Volume Three—Chapter Fifteen.
Face to Face.
John Huish’s brain was still confused. At times he was ready to give way to the idea that he must be quite mad, and at such times he had a dire mental struggle to master the wild rush of thoughts so that he might get one uppermost and let it have due course—that one wild idea that he must bring himself face to face with the fiend who mocked his existence, had tortured him for years, and who lived in his semblance; and he felt in nowise surprised, as he passed down the road, at seeing himself, dressed exactly as he then was, turn suddenly out of a side-street and walk rapidly towards the house he had just left.
“At last!” he said beneath his breath; and he drew back into a garden to avoid being seen.
He was in nowise surprised either, as, with the cunning of a madman, he watched till his semblance went straight up to the house and knocked; and, feeling that he would enter, Huish stole slowly out of his hiding-place and followed.
“Trapped!” he said in a low voice. “Only room for one of us in this little world.”
His teeth grated together, his fingers were tightly clenched, and he crept on towards the gateway of his house, hidden by the tall privet hedge within the railings, and reached the entry just as his semblance came back from the door frowning and savage with disappointment at the result of his quest of her who had disappeared just as he had triumphed in his heart over a long-cherished idea of revenge.
The two men were face to face; and with a cry of savage delight John Huish sprang at his semblance’s throat, but to be met by a blinding flash and a tremendous blow, which sent him staggering back, clutching vainly at the railings before he fell upon the pavement and rolled over and over half stunned.
He sprang to his feet, though, and gnashed his teeth with rage as he looked up and down and saw that a couple of the very few people about, alarmed by the shot, were coming to his assistance, but him he sought was gone.
Before anyone could reach him, John Huish had started off running hard to the bottom of the road, chancing which way the man he hunted had gone, and was just in time to see him enter a hansom, to be rapidly driven off.