Dead Man's Love

by Tom Gallon

"William Capper!"

It had been a little man, who walked with drooping shoulders, a man who might be forty-five or fifty years of age. Well, Capper was older than that, but then Andrew Ferkoe had only seen the man in the dim light of a candle.

And the motive? That was more difficult to arrive at, although even I thought there I saw my way. Capper I knew was determined to kill Bardolph Just if he could, and he would know that Bardolph Just had gone to the house of Zabdiel Blowfield. What more natural than that he should have seen him arrive, but should have missed him when he went away; that would explain the man in labouring clothes I had seen hanging about near the house. Capper would know that he must put on some sort of disguise in order to bring himself into the presence of the doctor, and in order to lull the other's dread of him. I was convinced now that it was Capper who had forced his way into the house late at night, and, finding himself suddenly confronted by a man who demanded his business, had aimed a blow at him at the same time, and killed Zabdiel Blowfield on the impulse of the moment. I lay down again, firmly convinced that I had arrived at a proper solution of the matter.

I further questioned Ferkoe in the morning, and all that he told me served the more to settle the thing in my mind. I wondered if by any chance Capper would be discovered; I wondered also whether, after all, I had been mistaken in my estimate of him, and whether the sudden gusts of passion that had swept over him on the two occasions in regard to Bardolph Just might not have been real madness, and might, in this last case, have found their victim in a man with whom Capper had nothing to do. In that case he was merely a harmful lunatic, dangerous to anyone when those gusts of passion swept him.

I found that during the next day or two I was pretty closely watched and interrogated by one and another, and more than once I trembled for my liberty, and even for my life. For you will understand that I was surrounded now, more than ever, by dangers of every sort; if it could once have been proved or even suggested that I was that convict nephew of the dead man, it would have gone hard with me. For here was I, masquerading under another name, and actually walking up to the house on the night of the murder. And had not Zabdiel Blowfield actually stated in writing that he could tell the authorities something concerning his nephew, Norton Hyde? The motive was clear; it had been vitally necessary that I should silence Uncle Zabdiel at all costs.

So I argued the matter, and I remembered uneasily enough that that weakling, Andrew Ferkoe, knew who I really was, and might, in case of extremity, give my secret away. On the other hand it turned out that the police had found a scrap of writing in the house, which gave the name and address of Dr. Bardolph Just, so that that gentleman was brought into the business, in order that questions might be asked of him. I had gone down to the house, and there we came face to face.

There was no necessity for me to ask him what he thought about the matter; I read in his face that he was certain in his own mind that I was the man. I should not have spoken to him at all, because when next I fought him I meant to fight with other weapons than my tongue, but he came up to me, and looked at me with that evil grin of his.

"This is a bad business," he said. "I understand that you were here almost immediately after the thing was done, eh?"

"Yes, and not before," I replied in a whisper. "You're on the wrong track, I assure you. I've had nothing to do with the matter."

I saw that he had something more to say to me. When presently I left the house he strolled along by my side. His first words were startling enough, in all conscience.