it," he said, musingly. "Butting about alone. It's that – loneliness – that's responsible for so many things."
Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by you – some friend who knew – who comprehended – "
Waring laughed. "I haven't such a one."
"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you. I'll go West with you myself to-morrow – on Christmas day. I need a change. I want to get away for a little time."
Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen. Cold Anglo-Saxon as he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him seem almost lunatic. He stared blankly.
"It's simpler than it looks." Bulstrode attempted conventionally to shear it of a little of its eccentricity. "There's every reason why I should look after my property out there. I've never seen it at all."
"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly, – "not worth it."
"You will be."
"Don't hope it."
"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by you till you are – if you'll say the word."
Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The word?"
"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those – they're as good any – will you stand by me– ?"
Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man seized the other's outstretched hand. "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven! I will!"
It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode the round full disk of the Christmas moon.
The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly plans to the background. Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed the threshold of his drawing-room.
Well … as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two thousand miles away! "Waring thinks himself a vagrant – and so, poor chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind." Jimmy reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to the end, would be the reward?
"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire – and it's the one thing forbidden – I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!"
He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused, for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call – a cry.
Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare themselves to be scuffling – struggling – the half-cry of a muffled voice – a fall, then Bulstrode started.
"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy.
On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with all the animus of a bird of prey.
The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on his chest, Waring held the big man under.
"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir? I've got him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him."
Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him. He cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly:
"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?"
"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?"
"No," said that gentleman. "I'll cover him so. What's the truth?"
"I heard a queer noise," panted the Englishman, "and came out to see what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window. There was another chap outside, but he got away. I caught this one from the back, otherwise I could never have thrown him."
"You're throttling him."
"He deserves it."
"Let him up."
"Mr. Bulstrode…!"
"Yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up."
But Ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise. The breath was out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully returned at need.
Ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll over. He staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations raised his fist at Waring, but as Bulstrode's revolver was entirely ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where he stood.
"Now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be just the same as Mr. Waring's. You found him getting away with the silver. The probabilities are all with you, Ruggles. The police will be here in just about five minutes. Ten to one the guilty man is known to the officers. Now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in the hall. I give both of you time to get away. There's the front door and the window – which, by the way, you would better shut, Waring, as it's a cold morning."
Neither man moved. Without removing his eyes from the butler or uncovering him, Bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right of the window, summoned the police. The metallic click of the button sounded loud in the room.
Ruggles shook his great hand high in air.
"I'd – I'd – "
"Never mind that," interrupted the householder. "The man who's going had better take his chance. There's one minute lost."
During the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in suspense. It was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by Waring!
But Ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the door – accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a word cut down the steps and across Washington Square, slowly at first, and then on a run.
Bulstrode turned to his visitor.
"Come,"
