The de Bercy Affair

A bitter groan hissed from Furneaux's lips.

"But how about this fair Rosalind?" he muttered half aloud. "Is this well for her? She should at least be told who her suitor is – his name – his true colors – the length and depth of his loves. There is a way of stopping this…"

He walked straight back to the hotel, and at once took pen and paper to write:

Dear Miss Prout: – It has occurred to me that possibly you may be putting yourself to the pains of discovering for me the identity of the friend of Mr. Osborne, the "Rosalind," as to whom I asked you – in which case, to save you any trouble, I am writing to tell you that I have now discovered who that lady is. I am, you see, at present here in Tormouth, a very agreeable little place.

Yours truly,

C. E. Furneaux.

And, as he directed the envelope, he said to himself with a curious crowing of triumph that Winter would have said was not to be expected from his friend:

"This should bring her here; and if it does – !"

Whereupon a singular glitter appeared an instant in his eyes.

Having posted the letter, he told the young woman in the bar, who also acted as bookkeeper, that, after all, he would not be able to stay the night. He paid, nevertheless, for the room, and walked away with his bag, no one knew whither, out of Tormouth. Two hours later he returned to the hotel, and for the second time that day took the same room, but not a soul suspected for a moment that it was the same Furneaux, since at present he had the look of a meek old civil servant living on a mite of pension, the color all washed out of his flabby cheeks and hanging wrinkles.

His very suit-case now had a different physiognomy. He bargained stingily for cheap terms, and then ensconced himself in his apartment with a senile chuckle, rubbing his palms together with satisfaction at having obtained such good quarters so cheaply.

The chambermaid, whom he had tipped well on leaving, sniffed at this new visitor. "Not much to be got out of him," she said to her friend, the boots.

The next afternoon at three o'clock an elderly lady arrived by the London train at Tormouth, and she, too, came to put up at the Swan.

Furneaux, at the moment of her arrival, was strolling to and fro on the pavement in front of the hotel, very shaky and old, a man with feeble knees, threadbare coat, and shabby hat – so much so that the manager had told the young person in the bar to be sure and send in an account on Saturday.

Giving one near, clear, piercing glance into the newcomer's face, round which trembled a colonnade of iron-gray ringlets, Furneaux was satisfied.

"Marvelously well done!" he thought. "She has been on the stage in her time, and to some purpose, too."

The lady, without a glance at him, all a rustle of brown silk, passed into the hotel.

The same night the old skinflint and the lady of the iron-gray ringlets found themselves alone at a table, eating of the same dishes. It was impossible not to enter into conversation.

"Your first visit to Tormouth, I think?" began Furneaux.

The lady inclined her head.

"My name is Pugh, William Pugh," he told her. "I was in Tormouth some years ago, and know the place rather well. Charming little spot! I shall be most happy – if I may – if you will deign – "

"How long have you been here now?" she asked him in a rather mellow and subdued voice.

"I only came yesterday," he answered.

"Did you by chance meet here a certain Mr. Furneaux?" she asked.

"Let me see," said he – "Furneaux. I – stay – I believe I did! He was just departing at the time of my arrival – little man – sharp, unpleasant face – I – I – hope I do not speak of a friend or relative! – but I believe I did hear someone say 'Mr. Furneaux.'"

"At any rate, he is not here now?" she demanded, with an air of decision.

"No, he is gone."

"Ah!" she murmured, and something in the tone of that "Ah!" made Furneaux's eye linger doubtfully upon her an instant.

Then the elderly lady wished to know who else was in the hotel, if there was anyone of any interest, and "Mr. Pugh" was apparently eager to gossip.

"There is first of all a Mr. Glyn – a young man, an American, I think, of whom I have heard a whisper that he is enormously wealthy."

"Is he in the room?"

"No."

"Why is he – invisible?"

"I am told that he has made friends in Tormouth with a lady – a Mrs. Marsh – who resides at 'St. Briavels' some way out of town – not to mention Miss Marsh – Rosalind is her name – upon whom I hear he is more than a little sweet."

He bent forward, shading his lips with his palm to conceal the secret as it came out, and it was a strange thing that the newly-arrived visitor could not keep her ringlets from shaking with agitation.

"Well," she managed to say, "when young people meet – it is the old story. So he is probably at 'St. Briavels' now?"

"Highly probable – if all I hear be true."

The ringleted dame put her knife and fork together, rose, bowed with a gracious smile, and walked away. Five minutes later Furneaux followed her, went upstairs with soundless steps to his room, and within it stood some time listening at a crevice he had left between the door and the door-post.

Then he crept out, and spurting with swift suddenness, silent as a cat, to Osborne's room, sent the door open with a rush, and instantly was bowing profoundly, saying: "My dear madam! how can you pardon me?"

For the lady was also in Osborne's room, as Furneaux had known; and though there was no artificial light, enough moonlight flooded the room to show that even through her elaborate make-up a pallor was suggested in her face, as she stood there suspended, dumb.

Mr. Pugh seemed to be in a very pain of regret.

"I had no idea that it was your room!" he pleaded. "I – do forgive me – but I took it for my own!"

Oddly enough, the lady tittered, almost hysterically, though she was evidently much relieved to find who it was that had burst in so unceremoniously.

"The same accident has happened to me!" she cried. "I took it to be my room, but it doesn't seem – "

"Ah, then, we both… By the way," he added, with a magnificent effort to escape an embarrassing situation, "what beautiful moonlight! And the Tormouth country under it is like a fairy place. It is a sin to be indoors. I am going for a stroll. May I hope to have the pleasure – ?"

He wrung his palms wheedlingly together, and his attitude showed that he was hanging on her answer.

"Yes, I should like to take a walk – thank you," she answered. Together they made for the door; he fluttered to his room, she to hers, to prepare. Soon they were outside the hotel, walking slowly under the moon. Apparently without definite directive, they turned up the hill in the direction of "St. Briavels," nor was it many minutes before Mr. Pugh began to prove himself somewhat of a gallant, and gifted in the saying of those airy nothings which are supposed to be agreeable to the feminine ear. The lady, for her part, was not so thorny and hard of heart as one might have thought from the staidness of her air, and a good understanding was quickly established between the oddly-assorted pair.

"Rather an adventure, this, for people of our age…" she tittered, as they began to climb the winding road.

"But, madam, we are not old!" exclaimed the lively Mr. Pugh, who might be seventy from his decrepit semblance. "Look at that moon – are not our hearts still sensible to its seductive influences? You, for your part, may possibly be nearing that charming age of forty – "

"Oh, sir! you flatter me…"

"Madam, no, on my word! – not a day over forty would be given you by anyone! And if you have the heart of twenty, as I am sure that you have, what matters it if – "

"Hush!" she whispered, as a soft sound of the piano from "St. Briavels" reached them.

Before them on the roadway they saw several carriages drawn up near the great gates. The tinkle of the piano grew as they approached. Then they saw a few lantern lights in the grounds glimmering under the trees. Such signs spoke of a party in progress. For once, the English climate was gracious to its dupes.

The lady, without saying anything to her companion, stepped into the shadow of a yew-tree opposite the manor-close, and stood there, looking into the grounds over the bars of a small gate, beyond which a path ran through a shrubbery. On the path were three couples, ladies with light scarves draped over their décolleté dresses, men, bare-headed and smoking cigarettes. They were very dim to her vision, which must have been well preserved for one of her age, despite Mr. Pugh's gallantry. The overhanging foliage was dense, and only enough moonlight oozed through the canopy of leaves to toss moving patterns on the lawn and paths.

But the strange lady's eyes were now like gimlets, with the very fire of youth burning in them, and it was with the sure fleetness of youth that she suddenly ran in a moment of opportunity from the yew to the gate, pushed it a little open, and slipped aside into a footpath that ran parallel with the lawn on which the "St. Briavels" diners were now strolling.

With equal suddenness, or equal disregard of appearance, Mr. Pugh, too, became young again, as if both, like Philemon and Baucis, had all at once quaffed the elixir of youth; and he was soon by the young-old lady's side on the footpath. But her eyes, her ears, were so strained toward the lawn before her, that she seemed not to be aware of his presence.

"I did not guess that you were interested in the people here," he whispered. "That man now coming nearer is Mr. Glyn himself, and with him is Miss Rosalind Marsh."

"Sh-h-h," came from her lips, a murmur long-drawn, absent-minded, her eyes peering keenly forward.

He nudged her.

"Is it fitting that we should be here? We place ourselves in a difficult position, if seen."

"Sh-h-h-h-h…"

Still he pestered her.

"Really it is a blunder… We – we become – eavesdroppers – ! Let us – I suggest to you – "

"Oh, do keep quiet," she whispered irritably; and in that instant the talk of Osborne and Rosalind became audible to her. She heard him say:

"Yes, I confess I have known Osborne, and I believe the man perfectly incapable of the act attributed to him by a hasty public opinion."

"Intimately known him?"

Rosalind turned her eyebrows upward in the moonlight. Seen thus, she was amazingly beautiful.

"Do we intimately know anyone? Do we intimately know ourselves?" asked Osborne as he passed within five yards of the two on the path. "I think I may say that I know Osborne about as well as I know anyone, and I am confident that he is horribly misjudged. He is a young man of – yes, I will say that for him – of good intentions; and he is found guilty, without trial, of a wrong which he never could have committed – and the wrong which he has committed he is not found guilty of."

"What wrong?" asked Rosalind.

"I have heard – I know, in fact – that in the short time that has passed since the murder of Miss de Bercy, Osborne, her acknowledged lover, has allowed himself to love another."

Rosalind laughed, with the quiet amusement of well-bred indifference.

"What a weird person!" she said.

And as their words passed beyond hearing, a hiss, like a snake's in the grass, rose from the shrubbery behind them, a hiss of venom intensely low, and yet loud enough to be heard by Furneaux, who, standing a little behind the lady of the ringlets, rubbed his hands together in silent and almost mischievous self-congratulation.

The house end of the lawn was not far, the words of the returning pair were soon again within earshot. The fiery glance of the watching woman, ferreting, peering, dwelt on them – or rather on one of them, for she gave no heed to Osborne at all. Her very soul was centered on Rosalind, whose walk, whose lips, whose eyes, whose hair, whose voice, she ran over and estimated as an expert accountant reckons up a column of figures to ascertain their significance. She missed no item in that calculation. She noted the over-skirt of Chantilly, the wrap of Venetian lace on the girl's head, the white slippers, the roses disposed on her corsage with the harmless vanity of the artist's skill, all these that fixed stare ravenously devoured and digested while Rosalind took half a dozen slow steps.

"But seriously," she heard Osborne say, "what is your opinion of a love so apparently fickle and flighty as this of Osborne's?"

"Let me alone with your Osborne," Rosalind retorted with another little laugh. "A person of such a mood is merely uninteresting, and below being a topic. Let the dead lady's father or somebody horsewhip him – I cannot care, I'm afraid. Let us talk about – "

"Ourselves?"

"'Ourselves and our king.'"

"I have so much to say about ourselves! Where should I begin? And now that I have a few minutes, I am throwing them away. Do you know, I never seem to secure you free from interruption. Either yourself or someone else intervenes every time, and reduces me to silence and despair – "

Their words passed beyond earshot again in the other direction; and, as the lawn was wide between house and screen of shrubbery on the road front, it was some time before they were again heard. At last, though, they came, and then Rosalind's low tone of earnestness showed that this time, at least, Osborne had been listened to.

"I will, since you ask, since you wish" – her voice faltered – "to please you. You will be at the Abbey to-morrow evening. And, since you say that you so – desire it, I may then hear what you have to say. Now I'll go."

"But when – where – ?"

"If the night is fine, I will stroll into the gardens during the evening. You will see me when I go. On the south terrace of the Abbey there is a sun-dial in the middle of a paved Italian garden. I'll pass that way, and give you half an hour."

"Rosalind!"

"Ah, no – not yet."

Her lips sighed. She looked at him with a lingering tenderness languishing in her eyes.

"Can I help it?" he murmured, and his voice quivered with passion.

"Are you glad now?"

"Glad!"

"Good-by."

She left him hurriedly and sped with inimitable grace of motion across the lawn toward the house, and, while he looked after her, with the rapt vision of a man who has communed with a spirit, the two listeners crept to the little gate, slipped out when a laughing couple turned their heads, and walked back to the hotel.

The lady said never a word. Mr. Pugh was full of chat and merriment, but no syllable fell from her tight-pressed lips.

The next day the lady was reported to have a headache – at any rate she kept to her room, and saw no one save the "boots" of the establishment, with whom during the afternoon she had a lengthy interview upstairs. At about seven in the evening she was writing these words:

Miss Marsh: – Are you aware that the "Mr. Glyn" whom you know here is no other than Mr. Rupert Osborne, who is in everyone's mouth in connection with the Feldisham Mansions Murder? You may take this as a positive fact from

"One Who Knows."

She wrote it in a handwriting that was very different from her own, inclosed and directed it, and then, about half-past seven, sent for "boots" again.

Her instructions were quite explicit:

"Wait in the paved rose garden at the Abbey, the square sunken place with a sun-dial in the center," she said. "It is on the south terrace, and the lady I have described will surely come. The moment she appears hand the note to her, and be off – above all else, answer no questions."

So the youth, with a sovereign in his pocket, hurried away to do Hylda Prout's will – or was it Furneaux's? Who might tell?

CHAPTER VIII

AT THE SUN-DIAL

The messenger of evil had waited twenty minutes by the side of the sun-dial, when he saw a lady come round the corner from the front of the house, and saunter towards him. Moonlight lay weltering on the white walks of the terrace, on the whiter slabs of stone, on the water of the basin, on the surface of the lake eastward where the lowest of the terraces curved into the parkland that the wavelets lapped on. It weltered, too, on the lady's hair, deftly coiled and twisted into the coiffure of a Greek statue. It shimmered on the powdered blue of her gown that made her coming a little ghostly in that light, on the rows of pearls around her throat, and on the satin gloss of her shoes. She made straight for the dial; and then, all at once, finding some unknown man keeping the tryst, half halted.

He ran out to her, touched his cap, saying "Miss Marsh," handed her the note, touched his cap again, and was going.

"From whom?" she called after him in some astonishment.

"Lady at the Swan, miss" – and he hurried off even more swiftly, for this was a question which he had answered against orders.

She stood a little, looking at the envelope, her breathing labored, an apprehension in her heart. Then, hearing the coming of footsteps which she knew, she broke it open, and ran her eye over the few words.

Bending slightly, with the flood of the moon on the paper, she could easily read the plainly written, message.

… The Mr. Glyn whom you know is no other than the Mr. Rupert Osborne who is in everyone's mouth in connection with the Feldisham Mansions Murder…

Now she laughed with a sudden catch of the breath, gasping "Oh!" with a sharp impatience of all anonymous scandalizers. But as her head rather swam and span, she walked on quickly to the basin, and there found it necessary to sit down on the marble. The stab of pain passed in a few seconds, and again she sprang up and laughed as lightly as one of the little fountains in the basin that tossed its tinted drops to the moonbeams.

Not twenty yards away was Osborne coming to her.

She looked at him steadily – her marvelous eyes self-searching for sure remembrance of the earnestness with which he had pleaded in favor of the lover of Rose de Bercy – how he had said that Osborne had already loved again; and how she, Rosalind – oh, how blind and deaf! – heedlessly had brushed aside his words, saying that a man of that mood was below being a topic…

"Is it half an hour?" Osborne came whispering, with a bending of the body that was like an act of worship.

She smiled. In the moonlight he could not perceive how ethereally white was her face.

"It is one half-minute!.. It was rather quixotic of you to have proposed, and of me to have accepted, such a meeting. But I felt sure that by this hour others would be strolling about the terraces. As it is, you see, we are pioneers without followers. So, till we meet again – "

She seemed to be about to hurry away without another word; he stood aghast.

"But, Rosalind – "

"What? How dare you call me Rosalind?"

Now her eyes flashed upon him like sudden lightning from a dark blue sky, and the scorn in her voice blighted him.

"I – I – don't understand," he stammered, trying to come nearer. She drew her skirts aside with a disdain that was terrifying.

Then she laughed softly again; and was gone.

He looked after her as after treasure that one sees sinking into the sea, flashing in its descent to the depths. For one mad instant he had an impulse to run in vain pursuit, but instead he gave way, sank down upon the edge of the marble basin, just where she had dropped a few brief seconds earlier, covered his face, and a groan that was half a sob broke so loudly from his throat that she heard it. She hesitated, nearly stopped, did not look round, scourged herself into resolution, and in another moment had turned the corner of the house and was lost to sight.

What had happened to change his Rosalind into this unapproachable empress Osborne was too stunned to ask himself explicitly. He knew he was banned, and that was enough. Deep in his subconsciousness he understood that somehow she had found out his wretched secret – found out that he was not the happy Glyn reeling through an insecure dream in fairyland, but the unhappy Osborne, heavily tangled in the sordid and the commonplace.

And, because he was unhappy and troubled, she left him without pity, turned her back eternally upon him. That hurt. As he stood up to walk away toward Tormouth, a fierce anger and a gush of self-pity battled in his eyes.

He had no more hope. He wandered on through the night, unseeing, stricken as never before. At last he reached the hotel, and, as soon as he could summon the energy, began to pack his portmanteau to go back to London. The day of the postponed inquest now loomed near, and he cared not a jot what became of him, only asking dumbly to be taken far from Tormouth.

As he was packing the smaller of the bags, he saw the scrap of blood-stained lace that Furneaux had already seen, had taken out, and had replaced. Osborne, with that same feeling of repulsion with which Furneaux had thrust it away from him, held it up to the light. What was it? How could it have got into his bag? he asked himself – a bit of lace stained with blood! His amazement knew no bounds – and would have been still more profound, if possible, had he seen Furneaux's singular act in replacing it in the bag after finding it.

He threw the horrible thing from him out of the window, and his very fingers tingled with disgust of it. But then came the disturbing thought – suppose it had been put into his bag as a trap? by the police, perhaps? And suppose any apparent eagerness of his to rid himself of it should be regarded as compromising? He was beginning to be circumspect now, timorous, ostentatious of that innocence in which a whole world disbelieved.

So he glanced out of the window, saw where the lace had dropped upon a sloping spread of turf in the hotel grounds, and ran down to get it. When he arrived at the spot where he had just seen it, the lace had disappeared.

He stood utterly mystified, looking down at the spot where the lace should be and was not; then looked around in a maze, to discover on a rustic seat that surrounded an oak tree an elderly lady and a bent old man sitting there in the shadow. Some distance off, lounging among the flower beds in the moonlight, was the figure of a tall man. Osborne was about to inquire of the two nearest him if they had seen the lace, when the old gentleman hurried nimbly forward out of the tree's shadow and asked if he was seeking a piece of something that had dropped from above.

"Yes," answered Osborne, "have you seen it?"

"That gentleman walking yonder was just under your window when it dropped, and I saw him stoop to pick it up," said the other.

Osborne thanked him, and made for "the gentleman," who turned out to be a jauntily-dressed Italian, bony-faced, square in the jaw, his hair clipped convict-short, but dandily brushed up at the corner of the forehead.

To the question: "Did you by chance pick up a bit of lace just now?" he at once bowed, and showing his teeth in a grin, said:

"He dropped right to my feet from the sky; here he is" – and he presented the lace with much ceremony.

"I am obliged," said Osborne.

"Do not say it," answered the other politely, and they parted, Osborne hurrying back to his room, with the intent to catch a midnight train from Tormouth.

As he entered the house again, the older man, incredibly quick on his uncertain feet, overtook him, and, touching him on the arm, asked if he intended to catch the train that night.

"That is my desire," answered Osborne.

"It is mine, too," said the other; "now, could you give me a seat in your conveyance?"

Osborne said, "With pleasure," and they entered the hotel to prepare to go.

At the same moment the Italian sauntered up to the oak tree beneath which sat Hylda Prout in her Tormouth make-up. Seating himself without seeking her permission, he lit a cigarette.

"Good-evening," he said, after enveloping himself in a cloud of smoke. She did not answer, but evidently he was not one to be rebuffed.

"Your friend, Mistare Pooh, he is sharp! My! he see all," he said affably.

This drew a reply.

"You are quite right," she said. "He sees all, or nearly all. Do you mean because he saw you pick up the lace?"

"Now – how you know it was lace?" asked the Italian, turning full upon her. "You sitting here, you couldn't see it was lace so far – no eyes could see that."

This frankness confused the lady a moment; then she laughed a little, for he had supplied her with a retort.