FullReads

“When I heard of Barker’s trouble I went, as a matter of curiosity solely, to the trial, and discovered in the dock the man you and I had encountered at Keswick. That is to say, he resembled our friend in every possible respect. If he were not Barker he was the most perfect imitation of Barker conceivable. Not a feature of our Barker but was reproduced in this one, even to the name. But he failed to recognize me. He saw me, I know, because I felt his eyes upon me, but in trying to return his gaze I quailed utterly before him. I could not look him in the eye without a feeling of the most deadly horror, but I did see enough of him to note that he regarded me only as one of a thousand spectators who had flocked into the court-room during the progress of the trial. If it were our Barker who sat there his dissemblance was remarkable. So coldly did he look at me that I began to doubt if he really were the man we had met; but the events of this morning have changed my mind utterly on that point. He was the one we had met, and I am now convinced that his story to me of his double was purely fictitious, and that from beginning to end there has been but one Barker.

“The trial was a speedy one. There was nothing to be said in behalf of the prisoner, and within five days of his arraignment he was convicted and sentenced to the extreme penalty–that of hanging–and noon to-day was the hour appointed for the execution. I was to have gone to Richmond to-day by coach, but since Barker’s trial I have been in a measure depressed. I have grown to dislike the man as thoroughly as did you, and yet I was very much affected by the thought that he was finally to meet death upon the scaffold. I could not bring myself to participate in any pleasures on the day of his execution, and in consequence I gave up my Richmond journey and remained all morning in my lodgings trying to read. It was a miserable effort. I could not concentrate my mind upon my book–no book could have held the slightest part of my attention at that time. My thoughts were all for Carleton Barker, and I doubt if, when the clock hands pointed to half after eleven, Barker himself was more apprehensive over what was to come than I. I found myself holding my watch in my hand, gazing at the dial and counting the seconds which must intervene before the last dreadful scene of a life of crime. I would rise from my chair and pace my room nervously for a few minutes; then I would throw myself into my chair again and stare at my watch. This went on nearly all the morning–in fact, until ten minutes before twelve, when there came a slight knock at my door. I put aside my nervousness as well as I could, and, walking to the door, opened it.

“I wonder that I have nerve to write of it, Parton, but there upon the threshold, clad in the deepest black, his face pallid as the head of death itself and his hands shaking like those of a palsied man, stood no less a person than Carleton Barker!

“I staggered back in amazement and he followed me, closing the door and locking it behind him.

“‘What would you do?’ I cried, regarding his act with alarm, for, candidly, I was almost abject with fear.

“‘Nothing–to you!’ he said. ‘You have been as far as you could be my friend. The other, your companion of Keswick’–meaning you, of course–‘was my enemy.’

“I was glad you were not with us, my dear Parton. I should have trembled for your safety.

“‘How have you managed to escape?’ I asked.

“‘I have not escaped,’ returned Barker. ‘But I soon shall be free from my accursed double.’

“Here he gave an unearthly laugh and pointed to the clock.

“‘Ha, ha!’ he cried. ‘Five minutes more–five minutes more and I shall be free.’

“‘Then the man in the dock was not you?’ I asked.

“‘The man in the dock,’ he answered, slowly, ‘is even now mounting the gallows, whilst I stand here.’

“He trembled a little as he spoke, and lurched forward like a drunken man; but he soon recovered himself, grasping the back of my chair convulsively with his long white fingers.

“‘In two minutes more,’ he whispered, ‘the rope will be adjusted about his neck; the black cap is even now being drawn over his cursed features, and–‘

“Here he shrieked with laughter, and, rushing to the window, thrust his head out and literally sucked the air into his lungs, as a man with a parched throat would have drank water. Then he turned and, tottering back to my side, hoarsely demanded some brandy.

“It was fortunately at hand, and precisely as the big bells in Westminster began to sound the hour of noon, he caught up the goblet and held it aloft.

“‘To him!’ he cried.

“And then, Parton, standing before me in my lodgings, as truly as I write, he remained fixed and rigid until the twelfth stroke of the bells sounded, when he literally faded from my sight, and the goblet, falling to the floor, was shattered into countless atoms!”