When I could look (and it was a long time before I could make up my mind to do so), the body of Bardolph Just swung high above me, suspended by the neck. On the landing, prone upon the floor, lay William Capper, sleeping soundly.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE BOY WITH THE LONG CURLS.
The suicide of that brilliant and cultured man, Dr. Bardolph Just, caused, as you will remember, a very great sensation at the time, and there was much wonder expressed as to why the man had hanged himself at all. But there was no doubt about the question of suicide, because the whole thing had been so deliberately and carefully planned.
He had taken care to send everyone away from him—even an old and trusted friend like Mr. Harvey Scoffold—and had left himself absolutely alone in that great house. Various theories were put forward as to how he had managed to tie the knot so successfully, in making that running noose for his neck; but it was universally agreed that that had been a matter of teeth and his one uninjured hand. Shuddering accounts, wholly imaginary, were given of what the man's last hours must have been, and in what determined fashion he must have hacked away the rails, in order to make a space through which he could push his way. Everyone seemed to be perfectly agreed on that matter, and there it ended.
For the rest, let me say that I waited in that house until, in due course, William Capper woke up. He went about what he had to do after that in the most methodical way, restoring all the keys to the doors, and putting in order such things as had been disturbed during those long, weary hours when he had followed the other man round the house. He said but little to me, and at last we came out of the place, and stood together, with the doors of the house closed upon us. Only when we had gone through the grounds, and had come out upon the high road did he speak again, and then without looking at me.
"This is where we part, sir," he said quietly. "You will be making for London, and I——"
"Where will you go?" I asked him as he hesitated.
"I don't know, and it doesn't matter," he replied, looking out over the landscape that stretched before him. "I'm an old man, and there may not be many years for me. It does not matter much where or how I spend them. If," he added whimsically, "I could be sure that they would send me to that prison from which you came"—for I had told him that part of the story—"I would do something that would cause me to be sent there; but it might be another prison, and that wouldn't do. I should like to be near him."