Part 23 (1/2)

”What do you mean by saying such things--are you mad, man?”

”I mean what I say.”

”Very good. You know a woman can never forget or forgive such words as you have spoken to me.”

”I don't care a d.a.m.n, if you don't!” cried Hudson.

She took up her cloak and hat, stood for a few moments looking fixedly at him, the very picture of intense hate, and hissed through her teeth, ”I leave you--madman! Idiot! You will have the horrors soon, and perhaps then you will see faces more pitiless and loathsome than even mine--I leave you to enjoy yourself with them. Good-bye, dear, good-bye!” and she left his rooms.

When she had got out of the gate at the top of Middle Temple Lane into Fleet Street, she did not immediately leave the spot, but stood a few moments considering her position. She knew the man she had left was on the verge of a severe attack of delirium tremens. She thought it highly probable that in his present condition he would not remain alone in his chambers, but would soon be driven out by the fever within him once more into the deserted streets. She would wait and watch his proceedings from a safe distance. It would be amusing. So with this object in view she crossed to the other side of the road and stood there.

Her surmise was correct. She had not to wait many minutes. The gate swung open, and the barrister staggered out. The porter looked out after him for a few seconds, and then closed the door again.

Hudson did not perceive her. A new mood was on him. He walked slowly along Fleet Street westwards, his eyes turned to the ground.

Suddenly a fantastic idea seized his ever-changing mind. He would go down Devereux Court. He would look at the doorway in which he had first found Mary Grimm.

Susan Riley followed him afar off, like a vulture waiting till its prey fall.

At last he came to the dark doorway, and then followed a strange scene, which the observer, not having the clue to it, merely set down to the unreasoning frenzy of one mad with drink.

The poor wretch sobbed aloud. He threw out his arms towards the door, and kissed the panels against which the young girl had crouched in that summer evening long ago. Then with a cry he cast himself on the ground and kissed the stones on which her feet had trod.

It often happens that when a mind is in the condition his was in then, exalted by disease, it will for a moment become unnaturally clear and acute, capable of suffering impossible to the sane. So there arose suddenly to his crazed mind so vivid a vision of his past--of what might have been--of what was, so terrible a contrast, that in his anguish and despair he deliberately dashed his head violently three times against the stone column of the house; then he rose up to his full height, the blood streaming down his features, gazed wildly round for a few seconds, and fell down on his face, insensible.

Susan Riley, pale, calm, with a bitter smile on her mouth, watched all this. Then she went to him, turned his face upwards, and gazed at it with the same unmoved expression; that once n.o.ble face, now distorted, hideous, with the locks steeped with blood lying on the brow, and the red stream trickling over it.

”Faugh!” she said to herself, ”what a beast a man can make of himself!”

Then she deliberated for a short time what she should do next.

Of a sudden, a triumphant smile broke out on her face; she laughed low: ”Oh, it is too good,” she thought, ”what a capital idea--what a scene we will have!”

She looked around her stealthily to see that no one was by; then she drew a small hypodermic syringe from her pocket, and standing under the lamp by the Temple gate carefully filled it from a bottle of straw-coloured fluid. After another careful look up and down the two streets, and at all the windows that commanded a view of the scene, she approached the insensible man. She stooped down and bared his left arm, then with one hand she took up a bit of the fleshy part of it, with the other she pushed the fine tube under the skin, and slowly pressed down the piston.

She held it there for a few seconds, then withdrew it, and placed it again in her pocket.

”Number one!” she muttered to herself. ”Ah, Mary! so quiet and yet so sly; I shouldn't have thought it of you. You have robbed me of this fool. I believe you are trying to rob me of that prig, Dr. Duncan. We shall see, my girl, who wins in this game. I never liked you; now I hate you, and that's bad for you. I flatter myself I'm a dangerous person to make an enemy of--subtle and unscrupulous enough anyhow. Yes, Susie dear, you are decidedly dangerous.”

Then she walked up to Fleet Street and found a policeman. She informed him that there was a man who had been seized by a fit at the bottom of the court.

The policeman accompanied her to the spot, and examined the prostrate form by the light of his bull's eye.

”He's only drunk,” he said at last. ”He's fallen down and cut his face a bit; nothing serious. We'll take him to the lock up.”

Susan stooped and pretended to feel the barrister's pulse. ”Policeman,”

she cried, ”you must do nothing of the kind. He is not drunk, but seriously ill. I am an hospital nurse, and understand this case. He must be removed to the hospital at once, and without delay; do you hear? It is a question of life and death! Get a cab and drive him to the ---- hospital; it is my hospital. There will be a doctor in attendance there who will save him, if any one can.”

The constable still hesitated; but when the sergeant came up her earnestness overcame the doubts of both, and her advice was followed.