He was silent for a few moments, and then he bawled out: “She’ll swing for it, they say—swing for it, d’ye hear, dame? But no, of course she don’t—deafer and deafer, deafer and deafer every day. It’ll be a precious good job when the parson says his last prayers over her as well as others.”
He then got up, and went to a cupboard. I could hear—for I dared not look up—by the jingling of glasses and the outpouring of liquids that he was helping himself to his spirituous sleeping-draughts. He reseated himself, and drank in moody silence, except now and then mumbling drowsily to himself, but in so low a tone that I could make nothing out of it save an occasional curse or blasphemy. It was nearly eleven o’clock before the muttered self-communing ceased, and his heavy head sank upon the back of the easy-chair. He was very restless, and it was evident that even his sleeping brain labored with affrighting and oppressive images; but the mutterings, as before he slept, were confused and indistinct. At length—half an hour had perhaps thus passed—the troubled meanings became for a few moments clearly audible. “Ha—ha—ha!” he burst out, “how are you off for soap? Ho—ho! done there, my boy; ha—ha! But no—no. Wall-plaster! Who could have thought it? But for that I—I—— What do you stare at me so for, you infernal blue-bottle? You—you”—— Again the dream-utterance sank into indistinctness, and I comprehended nothing more.
About half-past twelve o’clock he awoke, rose, stretched himself, and said:—“Come, dame, let’s to bed; it’s getting chilly here.”
“Dame” did not answer, and he again went towards the cupboard. “Here’s a candle-end will do for us,” he muttered. A lucifer-match was drawn across the wall, he lit the candle, and stumbled towards me, for he was scarcely yet awake. “Come, dame, come! Why, thee beest sleeping like a dead un! Wake up, will thee—— Ah! murder! thieves! mur”——
My grasp was on the wretch’s throat; but there was no occasion to use force: he recognized me, and nerveless, paralyzed, sank on the floor incapable of motion much less of resistance, and could only gaze in my face in dumb affright and horror.
“Give me the key of the recess up stairs, which you carry in your breast-pocket. In your sleep, unhappy man, you have revealed every thing.”
An inarticulate shriek of terror replied to me. I was silent; and presently he gasped: “Wha—at, what have I said?”
“That Mr. Hursley’s plate is buried in the garden by the lilac-tree; that you have received a thousand pounds belonging to the man you tried to poison; that you netted four hundred and fifty pounds by the plate stolen at Salisbury; that you dexterously contrived to slip the sulphuric acid into the tea unseen by Henry Roger’s wife.”
The shriek or scream was repeated, and he was for several moments speechless with consternation. A ray of hope gleamed suddenly in his flaming eyes. “It is true—it is true!” he hurriedly ejaculated; “useless—useless—useless to deny it. But you are alone, and poor, poor, no doubt. A thousand pounds!—more, more than that: two thousand pounds in gold—gold, all in gold—I will give you to spare me, to let me escape!”
“Where did you hide the soap on the day when you confess you tried to poison Henry Rogers?”