The de Bercy Affair

Furneaux, meantime, at Waterloo was taking train to Tormouth, and his fixed stare boded no good will to Rupert Osborne.

CHAPTER VII

AT TORMOUTH

Furneaux reached Tormouth about three in the afternoon, and went boldly to the Swan Hotel, since he was unknown by sight to Osborne. It was an old-fashioned place, with a bar opening out of the vestibule, and the first person that met his eye was of interest to him – a man sitting in the bar-parlor, who had "Neapolitan" written all over him – a face that Furneaux had already marked in Soho. He did not know the stranger's name, but he would have wagered a large sum that this queer visitor to Tormouth was a bird of the Janoc flock.

"What is he doing here?" Furneaux asked himself; and the only answer that suggested itself was: "Keeping an eye on Osborne. Perhaps that explains how Janoc got hold of the name 'Glyn.'"

When he was left alone in the bedroom which he took, he sat with his two hands between his knees, his head bent low, giving ten minutes' thought by the clock to the subject of Anarchists. Presently his lips muttered:

"Clarke is investigating the murder on his own account; he suspects that Anarchists were at the bottom of it; he has let them see that he suspects; and they have taken alarm, knowing that their ill repute can't bear any added load of suspicion. Probably she was more mixed up with them than is known; probably there was some quarrel between them and her; and so, seeing themselves suspected, they are uneasy. Hence Janoc wrote to Osborne in Clarke's name, asking how much Osborne knew of her connection with Anarchists. He must have managed somehow to have Osborne shadowed down here – must be eager to have Osborne proved guilty. Hence, perhaps, for some reason, the presence of that fellow below there in the parlor. But I, for my part, mustn't allow myself to be drawn off into proving them guilty. Another, another, is my prey!"

He stood up sharply, crept to his door, and listened. All the upper part of the house was as still as the tomb at that hour. Mr. Glyn – Osborne's name on the hotel register – was, Furneaux had been told, out of doors.

He passed out into a corridor, and, though he did not know which was Osborne's room, after peering through two doorways discovered it at the third, seeing in it a cane with a stag's head which Osborne often carried. He slipped within, and in a moment was everywhere at once in the room, filling it with his presence, ransacking it with a hundred eyes.

In one corner was an antiquated round table in mahogany, with a few books on it, and under the books a copper-covered writing-pad. In the writing-pad he found a letter – a long one, not yet finished, in Osborne's hand, written to "My dear Isadore."

The first words on which Furneaux's eyes fell were "her unstudied grace…"

… her walk has the undulating smoothness that one looks for in some untamed creature of the wild… You are a painter, and a poet, and a student of the laws of Beauty. Well, knowing all that, I still feel sure that you would be conscious of a certain astonishment on seeing her move, she moves so well. I confess I did not know, till I knew her, that our human flesh could express such music. Her waist is small, yet so willowy and sinuous that it cannot be trammeled in those unyielding ribs of steel and bone in which women love to girdle themselves. For her slimness she is tall, perhaps, what you might think a little too tall until you stood by her side and saw that her freedom of movement had deceived you. Nor is she what you would call a girl: her age can't be a day under twenty-three. But she does not make a motion of the foot that her waist does not answer to it in as exact a proportion as though the Angel of Grace was there with measuring-tape and rod. If her left foot moves, her waist sways by so much to the left; if her right, she sways to the right, as surely as a lily on a long stalk swings to the will of every wanton wind. But, after all, words cannot express the poetry of her being. With her every step, I am confident her toe in gliding forward touches the ground steadily, but so zephyr-lightly, that only a megaphone could report it to the ear. And not only is there a distinct forward bend of the body in walking, but with every step her whole being and soul walks – the mere physical movements are the least of it! And her walk, I repeat, has the security, the lissome elegance of a leopard's – her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her neck, those of a Naiad balanced on the crest of a curling wave…

"Ah-h-h!.." murmured Furneaux on a long-drawn breath, "'A Naiad'! Something more fairy-like than Rose de Bercy!"

He read on.

Soon I shall see her dance – dance with her! and then you shall hear. There's a certain Lord Spelding a little way from here whom I know through a local doctor, and he is giving a dance at his Abbey two evenings hence – she and her mother are to be there. She has promised me that she will dance, and I shall tell you how. But I expect nothing one whit more consummate in the way of charm from her dancing than from her ordinary motions. I know beforehand that her dancing will be to her walking what the singing of a lovely voice is to its talking – beauty moved to enthusiasm, but no increase of beauty; the moon in a halo, but still the moon. What, though, do you think of me in all this, my dear Isadore? I have asked myself whether words like "fickle," "flighty," "forgetful," will not be in your mind as you read. And if you are not tolerant, who will be? She, the other, is hardly cold yet in her untimely tomb, and here am I … shall I say in love? say, at any rate, enraptured, down, down, on my two bended knees. Certainly, the other was bitter to me – she deceived, she pitilessly deceived; and I see now with the clearest eyes that love was never the name of what I felt for her, even if she had not deceived. But, oh, such a fountain of pity is in me for her – untimely gone, cut off, the cup of life in her hand, her lips purple with its wine – that I cannot help reproaching this wandering of my eye from her. It is rather shocking, rather horrible. And yet – I appeal to your sympathy – I am no more master of myself in this than of something that is now happening to the Emperor of China, or that once happened to his grandfather.

The corners of Furneaux's lips turned downward, and a lambent fire flamed in his eyes. He clutched the paper in his hand as if he would strangle its dumb eloquence. Still he glowered at the letter, and read.

But imagine, meanwhile, my false position here! I am known to her and to her mother as Mr. Glyn; and thrice has Osborne, the millionaire, the probable murderer of Rose de Bercy, been discussed between us. Think of it! – the misery, the falseness of it. If something were once to whisper to Mrs. Marsh, "this Mr. Glyn, to whom you are speaking in a tone of chilly censure of such men as Osborne, is Osborne himself; that translucent porcelain of your teacup has been made impure by his lips; you should smash your Venetian vases and Satsuma bowl of hollyhocks, since his not-too-immaculate hands have touched them: beware! a snake has stolen into your dainty and Puritan nest" – if some imp of unhappiness whispered that, what would she do? I can't exactly imagine those still lips uttering a scream, but I can see her lily fingers – like lilies just getting withered – lifted an instant in mild horror of the sacrilege! As it is, her admittance of me into the nest has been an unbending on her part, an unbending touched with informality, for it was only brought about through Richards, the doctor here, to whom I got Smythe, one of my bankers, who is likewise Richards' banker, to speak of a "Mr. Glyn." And if she now finds that being gracious to the stranger smirches her, compromises her in the slightest, she will put her thin dry lips together a little, and say "I am punished for my laxity in circumspection." And then, ah! no more Rosalind for Osborne forever, if he were ten times ten millionaires…

"'Rosalind,'" murmured Furneaux, "Rosalind Marsh. That explains the scribble on the back of the Janoc letter. He calls her Rosalind – breathes her name to the moon – writes it! We shall see, though."

At that moment he heard a step outside, and stood alert, ready to hide behind a curtain; but it was only some hurrying housemaid who passed away. He then put back the letter where he had found it; and instantly tackled Osborne's portmanteaux. The larger he found locked, the smaller, lying half under the bed, was fastened with straps, but unlocked. He quickly ransacked the knicknacks that it contained; and was soon holding up to the light between thumb and finger a singular object taken from the bottom of the bag – a scrap of lace about six inches long, half of it stained with a brown smear that was obviously the smear of – blood.

It was a peculiar lace, Spanish hand-made, and Furneaux knew well, none better than he, that the dressing-gown in which Rose de Bercy had been murdered, which she had thrown on preparatory to dressing that night, was trimmed with Spanish hand-made lace. He looked at this amazing bit of evidence with a long interest there in the light from the window, holding it away from him, frowning, thinking his own thoughts behind his brow, as shadow chases shadow. And presently he muttered the peculiar words:

"Now, any detective would swear that this was a clew against him."

He put it back into the bag, went out softly, walked downstairs, and passed out into the little town. A policeman told him where the house of Mrs. Marsh was to be found, and he hastened half a mile out of Tormouth to it.

The house, "St. Briavels," stood on a hillside behind walls and wrought-iron gates and leafage, through which peeped several gables rich in creepers and ivy. Of Osborne, so far, there was no sign.

Furneaux retraced his steps, came back to Tormouth, sauntered beyond the town over the cliffs, with the sea spread out in the sunlight, all sparkling with far-flung sprightliness. And all at once he was aware of a murmur of voices sounding out of Nowhere, like the hum of bumble-bees on a slumbrous afternoon. The ear could not catch if they were right or left, above or below. But they became louder; and suddenly there was a laugh, a delicious low cadence of a woman's contralto that seemed to roll up through an oboe in her throat. And now he realized that the speakers were just below him on the sands. He stepped nearer the edge of the cliff, and, craning and peering stealthily through its fringe of grasses, saw Osborne and a lady walking westward over the sands.

Osborne was carrying an easel and a Japanese umbrella. He was not looking where he was going, not seeing the sea, or the sands, or the sun, but seeing all things in the lady's face.

Furneaux watched them till they were out of sight behind a bend of the coast-line; he saw Osborne once stumble a little over a stone, and right himself without glancing at what he had stumbled on, without taking his gaze from the woman by his side.

A bitter groan hissed from Furneaux's lips.

"But how about this fair Rosalind?" he muttered half aloud. "Is this well for her? She should at least be told who her suitor is – his name – his true colors – the length and depth of his loves. There is a way of stopping this…"

He walked straight back to the hotel, and at once took pen and paper to write:

Dear Miss Prout: – It has occurred to me that possibly you may be putting yourself to the pains of discovering for me the identity of the friend of Mr. Osborne, the "Rosalind," as to whom I asked you – in which case, to save you any trouble, I am writing to tell you that I have now discovered who that lady is. I am, you see, at present here in Tormouth, a very agreeable little place.

Yours truly,

C. E. Furneaux.

And, as he directed the envelope, he said to himself with a curious crowing of triumph that Winter would have said was not to be expected from his friend:

"This should bring her here; and if it does – !"

Whereupon a singular glitter appeared an instant in his eyes.

Having posted the letter, he told the young woman in the bar, who also acted as bookkeeper, that, after all, he would not be able to stay the night. He paid, nevertheless, for the room, and walked away with his bag, no one knew whither, out of Tormouth. Two hours later he returned to the hotel, and for the second time that day took the same room, but not a soul suspected for a moment that it was the same Furneaux, since at present he had the look of a meek old civil servant living on a mite of pension, the color all washed out of his flabby cheeks and hanging wrinkles.

His very suit-case now had a different physiognomy. He bargained stingily for cheap terms, and then ensconced himself in his apartment with a senile chuckle, rubbing his palms together with satisfaction at having obtained such good quarters so cheaply.

The chambermaid, whom he had tipped well on leaving, sniffed at this new visitor. "Not much to be got out of him," she said to her friend, the boots.

The next afternoon at three o'clock an elderly lady arrived by the London train at Tormouth, and she, too, came to put up at the Swan.

Furneaux, at the moment of her arrival, was strolling to and fro on the pavement in front of the hotel, very shaky and old, a man with feeble knees, threadbare coat, and shabby hat – so much so that the manager had told the young person in the bar to be sure and send in an account on Saturday.

Giving one near, clear, piercing glance into the newcomer's face, round which trembled a colonnade of iron-gray ringlets, Furneaux was satisfied.

"Marvelously well done!" he thought. "She has been on the stage in her time, and to some purpose, too."

The lady, without a glance at him, all a rustle of brown silk, passed into the hotel.

The same night the old skinflint and the lady of the iron-gray ringlets found themselves alone at a table, eating of the same dishes. It was impossible not to enter into conversation.

"Your first visit to Tormouth, I think?" began Furneaux.

The lady inclined her head.

"My name is Pugh, William Pugh," he told her. "I was in Tormouth some years ago, and know the place rather well. Charming little spot! I shall be most happy – if I may – if you will deign – "

"How long have you been here now?" she asked him in a rather mellow and subdued voice.

"I only came yesterday," he answered.

"Did you by chance meet here a certain Mr. Furneaux?" she asked.