Part 27 (1/2)
Pocket saw himself a desperate character just then, and one not incapable of desperate action had the climax only come at once. But he had more than an hour of it alone at his post; he had a whole hot forenoon of unmitigated suspense, of sickening alarms from tradesmen's carts, boys whistling past the house as though they were not in a wicked world at all, and then a piano-organ that redoubled his watchfulness, and spoilt some tunes for him for ever. Once he did hear shambling feet on the very steps outside. Once was quite enough, though it was but an advertis.e.m.e.nt for cast-off clothing (and false teeth) that came fluttering through the letter-box. Pocket was left in such a state that he would not have backed himself to hit the door from the stairs; and he put the chain on it, thinking to interview the doctor over that, in the manner of old Miss Harbottle.
So it happened that the first significant sound was entirely lost upon him, because he was listening for one so much nearer at hand, until Phillida ran downstairs and almost over him where he sat.
He got up to make way stiffly, but a glance a.s.sured him that the quarrel was over on her side. The great eyes were fixed appealingly upon him, but with a distressing look which he had done nothing to provoke. Not before then was he aware of another duet between newsboys coming nearer and nearer, and shouting each other down as they came.
”You hear that?” she whispered, as if not to drown a note.
”I do now.”
”Do you hear what it is?”
Pocket listened, and caught a word he was not likely to miss.
”Something fresh about the murder,” said he grimly.
”No; it's another one,” she shuddered. ”Can't you hear? 'Another awful murder!' Now they're saying something else.”
”It is something about the Park.” Pocket stuck to his idea.
”And something else about some 'well-known'-I can't hear what!”
”No more can I.”
”I'll open the door.”
She opened it on the chain as he had left it. That did not help them.
The shouting had pa.s.sed the end of their quiet road. It was dying away again in the distance.
”I must go out and get one,” said Phillida. ”Some well-known man!”
”You're not thinking of the doctor, surely?”
”I don't know! I can't think where he is.”
”But you're worse than I am, if you jump to that!” said Pocket, smiling to rea.s.sure her. He did not smile when she had run out as she was; he had shut the door after her, and he was waiting to open it in a fever of impatience.
Dr. Baumgartner had left the house before six o'clock in the morning; now it was after twelve. If some tragedy had overtaken him in his turn, then there was an end to every terror, and for him a better end than he might meet with if he lived. The boy remembered Him who desireth not the death of a sinner, and was ashamed of his own thought; but that did not alter it. Unless his fears and his surmises were all equally unfounded, better for everybody, and best of all for Phillida, if this criminal maniac came to his end without public exposure of his crimes. Pocket may have misconceived his own att.i.tude of mind, as his elders and betters do daily; he may have been thinking of his own skin more than he knew, or wanted to know. In that case he had his reward, for the murdered man was not Dr.
Baumgartner. Phillida's first words on returning were to that effect; and yet she trembled as though they were not the truth.
”Who was it, then?” the schoolboy asked suspiciously.
”Sir Joseph Schelmerdine.”
”So he was the well-known man!”
He was well known even to the boy by name, but that was all. He had seen it in newspapers, and he thought he had heard it execrated by Baumgartner himself in one of his little digs at England. Pocket was not sure about this, but he mentioned his impression, and Phillida nodded with swimming eyes.
”Did the doctor know him?”
”Not personally; but he thought him a European danger.”
”Why?”