“He’s gone out,” I said encouragingly. “You get to bed and I’ll sit up and wait for him to come back.”
Orchard undressed as docilely as a child, and stretched himself with a groan of fatigue beneath the sheets. His eyes were wide open—on the empty camp bedstead with the smoothly turned down sheet and the gayly striped blanket which served as a quilt.
“You’d better go back to your own place, old man,” he said suddenly. “I shall be all right. Head’s been a bit queer, but a sleep will make me all right. I’m very sleepy. It would bother me to know you were waiting, and there is no necessity. Good-night.”
His eyes closed drowsily, then opened, and fixed themselves on that empty bed.
“I want you to go,” he said more positively. “I shan’t get to sleep until you do.”
I went. I thought that he would sleep, and after a good night’s rest he would be reasonable. I’d take him to the doctor in the morning. I slept myself. It was past nine next morning when I woke. There was an envelope in the letter box. It was from Orchard. He inclosed the key of his set, and a little note in pencil. So far as I can remember, this is pretty much how it ran:
“Not a bit of good, old fellow. Hopkins won’t leave me alone. He was in bed all the time—his own bed, under the window. I wonder you didn’t see him. He looked hard at me, and I knew he meant me to send you away. Not a bit of good trying to resist a man like that—a fellow who won’t drown! He’s making me hang myself; says he’s a firm believer in capital punishment. I murdered him, and I must swing for it. You’ll find me, if he leaves me alone, behind the kitchen door. I’m going to bring this note down, with the key, and put it in your letter box. Hope Hopkins won’t get it. I should like you to know the truth. Suicide is vulgar—hanging the most popular form of self-effacement. I dislike popularity, as you know. Hopkins reassures me; he says it’s only justice. He’s reading every word I write. Sell the sticks—if he’ll let you—and square up Mackary. Poor Miss M——, she was a little sweet on me. Clever girl! Wasted on a ‘good family trade.’”
That was all. I know that the reference to Miss Mackary came last. She’s still at the shop in Bernard Street; you must come and have a couple of Queen Charlotte cakes.
I went up. He was hanging, as he said he would be, behind the kitchen door. The door is half glass. As I pushed it back. I saw him gently swinging. You won’t believe it—I’m not sure that I believe it myself—but I’ll swear that as I put the key in the outer door I heard the long, wailing cry of a violin.
*****