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 offeven 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....
... 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 whereshe 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, hesaw 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 themoonlight, 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—howyouknow it waslace?" 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.
"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 ofyours?" she asked, looking at him with a lowering of the lids in a quick scrutiny that was almost startled. "What isyourinterest 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 youknowit 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, andIput 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? Thathekilled her, or thatIkilled 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."
"Didtheykill 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. Butnothingshould 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 washe—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 onhisway 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 butone 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.Hewas 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 probablynever 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'sface 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 Tormoutheither 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 evento 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.
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.
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 itsown 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 presentwere 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 tormentedby 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.
"May I not be allowed to examine it?" he asked his solicitor.
"Why not?" said the coroner, and there was a tense moment when the celt was handed him.
He bent over it two seconds, and then said quietly: "This is certainly one of my collection of flints!"
His solicitor, taken quite aback, muttered an angry protest, and a queer murmur made itself felt. Osborne heard both the lawyer's words and the subdued "Ah!" of the others echoing in his aching heart. By this time he was as inwardly sensitive to the opinion of the mob as a wretch in the hands of inquisitors to the whim and humors of his torturers.
"That evidence will be taken on oath in due course," said the coroner, dryly official, and the examination of Miss Prout went on after the incident.
"And now as to the dagger," resumed the Treasury solicitor, "tell us of that."
She described it, its shape, the blunt edges of the long and pointed blade, the handle, the label on it with the date. It was Saracen, and it, too, like the celt, had once been used, in all probability, in the hands of wild men in shedding blood.
"And you are sure of the date when you first missed it from its place in the museum?"
"It was on the third day after the murder"—and Hylda Prout's glance traveled for an instant to the veiled, bent head of Rosalind, as it seemed to droop lower after every answer that she gave.
"And you are unable to conceive how both the dagger and the celt could have vanished from their places about that time?"
"Yes, I conceive that they were stolen," she said—"unless Mr. Osborne made them a present to some friend, for I have known him to do that."
"'Stolen,' you say," the Treasury man remarked. "But you have no grounds for such a belief? You suggest no motive for a thief to steal these two objects and no other from the museum? You know of no one who entered the room during those days?"
"No, I know of no one—except Inspector Furneaux, who seems to have entered it about six o'clock on the evening of the murder."
The coroner looked up sharply from his notes. This was news to the court.
"Oh?" said the examiner. "Let us hear how that came about."
She explained that Furneaux had called to see Mr. Osborne, and, while awaiting his coming in the library, had apparently strolled into the museum. Jenkins, Mr. Osborne's valet, was her informant. It was not evidence, but the statement was out before the court well knew where it was leading. Winter's lip quivered with suppressed agitation, and over Clarke's face came a strange expression of amazement, a stare of utter wonderment widening his eyes, as when one has been violently struck, and knows not by what or whom.
When Hylda Prout stepped down, the coroner invited the officer in charge of the case to explain the curious bit of intelligence given by the last witness.
Furneaux, not one whit disturbed in manner, rose to give his evidence of the incident. Oddly enough, his eyes dwelt all the time, with a dull deadness of expression in them, upon the lowered face of Winter.
It was true, he told the court, that he had called upon Mr. Osborne that evening; it was true that he was asked to wait; and he seemed to remember now that hehadwandered through a doorway into a room full of curios to have a look at them in those idle moments.
"So you knew Mr. Osbornebeforethe murder?" inquired the court.
"Yes. I knew him very well by sight and repute, as a man about town, though not to speak to."
"And what was the nature of the business on which you called to see him?"
"It was a purely personal matter."
The coroner paused, with the air of a man who suddenly discovers a morass where he imagined there was a clear road.
"And did you see Mr. Osborne that evening?" he asked at length.
"No, sir. After I had waited some time the valet entered and told me that Mr. Osborne had just telephoned to say that he would not be home before dinner. So I came away."
"Have you spoken to Mr. Osbornesincethen about the matter on which you called to see him that evening?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"Because after that evening there was no longer any need!"
Well, to the more experienced officials in court this explanation had an unusual sound, but to Winter, who slowly but surely was gathering the threads of the murder in the flat into his hands, it sounded like a sentence of death; and to Clarke, too, who had in his possession Rose de Bercy's diary taken from Pauline Dessaulx, it sounded so amazing, that he could scarce believe his ears.
However, the coroner nodded to Furneaux, andFurneaux turned to Osborne's solicitor, who suddenly resolved to ask no questions, so the dapper little man seated himself again at the table—much to the relief of the jury, who were impatient of any red herring drawn across the trail of evidence that led unmistakably to the millionaire.
Then, at last, appeared six witnesses who spoke, no longer against, but for Osborne. Four were International polo-players, and two were waiters at the Ritz Hotel, and all were positive that at the hour when Mrs. Bates saw her employer at home,theysaw him elsewhere—or some among them saw him, and the others, without seeing him, knew that he was elsewhere.
Against this unassailable testimony was the obviously honest cabman, and Osborne's own housekeeper: and the jury, level-headed men, fully inclined to be just, though perhaps, in this instance, passionate and prejudiced, weighed it in their hearts.
But Furneaux, to suit his own purposes, had contrived that the tag of lace should come last; and with its mute appeal for vengeance everything in favor of Osborne was swept out of the bosom of His Majesty's lieges, and only wrath and abhorrence raged there.
Why, if he had actually killed Rose de Bercy, Osborne should carry about that incriminating bit of lace in his bag, no one seemed to stop to ask; but when the dreadful thing was held up before his eyes, the twelve good men and true looked at it and ateach other, and a sort of shuddering abhorrence pervaded the court.
Even the Italian Antonio, who had contrived to be present as representing some obscure paper in Paris—the very man who had put the lace into the bag—shook his head over Osborne's guilt, being, as it were, carried out of himself by the vigor and rush of the mental hurricane which swept around him!
When Osborne, put into the box, repeated that the "celt" was really his, this candor now won no sympathy. When he said solemnly that the bit of lace had been secreted among his belongings by some unknown hand, the small company of men present in court despised him for so childish a lie.
His spirit, as he stood in that box, exposed to the animus of so many spirits, felt as if it was being hurried by a kind of magnetic gale to destruction; his fingers, his knees shivered, his voice cracked in his throat; he could not keep his eyes from being wild, his skin from being white, and in his heart his own stupefied conscience accused him of the sin that his brothers charged him with.
Though the jury soon ascertained from the coroner's injunctions what their verdict had to be, they still took twenty minutes to think of it. However, they knew well that the coroner had spoken to them under the suggestion of the police, who, no doubt, would conduct their own business best; so in the end they came in with the verdict of "willful murder committed by some person or persons unknown."
And now it was the turn of the mob to have their say. The vast crowd was kept in leash until they were vouchsafed just a glimpse of Osborne, in the midst of a mass of police guarding him, as he emerged from the court to his automobile. Then suddenly, as it were, the hoarse bellow of the storm opened to roar him out of the universe—an overpowering load of sound for one frail heart to bear without quailing.
But if Osborne's heart quailed, there was one heart there that did not quail, one smooth forehead that suddenly flushed and frowned in opposition to a world's current, and dared to think and feel alone.
As the mob yelped its execration, Rosalind Marsh cried a protest of "Shame, oh, shame!"
For now her woman's bosom smote her with ruth, and her compassion championed him, believed in him, refused to admit that he could have been so base. If she had been near him she would have raised her veil, and gazed into his face with a steady smile!
As she was about to enter the carriage that awaited her, someone said close behind her:
"Miss Marsh."
She looked round and saw a small man.
"You know me," he said—"Inspector Furneaux. We have even met and spoken together before—you remember the old man who traveled with you in the train from Tormouth? That was myself in another aspect."
His eyes smiled, though his voice was respectful,but Rosalind gave him the barest inch of condescension in a nod.
"Now, I wish to speak to you," he muttered hurriedly. "I cannot say when exactly—I am very occupied just now—but soon.... To speak to you, I think, in your own interests—if I may. But I do not know your address."
Very coldly, hardly caring to try and understand his motive, she mentioned the house in Porchester Gardens. In another moment she was in her carriage.
When she reached home she saw in her mother's face just a shadow of inquiry as to where she had been driving during the forenoon; but Rosalind said not a word of the inquest. She was, indeed, very silent during the whole of that day and the next. She was restless and woefully uneasy. Through the night her head was full of strange thoughts, and she slept but little, in fitful moments of weariness. Her mother observed her with a quiet eye, pondering this unwonted distress in her heart, but said nothing.
On the third morning Rosalind was sitting in a rocking-chair, her head laid on the back, her eyes closed; and with a motion corresponding with the gentle to-and-fro motion of the chair her head moved wearily from side to side. This went on for some time; till suddenly she brought her hand to her forehead in a rather excited gesture, her eyes opened with the weak look of eyes dazzled with light, and she said aloud:
"Oh, Imust!..."
Now she sprang up in a hurry, hastened to an escritoire, and dashed off a letter in a very scamper of haste.
At last, then, the floods had broken their gates, for this is what she wrote:
My dear, my dear, I was brutal to you that night at the sun-dial. But it was necessary, if I was to maintain the severity which I felt that your lack of frankness to me deserved. Inwardly there was a terribly weak spot, of which I was afraid; and if you had come after me when I left you, and had commanded me, or prayed me, or touched me, no doubt it would have been all up with me. Forgive me, then, if I seemed over harsh where, I'm afraid, I am disposed to be rather too infinitely lenient. At present, you see, I quite lack the self-restraint to keep from telling you that I am sorry for you.... I was present at the inquest.... Pity is like lightning; it fills, it burns up, it enlightens ... see me here struck with it!... You are not without a friend, one who knows you, judges you, and acquits you.... If you want to come to me, come!... I once thought well of a Mr. Glyn, but, like a flirt, will forget him, if Osborne is of the same manner, speaks with the same voice.... My mother is usually good to me....
My dear, my dear, I was brutal to you that night at the sun-dial. But it was necessary, if I was to maintain the severity which I felt that your lack of frankness to me deserved. Inwardly there was a terribly weak spot, of which I was afraid; and if you had come after me when I left you, and had commanded me, or prayed me, or touched me, no doubt it would have been all up with me. Forgive me, then, if I seemed over harsh where, I'm afraid, I am disposed to be rather too infinitely lenient. At present, you see, I quite lack the self-restraint to keep from telling you that I am sorry for you.... I was present at the inquest.... Pity is like lightning; it fills, it burns up, it enlightens ... see me here struck with it!... You are not without a friend, one who knows you, judges you, and acquits you.... If you want to come to me, come!... I once thought well of a Mr. Glyn, but, like a flirt, will forget him, if Osborne is of the same manner, speaks with the same voice.... My mother is usually good to me....
She enclosed it in a flurry of excitement, ran to the bell-rope, rang, and while waiting for a servant held the envelope in the manner of one who is on the very point of tearing a paper in two, but halts to see on which cheek the wind will hit. In the midst of this suspense of indecision the door opened; and now, straightway, she hastened to it, and got rid of the letter, saying rapidly in a dropped voice, confidentially:
"Pauline, put that in the pillar-box at once for me, will you?"
Another moment and she stood alone there, with a shocked and beating heart, the deed done, past recall now.
As for Pauline Dessaulx, she was half-way down the stairs when she chanced to look at the envelope. "Rupert Osborne, Esq." She started! Everything connected with that name was of infinite interest to her! But she had not dreamt that Miss Marsh knew it, save as everyone else knew it now, from public gossip and the papers.
She had never seen Rosalind Marsh, or her mother, till the day of their arrival from the country. It was but ten days earlier that she had become the servant of a Mrs. Prawser, a friend of Mrs. Marsh's, who kept a private boarding-house, being in reduced circumstances. Then, after but an interval of peace and security, the Marshes had come, and as she let them in, and they were being embraced by Mrs. Prawser, Inspector Clarke had appeared at the door, nearly striking her dead with agitation, and demanding of her the diary, which she had handed him.
Luckily, luckily, she had been wise enough before that to scratch out with many thick scratches of the pen the name that had been written by the actress before the initials C. E. F. in that passage where the words appeared: "If I am killed this night it will be by —— or by C. E. F." But supposeshe had not shown such sense and daring, what then? She shivered at the thought.
And a new problem now tortured her. Was it somehow owing to the fact that Miss Marsh knew Osborne that Inspector Clarke had come upon her at the moment of the two ladies' arrival? What was the relation between Miss Marsh and Osborne? What was in this letter? It might be well to see....
Undecided, Pauline stood on the stairs some seconds, letter in hand, all the high color fled from lips and cheeks, her breast rising and falling, no mere housemaid now, but a figure of anguish fit for an artist to sketch there in her suspense, a well-molded girl of perfect curves and graceful poise.
Then it struck her that Miss Marsh might be looking out of the window to watch her hurrying with the letter to the pillar-box a little way down the street, and at this thought she ran downstairs and out, hurried to the pillar-box, raised her arm with the letter, inserted it in the slot, drew it out swiftly and hiddenly again, slipped it into her pocket, and sped back to the house.
In her rooms half an hour later she steamed the envelope open, and read the avowal of another woman's passion and sympathy. It appeared, then, that Miss Marsh was now in love with Osborne? Well, that did not specially interest or concern her, Pauline. It was a good thing that Osborne had so soon forgottencette salope, Rose de Bercy. She, Pauline,had conceived a fondness for Miss Marsh; she had detested her mistress, the dead actress. At the first chance she crept afresh into the street, and posted the letter in grim earnest. But an hour had been lost, an hour that meant a great deal in the workings of this tragedy of real life and, as a minor happening, some of the gum was dissolved off the flap of the envelope.
Inspector Furneaux, as he had promised after the inquest, called upon Rosalind during the afternoon. They had an interview of some length in Mrs. Prawser's drawing-room, which was otherwise untenanted. Furneaux spoke of the picturesqueness of Tormouth, but Rosalind's downright questioning forced him to speak of himself in the part of the decrepit Mr. Pugh, and why he had been there as such. He had gone to have a look at Osborne.
"Is his every step, then, spied on in this fashion?" asked Rosalind.
"No," answered Furneaux. "The truth is that I had had reason to think that the man was again playing the lover in that quarter——"
"Ah, playing," said Rosalind with quick sarcasm. "It is an insipid phrase for so serious an occupation. But what reason had you for thinking that he was playing in that particular mood?"
"The reason is immaterial.... In fact, he had impressed on the back of a letter a name—I may tell you it was 'Rosalind'—and sent it off inadvertently——"
"Oh, poor fellow! Not so skilled a villain then, after all," she murmured.
"But the point was that, if this was so, it was clear to me that he could not be much good—I speak frankly——"
"Very, sir."
"And with a good meaning toyou."
"Let us take it at that. It makes matters easier."
"Well, as I suspected, so I found. And—I was disgusted. I give you my assurance that he had professed to Mademoiselle de Bercy that he—loved her. He had, he had! And she, so pitifully handled, so butchered, was hardly yet cold in her grave. Even assuming his perfect innocence in that horrible drama, still, I must confess, I—I—was disgusted; I was put against the man forever. And I was more than disgusted with him, I was concerned for the lady whose inclinations such a weather-vane might win. I was concerned before I saw you; I was ten times more concerned afterwards. I travelled to town in the same compartment as you—I heard your voice—I enjoyed the privilege of breathing the same air as you and your charming mother. Hence—I am here."
Rosalind smiled. She found the detective's compliments almost nauseating, but she must ascertain his object.
"Why, precisely?" she asked.
"I want to warn you. I had warned you before: for I had given a certain girl whose love Mr. Osbornehas inspired a hint of what was going on, and I felt sure that she would not fail to tell you who 'Mr. Glyn' was. Was I not right?"
Rosalind bent her head a little under this unexpected thrust.
"I received a note," she said. "Who, then, is this 'certain girl, whose love Mr. Osborne has inspired,' if one may ask?"
"I may tell you—in confidence. Her name is Prout. She is his secretary."
"He is—successful in that way," observed Rosalind coldly, looking down at a spray of flowers pinned to her breast.
"Too much so, Miss Marsh. Now, I felt confident that the warning given by Miss Prout would effectually quash any friendship between a lady of your pride and quality and Mr. Glyn—Osborne. But then, through your thick veil I noticed you at the inquest: and I said to myself, 'I am older than she is—I'll speak to her in the tone of an old and experienced man, if she will let me.'"
"You see, I let you. I even thank you. But then you notice that Mr. Osborne is just now vilified and friendless."
"Oh, there is his Miss Prout."
Rosalind's neck stiffened a little.
"That is indefinite," she said. "I know nothing of this lady, except that, as you tell me, she is ready to betray her employer to serve her own ends. Mr. Osborne is my friend: it is my duty to refuse tocredit vague statements made against him. It is not possible—it cannot be——"
She stopped, rather in confusion. Furneaux believed he could guess what she meant to say.
"Itispossible, believe me," he broke in earnestly. "Since it was possible, as you know, for him to turn his mind so easily from the dead, it is also possible——"
"Oh, the dead deceived him!" she protested with a lively flush. "The dead was unworthy of him. He never loved her."
"Hedeceivedher," cried Furneaux also in an unaccountable heat—"he deceived her. No doubt she was as fully worthy of him as he of her—it was a pair of them. And he loved her as much as he can love anyone."
"Women are said to be the best judges in such matters, Inspector Furneaux."
"So, then, you will not be guided by me in this?" Furneaux said, standing up.
"No. Nevertheless, I thank you for your apparent good intent," answered Rosalind.
He was silent a little while, looking down at her. On her part, she did not move, and kept her eyes studiously averted.
"Then, for your sake, and to spite him, I accuse him to you of the murder!" he almost hissed.
She smiled.
"That is very wrong of you, very unlike an officerof the law. You know that he is quite innocent of it."
"Great, indeed, is your faith!" came the taunt. "Well, then," he added suddenly, "again for your sake, and again to spite him, I will even let you into a police secret. Hear it—listen to it—yesterday, with a search-warrant, I raided Mr. Osborne's private apartments. And this is what I found—at the bottom of a trunk a suit of clothes, the very clothes which the driver of the taxicab described as those of the man whom he took from Berkeley Street to Feldisham Mansions on the night of the murder. And those clothes, now in the possession of the police, are all speckled and spotted with blood. Come, Miss Marsh—what do you say now? Is your trust weakened?"
Furneaux's eyes sparkled with a glint of real hatred of Osborne, but Rosalind saw nothing of that. She rose, took an unsteady step or two, and stared through the window out into the street. Then she heard the door of the room being opened. She turned at once. Before a word could escape her lips, Furneaux was gone.
One minute later, she was scribbling with furious speed:
Do not read my letter. I will call for it—unopened—in person.Rosalind Marsh.
Do not read my letter. I will call for it—unopened—in person.
Rosalind Marsh.
Rosalind Marsh.
She tugged at the bell-rope. When Pauline appeared, she whispered: "Quickly, Pauline, for my sake—this telegram." And as Pauline ran with it,she sank into a chair, and sat there with closed eyelids and trembling lips, sorely stricken in her pride, yet even more sorely in her heart.
Now, if her letter had gone by the post by which she had sent it, Osborne would have read it two hours or more before the telegram arrived. But it had been kept back by Pauline: and, as it was, the letter only arrived five minutes before the telegram.
At that moment Osborne was upstairs in his house. The letter was handed to Hylda Prout in the library. She looked at it, and knew the writing, for she had found in Osborne's room at Tormouth a note of invitation to luncheon from Rosalind to Osborne, and did not scruple to steal it. A flood of jealousy now stabbed her heart and inflamed her eyes. It was then near five in the afternoon, and she had on a silver tripod a kettle simmering for tea, for she was a woman of fads, and held that the servants of the establishment brewed poison. She quickly steamed open the letter—which had been already steamed open by Pauline—and, every second expecting Osborne to enter, ran her eye through it. Then she pressed down the flap of the envelope anew.
Two minutes afterwards Rupert made his appearance, and she handed him the letter.
He started! He stared at it, his face at one instant pale, at the next crimson. And as he so stood, flurried, glad, agitated, there entered Jenkins with a telegram on a salver.
"What is it?" muttered Osborne with a gestureof irritation, for he was not quite master of himself in these days. Nevertheless, to get the telegram off his mind at once before rushing upstairs to read the letter in solitude, he snatched at it, tore it open, and ran his eye over it.
"Do not read my letter. I will call for itunopened...."
He let his two hands drop in a palsy of anger, the letter in one, the telegram in the other—bitter disappointment in his heart, a wild longing, a mad temptation....
He lifted the letter to allow his gaze to linger futilely upon it, like Tantalus.... In spite of his agitation he could not fail to see that the envelope was actually open, for, as a matter of fact, the gum had nearly all been steamed away....
It was open! He had but to put in his finger and draw it out, and read, and revel, like the parched traveler at the solitary well in the desert. Would that be dishonest? Who could blame him for that? He had not opened the envelope....
"Miss Prout, just give me the gum-pot," he said, for he could see that the gum on the flap was too thin to be of any service.
Hylda Prout handed him a brush, and he pasted down the flap, but with fingers so agitated that he made daubs with the gum on the envelope, daubs which anyone must notice on examination.
Meantime, he had dropped the telegram upon the table, and Hylda Prout read it.