The de Bercy Affair

"Perhaps I see all, too, like my friend."

There was a silence, but the Italian was apparently waiting only to rehearse his English.

"You know Mr. Glyn – yes?" he said.

"No."

"Oh, don't say 'no'!" Reproach was in his ogle, his voice. His tone was almost wheedling.

"Why not?"

"The way I find you spying after him this morning tell me that you know him. And I know that you know him before that."

"What concern is it of yours?" she asked, looking at him with a lowering of the lids in a quick scrutiny that was almost startled. "What is your interest in Mr. Glyn?"

"Say 'Osborne' and be done," he said.

"Well, say 'Osborne,'" she responded.

"Good. We are going to understand the one the other, I can see. But if you want to know what is 'my interest' in the man, you on your part will tell me first if you are friend or enemy of Osborne."

In one second she had reflected, and said: "Enemy."

His hand shot out in silence to her, and she shook it. The mere action drew them closer on the seat.

"I believe you," he whispered, "and I knew it, too, for if you had been a friend you would not be in a disguise from him."

"How do you know that I am in a disguise?"

"Since yesterday morning I know," he answered, "when I see you raise your blind yonder, not an old woman, but a young and charming lady not yet fully dressed, for I was here in the garden, looking out for what I could see, and my poor heart was pierced by the vision at the window."

He pressed his palm dramatically on his breast.

"Yes, of course, it is on the left, as usual," said Hylda Prout saucily. "But let us confine ourselves to business for the moment. I don't quite understand your object. As to the bit of lace – "

"How you know it was lace?"

She looked cautiously all round before answering. "I know because I searched Mr. Osborne's room, and saw it."

"Good! Before long we understand the one the other. You be frank, I be frank. You spied into the bag, and I put it in the bag."

"I know you did."

"Now, how you know?"

"There was no one else to do it!"

"No? Might not Osborne put it there himself? You know where that bit of lace come from?"

"I guess."

"What you guess?"

"I guess that it is from the dress of the dead actress, for it has blood on it."

"You guess good – very good. And Osborne killed her – yes?"

She pondered a little. This attack had come on her from a moonlit sky.

"That I don't know. He may have, and he may not," she murmured.

"Which is more likely? That he killed her, or that I killed her?"

"I don't know. I should say it is more likely that you killed her."

"What! You pay me that compliment? Why so?"

"Well, you are in possession of a portion of the dress she wore when she was killed, and you put it into someone's belongings to make it seem that he killed her, an act which looks a little black against you."

"Ah, ma bella, now you jest," said the Italian, laughing. "The fact that I am so frank with you as to say you all this is proof that I not kill her."

"Yes, I see that," she agreed. "I was only joking. But since you did not kill her, how on earth did you get hold of that piece of her dress?"

"That you are going to know when I have received better proof that you are as much as I the enemy of Osborne. Did I not guess good, on seeing you yesterday morning at the window, that you are the same young lady who is Osborne's secretary in London, where I see you before?"

Hylda Prout admitted that she was the secretary.

"Good, then," said the Italian; "you staying in the house with him have every opportunity to find proof of his guilt of the murder; until which is proved, the necks of those I am working for are in danger."

With the impulsive gesture of his race he drew his forefinger in ghastly mimicry across his throat.

"So bad as that?" asked the woman coolly. "Unfortunately, I don't know who 'those' are you are working for. The – ?"

"Yes."

"The Anarchists?"

"If you call them so."

"Did they kill her?"

"Not they!"

"Did they intend to?"

"Not they!"

"Then, where did you get that bit of lace? And where is the dagger?"

"Dagger! What about dagger now?"

He asked it with a guilty start. At last the talk was taking a turn which left Hylda Prout in command.

"If you have that lace, you have the dagger, too. And if you have the dagger, what help do you want from me? Produce that, and Osborne is done for."

Her voice sank to a whisper. If Furneaux could have been present he must have felt proud of her.

"Dagger!" muttered the Italian again in a hushed tone. "You seem to know much more – "

"Stay, let us get up and walk. It is not quite safe here… There are too many trees."

The man, who had lost his air of self-confidence, seemed to be unable to decide what to do for the best. But Hylda Prout had risen, and he, too, stood up. He was compelled to follow her. Together they passed through the grounds toward the cliffs.

The same moonlight that saw them strolling there, saw at the same time Furneaux and Osborne racing in a trap along the road to Sedgecombe Junction to catch the late train on the main line. Furneaux was inclined to be chatty, but Osborne answered only in monosyllables, till his companion's talk turned upon the murder of the actress, when Osborne, with a sudden access of fury, assured him in very emphatic language that his ears were weary of that dreadful business, and prayed to be spared it. The old gentleman seemed to be shocked, but Osborne only glanced at his watch, muttering that they would have to be smart to catch the train; and as he put back the watch in its pocket, the other dropped his bag over the side of the vehicle.

There was nothing to be done but to stop, and the delinquent, with the stiffness and slowness of age, descended to pick it up. Thus some precious minutes were wasted. Furneaux, in fact, did not wish Osborne to start for London that night at that late hour, since he wanted to apprise Winter of Osborne's departure. Hence he had begged a seat in the conveyance, and had already lost time at the hotel. A little later, when Osborne again glanced at his watch, it was to say: "Oh, well, there is no use in going on," and he called to the driver to turn back. Indeed, the whistle of the departing train was heard at the station half a mile away.

"Well, yes," said Furneaux, curiously pertinacious, when the dog-cart was on the homeward road, "one is weary of hearing this murder discussed. I only spoke of it to express to you my feeling of disapproval of the lover – of the man Osborne. Is it credible to you that he was not even at her funeral? No doubt he was advised not to be – no doubt it was wise from a certain point of view. But nothing should have prevented him, if he had had any affection for her. But he had none – he was a liar. Talk of her deceiving him! It was he – it was he– who deceived her, I say!"

"Have a cigar," said Osborne, presenting his case; "these are rather good ones; you will find them soothing."

His hospitality was declined, but there was no more talk, and the trap trotted back into Tormouth.

Up at "St. Briavels" that same moment the same moonlight, shining on a balcony, illumined yet another scene in the network of events. Rosalind Marsh was sitting there alone, her head bent between her clenched hands. She had returned home early from the Abbey, and Mrs. Marsh, who had silently wondered, presently came out with the softness of a shadow upon her, and touched her shoulder.

"What is the matter?" she asked in a murmur of sympathy.

"My head aches a little, mother dear."

"I am sorry. You look tired."

"Well, yes, dear. There are moments of infinite weariness in life. One cannot avoid them."

"Did you dance?"

"Only a little."

"Weary of emotions, then?"

The old lady smiled faintly.

"Mother!" whispered Rosalind, and pressed her mother's hand to her forehead.

There was silence for a while. When Mrs. Marsh spoke again it was to change the subject.

"You have been too long at Tormouth this time. I think you need a change. Suppose we took a little of London now? Society might brighten you."

"Oh, yes! Let us go from this place!" said Rosalind under her breath, her fingers tightly clenched together.

"Well, then, the sooner the better," said Mrs. Marsh. "Let it be to-morrow."

Rosalind looked up with gratitude and the moonlight in her eyes.

"Thank you, dear one," she said. "You are always skilled in divining, and never fail in being right."

And so it was done. The next forenoon saw the mother and daughter driving in an open landau past the Swan to Tormouth station, and, as they rolled by in state, Hylda Prout, who was peeping from a window after the figure of Osborne on his way to the station, saw them.

A glitter came into her eyes, and the unspoken thought was voiced in eloquent gesture: "What, following him so soon?" – for she knew that they could only be going by the London train, which had but one stopping-place after Tormouth. At once she rushed in a frenzy of haste to prepare to travel by that very train.

Some wild ringing of bells and promise of reward brought chambermaid and "boots" to her aid.

In her descent to the office to pay her bill she was encountered by her new friend, the Italian, who, surprised at her haste, said to her, "What, you go?" – to which she, hardly stopping, answered: "Yes – we will meet when we said – in two days' time."

"But me, too, I go," he cried, and ran to get ready, the antics of the pair creating some stir of interest in the bar parlor.

At this time Furneaux was already at the station, awaiting the train, having already wired to Winter in London to meet him at Waterloo. And so the same train carried all their various thoughts and purposes and secrets in its different compartments on the Londonward journey.

Furneaux, who chose to sit in the compartment with Rosalind and Mrs. Marsh, listened to every sigh and syllable of Rosalind, and, with the privilege of the aged, addressed some remarks to his fellow-travelers. Hylda Prout and the Italian were together – a singular bond of intimacy having suddenly forged itself between these two. They were alone, and Hylda, who left Tormouth old and iron-gray, arrived at London red-headed and young, freckle-splashed and pretty. But as for Osborne, he traveled in the dull company of his black thoughts.

The first to alight at Waterloo, before the train stopped, was Furneaux. His searching eyes at once discovered Winter waiting on the platform. In a moment the Chief Inspector had a wizened old man at his ear, saying: "Winter – I'm here. Came with the crowd."

"Hallo," said Winter, and from old-time habit of friendship his hand half went out. Furneaux, however, seemed not to notice the action, and Winter's hand drew back.

"Osborne is in the train," whispered Furneaux. "I telegraphed because there is an object in his smaller bag that I want you to see – as a witness, instantly. There he comes; ask him into the first-class waiting-room. It is usually empty."

Furneaux himself went straight into the waiting-room and sat in a corner behind a newspaper. Soon in came Winter, talking to Osborne with a marked deference:

"You will forgive me, I am sure, for this apparent lack of confidence, but in an affair of this sort one leaves no stone unturned."

"Do not mention it," said Osborne, who was rather pale. "I think I can guess what it is that you wish to see…"

A porter, who had followed them, put the two portmanteaux on a table, and went out. Osborne opened the smaller one, and Winter promptly had the blood-stained bit of lace in his hand.

"What is it, sir?" asked Winter.

"Heaven knows," came the weary answer. "It was not in my possession when I left London, and was put into one of my bags by someone at Tormouth. When I found it, I threw it out of the window, as that gentleman there can prove," for he had seen Furneaux, but was too jaded to give the least thought to his unaccountable presence. "Afterwards I ran down and recovered it. He was in the garden…"

The unhappy young man's glance wandered out of the door to see Rosalind and her mother go past towards a waiting cab. He cared not a jot if all Scotland Yard were dogging his footsteps now.

"Is that so, sir?" asked Winter of Furneaux.

"Exactly as Mr. Glyn says," answered Furneaux, looking at them furtively, and darting one very curious glance at Winter's face.

"And who, Mr. – Glyn, was about the place whom you could possibly suspect of having placed this object in your bag – someone with a wicked motive for throwing suspicion upon you?"

Winter's lips whitened and dwelt with venom upon the word "wicked."

"There was absolutely no one," answered Osborne. "The hotel was rather empty. Of course, there was this gentleman – "

"Yes," said Winter after him, "this gentleman."

"An elderly lady, a Mrs. Forbes, I believe, as I happened to read her name, a foreigner who probably never saw me before, an invalid girl and her sister – all absolutely unconnected with me."

Furneaux's eyes were now glued on Winter's face. They seemed to have a queer meaning in them, a meaning not wholly devoid of spite and malice.

"Well, Mr. – Glyn," said Winter, "let me tell you, if you do not know, that this bit of lace was certainly part of the dress in which Miss de Bercy was murdered. Therefore the man – or woman – who put it into your bag was there – on the spot – when the deed was done."

Osborne did then exhibit some perplexed interest in a strange discovery.

"How can you be certain that it was part of her dress?" he asked.

"Because a fragment of lace of this size was torn from the wrap she was wearing at the time of the murder – I noticed it at my first sight of the body. This piece would just fit into it. So, whoever put it into your bag – "

"In that case I may have put it in myself!" said Osborne with a nervous laugh, "since I may be the murderer."

Apparently the careless comment annoyed Winter.

"I don't think I need detain you any longer, sir," he said coldly. "As for the lace, I'll keep it. I feel very confident that this part of the mystery will not baffle me for more than a day or two."

And ever the eyes of Furneaux dwelt upon Winter's face with that queer meaning reveling in their underlook.

Osborne turned to go. He did not trouble to call another porter, but carried his own luggage. He was about to enter a cab when he caught sight of the back of a woman's head among the crowd hurrying to an exit, a head which seemed singularly familiar to him. The next moment it was gone from his sight, which was a pity, since the head belonged to Hylda Prout, who had not anticipated that Osborne would be delayed on the platform, and had had to steal past the waiting-room door at a rush, since she was no longer an old lady, but herself. She could not wait in the train till he was well away, for she thought it well to ascertain the whereabouts of Rosalind Marsh in London, and wished to shadow her.

Mrs. Marsh and her daughter carried the usual mountain of ladies' luggage, which demanded time and care in stowing safely on the roof of a four-wheeler, so Hylda Prout was in time to call a hansom and follow them. After her went the Italian, who made off hastily when the train arrived, but lurked about until he could follow the girl unseen, for she had frightened him.

Now, at the station that day, keeping well in the background, was a third detective beside Winter and Furneaux.

Clarke, with his interest in Anarchists, knew that this particular Italian was coming from Tormouth either that day or the day after. Two nights before, while on a visit to the Fraternal Club in Soho, he had overheard the whispered word that "Antonio" would "be back" on the Wednesday or the Thursday.

Clarke did not know Antonio's particular retreat in London, and had strong reasons for wishing to know it. He, therefore, followed in a cab the cab that followed Rosalind's cab. In any other city in the world than London such a procession would excite comment – if it passed through street after street, that is. But not so in cab-using London, where a string of a hundred taxis, hansoms, and four-wheelers may all be going in the same direction simultaneously.

As Clarke went westward down the Strand and across Trafalgar Square, he was full of meditations.

"What is Antonio doing with Osborne's lady secretary?" he asked himself. "For that is the young woman he is after, I'll swear. By Jove, there's more in this tangle than meets the eye. It's a case for keeping both eyes, and a third, if I had it, wide, wide open!"

Rosalind's and Mrs. Marsh's cab drew up before a house in Porchester Gardens. As they got out and went up the steps, the cabs containing Antonio and Hylda Prout almost stopped, but each went on again.

"Now, what in the world is the matter?" mused Clarke. "Why are those two shadowing a couple of ladies, and sneaking on each other as well?"

He told his own driver to pass the house slowly, as he wished to note its number, and the vehicle was exactly opposite the front door when it was opened by a girl with a cap on her head to let in Mrs. Marsh and Rosalind; Clarke's eye rested on her, and lit with a strange fire. A cry of discovery leapt to his lips, but was not uttered. A moment after the door had closed upon the two travelers, Clarke's hand was at the trap-door in the roof of the hansom, and, careless whether or not he was seen, he leaped out, ran up the steps, and rang.

A moment more and the door was opened to him by the same girl, whom he had recognized instantly as Pauline Dessaulx, the late lady's-maid of Rose de Bercy – a girl for whom he had ransacked London in vain. And not he alone, for Pauline had very effectively buried herself from the afternoon after the murder, when Clarke had seen her once, and she him, to this moment. And there now they stood, Clarke and Pauline, face to face.

He, for his part, never saw such a change in a human countenance as now took place in this girl's. Her pretty brown cheeks at once, as her eyes fell on him, assumed the whiteness of death itself. Her lips, the very rims of her eyelids even, looked ghastly. She seemed to be on the verge of collapse, and her whole frame trembled in an agony of fear. Why? What caused these deadly tremors? Instantly Clarke saw guilt in this excess of emotion, and by one of those inspirations vouchsafed sometimes even to men of his coarse fiber he did the cleverest act of his life.

Putting out his hand, he said quietly, but roughly:

"Come now, no nonsense! Give it to me!"

What "it" meant he himself had no more notion than the man in the moon. His real motive was to set the terrified girl speaking, and thus lead her on to yield some chance clew on which his wits might work. But at once, like one hypnotized, Pauline Dessaulx, still keeping her eyes fixed on his face, slowly moved her right hand to a pocket, slowly drew out a little book, and slowly handed it to him.

"All right – you are wise," he said. "I'll see you again." The door slammed, and he ran down the steps, his blood tingling with the sense that he had blundered upon some tremendous discovery.

Nor was he far wrong. When in the cab he opened the book, he saw it was Rose de Bercy's diary. He did not know her handwriting, but he happened to open the book at the last written page, and the very first words his staring eyes devoured were these:

If I am killed this night, it will be by – or by C. E. F.

Where the blank occurred it was evident that some name had been written, and heavily scratched through with pen and ink.

But the alternative suggested by the initials! C. E. F.! How grotesque, how exquisitely ludicrous! Clarke, gazing at the enigma, was suddenly shaken with a spasm of hysterical laughter.

CHAPTER IX

THE LETTER

Two days later, not Britain alone, but no small part of the two hemispheres, was stirred to the depths by the adjourned inquest on the Feldisham Mansions crime. Nevertheless, though there were sensations in plenty, the public felt vaguely a sense of incompleteness in the process, and of dissatisfaction with the result. The police seemed to be both unready and unconvinced; no one was quite sincere in anything that was said; the authorities were swayed by some afterthought; in popular phrase, they appeared "to have something up their sleeve."

Furneaux, this time, figured for the police; but Winter, too, was there unobtrusively; and, behind, hidden away as a mere spectator, was Clarke, smiling the smile that knows more than all the world, his hard mouth set in fixed lines like carved wood.

As against Osborne the inquiry went hard. More and more the hearts of the witnesses and jury grew hot against him, and, by a kind of electric sympathy, the blood of the crowd which gathered outside the court caught the fever and became inflamed with its own rage, lashing itself to a fury with coarse jibes and bitter revilings.

Furneaux, bringing forth and marshaling evidence on evidence against Osborne, let his eye light often on Winter; then he would look away hastily as though he feared his face might betray his thoughts.

In that small head of his were working more, by far more, secret things, dark intents, unspoken mazy purposes, than in all the heads put together in the busy court. He was pale, too, but his pallor was nothing compared with the marble forehead of Winter, whose eyes were nailed to the ground, and whose forehead was knit in a frown grim and hard as rock.

It was rarely that he so much as glanced up from the reverie of pitch-black doubts weltering through his brain like some maelstrom drowned in midnight. Once he glanced keenly upon William Campbell, the taxicab driver, who kept twirling his motor-cap round and round on his finger until an irritated coroner protested; once again did he glance at Mrs. Bates, housekeeper, and at the fountain of tears that flowed from her eyes.

Campbell was asked to pick out the man whom he had driven from Berkeley Street to Feldisham Mansions, if he saw him in court. He pointed straight at Osborne.

"You will swear that that is the man?" he was asked.

"No, not swear," he said, and looked round defiantly, as if he knew that most of those present were almost disappointed with his non-committal answer.

"Just think – look at him well," said the Treasury representative, as Osborne stood up to confront the driver with his pale face.

"That gentleman is like him – very like him – that's all I'll swear to. His manner of dress, his stand, his height, yes, and his face, his mustache, the chin, the few hairs there between the eyebrows – remarkably like, sir – for I recollect the man well enough. It may have been his double, but I'm not here to swear positively it was Mr. Osborne, because I'm not sure."

"We will take it, then, that, assuming there were two men, the one was so much like the other that you swear it was either Mr. Osborne or his double?" the coroner said.

"Well, I'll go so far as that, sir," agreed Campbell, and, at this admission, Furneaux glanced at a veiled figure that sat among the witnesses at the back of the court.

He knew that Rosalind Marsh was present, and his expression softened a little. Then he looked at another veiled woman – Hylda Prout – and saw that her eyes were fastened, not on the witness, but ever on Rosalind Marsh, as though there was no object, no interest, in the room but that one black-clothed figure of Rosalind.

Campbell's memory of the drive was ransacked, and turned inside out, and thrashed and tormented by one and another to weariness; and then it was the turn of Hester Bates, all tears, to tell how she had seen someone like unto Osborne on the stairs at five to eight, whose feet seemed to reel like a drunken man's, and who afterwards impressed her, when she thought of it, as a shape rather of limbo and spirit-land than of Mayfair and everyday life.

Then the flint ax-head, or celt, was presented to the court, and Hylda Prout was called to give evidence against her employer. She told how she had missed an ax-head from the museum, and also a Saracen dagger, but whether this was the very ax-head that was missing she could not say. It was very like it – that was all – and even Osborne showed his amaze at her collectedness, her calm indifference to many eyes.