I turned to Mr. John Smith--I should say to my old friend Douglas Howarth; who had been staring from me to Mr. Acrodato, and from Mr.

Acrodato back to me, apparently wholly at a loss to understand the situation. Funny how opaque some men can be.

'Conscience,' says the bard, 'makes cowards of us all.' The Prince of Denmark wasn't quite so right as he supposed; but it had certainly succeeded in making, in a marvellously short s.p.a.ce of time, a wreck of my dear old friend. Even the inexperienced eye could not fail to perceive that he had aged both morally and mentally. I was willing to bet a trifle that instead of scoring off the little game he had tried to play, he had pa.s.sed from the prime of life to old age in the course of a single deal. He wasn't half the man who had called himself John Smith. He had acquired a new stoop; and that stoop was typical of all he had acquired. As he stared at me with astonished eyes it was clear that he had not so much control over his nerves as he would have liked to have had.

'As I just observed, I am glad to see you, my dear Douglas. My relatives and friends have not flocked round me as I had hoped they would. Am I to take it that this is a case of better late than never?'

'How did you get out?'

'How did I get out? Of what?'

'How did you get out of the coffin?'

'Out of----? My dear Douglas, aren't you well? Is that the explanation of your laggard step?'

'You are Babbacombe!'

I shrugged my shoulders.

'So that bee's in your bonnet. Very well, I am Babbacombe. I've been told it before; but no one has told me who Babbacombe is.'

'Don't--don't play any more tricks with me. Can't you see I've been nearly driven mad? Tell me; aren't you that--that devil?'

'Douglas, I have learned, to my pain, that you have lately not cut a very pretty figure. I am willing to excuse you on the charitable supposition that, as you say, you have been nearly driven mad. But do not let your madness go too far. Show some method in it, Douglas. Is it money you're in want of? If so, I've plenty, and am quite content that there should be some of it for you. What's the figure, man.'

'The figure?'

He looked as if his wits were wool-gathering. Going to a sideboard I poured out some brandy into a gla.s.s.

'Come, Douglas, swallow this. A pick-me-up may do you good. It strikes me that you ought to be in bed rather than abroad.'

He took the gla.s.s of brandy with a hand which trembled.

'It's a day of miracles.'

'Have you only just found that out? Surely you and I have reached an age at which we ought to know that wherever we turn, a miracle stares us in the face. What's the matter with you, my dear old chap?'

'Are you--are you Babbacombe?'

'My dear Douglas, I'm any one you please. Come, drink your brandy.' He took a sip; then put the gla.s.s on the table? 'Now tell me, what's the trouble? Is it money? If so, consider that I'm your banker and draw on me.'

Although I fancy that the sip he had taken had done him good, it still was sufficiently clear that the situation was beyond his comprehension; at which, on the whole, I wasn't surprised.

'Either, Leonard, you're a very remarkable actor, or you're a very remarkable man.'

'If you like we'll grant both hypotheses. And now may I ask you what you mean?'

'Should you desire it, I am quite willing to ignore the fact that I ever knew you as--anybody else, but I shouldn't like you to suppose that I'm an utter fool.'

'Howarth, you oblige me to adopt a tone with you for which I have no relish. Your words and manner convey an insinuation which I must ask you to explain. What am I to understand by what you have just now said?'

'Tell me, honestly. Have you not been masquerading as Montagu Babbacombe?'

'I have not. Nor, until I returned to the bosom of my family, was I aware that there was such a person in existence. Now tell me, in your turn, why are you so anxious to confound me with the gentleman in question?'

'If you never have a.s.sumed the name of Montagu Babbacombe, I beg your pardon.'

'In what dirty waters have you been paddling together? I was a pretty warm member when I was younger; I didn't expect to find you had become, with advancing years, the sort of man you apparently are. You have been attempting to do me out of my birthright; and now, as far as I understand, you are trying to do me out of my ident.i.ty, too.'

He put both hands up to his head, as if it ached.

'I'm doing nothing of the kind; I only repeat that this is an age of miracles. When you meet Mr. Babbacombe--if you ever have so much good fortune'--his words had an ironical intonation which I couldn't but notice--'you'll understand the sense in which I use the words.'

'Douglas, what was there between this man and you?'

'I'll tell you. It will be at any rate a comfort to tell some one.'

He did tell me--the story with which I was even better acquainted than he was. The course of action which I should have to pursue loomed clearer and clearer as his tale proceeded. If I wished to stifle any remaining doubts which he might have, I should have to make an example of Mr. Howarth. Which I promptly proceeded to do.

I waited till he had reached the end of his pleasant little narrative, and then I let him have it. I fancy that the confession, which was good for his soul, was not received quite in the way he antic.i.p.ated.

In matters of this kind the world is full of disappointments. When it comes to confessing our sins, so few of us receive just the treatment we consider ourselves ent.i.tled to expect.

'Howarth, your att.i.tude presents a curious psychological study. You tell your--I will flatter you by calling it amazing--story to me, as if you had been the sufferer. On the same line of reasoning the man who, having cut his father's throat, finds himself deserted by the wretched creature whom he has incited to a.s.sist him in his crime may pose as an injured martyr. Shall I inform you what I think? That you are a skulking thief and a cowardly scoundrel--that most pestilent type of blackguard whose one end and aim is to shift the onus of his own filthy deeds on to another's shoulders.'

He started; as if plain speaking was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. But I was only just beginning.

'According to your own statement you bribe a miserable mountebank to play a part in so hideous a fraud that I am conscious of a sensation of nausea when I think of it; and when with horrible fidelity the wretch has played his part, what do you do? Do you play your part?

Lord, no! You're not that kind of man. Your one anxiety is to save your own leprous skin--double-dyed cur and coward that you are. He at least has trusted you; so you reward his faith by subjecting him to the most terrible death the mind can contemplate--you bury him alive.

You have not even the courage of the common murderer. You crucify yourself for your own crime. See what a pallid, shrinking, stammering wretch you have become! Out! out! out! before I soil my hands by taking you by the throat, and throwing you into the street.'

Mr. Smith didn't seem as if he was enjoying himself. As I came towards him he seemed to shrink into a smaller and smaller compa.s.s, as if I were an avenging spirit before whose anger he had perforce to dwindle into nothing. I was wondering if I should play the farce right through, and really deposit him in the gutter, when the advent of two new-comers created a diversion. They were my affectionate brother, Lord Reginald Sherrington, and a rather incongruous companion, in the shape of Mr. Augustus FitzHoward. Fitz kept a little in the rear--as if not altogether at his ease as to the sort of reception he might receive; but the mere fact of his presence was proof enough that if I wished to keep myself free from such intrusions in the future, mercy was a quality against which, for the present at any rate, my heart must be steeled. This was a case when the downfall of vice must be carried to its legitimate conclusion.

So I gave Reggie the benefit of some candid criticisms on Mr. Smith.

'Reggie, you come at a convenient moment. You afford me an opportunity of closing, once for all, an incident of which I never wish to hear again. You see this nameless thing--this libel on our common manhood, whom, I am ashamed to reflect, I once regarded as my friend? With what sort of tale do you suppose he has been regaling me? He tells me that by the promise of a payment of one thousand pounds, he suborned some hard-driven wretch, who bore some real or imagined resemblance to myself, and induced him to feign death. Think of it! He persuaded the creature to simulate the greatest of all the mysteries, and to pretend to pa.s.s into the valley of the shadows. And when he lay in a coffin--actually in a coffin--think of it, ye G.o.ds!--waiting for this--this thing, to fulfil his part of the bargain, and release him, Mr. Howarth, deeming discretion to be the better part of honour, caused him to be fastened in his prison house and buried alive. What judgment would you p.r.o.nounce upon so unique a gentleman?'

'Is this true?'

'Ask him. I tell you the story as I had it just now from his own lips.'

'Douglas, is this true?'

Mr. Smith put his fingers inside his shirt collar, as if its tightness worried him. It was some seconds before he spoke. Then it was in tones which were curiously unlike his own.

'Yes, it's true--all true.'

'And you are not Montagu Babbacombe?'

This was Reggie to me.