I remembered in a flash the story the doctor had told at that dinner party at the house of old Patton; of the man who worked on the jealous feelings of another that he might kill a third man. But my mind moved slowly, and even yet I did not even quite see what this man had done.
"I can tell you this now, because you're a dead man to all intents and purposes," said Jervis Fanshawe, leaning across the table and looking hard at me. "I always hated you—hated you, I think, for your youth and your strength, and that fair boyish face of yours that gave you a chance with women I never had. You've served my purpose, and in a way I never expected."
"Then, when they bring me to justice—when they try me for what I have done," I said slowly and patiently, "that is the story you will tell them?"
"Undoubtedly," he replied. "And you cannot contradict it."
"I would not contradict it if I could prove the truth to every one," I assured him earnestly. "And I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
He stared at me in amazement. "Are you mad?" he gasped.
I shook my head, and smiled. "No, I'm not mad," I replied. "Only this gives me the chance I never hoped to get—the chance to keep her name out of it. I was afraid you might drag that in, tell of the quarrel between Hockley and myself, and have sharp lawyers turning and twisting that lie this way and that. Tell your tale, by all means; I shall keep silent. Now give me something to eat; I'm faint and worn out."
I do not think he had understood me before; I caught him more than once stopping, as he moved about the room, to look back at me, and to ponder over me and to shake his head. I was indifferent to everything; I only thought how wonderfully it had all come about, that Barbara's name would never be mentioned; I had not hoped to kill the lie so completely as this. I ate the food he gave me, and presently lay down on the hard horsehair sofa in his sitting-room, and was fast asleep in a minute. I only woke once during the night, and then I found him bending over me with a flaring candle held above his head; there was still that wondering awestruck look in his face.
I went out long before he was awake in the morning; I had not yet decided what I should do. That it would be done for me pretty quickly I already realized; for it was not likely, after his declaration of the previous night, that Jervis Fanshawe would long leave me at liberty. So I took what was to prove my last walk through London, for that time at least; and presently saw what I had expected to see. Flaring lines on newspaper placards told me and all the world of London what had happened, and the lines were strengthened as hour after hour went by. In face of them I had a curious satisfaction in my present liberty, a curious wonder at the power that was mine. I could have gone up to any respectable citizen jogging along his respectable way, and have told him the truth calmly; I could have shouted it in the streets, and then have run, with a hundred at my heels. I was a pariah, walking the streets of a great city with men hunting for me; I had nothing in common with respectability or decency.
I remember that I tried experiments that day; touched the very fringe of what was waiting for me, in a sense, to try how near I could go to the actual danger without grasping it. I sat in a crowded restaurant at lunch time, and heard men talk of what had happened, giving details of how the man had been struck down, and offering suggestions as to the motive. I that was already dead could listen to them with equanimity; could wonder a little what would have happened had I suddenly declared how much deeper my knowledge of the business was than theirs.