The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
"I--I feel as if I were dying. I--I don't see things very clearly. I am
ill--ill. Oh, what is this? Something is amiss. Mercy, mercy!"
"Ha, ha, ha!"
"I--I--shall fall. Help! The room swims round with me. I am poisoned. I
know I am. Mercy! help! murder! Oh, spare me."
"Ha, ha, ha!"
Lupin rose and went round the table. He caught hold of the wretched
woman by the head, and applying his mouth close to her ear, he said--
"Jane! There was something in the bottle, and I intend to cut your
throat. I hope the knife you have got with you has a good edge to it?"
She tried to scream, but an indistinct, strange, stifled cry only came
from her lips. She tried to get up, but her limbs refused their office.
The powerful narcotic had taken effect, and she fell forward, her head
striking the table heavily, and upsetting the bottle with the remainder
of the drugged brandy in it as she did so.
"Done!" said Lupin. "Done at last. Oh, how I have watched for such an
opportunity as this. How often I have pleased myself with the idea of
meeting her in some lonely place when she was off her guard, and killing
her, but I never thought that anything could happen half so lucky as
this. Let me think. I am quite alone in this building, or as good as
alone, for Mrs. Oakley sleeps soundly. I can easily drag the dead body
down stairs, and place it in one of the vaults underneath the chapel, to
which I have the key. I will wrench open some coffin if that be all, and
cram her in on the top of the dead there previously. Ah, that will do,
and then I defy any circumstances to find me out. How safe a--mur--I
mean a death this will be to be sure. How very--very safe."
Mrs. Oakley shook in every limb, but she kept her eyes steadfastly fixed
at the small hole in the canvas, through which she could see into the
room, and by a horrible species of fascination, she felt that if she had
ever so much wished to do so, she could not then have withdrawn it. No!
she was as it were condemned as a fiat of destiny, as a punishment for
her weak and criminal credulity regarding that man, to be a witness to
the dreadful deed he proposed committing, within the sphere of her
observation.
It was dreadful. It was truly horrible. But it was not now by any means
to be avoided.
Lupin disappeared for a few seconds into a room where he usually himself
slept. From thence he returned with a wash-hand basin in his hand, which
he placed upon the floor. He then fumbled about the clothing of his wife
until he found the knife that she had twice so threateningly exhibited
to him. He held it up to the light and narrowly scrutinised it.
"It will do I think," he said.
He tried its keenness upon the edge of the sole of his shoe, and he was
satisfied that it had been well prepared for mischief.
"It will do well," he said. "Well, nothing can be better. From this
night I shall be free from the fears that have haunted me night and day
for so long. This woman is the only person in all London who really
knows me, and who has it in her power to destroy all my prospects. When
she is gone, I shall be perfectly easy and safe, and surely never was
such a deed as this done with so much positive safety."
Mrs. Oakley felt sickened at what she saw, but still she looked upon it
with that same species of horrible fascination which it is said--and
said truly, too--prevents the victim of a serpent's glittering eye from
escaping the jaws of the destroyer. She saw it all. She did not
move--she did not scream--she did not weep--but as if frozen to the
spot, she, with a statuesque calmness, looked upon that most horrible
scene of blood. She was the witness appointed by Heaven to see it done,
and she could not escape her mission.
Lupin twined his left hand in the hair at the back of the head of the
wretched woman, and then he held her head over the wash-hand basin.
There was a bright flash of the knife, and then a gushing, gurgling
sound, and blood poured into the basin, hot, hissing and frothing. The
light fell upon the face of Lupin, and at that time so changed was it,
that Mrs. Oakley could not have recognised it, and, but that she knew
from the antecedents that it was no other than he, she might have
doubted if some devil had not risen up through the floor to do the deed
of blood.
He dropped the knife to the floor.
The murdered woman made a faint movement with her arms, and then all was
over. The blood still rolled forth and filled the wash-hand basin. Lupin
caught the cover from the table, throwing everything that was upon it to
the floor, and wrapped it many times round the head, face, and neck of
his victim.
"It is done!" he said. "It is done!"
He still held the body by the hair of the head, and dragging it along
the floor, he dropped it near the door opening on to the staircase. He
then went to a cupboard in the room, and finding a bottle, he plunged
the neck of it into his mouth, and drank deeply. The draught was ardent
spirit, but it had no more effect upon him at that moment than as though
it had been so much water from a spring. That is to say, it had no
intoxicating effect. It may have stilled some of the emotions of dread
and horror which his own crime must have called up from the bottom even
of such a heart as his. He was human, and he could not be utterly
callous.
Leaning against the cupboard-door for a few seconds he gasped out--
"Yes, it is done. It is quite done, and now for the worst. Now for the
body, and the vaults, and the dead. Can I do it? can I do it? I must.
Yes, I must. There is no safety for me if I do not. I shall come else to
the scaffold. I think already that I see the hooting crowd--the rope and
the cross-beam. Now they hold my arms. Now they tell me to call upon God
for mercy to my wretched blood-stained soul. Now the mob shouts. The
hangman touches me--I feel the rope about my neck. They draw the cap
over my face, and so shut out the world from me for ever. I die--I
struggle--I writhe--I faint--God--God--God help me!"
He fell heavily to the floor of the room.
CHAPTER CV.
MRS. OAKLEY ESCAPES, AND TAKES A DIFFERENT VIEW OF THINGS IN GENERAL.
Mrs. Oakley nearly fainted herself at this juncture, but she felt that
her life was in jeopardy, and by a strong mental effort, such as she
could hardly have supposed herself capable of making, she sustained
herself, and preserved her senses.
Lupin lay for some minutes quite insensible upon the floor, but he did
not lie long enough for Mrs. Oakley to take advantage of his temporary
swoon and leave the place. Had she perhaps been very prompt and
resolute, and self-possessed, she might have done so, but under the
whole of the circumstances, it was not to be supposed that such could be
her state of mind; so the slight opportunity, for, after all, it was
only a slight one, if one at all, was let slip by her.
She was just beginning to ask herself if there was a chance of getting
away before Lupin should recover, when he uttered a hideous groan, and
moved slightly.
After these indications of recovery, Mrs. Oakley was afraid to move; and
certainly, the slightest indication of her being otherwise than in the
state of insensibility which Lupin believed to be her condition, there
is very little doubt it would have been the signal for her death.
The man who commits a murder for the attainment of any object of
importance to him, will not scruple to commit another to hide the first
deed from the eyes of the world.
And now Lupin slowly rose to a sitting posture, and glared around him
for a few moments in silence. Then he spoke.
"What is this?" he said. "What is all this? What is the meaning of all
this? Blood!--blood! Is this blood upon my hands? No--no--yes, it is--it
is. Ah! I recollect."
He held his blood-stained hands to his eyes for a few moments, and then
as he withdrew them, he slowly turned his eyes to where the body lay.
With a shudder he dragged himself along the floor further off from it,
gasping out as he did so--
"Off--off, horrible object!--off--off!"
His distempered imagination, no doubt, pictured the body as following
him. Is there not, indeed, a prompt retribution in this world?
"Off--off, I say! No further!--Not dead?--not dead yet? How much blood
have you in you now to shed? Off--off!"
He reached the wall. He could get no further, and thus pursued still by
the same wild insane idea, he sprung to his feet, and uttering a loud
cry, he caught up a chair and held it out at arm's length before him,
shouting--
"Keep away--keep away! Keep off, I say--I--I did not do it. Who shall
say I did it? Who saw me do it?"
He slowly dropped the chair, and then in a more composed voice he said--
"Hush! hush! I am mad to raise these cries. They will alarm the court. I
am mad--mad!"
Mrs. Oakley had hoped that his ravings would reach some other ears then
hers, and that his apprehension, with the bleeding witness of his crime
close at hand, would follow as a thing of course, and then how gladly
would she have flown from her place of concealment, and cried out--
"He did it! I saw him! That is the man!"
But such was not the case. Either he really did not call out loud enough
to make himself heard, or the inhabitants of the court were too much
accustomed to all sorts of sounds to pay any attention even to the
ravings of a murderer!
No one came. No one even knocked at the chapel-door to know if anything
was amiss, and when she saw him calm, and in a measure self-possessed
again, her heart died within her.
"Murder! murder!" he said; "I have done murder! Yes, I have steeped my
hands in blood--again--again! It is not the first time, but one does not
become familiar with murder. I did not feel as I feel now when I took a
life before. Oh, horror! horror!"
He shook, but soon again recovered himself.
"The vaults! The vaults!" he said. "They will hide the dead. Who will
look for this woman? What friends has she? Is there one in all the world
who cares if she be alive or dead? Not one. Is there one who will stir
six steps to find out what has become of her? Not one."
Again he solaced himself with a draught of brandy, and then he set about
making his preparations for disposing of the dead body of his
slaughtered victim.
From a drawer in the room he took a large sheet, and spread it upon the
floor. Then he kicked and pushed the dead body with his feet on to it,
and then he deliberately rolled it up round and round in the sheet, and
at each fold feeling that it was further removed from his sight, he
seemed to breathe more and more freely.
He spoke in something like his old tones.
"That will do--that will do. The vaults will be the place. Was there
ever such a cunning place for murder to be done in as a chapel, with its
ready receptacles of the dead beneath it? There let her rot. She will
never come up in judgment against me from there. It is done now. The
deed that I often thought of doing, and yet never had the courage, nor
the opportunity at the same time, to accomplish until to-night. The
vaults--the vaults. Ay, the vaults!"
He lit a lantern that he took from the cupboard, and then he opened the
door that communicated with the staircase terminating in the chapel. He
listened as though he fancied that some one might be below listening to
the deed of blood above.
"All is still," he muttered, "so very still. It is providential. It is
the will of Heaven that this woman should die to night, and after all I
am but the instrument of its decrees--nothing more. That is comforting."
He now dragged the body to the door he had opened, but he did not carry
it. When he got it there he overbalanced it, and let it fall down. Mrs.