The question brought me back to the present again with a bound.
“Oh! what ought I to do?” I cried, wringing my hands. “I don’t quite know all yet. Jack, why did you run away that last moment and leave me?”
Jack took my hand very seriously.
“Una, my child,” he said, fixing his eyes on mine, “I hardly know whether I can ever make you understand all that. I must ask you at first at least just simply to believe me. I must ask you to trust me and to accept my account. When you rushed upon me as I stood there, all entangled in that hateful apparatus, and unable to move, I didn’t know where you had been; I didn’t know how you’d come there. But I felt sure you must have heard at least your false father’s last words—that he’d stifle me with the chloroform and burn my body up afterwards to ashes with his chemicals. You seized the pistol before I could quite recover from the effects of the fumes. He lay dead at my feet before I realised what was happening.
“Then, in a moment, as I looked at you, I took it all in, like a flash of lightning. I saw how impossible it would be ever to convince anybody else of the truth of our story. I saw if we both told the truth, no one would ever believe us. There was no time then to reflect, no time to hesitate. I had to make up my mind at once to a plan of action, and to carry it out without a second’s delay. In one burst of inspiration, I saw that to stop would be to seal both our fates. I didn’t mind so much for myself; that was nothing, nothing: but for your sake I felt I must dare and risk everything. Then I turned round and looked at you. I saw at one glance the horror of the moment had rendered you speechless and almost senseless. The right plan came to me at once as if by magic. ‘Una,’ I cried, ‘stand back! Wait till the servants come!’ For I knew the report of the revolver would soon bring them up to the library. Then I waited myself. As they reached the door, and forced it open, I jumped up to the window. Just outside, my bicycle stood propped against the wall. I let them purposely catch just a glimpse of my back—an unfamiliar figure. They saw the pistol on the floor,—Mr. Callingham dead—you, startled and horrified—a man unknown, escaping in hot haste from the window. I risked my own life, so as to save your name and honour. I let them see me escape, so as to exonerate you from suspicion. If they hanged me, what matter? Then I leapt down in a hurry, jumped lightly on my machine, and rode off like the wind down the avenue to the high-road. For a second or two they waited to look at you and your father. That second or two saved us. By the time they’d come out to look, I was away down the grounds, past the turn of the avenue, and well on for the high-road. They’d seen a glimpse of the murderer, escaping by the window. They would never suspect YOU. You were saved, and I was happy.”
“And for the same reason even now,” I said, “you wouldn’t tell the police?”
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Jack answered, in the same words as Dr. Marten. “Why rake up this whole matter? It’s finished for ever now, and nobody but yourself is ever likely to reopen it. If we both told our tale, we might run a great risk of being seriously misinterpreted. You know it’s true; so do I: but who else would believe us? No man’s bound to criminate himself. You shot him to save my life, at the very moment when you first learned all his cruelty and his vileness. The rest of the world could never be made to understand all that. They’d say to the end, as it looks on the surface, ‘She shot her father to save her lover.’”
“You’re right,” I said slowly. “I shall let this thing rest. But the photographs, Jack—the apparatus—the affair of the inquest?”
“That was all very simple,” Jack answered. “For a day or two, of course, I was in a frantic state of mind for fear you should be suspected, or the revolver should betray you. But though I saw the electric sparks, of course, I knew nothing about the photographs. I wasn’t even aware that the apparatus took negatives automatically. And I was so full of the terrible reports in the newspapers about your sudden loss of health, that I could think of nothing else—least of all my own safety. As good luck would have it, however, the clergyman at Wrode, who knew the Wilsons, happened to speak to me of the murder—all England called it the murder and talked of nothing else for at least a fortnight,—and in the course of conversation he mentioned this apparatus of Mr. Callingham’s construction. ‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘there didn’t happen to be one of them in the library at the time! If it was focussed towards the persons, and had been set on by the victim, it would have photographed the whole scene the murder, the murderer.’
“That hint revealed much to me. As he spoke, I remembered suddenly about those mysterious flashes when you burst all at once on my sight from behind the screen. Till that moment, I thought of them only as some result of your too suddenly turning off the electric current. But then, it came home to me in a second that Mr. Callingham must have set out his apparatus all ready for experimenting—that the electric apparatus was there to put it in working order. The button you turned must not only have stopped the current that nailed me writhing to the spot: it must also have set working the automatic photographic camera!