Strange as a process of nature is the way in which events, themselves unimportant, work into one another to produce some foredestined result that shall astonish the world.
The sudden appearance of Inspector Clarke before Pauline Dessaulx at the front door of Mrs. Marsh's lodgings produced by its shock a thorough upset in the girl's moral and physical being. And in Clarke himself that diary of Rose de Bercy which Pauline handed him produced a hilarity, an almost drunken levity of mind, the results of which levity and of Pauline's upset dovetailed one with the other to bring about an effect which lost none of its singularity because it was preordained.
To Clarke the diary was a revelation! Moreover, it was one of those sweet revelations which placed the fact of his own wit and wisdom in a clearer light than he had seen those admitted qualities before, for it showed that, though working in the dark, he had been guided aright by that special candle of understanding that must have been lit within him before his birth.
"Well, fancy that," cried he again and again in a kind of surprise. "I was right all the time!"
He sat late at night, coatless and collarless, at a table over the diary, Mrs. Clarke in the next room long since asleep, London asleep, the very night asleep from earth right up to heaven. Four days before a black cat had been adopted into the household. Surely it wasthatwhich had brought him the luck to get hold of the diary!—so easily, so unexpectedly. Pussie was now perched on the table, her purr the sole sound in the quietude, and Clarke, who would have scoffed at a hint of superstition, was stroking her, as he read for the third time those last pages written on the day of her death by the unhappy Frenchwoman.
... I so seldom dream, that it has become the subject of remark, and Dr. Naurocki of the Institute said once that it is because I am such a "perfect animal." It is well to be a perfectsomething: but that much I owe only to my father and mother. I am afraid I am not a perfect anything else. A perfect liar, perhaps; a perfect adventuress; using as stepping-stones those whose fond hearts love me; shallow, thin within; made of hollow-ringing tin from my skin to the tissue of my liver. Oh, perhaps I might have done better for myself! Suppose I had stayed with Marguerite andle preArmaud on the farm, and helped to milk the two cows, and met some rustic lover at the stile at dusk, and married him in muslin? It might have been as well! There is something in me that is famished and starved, and decayed, something that pines and sighs because of its utter thinness—I suppose it is what they call "the soul." I have lied until I am become a lie, an unreality, a Nothing. I seem to see myselfclearly to-day; and if I could repent now, I'd say "I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him 'Father.'"Too late now, I suppose. Marguerite would draw her skirts away from touching me, though the cut of the skirt would set me smiling; and, if the fatted calf was set before me on a soiled table-cloth, I should be ill.Too late! You can't turn back the clock's hands: the clock stops. God help me, I feel horribly remorseful. Why should I have dreamt it? I so seldom dream! and I havenever, I think, dreamt with such living vividness. I thought I saw my father and Marguerite standing over my dead body, staring at me. I saw them, and I saw myself, and my face was all bruised and wounded; and Marguerite said: "Well, she sought for it," and my father's face twitched, and suddenly he sobbed out: "I wish to Heaven I had died for her!" and my dead ears on the bed heard, and my dead heart throbbed just once again at him, and then was dead for ever.
... I so seldom dream, that it has become the subject of remark, and Dr. Naurocki of the Institute said once that it is because I am such a "perfect animal." It is well to be a perfectsomething: but that much I owe only to my father and mother. I am afraid I am not a perfect anything else. A perfect liar, perhaps; a perfect adventuress; using as stepping-stones those whose fond hearts love me; shallow, thin within; made of hollow-ringing tin from my skin to the tissue of my liver. Oh, perhaps I might have done better for myself! Suppose I had stayed with Marguerite andle preArmaud on the farm, and helped to milk the two cows, and met some rustic lover at the stile at dusk, and married him in muslin? It might have been as well! There is something in me that is famished and starved, and decayed, something that pines and sighs because of its utter thinness—I suppose it is what they call "the soul." I have lied until I am become a lie, an unreality, a Nothing. I seem to see myselfclearly to-day; and if I could repent now, I'd say "I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him 'Father.'"
Too late now, I suppose. Marguerite would draw her skirts away from touching me, though the cut of the skirt would set me smiling; and, if the fatted calf was set before me on a soiled table-cloth, I should be ill.
Too late! You can't turn back the clock's hands: the clock stops. God help me, I feel horribly remorseful. Why should I have dreamt it? I so seldom dream! and I havenever, I think, dreamt with such living vividness. I thought I saw my father and Marguerite standing over my dead body, staring at me. I saw them, and I saw myself, and my face was all bruised and wounded; and Marguerite said: "Well, she sought for it," and my father's face twitched, and suddenly he sobbed out: "I wish to Heaven I had died for her!" and my dead ears on the bed heard, and my dead heart throbbed just once again at him, and then was dead for ever.
Clarke did not know that he was reading literature, but he did know that this was more exciting than any story he had ever set eyes on. He stopped, lit a pipe, and resumed.
I saw it, I heard it, though it was in a black world that it happened, a world all draped in crape; black, black. But what is the matter with me to-day? Is there any other woman so sad in this great city, I wonder? I have opened one of the bottles of Old Veuve, so there are only seven left now; and I have drunk two full glasses of it. But it has made no difference; and I have to dine with Lady Knox-Florestan, and go with her to the opera; and Osborne may be coming. They will think me a death's-head, and catch melancholy from me like a fever. I do not know why I dreamt it, and why I cannot forget. It seems rather strange. Is anything going to happen to me, really? Oh, inside this breast of mine there is a bell tolling, and a funeral moving to the tomb this afternoon. It is as if I had drunk of some lugubrious drug thatturns the human bosom to wormwood. Is it my destiny to die suddenly, and lie in an early grave? No, not that! Let me be in rags, and shrunken, with old, old eyes and toothless gums, but give me life! Let me say I am still alive!
I saw it, I heard it, though it was in a black world that it happened, a world all draped in crape; black, black. But what is the matter with me to-day? Is there any other woman so sad in this great city, I wonder? I have opened one of the bottles of Old Veuve, so there are only seven left now; and I have drunk two full glasses of it. But it has made no difference; and I have to dine with Lady Knox-Florestan, and go with her to the opera; and Osborne may be coming. They will think me a death's-head, and catch melancholy from me like a fever. I do not know why I dreamt it, and why I cannot forget. It seems rather strange. Is anything going to happen to me, really? Oh, inside this breast of mine there is a bell tolling, and a funeral moving to the tomb this afternoon. It is as if I had drunk of some lugubrious drug thatturns the human bosom to wormwood. Is it my destiny to die suddenly, and lie in an early grave? No, not that! Let me be in rags, and shrunken, with old, old eyes and toothless gums, but give me life! Let me say I am still alive!
"By Jove!" growled Clarke, chewing his pipe, "that rings in my ears!"
Yet I have had curious tokens, hints, fancies, of late. Four nights ago, as I was driving down Pall Mall from Lady Sinclair'sdiner dansant—it was about eleven-thirty—I saw a man in the shadow at a corner who I could have sworn for a moment was F. I didn't see his face, for as the carriage approached him, he turned his back, and it was that turning of the back, I think, that made me observe him. Suppose all the time F. knows of me?—knowswhoRose de Bercyis! I never wanted to have that Academy portrait painted, and I must have been mad to consent in the end. If F. saw it? If heknows? What would he do? His nature is capable of ravaging flames of passion! Suppose he killed me? But could a poor woman be so unlucky? No, he doesn't know, he can't, fate is not so hard. Then there is that wretched Pauline—she shan't be in this house another week. My quarrel with her this morning was the third, and the most bitter of all. Really, that girl knows too much of me to permit of our living any longer under one roof; and, what is more, she has twice dropped hints lately which certainly seem to bear the interpretation that she knows of my work in Berlin for the Russian Government. Oh, but that must only be the madness of my fancy! Two persons, and two only, in the whole world know of it—how couldshe, possibly? Yet she said in her Friday passion: "You will not be a long liver, Madame, you have been too untrue to your dupes."Untrue to my dupes!Which dupes? My God, if she meant the Anarchists!
Yet I have had curious tokens, hints, fancies, of late. Four nights ago, as I was driving down Pall Mall from Lady Sinclair'sdiner dansant—it was about eleven-thirty—I saw a man in the shadow at a corner who I could have sworn for a moment was F. I didn't see his face, for as the carriage approached him, he turned his back, and it was that turning of the back, I think, that made me observe him. Suppose all the time F. knows of me?—knowswhoRose de Bercyis! I never wanted to have that Academy portrait painted, and I must have been mad to consent in the end. If F. saw it? If heknows? What would he do? His nature is capable of ravaging flames of passion! Suppose he killed me? But could a poor woman be so unlucky? No, he doesn't know, he can't, fate is not so hard. Then there is that wretched Pauline—she shan't be in this house another week. My quarrel with her this morning was the third, and the most bitter of all. Really, that girl knows too much of me to permit of our living any longer under one roof; and, what is more, she has twice dropped hints lately which certainly seem to bear the interpretation that she knows of my work in Berlin for the Russian Government. Oh, but that must only be the madness of my fancy! Two persons, and two only, in the whole world know of it—how couldshe, possibly? Yet she said in her Friday passion: "You will not be a long liver, Madame, you have been too untrue to your dupes."Untrue to my dupes!Which dupes? My God, if she meant the Anarchists!
Clarke's face was a study when he came to that word. It wore the beatific expression of the man who is justified in his own judgment.
Just suppose that she knows! For that she is mixed up with some of them to some uncertain extent I have guessed for two years. And if they knew that I have actually been a Government agent; they would do for me, oh, they would, I know, it would be all up with me. Three months ago Sauriac Paulus in thepromenoireat Covent Garden, said to me: "By the way, do you know that you have been condemned to death?" I forgetà proposof what he said it, and have never given it a thought from that day. He was bantering me, laughing in the lightest vein, but—God! it never struck me like this before!—Suppose there was earnest under the jest, deep-hidden under? He is a deep, deep, evil beast, that man. Those were his words—I remember distinctly. "By the way, do you know that you have been condemned to death?" "By the way:" his heavy face shook with chuckling. And it never once till now entered my head!—Oh, but, after all, I must be horribly ill to be having such thoughts this day! The beast, of course, didn't mean anything. Think, though, of saying, "by the way?"—the terrible, evil beast. Oh, yes, I am ill. I have begun to die. This night, may be, my soul shall be required of me. I hear Marguerite saying again, "Well, she sought for it," and my father's bitter sobbing, "I wish to Heaven I had died for her!" But, if I am killed this day, it will be by ... or by C. E. F....
Just suppose that she knows! For that she is mixed up with some of them to some uncertain extent I have guessed for two years. And if they knew that I have actually been a Government agent; they would do for me, oh, they would, I know, it would be all up with me. Three months ago Sauriac Paulus in thepromenoireat Covent Garden, said to me: "By the way, do you know that you have been condemned to death?" I forgetà proposof what he said it, and have never given it a thought from that day. He was bantering me, laughing in the lightest vein, but—God! it never struck me like this before!—Suppose there was earnest under the jest, deep-hidden under? He is a deep, deep, evil beast, that man. Those were his words—I remember distinctly. "By the way, do you know that you have been condemned to death?" "By the way:" his heavy face shook with chuckling. And it never once till now entered my head!—Oh, but, after all, I must be horribly ill to be having such thoughts this day! The beast, of course, didn't mean anything. Think, though, of saying, "by the way?"—the terrible, evil beast. Oh, yes, I am ill. I have begun to die. This night, may be, my soul shall be required of me. I hear Marguerite saying again, "Well, she sought for it," and my father's bitter sobbing, "I wish to Heaven I had died for her!" But, if I am killed this day, it will be by ... or by C. E. F....
That last dash after the "F." was not, Clarke saw, meant as a dash, for it was a long curved line, as if her elbow had been struck, or she herself violently startled. She had probably intended, this time, to write the name in full, but the interruption stopped her.
At the spot of the first dash lay thick ink-marks—really made by Pauline Dessaulx—and Clarke, cute enough to see this, now commenced to scratch out the ink blot with a penknife, and after the black dust was scraped away, he used a damp sponge.
It was a delicate, slow operation, his idea being that, since under those layers of ink lay a written name, if he removed the layers with dainty care, then he would see the name beneath. And this was no doubt true in theory, but in practice no care was dainty enough to do the trick with much success. He did, however, manage to see the shape of some letters, and, partly with the aid of his magnifying glass, partly with the aid of his imagination, he seemed to make out the word "Janoc."
The murder, then, was committed either by Janoc, or by C. E. F.—this, as the mantle of the night wore threadbare, and some gray was showing through it in the east, Clarke became certain of.
Whowas C. E. F.? There was Furneaux, of course. Those were his initials, and as the name of Furneaux arose in his mind, Clarke's head dropped back over his chair-back, and a long, delicious spasm of laughter shook him. For the idea that itmight, in very truth, be Furneaux who was meant never for one instant occurred to him. He assumed that it must needs be some French or Russian C. E. F., but the joke of the coincidence of the initials with Furneaux's, who had charge of the case, into whose hands the case had been given by Winter over his (Clarke's) head, was so rich, that he resolved to show the diary to Winter, and to try and keep from bursting out laughing, while he said:
"Look here, sir—this is your Furneaux!"
Clarke, indeed, had heard at the inquest how Furneauxhad been seen on the evening of the murder in Osborne's museum, from which the "celt" and the dagger had vanished. Hearing this, his mind had instantly remembered the "C. E. F." of the diary, and had been amazed at such a coincidence. But his brain never sprang to grapple with the possibility that Rose de Bercy might, in truth, be afraid of Furneaux. So, whoever "C. E. F." might be, Clarke had no interest in him, never suspected him: his thoughts had too long been preoccupied with one idea—Anarchists, Janoc, Anarchists—to receive a new bent with real perspicacity and interest. And the diary confirmed him in this opinion: for she had actually been condemned to death as an agent of the Russian Government months before. At last he stood up, stretching his arms in weariness before tumbling into bed.
"Well! to think that I was right!" he said again, and again he laughed.
When he was going out in the morning, he put some more ink-marks over the "Janoc" in the diary—for he did not mean that any other than himself should lay his hand on the murderer of Rose de Bercy—and when he arrived at Scotland Yard, he showed the diary to the Chief Inspector.
Winter laid it on the desk before him, and as he read where Clarke's finger pointed, his face went as colorless as the paper he was looking at.
A laugh broke out behind him.
"Furneaux!"
And Winter, glancing round, saw Clarke's face merry, like carved ivory in a state of gayety, showing a tooth or two lacking, and browned fangs. For a moment he stared at Clarke, without comprehension, till the absurd truth rushed in upon him that Clarke was really taking it in jest. Then he, too, laughed even more loudly.
"Ha! ha!—yes, Furneaux! 'Pon my honor, the funniest thing! Furneaux it is for sure!"
"Officer in charge of the case!"
"Ripping! By gad, I shall have to apply for a warrant!"
Finding his chief in this rare good humor, Clarke thought to obtain a little useful information.
"Do you know any of the Anarchist crowd with those initials, sir?" he asked.
"I think I do; yes, a Frenchman. Or it may be a German. There is no telling whom she means—no telling. But where on earth did you come across this diary?"
"You remember the lady's-maid, Pauline, the girl who couldn't be found to give evidence at the inquest? I was following the Anarchist Antonio, who seemed to be prowling after some ladies in a cab a day or two ago, and the door that was opened to the ladies when their cab stopped was opened by—Pauline."
Then he told how he had obtained the diary, and volunteered a theory as to the girl's possession of it.
"She must have picked it up in the flat on cominghome from the Exhibition on the night of the murder, and kept it."
They discussed the circumstances fully, and Clarke went away, his conscience clear of having kept the matter dark from headquarters, yet confident that he had not put Winter on the track of his own special prey, Janoc. And as his footsteps became faint and fainter behind the closed door, Winter let his head fall low, almost upon the desk, and so he remained, hidden, as it were, from himself, a long while, until suddenly springing up with a face all fiery, he cried aloud in a rage:
"Oh, no more sentiment! By the Lord, I'm done with it. From this hour Inspector Furneaux is under the eye of the police."
Furneaux himself was then, for the second time that week, at Mrs. Marsh's lodgings in Porchester Gardens in secret and urgent talk with Rosalind.
"You will think that I am always hunting you down, Miss Marsh," he said genially on entering the room.
"You know best how to describe your profession," she murmured a little bitterly, for his parting shot at their last meeting had struck deep.
"But this time I come more definitely on business," he said, seating himself uninvited, which was a strange thing for Furneaux to do, since he was a gentleman by birth and in manners, "and as I am in a whirl of occupation just now, I will come at once to the point."
"To say 'I will come at once to the point' is to put off coming to it—for while you are saying it——"
"True. The world uses too many words——"
"It is a round world—hence its slowness in coming to a point."
"I take the hint. Yet you leave me rather breathless."
"Pray tell me why, Inspector Furneaux."
"For admiration of so quick and witty a lady. But I shall make you dumb by what I am going to suggest to-day. I want to turn you into a detective——"
"Itisa point, then. You want me to be sharp?"
"You are already that. The question is, what effect did what I last said have upon your mind?"
"About your finding the blood-spotted clothes in Mr. Osborne's trunk?" she asked, looking down at his tired and worn face from her superior height, and suddenly moved to listen to him attentively. "Well, it was somewhat astounding at first. In fact, it sounded almost convincing. But then, I had already believed in Mr. Osborne's innocence in this matter. Nor am I over-easily shaken, I think, in my convictions. If he confessed his guilt to me, then I would believe—but not otherwise."
"Good," said Furneaux, "you have said that well, though I am sure he does not deserve it. Anyhow, since you persist in believing in his innocence, you must also believe that every new truth must be inhis favor, and so may be willing to turn yourself into the detective I suggested.... You have, I think, a servant here named Pauline Dessaulx?"
This girl he had been seeking for some time, and had been gladly surprised to have her open the door to him on the day of his first visit to Rosalind. "She did not know me," he explained, "butIhave twice seen her in the streets with her former mistress. Do you know who that mistress was? Rose de Bercy!"
Rosalind started as though a whip had cracked across her shoulders. She even turned round, looked at the door, tested it by the handle to see if it was closed, and stood with her back to it. Furneaux seemingly ignored her agitation.
"Now, you were at the inquest, Miss Marsh," he said. "You heard the description given by Miss Prout of the Saracen dagger missing from Mr Osborne's museum—the dagger with which the crime was probably committed. Well, I want to get that into my hands. It is lying in Pauline Dessaulx's trunk, and I ask you to secure it for me."
"In Pauline's trunk," Rosalind repeated after him, quite too dazed in her astonishment to realize the marvels that this queer little man was telling her.
"To be quite accurate," he continued, "I am not altogether sure of what I say. But that is where itshouldbe, in her trunk, and with it you should find a second dagger, or knife, which I am also anxious to obtain, and if you happen to come across a littlebook, a diary, with a blue morocco cover, I shall be extremely pleased to lay my hand on it."
"How can you possibly know all this?" Rosalind asked, her eyes wide open with wonder now, and forgetful, for the moment, of the pain he had caused her.
"Going up and down in the earth, like Satan, and then sitting and thinking of it," he said, with a quick turn of mordant humor. "But is it a bargain, now? Of course, I could easily pounce upon the girl's trunk myself: but I want the objects to bestolenfrom her, since I don't wish to have her frightened—not quite yet."
"Do you, then, suspect this girl of having—of being—the guilty hand, Inspector Furneaux?" asked Rosalind, her very soul aghast at the notion.
"I have already intimated to you the person who is open to suspicion," answered Furneaux promptly, "a man, not a woman—though, if you find these objects in the girl's trunk, thatmaylighten the suspicion against the man."
A gleam appeared one instant in his eyes, and died out as quickly, but this time Rosalind saw it. She pulled a chair close to him and sat down, her fingers clasped tightly over her right knee—eager to serve, to help. But, then, to steal, to pry into a servant's boxes, that was not a nice action. And this Pauline Dessaulx was a girl who had interested her, had shown a singular liking for her.
She mentioned her qualms.
"At the bidding of the police," urged Furneaux—"in the interests of justice—to serve a possibly innocent man, who is also a friend—surely that is something."
"I might have been able to do it yesterday," murmured Rosalind, distraught, "but she is better to-day. I will tell you. For two days the girl has been ill—in a kind of hysteria or nervous collapse—a species of neurosis, I think—altogether abnormal and strange. I—you may as well know—wrote a letter to Mr. Osborne on the day you first came, a little before you came. I gave it her to post—she may have seen the address. Then you appeared. After you were gone, I sent him a telegram, also by Pauline's hand, telling him not to read my letter——"
"Ah, you see you did believe that what I told you proved his guilt——"
"Hear me.... No, I did not believe that. But—you had impressed me with the fact that Mr. Osborne has been, may have been, already sufficiently successful in attracting the sympathies of young ladies. I had been at the inquest—I had seen there in the box his exquisite secretary, of whose perfect ways of acting you gave me some knowledge that day, and I thought it might be rash of me to seem to be in rivalry with so charming a lady. Now you see my motive—I am often frank. So, when you were gone, I sent the telegram forbidding the reading of my letter; and the next morning I received a verybrief note from Mr. Osborne saying that the letter was awaiting my wishes unopened."
"How did he know your address, if he did not open the letter?" asked Furneaux.
Rosalind started like a child caught in a fault. She was so agitated that she had not asked herself that question. As a matter of fact, it was Hylda Prout, having tracked Rosalind from Waterloo, who had given Osborne the address for her own reasons: Hylda had told Osborne, on hearing his fretful exclamation of annoyance, that she knew the address of a Miss Marsh from an old gentleman who had apparently come up from Tormouth with him and her, and had called to see Osborne when Osborne was out.
"He got the address from some source, I don't know what," Rosalind said, with a rather wondering gaze at Furneaux's face; "but the point is, that the girl, Pauline, saw my letter to him, and the telegram; and last night, coming home from an outing in quite a broken-down and enfeebled state, she said to me with tears in her eyes: 'Oh, he is innocent! Oh, do not judge him harshly, Miss Marsh! Oh, it was not he who did it!' and much more of that sort. Then she collapsed and began to scream and kick, was got to bed, and a doctor sent for, who said that she had an attack of neurasthenia due to mental strain. And I was sitting by her bedside quite a long while, so that I might then—if I had known—But I think she is better to-day."
"It is not too late, if she is still in bed," said Furneaux. "Sit with her again till she is asleep, and then see if the trunk is unlocked, or if you can find the key——"
"Only it doesn't seem quite fair to——"
"Oh, quite, in this case, I assure you," said Furneaux. "Whether this girl committed that murder with her own hand or not——"
"But howcouldshe? She was at an Exhibition——!"
"Was she? Are you sure? I was saying that whether the girl committed the murder with her own hand or not——"
"Ifshedid, it could not have been done by the person you said that you suspect!"
"No? Why speak so confidently? Have you not heard of such things as accomplices? She might have helped Osborne!Hemight have helpedher! But I was saying—for the third time—that whether the girl committed the murder with her own hand or not, I am in a position to give you my assurance that she is not a lawful citizen, and that you needn't have the least compunction in doing anything whatever to her trunk or her—in the cause of truth."
"Well, if you say so——" Rosalind said, and Furneaux stood up to go.
It was then two o'clock in the afternoon. By five o'clock Rosalind had in her hand the Saracen dagger, and another dagger—though not, of course,the diary, which Clarke had carried off long ago.
At about three she had gone to sit by Pauline's bedside, and here, with the leather trunk strapped down, not two feet from her right hand, had remained over an hour. Pauline lay quiet, with a stare in her wide-open eyes, gazing up at the ceiling. Every now and again her body would twist into a gawky and awkward kind of position, a stupid expression would overspread her face, a vacant smile play on her lips; then, after some minutes, she would lie naturally again, staring at the ceiling.
Suddenly, about half-past four, she had had a kind of seizure; her body stiffened and curved, she uttered shrieks which chilled Rosalind's blood, and then her whole frame settled into a steady, strong agitation, which set the chamber all in a tremble, and could not be stilled by the two servants who had her wrists in their grip. When this was over, she dropped off into a deep sleep.
And now, as soon as Rosalind was again left alone with the invalid, she went to the trunk, unstrapped it, found it locked. But she was not long in discovering the key in the pocket of the gown which Pauline had had on when she fell ill. She opened the trunk, looking behind her at the closed eyes of the exhausted girl, and then, in feverish haste, she ransacked its contents. No daggers, however, and no diary were there. She then searched methodically through the room—an improvised wardrobe—apainted chest of drawers—kneaded and felt the bed, searched underneath—no daggers. She now stood in the middle of the room, her forehead knit, her eyes wandering round, all her woman's cunning at work in them. Then she walked straight, with decision, to a small shelf on the wall, full of cheap books; began to draw out each volume, and on drawing out the third, she saw that the daggers were lying there behind the row.
Her hand hovered during some seconds of hesitancy over the horrible blades, one of which had so lately been stained so vilely. Then she took them, and replaced the books. One of the daggers was evidently the Saracen weapon that she had heard described. The label was still on it; the other was thick-bladed, of an Italian type. She ran out with them, put them in a glove box, and, rather flurriedly, almost by stealth, got out of the house to take her trophies to Furneaux.
She drove to the address that he had given her, an eagerness in her, a gladness that the truth would now appear, and throughher—most unexpectedly! Quite apart from her friendship for Osborne, she had an abstract interest in this matter of the murder, since from the first, before seeing Osborne, she had said that he was innocent, but her mother had seemed to lean to the opposite belief, and they were in hostile camps on the subject, like two good-natured people of different political convictions dwelling in the same house.
She bade her driver make haste to Furneaux's; but midway, seeing herself passing close to Mayfair, gave the man Osborne's address, thinking that she would go and get her unopened letter, and, if she saw Osborne himself, offer him a word of cheer—an "all will be well."
Her driver rapped for her at the house door, she sitting still in the cab, a hope in her that Osborne would come out. It seemed long since she had last seen his face, since she had heard that sob of his at the sun-dial at the Abbey. The message went inwards that Miss Marsh had called for a letter directed to Mr. Osborne by her; and her high spirits were damped when Jenkins reappeared at the door to say that the letter would be brought her, Mr. Osborne himself having just gone out.
In sober fact, Osborne had not stirred out of the house for days, lest her promised call "in person" should occur when he was absent, but at last, unable to bear it any longer, he had made a dash to see her, and was at that moment venturing to knock at her door.
However, though the news was damping, she had a store of high spirits that afternoon, which pushed her to leave a note scribbled with her gold pencil on the back of a letter—an act fraught with terrible sufferings for her in the sequel. This was her message:
I will write again. Meantime, do not lose hope! I have discovered that your purloined dagger has been in the possessionof the late lady's-maid, Pauline. "A small thing, but mine own!" I am now taking it to Inspector Furneaux's.R. M.
I will write again. Meantime, do not lose hope! I have discovered that your purloined dagger has been in the possessionof the late lady's-maid, Pauline. "A small thing, but mine own!" I am now taking it to Inspector Furneaux's.
R. M.
"Whatwillhe think of 'Ihave discovered'?" she asked herself, smiling, pleased; "he will say 'a witch'!"
She folded it crossways with a double bend so that it would not open, and leaning out of the cab, handed it to Jenkins.
As he disappeared with it, Hylda Prout stood in the doorway with Rosalind's letter to Osborne—Hylda's freckles showing strong against her rather pale face. She held the flap-side of the envelope forward from the first, to show the stains of gum on it.
As she approached the cab, Rosalind's neck stiffened a little. Their eyes met malignly, and dwelt together several seconds, in a stillness like that of somber skies before lightnings fly out. Truly, Rupert Osborne's millions were unable to buy him either happiness or luck, for it was the worst of ill-luck that he should not have been at home just then.
When Rosalind's contemptuous eyes abandoned that silent interchange of looks, they fell upon the envelope in Hylda Prout's hand, nor could she help noticing that round the flap it was clumsily stained with gum. Yet Osborne had written her saying that it had been unopened....
The other woman stepped to the door of the cab.
"Miss Marsh?" she inquired, with an assumed lack of knowledge that was insolent in itself.
"Yes."
"Mr. Osborne left this for you, if you called."
"Thank you."
The business was ended, yet the lady-secretary still stood there, staring brazenly at Rosalind's face.
"Drive on——"
Rosalind raised her gloved hand to attract the driver's attention.
"One moment, Miss Marsh," said Hylda, also raising a hand to forbid him to move; "I want to tell you something—You are very anxious on poor Mr. Osborne's behalf, are you not?"
"I thought he was rich? You are not to say 'poor Mr. Osborne.'"
"Is that why you are so anxious, because he is rich?" and those golden-brown eyes suddenly blazed out outrageously.
"Driver, go on, please!" cried Rosalind again.
"Wait, cabman!" cried Hylda imperiously.... "Stay a little—Miss Marsh—one word—I cannot let you waste your sympathies as you do. You believe that Mr. Osborne is friendless; and you offer him your friendship——"
"I!"
Rosalind laughed a little, a laugh with a dangerous chuckle in it that might have carried a warning to one who knew her.
"Do you not say so in that letter? In it you tell him that since the night at the sun-dial, when you were 'brutal' to him——"
"You know, then, my letter—by heart?" said Rosalind, her eyes sparkling and cheeks aflame. "That is quite charming of you! You have been at the pains to read it?"
"No, of course, Mr. Osborne wouldn't exactlyshowit to me, nor did I ask him. But I think you guess that I am in Mr. Osborne's confidence."
"Mr. Osborne, it would seem, has—read it? He even thought the contents of sufficient importance to repeat them to his typist? Is that so?"
"Mr. Osborne repeats many things to me, Miss Marsh—by habit. You being a stranger to him, do not know him well yet, but I have been with him some time, you see. As to his reading it, I knowthat you telegraphed him not to, and he received the telegram before the letter, I admit; but, the letter once in his hand, it became his private property, of course. He had a right to read it."
A stone in Rosalind's bosom where her heart had been ached like a wound; yet her lips smiled—a hard smile.
"But then, having read, to be at the pains to seal it down again!" she said. "It seems superfluous, a contemptible subterfuge."
"Oh, well," sneered Hylda, with a pouting laugh, "he is not George Washington—a little harmless deception."
"But you cry out all his secrets!"
"To you."
"Why to me?"
"I save you from troubling your head about him. He is not so friendless as you have imagined."
"Happy man! And was it you who wrote me the anonymous information that he was not Glyn but Osborne?"
"No, that was someone else."
And now Rosalind, blighting her with her icy smile, which no inward fires could melt, said contemplatively:
"I am afraid you are not speaking the truth. I shall tell Mr. Osborne to get rid of you."
The dart was well planted. The paid secretary's lips twitched and quivered.
"Try it! He'll laugh at you!" she retorted.
"No, I think he will do it—to please me!"
Sad to relate, our gracious Rosalind was deliberately adding oil to the fires of hate and rage that she saw devouring Hylda Prout; and when Hylda again spoke it was from a fiery soul that peered out of a ghost's face.
"Will he?—to please you?" she said low, hissingly, leaning forward. "He has a record in a diary of the girls he has kissed, and the number of days from the first sight to the first kiss. He only wanted to see in how few days he could secure you."
This vulgarity astonished its hearer. Rosalind shrank a little; her smile became forced and strained; she could only murmur:
"Oh, you needn't be so bourgeoise."
Hylda chuckled again maliciously.
"It's the mere truth."
"Still, I think I shall warn him against you, and have you dismissed,"—this with that feminine instinct of the dagger that plunged deepest, the lash that cut most bitterly.
"You try!" hissed Hylda sharply, as it were secretly, with a nod of menace. "I am not anybody! I am not some defenseless housemaid, the only rival you have experienced hitherto, perhaps. I am—at any rate, you try! You dare! Touch me, and I'll wither your arm——"
"Drive on!" cried Rosalind almost in a scream.
"Wait!" shrilled Hylda—"youshallhear me!"
"Cabman, please——!" wailed Rosalind despairingly.
And now at last the cab was off, Hylda Prout running with it to pant into it some final rancor; and when it left her, she remained there on the pavement a minute, unable to move, trembling from head to foot, watching the vehicle as it sped away from her.
When she re-entered the library the first thing that she saw was Rosalind's cross-folded note to Osborne, and, still burning inwardly, she snatched it up, tore it open, and read:
I will write again. Meantime, high hope!Ihave discovered that your purloined dagger has been in the possession of the late lady's-maid, Pauline. "A small thing but mine own." I am now taking it to Inspector Furneaux's.R. M.
I will write again. Meantime, high hope!Ihave discovered that your purloined dagger has been in the possession of the late lady's-maid, Pauline. "A small thing but mine own." I am now taking it to Inspector Furneaux's.
R. M.
R. M.
Hylda dashed the paper to the ground, put her foot on it, then catching it up, worried it in her hands to atoms which she threw into a waste-paper basket. Then she collapsed into a chair at her desk, her arms thrown heedlessly over some documents, and her face buried between them.
"I have gone too far, too far, too far——"
Now that her passion had burnt to ashes this was her thought. A crisis, it was clear, had come, and something had to be done, to be decided, now—that very day. Rosalind would surely tell Osborne whatshe, Hylda, had said, how she had acted, and then all would be up with Hylda, no hope left, her whole house in ruins about her, not one stone left standing on another. Either she must bind Osborne irrevocably to her at once, or her brain must devise some means of keeping Osborne and Rosalind from meeting—or both. But how achieve the apparently impossible? Osborne, she knew, was at that moment at Rosalind's residence, and if Rosalind was now going home ... they would meet! Hylda moved her buried head from side to side, woe-ridden, in the grip of a hundred fangs and agonies. She had boasted to Rosalind that she was not a whimpering housemaid, but of a better texture: and if that was an actual truth, the present moment must prove it. Yet she sat there with a buried head, weakly weeping....
Suddenly she thought of the words in Rosalind's note to Osborne, which she had thrown into the basket: "I have discovered that your purloined dagger has been in the possession of the late lady's-maid, Pauline.... I am now taking it to Inspector Furneaux's...."
That, then, was the person who had the dagger which had been so sought and speculated about—Pauline Dessaulx!
And at the recollection of the name, Hylda's racked brain, driven to invent, invented like lightning. Up she sprang, caught at her hat, and rushed away, pinning it on to her magnificent red hair in herflight, her eyes staring with haste. In the street she leapt into a motor-cab—to Soho.
She was soon there. As if pursued by furies she pelted up two foul staircases, and at a top back room, rapped pressingly, fiercely, with the clenched knuckles of both hands upon the panels. As a man in his shirt-sleeves, his braces dropped, smoking a cigarette, opened the door to her, she almost fell in on him, and the burning words burst from her tongue's tip:
"Antonio!—it's all up with Pauline—the dagger she did it with—has been found—by a woman—the same woman from Tormouth whom you and I tracked to Porchester Gardens—Pauline is in her employ probably—tell Janoc—he has wits—he may do something before it is too late—the woman has the dagger—in a motor-cab—in a long, narrow box—she is this instant taking it to Inspector Furneaux's house—ifshelives, Pauline hangs—tell Janoc that, Antonio—don't stare—tell Janoc—it issheor Pauline—let him choose——"
"Grand Dieu!"
"Don't stare—don't stand—I'm gone."
She ran out; and almost as she was down the stair Antonio had thrown on a coat and was flying down behind her.
He ran down three narrow streets to Poland Street, darted up a stair, broke into a room; and there on the floor, stretched face downwards, lay the lank length of Janoc's body, a map of Europe spreadbefore him, on which with an ivory pointer he was marking lines from town to town. He glanced at the intruder with a frowning brow, yet he was up like an acrobat, as the tidings leapt off Antonio's tongue.
"Found!" he whispered hoarsely, "Pauline found!"
"Yes, and the dagger found, too!"
"Found! dearest of my heart! my sweet sister!"
Janoc clasped to his bosom a phantom form, and kissed thrice at the air.
"Yes, and the dagger found that she did it with——"
"The dagger?"
"Yes, and the lady is this minute taking it to Inspector Furneaux——"
"Lady?—Oh, found! found! dear, sweet sister, why didst thou hide thyself from me?"
Janoc spread his arms with a face of rapture. He could only assimilate the one great fact in his joy.
"But Janoc—listen—the lady——"
"Lady?"
"The lady who has the dagger! Listen, my friend—she is on the way to Inspector Furneaux with Pauline's dagger——"
"Mille diables!"
"Janoc, what is to be done? O, arouse yourself,pour l'amour de Dieu—Pauline will be hanged——"
"Hanged? Yes! They hang women, I know,in England—the only country in Europe—this ugly nest of savages. Yes! they hang them by the neck on the gallows here—the gallant gentlemen! But they won't hangher, Antonio! Let them touch her, andI, I set all England dancing like a sandstorm of the Sahara! Furneaux's house No. 12?"
"Yes."
"And the lady's address?"
"Porchester Gardens—unfortunately I did not notice the number of the house."
"Pity: weak. What is she like, this lady?"
"Middle-size—plentiful brown hair—eyes blue—beautiful in the cold English way, elegant, too—yes, a pretty woman—I saw her in Tormouth——"
"Come with me"—and Janoc was in action, with a suddenness, a fury, a contrast with his previous stillness of listening that was very remarkable—as if he had waited for the instant of action to sound, and then said: "Here it is! I am ready!"
Out stretched his long leg, as he bent forward into running, catching at his cap and revolver with one sweep of his right arm, and at Antonio with a snatch of the left; and from that moment his motions were in the tone of the forced marches of Napoleon—not an instant lost in the business he was at.
He took Antonio in a cab to Furneaux's house in Sinclair Street. There he was nudged by Antonio, as they drove up, with a hysterical sob of "See! There she is!"
Rosalind was driving away at the moment. She had, then, seen Furneaux? told Furneaux? given Furneaux the dagger? In that case, the battle would lie between Furneaux and Janoc that day. Janoc's flesh was pale, but it was the paleness of iron, his eyes were full of fire. In his heart he was a hero, in brain and head an assassin!
He alighted at the detective's house, letting Rosalind go. But the landlady of the flat told him that Furneaux had not been at home for two hours, and was not expected for another hour. Rosalind, then, had not seen him; and the battle swung back to its first ground as between Rosalind and Janoc. Had the lady who had just called left any parcel, or any weapon for Mr. Furneaux? The answer was "No." He hurried down into his cab, to make for Rosalind's boarding-house.
But Antonio had not noted the number, and, to discover it, Janoc started off to Osborne's house, to ask it of Miss Prout.
Now, Rosalind was herself driving to the same place. On learning that Furneaux was not at home, she had paced his sitting-room a little while, undecided whether to wait, or to leave a message and go home. Then the new impulse had occurred in her to go to Osborne's in the meantime, and then return to Furneaux. Hylda Prout had contrived to put a lump in her throat and a firebrand in her bosom, an arrogance, a hot rancor. How much of what the hussy had said against Osborne mightcontain some truth she did not know; it had so scorched her, and inflamed her gorge, and kindled her eyes, that she had not had time to question its probability in her preoccupation with the gall and smart of it. But that Osborne should have opened the letter, and then written to say he had not—this was a vileness that the slightest reflection found to be incredible. The creature with the red hair certainly knew what was in the letter, but—might she not have opened it herself? And if any part of her statements were false,allmight be false. An impatience to see Osborne instantly seized and transported Rosalind. He had honest eyes—had she not whispered it many a time to her heart? She hurried off to him.... And by accident Janoc went after her.
Osborne himself had arrived home some ten minutes before this, after a very cold reception from Mrs. Marsh at Porchester Gardens.
As he entered the library, he saw Hylda Prout standing in the middle of the room with a face of ecstasy which astonished him. She, lately arrived back from her visit to the Italian, had heard him come, and had leapt up to confront him, her heart galloping in her throat.
"Anything wrong?" he asked with a quick glance at her.
"Miss Marsh has been here."
"Ah?... Miss Marsh?"
She made a mad step toward him. The wordsthat she uttered rasped harshly. She did not recognize her own voice.
"I told her straight out that it is not the slightest good her running after you."
"You told herwhat?"
Amazement struggled with indignation in his face. All the world seemed to have gone mad when the pale, studiously sedate secretary used such words of frenzy.
"I meant to stop—her pursuit of you.... Mr. Osborne—hear me—I—I...." Excessive emotion overpowered her. In attempting to say more she panted with distress.
"What is it all about, Miss Prout? Calm yourself, please—be quiet"—he said it with some effort to express both his resentment and his authority.
"Mr. Osborne—I warn you—I cannot endure—any rival——"
"Who can't? you speak of arival!"
"Oh, Heaven, give me strength—words to explain. Ah!..."
She had been standing with her left hand resting on a table, shivering like a sail in the wind, and now the hand suddenly gave way under her, and she sank after it, falling to the ground in a faint, while her head struck the edge of the table in her descent.
"Well, if this isn't the limit," muttered Osborne, as he ran to her, calling loudly for Jenkins. He lifted her to a sofa, and, in his flurry, not knowing what else to do, wet her forehead with a little waterfrom a carafe. Jenkins had not heard his call, and by the time he looked round for a bell to summon help, her eyes unclosed themselves, and she smiled at him.
"You are there...."
"You feel better now?" He sat on a chair at her head, looking down on her, wondering what inane words he should use to extricate both himself and her from an absurd position.
"It is all right.... I must have fainted. I have undergone a great strain, a dreadful strain. You should be sorry for me. Oh, I have loved—much."
"Miss Prout——"
"No, don't call me that, or you kill me. You should be sorry for me, if you have any pity, any shred of humanity in your heart. I have—passed through flames, and drunk of a cup of fire. Ten women, yes, ten—have hungered and wailed in me. I tellyou—yet to whom should I tell it but to you?"
She smiled a ravished smile of pain; her hand fell upon his heavily; her restless head swung from side to side.
"Well, I am very sorry," said Osborne, forced to gentleness in spite of the anger that had consumed him earlier. "It is impossible not to believe you sincere. But, you will admit, all this is very singular and unexpected. I am afraid now that I shall have to send you on a trip to—Switzerland; or else gomyself. Better you—it is chilling there, on the glaciers."
Yet the attempt at humor died when he looked at her face with its languishing, sick eyes, its expression of swooning luxury. She sighed deeply.
"No, you cannot escape me now, I think, or I you," she murmured. "There are powers too profound to be run from when once at work, like the suction of whirlpools. If you don't love me, my love is a force enough for two, for a thousand. It will draw and compel you. Yes, I think so. It will either warm you, or burn you to ashes—and myself, too. Oh, I swear to Heaven! It will, it shall! You shouldn't have pressed my hand that night."
"Pressed your hand! on which night?" asked Osborne, who had now turned quite pale, and wanted to run quickly out of the house but could not.
"What, have youforgotten?" she asked with tender reproach, gazing into his eyes; "the night I was going to see my brother nine months ago, and you went with me to Euston, and in saying good-by you——"
She suddenly covered her eyes with her fingers in a rapture at the memory.
Osborne stared blankly at her. He recalled the farewell at Euston, which was accidental, but he certainly had no memory of having pressed her hand.
"I loved you before," her lips just whispered in a pitiful assumption of confidence, "but timidly, notadmitting it to myself. With that pressure of your hand, I was done with maidenhood, my soul rushed to you. After that, you were mine, and I was yours."
The words almost fainted on her bitten under lip, and in Osborne, too, a rush of soul, or of blood, took place, a little flush of his forehead. It was a bewitching woman who lay there before him, with that fair freckle-splashed face couched in its cloud of red hair.
"Come, now," he said, valiantly striving after the commonplace, "you are ill—you hardly know yet what you are saying."
She half sat up suddenly, bending eagerly toward him.
"Is it pity? Is it 'yes'?"
"Please, please, let us forget that this has ever——"
"Itwouldbe 'yes' instantly but for that Tormouth girl! Oh, drive her out of your mind! That cannot be—I could never, never permit it! For that reason alone—and besides, you are about to be arrested——"
"I!"
"Yes: listen—I know more of what is going on than you know. The man Furneaux, who, for his own reasons, hates you, and is eager to injure you, has even more proofs against you than you are aware of.Ihappen to know that in his search of your trunks he has discovered something or other whichhe considers conclusive against you. And there is that housemaid at Feldisham Mansions, who screamed out 'Mr. Osborne did it!'—Furneaux only pretended at the inquest that she was too ill to be present, because he did not want to produce the whole weight of his evidence just then. But he has her, too, safe up his sleeve, andsheis willing to swear against you. And now he has got hold of your Saracen dagger. But don't you fearhim: I shall know how to foil him at the last; I alone have knowledge that will surely make him look a fool. Trust in me! I tell you so. But I can't help your being arrested—that must happen. Believe me, for I know. And let that once take place, and that Tormouth girl will never look at you again. I understand her class, with its prides and prejudices—she will never marry you—innocent or guilty—if you have once stood in the dock at an assize court. Such as she does not know what love is.Iwould take you if you were a thousand times guilty—and I only can prove you innocent—even if you were guilty—because I am yours—your preordained wife—oh, I shall die of my love—yes, kiss me—yes—now——"
The torrent of words ended in a fierce fight for breath. Her eyes were glaring like two lakes of conflagration, her cheeks crimson, her forehead pale. Unexpectedly, eagerly, she caught him round the neck in an embrace from which there was no escape. She drew him almost to his knees, and pressed hislips to hers with a passion that frightened and repelled him.
And he was in the thick of this unhappy and ridiculous experience when he heard behind him an astonished "Oh!" from someone, while some other person seemed to laugh in angry embarrassment.
It was Jenkins who had uttered the "Oh!" and when the horrified Osborne glanced round he saw Rosalind's eyes peering over Jenkins's shoulder. She it was who had so lightly, so perplexedly, laughed.
Before he could free himself and spring up she was gone. She had murmured to Jenkins: "Some other time," and fled.
As she ran out blindly, and was springing into the cab, Janoc, in pursuit of her, drove up. In an instant he was looking in through the door of the cab.
"Miss Marsh?" he inquired.
"Yes."
His hands met, wringing in distress.
"You are the lady I am searching for, the mistress of the young girl Pauline Dessaulx, is it not? I am her brother. You see—you can see—the resemblance in our faces. She threatens this instant to commit the suicide——"
Rosalind was forced to forget her own sufferings in this new terror.
"Pauline!" she cried, "I am not her employer. Moreover, she is ill—in bed——"
"She has escaped to my lodging during your absencefrom home! Something dreadful has happened to her—she speaks of the loss of some weapon—one cannot understand her ravings! And unless she sees you—her hands cannot be kept from destroying herself—Oh, lady! lady! Come to my sweet sister——"
Rosalind looked at him with the scared eyes of one who hears, yet not understands. There was a mad probability in all this, since Paulinemighthave discovered the loss of the daggers; and, in her present anguish of spirit, the thought that the man's story might only be a device to lure her into some trap never entered Rosalind's head. Indeed, in her weariness of everything, she regarded the mission of succor as a relief.
"Where do you live? I will go with you," she said.
"Lady! Lady! Thank God!" he exclaimed. "It is not far from here, in Soho."
"You must come in my cab," said Rosalind.
Janoc ran to pay his own cabman, came back instantly, and they started eastward, just as Osborne, with the wild face of a man falling down a precipice, rushed to his door, calling after them frantically: "Hi, there! Stop! Stop! For Heaven's sake——"
But the cab went on its way.
Next morning, just as the clock was striking eight, Osborne was rising from his bed after a night of unrest when Jenkins rapped at the door and came in, deferential and calm.
"Mrs. Marsh below to see you, sir," he announced.
Osborne blinked and stared with the air of a man not thoroughly awake, though it was his mind, not his body, that was torpid.
"Mrs.," he said, "not Miss?"
"No, sir, Mrs."
"I'll be there in five minutes," he hissed with a fierce arousing of his faculties, and never before had he flung on his clothes in such a flurry of haste; in less than five minutes he was flying down the stairs.
"Forgive me!" broke from his lips, as he entered the drawing-room, and "Forgive me!" his visitor was saying to him in the same instant.
It was pitiful to see her—she, ever so enthroned in serenity, from whom such a thing as agitation had seemed so remote, was wildly agitated now. That pathetic pallor of the aged when their heart is in labor now underlay her skin. Her lips, her fingers,trembled; the tip of her nose, showing under her half-raised veil, was pinched.
"The early hour—it is so distressing—I beg your forgiveness—I am in most dreadful trouble——"
"Please sit down," he said, touching her hand, "and let me get you some breakfast."
"No, nothing—I couldn't eat—it is Rosalind——"
Now he, too, went a shade paler.
"What of Rosalind?"
"Do you by chance know anything of her whereabouts?"
"No!"
"She has disappeared."
Her head bowed, and a sob broke from her bosom.
"Disappeared"—his lips breathed the word foolishly after her, while he looked at her almost stupidly.
Mrs. Marsh's hand dropped with a little nervous fling.
"She has not been at home all night. She left the house apparently between four and five yesterday—I was out; then I came in; then you called.... She has not come home—it is impossible to conceive...."
"Oh, she has slept with some friend," he said, feeling that the world reeled around him.
"No, she has never done that without letting me know.... She would surely have telegraphed me.... It is quite impossible even to imagine what dispensation of God——"
She stopped, her lips working; suddenly covering her eyes with her hand, as another sob gushed from her, she humbly muttered:
"Forgive me. I am nearly out of my senses."
He sprang up, touched a bell, and whispered to Jenkins, who instantly was with him: "Brandy—quick." Then, running to kneel at the old lady's chair, he touched her left hand, saying: "Take heart—trust in God's Providence—rely uponme."
"You believe, then, that you may find her——?"
"Surely: whatever else I may fail in, I could not fail now.... Just one sip of this to oblige me." Jenkins had stolen in, and she drank a little out of the glass that Osborne offered.
"You must think it odd," she said, "that I come to you. I could not give a reason—but I was so distracted and benumbed. I thought of you, and felt impelled——"
"You were right," he said. "I am the proper person to appeal to in this case. Besides, she was here yesterday——"
"Rosalind?"
"The fact is——"
"Oh, she was here? Well, that is something discovered! I did well to come. Yes—you were saying——"
"I will tell you everything. Three days ago she wrote me a letter——"
"Rosalind?"
"Are you astonished?"
"I understood—I thought—that your friendship with her had suffered some—check."
"That is so," said Osborne with a bent head. "You may remember the night of the dance at the Abbey down at Tormouth. That night, when I was full of hopes of her favor, she suddenly cast me off like a burr from her robe—I am not even now sure why—unless she had discovered that my name was not Glyn."
"If so, she no doubt considered that a sufficient reason, Mr. Osborne," said Mrs. Marsh, a chill in her tone. "One does not like the names of one's friends to be detachable labels."
"Don't think that I blame her one bit!" cried Osborne—"no more than I blame myself. I was ordered by—the police to take a name. There seemed to be good reason for it. I only blame my baleful fate. Anyway, so it was. She dropped me—into the Pit. But she was at the inquest——"
"Indeed? At the inquest. She was there. Singular."
"Deeply veiled. She didn't think, I suppose, that I should know. But I should feel her presence in the blackest——"
"Mr. Osborne—I must beg—do not make your declarations tome——"
"May I not? Be good—be pitiful. Here am I, charged with guilt, conscious of innocence——"
"Let us suppose all that, but are you a man free to make declarations of love? One would say thatyou are, as it were, married for some time to come to the lady who has lately been buried."
"True," said Osborne—"in the eyes of the world, in a formal way: but in the eyes of those near to me? Oh, I appeal to your indulgence, your friendship, your heart. Tell me that you forgive, that you understand me! and then I shall be so exuberantly gladsome that in the sweep of my exhilaration I shall go straight and find her, wherever she lies hidden.... Will you not say 'yes' on those terms?" He smiled wanly, with a hungry cajolery, looking into her face.
But she did not unbend.
"Let us first find her! and then other things may be discussed. But to find her! it is past all knowing—Oh, deep is the trouble of my soul to-day, Mr. Osborne!"
"Wait—hope——"
"But you were speaking of yesterday."
"Yes. She was at the inquest: and when I saw her—think how I felt! I said: 'She believes in me.' And three days after that she wrote to me——"
"My poor Rosalind!" murmured Mrs. Marsh. "She suffered more than I imagined. Her nature is more recondite than the well in which Truth dwells. Whatcouldshe have written to you?"
"That I don't know."
"How——?"
"As I was about to open the letter, a telegramcame from her. 'Don't read my letter: I will call for it unopened in person,' it said. Picture my agony then! And now I am going to tell you something that will move you to compassion for me, if you never had it before. Yesterday she called for the letter. I was with you at Porchester Gardens at that very hour. When I came home, an extraordinary scene awaited me with my secretary, a Miss Prout.... I tell you this as to a friend, a Mother, who will believe even the incredible. An extraordinary scene.... Without the least warning, the least encouragement that I know of, Miss Prout declared herself in love with me. While I stood astonished, she fainted. I bore her to a sofa. Soon after she opened her eyes, she—drew—me to her—no, I will say that I wasnotto blame; and I was in that situation, when the library door opened, and who should be there looking at me but—yes—she."
Mrs. Marsh's eyes fell. There was a little pressure of the lips that revealed scant sympathy with compromising situations. And suddenly a thought turned her skin to a ghastlier white. What if the sight of that scene accounted for Rosalind's disappearance? If Rosalind was dead—by her own act? The old lady had often to admit that she did not know the deepest deeps of her daughter's character. But she banished the half-thought hurriedly, contenting herself with saying aloud:
"That made the second time she came to you yesterday. Why a second time?"
"I have no idea!" was the dismayed reply. "She uttered not one word—just turned away, and hurried out to her waiting cab—and by the time I could wring myself free, and run after her, the cab was going off. I shouted—I ran at top speed—she would not stop. I think a man was in the cab with her——"
"A man, you say?"
"I think so. I just caught a glimpse of a face that looked out sideways—a dark man he seemed to me—I'm not sure."
"It becomes more and more mysterious!"
"Well, we must be making a move to do something—first, have you breakfasted?"
She had eaten nothing! Osborne persuaded her to join him in a hurried meal, during which his motor-car arrived, and soon they set off together. He was for going straight to the police, but she shrank from the notoriety of that final exposure until she had the clear assurance that it was absolutely necessary. So they drove from friend to friend of the Marshes who might possibly have some information; then drove home to Mrs. Prawser's to see if there was news. Osborne had luncheon there—a polite pretense at eating, since they were too full of wonder and woe to care for food. By this time Mrs. Marsh had unbent somewhat to Osborne, and humbly enough had said to him, "Oh, find her, and if she is alive, every other consideration shall weigh less than my boundless gratitude to you!"
After the luncheon they again drove about London, making inquiries without hope wherever the least chance of a clew lay; and finally, near six, they went to Scotland Yard.
To Inspector Winter in his office the whole tale was told; and, after sitting at his desk in a long silence, frowning upon the story, he said at last: