CHAPTER XI
[I TELL THE TRUTH]
My first thought, after that ghastly discovery, was to run to the outer door and close it. After that, the mere coming back into the room was an effort; I was afraid of that grim thing lying there, stark and still, with the knife sticking in its breast—afraid most of all of what it suggested.
For I saw now that a hatred greater and deeper than mine had pursued this man, and had struck him down before my slower vengeance could reach him. As I stood in the room, in that silence greater than any silence I had known before, I realized that all that I had feared, and all that I had fought against had happened, after all: the boy had been here before me, and had struck down his enemy. There was no doubt about that at all: all the precautions Murray Olivant had taken had availed him nothing. Surely and resolutely young Arnold Millard had tracked him down, and had killed him, as he had sworn to do.
I stood there by the table for what seemed a long time, wondering what I should do. For now the instinct to cover up this crime was stronger in me than it would have been had the man been struck down by my own hands. In a pitiful fashion I knew the business, and had paid the penalty of it before; I should have gone into it, and indeed had meant to go into it, with my eyes open, knowing well the desperate risk I ran. But with the boy it was different; he was only poor Charlie Avaline again, of twenty years before, who had flung himself upon this man in sheer bitter rage, and without thought of what he must pay for the blow.
I looked about the room. A chair had been overturned, and I guessed that Murray Olivant had made something of a struggle with his murderer, but had had no chance really to defend himself. The candle I had seen knocked over seemed to suggest that the man who had struck the blow had knocked over the light, in sheer horror of that dying face staring up at him: that seemed natural enough. There was nothing else disturbed; a glass upon the table held a little whisky and soda still, and on the rim of it were to be seen the impression of the lips of the drinker. The cigar that had burnt its way into the table-cloth had long since gone out. The whole place was unnaturally still.
I stood there looking down at the dead man; for if the truth be told I dared not put the table between us; there was an uncanny feeling in me that he might stir, and get up, and come towards me—dead, and yet moving—with that knife sticking out of him. I kept near him, that I might be sure where he was, and above all that he was still. And I began to calculate the chances again—not for myself this time, but for the boy.
For in this, of course, I had the advantage of a dreadful experience. I seemed to know that Arnold Millard would strike down his man without fear of any consequences—without thought of any penalty he might have to pay. That done, he would walk out of the place, and would take his way through the streets, not caring greatly what happened to him. I had done that, ever so many years before; and therein I had been mistaken. I had walked straight into the arms of those who waited for me; I had not cared. But this boy must care; in a sense, he must be saved from himself. There was no one now that could guide him out of the labyrinth into which he had gone but myself; I only knew where the hammers were going, and where the scaffold was being built, with its black arm pointing to the grave; I only could meet him on that road, and from bitter experience turn him aside, and show him another secret road to travel—a road by which he might escape. I blessed God for my knowledge then.
In the dread silence of the room I found myself addressing the dead man; leaning over the table to look down at him fearfully, as though he could hear me.
"It may be that you will save him, after all," I whispered. "You have hidden yourself here—you are an unknown man; they cannot find out anything about you. If he is silent, it may happen that no one will ever suspect. But will he be silent?—that is the point. Or will he feel, in a cooler moment, that this deed cuts him off for ever from those for whose sake it was done. What will he do?"
Once again I found myself counting and calculating the chances—not for myself, but for another this time. In some strange fashion the boy must have tracked Murray Olivant to this place; must have struck him down; and must now be wandering, with that brand of Cain upon him, fighting the desperate battle with himself that a man must fight who has in one moment put himself outside the sphere of ordinary things; and so is hiding and dodging in a crowded world to escape.