Part 52 (1/2)
”Oh, you knew...And have you never seen a bundle of papers under it?”
”Yes--I a.s.sumed them to be old farm-accounts....”
”They are all the proofs you need concerning your birth; it is _my_ trunk by the way--Ah, I must go!”
At the door he fastened upon Hogarth a last reluctant gaze to say good-bye, but Hogarth, staring wildly afar, did not turn his eyes, and O'Hara, with a sigh, was gone.
He drove to Adair Street, and, as he pa.s.sed by a mews, Frankl, waiting there with two detectives, saw him by a street-light, but made no remark.
When O'Hara entered the house, he looked about for Harris, but Harris had gone to the lodging of a woman in James Street near, to arrange a hiding-place for the bag, pa.s.sing out through the Market Street house; and O'Hara, opening the two locked doors, entered the safe-room, where he stood waiting, his forehead low, resting on the steel top; and now a sob throbbed through his frame, and his lips let out ”..._so lovely...so great_....”
Count a minute's stillness: and now the man's soul and being foundered in a storm of sorrow, and half-words borne on s.h.i.+vering puffs of breath, and choking groans, broke the stillness: ”My Liege! Richard! my King!”
This died to silence; and now he roamed the room with furious steps, and lowering brow, and an out-pushed under-lip, until, deciding, he drew from his pocket a penknife, opened it, leant now one elbow on the safe-top, blade in hand, considered, considered, hesitating, then with lifted chin and the thinnest whimpering like a puppy, pretty pitiful, cut from under his left ear to the chin.
Certainly a hurt so shallow could never have killed, for the hand had been cheris.h.i.+ngly restrained, and the thing was no sooner done than the priest, seeing that he did not die, ran horror-eyed, streaming with blood, shouting a hoa.r.s.e whisper: ”Help! help! help!”
But at that cry he sighed, fell back, and effectually died, his heart pierced by the knife of Harris.
And some moments later the face of Frankl, who bore a candle, looked in at the door.
”Is that all right, Alfie?”--in the weakest whisper.
”Come on in, and don't ask any questions”, said Harris.
Frankl entered, peered upon the dead visage of the priest; then, the detectives being now behind the parlour-door below, with handcuffs, rose to run to summon them: but, to his horror, Harris was now before the door; he saw in the candlelight those eyes of Alfie fixed upon him: and he knew: before the least threat or movement by Harris, the Jew sent to Heaven a piercing shriek, his hour come....
”...dirty-livered Jew...” striking in the breast, and, as Frankl fell, he gave him one other in the temple, with ”Down, down to h.e.l.l, and sye _I_ sent thee thither”; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the cheek, with ”Go up, thou bald-head, it _is_”: all in two seconds' s.p.a.ce; and he was now about to turn anew to hack at Frankl, when his keen ear heard a creak; and he sprang up a spinning motionlessness--the Reality before him.
And instantly on the realization of that fact, he was submissive, reverent, as before the very Helmet of Pallas, G.o.ddess of Blue; and said he with sullen dejection, reverent of the Helmet, but easy with the man: ”All right: you've beat me...I suppose it's that Regent-stabbing affair brought you: it was I did it all right”.
When they went down, almost from the door a crowd gathered, pressing close, Harris' hands and front all red from O'Hara's throat; and when one policeman, big with the fact, whispered a gentleman: ”You may have heard, sir, that the Regent was stabbed to-day--it's been kept precious dark, but the fact's so: this is the beauty as done it”, like loosened effluvia that news flew--but distorted, largened--the stains were Regent's blood!--and beyond measure had the crowd spread ere it reached the Edgware Road.
There at the corner, as the officers looked about for a cab, and one blew a whistle, a man reached out and fiercely struck Harris on the face, while another shouted: ”Lynch the beggar!”; and now arose a hustling, huddled impulses, and now in full vogue that grave noising of congregations when the voice of G.o.d jogs them; while Harris, excessively pallid, handcuffed, began to whistle; a number of other police now seeking the crowd's centre, but with difficulty; a cab, too, slowly making a way which closed like water round it: and when this had nearly reached him, Harris, in his eagerness to get in, sprang far toward it--and slipped. He never rose again: the crowd rolled over his last howl, and in the midst of a great row as of hounds, trampled him to a paste.
About that very time that better man whom he had stabbed, in tying up in bed a bundle of old papers, was saying: ”Yes, I will go to my people”....
And by six A.M. he was up, in his study, dressed, looking quite owlish with his excess of eyes, which, however, danced at the first news of the morning--the arrival at Portsmouth of the _Boodah II_., which had raced like a carrier-bird since 8.30 P.M. of the 29th, full of the news of the vanished _Mahomet_: on her being 200 marines.
After that he spoke through the telephone with various Government-offices, early astir that morning, till the Private Secretary looked in with the announcement that his train would be ready in ten minutes.
His last act in the Palace was the sending to the Treasurer at Jerusalem, for Miss Frankl, the telegram:
”Be surprised, but believe: I am a Jew.”
”RICHARD”.
Of the Household some fifty, catching wind of what was toward, offered, even begged, to go with him; but in general he refused, and set out with a suite of only seven.