Caught in a Trap

by John C. Hutcheson

The shock, the fall, the mental anxieties she had suffered, brought on an attack of brain fever; and Susan was for days struggling between life and death. When she was out of danger, the doctor, leaving her in the care of a trustworthy nurse, went home to see about his practice—which he thought must be at sixes and sevens from his prolonged absence—and to make preparations for Susan’s return to The Poplars.

When he got to Bigton, however, the doctor heard of the alarming illness of the old dowager, and his plans became upset.

He went off at once to Hartwood village, and found the old lady unconscious, although the respectable Dobbins, his locum tenens had treated her, the doctor allowed, as well as he could have done himself under the sudden paralytic shock she had sustained.

Doctor Jolly had consequently to neglect Susan for a few days, in order to attend to her mother; and when he did go back for her, he determined that he would not bring her home to The Poplars—where everything would remind her of her former life—but would take her to his own house at Bigton.

Here, accordingly, Susan was removed as soon as she was able to travel from Southampton; and here the good old Deb, the doctor’s sister, nursed the girl back to life, and to a knowledge of the past and present, with more than a mother’s care, tenderly aided by the doctor himself.

It may be remembered by the reader, in our retrospect, that Mr Trump met Doctor Jolly soon after he returned from abroad; and the two had some explanation together, which resulted in the fact of the lawyer being pleased with himself at having taken no active part in the proceedings of the French police after Susan’s disappearance and supposed death—although he had inserted a mortuary notice in the Times.

Mr Trump’s gratulation is thus easily explained. The advertisement of Susan’s death was not contradicted, in the first place because it was rather late in the day to do it now, and in the second, the doctor advised no steps being taken in the matter, or else Markworth might return and claim the girl.

Mr Trump, however, made one omission, which, as a lawyer, he ought to have attended to earlier. He did not communicate with the French police until some weeks had elapsed—not until in fact after Miss Kingscott had left Havre, in disgust at not hearing anything there of the hunted man, and come to prosecute her watch in London. Thus it was that she knew nothing of these revelations; and the polite Chef did not think it worth his while, or the expenditure of a dix centimes stamp, to inform cette femme diable, as he termed her, any more about the matter.

When Susan recovered her senses and her memory, the only thing remained fixed in her mind was the idea that Markworth had gone off and left her. She seemed to remember only the words which he had spoken before she had been alarmed and started back to the edge of the cliff that night. She remembered nothing of the fall, and her subsequent removal by the doctor to England. All the present was easily explained to her mind as a natural consequence of what Markworth had told her, that he had to go away, and that he was going to send her back home again; here she was accordingly.

As she became well, however—there could be no question of her reason now, for she was as sensible as possible, although timid in manner, as she always would be—she appeared to dread the idea of being taken back to her mother’s house, which very naturally the doctor had suggested.