The man sprang to his feet again and hammered and kicked furiously at the
door. Fisher's sense of humor began to recover from the struggle and he sat up
on his sofa with something of his native nonchalance. But as he listened to the
captive captor beating on the door of the prison, a new and curious reflection
came to him.
The natural course for a man thus wishing to attract his friends' attention
would be to call out, to shout as well as kick. This man was making as much
noise as he could with his feet and hands, but not a sound came from his
throat. Why couldn't he speak? At first he thought the man might be gagged,
which was manifestly absurd. Then his fancy fell back on the ugly idea that
the man was dumb. He hardly knew why it was so ugly an idea, but it affected
his imagination in a dark and disproportionate fashion. There seemed to be
something creepy about the idea of being left in a dark room with a deaf mute.
It was almost as if such a defect were a deformity. It was almost as if it went
with other and worse deformities. It was as if the shape he could not trace in
the darkness were some shape that should not see the sun.
Then he had a flash of sanity and also of insight. The explanation was very
simple, but rather interesting. Obviously the man did not use his voice because
he did not wish his voice to be recognized. He hoped to escape from that dark
place before Fisher found out who he was. And who was he? One thing at
least was clear. He was one or other of the four or five men with whom Fisher
had already talked in these parts, and in the development of that strange story.
"Now I wonder who you are," he said, aloud, with all his old lazy urbanity.
"I suppose it's no use trying to throttle you in order to find out; it would be
displeasing to pass the night with a corpse. Besides I might be the corpse. I've
got no matches and I've smashed my torch, so I can only speculate. Who could
you be, now? Let us think."
The man thus genially addressed had desisted from drumming on the door
and retreated sullenly into a corner as Fisher continued to address him in a
flowing monologue.
"Probably you are the poacher who says he isn't a poacher. He says he's a
landed proprietor; but he will permit me to inform him that, whatever he is,
he's a fool. What hope can there ever be of a free peasantry in England if the
peasants themselves are such snobs as to want to be gentlemen? How can we
make a democracy with no democrats? As it is, you want to be a landlord and
so you consent to be a criminal. And in that, you know, you are rather like
somebody else. And, now I think of it, perhaps you are somebody else."
There was a silence broken by breathing from the corner and the murmur
of the rising storm, that came in through the small grating above the man's
head. Horne Fisher continued: