“Vicars, you’re a fool! A man with money about him, a lot of money like me—you want me to be robbed, you villain! And then how can I pay up? When you know it’s my pride to pay up, whenever I’m called upon. Whenever I’m called upon—everybody! There’s plenty for everybody. Ah! there’s an open door! I’m going to see them, Vicars. Their mother tells them lies, but when they know I have it all here to pay up——”
“No, sir,” said Vicars, “you can’t go in there to-night.”
“Why not to-night? Did she say so? She wants to get my money from me, that’s what it is! Swear, Vicars, you’ll never tell them where I keep my money! She got it and gave it to that fellow, but it came back, eh! Vicars? It knows its own master, and it always comes back.” Here the old man burst into a foolish laugh, but presently began to whisper again. “Where are you taking me? You are taking me upstairs. You want me to be murdered for my money in that dark hole upstairs.”
The two men stood at the door, hidden in the curtain that hung on it, and watched this scene. They stood still, listening while the wheels of the chair rumbled along, and the door of the wing closed upon it. Then Meredith spoke.
“Is this the man you are going to give up to punishment?” he said.
The doctor turned away and covered his face for a moment with his hands. When he turned round again to the audience, who watched him so intently, almost without seeming to draw breath, he met the gaze of Mrs. Harwood’s eyes, wide open, full of agonized meaning. She had come to herself and to a consciousness of all that depended upon the decision he would make.
“What does he mean about the money?” he asked in a low tone.
“He means,” she said, answering him before any one could speak, “what he thinks he has in his pocket-book—money to pay everybody. Oh, John Harding, that’s no dishonest meaning. He gives it to me, to pay up—and then he is restless till he has it back again. There’s nothing but old papers, old bills, worth nothing. He thinks,” she said, carried on by her eagerness, “that it is the money he took to Spain.”
“And where is the money he took to Spain?”
She had not meant to say that; but there was only one in the company who was aware that she had betrayed herself, or understood the look of bewilderment that for a moment came over her face. She paused, and that one who was in her confidence trembled. She raised herself up by the arms of her chair, and looked round upon them. Then she burst into a strange hysterical fit of laughter.