Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/609

23, 1863.] You, who have been the cause of all this misery and ruin.”

The matter was becoming to me momentarily more inexplicable. I was about to make further reply to the landlady, when I was startled by a loud noise outside the bar, and I heard a man’s voice exclaiming,

“Where is he? Where is he? Where is the ruffian? Let me reach him. Let me grasp his throat. Let me revenge my wife. Let me revenge my three daughters. Out of the way!”

“It is the General!” shrieked the landlady; and at the same moment a gentleman in a furious rage bounded into the room. He carried a bootjack in one hand, which he waved wildly over his head, and he was advancing to seize me, when another gentleman jumped into the room after him, threw his arms round his waist, and held him as if he were in a vice.

“Let me go,” shouted the first gentleman, struggling to get free.

“I shan’t,” shouted the second gentleman. “What do you want to do?”

I knew the voice. It was Tom Marlowe.

“Tom,” I cried, “what is all this about? I am charged with the most extraordinary conduct. Speak for me, old fellow.”

“Why—what—” exclaimed Tom, putting his head round the General’s body without relaxing his hold. “Good gracious! is it you? If this gentleman would only have the kindness to leave off struggling, and abandon his bloodthirsty intentions, I could discuss the matter with him. There is some mistake.”

“There’s not!” roared the General.

“There is!” I shouted.

“You had better retire, sir,” interposed the landlady, addressing me. “Your presence only serves to excite the General’s frenzy. I am willing to explain matters to Mr. Marlowe.”

“Go into the next room, will you,” said Tom, again putting his head round the General’s body, “and lock the door on him, ma’am. I won’t let go of this gentleman unless you do.”

“Go, sir!” exclaimed the landlady to me; and pointing to an inner room in a Lady Macbeth attitude.

I entered. The door was immediately closed, and locked upon me. It was quite an hour before Tom made his appearance. Directly he came in he fell into a chair, and burst into a fit of laughter. When he had partially recovered himself, he said:

“Excuse me, my dear fellow, laughing in this wild manner; but for the last hour I have been dying with suppressed emotion. I have been wanting to laugh, and have not dared.”

“What is it all about?”

“Well, my dear boy,” said Tom, “it seems it was you who did it after all.”

“Impossible! I wasn’t in the hotel.”

“Just listen for one moment. I have been making inquiries all over the house, and have had interviews with the parties concerned. I think I have found it all out, and if I know anything of the laws of cause and effect, it was you who did it. However, don’t make yourself uneasy. I have cleared up the matter now, and appeased the landlady, and they have determined to forgive you.”

“Forgive me—but what for? What have I done?”

“It seems,” said Tom, “that there is an elderly gentleman from America stopping in the house with his family. He is of very nervous temperament, and from having some short time ago severely suffered from the effects of a fire upon his premises, exists in a perpetual state of alarm as to one breaking out wherever he may be. In fact, he is almost a monomaniac upon the subject. Now, it appears that it was you who rang the bell last night. Loverock, the waiter, who sleeps down-stairs, says he opened the street-door to you at one o’clock. You left me at eleven, so that you were at it about two hours.”

“That’s true,” I said. “They wouldn’t open the door. What was I to do?”

“Precisely,” continued Tom. “At about half-past twelve o’clock it further appears that the fire-fearing gentleman having listened to a violent and almost continuous ringing of a bell for an hour and a half, at length took it into his head to travel out of his bedroom to discover the cause. On reaching the hall—”

“Yes, I saw him through the door-window.”

“On reaching the hall, he examined all the bells upon the wall, and seeing a particularly large one madly ringing came to the conclusion it was the fire-bell. The alarm of fire always drives him out of his senses, and the instinct of preserving his fellow-creatures at such a time is so strong upon him that it becomes a madness. It was this feeling that drove him through the house shouting for help, bursting open doors, pulling the furniture out of the rooms and the people out of their beds,—in fact, acting as if a fire were actually raging in the hotel.”

“But why should he have thought it was the fire-bell?”

“Come and see,” said Tom.

We passed into the hall.

In the midst of a cluster of bells hanging upon the wall, each of which had its number, was one bell of an unusually large size, and underneath this, painted in red, were the mysterious letters “F. D.”

“That’s the bell you rung,” said Tom. “The American gentleman, in his excitement, not unnaturally concluded it gave the alarm of fire.”

“And what, in the name of Heaven, do those initials stand for?”

“Front Door!” 2em

’Twas a fierce night when old Mawgan died!

Men shudder’d to hear the rolling tide:

The wreckers fled far from the awful shore,—

They had heard strange voices amid the roar!