’t you better come in and bathe your forehead, Mr. Marx?” I suggested hesitatingly.
He shook his head and declined.
“No, thanks. I’ll get back to the Castle as soon as I can and doctor it myself. Good-bye, Morton. If I don’t see you again before you go, I wish you every success at Mr. Randall’s.”
I thanked him warmly, shook his offered hand, and, shutting the carriage-door, called out to Burdett to drive on. For a moment or two I stood in the road watching the lights as they rapidly grew fainter and fainter in the distance. Then I turned slowly up the path towards the house.