Had it not been for the pressure put upon her by Mr. and Mrs. Wingate, Hermia would have returned to Ashdown by an early train next day, so disheartened was she by the result of her interview with Richard Varrel. In deference, however, to the wishes of her friends, she agreed to extend her stay for three days longer. She had quite made up her mind that she had seen the last of Varrel; that his path and hers would never cross each other again. Yet all the while an indefinable sense of something still to come held her in her own despite. It could hardly be called a premonition, so shadowy and elusive was it, and yet it so impressed her that she could not hear a knock at the door without holding her breath to listen for a summons, for which her reason told her she might wait till the last day of her life, and always might be in vain.
However, strangely enough, the summons did come, and that just forty-eight hours after she had parted from Varrel. Before leaving him she had laid a card on the table. "Here is my address, in case you should at any time be desirous of communicating with me," she had said.
His only answer had been a cynical smile.
Having no cards of her own, she had pencilled her Ashdown address on the back of one of Mrs. Wingate's cards, which had that lady's address on the other side, and it was there the messenger came in search of her. A man of the name of Richard Varrel, who was lying in St. Gregory's Hospital in a very critical state, earnestly entreated that Miss Rivers would go to him with the least possible delay, as he had something of extreme importance to communicate to her. Such was the message that now reached Hermia.
A cab was at once ordered, and ten minutes later she was on her way to the Hospital, accompanied, as before, by Mr. Wingate.
Before being admitted to the ward Hermia was shown into an ante-room, where she was presently joined by a middle-aged, ladylike person, with a strong yet kindly face, dressed in the usual Hospital uniform, whose name she afterwards found to be Miss Davis. From her Hermia learned that in the course of the preceding night Varrel had been brought in by the police, unconscious and apparently in a dying state. His story when he came to himself, was to the effect that while on his way to his lodgings he had been set upon by three men, who had somehow discovered that he had a considerable sum of money about him, and that in the fight which ensued he had not only been robbed, but stabbed in three places. His case was an utterly hopeless one, Miss Davis went on to say; he might possibly linger for two or three days, but should internal hemorrhage set in the end would come still more quickly. Then she went on to ask whether Hermia was a relative of the dying man, and on receiving a reply in the negative, requested her to make her interview as brief as possible, and especially to avoid all topics which would be likely in any way to excite the patient. After that she led the way into the ward, while Mr. Wingate awaited Hermia's return in the ante-room.
Varrel's eyes lighted up the moment they rested on Hermia. His face was the face of one on the verge of the last great change, and the girl could not keep back her tears. She sat down by the side of his pallet, after which one of the attendants placed a large screen round them, so as to shut them in from the other patients.
"You didn't think to see me so soon again, Miss Hermia, I'll be bound--nor I you!" began Varrel, with a dim smile, but speaking more clearly and strongly than Hermia would have thought possible for one in his condition. "However, here I am, and there's no help for it. It was the money that was the cause of it--the money you brought me. A sort of Nemesis. They--the men my life has been mixed up with of late--found out somehow I had it about me. The wonder is they left any life in me at all. But it's not for long. I know that I'm booked for the journey for which no return tickets are issued. Well, I'm not sorry--on my soul, I'm not!--that the end has come. But it was to talk about something very different that I sent for you, for since I've been lying here, I've made up my mind to tell all I know."
He ceased, and lay for a little while with shut eyes. When he opened them it was seemingly to fix them on a flickering shadow flung by the lamplight on the ceiling. Suddenly a hollow voice spoke,
"Miss Hermia, it was not John Brancker, but the man you see before you, who killed Mr. Hazeldine."
Hermia's heart gave a great bound, and she caught her breath with a gasp like a drowning person. It seemed to her as if an ice-cold wind blew for a minute across her face. She shuddered, and involuntarily drew a little farther away from the dying man.
"I haven't strength enough left me to go into a lot of details," resumed Varrel, after a pause, "but if I'm not hurried, I think it will last out till I've told you enough to make the whole business clear, and--and to lift the last shadow of suspicion off John Brancker."
Again he lapsed into silence, and to Hermia it seemed as if he were struggling against some inward force which would fain have compelled him, even at this the eleventh hour, to carry his secret unrevealed to the grave. She waited in a sort of dread expectancy and with nerves all a-tremble for his next words.
The statement which follows, although given here in unbroken sequence, was several times interrupted by a fit of coughing, or by a labored gasping for breath. More than once, in obedience to his request, Hermia gave him to drink of a jug of barley-water which stood within reach of his hand.
"Yes, mine alone is the guilt. I wanted money; I was desperately hard up, and I made up my mind to rob the Bank, if it was possible anyhow to do so. I knew that Thursday night, when the gold had been fetched from London to pay away to market-day customers, was the best time for my purpose. I was acquainted with all the ins and outs of the place, and it was a simple matter for me to push open the swing doors and steal unseen into the building when the day's business was nearly over. Then up the spiral staircase and so into the book-room, where snugly hidden in an empty cupboard, I was safe from observation until the time should have come for me to take my next step, which was to make my way to Mr. Avison's office--he was abroad, and I knew that it was never used during his absence--there to bide my time. To reach it I should have to pass through Mr. Hazeldine's office, the door which led into it from the lobby being kept locked. I was aware that for several weeks past Mr. Hazeldine had been in the habit of working till a late hour, and I calculated that he would most likely do so on this particular night. Earlier in the day I had watched him start for London, and I knew that when he returned he would bring with him the gold he had been there to fetch.
"I waited where I was until the general staff had gone for the night, but I knew that Mr. Brancker and Mr. Judd often worked after hours, and it seemed not unlikely that they might still be on the premises. It was absolutely necessary, however, that I should make my way to Mr. Avison's office before Mr. Hazeldine's return; a............