The Woman With One Hand
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 7: The Second Encounter
I began, as the days went by, to be more and more a prey to unhealthy, and apparently unreasonable doubts and fears--fears which, in truth, were so intangible that they were without form and void, but which were very real for all that. I began to feel as if a net were being drawn tighter and tighter round me, and as if every step I took was beset by hidden dangers. Such a mental condition was as I have said, an unhealthy one. I realised that well enough, and I had been wandering one evening to and fro on the Embankment, striving to free myself, if only for a time, from the imaginary mists and shadows which seemed to compass me about, when as I was turning into the street in which stood Mrs. Barnes’s hotel, I saw a man crouching in the darkness of the wall. What was the man’s purpose I had no doubt: he was seeking for concealment. He had seen me before I saw him, and was endeavouring to escape my scrutiny.
I took him to be the new waiter. I supposed that I had caught him in the act of spying on me at last. I turned swiftly on him, and before he could retreat I had him by the shoulders.
“Before I let you go, my friend, you will be so good as to tell me, now and here, what is the cause of the extreme interest which you evidently take in my proceedings.”
That was what I said to him; but already, before I had said my say right out, I perceived that I was wrong: that the man I had hold of was not the man I thought he was. This man was shorter and of slighter build, and he showed more signs of fight than, within my experience, the other had evinced. He wriggled in my grasp like an eel, but, holding tightly on to him, I dragged him a little into the light.
When I succeeded in getting a glimpse at him there came from between my lips a series of interjections:--
“You!--James Southam!--Mr. Barnes! Good God!”
I had hardly spoken when he knocked me down. I was so taken by surprise that I was unable to offer the least resistance; he felled me again, as he had felled me before, as if I had been a ninepin. By the time I had realised what had happened I was lying on my back on the pavement. His hand was on my throat, and his knee was on my chest. He was peering closely into my face--so closely that I could feel his breath upon my cheeks.
“It’s you again, is it? I thought it was. Don’t you make a noise, or I’ll choke the life right out of you. You tell me, straight out, what it is you want with me--do you hear?”
As if to drive his question well home, he gave my head a sharp tap against the pavement. His strength must have been prodigious. I was conscious that, with him above me thus and with that iron grasp upon my throat, I was wholly at his mercy. The hour was late. Although almost within a stone’s throw of the Strand, the place was solitary; not a creature might pass just where we were the whole night through.
“Take your hand from my windpipe--I cannot speak--you are choking me,” I gasped.
“Give me your word you will make no noise if I do. See here!”
He was clutching a knife--as ugly a looking knife as ever I saw. He brandished it before my eyes.
“I give my word,” I managed to utter.
He relaxed his hold. It was a comfort to be again able to freely inflate my lungs, though the continued presence of his knee on my chest was none too pleasant. With the point of his knife he actually pricked my nose.
“Don’t you try to move, or I will cut your throat as if you were a pig. Lie still and answer my questions--and straight, mind, or you’ll be sorry. What is it you want with me?”
“I want nothing from you--I have never wanted anything. You have been under an entire misapprehension throughout.”
Once more, with gruesome sportiveness, he tickled my nose with his knife.
“Stow that, my lad! It’s no good trying to catch this bird with salt. How did you come to know that my name was James Southam?”
“I never did know it. The simple truth is that that name happened to be mine.”
“What’s that?”
“I say that that name happens to be mine--I am James Southam.”
Bending down he glared at me with eyes which seemed to glow like burning coal.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean precisely what I say. If you choose to examine the contents of my pockets--they are at your mercy--you will find ample proof of the truth of what I say. Besides, I take it that you have had truth of this proof from the contents of the papers.”
“The contents of the papers--what papers?”
I looked at him to see if his seeming ignorance of what I meant was real. It appeared to be.
“You and I, Mr. Southam, or Mr. Barnes, or whatever your name is, have been, and it would seem still are, at cross purposes. I take no more interest in your affairs than you take in mine--perhaps not so much. The mention of my name seems to have awoke uncomfortable echoes in your breast, which fact is of the nature of an odd coincidence.”
“You are not a policeman, or a detective, or a private inquiry agent, or anything of that kind--you swear it?”
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