The man with the mask :: :: University of Virginia Library

That gaze penetrated Lemuel with the very
extremity of fright and terror. The luxurious
folds of the dressing gown, which clothed
Brother Caleb's gaunt form, only increased
by contrast, the hideousness of his unearthly
countenance.

“You can't scarce me, Gatherwood,”
whispers Lemuel through his set teeth, as his
form trembles with the desperation of cowardice:
“The time has gone by for that kind of
thing.”

“Another step, and I will reach the top of
this cursed stairway!” murmurs Brother Caleb,
still absorbed by the adventure of his
dream.

His rigid face, motionless eyeballs, and
slowly muttered words, suddenly strike the
“Converted Monk” with an impression of the
truth.

“A Somnambulist!” the thought only half
escapes his lips. “Walks in his sleep, does
he? I'll wake him up, when I have the proofs
of his guilt in my hands. Go on, my dear
Gatherwood!”

Bowing with much gravity, Lemuel uttered
these closing words, with a grimace, accompanied
by a burst of half suppressed laughter.

Brother Caleb, still asleep, was of course
unconscious of his presence.

Turning, he touched the spring of the narrow
door. It opened, and light in hand, he
crossed the threshold, imagining that he had
won another step on the stairway of his dream.

Lemuel stealthily creeping at his heels, followed
him across the threshold, into the Room.
And Lemuel, with all his soul absorbed in the
contemplation of the movements of Brother
Caleb, did not observe a prostrate form which
was stretched upon the iron floor. His own

shadow added to the shadow of Brother Caleb,
completely veiled the prostrate form from observation.

Nor did Lemuel, watching with an unchanging
glance, the movements of Brother Caleb,
behold the haggard face, which slowly uprose
from the shadows, gazing around with a dull
vacant gaze. It was the face of Charles Lester,
who aroused from his deathlike stupor, by
the current of fresh air, slowly raised his head,
and beheld the motionless form of Brother
Caleb, standing gaunt and erect, in the centre
of the Iron Room. And near Brother Caleb,
Charles beheld the slight figure of the “Converted
Monk,” crouching behind the gaunt
form, like some noxious reptile, about to dart
upon its unconscious prey.

Charles slowly rose to his feet. But half
conscious, and impelled by an influence which
it is in vain to analyze, he crossed the narrow
space which separated him from the door-way.

Lemuel heard the sound of his step, and
turned to him, suddenly whispering, “Go
back, Stewel!” but ere his words were uttered,
Charles had crossed the threshold, and closed
the narrow door.

Lemuel still believing that it was Stewel's
footstep that had disturbed his silent watch,
turned again, and watched with flaming eyes
the motions of his friend Gatherwood, otherwise
known as Brother Caleb.

“No! No! You will not drive me back!”
groaned Brother Caleb, in a tone of acute
agony: “Do not hurl me from this dreadful
height! Extend your hand — only for a
moment — and I will be saved!”

Brother Caleb had attained the last step of
that stairway, leading into the clouds, when
there — upon the summit, amid white folds of
waving mist — appeared the figure of Alice
Bayne. There was a smile upon her beautiful
face, and her golden hair waved freely to
her uncovered shoulders. But even as Brother
Caleb's foot touched the last step, the stairway
began to rock with a frightful motion. He
reached forth his arm, and attempted to clutch
her hand, but that hand evaded his grasp, while
the face of the beautiful woman was agitated
by a look of calm mockery. Brother Caleb
cast his eyes below — the awful height made
him dizzy. Thousands and ten of thousands
of fathoms of space, lay between him and the
solid earth. And Alice could save him — save
him by the single extension of her hand — but
Alice smiled in calm mockery, while she murmured
in a calm musical voice, these words:

“Dr. Gatherwood, my home was happy
before you passed its threshold! Give back
my home, my husband, and my children, and
then I will help you to ascend the stairway!”

And while the stairway rocked like a reed
in the blast, Alice shook her golden hair, from
the summit, and taunted the poor wretch with
the history of his crimes.

— Such was the course of Brother Caleb's
dream, as he stood in the centre of the
Iron Room, with the keen eyes of Lemuel
Gardiner fixed upon his rigid face.

“Alice! Thee must forgive me!” cried
Brother Caleb, relapsing into the dialect of his
youth: “Thee will not refuse to aid me!
Mercy, Alice, mercy upon me, or I will
fall —”

Brother Caleb strode madly forward, thinking
that he was gaining the last step of the
dream-stairway, and Brother Caleb pitched
violently against the iron wall of the Iron
Room.

With cold sweat upon his forehead, he
awoke.

You may imagine his surprise, when the
reality succeeded to his dream. The form of
Alice, and the dizzy stairway had passed
away. He found himself in the Iron Room,
with the eyes of Lemuel Gardiner gazing into
his own.

Lemuel, with his narrow figure contracted
into the smallest possible compass, crouched
in one corner of the closet, his head sunken on
his breast, his chin resting on his hands,
pressed nervously against each other. And
thus Lemuel's eyes, looking upward from the
shadow of his compressed brows, imparted a
singular, almost ghostly character to his visage,
covered by a close-fitting skull-cap.

And Lemuel did not move — not even for an
instant change in the slightest degree, his statue-like
position in the corner. Lemuel looked
for all the world like some mischievous animal,
of the lower order of the feline race, which,
while in pursuit of its victim, has been suddenly
confronted by a more aristocratic beast
of greater capacity for carnage and destruction.

Very much like a cat, abruptly cornered by a
tiger, looked Lemuel, the “Converted Monk.”

“What does this all mean?” said Brother
Caleb after a long pause. His projecting eyeballs
began to lose their vague and glassy aspect.
There was some trace of “Captain
Bradburne of the Falcon” in their glance.

Lemuel preserved his fixed attitude, but did
not reply.

“I have not seen you these three months,”
resumed Brother Caleb, holding the light above
his head, while he took a more attentive survey
of Lemuel's face: “Yes, it's three —
possibly four months. What are you doing
here, in my house? Is this a `Chrismas Play'
to amuse the children?”

Brother Caleb smiled with his imperceptible
lips; a sort of cadaverous smile, which only
deepened the hollows of his cheeks, while it
gave a sudden lustre to his eyes.

And Lemuel, crouching in the corner, saw
the smile — felt it too, in every pore of his
slender frame — and still had not a word in
answer.

Brother Caleb was wrapped in thought.
Placing the finger of his unoccupied hand, between
his brows, he seemed earnestly engaged
in an effort, to recollect distinctly, the events
of the past four hours.

“I have been walking in my sleep,” he exclaimed,
“and have wandered from my bed
to this room. The Iron Room! Eh! Where's
Lester? Did you see anything of Lester?”

A miracle! Lemuel so glib in speech,
when acting in the character of a “Converted
Monk,” is now silent as the President of a
Broken Bank, when questioned concerning the
causes of its failure.

“Who told you of this place?” cried
Brother Caleb folding his blue gown about his
spare limbs: “How came you into my house
at this hour? How dared you, Sir, to follow
me to the Iron Room?”

Then Lemuel speaking in a bland and whispering
voice, as he joined his hands, while his
face assumed a look of mock-gravity, uttered
this simple exclamation:

“O, Reuben!”

Now Brother Caleb had not heard that name
for many years.

Pronounced by his associate in the crimes
of seventeen years ago, it struck harshly upon
his ear, and with the memory of his late dream
still pressing heavily upon his brain, it sounded
like an accent uttered by some mocking Demon,
from the shadows of a dark and guilty Past.

The very audacity of this Lemuel — this
despised dupe and tool of former years —
penetrated Goodleigh with an impression of
involuntary fear.

“You have set yourself upon my track.
You have spied out the secret of this house.
You have even discovered the secret of this
room. Since the moment, now three months
ago, when I scorned you in the street, and
refused you the charity of a single dollar, you
have dogged me, like — like —” he paused
for a word — “like the common eaves-dropper
and vulgar busy-body that you are. And now
you have joined hands with this Lester — is it
so?”

While Brother Caleb thus poured forth this
torrent of incoherent reproach, “the Converted
Monk” maintained his fixed position in the
corner, as silent as the iron walls against
which he leaned his crouching form.

“Is it so? You have some petty plot
working in your craven brain? How much
must I pay for your silence? You have made
some discovery — eh? Have succeeded in
identifying Caleb Goodleigh, with Captain
Bradburne of the Falcon? Ho — ho! Lemuel,
you grow amusing in your old days.”

“This night,” said Lemuel, speaking very
low, his chin still resting on his clenched
hands: “This night, I witnessed the death of
Ann Clarke.”

Goodleigh started — a convulsive motion of
his features was perceptible — but in an instant
he recovered his grim composure.

“Did you?” he blandly replied: “Said she
anything of that child — the pledge of your
early loves?”

Lemuel Gardiner was a despicable coward.
All his life had been devoted to despicable and
cowardly deeds. Through seventeen years of
baseness, he had slimed his way with a devotion
to the smallest details of depravity, worthy
of one of those vulgar fiends, which make you
laugh and shudder, in the pages of some grotesque
German story. But all his baseness,
rich at first in money, had at last left him —
poor — miserably poor. He was now, at the
age of forty-seven — to a casual gazer he

seemed not more than thirty — a desolate and
blasted man. Virtue he could not understand;
it was one of the incomprehensible
words in the Dictionary to him. But Poverty
was a word that conveyed an intelligible, a
palpable idea to his dwarfed soul. Poverty
sounded in his ears, as Leprosy sounded in
the ears of the ancient Hebrews. And he was
poor — poor after seventeen years of perjury,
trick, and fraud — while Reuben Gatherwood,
his old-time associate, stood before him in
all the plenitude of Real Estate and Bank
Deposits. He was poor; forced to get his
bread by pandering a nightly stimulant to the
appetite of bigotry, in the shape of “No-Popery
Lectures,” to drag his weary way
through the tortuous details of small hypocrisies,
and pettier hatreds, while Reuben Gatherwood
the Apostate Physician and blaspheming
Slaver, was the Lord of half a million dollars.

Lemuel had been thinking of all this, for
three long months. Churning it over, while he
wandered dark streets, at dead of night, and
digesting it in his very soul, as he threaded
through the crowd of Chesnut street by day.
And Lemuel had long resolved upon revenge.
He did not hate Caleb because he was bad;
only because he was the Rich Scoundrel. Resolved
upon revenge, in what form he had not
determined, Lemuel had spied out the secret
of Goodleigh's connection with the Falcon, or
rather spied out a clue to the proof necessary
for Goodleigh's conviction, before a Court of
Justice, for the identity of Goodleigh with
Captain Bradburne had been known to Lemuel
for many years.

This was the state of affairs with him, when
Ralph summoned him from the Church of St.
John — where he had wandered under the
influence of some lingering trace of early belief
— to the bedside of the dying woman. But
his interview with Ann Clarke had altogether
changed the current of his ideas. It had left
upon him a shadow of overwhelming despair.
Perchance his brain, long fitted for the reception
of mental disease, had suddenly been seized
with that most terrible form of insanity, known
as Monomania. There is a monomania which
makes the veriest coward brave. A purpose
of revenge, nursed in the very core of the
heart for weary days and nights — nursed in
dreams and elaborated slowly in the hours of
waking hatred — may at last ripen into the two-fold
idea of Suicide and Murder.

Did this two-fold idea impart to Lemuel
Gardiner the courage to confront the man
whom he feared; feared supremely, and from
the depths of his coward nature?

Let us await the issue of the scene.

“Said she anything of your child — the
pledge of your early loves?”

“Yes,” replied Lemuel, “and something of
Alice Bayne, the victim of your cowardly outrage.”

“Do you know that I've a mind to strangle
you?” Caleb's voice was hoarse with suppressed
rage. He advanced threateningly, but
Lemuel still crouched motionless in the corner.

“Have you? Hush!” Lemuel's voice
sounded like the accent of a woman who endeavours
to still a boisterous child: “Hush!
Reuben! The Police Officers may hear you.
They wait without.”

Brother Caleb recoiled, as though a blow
from a strong man had stricken him in the
chest.

“Have you dared?” he whispered, “Cur!
Why I could beat your brains against these
walls — beat out the miserable heart which rots
in your living body — and leave you here, in
this room, which in that case, should be your
only coffin. Who would ever hear of your
death? That door once closed, and your carcass
would be shut up in darkness forever.”

Lemuel advanced from the corner. His
lean shrunken figure dilated in its every fibre.

“The door is closed,” he said in a whisper,
and with a singular smile.

Caleb turned on his heel, and at a glance,
saw that the door of the Iron Room was indeed
closed. Closed so tightly and effectually
that it was not distinguishable from the iron
walls.

And then Brother Caleb gave utterance to a
frightful oath, for — he knew not the secret of
the spring which opened the door from the
inside.