The de Bercy Affair

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 that turns 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's diner 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? – knows who Rose de Bercy is! 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 he knows? 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 could she, 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 the promenoire at Covent Garden, said to me: "By the way, do you know that you have been condemned to death?" I forget à propos of 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.

Who was 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 it might, 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 Furneaux had 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 coming home 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 – "

"It is a 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 in his 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, "but I have 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 it should be, 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 little book, 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.