“A plague on all cowards, I say.”
Shakespeare.
From a slumber that was scarcely a sleep, a slumber feverish and fitful, broken by restless starts and uneasy twitchings, Arthur Vaughan suddenly opened his eyes, on the instant broad awake. For just one blank moment, as has happened with mankind so many million times before, as will happen so many million times again, his brain seemed to hang motionless, without impression of any sort; and the next minute across it the blurred and distorted images of the night before were rushing and crowding their way with a sense almost of physical suffocation and terror. He had half started from his bed, when at the same moment the knock on the door which had first awakened him was repeated. “Come in,” he called, and at the word the door opened, and Henry Carleton’s valet softly entered and began to pull back the curtains. For a moment Vaughan lay motionless, watching the man, and wondering instinctively if he knew; then, trying hard to speak in a tone casual and off-hand, he greeted him. “Good morning, Rollins.”
Swiftly and silently the man turned. His face, to Vaughan’s relief, appeared perfectly impassive. “Good morning, sir,” he returned respectfully. “A fine morning out, sir,” and then, after a hardly perceptible pause—Vaughan could almost feel the words coming—“There was bad doings last night, sir.”
Vaughan had risen, and was slowly crossing the room toward his bath. He stopped abruptly. “And what was that, Rollins?” he asked.
The valet stepped a little nearer, speaking in a hushed and somewhat awe-struck tone. “It was poor Satterlee,” he answered. “He’s dead, sir. They found him this morning, outside his house, with his head all bashed in. Stone dead, sir. I was there when they brought him in. It was a horrid sight to see;—” and then, with real feeling, the man, and not the servant in him uppermost, he added, “Poor Tom. He was that happy, sir.”
Vaughan still stood without moving. “Dead,” he repeated mechanically, “Good God!” and then, “His head, you say? Why, do they think—”
The man shook his head. “Nobody knows anything, sir,” he answered. “It was right near his house; right underneath a big high rock; he might have fell off, or been pushed off; you couldn’t tell. Of course, sir, they’ve sent for the medical examiner, direct. He should be here in an hour or two, I should judge, sir, at the most.”
“Yes, yes,” Vaughan assented. “I understand;” then at once added, “and what does Mr. Carleton say?”
“Oh, he feels terribly, sir,” the valet answered, “I never saw him so broke up in my life. ‘Poor Satterlee,’ he kept saying, ‘I feel as if I was to blame. I shouldn’t have asked him to go that far, so late. It was after hours. I should have waited.’”