Dead Man's Love

by Tom Gallon

"It was like the sound of a weapon striking a man's head. It was followed by a sort of quick cry; and then there was silence. In my agitation I must have turned away from the spot; and I had now nothing to guide me, as the voices had guided me before. I could only stand there, waiting, and hoping to hear something. It was all so horrible, and I so helpless, that I wonder I did not go mad then. I was near to it when presently I heard a sound as though someone were dragging a heavy body across a room. I began again to move in the direction of that sound, and presently came to a door, and after listening to another sound I did not understand, opened it, and went in. I must be quick now to tell you what I saw, for it is at this point that the darkness falls upon me, and I seem to sink down and down into the depths that swallowed me up for so long a time."

I was really afraid that he might, indeed, forget before he could tell me; I watched him eagerly. After but a little pause he went on again, and now the horror was growing in his face, and stamping it, so that I could not take my eyes from him.

"As I opened the door of the room the doctor had his back to me, and he was hauling on something. I did not understand at first, until I saw that he was pulling on a rope that ran over a hook in the ceiling. That which he pulled was hidden from me by himself; I could not see what it was. It all happened in a second, because as I opened the door he swung away from me, still clinging to the rope—and then, dear God!—I saw what it was. Only for a flash did I see up there before me the dead face of my master—the master I loved, and for whom I would have given my life; then, as I put up my hand to hide the sight, everything went from me; and I seemed to fall, as I have said, into some great blackness, with all my life blotted out! That," he said, with a little, quick, helpless gesture of the hands—"that is all."

I felt my blood run cold at the horror of his tale; the whole scene seemed to be enacted before me, as though I had myself been present. "And did you really forget everything until a little time ago?" I asked.

"Everything, sir," he assured me solemnly. "I was like one groping in the dark. People I had known I knew again—as with Miss Debora; but I could not remember anything else. I had a vague idea that I had lost my master somewhere about that house; that made me cling to it. The rest was a blank. And then one day, when I saw the doctor raise his stick to strike a man down, it was as though something had been passed across my brain, and I remembered. If I can make myself clear, sir," went on Capper eagerly, "it was as though I had gone back to that night; that was why I sprang at the doctor, and wanted to kill him."

"And you tried again in the train," I reminded him. "But why on each occasion did you sham madness?—why did you pretend you were still the simple creature everyone supposed you to be?"

"Because I knew that if once Dr. Just guessed that I remembered the events of that night, he would take means to have me shut up; I might have been taken for a lunatic, and disposed of for the rest of my life. I knew that if I could once deceive him into believing that my mind was gone, he would not be suspicious of me. Unfortunately for my plan, I gave the game away when I tried to throw him out of that train."

"How was that?" I asked.

"I had managed things very well up to that point," he said. "I knew pretty well how the trains ran, and I knew that if I could throw him out on the line at a certain spot between the stations it would look like an accident, and the train on the other line would cut him to pieces. I was so sure of success that I threw off that disguise I had worn so long, and I cried out to him that I remembered he had killed my master, and that I meant to kill him. I dare say you remember, sir, that you asked him what I had said, and he would not tell you."

I remembered it distinctly, and I remembered how the doctor had watched that little drooping figure in the corner of the railway carriage, and how he had refused to tell me what the man had said before attacking him.