The Camera Fiend. Hornung Ernest William
and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign accents of Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open door. It was scarcely shut before the morning's troubles ceased deliciously in the cosy chair.
Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it. No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood. Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one's body weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.
“I've had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I'm in a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”
“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by taking out his watch.
“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”
“No – six.”
And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of the house.
“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You've broken your word, sir!”
“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.
“I believe you were waiting for me to wake – to catch my soul, or some rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.
“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best – to make up for my bad night – you've been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in Welbeck Street at twelve o'clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”
“You won't catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner, scarcely looking up from his paper.
“I will unless I'm in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket, reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of London he was. “I must catch it. It's the last train back to school. I'll get into an awful row if I don't!”
“You'll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.
“What about?”
Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his grey face:
“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here in town about it.”
“Do tell me what, sir!”
“Can you face things, my young fellow?”
“Is it about my people – my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral in a flash.
“No – yourself.”
“Then I can!”
The doctor overcame his final hesitation.
“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”
“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”
“Exactly. Didn't it strike you as strange that he should be lying there in the wet grass?”
“I thought he was drunk.”
“He was dead!”
Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But then he had not even known the man was dead.
Had the doctor?
Yes.
Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another question first.
“What did he die of?”
“A bullet!”
“Suicide?”
“No.”
“Not murder?”
“This paper says so.”
“Does it say who did it?”
“It cannot.”
“Can you?”
“Yes!”
“Tell me.”
The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.
“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it yourself?”
BLOOD-GUILTY
His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment's doubt. He marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The walking in his sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr. Baumgartner, his first swift action, and the warm pistol in his own unconscious hand: these burning memories spoke more eloquently than any words. They would have told their own tale at once, if only he had known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived? It was cruel, it was infamous, to have kept the truth from him for a single instant. Thus wildly did the stricken youth turn and rend his benefactor for the very benefaction of a day's rest in ignorance of his deed. The doctor defended himself firmly, frankly, with much patience and some cynicism. Pocket was reminded of the state he himself had been in at the time. He also might have been a dying man, he was assured, and could well believe on looking back. Baumgartner had actually opened his lips to tell him the truth, but had checked himself in sheer humanity. Again the boy could confirm the outward detail out of his own recollection. To have told him later in the morning, the doctor went on to say, with an emphasis not immediately understood, could have undone nothing. He acknowledged a grave responsibility, but rightly or wrongly he had put the living before the dead.
How had he known the man was dead? Baumgartner smiled at the question. He was not only a doctor, but an old soldier who had fought in one at least of the bloodiest battles in European history. He had seen too many men fall shot through the heart to be mistaken for a moment; but in point of fact he had confirmed his conviction by brief examination while Pocket was fetching his things from behind the bush. Pocket pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would not be warned. The poor man had raised a drunken shout and been shot pointblank through the heart. The doctor described him as leaping backward from the levelled barrel, then into the air and down in the dew upon his face.
The boy buried his face and wept; but even in his anguish he now recalled the shout before the shot. The enforced description had been so vivid in the end that he beheld the scene as plainly as though he had been wide awake. Then he dwelt upon the dead man, looking nothing else as he now