Part 48 (1/2)

”You should go to the Old Bailey one day and hear a trial,” said Edward Ambrose. ”All things that are concerned with reality might help you just now. I dare say it will hurt you horribly; but if you are not unlucky in the judge, it may help to restore your faith in your country.”

”Yes, sir, I'll go there one day, as you advise me to,” said Henry Harper, as a boy in the fourth form who was young for his age might have said it; and then with curious simplicity: ”But I won't much fancy going by myself.”

”I'll come with you,” said Edward Ambrose, ”if that is how you feel about it.”

Thus it was that one evening, about a fortnight later, Henry Harper received a postcard, which said:

Meet me outside O. B. 10.30 tomorrow. Murder trial: a strange and terrible drama of pa.s.sion for two students of the human comedy! E. A.

On the following morning, the Sailor had already mingled with the crowd outside the Old Bailey when, punctual to the minute, he was joined by his friend.

”It's brave of you to face it,” was his greeting.

Mr. Ambrose little knew the things he had faced in the course of his five and twenty years of life, was the thought that ran in the mind of the Sailor.

They made their way in, and became witnesses of the drama that the law was preparing to unfold.

The judge began the proceedings, or rather the proceedings began themselves, with a kind of grotesque dignity. After the jury had been sworn, the prisoner was brought into the dock. Henry Harper gazed at him with an emotion of dull horror. In an instant, he had recognized Mr. Thompson, the mate of the _Margaret Carey_.

There could be no doubt it was he. Alexander Thompson was the name given in the indictment; besides, the Sailor would have known anywhere that s.h.a.ggy and hirsute man who had cast such a shadow across his youth. There he was, that grim figure! He had changed, and yet he had not changed. The long, lean, angular body was the same in every awkward line, but the deadly pallor of the face was horrible to see.

It was Mr. Thompson right enough, and yet it was not Mr. Thompson at all.

A surge of memories came upon Henry Harper as he sat in that court.

They were so terrible that he could hardly endure them. He did not hear a word that was being spoken by the barrister who, in even and impartial tones, was reciting the details of a savage but not ign.o.ble crime. The Sailor was thousands of miles away in the Pacific; the groves of the Island of San Pedro were rising through the morning mists; he could hear the plop-plop of the sharks in the water; he could hear the Old Man coming up on deck.

”That man looks capable of anything,” whispered Edward Ambrose.

The Sailor had always been clear upon that point. There was the drive to the docks in a cab through the rain of the November night in his mind. Again he was a helpless waif of the streets seated opposite Jack the Ripper. He almost wanted to scream.

”Would you rather not stay?” whispered his friend.

”I'm not feeling very well,” said Henry Harper; thereupon they left the court and went out into the street.

They walked along Holborn in complete silence. To the Sailor the fellows.h.i.+p, the security, the friendliness of that crowded street were a great relief. His soul was in the grip of awful memories. Even the man at his side could not dispel them. Mr. Ambrose was much farther away just now than the Old Man, the Island of San Pedro, and the savage and brutal murderer to whom he owed his life.

For days afterwards, the mind of the Sailor was dominated by Mr.

Thompson. He learned from the newspapers that the mate of the _Margaret Carey_ was condemned to death, and that he awaited the last office of the law in Dalston Prison. One day, an odd impulse came upon him. He bought some grapes and took them to the prison, and with a boldness far from his character at ordinary times, sought permission to see the condemned man.

As Mr. Thompson had only one day more to live, and not one of his friends had visited him for the simple reason that he had not a friend in the world, the governor of the prison, a humane man, gave the Sailor permission to see the mate of the _Margaret Carey_.

Behind iron bars and in the presence of a warder, Henry Harper was allowed to look upon Mr. Thompson, to speak to him, and to offer the grapes he had brought him. But a dreadful shock awaited the young man.

He saw at once that there was nothing human now in the man who was ranging his cell like a caged beast.

”Don't you know me, Mr. Thompson?” cried Henry Harper feebly, through the bars.

The mate of the _Margaret Carey_ paid no heed to his voice, but still paced up and down.

”Don't you know me, Mr. Thompson? I'm Sailor.”