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Updated: June 1, 2025
Shanks sat watching every movement with the most intense interest. The physician succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. It was a most powerful antidote to the poison he knew had been administered by the treacherous husband. In the course of twenty minutes the woman was able to speak again, although only in an extremely low tone. "Can you communicate with me, Mrs. Barkswell?"
"Don't worry," he cried, quickly. "It may never be fetched home to Andy." "Do you believe he is guilty?" "Don't you?" He sought to evade the question. "I I cannot say. I have thought " "That I had a hand in it, eh?" The eyes of the tramp regarded his sister's face fixedly. But Mrs. Barkswell refused to make reply. She shuddered and drew her shawl about her as though experiencing a sudden chill.
"You remember seeing me at your house 'tother day don't you?" "I do not." "Ain't your name Barkswell?" "No." The one-eyed man fixed his single optic on the face of the wet youth in a glance that was penetrating. "I swear, but there's a mighty close resemblance." "There must be. Many people have taken me to be somebody other than I am. I do not understand it." "What is your name?" "Bordine." "Um!"
Several men were striding through the garden, the two in advance wearing the uniform of the city police. "August Bordine, I arrest you for the murder of Victoria Vane." A hand fell on the impostor's shoulder and a bearded face looked into his. There came a wild gleam to the eyes of Barkswell as he realized his situation. He seemed equal to the occasion, however. "A mistake, officer.
In fact, even he recoiled from it in evident annoyance and alarm. This woman had long been his simple tool, doing many things that at one time she would have shrunk from in horror and loathing. Andrew Barkswell had dragged her down to his own level, and was even now meditating her complete destruction. He had never scorned her, or told the truth, that she was no longer loved.
When the two men entered the room we recognize one of them as Hiram Shanks, the peddler, although he is now neatly clad, and not so repulsive to look upon as formerly. "Too late!" exclaimed Shanks' companion, as he bent over Mrs. Barkswell. "The woman is dead!" "Dead! No, no, it must not be," cried the peddler, in an excited tone. The doctor felt the woman's pulse.
"Pretty place you've got here," he remarked, as he stood on the porch and gazed about him. "Yes," admitted Barkswell. "You own it?" "Yes." "Your name is " "Bordine." The man uttered the name involuntarily. He had been acting as Bordine, and somehow, he seemed growing into that personage more and more. "Well, well," grunted the peddler, holding out his hand, "You an' I ought to be acquainted.
Again the fallen wretch gasped for mercy. "You butted against the wrong man, Perry Jounce," muttered Barkswell, "when you attempted to frighten me from my plans. What is your life to me? No more than his, than that woman's. You must die." The point of the knife touched the heaving bosom of the tramp, above the heart. "Mercy! Spare me, brother !"
A smile touched the face of Andrew Barkswell. "A confounded notion peddler," he muttered, "yet a queer-looking specimen." "Hello!" At the second call Barkswell rose to his feet and walked out to the gate. "Be you the man of the house?" "I am." "Wal, I've got the neatest set o' table-clothes you ever set eyes on.
"That man was certainly Barkswell, and yet he resembled Bordine. Can it be that the two are identical? They certainly look enough alike to be twin brothers." Once more the detective entered the house. Groping along the hall, he scratched a match, and entering the back room, soon had the lamp burning once more. The woman was gone.
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