CHAPTER IV.

WHAT LUCIUS SAW BETWIXT MIDNIGHT AND MORNING.

The sky was starless above the Shadrack-road, and the air hardly less oppressive than it had been in the sultry noontide. That low sky seemed to shut in the Shadrack district like an iron roof, and the Shadrackites lounging against their doorposts, or conversing at street corners, or congregating in small clusters outside public-houses, bemoaned themselves that the storm had not yet come.

Lucius left Cedar House heavy-hearted, in spite of the knowledge that he, who yesterday knew not of a creature in this universe likely to leave him a five-pound note, was to-night heir to a handsome fortune. The thought of Mr. Sivewright’s generosity in no manner elated him. Had his mind been free to contemplate this fact he would, no doubt, have rejoiced in the new sense of security which such a prospect must have inspired; he would have rejoiced not alone for himself, but for the sake of the woman who was to be his wife. Through the thick tangle of his troubled thoughts no gleam of light could penetrate. He saw himself the centre of perplexities. It seemed almost as if the avenging shade of the man he had slain were hunting him down—tempting him to entangle himself by some foolish confession, urging him to some folly that must bring about his own destruction. He thought of Orestes pursued by the Eumenides—tortured by the burden of a crime which, at the hour of its commission, he had deemed an act of justice.

Instead of turning homewards as usual, he paused for a minute or so outside the iron gate, and then took the opposite direction, setting his face towards the distant country. It was only a fancy, perhaps, but it seemed to him that the atmosphere was a shade less oppressive when he turned his back upon Shadrack Basin and the steam factories which encompassed it. No rain came to cool the fever-parched city, nor had the first low note of the impending storm sounded in distant thunder. Yet that coming storm was no less a certainty.

There was a strange bewilderment in the surgeon’s mind. That promise of wealth, ease, security, a more speedily-won renown, all the benefits which go hand-in-hand with the possession of ample means, had excited his brain, although it had not elated his spirits. He saw all the scheme of his future altered. No longer need he toil in this wretched district. He might at once establish himself amongst the most famous of his fellow workers; make known his new theories, his discoveries in the vast world of medical science; do good on a scale infinitely larger than that afforded by his present surroundings. It was not that he wanted to turn his back upon the suffering poor. His brightest hopes, his fondest dreams, were of the good he was to do for these. He only desired that his light might not be for ever hidden under a bushel. Strong in the belief that he could serve the whole race of man, he languished to shake off those fetters, forged by necessity, which kept him chained to this obscure corner of the earth.

With the thought of his improved prospects, and all the hopes that went along with that thought, there mingled that ever-brooding care about the past. He had perceived a curious change in Lucille’s manner to-night. Could she have discovered anything? How anxious she had been to get rid of him! She had not seemed exactly cold or unkind, but her manner had been hurried, excited; as if her mind were occupied with some all-absorbing thought in which he had no part.

‘If, by some fatal chance, she had discovered the true story of her father’s fate,’ he told himself, ‘she would hardly have concealed her knowledge; she would have surely told me the truth at once, and dismissed me for ever. I cannot imagine her acting in any double or underhanded manner. Yet to-night it seemed as if she had something to hide from me.’

This fancy troubled him; and in spite of his endeavours to dismiss the suspicion as groundless, the thought recurred to him every now and then. He walked far along the Shadrack-road, farther than he had penetrated for many a day; walked on, meditative, and hardly conscious where he went, until he came to a region of deserted building-ground, upon which a few skeleton houses lifted their roofless walls to the blank sky, as if demanding of the gods wherefore the speculative builder—long since stranded on the reefy shore of the bankruptcy court—came not to finish them.

This arid plain, which had erst been pleasant meadow-land, and where the shorn remnant of a once-beauteous hawthorn hedge still languished here and there under a cloud of lime dust, was the nearest approach to a rustic landscape within reach of the Shadrackites. Its beauty did not tempt the pedestrian.

Lucius halted at sight of the skeleton houses, and having in some measure walked down his excitement, turned back. He did not, however, take exactly the same way by which he had come. The prospect of the Shadrack-road, in all its dreary length, may have appalled him, or it may have been mere vagrant fancy which led him to return by a long narrow street, straggling and poverty-stricken, yet boasting here and there some good old red-brick mansion, which had once been the country seat of a prosperous City merchant, but which now, shorn of its garden, and defaced by neglect and decay, was let off in divers tenements to the struggling poor.

This street, with all its byways, was familiar to Lucius, who had plenty of patients in those squalid houses, down those narrow side streets, courts, and alleys. He knew every turn of the place, and wandered on to-night, not troubling himself which way he went, so long as he kept in a general manner the homeward direction. It had struck twelve when he emerged from a darksome alley on to the wharf which formed one side of the narrow creek whereon Mr. Sivewright’s garden abutted.

There were the dingy barges moored side by side upon the stagnant water; and there above them, dark against the sky, loomed the outline of the house that sheltered all Lucius Davoren most fondly loved. He had wandered to this spot almost unawares.

‘I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Has led me—who knows how? To thy chamber-window, sweet!’

murmured the lover, as he looked up at those blank windows.

There was a faint light in one, the little dressing-room next Mr. Sivewright’s bedchamber, the room now occupied by Lucille. Yes, and there was one more light—the yellow flame of a candle in one of the upper windows, a window in that topmost story, which Lucille had declared to be utterly uninhabited.

The sight struck Lucius with a vague suspicion—a feeling almost of alarm.

How should there be a light up yonder in one of those unoccupied rooms? Could it be Jacob Wincher, prowling about after midnight, to inspect the treasures of which he was guardian. It was just possible there might be some part of the bric-à-brac merchant’s collection in one of those upper rooms. Yet Lucille had declared that they were quite empty—and his own inspection through the keyholes had revealed nothing worth speaking of within. And again, how foreign to Jacob Wincher’s orderly habits to be roaming about with a candle at such an hour!

The gleam of that solitary candle amidst all those dark upper windows mystified Lucius beyond measure.

‘If it is old Wincher who has carried the light up yonder, it will move presently,’ thought Lucius; ‘he would not stay there long at such a late hour. I’ll wait and see the end of the business.’

The first note of the storm sounded as he made this resolve, a rumble of distant thunder, and then came the heavy patter of big rain-drops, shedding coolness upon the thunder-charged air. There was an open shed close at hand, and Lucius withdrew to its shelter without losing sight of the dark old house opposite, with its two lighted windows.

The water and the barges lay between him and Cedar House, the wharf—used at this time as a repository for spelter—being built upon a narrow creek, or inlet from the river.

He stood and watched for nearly half an hour, while the rain came down heavily and the lightning flashed across his face every now and then; but still the light burnt steadily. What could Wincher or anybody else be doing in yonder room at such an hour? Or could it be Homer Sivewright himself, roaming the house like an unquiet spirit?

‘No,’ Lucius thought, ‘he has not strength enough to mount those steep stairs without help. It cannot be Sivewright.’

Did the circumstance—trivial enough in itself, perhaps, but painfully perplexing to that anxious watcher—mean any harm? That was the question. Did it denote any peril to Lucille? Ought he to go round to the front of the house, and try to arouse the sleeping household, in order to warn them of some unknown danger? That seemed a desperate thing to do, when the circumstance, after all, might be of no moment. It was most likely Jacob Wincher. He might have eccentricities that Lucius had never heard of; and to sit up late into the night was perhaps one of his failings.

Yet that mysterious light, taken in conjunction with Mr. Sivewright’s fancy about strange footsteps in the dead of the night, was not a fact to be dismissed carelessly.

‘If there were any way of getting into the house without ringing people up and frightening my patient, I would get in somehow, and find the solution of this enigma,’ thought Lucius; ‘but I daresay the doors and windows at the back are firmly fastened.’

A distant clock chimed the quarter before one, while Lucius was standing irresolute under the spelter shed. While the third slow chime was still vibrating in the silent night, the blue glare of a lightning-flash showed that eager watcher a figure upon one of the barges.

Until this moment he had believed them utterly empty, save of their cargo; nor did this figure belong to either of those darksome vessels. It was the figure of a man, tall and lithe, who moved quickly along, bending his body as he crept from one barge to the other, as if shrinking from the pelting rain—a stealthy figure, upon which Lucius at once concentrated his attention.

He had not long to remain in doubt. The man lifted his head presently, and looked up towards the lighted window; then, with the agility of some wild animal, sprang from the barge to the garden-wall. There Lucius lost him in the darkness.

Presently there came a long whistle—long but not loud; then a light appeared in the lower part of the house—a light from an open door, evidently. Lucius saw the light appear and vanish, and heard the closing of a heavy door.

Some one had admitted that man to the house, but who was that some one? There was foul play of some kind; but what the nature of the mystery was a question he could not answer.

What should he do? Go round to the front gate, ring, and alarm the household? By that means only could he solve the mystery, and prove to Lucille that these Winchers, whose fidelity she believed in, were deceiving her. Yet to do that might be to imperil his patient, in whose weak state any violent shock might be well-nigh fatal.

Reflection convinced him that whatever mischief was at work in that house was of a subtle character. It could only mean plunder; for after all, to suppose that it involved any evil design against Homer Sivewright’s life seemed too improbable a notion to be entertained for a moment. The plot, whatever its nature, must mean plunder, and these Winchers, the trusted servants, in whom long service seemed a pledge of honesty, must be the moving spirits of the treason. What more likely than that Jacob Wincher, who knew the value of his master’s treasures, was gradually plundering the collection of its richest gems, and that this stealthy intruder, who entered the house thus secretly under cover of night, was his accomplice, employed to carry away and dispose of the booty?

Arguing thus, Lucius decided that it would be a foolish thing to disturb the evildoers in the midst of their work. His wiser course would be to lie in wait, watch the house till daybreak, and surprise the accomplice in the act of carrying off the plunder. As the man had gone in, so he must surely come out before morning. If, owing to the darkness of the night, he should escape the watcher’s keen gaze on this occasion, Lucius determined that he would set one of the minions of Mr. Otranto, the private detective, to watch to-morrow night.

Lucius waited patiently, though those hours in the dead of the night went by with leaden pace, and every limb of the watcher became a burden to him from very weariness. He seated himself upon an empty cask in an angle of the shed, leaned his back against the wall, and waited; never relaxing his watch upon those quiet barges and the low garden-wall beyond them, never ceasing to listen intently for the least sound from that direction. The storm abated, heaven’s floodgates were closed again; the lightning faded to fainter flashes and then ceased altogether; a distant rumble of thunder, like the sound of a door shutting after the exit of a disagreeable visitor, marked the end of the tempest. Peace descended once more upon earth, and coolness; a pleasant air crept along the narrow creek; even the odour of the damp earth was sweet after the heat and dryness of yesterday.

Morning came, and the aching of Lucius Davoren’s bones increased, but there was no sign from the barges or the garden-wall. The watcher was thoroughly wearied. His eyes had been striving to pierce the darkness, his ears had been strained to listen for the lightest sound during four long hours. At five o’clock he departed, not wishing to be surprised by early labourers coming his way, or by the traffic of the wharf, which might begin he knew not how soon. He went away, vexed and disquieted; thinking that it was just possible the man might have escaped him after all in the darkness.

‘I shouldn’t have seen him in the first instance without the aid of that lightning-flash,’ he said to himself; ‘I may very easily have missed him afterwards. I’ll go home and get two or three hours’ sleep if I can, and then go straight to Cedar House and try to solve this mystery.’