The de Bercy Affair

"Nothing," was the answer. "One of the servants in the house has had a sort of hysteria: but that did not trouble Rosalind beyond the mere exercise of womanly sympathy."

"Any visitors? Any odd circumstance in that way?"

"No unusual visitors – except an Inspector Furneaux, who – twice, I think – had interviews with her. She was not very explicit in telling me the subject of them."

"Inspector Furneaux," muttered Winter. To himself he said: "I thought somehow that this thing was connected with Feldisham Mansions." And at once now, with a little start, he asked: "What, by the way, is the name of the servant who has had the hysteria?"

"Her name is Pauline," answered Mrs. Marsh – "a French girl."

"Ah, Pauline!" said Winter – "just so."

The fewness of his words gave proof of the activity of his brain. He knew how Clarke had obtained the diary of Rose de Bercy from Pauline, and he felt that Pauline was in some undetermined way connected with the murder. He knew, too, that she was now to be found somewhere in Porchester Gardens, and had intended looking her up for general inquiries before two days had passed. That Pauline might actually have had a hand in the crime had never entered into his speculations – he was far too hot in these days on the trail of Furneaux, who was being constantly watched by his instructions.

"I think I will see this Pauline to-night," he said. "Meantime, I can only recommend you to hope, Mrs. Marsh. These things generally have some simple explanation in the end, and turn out less black than they look. Expect me, then, at your residence within an hour."

But when Mrs. Marsh and Osborne were gone he was perplexed, remembering that this was Thursday evening, for he had promised himself on this very evening to be at a spot which he had been told by one of his men that Furneaux had visited on two previous Thursday evenings, a spot where he would see a sight that would interest him.

While he was on the horns of the dilemma as to going there, or going to Pauline, Inspector Clarke entered: and at once Winter shelved upon Clarke the business of sounding Pauline.

"You seem to have a lot of power over her – to make her give up the diary so promptly," he said to Clarke. "Go to her, then, get at the bottom of this business, and see if you cannot hit upon some connection between the disappearance of Miss Marsh and the murder of the actress."

Clarke stood up with alacrity, and started off. Presently Winter himself was in a cab, making for the Brompton Cemetery.

As for Clarke, the instant he was within sight of Porchester Gardens, his whole interest turned from Pauline Dessaulx and the vanished Rosalind to two men whom he saw in the street almost opposite the house in which Pauline lay. They were Janoc and the Italian, Antonio, and Antonio seemed to be reasoning and pleading with Janoc, who had the gestures of a man distracted.

Hanging about near them was a third man, whom Clarke hardly noticed – a loafer in a long coat of rags, a hat without any crown, and visible toes – a diminutive loafer – Furneaux, in fact, who, for his own reasons, was also interested in Janoc in these days.

Every now and again Janoc looked up at the windows of Mrs. Marsh's residence with frantic gestures, and a crying face – a thing which greatly struck Clarke; and anon the loafer passed by Janoc and Antonio, unobserved, peering into the gutter for the cast-aside ends of cigars and cigarettes.

Instantly Clarke stole down the opposite side of the square into which the house faced, looked about him, saw no one, climbed some railings, and then through the bushes stole near to the pavement where the foreigners stood. There, concealed in the shrubbery, he could clearly hear Janoc say:

"Am I never to see her? My little one! But I am about to see her! I will knock at that door, and clasp her in my arms."

"My friend, be reasonable!" pleaded Antonio, holding the arm of Janoc, who made more show of tearing himself free than he made real effort – with that melodramatic excess of gesture to which the Latin races are prone. "Be reasonable! Oh, she is wiser than you! She has hidden herself from you because she realizes the danger of being seen near you even in the dark. Be sure that she has longed to see you as keenly as you hunger to see her; but she feels that there must be no meeting with so many spying eyes in the world – "

"Let them spy! but they shall not keep me from the embrace of one whom I love, of one who has suffered," said Janoc, covering his face. "Oh, when I think of your cruelty – you who all the time knew where she was and did not tell me!"

"I confess it, but I acted for the best," said Antonio. "She wrote to me three days after the murder, so that she might have news of you. I met her, and received from her that bit of lace from the actress's dress which I put into Osborne's bag at Tormouth, to throw still more doubt upon him. But she implored me not to reveal to you where she was, lest, if you should be seen with her, suspicion of the murder should fall upon you – "

"Her heart's goodness! My sister! My little one!" exclaimed Janoc.

"Only be patient!" wooed Antonio – "do not go to her. Soon she will make her escape to France, and you also, and then you will embrace the one the other. And now you have no longer cause for much anxiety as to her capture, for the dagger cannot be found with her, since it lies safe in your room in your own keeping, and to-night you will drop it into the river, where it will be buried forever. Do not go to her – "

These were the last words of the dialogue that Clarke heard, for the tidings that "the dagger" was in Janoc's room sent him creeping away through the bushes. He was soon over the railings and in a cab, making for Soho; and behind him in another cab went Furneaux, whose driver, looking at his fare's attire, had said, "Pay first, and then I'll take you."

Clarke, for his part, had no difficulty in entering Janoc's room with his skeleton-keys – indeed, he had been there before! Nor was there any difficulty in finding the dagger. There it lay, with another, in the narrow cardboard box into which Rosalind had put both weapons on finding them behind the shelf of books in Pauline's room.

Clarke's eyes, as they fell at last upon that Saracen blade which he knew so well without ever having seen it, pored, gloated over it, with a glitter in them.

He relocked the trunk, relocked the door, and with the box held fast, ran down the three stairs to his cab – feeling himself a made man, a head taller than all Scotland Yard that night. He put his precious find on the interior front seat of the cab – a four-wheeler; for in his eagerness he had jumped into the first wheeled thing that he had seen, and, having lodged the box inside, being anxious to hide it, he made a step forward toward the driver, to tell him whither he had now to drive. Then he entered, shut the door, and, as the vehicle drove off, put out his hand to the box to feast his eyes on its contents again. But the box was gone – no daggers were there!

"Stop!" howled Clarke.

The cab stopped, but it was all in vain. The loafer, who had opened the other door of the cab with swift deftness while Clarke spoke to the driver, had long since turned a near corner with box and daggers, and was well away. Clarke, standing in the street, glanced up at the sky, down at the ground, and stared round about, like a man who does not know in which world he finds himself.

Meantime, Furneaux hailed another cab, again having to pay in advance, and started off on the drive to Brompton Cemetery – where Winter was already in hiding, awaiting his arrival.

Something like a storm of wind was tearing the night to pieces, and the trees of the place of graves gesticulated as if they were wrangling. The moon had moved up, all involved in heavy clouds whose grotesque shapes her glare struck into garish contrasts of black against silver. Furneaux bent his way against the gale, holding on his dilapidated hat, his rags fluttering fantastically behind him, till he came to the one grave he sought – the cheerless resting-place of Rose de Bercy. The very spirit of gloom and loneliness brooded here, in a nook almost inclosed with foliage. As yet no stone had been erected. The grave was just a narrow oblong of red marl and turf, which the driven rain now made soft and yielding. On it lay two withered wreaths.

Furneaux, standing by it, took off his hat, and the rain flecked his hair. Then from a breast-pocket of his rags he took out a little funnel of paper, out of which he cast some Parma violets upon the mound. This was Thursday – and Rose de Bercy had been murdered on a Thursday.

After that he stood there perhaps twenty minutes, his head bent in meditation.

Then he peered cautiously into the dark about him, took a penknife with a good-sized blade from a pocket, and with it set to work to make a grave within the grave – a grave just big and deep enough to contain the box with the daggers. He buried his singular tribute and covered it over.

After this he waited silently, apparently lost in thought, for some ten minutes more.

Then, with that curious omniscience which sometimes seemed to belong to the man, he sent a strange cry into the gloom.

"Are you anywhere about, Winter?"

Nor was there anything aggressive in the call. It was subdued, sad, touched with solemnity, like the voice of a man who had wept, and dried his eyes.

There was little delay before Winter appeared out of the shadow of his ambush.

"I am!" he said; he was amazed beyond expression, yet his colleague had ever been incomprehensible in some things.

"Windy night," said Furneaux, in an absurd affectation of ease.

"And wet," said Winter, utterly at a loss how to take the other.

"Odd that we should both come to visit the poor thing's grave at the same hour," remarked Furneaux.

"It may be odd," agreed Winter.

There was a bitter silence.

Then Furneaux's cold voice was heard again.

"I dare say, now, it seems to you a suspicious thing that I should come to this grave at all."

"Why should it, Furneaux?" asked his chief bluntly.

"Yes, why?" said Furneaux. "I once knew her. I told you from the first that I knew her."

"I remember: you did."

"You asked no questions as to how I came to know her, or how long, or under what circumstances. Why did you not ask? Such questions occur among friends: and I – might have told you. But you did not ask."