Chapter XLVII: Ralph St. Alban

A snarl of tiger like rage and hate came from the lips of Ferris at those few emphatic words from the lips of his foe. He growled, hoarsely:

“Curse you forever for that base lie! How dare you thus condemn an innocent man?”

Talbot Strangemore did not answer him. He was looking at his comrades.

“You know now, my friends, why the asp was placed in my bed to-night. Oswald Ferris knew that I suspected him and that I would follow him from one end of the earth to the other to convict him of his sin and clear the memory of my martyred bride, so he took that means of ridding himself of his foe.”

“It is false, false!” the accused ground out between his clenched teeth, vindictively, but no one paid any regard to his denials. Every man was against him. The terrible purpose that had been frustrated by the arrival of John Armstrong flamed up into their minds again.

“Lynch law is too good for this villain!” they shouted, angrily.

Oswald Ferris sprang up, he caught John Armstrong hurriedly by the arm.

“Do not let this horrible thing go on, do not let them murder me,” he cried, imploringly.

Armstrong shook himself scornfully free.

“What can I say or do to prevent them from carrying out their threat? You have shown yourself such a wicked wretch that the injuries of your victims cry out against you for vengeance!” he said.

“But I tell you solemnly that I have injured no one. The evidence against me is all of a purely circumstantial nature. You say yourself that Mrs. Strangemore has been proven guilty of the murder of Sibyl St. Alban. That fact clears me fairly from Strangemore’s idiotic charge. For the other, no one can swear that I placed the serpent in his bed. They merely supposed so from the fact that Wilson saw me looking at his pet asp last evening. I ask you, are these baseless accusations sufficient evidence for Judge Lynch to proceed upon?” clamored Ferris, sharply.

“He took away the box with the asp and I could swear that he placed it under the pillow of Strangemore. He is a guilty wretch, and deserves to have summary justice executed upon him!” exclaimed Harvey Wilson, threateningly.

“We will take him out to the highest palm-tree we can find and swing him from the end of a rope,” shouted the men.

“We will thus avenge the murder of Mrs. St. Alban and the attempted one of Talbot Strangemore,” added Harvey Wilson.

“No, no, no,” shrieked Ferris, and again he clutched Mr. Armstrong’s arm, imploringly.

“For God’s sake, exert your influence and save me from the fury of this mob!” he cried. “You will not permit them to commit a cold blooded murder!”

But John Armstrong had become thoroughly imbued with the belief in his guilt, and his indignation ran as high as that of the others. He resolutely refused to speak one word to the excited and angry men.

“You overrate my influence,” he said, coldly. “What can the word of one man avail against a determined mob?”

“Then help me to fight for my life and I will at least sell it at as dear a cost as possible,” exclaimed the shuddering victim, to whom retribution was now hastening on.

“I will have nothing to do with the matter. I believe it was all settled before I came upon the scene and I have no wish to meddle with the decision of the self-constituted judge and jury,” Mr. Armstrong replied, decisively, and then, suddenly bursting into a gust of passion, he added, furiously:

“Rather would I see you hanged for the murder of that poor soulless butterfly, Sibyl St. Alban, than lift a finger to save you! Man, do you guess who I am whom you are begging to save you from the consequences of your double sin?”

Every one stared in amazement at this sudden change of manner in one whom they had always known as cold, reserved and proud. Oswald Ferris stammered, faintly:

“I know nothing of you except your name!”

A strange, cold smile curled the lips of John Armstrong.

“No, you do not even know my name,” he said. “I am not John Armstrong as I call myself, and as these trusty comrades call me and believe me. I am a man supposed to be dead, a man to whom a costly monument has been erected by his widow. I am a man whose happiness was ruined like yours by Sibyl St. Alban, but who did not have the cruelty that you did, to kill her for her sin!”

What dazed, wondering faces that moon of Egypt shone upon as they crowded around the excited speaker. Oswald Ferris cried, blankly:

“You are not John Armstrong--then who are you?”

“I am Ralph St. Alban, the husband of the woman whom you ruthlessly murdered,” the man answered, unhesitatingly.

No one spoke for a moment, so great was the shock of wonder. Then Talbot Strangemore sprang forward, hastily, and faced the speaker.

“Let me see if you speak the truth,” he cried. “I knew Ralph St. Alban, and I hated him once because he took Sibyl from me. The years have changed you, but, yes, I remember you now. You are indeed St. Alban, but how have you come to life again from the grave where they laid you?”

In the moonlight a weary smile flickered over Ralph St. Alban’s thin, worn face.

“I was never dead,” he said. “I was half maddened by Sibyl’s coquetries and cruelty. She was vain, light, false, falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung! I soon learned that she did not love me. She actually disliked and defied me. Her brilliant successes in the social world filled her with such intoxicating triumph that she had no other thoughts but to ruin the peace of other women and to break men’s hearts as well. With all her folly and wrongdoing I adored her, but no expostulation availed to turn her from her wild career. Then my love changed to hatred and despair. I might have divorced her and so freed myself from the incubus she had become upon me, but I was too proud to drag my name through the scandal of a divorce court. After wretched days and nights while my life was a torture to me I hit upon a startling plan to free myself from her. With the aid of a party too heavily bribed to betray me, I carried out my plan. The man that dropped dead suddenly in the street was not Ralph St. Alban, but a dead man from the morgue, dressed in my clothes, and propped up in my carriage, from which, of course, he tumbled lifeless into the street when the driver opened the door. But I practised the fraud triumphantly upon everybody, and while Sibyl was ordering the grand monument for my grave I was _en route_ for Egyptian deserts. I had been in Egypt as a boy with my father who was a noted traveler, and in my misery my thoughts turned thitherward again. You know it has been written,” he added, with a cold, sad smile, “that ‘he who has drunk of the Nile will always long to return and drink of its waters again.’”

Every one was gazing at him in wonder and amazement while he talked, and seeing this, he turned suddenly upon Oswald Ferris and said, hoarsely:

“Now you know why I will not help you, why I am ready to see you perish. It was my wife whom you slew in your murderous wrath, and for this I hate and loathe you. She had wronged me more than any human being on earth, but I never once thought of ending her frail, butterfly existence by violence. I exiled myself for her sake, and left her to the pleasures that tempted her, the pleasures she could buy with the gold for which she had sold herself to me. And, God help me, some of the love I once bore her lingers in me yet, and prompts me to pity her for her terrible fate, and to hate you because your cruel hand plunged the murderous dagger into the white breast that was once mine!”

He paused, and one of those men who loved him as chosen comrades love each other, called out furiously:

“He shall pay for his devil’s crime with his worthless life!”

Those words were the signal for an attack upon Ferris.

The men sprang at him in a body, and in spite of his desperate struggles and outcries they succeeded in pinioning his arms and legs so that it was impossible for him to move from the spot. During the enactment of the dreadful scene, Talbot Strangemore, Ralph St. Alban, and Harvey Wilson stood apart with folded arms and gloomy brows looking on.

A great struggle was going on in Talbot Strangemore’s mind.

Pity and humanity alike prompted him to rescue Oswald Ferris from the wrath of the justly angry mob, while at the same time the natural indignation and resentment within him held him sternly back.

“He deserves his fate,” clamored justice. “Think of Sibyl St. Alban’s dreadful death, and of Nina’s unmerited disgrace and suffering with the shadow of the scaffold looming over her golden head. Let him die the most ignominious death possible, and even then he would scarcely have atoned for his sins.”

And yet his better nature revolted against the horrible deed they were going to do out there beneath the palms of old Egypt with the murmur of the storied Nile in their ears. It was a horrible thing after all, he thought, to thrust a guilty, craven, crime-stained soul out of its earthly tabernacle and send it wandering through space to the terrors of judgment. Unconsciously he lifted his eyes to the sky. The blue dome sprinkled with innumerable stars, and the great calm moon rolling through illimitable space, suggested heavenly witnesses.

He shuddered through his whole frame.

“Do God’s angels behold this scene?” he asked himself in fear and dread, for already the men had selected a rope and a tree, and without even the formal ceremony of a mock trial were about to lead their captive to his doom.

Suddenly even as they had dragged him to the chosen spot and were adjusting the terrible slip-knot about his neck, Talbot Strangemore stepped boldly forward, held up his hand, and hoarsely shouted:

“Hold!”

They desisted from their awful occupation a moment to look around in amazement.

“Say your prayers if you know any, quick now, while we see what Strangemore wants,” one said, carelessly, to the prisoner, while another asked:

“Well, what is it you wish, Strangemore?”

He answered, eagerly.

“Grant me this great boon. Spare the life of your victim!”

There ensued a moment of ominous, unbroken silence. While it lasted Talbot Strangemore advanced through the little group of men that surrounded the prisoner. He put up his hand and touched the rope about his neck.

“Let me take this away, please. Let us be men, not devils,” he said, boldly.

There was a low murmur of anger and dissatisfaction. Harvey Wilson advanced a step nearer.

“Better leave them alone, Stangemore,” he said. “The villain richly merits his fate, and the men will not easily be balked of executing justice upon him.”

“But surely they will listen to me,” Talbot said. “Remember I am the one most deeply wronged, and they must hear me when I beg for mercy and not justice for Oswald Ferris.”

“You would have us let him go?” one asked.

“Yes, because I want him to live. I have a great boon to ask of him, and I believe that surely if you spare his life at my request he will have mercy upon me!”

They stood round about the prisoner listening silently for Talbot’s further speech.

“Friends and comrades,” he continued, “At the dawn of day I must leave you to journey back to my own land to my wife who lies in prison in deadly peril of her life. But even when I go how can I deliver her from the fatal power of the law unless I can carry with me the confession of the real murderer of poor erring Sibyl St. Alban?”