Blind Policy

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Then the great athletic brother came and separated them, remonstrating on the folly of the encounter at such a time.

“How strange that I can remember it all so clearly now,” muttered Chester. “Yes, he said that it was over a dispute. He would not acknowledge the real cause, and she did not speak. The scoundrel; he had been persecuting her with his addresses. I see now; that must have been the cause of the first trouble. Her brother was defending her from him.”

Then he recalled how the pair went away, and that the old housekeeper stayed, while Marion sat by the patient’s side, avoiding his gaze, and as if repenting that she had given way to her feelings.

A tray was brought in by Paddy, so that the housekeeper should not leave the room; and he stopped, talking good-temperedly enough, for some little time, and almost playing the part of servant to them, till they had all partaken scantily of the excellent meal; but he did not have another opportunity of speaking to Marion alone.

Chester lay for some minutes trembling then, for he had been growing excited by the recollections, and a strange dread had come over him that he was about to lose his memory again; but the adventures of that night came back, and he recalled the coming of Paddy once more. This time he brought in a tray with coffee and four cups, which he filled and handed to each of those present. Yes, Chester remembered how the housekeeper refused, and Paddy spoke —

“Nonsense, old lady! take it; we can’t stand on ceremony now, you may have to be up for hours.”

Then the old housekeeper took the cup, and the young man sugared his own coffee very liberally, and added plenty of cream.

“Bad taste, doctor,” he said good-humouredly, “but I like it sweet. So you feel now that poor Bob will be all right?”

“Yes, I have no doubt of it.”

“Thanks to you,” said the young man, and he advanced and took Chester’s emptied cup, and then Marion’s, soon after leaving the room with the tray.

Chester recalled feeling a little drowsy after this, and then in a dreamy way seeing Marion with her brow resting upon the patient’s pillow.

No more – try how he would, Chester could recollect nothing else, but consideration filled up the gap. The elder brother, satisfied that the patient’s life was saved, was desirous of ridding the house of the doctor’s presence, the more so now that he had discovered the relations which had sprung up between him and Marion.

“The scoundrel!” thought Chester. “That must have been it: he was pursuing her, and the brother was shot down in defending his sister.”

Chester shivered now, and his brain grew hot, as he saw clearly enough all that remained. The cups had been prepared, two of them containing a drug, and Paddy had taken care that they should go to those for whom they were intended. It was all plain enough. Paddy was working in his brother’s interest, and he was the big friend who had taken him first to the Circus, and then placed him in another cab, with instructions to the man.

“Well,” muttered Chester, “I see my way now, and I am not going to sit down calmly over the matter. I must – I will see her again.”

Then he trembled, and the hot burning sensation came once more. But it passed off, and he felt that he must be calm and wait till he had another long sleep, when he hoped to be quite restored.

He lay trying now to forget all that had passed, so as to rest for a while; but sleep would not come, and he could do nothing but dwell upon his adventures at that mysterious house. It was so strange. The servants had evidently been sent away, so that they might know nothing of what threatened for long enough to prove a murder. He wanted to know of none other cause for the quarrel. His patient must have been shot down while defending his sister from some insult offered by the clever, overbearing, unprincipled scoundrel who seemed to lord it over all.

And as Chester lay thinking, an intense desire came over him to learn more of the family who had literally imprisoned him, and kept him there all those days. When there, it had seemed for the most part like some romantic dream; and as he lay now at home thinking, the vague intangibility of those nights and days appeared to him more fanciful and strange than ever; so much so, that there were moments when he was ready to ask himself whether, after all, it was not the result of imagination.

He recalled all the actors in the little social drama – the men whom he had seen on the first night, and who dropped out of sight afterwards; the two ladies – the wives of the brothers – both quiet, startled-looking women, of the type that would be seen exhibiting the latest fashions at some race, at Lord’s, or at a meeting of the Four-in-Hand Club, and evidently slaves of their husbands – and he recalled now how the wife of the elder brother seemed to hold her lord in dread.

“There’s something more about that place than one knows,” Chester thought to himself as he turned from side to side, “and I cannot – I will not, sit down and patiently bear such treatment. To-morrow I’ll go and demand an explanation. I have a good excuse,” he said half aloud and with a bitter laugh; “there is my promised fee, and – Pish!” he exclaimed savagely. “If I am to prove a scoundrel, I will be an honest one. I will ferret out who and what they are. I behaved like a child in not having some explanation earlier – in yielding passively as I did without reason – no, not without reason. I could not help it. Heaven help me! I will – I must see her again. It is fate!”

He jumped up in bed, for a sudden thought now sent a chill of horror through him, as for the first time the drugging which had taken place showed itself in another light.

“To get rid of me,” he muttered, as the great drops of sweat gathered on his face, “and – the last thing I remember – Marion – her head fallen upon the couch beside her brother, helpless now to protect her – drugged, insensible, at the mercy of that villain; and I here without stirring or raising a hand.”

Some little time later, feeling weak and faint, he was standing in the hall reaching down his hat, and for a moment he had a feeling of compunction. Isabel – his sister – what would they think of his strange, base infatuation?

“What they will,” he said between his teeth. “Placed in such circumstances, no man could be master of himself. I must save her, even if we never meet again;” and the door closed after him loudly, as, half mad now with excitement, Marion’s eyes seeming to lure him on, he stepped out into the darkness of the night.

“Whither?” he muttered, as he hurried across the Square. “Heaven help me! it is my fate.”

Chapter Nine.

A Blacker Cloud In Front

The nearest church clock was striking three as Chester passed into the great west-end artery, which was almost deserted, and he had been walking rapidly, under the influence of his strange excitement, for some minutes before, clear as his head was now, he found himself brought up short by a mental cloud as black and dense as that from which he had suffered when he began to recover from the influence of the drug he had taken.

But there was this difference: the dense obscurity then was relating to the past – this was connected with the future.

“Good heavens!” he muttered. “Whatever he gave me must be acting still; I am half delirious. I am no longer master of my actions. Why am I here? What am I going to do? – To try to save her, for she is at his mercy. But how?”