"Yes. A murderous hand had locked him in, and left him to drown. That hand was mine."
The Scotchman started up from the table; the doctor shrank from the bedside. The two looked at the dying wretch, mastered by the same loathing, chilled by the same dread. He lay there, with his child's head on his breast; abandoned by the sympathies of man, accursed by the justice of God--he lay there, in the isolation of Cain, and looked back at them.
At the moment when the two men rose to their feet, the door leading into the next room was shaken heavily on the outer side, and a sound like the sound of a fall, striking dull on their ears, silenced them both. Standing nearest to the door, the doctor opened it, passed through, and closed it instantly. Mr. Neal turned his back on the bed, and waited the event in silence. The sound, which had failed to awaken the child, had failed also to attract the father's notice. His own words had taken him far from all that was passing at his deathbed. His helpless body was back on the wreck, and the ghost of his lifeless hand was turning the lock of the cabin door.
A bell rang in the next room--eager voices talked; hurried footsteps moved in it--an interval passed, and the doctor returned. "Was she listening?" whispered Mr. Neal, in German. "The women are restoring her," the doctor whispered back. "She has heard it all. In God's name, what are we to do next?" Before it was possible to reply, Mr. Armadale spoke. The doctor's return had roused him to a sense of present things.
"Go on," he said, as if nothing had happened.
"I refuse to meddle further with your infamous secret," returned Mr. Neal. "You are a murderer on your own confession. If that letter is to be finished, don't ask me to hold the pen for you."
"You gave me your promise," was the reply, spoken with the same immovable self-possession. "You must write for me, or break your word."
For the moment, Mr. Neal was silenced. There the man lay--sheltered from the execration of his fellow-creatures, under the shadow of Death--beyond the reach of all human condemnation, beyond the dread of all mortal laws; sensitive to nothing but his one last resolution to finish the letter addressed to his son.
Mr. Neal drew the doctor aside. "A word with you," he said, in German. "Do you persist in asserting that he may be speechless before we can send to Stuttgart?"