[THE WRONG MAN.]
When Timmons led the almost unconscious Stamer from the threshold, and left him a few yards from the door, the latter did not go far. He had scarcely the strength to walk away, and he certainly had not the desire to go. He had borne two extreme phases of terror within the last twenty-four hours; he had suffered the breathless terror of believing he had taken human life, and he had imagined the spirit of the murdered man was pursuing him.
He had often, in thought, faced the contingency of having to fire on some one who found him at his midnight depredations, but he had not, until he formed the resolve of putting Leigh away, contemplated lying in wait for an unsuspecting man and shooting him as if he were a bird of prey.
Once it had entered his mind to kill Leigh, nothing seemed simpler than to do it, and nothing easier than to bear the burden of the deed. He had no hint of conscience, and there were only two articles in his code--first, that prison was a punishment not to be borne if, at any expense, it could be avoided; and, second, that no harm was to be allowed near Timmons. Both articles were concerned, inextricably bound up, in Leigh's life. He saw in the dwarf the agent, the ally of the police--the police, absolutely, in a more malignant form than the stalwart detective who, with handcuffs in his pockets, runs a man down. This Leigh was a traitor and a policeman together. It seemed as though it would be impossible for one human being to possess any characteristic which could add to the hatefulness of him who exhibited these two. And yet this Leigh was not only a traitor and a policeman combined, but an enemy of Timmons--a beast who threatened Timmons as well! Shooting was too merciful a death for such a miscreant. But then, shooting was easy and sure, so he should be shot.
The act itself had been very easy. There had been no more difficulty about it than about hitting the old hat in the shadow of the factory wall. But when the silent shot was sped and the air-gun disposed of by being carefully hung down the inside of a chimney and hooked to a copper-wire tie of the slate chimney-top, and he was safely down the water pipe and in the mews, the aspect of the whole deed changed, or rather it became another thing altogether.
Before pulling the trigger of the air-gun, he was perfectly satisfied that Leigh deserved, richly deserved death. That was as plain as the dome of St. Paul's from London Bridge. It had been equally plain to him that when Leigh was dead, and dead by his hand, he should never because of any compunction be sorry for his act. No sooner was he at the bottom of the water-pipe than he found he had no longer any control over his thoughts, or more correctly that the thoughts in his mind did not belong to him at all, but were, as it might be, thoughts hired in the interest of the dead man, hostile, relentless mercenaries, inside the very walls of the citadel within which he was besieged, and from which there was no escape except by flinging his naked bosom on the bayonets of the besiegers.
It made not the least difference now whether the man merited death a thousand times or not, that man insisted on haunting him. It did not now matter in the least how it pleased him to regard the provoker of that shot, it was how the murdered man regarded him was the real question. He had always told himself that a murdered man was only a dead man after all. Now he had to learn that no man ever born of woman is more awfully alive than a murdered man. He had yet to learn that the blow of the murderer endows the victim with inextinguishable vitality. He had yet to learn that all things which live die to the mind of a murderer except the man who is dead. He had yet to learn that in the mind of a murderer there is a gradually filling in and crowding together of the images of the undamned dead that in the end blind and block up the whole soul in stifling intimacies with the dead, until the murderer in his despair flings himself at the feet of the hangman shrieking for mercy, for mercy, for the mercy of violent and disgraceful death in order to put an end to the fiendish gibes of the dead who is not dead but living, who will not sink into hell, but brings hell into the assassin's brain. The desire to kill is easy, and the means of killing are easy, but the spirit of the murdered man takes immortal form in the brain of the murderer and cleaves to him for evermore.
So that when Stamer descended from the roof and found himself in the yard of the mews, he was not alone. He had seen little of Leigh, but now all he had seen came back upon the eye of his memory with appalling distinctness. He saw each detail of the man's body as though it were cast in rigid bronze and pressed forcibly, painfully, unbearably, upon his perception. He could see, he could feel, the long yellow fingers and the pointed chin hidden in the beard, and the hairs on the neck growing thinner and thinner as the neck descended into the collar. He could see the wrinkles about the eyes, and a peculiar backward motion of the lips before the dwarf spoke. He could see the forehead wrinkled upward in indulgent scorn, or the eyes flashing with insolent self-esteem. He could see. He could see the swift, sharp up-tilt of the chin when a deep respiration became necessary. There was nothing about the dwarf that he could not see, that he did not see, that he could avoid seeing, that was not pressed upon him as by a cold, steel die, that was not pressed and pressed upon him until his mind ached for the vividness, until he turned within himself frantically to avoid the features or actions of the dwarf, and found no space unoccupied, no loop-hole of escape, no resting-place for the eye, no variety for the mind. He was possessed by a devil, and he had made that devil into the likeness of Leigh with his own hands out of the blood of Leigh.
He had run, he did not know how long, or whither, but all the time he was running, he had some relief from the devil which possessed him, for he heard footsteps behind him, the footsteps of the dwarf. But what signified footsteps behind him, or the ordinary ghost one heard of, which could not take shape in day-light, or linger after cockcrow, compared with this internal spirit of the murdered man, this awful presence, this agonizingly minute portraiture at the back of the eye-balls where all the inside of the head could see it, when the eyes were shut, when one was asleep?
At the time Leigh overtook him, he was sure Leigh was dead. But when he found himself exhausted against the wall, and saw the dwarf go by, it was with a feeling of relief. This was the vulgar ghost of which he had heard so much, but which he had always held in contempt. But he had never heard of the other ghost before, and his spirit was goaded with terrors, and frantic with fears.