The de Bercy Affair

"Oh, Heavens!" muttered Winter in despair. "You and your eternal Janocs – "

The smiling Clarke looked at his chief in full confidence that he would not be reprimanded for having disobeyed orders. Suddenly making three steps on tiptoe, he said in Winter's ear:

"Don't be too startled – here's an amazing piece of information for you, sir —it was Gaston Janoc who committed the Feldisham Mansions murder!"

Winter stared at him without real comprehension. "Gaston Janoc!" his lips repeated.

"I want to apply to-morrow for a warrant for his arrest," crowed Clarke.

"But, man alive! – don't drive me distracted," cried out Winter; "what are you talking about?"

"Oh, I am not acting on any impulse," said Clarke, placidly satisfied, enthroned on facts; "I may tell you now that I have been working on the Feldisham Mansions affair from the first on my own account. I couldn't help it. I was drawn to it as a needle by a magnet, and I now have all the threads – ten distinct proofs – in my hands. It was Gaston Janoc did it! Just listen to this, sir – "

"Oh, do as you like about your wretched Anarchist, Clarke," said Winter pestered, waving him away; "I can't stop now. I sent you to do something, and you should have done it. Miss Marsh's mother is half dead with fright and grief; the thing is pressing, and I'll go myself."

With a snatch at his hat, he rushed out, Clarke following sullenly to go home, though on his way northward, by sheer force of habit, he strolled through Soho, looked up at Janoc's windows, and presently, catching sight of Janoc himself coming out of the restaurant on the ground floor, nodded after him, muttering to himself: "Soon now – " and went off.

But had he shadowed his Janoc just then, it might have been well! The Frenchman first went into a French shop labeled "Vins et Comestibles," where he bought slices of sausage and a bottle of cheap wine, from which he got the cork drawn – he already carried half a loaf of bread wrapped in paper, and with bread, sausage, and wine, bent his way through spitting rain and high wind, his coat collar turned up round his neck, to a house in Poland Street.

An unoccupied house: its window-glass thicker than itself with grime, broken in some of the panes, while in others were roughly daubed the words: "To Let." But he possessed a key, went in, picked up a candlestick in the passage, and lit the candle-end it contained.

At the end of the passage he went down a narrow staircase of wood, then down some stone steps, to the door of a back cellar: and this, too, he opened with a key.

Rosalind was crouching on the floor in the corner farthest from the door, her head bent down, her feet tucked under her skirt. She had been asleep: for the air in there was very heavy, the cellar hardly twelve feet square, no windows, and the slightest movement roused a cloud of dust. The walls were of rough stone, without break or feature, save three little vaulted caves like ovens in the wall facing the door, made to contain wine bottles and small barrels: in fact, one barrel and several empty bottles now lay about in the dust. Besides, there were sardine tins and a tin of mortadel, and relics of sausage and bread, with which Janoc had lately supplied his prisoner, with a bottle half full of wine, and one of water: all showing very dimly in the feeble rays of the candle.

She looked at him, without moving, just raising her scornful eyes and no more, and he, holding up the light, looked at her a good time.

"Lady," he said at last, "I have brought you some meat, wine, and bread."

She made no answer. He stepped forward, and laid them by her side; then walked back to the door, as if to go out, coughing at the dust; but stopped and leant his back on the wall near the door, his legs crossed, looking down at her.

"Lady," he said presently, "you still remain fixed in your obstinacy?"

No answer: only her wide-open reproving eyes dwelt on him with their steady accusation like a conscience, and her hand stuck and stuck many times with a hat-pin her hat which lay on her lap. Her gown appeared to be very frowsy and unkempt now; her hair was untidy, and quite gray with dust on one side, her face was begrimed and stained with the tracks of tears; but her lips were firm, and the wonderful eyes, chiding, disdainful, gave no sign of a drooping spirit.

"You will say nothing to me?" asked Janoc.

No answer.

"Is it that you think I may relent and let you free, lady, because my heart weakens at your suffering? Do not imagine such a thing of me! The more you are beautiful, the more you are sublime in your torture, the more I adore you, the more my heart pours out tears of blood for you, the more I am inflexible in my will. You do not know me – I am a man, I am not a wind; a mind, not an emotion. Oh, pity is strong in me, love is strong; but what is strongest of all is self-admiration, my worship of intelligence. And have I not made it impossible that you should be let free without conditions by my confession to you that it was my sister Pauline who killed the actress? I tell you again it was Pauline who killed her. It was not a murder! It was an assassination – a political assassination. Mademoiselle de Bercy had proved a traitress to the group of Internationals to which she belonged: she was condemned to death; the lot fell upon Pauline to execute the sentence; and on the day appointed she executed it, having first stolen from Mr. Osborne the 'celt' and the dagger, so as to cast the suspicion upon him. I tell you this of my sister – of one who to me is dearest on earth; and, having told you all this, is it any longer possible that I should set you free without conditions? You see, do you not, that it is impossible?"

No answer.

"I only ask you to promise – to give your simple word – not to say, or hint, to anyone that Pauline had the daggers. What a risk I take! What trust in you! I do not know you – I but trust blindly in the highly-evolved, that divine countenance which is yours; and since it was with the object of saving my sister that you came here with me, my gratitude to you deepens my trust. Give me, then, this promise, Miss Marsh!"

Now her lips opened a little to form the word "No," which he could just catch.

"Sublime!" he cried – "and I am no less sublime. If I was rich, if I had a fair name, and if I could dare to hope to win the love of a lady such as you, how favored of the gods I should be! But that is – a dream. Here, then, you will remain, until the day that Pauline is safely hidden in France: and on that day – since for myself I care little – I will open this door to you: never before. Meanwhile, tell me if you think of anything more that I can do for your comfort."

No answer.

"Good-night." He turned to go.

"You made me a promise," she said at the last moment.

"I have kept it," he said. "This afternoon, at great risk to myself, I wrote to your mother the words: 'Your daughter is alive and safe.' Are you satisfied?"

"Thank you," she said.

"Good-night," he murmured again.

Having locked the door, he waited five minutes outside silently, to hear if she sobbed or wailed in there in the utter dark: but no sound came to him. He went upstairs, put out the light, put down the candlestick in the passage, and was just drawing back the door latch, when he was aware of a strong step marching quickly along an almost deserted pavement.

After a little he peeped out and recognized the heavy figure of Inspector Winter. Even Janoc, the dreamer, whose dreams took such tragic shape, was surprised for an instant.

"How limited is the consciousness of men!" he muttered. "That so-called clever detective little guesses what he has just passed by."

But Winter, too, might have indulged in the same reflection: "How limited the consciousness of Janoc! He doesn't know where I am passing to – to visit and question his sister Pauline!"

Winter, a little further on, took a taxicab to Porchester Gardens, got out at the bottom of the street, and was walking on to Mrs. Marsh's temporary residence, when he saw Furneaux coming the opposite way.

Winter wished to pretend not to see him, but Furneaux spoke.

"Well, Providence throws us together somehow!"

"Ah! Why blame Providence?" said Winter, with rather a snarl.

"Not two hours ago there was our chance meeting by that graveside – "

The "chance" irritated Winter to the quick.

"You have all the faults of the French nature," he said bitterly, "without any of its merits: its levity without its industry, its pettiness without its minuteness – "

"And you the English frankness without its honesty. The chief thing about a Frenchman is his intelligence. At least you do not deny that I am intelligent?"

"I have thought you intelligent. I am damned if I think you so any longer."

"Oh, you will again – soon – when I wish it. We met just now at a grave, and there was more buried in that grave than the grave-diggers know: and we both stood looking at it: but I fancy there were more X-rays in my eye to see what was buried there than in yours!"

Driven beyond the bounds of patience, Winter threw out an arm in angry protest.

"Ha! ha! ha!" tittered Furneaux.

An important official at Scotland Yard must learn early the value of self-control. Consumed with a certain sense of the monstrous in this display of untimely mirth, Winter only gnawed a bristle or two of his mustache. He looked strangely at Furneaux, and they lingered together, loath to part, having still something bitter and rankling to say, but not knowing quite what, since men who have been all in all to each other cannot quarrel without some childish tone of schoolboy spite mingling in the wrangle.

"I believe I know where you are going now!" jeered Furneaux.

"Ah, you were always good at guessing."

"Going to pump the Pauline girl about Miss Marsh."

"True, of course, but not a very profound analysis considering that I am just ten yards from the house."

"Don't you even know where Miss Rosalind Marsh is?" asked Furneaux, producing a broken cigar from a pocket and sniffing it, simply because he was well aware that the trick displeased his superior.

"No. Do you?" Winter jeered back at him.

"I do."

"Oh, the sheerest bluff!"

"No, no bluff. I know."

"Well, let me imagine that it is bluff, anyway: for brute as a man might be, I won't give you credit for being such a brute as to keep that poor old lady undergoing the torments of hell through a deliberate silence of yours."

"Didn't you say that I have all the bad qualities of the Latin temperament?" answered Furneaux. "Now, there is something cat-like in the Latin; a Spaniard, for example, can be infernally cruel at a bullfight; and I'll admit that I can, too. But 'torments of hell' is rather an exaggeration, nor will the 'torments' last mortally long, for to-morrow afternoon at about four – at the hour that I choose – in the hour that I am ready – Miss Marsh will drive up to that door there."

"Evidently you were not born in Jersey, but in Gascony," Winter said sourly.

"Wrong again! A Jersey man will bounce any Gascon off his feet," said Furneaux. "And, just to pile up the agony, here is another sample for you, since you accuse me of bluffing. To-morrow afternoon, at that same hour – about four – I shall have that scoundrel Osborne in custody charged with the murder in Feldisham Mansions."

"Mr. Osborne?" whispered Winter, towering and frowning above his diminutive adversary. "Oh, Furneaux, you drive me to despair by your folly. If you are mad, which I hope you are, that explains, I suppose, your delusion that others are mad, too."

"Genius is closely allied with insanity," said Furneaux carelessly; "yet, you observe that I have never hinted any doubt as to your saneness. Wait, you'll see: my case against Osborne is now complete. A warrant can't be refused, not even by you, and to-morrow, as sure as you stand there, I lay my hand on your protégé's shoulder."

Winter nearly choked in his rage.

"All right! We'll see about that!" he said with a furious nod of menace. Furneaux chuckled; and now by a simultaneous impulse they walked apart, Furneaux whistling, in Winter a whirlwind of passion blowing the last shreds of pity from his soul.

He was soon sitting at the bedside of Pauline Dessaulx, now convalescent, though the coming of this strange man threw her afresh into a tumult of agitation. But Winter comforted her, smoothed her hand, assured her that there was no cause for alarm.

"I know that you took Mademoiselle de Bercy's diary," he said to her, "and it was very wrong of you not to give it up to the police, and to hide yourself as you did when your evidence was wanted. But, don't be frightened – I am here to-night to see if you can throw any light on the sad disappearance of Miss Marsh. The suspense is killing her mother, and I feel sure that it has some connection with the Feldisham Mansions affair. Now, can you help me? Think – tell me."

"Oh, I cannot!" She wrung her hands in a paroxysm of distress – "If I could, I would. I cannot imagine – !"

"Well, then, that part of my inquiry is ended. Only, listen to this attentively. I want to ask you one other question: Why did you leave the Exhibition early on the night of the murder, and where did you go to?"

"I – I – I, sir!" she said, pointing to her guiltless breast with a gaping mouth; "I, poor me, I left– ?"

"Oh, come now, don't delude yourself that the police are fools. You went to the Exhibition with the cook, Hester Se – "

"And she has said such a thing of me? She has declared that I left – ?"

"Yes, she has. Why trouble to deny it? You did leave – By the way, have you a brother or any other relative in London – ?"

"I – I, sir! A brother? Ah, mon Dieu! Oh, but, sir – !"

"Really you must calm yourself. You went away from the Exhibition at an early hour. There is no doubt about it, and you must have a brother or some person deeply interested in you, for some man afterwards got hold of the cook, Bertha Seward, and begged her for Heaven's sake not to mention your departure from the Exhibition that night. He gave her money – she told me so. And Inspector Clarke knows it, as well as I, for Hester Seward has told me that he went to question her – "

"M'sieur Clarke!" – at the name of "Clarke," which she whispered after him, the girl's face turned a more ghastly gray, for Clarke was the ogre, the griffon, the dragon of her recent life, at the mere mention of whom her heart leaped guiltily. Suddenly, abandoning the struggle, she fell back from her sitting posture, tried to hide her face in the bedclothes, and sobbed wildly:

"I didn't do it! I didn't do it!"

"Do what? Who said you had done anything?" asked Winter. "It isn't you that Mr. Clarke suspects, you silly child, it is a man named – "

She looked up with frenzied eyes to hear the name – but Winter stopped. In his hands the unhappy Pauline was a little hedge-bird in the talons of a hawk.

"Named?" she repeated.

"Never mind his name."

She buried her head afresh, giving out another heart-rending sob, and from her smothered lips came the words:

"It wasn't I – it was – it was – "

"It was who?" asked Winter.

She shivered through the whole of her delicate frame, and a low murmur came from her throat:

"You have seen the diary – it was Monsieur Furneaux."

Oddly enough, despite his own black conviction, this was not what Winter expected to hear.

He started, and said sharply:

"Oh, you are stupid. Why are you saying things that you know nothing of?"

"May Heaven forgive me for accusing anyone," she sobbed hoarsely. "But it was not anybody else. It could not be. You have seen the diary – it was Mr. Furneaux, or it was Mr. Osborne."

"Ah, two accusations now," cried Winter. "Furneaux or Osborne! You are trying to shield someone? What motive could Mr. Furneaux, or Mr. Osborne, have for such an act?"

"Was not Mr. Osborne her lover? And was not Mr. Furneaux her – husband?"

"Her – !"

In that awesome moment Winter hardly realized what he said. Half starting out of his chair, he glared in stupor at the shrinking figure on the bed, while every drop of blood fled away from his own face.

There was a long silence. Then Winter, bending over her, spoke almost in the whisper of those who share a shameful secret.

"You say that Mr. Furneaux was her husband? You know it?"

She trembled violently, but nerved herself to answer:

"Yes, I know it."

"Tell me everything. You must! Do you understand? I order you."

"She told me herself when we were friends. She was married to him in the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris on the 7th of November in the year '98. But she soon left him, since he had not the means to support her. I have her marriage certificate in my trunk."

Winter sat some minutes spellbound, his big round eyes staring at the girl, but not seeing her, his forehead glistening. This, then, supplied the long-sought motive. The unfaithful wife was about to marry another. This was the key. An affrighting callousness possessed him. He became the cold, unbending official again.

"You must get up at once, and give me that certificate," he said in the tone of authority, and went out of the room. In a little while she placed the paper in his hands, and he went away with it. Were she not so distraught she might have seen that it shook in his fingers.

Now he, like Clarke, held all the threads of an amazing case.

The next afternoon Furneaux was to arrest Osborne – it was for him, Winter, then, to anticipate such an outrage by the swift arrest of Furneaux. But was he quite ready? He wished he could secure another day's grace to collate and systematize each link of his evidence, and he hurried to Osborne's house in order to give Osborne a hint to vanish again for a day or two. Nevertheless, when at the very door, he paused, refrained, thought that he would manage things differently, and went away.

On one of the blinds of the library as he passed he saw the shadow of a head – of Osborne's head in fact, who in that hour of despair was sitting there, bowed down, hopeless now of finding Rosalind, whom he believed to be dead.

Though Mrs. Marsh had that evening received a note from Janoc: "Your daughter is alive," as yet Osborne knew nothing of it. He was mourning his loss in solitude when a letter was brought to him by Jenkins. He tore it open. After an uncomprehending glare at the written words he suddenly grasped their meaning.

The writer believes that your ex-secretary, Miss Hylda Prout, could tell you where Miss Rosalind Marsh is imprisoned.

"Imprisoned!" That was the word that pierced the gloom and struck deepest. She was alive, then – that was joy. But a prisoner – in what hole of blackness? Subject to what risks? In whose power? In ten seconds he was rushing out of the house, and was gone.

During the enforced respite of a journey in a cab he looked again at the mysterious note. It was a man's hand; small, neat writing; no signature. Who could have written it? But his brain had no room for guessing. He looked out to cry to the driver: "A sovereign for a quick run."

To his woe, Hylda Prout was not in her lodgings when he arrived there. During the last few days he had known nothing of her movements. After that flare-up of passion in the library, the relation of master and servant had, of course, come to an end between them; and the lady of the house in Holland Park where Hylda rented two rooms told him that Miss Prout had gone to see her brother for the weekend, and was not expected back till noon on the following day.

And Osborne did not know where her brother lived! His night was dismal with a horror of sleeplessness.

Long before midday he was in Hylda's sitting-room, only to pace it to and fro in an agony of impatience till two o'clock – and then she came.

"Oh, I have waited hours – weary hours!" he cried with a reproach that seemed to sweep aside the need for explanations.

"I am so sorry! – sit here with me."

She touched his hand, leading him to a couch and sitting near him, her hat still on, a flush on her pale face.

"Hylda" – her heart leapt: he called her "Hylda"! – "you know where Miss Marsh is."

She sprang to her feet in a passion.

"So it is to talk to me about another woman that you have come? I who have humbled myself, lost my self-respect – "

Osborne, too, stood up, stung to the quick by this mood of hers, so foreign to the disease of impatience and care in which he was being consumed.

"My good girl," he said, "are you going to be reasonable?"

"Come, then," she retorted, "let us be reasonable." She sat down again, her hands crossed on her lap, a passionate vindictiveness in her pursed lips, but a mock humility in her attitude.

"Tell me! tell me! Where shall I find her?" and he bent in eager pleading.

"No. How is it possible that I should tell you?"

"But you do know! Somehow you do! I see and feel it. Tell it me, Hylda! Where is she?"

She looked up at him with a smiling face which gave no hint of the asp's nest of jealousy which the sight of his agony and longing created in her bosom. And from those calm lips furious words came out:

"Why, I horribly hate the woman – and since I happen to know that she is suffering most vilely, do you think it likely that I would tell you where she is?"

He groaned, as his heart sank, his head dropped, his hope died. He moved slowly away to a window; then, with a frantic rush was back to her, on his knees, telling her of his wealth – it was more than she could measure! – and he had a checkbook in his pocket – all, one might say, was hers – she had only to name a sum – a hundred thousand, two hundred – anything – luxury for life, mansions, position – just for one little word, one little act of womanly kindliness.

When he stopped for lack of breath, she covered her eyes with the back of her hand, and began to cry; he saw her lips stretched in the tension of her emotion.

"Why do you cry? – that achieves nothing – listen – " he panted.

"To be offered money – to be so wounded – I who – " She could not go on.

"My God! Then I offer you – what you will – my friendship – my gratitude – my affection – only speak – "

"For another woman! Slave that you are to her! she is sweet to you, is she, in your heart? But she shall never have you – be sure of that – not while I draw the breath of life! If you want her free, I will sell myself for nothing less than yourself – you must marry me!"

Her astounding demand struck him dumb. He picked himself slowly up from her feet, walked again to the window, and stood with his back to her – a long time. Once she saw his head drop, heard him sob, heard the words: "Oh, no, not that"; and she sat, white and silent, watching him.

When he returned to her his eyes were calm, his face of a grim and stern pallor. He sat by her, took her hand, laid his lips on it.

"You speak of marriage," he said gently, "but just think what kind of a marriage that would be – forced, on one side – I full of resentment against you for the rest of my life – "

Thus did he try to reason with her, tried to show her a better way, offering to vow not to marry anyone for two years, during which he promised to see whether he could not acquire for her those feelings which a husband —

But she cut him short coldly. In two years she would be dead without him. She would kill herself. Life lived in pain was a thing of no value – a human life of no more value than a fly's. If he would marry her, she would tell him where Miss Marsh was: and, after the marriage, if he did not love her, she knew a way of setting him free – though, even in that case, Rosalind Marsh should never have him – she, Hylda, would see to that.

For the first time in his life Osborne knew what it was to hate. He, the man accused of murder, felt like a murderer, but he had grown strangely wise, and realized that this woman would die cheerfully rather than reveal her secret. He left her once more, stood ten minutes at the window – then laughed harshly.

"I agree," he said quite coolly, turning to her.

She, too, was outwardly cool, though heaven and hell fought together in her bosom. She held out to him a Bible. He kissed it.

"When?" she asked.

"This day week," he said.

She wrote on a piece of paper the address of a house in Poland Street; and handed it to him.