The Last Call: A Romance (Vol. 3 of 3). Dowling Richard
that what he had contemplated towards Lavirotte would have been a crime, and serious doubts began to arise in his mind as to whether his own life was in reality ended. The first shock caused by the news Eugene gave him had now passed away, and he was able to see with clearer vision what had been, what was, and what might be. At last he mustered courage enough to say: "Whatever may have occurred before, Mr. Lavirotte, supposing you were justified in your attack upon my son, and in the promise you made to me of material help in my great difficulty, there could not be the shadow of a justification for your taking my life." "I don't seek for justification," said Lavirotte. "You have no reason to suppose I desire justification. A while ago you used the vilest language towards me. It may suit me to take ample revenge for such language, when I may do so with safety." "Safety!" cried the old man; "safety! How can you talk of safety? You told me a few minutes ago that there were other people in the house. If you fired they would hear the shot-" "Shot," said Lavirotte, with a sinister smile, "there are six here;" tapping the revolver, which he held in his right, with the forefinger of his left hand. "Shots!" repeated the old man with a shudder. "Good God! you don't mean to say you could shoot a man with that smile on your face!" "That is a question quite apart from the matter we are discussing," said Lavirotte, smiling still more. "Yes, they would hear the shots." "Then there are the men I saw outside watching the place. They also would hear, and knowing that you and I were not friends-" "How should they know we are not friends? We have been friends up to this. Your secret designs upon my life have not been, I assume, communicated to anyone." "Yes, but they would come then and find me wounded, perhaps dead. They would find you here. They would know that you have had some unaccountable connection with the assault upon my son, were found in the vault with the dead body of that man Crawford, and are now found here with another injured man, and with a revolver in your hand. All this would be strong enough, I am sure, to convince people that I had been the victim of foul play." "Up to a certain point, sir, I quite agree with you; and if the facts were to be exactly as you have described them, I have no doubt whatever that an intelligent jury would string me up. But there is a slight difference between what you fancy would occur and what seems to me likely to happen. I will describe to you briefly what, to my mind, would occur. I would hold this revolver thus and pull twice, sending one bullet through the head to insure instant insensibility, sending a second through the cavity of the chest to secure ultimate death. Then I would take this revolver and put it in your hand." Lavirotte held the weapon in his right hand, and pointed at James O'Donnell's head. With his left hand he touched the barrel as he spoke. "For God's sake put that thing down!" Lavirotte laughed. "You have not yet been so long under the magic ordeal of its glance as I was a little while ago. Within a minute some persons would be in this room. They would find me in a state of terrible excitement. They would find me calling for help at the door and at the window. They would find me a man absolutely distracted. They would find you either sitting in that chair dead or dying, or lying on the floor. They would find this revolver-your own revolver-in your hand, or close by, where you let it fall after committing suicide." "Suicide!" "They would hear from me how you received news that I could not help you, although I had hoped to be able to do so; that you came over here to learn from me personally if there were not some chance of my being able to aid you, and that upon my telling you there was not, you, to my grief and horror, put an end to yourself. You see, sir," said Lavirotte, lowering the revolver and throwing himself back in his chair, "your story could not be heard. Mine would be the only one forthcoming, and on each of the six sides of the cube of my story is the hall-mark of truth." "But surely, Mr. Lavirotte," said the merchant, "anything I may have said or done would not be a sufficient excuse for your committing so terrible a crime as making away with an old man who had never done you any serious injury. I may have said violent, unjustifiable things; I own I have. But I said them in heat and in ignorance. You can understand that I spoke under tremendous excitement, and in the belief that you had, without provocation, assailed my son, and that you had, for no reason known to me, promised me aid in my great trial and forsaken me in the moment of peril." "Then, sir, am I to assume that you hold me at my word, and that you believe when I attacked your son I was suffering under extreme excitement and not responsible for my actions?" "I believe what you say." "And that when I promised to help you out of the money I made certain I was about to receive, I was sincere?" "That," said the old man, with some hesitancy, "is a question I am not yet qualified to answer." "Will you, sir, say that you are now as open to believe I was in good faith when I promised to help you as you were to believe I had committed an unprovoked assault upon your son when you came in here?" "I see no reason why I should not say so." "Then, sir, we may take it that we have arrived at the end of what might have been a fatal talk. Let us put an end to any further chances of fatality thus." He cocked the revolver, placed the butt of the weapon on the floor, held the barrel in his left hand, and placing the heel of his right foot on the hammer, he tore it out from its place, and flung the weapon on the table, saying: "Now, sir, a child may play with it in safety." The old man rose up in supreme relief, and said: "I have often thought hard things of you. I shall never think them again. When I came in I believed I had matters all my own way, and that I should shoot you like a dog. I had the merciless intention of shooting you as you were. You then got the upper hand of me and had me at your mercy. I cannot now but believe all you have told me. Will you shake hands?" "Very gladly indeed," said Lavirotte, with the tears in his eyes. "This is one of the happiest moments of my life. Now it is only fair I should tell you upon what I grounded my hopes of being able to help you." Lavirotte told James O'Donnell the whole history of the treasure and St. Prisca's Tower. When it was over, the old man said: "Why, in the name of goodness, did you not get twenty men to dig instead of risking both your lives in such a silly way?" "We did not wish that anyone beyond ourselves should know. We did not want to share our good luck with the Crown." "There was no need to share your luck with the Crown. The law of Treasure Trove has lately been altered." "Good Heavens!" cried Lavirotte. "To think it is so, and that poor old Crawford should have lived all his life and died the death he did, without knowing this!"
CHAPTER XII
The crash at last came on the firm of O'Donnell. The business was sold; but the creditors would not be as severe on the old man as he would be on himself. They refused to leave him absolutely penniless; and when the whole affair was wound up he found he had a sum of money which, if carefully invested, would secure the declining years of his wife and himself against absolute want. Eugene was offered the managership of the old business, but would not take it, saying, with words of gratitude for the offer, that he would rather seek his fortune in another field, and that Rathclare would always in his mind be haunted by the ghost of their more prosperous years. He told his personal friends that while he was abroad on his honeymoon he had had his voice tried, and competent judges told him that, with study, he could make a living by it. He had always a desire to go on the stage. He was not too old to begin now. He intended selling up all his immediate personal belongings, and on the proceeds of the sale he calculated that he and his wife could, with great thrift, manage to live until he was able to earn money by singing. Three months after the last call, James O'Donnell and his wife had given up their large house in Rathclare, and taken a modest cottage in Glengowra, where they purposed passing the remainder of their days, and Eugene O'Donnell and his wife were settled in lodgings in London. By this time, all that had hitherto been concealed by Lavirotte was revealed. He had anticipated Cassidy's story by himself telling Dora of the infatuation he had once experienced for Nellie Creagh; and having explained to her that this condition of mind or heart had immediately preceded the onslaught he made on O'Donnell, she adopted his view, namely, that the whole thing was the outcome of an abnormal mental condition likely to arise once in the lifetime of the average man. He explained to her that upon certain occasions the sanest and greatest of men had behaved like idiots or poltroons, and that the very desperation of his circumstances at the time had left him to drift into a flirtation, which had never gone beyond a dozen civil words on one particular occasion. She believed all he said; and once she got over the first shock of the affair, banished it for ever from her mind, as though it had no longer any more existence than the moonlight of last month. Lavirotte and O'Donnell were now as inseparable as ever. They attended the same lessons together, and Dora waited for Lavirotte with Nellie at Eugene's lodgings, where the two unmarried lovers now met, when they met indoors. Lavirotte had still some of the money Lionel Crawford gave him, and when the affairs of the dead man were investigated it was found that he had some money left. This naturally became Dora's. Eugene's reverse of fortune arose at a