Nothing happened, however, during that night; and in the morning quite early Debora stepped out of the little inn into the village street, and we went off happily together to the railway station. There, by an early market train, we got to London, coming to it just as all the people were pouring into the busy city for the day. I took Debora to a little, old-fashioned hotel that I had heard of near the Charterhouse, and left her there while I set off on a mission of my own. I had determined that, before ever I saw my uncle, or availed myself of his promise to look after the girl, I would go again to that solitary house in which Gregory Pennington had died, and would find the man Capper. For now I had the threads of the thing strongly in my fingers; I knew from what point to start, and I could put certain questions to Capper that he might be able to answer.
I came to the house soon after mid-day, and opened the gate in the fence and went in. Lest I should be refused admission for any reason, I determined that I would, if possible, slip into the house by the back way; and I made my way cautiously round there. So it happened that I came in sight of that open window, on the window-seat of which I had left Mr. George Rabbit reclining while he kept guard over the little grey-headed man called Capper. And I was in time to see a curious scene enacted before my eyes at that very window, just as though it had been a scene in some play. I was hidden among the trees, so that no one saw me, but I could both see and hear distinctly.
Standing with his back to the window, and with his arms folded, was George Rabbit, and his attitude was evidently one of defiance. Leaning against the side of the window-frame, watching him, and glancing also at someone else within the room, stood Capper, with nervous fingers plucking at his lips, and with that vacant smile upon his face. The man Rabbit was speaking.
"I know too much to be turned aht, or to be told to do this or to do that. I'm much too fly for that, guv'nor, an' so I tell yer. Money's my game, 'an money I mean to 'ave."
The voice that replied, to my very great surprise, was the voice of Bardolph Just. "We'll see about that, you dog!" he shouted. And with that I ran round at once through the back door, into the house, and made for the room.
I darted in, in time to see the doctor with a heavy stick raised in his right hand; he was in the very act of bringing it down with all his force, in a very passion of rage, on the head of George Rabbit. The man put up his arm in time to save his head, and drew back with a cry of pain, and stopped dead on seeing me. The doctor swung round, too, and lowered the stick.
But the strangest thing of all was the sight of the man Capper. As that blow had fallen, his eyes had been fixed upon the doctor; and I had seen a great change come suddenly over his face. It was as if the man had been turned into another being, so strangely had the face lighted up. He gave what was nothing more nor less than a scream, and leapt straight for the doctor. As the doctor swung about at the sound, the man Capper caught him by the throat, and held on, and swayed about with him, and seemed to be striving to choke him.
"Murder!" he shrieked, and again yet louder, "Murder!"