BY that night’s post—although I was far from being fit to make the exertion—I wrote to Mr. Playmore, to tell him what had taken place, and to beg for his earliest assistance and advice.
The notes in Benjamin’s book were partly written in shorthand, and were, on that account, of no use to me in their existing condition. At my request, he made two fair copies. One of the copies I inclosed in my letter to Mr. Playmore. The other I laid by me, on my bedside table, when I went to rest.
Over and over again, through the long hours of the wakeful night, I read and re-read the last words which had dropped from Miserrimus Dexter’s lips. Was it possible to interpret them to any useful purpose? At the very outset they seemed to set interpretation at defiance. After trying vainly to solve the hopeless problem, I did at last what I might as well have done at first—I threw down the paper in despair. Where were my bright visions of discovery and success now? Scattered to the winds! Was there the faintest chance of the stricken man’s return to reason? I remembered too well what I had seen to hope for it. The closing lines of the medical report which I had read in Mr. Playmore’s office recurred to my memory in the stillness of the night—“When the catastrophe has happened, his friends can entertain no hope of his cure: the balance once lost, will be lost for life.”
The confirmation of that terrible sentence was not long in reaching me. On the next morning the gardener brought a note containing the information which the doctor had promised to give me on the previous day.
Miserrimus Dexter and Ariel were still where Benjamin and I had left them together—in the long room. They were watched by skilled attendants, waiting the decision of Dexter’s nearest relative (a younger brother, who lived in the country, and who had been communicated with by telegraph). It had been found impossible to part the faithful Ariel from her master without using the bodily restraints adopted in cases of raging insanity. The doctor and the gardener (both unusually strong men) had failed to hold the poor creature when they first attempted to remove her on entering the room. Directly they permitted her to return to her master the frenzy vanished: she was perfectly quiet and contented so long as they let her sit at his feet and look at him.
Sad as this was, the report of Miserrimus Dexter’s condition was more melancholy still.
“My patient is in a state of absolute imbecility”—those were the words in the doctor’s letter; and the gardener’s simple narrative confirmed them as the truest words that could have been used. He was utterly unconscious of poor Ariel’s devotion to him—he did not even appear to know that she was present in the room. For hours together he remained in a state of utter lethargy in his chair. He showed an animal interest in his meals, and a greedy animal enjoyment of eating and drinking as much as he could get—and that was all. “This morning,” the honest gardener said to me at parting, “we thought he seemed to wake up a bit. Looked about him, you know, and made queer signs with his hands. I couldn’t make out what he meant; no more could the doctor. She knew, poor thing—She did. Went and got him his harp, and put his hand up to it. Lord bless you! no use. He couldn’t play no more than I can. Twanged at it anyhow, and grinned and gabbled to himself. No: he’ll never come right again. Any person can see that, without the doctor to help ‘em. Enjoys his meals, as I told you; and that’s all. It would be the best thing that could happen if it would please God to take him. There’s no more to be said. I wish you good-morning, ma’am.”
He went away with the tears in his eyes; and he left me, I own it, with the tears in mine.
An hour later there came some news which revived me. I received a telegram from Mr. Playmore, expressed in these welcome words: “Obliged to go to London by to-night’s mail train. Expect me to breakfast to-morrow morning.”
The appearance of the lawyer at our breakfast-table duly followed the appearance of his telegram. His first words cheered me. To my infinite surprise and relief, he was far from sharing the despondent view which I took of my position.
“I don’t deny,” he said, “that there are some serious obstacles in your way. But I should never have called here before attending to my professional business in London if Mr. Benjamin’s notes had not produced a very strong impression on my mind. For the first time, as I think, you really have a prospect of success. For the first time, I feel justified in offering (under certain restrictions) to help you. That miserable wretch, in the collapse of his intelligence, has done what he would never have done in the possession of his sense and his cunning—he has let us see the first precious glimmerings of the light of truth.”
“Are you sure it is the truth?” I asked.
“In two important particulars,” he answered, “I know it to be the truth. Your idea about him is the right one. His memory (as you suppose) was the least injured of his faculties, and was the last to give way under the strain of trying to tell that story. I believe his memory to have been speaking to you (unconsciously to himself) in all that he said from the moment when the first reference to ‘the letter’ escaped him to the end.”
“But what does the reference to the letter mean?” I asked. “For my part, I am entirely in the dark about it.”
“So am I,” he answered, frankly. “The chief one among the obstacles which I mentioned just now is the obstacle presented by that same ‘letter.’ The late Mrs. Eustace must have been connected with it in some way, or Dexter would never have spoken of it as ‘a dagger in his heart’; Dexter would never have coupled her name with the words which describe the tearing up of the letter and the throwing of it away. I can arrive with some certainty at this result, and I can get no further. I have no more idea than you have of who wrote the letter, or of what was written in it. If we are ever to make that discovery—probably the most important discovery of all—we must dispatch our first inquiries a distance of three thousand miles. In plain English, my dear lady, we must send to America.”
This, naturally enough, took me completely by surprise. I waited eagerly to hear why we were to send to America.
“It rests with you,” he proceeded, “when you hear what I have to tell you, to say whether you will go to the expense of sending a man to New York, or not. I can find the right man for the purpose; and I estimate the expense (including a telegram)—”
“Never mind the expense!” I interposed, losing all patience with the eminently Scotch view of the case which put my purse in the first place of importance. “I don’t care for the expense; I want to know what you have discovered.”
He smiled. “She doesn’t care for the expense,” he said to himself, pleasantly. “How like a woman!”
I might have retorted, “He thinks of the expense before he thinks of anything else. How like a Scotchman!” As it was, I was too anxious to be witty. I only drummed impatiently with my fingers on the table, and said, “Tell me! tell me!”
He took out the fair copy from Benjamin’s note-book which I had sent to him, and showed me these among Dexter’s closing words: “What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grate. No matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone.”
“Do you really understand what those words mean?” I asked.
“I look back into my own experience,” he answered, “and I understand perfectly what the words mean.”
“And can you make me understand them too?”
“Easily. In those incomprehensible sentences Dexter’s memory has correctly recalled certain facts. I have only to tell you the facts, and you will be as wise as I am. At the time of the Trial, your husband surprised and distressed me by insisting on the instant dismissal of all the household servants at Gleninch. I was instructed to pay them a quarter’s wages in advance, to give them the excellent written characters which their good conduct thoroughly deserved, and to see the house clear of them at an hour’s notice. Eustace’s motive for this summary proceeding was much the same motive which animated his conduct toward you. ‘If I am ever to return to Gleninch,’ he said, ‘I cannot face my honest servants after the infamy of having stood my trial for murder.’ There was his reason. Nothing that I could say to him, poor fellow, shook his resolution. I dismissed the servants accordingly. At an hour’s notice, they quitted the house, leaving their work for the day all undone. The only persons placed in charge of Gleninch were persons who lived on the outskirts of the park—that is to say, the lodge-keeper and his wife and daughter. On the last day of the Trial I instructed t............