‘Well, Sir,’ replied Holmes, ‘we will hear what you have to say.’
‘Stop,’ said Rust; ‘before uttering a word, I must have a promise.’
The lawyer looked at him, and then at Harson, as much as to say: ‘I expected it. There’s some trick in it.’
Rust observed it, and said: ‘Spare your suspicions; I have come here to be frank and honest in word and deed; and Michael Rust can be so, when the fancy seizes him. The promise I require is this; whatever I may reveal, no matter what the penalty, you will not set the blood-hounds of the law on my track within forty-eight hours. I have yet one act to perform in the great farce of life. That accomplished, you may do your worst.’
‘This is all very strange,’ said Holmes, eyeing the thin, excited features of his visitor, as if not altogether sure of his sanity; ‘if you fear the punishment of your misdeeds, why reveal them? Why place yourself in our power, or run the risk of our interfering with your future movements?’
Rust replied bitterly: ‘You shall hear. My whole life has been spent for one person, my own child. Every faculty of mind and body has been devoted to her, and every crime I have committed was for her. Scruples were disregarded; ties of blood set at defiance; every thing that binds man to man, that deters from wrong, were disregarded, if they stood in the way of that one grand aim of life. She forgot all! She has broken me down, heart and spirit. Love and devotion were crushed with them, and revenge has sprung up from their ruins. Ay! revenge against my own child! Should any thing prevent my doing what I have yet to do, and should my brother die, and his children not be found, she would be his heir. I would have labored and succeeded, for one who has disgraced me, and made me what you see me!’
He stretched out his thin hands, displaying the large veins, coursing beneath the skin, and apparently full to bursting. ‘How wasted they are!’ He smiled as he looked at them, and then asked: ‘Will you promise?’
The lawyer turned to Harson, and then said: ‘I promise; do you, Harson?’ Harry nodded.
‘Good!’ said Rust, abruptly. ‘You know my name, and much of my history. All the facts which you detailed to me at my office a short time since are true—true almost to the very letter. Michael Rust and Henry Colton are one. The plodding, scheming, heartless, unprincipled Henry Colton, who could sell his brother’s own flesh and blood for gold; who could forget all the kindnesses heaped upon him, and stab his benefactor, and this wreck of Michael Rust, are one!’
He struck his hand against his chest, and strode up and down the room, biting his lips. ‘He was rich, and I was poor: he gave me the means of living, but I wanted more. I had my eye on his entire wealth, and I wanted him to be in his grave. But he thwarted me in that. Feeble and sickly, so that a breath might have destroyed him, he lived on, and at last, as if to balk me farther, he married. Two children were born; two more obstacles between me and my aim. Two children!—two more of the same blood for me to love. Ho! ho! how Michael Rust loved those babes!’ exclaimed he, clutching his fingers above his head, and gasping as he spoke. He turned, and fastening his glaring eye on the lawyer, griped his fingers together, with his teeth hard set and speaking through them, said in a sharp whisper: ‘I could have strangled them!’