"God knows, Mr. Campbell," he whispered. "Mr. and Mrs. Barton breakfasted together in the oak room this morning: there wasn't no one waiting, and about ten minutes gone I heard a cry and went to the door. It was locked, Mr. Campbell, and there's something goin' on in there as I don't like, sir. The police are breaking in the door now."
"THE POLICEMAN AND BUTLER TRIED TO BREAK IN THE STRONG OAK DOOR."
I hurried past the old fellow, and up the stairs to the oak room, a little panelled room with a strong oak door, which two men, a policeman and the footman, were trying to break in. From the room came a noise of blows and of a voice singing, heard from time to time, as the two men paused in their violent attack on the door. The voice was strange to me, and I could make nothing of the words of the song; they were not English, that was all I could discover. As I threw my weight against it the door gave way, and the three of us tumbled into the room together. It was a ghastly sight, Jack. There, with her head on the table among the breakfast things and her body resting across the back of a chair, lay Mrs. Barton, dead, and horribly lacerated on the back and shoulders, from which the clothes had been torn away. Her husband was standing beside her, still singing the hideous song we had heard, and waving round his head the terrible whip that I had seen the night before, and which was now dripping with the blood of the wretched woman whose life he had taken.
We all rushed in at him together: he knocked the footman head over heels with his left hand, and struck at me with his whip, but at the same moment the policeman at my side cut him down with a blow of his truncheon, and he lay writhing on the floor. I lifted up the body of the poor woman, but finding that life was quite extinct I laid her down and turned to the madman at my feet. The blow of the policeman's staff had caught him on the side of the head, crushing it in like an egg-shell, and I saw that he was dying. I knelt down by him, and he seemed to recognise me, but in a moment his eyes closed, and though he breathed for more than an hour he never recovered consciousness.
"WE RUSHED AT HIMTOGETHER. HE KNOCKED THE FOOTMAN HEAD OVER HEELS."
You read my evidence at the inquest: of course my description of Barton's delusion was necessary to establish the poor fellow's undoubted madness, but I did not think it incumbent on me to enter into great detail. Now, I want your opinion as a medical man. This affair has shaken my nerves in the most terrible way.
Of course the vision and its fulfilment, if you can call it such, is and must remain inexplicable. It is Barton's conduct after the operation that I want you to explain.
I know, from certain correspondence that I have in my hands, that the man Israel Hoffmann was terribly wronged by Mrs. Barton and her father: his wife was, in fact, executed on their representations alone, as far as I can ascertain, and the whole object of his life was revenge. Is it possible that the spirit of vengeance passed into Barton's soul as the blood of the injured Jew passed into his veins?