Dangerous Ground: or, The Rival Detectives

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It is a half hour later. The light in the room is increased by a sputtering additional candle, and Papa Francoise, sitting by the deal table, is gazing toward the door, an eager expectant look upon his face.

“If that old woman were here!” he mutters, and then starts forward at the sound of a low hesitating tap.

Hurrying to the door he unbars it with eager haste, and a smile of blandest delight overspreads his yellow face as the new-comer enters.

It is a woman, slender and graceful; a lady, who holds up her trailing black garments daintily as she steps across the threshold, repulsing the proffered hand-clasp with a haughty gesture, and gliding away from him while she says in a tone of distressful remonstrance:

“Man, why have you sent for me? Don’t you know that there is such a thing as a last straw?”

“A last straw!” His voice is a doleful whine, his manner obsequious to servility. “Ah, my child, I wanted to see you so much; your poor mother wanted to see you so much!”

The woman throws back her veil with a gesture of fierce defiance, disclosing the face of Leslie Warburton pale and woe-stricken, but quite as lovely as when it shone upon Stanhope, surrounded by the halo of “Sunlight.”

“You hypocrite!” she exclaims scornfully. “Parents do not persecute their children as you and the woman you call my mother have persecuted me. You gave me to the Ulimans when I was but an infant, – that I know, – but the papers signed by you do not speak of me as your child. Besides, does human instinct go for nothing? If you were my father would I loathe these meetings? Would I shudder at your touch? Would my whole soul rise in rebellion against your persecutions?”

Her eyes flash upon him and the red blood mounts to her cheeks. In the excitement of the moment she has forgotten her fear. Her voice rises clear and ringing; and Papa Francoise, thinking of two possible listeners concealed not far away, utters a low “sh-h-h-h!”

“Not so loud, my child,” he says in an undertone; “not so loud. Ah! you ungrateful girl, we wanted to see you rich and happy, and this is how you thank us,” affecting profound grief. “These rich people have taught you to loathe your poor old father!”

He sinks upon the stool as if in utter dejection, wipes away an imaginary tear, and then resumes, in the same guarded tone:

“My dear child, when we gave you to the Ulimans we were very poor, and they were very rich, – a great deal richer than when they died, leaving you only a few thousands.”

“Which you have already extorted from me! I have given you every dollar I possess and yet you live like beggars.”

“And we are beggars, my child. Some unfortunate speculations have swept away all our little gains, and now – ”

“And now you want more money, – the old story. Listen: you have called me to-night from my husband’s home, forced me to steal away from my guests like the veriest criminal, threatening to appear among them if I failed to come. At this moment you, who call yourself my father, stand there gloating and triumphant because of the power you hold over me. I knew you were capable of keeping your word, and rather than have my husband’s home desecrated by such presence as yours, I am here. But I have come for the last time – ”

“No, my child, oh! – ”

But she pays no heed to his expostulations.

“I have come for the last time!” she says with fierce decision. “I have come to tell you that from this moment I defy you!”

“Softly, my dear; sh-h-h!”

His face, in spite of his efforts to retain its benign expression, is growing vindictive and cruel. He comes toward her with slow cat-like movements.

But she glides backward as he advances, and, putting the table between herself and him, she hurries on, never heeding that she has, by this movement, increased the distance from the outer door – and safety.

“You have carried your game too far!” she says. “When you first appeared before me, so soon after the loss of my adopted parents that it would seem you were waiting for that event – ”

“So we were, my child,” he interrupts, “for we had promised not to come near you during their lifetime.”

“You had promised never to approach me, never to claim me, as the documents I found among my mother’s – among Mrs. Uliman’s papers prove. Oh,” she cries, wringing her hands and lifting her fair face heavenward; “oh, my mother! my dear, sweet, gentle mother! Oh, my father! the truest, the tenderest a wretched orphan ever had on earth! that Death should take you, and Life bring me such creatures to fill your places! But they cannot, they never shall!”

“Oh, good Lord!” mutters Papa under his breath, “those fools upstairs will hear too much!”

But Leslie’s indignation has swallowed up all thought of caution, and her words pour out torrent-like.

“Oh, if I had but denounced you at the first!” she cries; “or forced you to prove your claim! Oh, if you had shown yourselves then in all your greed and heartlessness! But while I was Leslie Uliman, with only a moderate fortune, you were content to take what I could give, and not press what you are pleased to term your claim upon my affections. Affections! The word is mockery from your lips! In consideration of the large sums I paid you, you promised never to approach me in the future, and I, fool that I was, believing myself free from you, married David Warburton, only to find myself again your victim, to know you at last in all your baseness.”

Papa Francoise, unable to stem the tide of her eloquence, shows signs of anger, but she never heeds him.

“Since I became the wife of a rich man, you have been my constant torment and terror. Threatening and wheedling by turns, black-mailing constantly, you have drained my purse, you have made my life a burden. And I came here to-night to say, I will have no more of your persecution! All of my money has been paid into your hands, but not one dollar of my husband’s wealth shall ever come to you from me. I swear it!”

The old man again moves nearer.

“Ah, ungrateful girl!” he cries, feigning the utmost grief; “ah, unkind girl!”

And his affectation of sorrow causes two unseen observers to grin with delight, and brings to Leslie’s countenance an expression of intense disgust.

Moving back as he approaches, she throws up her head with an impatient gesture, and the veil which has covered it falls to her shoulders, revealing even by that dim light, the glisten of jewels in her ears – great, gleaming diamonds, which she, in her haste and agitation, has forgotten to remove before setting out upon this unsafe errand.

It is a most unfortunate movement, for two pair of eyes are peering down from directly above her, and two pair of avaricious hands itch to clutch the shining treasures.

Obeying Papa’s instructions, Josef Siebel and the girl Nance, had mounted the rickety stairway which they reached through a closet-like ante-room opening from the large one occupied by Papa and Leslie. And having stationed themselves near the top of the stairs they awaited there the coming of the lady who, surprised by their presence, was to proffer them hush-money with a liberal hand; but —

“The best-laid plans of men and mice gang aft agleg.”

And Papa Francoise has not anticipated the spirited outbreak with which Leslie has astonished him. Startled by this, and fearful that; by a false move, he should entirely lose his power over her, he has made feeble efforts to stay the flow of her speech and neglected to give the signal for which the concealed sneak thieves have waited, until it was too late.