The de Bercy Affair

"Oh, I see," muttered Furneaux, his eyes, too, alight like live coals, "there's an article missing here, also – one from the celts, one from the daggers."

"He is innocent!" suddenly cried Hylda Prout, in a tempest of passionate reproach.

"She loves him," thought Furneaux.

And the girl thought: "He knew before now that these things were missing. His acting would deceive every man, but not every woman. How glad I am that I drew him on!"

Now, though the fact of the discovery of the celt by Inspector Clarke under the dead actress's piano had not been published in the papers, the fact that she had been stabbed through the eye by a long blade with blunt edges was known to all the world. There was nothing strange in this fierce outburst of Osborne's trusted secretary, nor that tears should spring to her eyes.

"Mr. Furneaux, he is innocent," she wailed in a frenzy. "Oh, he is! You noticed me hesitate just now to bring you in here: well, this was the reason – this, this, this – " she tapped with her forefinger on the empty hole – "for I knew that you would see this, and I knew that you would be jumping to some terrible conclusion as to Mr. Osborne."

"Conclusion, no," murmured Furneaux comfortingly – "I avoid conclusions as traps for the unwary. Interesting, of course, that's all. Tell me what you know, and fear nothing. Conclusion, you say! I don't jump to conclusions. Tell me what was the shape of the dagger that has disappeared."

She was silent again for many seconds. She was wrung with doubt, whether to speak or not to speak.

At last she voiced her agony.

"Either I must refuse to say, or I must tell the truth – and if I tell the truth, you will think – "

She stopped again, all her repose of manner fled.

"You don't know what I will think," put in Furneaux. "Sometimes I think the most unexpected things. The best way is to give me the plain facts. The question is, whether the blade that has gone from there was shaped like the one supposed to have committed the crime in the flat?"

"It was labeled 'Saracen Stiletto: about 1150,'" muttered the girl brokenly, looking Furneaux straight in the face, though the fire was now dead in her eyes. "It had a square bone handle, with a crescent carved on one of the four faces – a longish, thin blade, like a skewer, only not round – with blunt-edged corners to it."

Furneaux took up a little tube containing radium from a table at his hand, looked at it, and put it down again.

Hylda Prout was too distraught to see that his hand shook a little. It was half a minute before he spoke.

"Well, all that proves nothing, though it is of interest, of course," he said nonchalantly. "How long has that stiletto been lying there?"

"Since – since I entered Mr. Osborne's employment, twelve months ago."

"And you first noticed that it was gone – when?"

"On the second afternoon after the murder, when I noticed that the celt, too, was gone."

"The second – I see."

"I wondered what had become of them! I could imagine that Mr. Osborne might have given the celt to some friend. But the stiletto was so rare a thing – I couldn't think that he would give that. I assumed – I assume – that they were stolen. But, then, by whom?"

"That's the question," said Furneaux.

"Was it this same stiletto that I have described to you that the murder was done with?" asked Hylda.

"Now, how can I tell that?" said Furneaux. "I wasn't there, you know."

"Was not the weapon, then, found in the unfortunate woman's flat?"

"No – no weapon."

"Well, but that is excessively odd," she said in a low voice.

"Why so excessively odd?" demanded Furneaux.

"Why? Because – don't you see? – the weapon would be blood-stained – of course; and I should expect that after committing his horrid deed, the murderer would be only too glad to get rid of it, and would leave it – "

"Oh, come, that is hardly a good guess, Miss Prout. I shall never make a lady detective of you. Murderers don't leave their weapons about behind them, for weapons are clews, you see."

He was well aware that if the fact of the discovery of the celt had been published in the papers, Hylda might justly have answered: "But this murderer did leave one of his weapons behind, namely the celt; and it is excessively odd that, since he left one, the smaller one, he did not leave the other, the larger one."

As it was, the girl took thought, and her comment was shrewd enough:

"All murderers do not act in the same way, for some are a world more cunning and alert than others. I say that it is odd that the murderer did not leave behind the weapon that pierced the woman's eye, and I will prove it to you. If the stiletto was stolen from Mr. Osborne – and it really must have been stolen – and if that was the same stiletto that the deed was done with, then, the motive of the thief in stealing it was to kill Mademoiselle de Bercy with it. But why should one steal a weapon to commit a murder? And why should the murderer have chosen Mr. Osborne to steal his weapon from? Obviously, because he wanted to throw the suspicion upon him – in which case he would naturally leave the weapon behind as proof of Mr. Osborne's guilt. Now, then, have I proved my point?"

Though she spoke almost in italics, and was pale and flurried, she looked jauntily at Furneaux, with her head tossed back; and he, with half a smile, answered:

"I withdraw my remark as to your detective qualifications, Miss Prout. Yes, I think you reason well. If there was a thief, and the thief was the murderer, he would very likely have acted as you say."

"Then, why was the stiletto not found in the flat?" she asked.

"The fact that it was not found would seem to show that there was not a thief," he said; and he added quickly: "Perhaps Mr. Osborne gave it, as well as the celt, to someone. I suppose you asked him?"

"He was gone away an hour before I missed them," Hylda answered. She hesitated again. When next she spoke it was with a smile that would have won a stone.

"Tell me where he is," she pleaded, "and I will write to him about it. You may safely tell me, you know, for Mr. Osborne has no secrets from me."

"I wish I could tell you… Oh, but he will soon be back again, and then you will see him and speak to him once more."

Some tone of badinage in these jerky sentences brought a flush to her face, but she tried to ward off his scrutiny with a commonplace remark.

"Well, that's some consolation. I must wait in patience till the mob finds a new sensation."

Furneaux took a turn through the room, silently meditating.

"Thanks so much for your courtesy, Miss Prout," he said at last. "Our conversation has been – fruitful."

"Yes, fruitful in throwing still more suspicion upon an innocent man, if that is what you mean. Are not the police quite convinced yet of Mr. Osborne's innocence, Inspector Furneaux?"

"Oh, quite, quite," said he hastily, somewhat taken aback by her candor.

"Two 'quites' make a 'not quite,' as two negatives make an affirmative," said she coldly, fingering and looking down at some wistaria in her bosom.

She added with sudden warmth: "Oh, but you should, Inspector Furneaux! You should. He has suffered; his honest and true heart has been wounded. And he has his alibi, which, though in reality it may not be so good as you think, is yet quite good enough. But I know what it is that poisons your mind against him."

"You are full of statements, Miss Prout," said Furneaux with an inclination of the head; "what is it, now, that poisons my mind against that gentleman?"

"It is that taxicabman's delusion that he took him from the Ritz Hotel to Feldisham Mansions and back, added to the housekeeper's delusion that she saw him here – "