“Ah, we are all right now, thank God! How do you feel, friend? Drink this.” The speaker, holding a tumbler, came in front of me, and I saw a handsome man with clean-shaven face, black, wavy hair and beautiful but rather wild-looking eyes.
“Thank you,” I said as I took the glass and obediently drained it; “I feel somewhat as though I had been trifling with a steam-hammer. But I shall be all right presently.”
“Of course you will,” he assured me heartily. “You were struck a glancing blow on the head by the bullet of that poor, half-crazed Pole, who, the police say, thought I was a Russian duke. The only ill consequence of your noble act will be an honorable scar, to remind you how gallantly you risked your life to save a total stranger’s. My dear friend—if you will allow a friendless man to call you so”—here the charming voice grew as sweet and vibrant as an organ note—“it was the bravest and most generous act I ever knew. I cannot thank you adequately, but I hope it may be given me to serve you some time, and should you ever need a friend’s purse, his hand or his life, mine are yours.”
I endeavored to deprecate the value of my interference and to moderate his expressions of gratitude; but he would have none of it, and, leaping to his feet, began to pace to and fro, expatiating upon what he extravagantly termed my bravery and unselfishness, and insisting upon his tremendous obligation to me. He was manifestly in earnest; but all at once habit asserted itself, the ruling passion came to the fore, and a trifle “light as air” made “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ.” When he first began to move a memory flashed over me, but, as those beautiful, restless white hands added their evidence, assurance became doubly sure. I could see my demure, pretty little client impersonating this man, and I knew, despite the dyed hair and the shaven beard, that I had found the missing witness. But I had found something else. I had found a man suffering from a chronic dementia. Whether his derangement was general or merely monomania, I was at a loss to determine. If the former, he was not competent as a witness for either side. If the latter, the special form and degree of alienation might or might not militate against his testimony.
I was impelled to take him unawares, and so I said suddenly: “Dr. Bently, do you remember Mrs. Abbott, the daughter of your former patient, Mrs. Johnstone, of Laneville?”
If he started or showed surprise or annoyance, it was imperceptible; but he glanced with smiling complaisance at his nails as he came over to me, and, touching my forehead, remarked, with most irritating suavity: “My dear fellow, I fear you are feverish. My name is Charles Chester Chickering. I never was in Laneville, I never had a patient named Johnstone, and I have no recollection whatever of anyone by the name of Abbott.”
He looked straight at me as he uttered these falsehoods, and his tone was like velvet. There was the flicker of an amused smile on his mouth, but his eyes were hard and cold as blued steel, the contracted pupils shining like black pinheads. I stared back at him, and presently he shifted his gaze from my face to his own right hand, which he was holding out in front of him, and again that abominable, self-satisfied smirk appeared. I was filled with boundless contempt for this man I had almost begun to pity, and as I rose from the couch and began to speak I could fairly taste the bitterness of the words I flung at him:
“Dr. or Mr. Bernard Brice Bently, Charles Chester Chickering—or whatever your infernal, alliterative alias may be—I deeply regret that I should have saved you from the death I have no doubt you richly deserved, and I earnestly hope that you may be punished for your crime of helping to ruin a poor little woman and two innocent children. And, by the living God! I will do all in my power to bring you to——”
He interrupted me eagerly, wonderingly, protestingly. “What is that you say? Mrs. Abbott and her children living? Why, that scoundrel Johnstone and that she-devil of a nurse swore to Mrs. Johnstone and me that all three of them were dead and buried!”
Hope came to life again in my heart. It was a mistake, after all, and this man could and would rectify it. He had been deceived and had witnessed the document in good faith. I had commenced an apology when he uttered a violent exclamation, and, holding the backs of his hands in front of his face, scrutinized his nails with rapt intensity.