"Yes, yes, yes, I understand!" he said, rousing himself at last. "Besides, it'll be better to have someone else in the house—safer for me, you understand. Nobody will dare come to the place if they know that I'm not a lonely old man, with only a fool of a boy in the house with him—a boy that you can't wake for love or money."
I suppressed a grin. My experience of Andrew Ferkoe had been that he woke rather too easily. I rose to take my leave, and Uncle Zabdiel, in his anxiety to please me, came out into the hall with me, and seemed inclined to detain me even longer.
"I'll be very good to her," he said; then, suddenly breaking off, he gripped my arm, and pointed up the dark, uncarpeted stairs behind us. "You remember my old room," he whispered. "Well, I saw the room, and everything in it, quite clearly, three separate times, and I lying there——"
"You're thinking too much about it," I broke in hastily. For his face was ghastly. "You be kind to Debora, and you'll find she'll soon laugh some of your fears out of you. Good-bye for the present; you'll see us both later in the day."
He shook my hand quite earnestly, and let me out of the house. I saw him, as I had seen him before, standing in the doorway, peering out at me; in that moment I felt a little sorry for him. So much he had missed—so much he had lost or never known; and now, towards the end of his days, he was racked by fears of that death that he knew must be approaching rapidly.
I started back for London, meaning to fetch Debora to my uncle's house that night. I was fortunate enough not to have to wait long at the station for a train, and I presently found myself in an empty compartment. I was tired out, and excited with the events of the day. I settled myself in a corner, and closed my eyes, as the train sped on its way. And presently, while I sat there, I became aware of a most extraordinary commotion going on in the compartment on the other side of the partition against which I leaned. There was a noise as of the stamping of feet, and shouts and cries—altogether a hideous uproar.
I thought at first that it must be some drunken men, uproarious after a debauch; but I presently came to the conclusion that some severe struggle was going on in the next compartment; I distinctly heard cries for help. I leaned out of the window, in the hope that I might be able to see into the next carriage; then, on an impulse, I opened the door, and got out on to the footboard. It was not a difficult matter, because the train was travelling comparatively slow. I closed the door of the compartment I had been in, and stepped along the footboard to the next. Clinging on there, I looked in, and beheld an extraordinary sight.
Two men were battling fiercely in the carriage; and I saw that the further door of the carriage was open. As the men wrenched and tugged at each other, I could not for a moment or two see their faces; but I could make out clearly that the smaller man of the two was working strenuously to force the other man out on to the line through the open door. I saw, too, that the bigger man appeared to be using only one arm to defend himself; and it was suddenly borne in upon me that I knew with certainty who the two men were. I tore open the door on my side, and slipped into the carriage, and shut the door again. Then I flung myself upon the smaller man, who was no other than William Capper.
As it happened, I was only just in time. The other man had been driven to the open door, until he was absolutely half in and half out; he had dug his nails into the cushions on one side, in a desperate effort to save himself from falling. And as I pulled Capper off, and flung him to the other end of the carriage, I naturally pulled his intended victim with him—and that intended victim was Dr. Bardolph Just!
How narrow his escape had been was brought home to me the next moment, when, as I leaned out to close the door, another train tore past on the next track, going in the opposite direction. I banged the door, and stood against it, and looked at the two men.