When Ghost Meets Ghost. William De Morgan
except the turn-cock, obviously useless. That is the verdict. "You'll never be for breaking down the door, Mr. Inspector, with my father there ill in the room!"—is the woman's appeal. "Not till we've looked everywhere else," is the reply. "I'll say that much. I'll see through the cupboards in the room, though. That won't hurt him."
Little did either of them anticipate what met their eyes as the door opened. There on the couch, no longer on his back, but sitting up and gasping for clearer speech, which he seemed to have achieved in part, was the paralysis-stricken man. The left hand, powerless no longer, was still uncertain of its purpose, and wavered in its ill-directed motion; the right, needed to raise him from his pillow, grasped the level moulding of the couch-back. Its fingers still showed a better colour than those of its fellow, which trembled and closed and reopened, as though to make trial of their new-found power. His eyes were fixed on this hand rather than on his daughter or the stranger. His knees jerked against the light bondage of a close dressing-gown, and his right foot was striving to lift or help the other down to the floor. Probably life was slower to return to it than to the hand, as the blood returns soonest to the finger-tips after frost. Only the face was quite changed from its seeming of but ten minutes back. The voice choked and stammered still, but speech came in the end, breaking out with a shout-burst:—"Stop—stop—stop!"
"Easy so—easy so!" says the police-officer, as the woman gives way to a fit of hysterical crying, more the breaking-point of nerve-tension than either joy or pain. "Easy so, master!—easy does it. Don't you be frightened. Plenty of time and to spare!"
The old man gets his foot to the floor, and his daughter, under no impulse of reason—mere nerve-paroxysm—runs to his side crying out:—"No, dear father! No, dear father! Lie down—lie down!" She is trying to force him back to his pillow, while he chokes out something he finds it harder to say than "Stop—stop!" which still comes at intervals.
"I should make it easy for him, Miss Hawkins, if I was in your place. Let the old gentleman please himself." Thus the officer, whose sedateness of manner acts beneficially. She accepts the suggestion, standing back from her father with a stupid, bewildered gaze, between him and the exit to the roof. "Give him time," says Sub-Inspector Cardwell.
He takes the time, and his speech dies down. But he can move that hand better now—may make its action serve for speech. Slowly he raises it and points—points straight at his daughter. He wants her help—is that it? She thinks so, but when she acts on the impulse he repels her, feebly shouting out: "No—no—no!"
"Come out from between him and the clock, missis," says the officer, thinking he has caught a word right, and that a clock near the door is what the old man points at. "He thinks it's six o'clock."
But the word was not six. The daughter moves aside, and yet the finger points. "It's nowhere near six, father dear!" she says. "Not one o'clock yet!" But still the finger points. And now a wave of clearer articulation overcomes a sibilant that has been the worst enemy of speech, and leaves the tongue free. "Wix!" That's the word.
"Got it!" exclaims the officer, and the woman with a shriek falls insensible. He takes little notice of her, but whistles for his mate below—a peculiar whistle. It brings the man who was keeping watch in the lane. "Got him all right," says his principal. "Out here on the tiles. That's your meaning, I take it, Mr. Hawkins?" The old man nods repeatedly. "And he's took the key out with him and locked to the door. That's it, is it?" More nods, and then the officer mounts the short ladder and knocks hard upon the door. He speaks to the silence on the other side. "You've been seen, Mr. Wix. It's a pity to spoil a good lock. You've got the key. We can wait a bit. Don't hurry!"
Footsteps on the roof, and a shout from the garden below! He is seen now—no doubt of it—whatever he was before. What is that they are calling from the garden? "He's got a loose tile. Look out!"
"Don't give him a chance to aim with it," says Jacomb below to his chief on the ladder. Who replies:—"He's bound to get half a chance. Keep your eyes open!" A thing to be done, certainly, with that key sounding in the lock.
The officer Cardwell only waited to hear it turn to throw his full weight on the door, which opened outwards. He scarcely waited for the back-click to show that the door, which had no hasp or clutch beyond the key-service, was free on its hinges. Nevertheless, he was not so quick but that the man beyond was quicker, springing back sharp on the turn of his own hand. Cardwell stumbled as the door gave, unexpectedly easily, and nearly fell his length on the leads.
Jacomb, on the second rung of the step-ladder, feels the wind of a missile that all but touches his head. He does not look round to see what it strikes, but he hears a cry; man or woman, or both. In front of him is his principal, on his legs again, grasping the wrist of the right hand that threw the tile, while his own is on its owner's throat.
"All right—all right!" says Mr. Wix. "You can stow it now. I could have given you that tile under your left ear. But the right man's got the benefit. You may just as well keep the snitchers for when I'm down. There's no such * * * hurry." Nevertheless, the eyes of both officers are keen upon him as he descends the ladder under sufferance.
On the floor below, beside the bed he lay on through so many weary years, lies Miss Julia's old father, stunned or dead. Her own insensibility has passed, but has left her in bewilderment, dizzy and confused, as she kneels over him and tries for a sign of life in vain. At the ladder-foot the officers have fitted their prisoner with handcuffs; and then Cardwell, leaving him, goes to lift the old man back to his couch. But first he calls from the window:—"Got him all right! Fetch the nearest doctor."
Through the short interval between this and Daverill's removal, words came from him which may bring the story home or explain it if events have not done so already. "The old * * * has got his allowance. He won't ask for no more. Who was he, to be meddling? You was old enough in all conscience, July-ar!" His pronunciation of her name has a hint of a sneer in it—a sneer at the woman he victimised, some time in the interval between his desertion of his wife and his final error of judgment—dabbling in burglary. She might have been spared insult; for whatever her other faults were, want of affection for her betrayer was not among them, or she would not have run the risks of concealing him from the police.
Her paralytic father's sudden reanimation under stress of excitement was, of course, an exceptionally well-marked instance of a phenomenon well enough known to pathologists. It had come within his power to avenge the wrong done to his daughter, and never forgiven by him. Whether the officers would have broken down the door, if he had not seized his opportunity, may be uncertain, but there can be no doubt that the operative cause of Daverill's capture was his recovery of vital force under the stimulus of excitement at the amazing chance offered him of bringing it about.
The affair made so little noise that only a very few Sunday loiterers witnessed what was visible of it in the lane, which was indeed little more than the unusual presence of two policemen. Then, after a surgeon had been found and had attended to the injured man, it leaked out that a malefactor had been apprehended at The Pigeons and taken away in the police-boat to the Station lower down the river.
That singular couple, Michael Ragstroar and his great-aunt, had got to the cherry-tart before a passing neighbour, looking in at their window, acquainted them what had happened. If after Michael come from the bake-'us with the meat, which kep' hot stood under its cover in the sun all of five minutes and no one any the worse, while the old lady boiled a potato—if Michael had not been preoccupied with a puppy in this interim, he might easy have seen the culprit took away in the boat. He regretted his loss; but his aunt, from whom we borrow a word now and then, pointed out to him that we must not expect everything in this world. Also the many blessings that had been vouchsafed to him by a Creator who had his best interests at heart. Had he not vouchsafed him a puppy?—on lease certainly; but he would find that puppy here next time he visited Hammersmith, possibly firmer in his gait and nothing like so round over the stomach. And there was the cherry-tart, and the crust had rose beautiful.
Michael got home very late, and was professionally engaged all the week with his father. He saw town, but nothing of his neighbours, returning always towards midnight intensely ready for bed. By the time he chanced across our friend Dave on the