"I am, I trust, always a friend to the friendless and the helpless," he went on. "You are friendless, I take it, and very helpless, and although I am no opponent of the law, I have yet the instinct which tells me that I should help a fugitive. Now let us understand one another."
At this point we were interrupted, horribly enough, by a cry from the old man in the corner—a cry like nothing earthly. He advanced a few steps towards where we stood, and looked from one to the other of us, with his hands plucking nervously at his lips.
"I don't understand, gentlemen—I don't understand," he said, in a feeble voice. "He was alive and well and strong this morning; he clapped me on the shoulder, and said—what was it that he said?" The man put one hand to his head and looked at me in a lost fashion. "I forget what it was; something seems to have gone here!" He struck his forehead sharply with his knuckles, and again looked at us with that feeble smile.
"Get out of the way!" said Dr. Just fiercely. "Take no notice of him," he added to me. "He babbles about things he doesn't understand."
The old man slunk away, and sat down on a chair in the corner and dropped his forehead in his hands. And from that time he did not move until my strange interview with Dr. Just was over.
"Now, what I suggest is this," the doctor said, leaning towards me and impressing his points upon me by stabbing one white forefinger into the palm of his other hand. "We will say that you have suffered for a crime which was not morally a crime at all. We will put it that you, by all the laws of humanity, had a right to escape from the hideous doom to which you had been consigned. You have escaped, and by the strangest chance you have found a friend at the very outset."
He smiled at me, if that quick baring of his teeth could be called a smile, and I tried to thank him with broken words. Then he went on again—
"Before you can enter the world again it is necessary that you should have clothing which does not brand you as that dress does," he said. "Therefore I want for a moment to put a case clearly to you—to let you see what is in my mind. Suppose that this convict, fleeing from pursuit, haunted by the thought that he may be recaptured, and may have to serve a yet longer period for his escapade—starving, and fainting, and hopeless; suppose this convict enters a house, and, finding the means ready to his hand, puts an end to the business once for all, and throws up the sponge. In other words, suppose that convict hangs himself, and so gets the laugh of those who are hunting him down. Do you follow me?"
I was so far from following him that I shook my head feebly, and glanced first at my own clothes and then at the man who had hanged himself, and who now lay on the couch. Then I shook my head again.
The doctor seemed to lose patience. "I'm afraid you haven't a very quick brain," he exclaimed testily. "Let me make myself more clear. A young man of good family and good standing in the world, comes in here to-night and commits suicide; soon after an outcast, flying from justice, follows him, and breaks in also. In appearance the two are something alike; both are tall, and strong, and dark; each man—the one from compulsion—has closely cropped dark hair. Suppose I suggest that, to avoid a scandal, it is the convict who has hanged himself, and that the other man has not been here at all. In other words, as you need a change of clothing, I propose you change with that!"