Chapter Eight
The Stranger

The visit of this mysterious woman in the white lace veil – at that time a fashionable feminine adornment – was, I felt assured, more than a coincidence. That it had some connexion with the strange events of the past night seemed certain, yet, try how I would, I could form no definite idea of either the motive of the visit or the object of her search. As far as Parker could discover, nothing whatever had been taken. A writing-table, the drawers of which contained some family papers, had apparently been hastily examined, but no object of value, nor any paper, had been extracted. Therefore I concluded that I had returned before the intruder had had time to make the complete examination of my effects which she had intended.

A curious thought occurred to me. Was the intruder in the white veil none other than the mysterious Edna herself?

As the day wore on I became more and more impressed by the belief that my surmise was the actual truth. Yet the cabman West had declared that she was young and pretty, while Parker expressed herself positive that she was middle-aged. But of the two statements I accepted that of the cabman as the more reliable. He had seen her in the broad daylight without the veil.

The fact of her concealing her features in a species of fine window-curtain proved an attempt at disguise, therefore what more likely than that she should contrive to render her features older, and thus impose upon Parker, whose sight was not over good? In any case, however, if it were really Edna, she had certainly lost no time in carrying out her design, and further, she must have been fully aware of my intended return.

Days passed, hot blazing days and stifling nights, when the dust of throbbing, ever-roaring London seemed over my heart. Each morning, with Parker’s assistance, I searched the newspapers, but nothing appeared to show that that strange midnight crime had been discovered. Were there two victims, or only one? How strange it was that although I had been present I could not tell I only knew that the male victim was young and well-dressed, probably a gentleman, and that he had been stabbed by a cowardly blow which had proved almost instantly fatal. That woman’s scream that had sounded so shrill and agonised in the dead stillness of the night I remembered plainly as though it were but an hour ago – indeed, I remember it now as distinctly as ever. Was it the cry of Edna herself?

In my helplessness I could do nothing but remain silent, and keep my terrible secret to myself. Unable either to communicate with the police or seek the assistance of my friend, I found that any endeavour to seek a solution of the problem was mere sowing of the wind. My thoughts hour by hour, as I sat alone in my dingy room, my poor blind eyes a black void, were of the ghastly affair, and in all its phases I considered it, trying to find some motive in the subsequent actions of the unscrupulous persons into whose hands I had had the misfortune to fall.

I heard of Dick through the office of his journal. He was down with fever at some outlandish place on the Afghan frontier, and would certainly not be home for a couple of months or so.

At first I was puzzled how to get rid of my soiled and blood-stained clothes so that Parker should not discover them, and at last hit upon the expedient of making them into a bundle and going forth one night when she was over at Kennington with her daughter Lily, the dancing-girl, and casting them into the Thames from the Embankment. It was a risky operation, for that part of London is well guarded by police after dark; nevertheless I accomplished it in safety, and was much amused a few days later by reading in an evening paper that they had been found near London Bridge and handed over to the river police, who, of course, scented a mystery. The blood-stains puzzled them, and the journal hinted that Scotland Yard had instituted inquiries into the ownership of the discarded suit of clothes. The paragraph concluded with that sentence, indispensable in reporting a mystery, “The police are very reticent about the matter.”

Fortunately, having cut out the maker’s name, and taken everything from the pockets which might serve as a clue to ownership, I felt perfectly safe, and eagerly read the issue of the same journal on the following evening, which told how the stains had been analysed, and found to be those of human blood.

A little more than a week had passed since my remarkable midnight adventure, when one morning I received a brief note by post, which Parker read to me. It consisted of only two typewritten lines stating that at mid-day I would receive a visitor, and was signed with the strange word “AVEL.”

It was, I knew, a message from Edna, and I dressed myself with greater care in expectation that she herself would visit me. In this, however, I was disappointed, for after existing some three hours on tiptoe with anxiety I found my visitor to be a well-spoken, middle-aged man, whose slight accent when introducing himself betrayed that he was an American.

When we were alone, with the door closed, he made the following explanation —

“I have called upon you, Mr Heaton, at the request of a lady who is our mutual friend. You have, I presume, received a letter signed ‘Avel’?”

“Yes,” I said, remembering how that I had promised to blindly and obediently render my protectress whatever assistance she desired. “I presume you desire some service of me. What is it?”

“No,” he said. “You are mistaken. It is with regard to the terrible affliction from which I see you are suffering that I have been sent.”

“Are you a medical man?” I inquired, with some astonishment.

“I am an oculist,” was his reply.

“And your name?”

“Slade – James Slade.”

“And you have been sent here by whom?”

“By a lady whose real name I do not know.”

“But you will kindly explain, before we go further, the circumstance in which she sought your aid on my behalf,” I said firmly.

“You are mutual friends,” he answered, somewhat vaguely. “It is no unusual thing for a patient to seek my aid on behalf of a friend. She sent me here to see you, and to examine your eyes, if you will kindly permit me.”

The man’s bearing irritated me, and I was inclined to resent this enforced subjection to an examination by one of whose reputation I knew absolutely nothing. Some of the greatest oculists in the world had looked into my sightless eyes and pronounced my case utterly hopeless. Therefore I had no desire to be tinkered with by this man, who, for aught I knew, might be a quack whose sole desire was to run up a long bill.

“I have no necessity for your aid,” I answered, somewhat bluntly. “Therefore any examination is entirely waste of time.”

“But surely the sight is one of God’s most precious gifts to man,” he answered, in a smooth, pleasant voice; “and if a cure is possible, you yourself would, I think, welcome it.”

“I don’t deny that,” I answered. “I would give half that I possess – nay, more – to have my sight restored, but Sir Leopold Fry, Dr Measom, and Harker Halliday have all three seen me, and agree in their opinion that my sight is totally lost for ever. You probably know them as specialists?”

“Exactly. They are the first men in my profession,” he answered. “Yet sometimes one treatment succeeds where another fails. Mine is entirely and totally different to theirs, and has, I may remark, been successful in quite a number of cases which were pronounced hopeless.”

Mere quackery, I thought. I am no believer in new treatments and new medicines. The fellow’s style of talk prejudiced me against him. He actually placed himself in direct opposition to the practice of the three greatest oculists in the world.

“Then you believe that you can actually cure me?” I remarked, with an incredulous smile.

“All I ask is to be permitted to try,” he answered blandly, in no way annoyed by my undisguised sneer.

“Plainly speaking,” I answered, “I have neither inclination nor intention to place myself at your disposal for experiments. My case has been pronounced hopeless by the three greatest of living specialists, and I am content to abide by their decision.”

“Oculists are liable to draw wrong conclusions, just as other persons may do,” he remarked. “In a matter of this magnitude you should – permit me to say so – endeavour to regain your sight and embrace any treatment likely to be successful. Blindness is one of man’s most terrible afflictions, and assuredly no living person who is blind would wish to remain so.”

“I have every desire to regain my sight, but I repeat that I have no faith whatever in new treatment.”

“Your view is not at all unnatural, bearing in mind the fact that you have been pronounced incurable by the first men of the profession,” he answered. “But may I not make an examination of your eyes? It is, of course, impossible to speak with any degree of authority without a diagnosis. You appear to think me a charlatan. Well, for the present I am content that you should regard me as such;” and he laughed as though amused.

He seemed so perfectly confident in his own powers that I confess my hastily formed opinion became moderated and my prejudice weakened. He spoke as though he had detected the disease which had deprived me of vision, and knew how to successfully combat it.

“Will you kindly come forward to the window?” he requested, without giving me time to reply to his previous observations. I obeyed his wish.

Then I felt his fingers open my eyelids wide, and knew that he was gazing into my eyes through one of those glasses like other oculists had used. He took a long time over the right eye, which he examined first, then having apparently satisfied himself, he opened the left, felt it carefully, and touched the surface, of the eyeball, causing me a twinge of pain.

“As I thought!” he ejaculated when he had finished. “As I thought! A slight operation only is necessary. The specialists whom you consulted were wrong in their conclusions. They have all three made an error which is very easy to make, yet it might have deprived you of sight for your whole life.”

“What!” I cried, in sudden enthusiasm. “Do you mean to tell me solemnly that you can perform a miracle? – that you can restore my sight to me?”

“I tell you, sir,” he answered quite calmly, “that if you will undergo a small operation, and afterwards subject yourself to a course of treatment, in a fortnight – or, say three weeks – you will again open your eyes and look upon the world.”

His words were certainly startling to me, shut out so long from all the pleasures of life. This stranger promised me a new existence, a world of light and movement, of colour, and of all the interests which combine to make life worth living. At first I was inclined to scorn this statement of his, yet so solemnly had he uttered it, and with such an air of confidence, that I became half convinced that he was more than a mere quack.

“Your words arouse within me a new interest,” I said. “When do you propose this operation?”

“To-morrow, if you will.”

“Will it be painful?”

“Not very – a slight twinge, that’s all.”

I remained again in doubt. He noticed my hesitation, and urged me to submit.

But my natural caution asserted itself, and I felt disinclined to place myself in the hands of one of whose bona fides I knew absolutely nothing.

As politely as I could I told him this, but he merely replied —

“I have been sent by the lady whom we both know as Edna. Have you no confidence in her desire to assist you?”

“Certainly I have.”

“She has already explained to me that you have promised to carry out her wishes. It is at her urgent request that I have come to you with the object of giving you back your sight.”

“She wishes me to submit to the experiment?”

“Pardon me. It is no experiment,” he said. “She desires you to submit yourself to my treatment. If you do, I have entire confidence that in a week or so you will see almost as well as I do.”