So sudden, too, had been his departure, that they had not the least idea in which direction he had gone; so that to follow him would have been a work of the greatest possible difficulty.
Notwithstanding, however, both the difficulty and the danger, for no doubt the vampyre was well enough armed, Henry and his brother both rushed after the murderer, as they now believed him to be, in the route which they thought it was most probable he would take, namely, that which led towards the garden gate.
They reached that spot in a few moments, but all was profoundly still. Not the least trace of any one could be seen, high or low, and they were compelled, after a cursory examination, to admit that Sir Francis Varney had again made his escape, despite the great odds that were against him in point of numbers.
"He has gone," said Henry. "Let us go back, and see into the state of poor Dr. Chillingworth, who, I fear, is a dead man."
They hurried back to the spot, and there they found the admiral looking as composed as possible, and solacing himself with a pinch of snuff, as he gazed upon the apparently lifeless form at his feet.
"Is he dead?" said Henry.
"I should say he was," replied the admiral; "such a shot as that was don't want to be repeated. Well, I liked the doctor with all his faults. He only had one foolish way with him, and that was, that he shirked his grog."
"This is an awful catastrophe," said Henry, as he knelt down by the side of the body. "Assist me, some of you. Where is Charles?"
"I'll be hanged," said the admiral, "if I know. He disappeared somewhere."
"This is a night of mystery as well as terror. Alas! poor Dr. Chillingworth! I little thought that you would have fallen a victim to the man whom you preserved from death. How strange it is that you should have snatched from the tomb the very individual who was, eventually, to take your own life."
The brothers gently raised the body of the doctor, and carried it on to the glass plot, which was close at hand.
"Farewell, kind and honest-hearted Chillingworth," said Henry; "I shall, many and many a time, feel your loss; and now I will rest not until I have delivered up to justice your murderer. All consideration, or feeling, for what seemed to be latent virtues in that strange and inexplicable man, Varney, shall vanish, and he shall reap the consequences of the crime he has now committed."
"It was a cold blooded, cowardly murder," said his brother.
"It was; but you may depend the doctor was about to reveal something to us, which Varney so much dreaded, that he took his life as the only effectual way, at the moment, of stopping him."
"It must be so," said Henry.
"And now," said the admiral, "it's too late, and we shall not know it at all. That's the way. A fellow saves up what he has got to tell till it is too late to tell it, and down he goes to Davy Jones's locker with all his secrets aboard."
"Not always," said Dr. Chillingworth, suddenly sitting bolt upright--"not always."
Henry and his brother started back in amazement, and the admiral was so taken by surprise, that had not the resuscitated doctor suddenly stretched out his hand and laid hold of him by the ankle, he would have made a precipitate retreat.
"Hilloa! murder!" he cried. "Let me go! How do I know but you may be a vampyre by now, as you were shot by one."
Henry soonest recovered from the surprise of the moment, and with the most unfeigned satisfaction, he cried,--
"Thank God you are unhurt, Dr. Chillingworth! Why he must have missed you by a miracle."
"Not at all," said the doctor. "Help me up--thank you--all right. I'm only a little singed about the whiskers. He hit me safe enough."
"Then how have you escaped?"
"Why from the want of a bullet in the pistol, to be sure. I can understand it all well enough. He wanted to create sufficient confusion to cover a desperate attempt to escape, and he thought that would be best done by seeming so shoot me. The suddenness of the shock, and the full belief, at the moment, that he had sent a bullet into my brains, made me fall, and produced a temporary confusion of ideas, amounting to insensibility."
"From which you are happily recovered. Thank Heaven that, after all, he is not such a villain as this act would have made him."
"Ah!" said the admiral, "it takes people who have lived a little in these affairs to know the difference in sound between a firearm with a bullet in it, and one without. I knew it was all right."
"Then why did you not say so, admiral?"