Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1581 page)

If I had not known that it was part of Morgan’s character always to do exactly the reverse of what might be expected from him, I should have been surprised at the extraordinary docility he exhibited the moment his manuscript was placed in his hands.

“My turn again?” he said. “How very satisfactory! I was anxious to escape from this absurd position of mine as soon as possible, and here is the opportunity most considerately put into my hands. Look out, all of you! I won’t waste another moment. I mean to begin instantly.”

“Do tell me,” interposed Jessie, mischievously, “shall I be very much interested to-night’?’

“Not you!” retorted Morgan. “You will be very much frightened instead. You hair is uncommonly smooth at the present moment, but it will be all standing on end before I’ve done. Don’t blame me, miss, if you are an object when you go to bed to-night!”

With this curious introductory speech he began to read. I was obliged to interrupt him to say the few words of explanation which the story needed.

“Before my brother begins,” I said, “it may be as well to mention that he is himself the doctor who is supposed to relate this narrative. The events happened at a time of his life when he had left London, and had established himself in medical practice in one of our large northern towns.”

With that brief explanation, I apologized for interrupting the reader, and Morgan began once more.

BROTHER MORGAN’S STORY of THE DEAD HAND

WHEN this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster exactly in the middle of the race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.

He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed young gentlemen who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life, making friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go. His father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him. Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and the great business after his father’s death; well supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after during his father’s lifetime. Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently indignant when he found that his son took after him. This may be true or not. I myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when he was getting on in years, and then he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.

Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his hare-brained way, that he would go to the races. He did not reach the town till toward the close of evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the principal hotel. Dinner they were ready enough to give him, but as for a bed, they laughed when he mentioned it. In the race-week at Doncaster it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments to pass the night in their carriages at the inn doors. As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under. Rich as he was, Arthur’s chance of getting a night’s lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful. He tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that, and was met everywhere with the same form of answer. No accommodation for the night of any sort was left. All the bright golden sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.

To a young fellow of Arthur’s temperament, the novelty of being turned away into the street like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly amusing piece of experience. He went on with his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travelers that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of the town.

By this time the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was soon going to rain!

The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday’s spirits. He began to contemplate the houseless situation in which he was placed from the serious rather than the humorous point of view, and he looked about him for another public house to inquire at with something very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject of a lodging for the night. The suburban part of the town toward which he had now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as he passed them, except that they got progressively smaller and dirtier the further he went. Down the winding road before him shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint lonely light that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round him. He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the shape of an inn, to return to the central part of the town, and to try if he could not at least secure a chair to sit down on through the night at one of the principal hotels.

As he got near the lamp he heard voices, and, walking close under it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the wall of which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing, with a lean forefinger, to this inscription:

THE TWO ROBINS.

Arthur turned into the court without hesitation to see what The Two Robins could do for him. Four or five men were standing together round the door of the house, which was at the bottom of the court, facing the entrance from the street. The men were all listening to one other man, better dressed than the rest, who was telling his audience something, in a low voice, in which they were apparently very much interested.

On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a knapsack in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.

“No,” said the traveler with the knapsack, turning round and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed man, with a dirty white apron on, who had followed him down the passage, “no, Mr. Landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles; but I don’t mind confessing that I can’t quite stand
that
.”

It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words, that the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at The Two Robins, and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it. The moment his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other benighted traveler should slip in and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord with the dirty apron and the bald head.

“If you have got a bed to let,” he said, “and if that gentleman who has just gone out won’t pay your price for it, I will.”

The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur. “Will you, sir?” he asked, in a meditative, doubtful way.

“Name your price,” said young Holliday, thinking that the landlord’s hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of him. “Name your price, and I’ll give you the money at once, if you like.”

“Are you game for five shillings?” inquired the landlord, rubbing his stubby double chin and looking up thoughtfully at the ceiling above him.

Arthur nearly laughed in the man’s face; but, thinking it prudent to control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he could. The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it back again.

“You’re acting all fair and aboveboard by me,” he said, “and, before I take your money, I’ll do the same by you. Look here; this is how it stands. You can have a bed all to yourself for five shillings, but you can’t have more than a half share of the room it stands in. Do you see what I mean, young gentleman?”

“Of course I do,” returned Arthur, a little irritably. “You mean that it is a double-bedded room, and that one of the beds is occupied?”

The land lord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder than ever. Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step or two toward the door. The idea of sleeping in the same room with a total stranger did not present an attractive prospect to him. He felt more than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his pocket and to go out into the street once more.

“Is it yes or no?” asked the landlord. “Settle it as quick as you can, because there’s lots of people wanting a bed at Doncaster to-night besides you.”

Arthur looked toward the court and heard the rain falling heavily in the street outside. He thought he would ask a question or two before he rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two Robins.

“What sort of man is it who has got the other bed?” he inquired. “Is he a gentleman? I mean, is he a quiet, well-behaved person?”

“The quietest man I ever came across,” said the landlord, rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the other. “As sober as a judge, and as regular as clock-work in his habits. It hasn’t struck nine, not ten minutes ago, and he’s in his bed already. I don’t know whether that comes up to your notion of a quiet man: it goes a long way ahead of mine, I can tell you.”

“Is he asleep, do you think?” asked Arthur.

“I know he’s asleep,” returned the landlord; “and, what’s more, he’s gone off so fast that I’ll warrant you don’t wake him. This way, sir,” said the landlord, speaking over young Holliday’s shoulder, as if he was addressing some new guest who was approaching the house.

“Here you are,” said Arthur, determined to be beforehand with the stranger, whoever he might be. “I’ll take the bed.” And he handed the five shillings to the landlord, who nodded, dropped the money carelessly into his waistcoat pocket, and lighted a candle.

“Come up and see the room,” said the host of The Two Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite briskly, considering how fat he was.

They mounted to the second floor of the house. The landlord half opened a door fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned round to Arthur.

“It’s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on yours,” he said. “You give me five shillings, and I give you in return a clean, comfortable bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that you won’t be interfered with, or annoyed in anyway, by the man who sleeps in the same room with you.” Saying those words, he looked hard, for a moment, in young Holliday’s face, and then led the way into the room.

It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be. The two beds stood parallel with each other, a space of about six feet intervening between them. They were both of the same medium size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round them.

The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window. The curtains were all drawn round it except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed furthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain — stopped half way, and listened for a moment — then turned to the landlord.

“He is a very quiet sleeper,” said Arthur. “Yes,” said the landlord, “very quiet.” Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man cautiously.

“How pale he is,” said Arthur.

“Yes,” returned the landlord, “pale enough, isn’t he?”

Arthur looked closer at the man. The bedclothes were drawn up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his chest. Surprised and vaguely startled as he noticed this, Arthur stooped down closer over the stranger, looked at his ashy, parted lips, listened breathlessly for an instant, looked again at the strangely still face, and the motionless lips and chest, and turned round suddenly on the landlord with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.

“Come here,” he whispered, under his breath. “Come here, for God’s sake! The man’s not asleep — he is dead.”

“You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,” said the landlord, composedly. “Yes, he’s dead, sure enough. He died at five o’clock to-day.”

“How did he die? Who is he?” asked Arthur, staggered for the moment by the audacious coolness of the answer.