Page:Weird Tales v13n04.djvu/39

Back in Fleet Street, Jacob soothed his rather shaken nerves with another bottle at the Cock, slipping out of sight into his old corner and putting down Jim's dying present out of sight. Little by little, as the wine warmed him, he got over the first disgust and horror of the execution and began to look at things from a different viewpoint. What was done was done. He had got his way and was now free to make the running with Barbara.

A rather ghoulish thought came to him; he had heard of dead man's luck, had seen the mob fighting for the rope with which the young highwayman had been strangled. Might there not be luck for him also in this strange present, made to him on the scaffold by the man he had so cunningly sold?

He laughed harshly at the thought, glanced round the little compartment in which he sat, satisfied himself that no one was spying over the top of either partition or round the side, and then quickly changed his rather old shoes for the smart, gold-buckled ones in which O'Dale had been hanged. They were a shade tight for him across the toes, but of softer leather than he was accustomed to, and he decided he could wear them with ease when he had broken them in a little.

He would go straight back to Kensington and try his luck—"dead man's luck"—would be guided by circumstances as they arose. Who knew?—this might be the very turn of luck he needed to win the heart of her for whom he had done that thing.

Kicking his old pair away into the shadows under the table, he paid his shot and walked out into the street.

Like the good man of business he was, Jacob turned into the Blue Boar to see how the house had prospered while he was away at the execution before he strolled on past it to the creeper-covered cottage where dwelt Barbara Challis; and here the first manifestation of "dead man's luck," as he believed, struck him with its full force as he entered the front door.

"Barbara!" he cried, stopping dead in his tracks.

She halted at the door of his private closet from which she had just come out; halted with parted lips, as if half afraid of him. Then she recovered herself and spoke:

"Jacob—it is all over?"

"Aye, all over. He died like a brave man."

"I knew he would."

The innkeeper went across to the girl, looking for the chance to touch her—to clasp a hand, maybe.

"I did my utmost for him."

"I know, I know. He told me all after the trial . . . we owe you much, Jacob."

He took both her hands, then, and she looked bravely up into his face. She had been crying, it was true; but now tears had given place to a strange glory, the light that illumines a heroine’s features in the moment of her trial.

"It was more for you than for him that I did it," said Jacob, quite truthfully. "Come, let us go into my room, Barbara; I have much that I would have you hear."

She yielded to him, let him turn her and guide her gently back through the low, oaken doorway. They sat together on a settee by the fire.

"Yes," Barbara dreamily went on, "we have much to repay you for, Jacob Larkyn—and—and——"

He pressed her hand between both of his.

"Speak not of repayment. Was not the deed its own reward?"

"For you no doubt; but, Jacob, those were Jim's last words to me: 'Forget not all he has done for poor Jim O'Dale and reward him for it.'"