Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — THE DEAD HAND. [ARTICLE]

THE DEAD HAND.

From the first day of my temporary sojourn at 14 Transome Terrace, Westville-by-Sea, I became aware that some one was ill next door. The weather was so persistently wet that I was compelled to remain within, and, being alone, I naturally spent much of my time at the window, wondering Whether it ever would be fine enough for outdoor sketching. Thus it was that the frequent visits to 13 of an unmistakable doctor, in an unmistakable doctor’s brougham attracted my attention. Two, and even three times a day he came, and on his departure I always noticed that look of grave, professional anxiety which, on a doctor’s face, bodes ill for the patient. Sometimes the medical man was accompanied to his carriage by a gentleman who appeared to be questioning him with singular earnestness. Bareheaded, and regardless of the never-ceasing rain, the latter would stand at the door of the brougham, seemingly loath to let the doctor go without some final instructions, or, perchance, some ray of hope. The anxious inquirer was tall, with narrow, stooping shoulders, but all that I could see of his features as he hurried back into the house was that he was about thirty years of age, with no hair on his face, which was very pale. . With a curiosity born of enforced idleness, I asked my landlady what was the matter at Na. 13, but all she could tell me was that the house next door was also a lodging house and that the doc»tor’s visits were paid to an old gentleman who had been brought there very ill, by his nephew. My landlady added that it was a strange choice of apartments io have made for a sick person, as the woman who kept them was little better than an idiot, and was only assisted by an equally stupid servant girl. At the time I put this remark down to professional jealously, especially as the nephew had been to look at the rooms I myself was now occupying, and, after making particular inquiries, had refused them. It was not until I had been gt Westville a week that the weather brightened and I was able to take my sketch book in search of subjects. But the eighth day was fine, and starting immediately after breakfast, I managed to put in a good day’s work at the ruined tower some miles along the coast. Returning at sundown I dined, and then settled myself for a comfortable pipe over the day’s S. As I lit up I could not help wong how many visits the doctor had paid to No. 13. From mere force of habit I had grown into looking out for him and finally into taking a sort of interest in the number of times he came. The day before, while I was still at my post at the window, he had been in four times, from which I argued that the patient was worse. I had not been reading very long when there was a ring at the street door bell. A minute or so later my landlady came into the room and said that the gentleman who lodged next door was below, and had asked for her husband, who happened to be out for the evening. On hearing that the gentleman had inquired if there was any ane else in the house who could accompany him back next door for a few minutes on a matter of business. The landlady was unable to go herself, the servant being out, but as the gentleman seemed disappointed she had token the liberty of suggesting that he should ask me. Would I, at any rate, see him and then decide? I was only too glad to be of use to people who appeared to be in great trouble, far from their friends in a seaside lodging house, and I told the landlady to show the gentleman in. In another moment the tall, looseframed man whom I had seen so often attending the doctor to his carriage stood bowing in the doorway. “Pray come in,” I said, rising, “in what way can I be of service to you ?” The -stranger entered the room. His eyes, which I saw were weak, blinked in the bright lamplight. He disregarded the motion I made toward a chair, and answered me standing. He seemed nerv-

ously anxious to conquor his shortsightedness in order to make out what manner of man I was. In other words, he peered at me somewhat rudely. “It is simply the small matter of witnessing the signature to a will,” he said. “If I might trespass on your kindness to step in next door for that purpose I should be greatly obliged. My uncle is ill, and though I trust he is in no immediate danger he is anxious to affix his signature to-night.” “I shall be most happy,” I said, taking up my h: t, “I will come with you at once.” “I must introduce myself,” said the stranger, as he led the way downstairs. “My name is Gaston Pierrepont; my uncle whom you are about to see is General Maitland, of Godney Park, Northampshire. I brought him here in the hopes that he might derive benefit from the sea air.” “With good results, I trust,” was the reply which politeness drew from me, though the frequent visits of that ominous brougham led me to expect a negative answer. To my surprise Mr. Pierrepoint replied in the affirmative, “Yes,” he said, “my uncle is better, though still dangerously ill.” By this time we were out in the street at the door of No. 13. He had already inserted his latch key in the lock, when he paused and looked at me. “There is one thing I must prepare you for,” he said, blinking his weak eyes at me in the gloom ; “my uncle is unable to speak. His complaint is nervous paralysis, you understand? Otherwise he is in full possession of his faculties. The doctor is with him now, and certifies to his fitness to sign.” I merely bowed and followed him into the house. No. 13 was a sac-simile of No. 14, with the exception of some slight differences in the furniture which stamped it as what it was—a second-rate seaside lodging house. Mr. Pierrepont conducted me upstairs to the first floor, and stopping outside a door on the landing knocked three times. There was a slight pause and a movement inside the chain i <er, and then a voice said, “Come in,” Grasping the door handle, Mr. Pierrepont turned to me hurriedly as if he had forgotten something. “I think,” he said, “it might be as well if I knew who was going to perform this service for us. Might I ask—” I stopped him by acceding to his very reasonable request. I took out my pocketbook and gave him one of my visiting cards with my name—Angus Macdonald —and the address of my studio in St. John’s Wood engraved thereon. He put it close to his eyes, b]inked at it, and said in a tone which somehow or other suggested relief: “Ahl you live in London—not here— I see.”

He opened the door, and I followed him into the room. There was a dim light from a shaded lamp which stood on a small table at the head of the bed, but so disposed that the curtains prevented its rays from falling on the sick man. On the bed, half reclining, half supported by a young man, with fair hair and wearing spectacles, w’as an old man whom, even in that dim light, I saw to be of stately presence and dignified mien. His scanty locks were snow white, .as were the bushy eyebrows, which he kept bent down toward the paper lying on the bed before him. But what surprised me most was the ruddy glow of health in General Maitland’s cheeks. The latter were sunken, it is true, but the faint lamp light was strong enough to show me a pink and white color that would have done no discredit to a maiden of sixteen. My conductor introduced me briefly. The general merely acknowledged my presence by courteous inclination of the head—a movement which he repeated when Mr. Pierrepoint asked him affectionately if he was ready to go through the usual formalities. “Very well, then, I will fetch Mrs. Butters as a second witness,” said the nephew'. “ The doctor there would do. but his attention must not be taken from his patient.” “The doctor !” I thought, wondering •why the portly individual whose brougham I had watched so often, should have given place to the flaxen-haired young man whose right arm encircled the general so carefully. The personage with the brougham did not cure quick enough, I suppose. Mr. Pierrepoint returned with a snuffling, tremulous female, whose vacuous countenance at once relieved my own landlady from a charge of libelling her neighbor and rival which I had mentally preferred against her. “Stop there by the door till you are wanted; we must not crowd the general,” said Pierrepont, and Mrs. Butters halted obediently, paying a good deal more attention to the pattern of her own carpet than to the proceedings around her. “Here is the will,” Pierrepont went on, holding up the paper, with the place for the signatures of the testator and witnesses as yet blank. Then he replaced it reverently before his uncle who bent over the document, and, supported by the ever careful doctor, slowly affixed his name: “William Joseph Maitland,” at the foot. As soon as his pen had made the last feeble scratch, Mr. Pierrepont brought the will over to me before the ink was dry, and I added my name, using the dressing table as a writing desk. The vacuous landlady followed, and in her tremulous scrawl General Maitland’s last will and testament received its finishing touch. I immediately prepared to leave the room and Pierrepont made no attempt to detain me.

I said “ Goodnight ” to the general, adding some commonplace remark about hopes for his recovery—a compliment which he again acknowledged with one of his £rave bows. That is my last recollection of the scene—the venerable Old man sitting up among pillows with the watchful doctor at his side. Pierrepont followed me on to the landing to conduct me td the street door. He thanked me profusely for coming; indeed, he said a good deal more than the occasion demanded. I stopped him, and to turn the conversation said: “So you have changed your doctor, Mr. Pierrepont ?” He stopped in the passage and blinked at me enquiringly. “Ah!” he said, “you have perhaps noticid Dr. Lorrimer here. That is Andrews, his assistant. The doctor could not come to-night, and, between ourselves, Andrews is the best man, I think. ” We parted at the door of No. 13, and I went back to my pipe and newspaper, having been absent barely twenty minutes, viz., from 8.30 to 8.50. . That night as I retired to rest I found myself speculating as to the amount of Mr. Gaston Pierrepont’s interest in the will I had witnessed. But in the morning I received a shock. The first piece of news my landlady—bustling in with the breakfast tray —imparted was that General Maitland was dead.

For a moment I experienced a sensation of surprise. Probably the General’s ruddy cheeks had forbidden the idea of such a speedy removal, but I soon saw that, after all, there was not much to wonder at. The day was again fine, and I deter mined to return to the ruined tower to finish the sketch I had begun. I reached the place on foot and set to work, but after some little time I had occasion to shift my position in order to obtain a different view of my subject. In doing so I met with an accident. An old stone wall on which I had mounted crumbled beneath me, and I fell violently to the ground. When I rose I knew that my left arm was broken. In great pain I made my way back to my lodgings and accepted my landlady’s offer to send at once for the doctor. In answer to her inquiry as to which of the medical men of the town I should prefer, I named the only one I had any knowledge of —Dr. Lorrimer- -who had been such a frequent visitor next door. The doctor came quickly and did what was needed. It was a simple fracture and easily set. Dr. Lorrimer was a cheerful, chatty man, and stayed for a little general conversation after his professional skill had exhausted itself. “By the way, doctor,” I said, “you have lost a patient next door.” “Yes, poor old fellow,” he replied, “not before I expected, though. There was no hope for him from the first.” “Your assistant, Mr. Andrews, seemed to be taking every care of him last night,” I said. “My assistant? Mr. Andrews? Last night?” the doctor exclaimed in amazement. “I have no assistant, and what of last night, sir?” I explained how I had been asked in by Mr. Pierrepont to witness the general’s will at 8.30 in the evening.. Dr. Lorrimer drew a long breath. “Well,” he said at last, “if you saw him sign his will at half-past eight he signed it with a dead hand. General Maitland died at half-past four yesterday as ternoon. ”

My broken arm was the means of exposing the whole dastardly plot by which Gaston Pierrepont, aided by his wife, had schemed to possess himself of his uncle’s property to the exclusion of his son and lawful heir—an officer serving in an Indian regiment. The General had, as the doctor said, died shortly after four, he himself being present. Having finished with the case it was not likely that the doctor would be questioned as to the exact hour of death, and there would be nothing suspicious in a man signing his will on the day of his death, should the General’s son compare the date of the will with that of the certificate which Dr. Lorrimer had given before he left the house. The “Mr. Andrews” who supported the dead man and guided his hand was Gaston Pierrepont’s wife, a woman who had already suffered imprisonment, and who was the instigator of her husband’s crime. The source of the “health glow," which bore a principal part in deceiving me, can easily be imagined. The couple fled on being openly accused by Dr. Lorrimer and myself, and George Maitland, when he came to claim his own, decided for the credit of the family not to pursue them, seeing he had lost nothing by the will his father had signed with a dead hand.—[The Million.