The de Bercy Affair

"Tell me now."

"Winter, I'd see you hanged first!"

The words came in a sharp rasp – his first sign of anger.

"Hanged?" repeated Winter, flushing. "You'll see me hanged? I usually see the hanging, Furneaux!"

"Sometimes you do: sometimes you are not half smart enough!"

Furneaux barked the taunt like a dog at him.

Of the two, the big bluff man of Anglo-Saxon breed, mystified and saddened though he was, showed more self-control than the excitable little man more French than English.

"This is an occasion when I leave the smartness to you, Furneaux," he said bitterly, "though there is a sort of clever duplicity which ought to be drained out of the blood, even if it cost a limb, or a life."

"Ah, you prove yourself a trusty friend – loyal to the backbone!"

"For Heaven's sake, make no appeal to our friendship!"

"What! Appeal? I? Oh, this is too much!"

"You are trying me beyond endurance. Can't you understand? Why keep up this farce of pretense?"

There was genuine emotion in Winter's voice, but Furneaux's harsh laugh mingled with the soughing of the laden branches that tossed in the wind.

"Farce, indeed!" he cried. "I refuse to continue it. Go, then, and be punished – you deserve it – you, whom I trusted more than a brother."

He turned on his heel, and made off, a weird figure in those wind-blown tatters, and Winter watched him with eyes that had in them some element of fear, almost of hope, for in that hour he could have forgiven Furneaux were he standing by his corpse.

But the instinct of duty soon came uppermost. He had seen his colleague bury something in the grave, and the briefest search brought to light the daggers in their cardboard coffin. Even in that overwhelming gloom of night and shivering yews he recognized one of the weapons. A groan broke from him, as it were, in protest.

"Mad!" he sighed, "stark, staring mad – to leave this here, where he knew I must find it. My poor Furneaux! Perhaps that is best. I must defer action for a few hours, if only to give him a last chance."

While the Chief Inspector was stumbling to the gate of the Cemetery – which was long since closed to all except those who could show an official permit – one of his subordinates was viewing the Feldisham Mansions crime in a far different light. Inspector Clarke, in whom elation at his discovery was chastened by chagrin at his loss, was walking towards Scotland Yard and saying to himself:

"I can prove, anyhow, that I took the rotten things from his trunk. So now, Monsieur Janoc, the next and main item is to arrest you!"

CHAPTER XIII

OSBORNE MAKES A VOW

When Inspector Winter returned to his office from the cemetery he sat at his desk, gazing at the two daggers before him, and awaiting the coming of Clarke, from whom he expected to receive a full report of an interview with Pauline Dessaulx in connection with the disappearance of Rosalind.

There lay that long sought-for Saracen dagger at last: and Furneaux had it, had been caught burying it in the grave of her who had been killed by it. Was not this fact, added to the fact that Furneaux was seen in Osborne's museum before the murder – was it not enough to justify – indeed, enough to demand – Furneaux's arrest straight away? And Furneaux had visited Rose de Bercy that night – had been seen by Bertha Seward, the actress's cook! And yet Winter hesitated… What had been Furneaux's motive? There was as yet no ray of light as to that, though Winter had caused elaborate inquiries to be made in Jersey as to Furneaux's earlier career there. And there were two daggers buried, not one…

"Where does this come in, this second dagger…?" wondered Winter, a maze of doubt and horror clouding his brain.

Just then Clarke arrived, rather breathless, jubilant, excited, but Winter had already hidden the daggers instinctively – throwing them into a drawer of his writing-desk.

"Well, what news of Miss Marsh?" he asked, with a semblance of official calm he was far from feeling.

"The fact is, sir, I haven't been to Pauline Des – "

"What!"

"I was nearly at her door when I came across Gaston Janoc – "

"Oh, Heavens!" muttered Winter in despair. "You and your eternal Janocs – "

The smiling Clarke looked at his chief in full confidence that he would not be reprimanded for having disobeyed orders. Suddenly making three steps on tiptoe, he said in Winter's ear:

"Don't be too startled – here's an amazing piece of information for you, sir —it was Gaston Janoc who committed the Feldisham Mansions murder!"

Winter stared at him without real comprehension. "Gaston Janoc!" his lips repeated.

"I want to apply to-morrow for a warrant for his arrest," crowed Clarke.

"But, man alive! – don't drive me distracted," cried out Winter; "what are you talking about?"

"Oh, I am not acting on any impulse," said Clarke, placidly satisfied, enthroned on facts; "I may tell you now that I have been working on the Feldisham Mansions affair from the first on my own account. I couldn't help it. I was drawn to it as a needle by a magnet, and I now have all the threads – ten distinct proofs – in my hands. It was Gaston Janoc did it! Just listen to this, sir – "

"Oh, do as you like about your wretched Anarchist, Clarke," said Winter pestered, waving him away; "I can't stop now. I sent you to do something, and you should have done it. Miss Marsh's mother is half dead with fright and grief; the thing is pressing, and I'll go myself."

With a snatch at his hat, he rushed out, Clarke following sullenly to go home, though on his way northward, by sheer force of habit, he strolled through Soho, looked up at Janoc's windows, and presently, catching sight of Janoc himself coming out of the restaurant on the ground floor, nodded after him, muttering to himself: "Soon now – " and went off.

But had he shadowed his Janoc just then, it might have been well! The Frenchman first went into a French shop labeled "Vins et Comestibles," where he bought slices of sausage and a bottle of cheap wine, from which he got the cork drawn – he already carried half a loaf of bread wrapped in paper, and with bread, sausage, and wine, bent his way through spitting rain and high wind, his coat collar turned up round his neck, to a house in Poland Street.

An unoccupied house: its window-glass thicker than itself with grime, broken in some of the panes, while in others were roughly daubed the words: "To Let." But he possessed a key, went in, picked up a candlestick in the passage, and lit the candle-end it contained.

At the end of the passage he went down a narrow staircase of wood, then down some stone steps, to the door of a back cellar: and this, too, he opened with a key.

Rosalind was crouching on the floor in the corner farthest from the door, her head bent down, her feet tucked under her skirt. She had been asleep: for the air in there was very heavy, the cellar hardly twelve feet square, no windows, and the slightest movement roused a cloud of dust. The walls were of rough stone, without break or feature, save three little vaulted caves like ovens in the wall facing the door, made to contain wine bottles and small barrels: in fact, one barrel and several empty bottles now lay about in the dust. Besides, there were sardine tins and a tin of mortadel, and relics of sausage and bread, with which Janoc had lately supplied his prisoner, with a bottle half full of wine, and one of water: all showing very dimly in the feeble rays of the candle.

She looked at him, without moving, just raising her scornful eyes and no more, and he, holding up the light, looked at her a good time.

"Lady," he said at last, "I have brought you some meat, wine, and bread."

She made no answer. He stepped forward, and laid them by her side; then walked back to the door, as if to go out, coughing at the dust; but stopped and leant his back on the wall near the door, his legs crossed, looking down at her.

"Lady," he said presently, "you still remain fixed in your obstinacy?"

No answer: only her wide-open reproving eyes dwelt on him with their steady accusation like a conscience, and her hand stuck and stuck many times with a hat-pin her hat which lay on her lap. Her gown appeared to be very frowsy and unkempt now; her hair was untidy, and quite gray with dust on one side, her face was begrimed and stained with the tracks of tears; but her lips were firm, and the wonderful eyes, chiding, disdainful, gave no sign of a drooping spirit.

"You will say nothing to me?" asked Janoc.

No answer.

"Is it that you think I may relent and let you free, lady, because my heart weakens at your suffering? Do not imagine such a thing of me! The more you are beautiful, the more you are sublime in your torture, the more I adore you, the more my heart pours out tears of blood for you, the more I am inflexible in my will. You do not know me – I am a man, I am not a wind; a mind, not an emotion. Oh, pity is strong in me, love is strong; but what is strongest of all is self-admiration, my worship of intelligence. And have I not made it impossible that you should be let free without conditions by my confession to you that it was my sister Pauline who killed the actress? I tell you again it was Pauline who killed her. It was not a murder! It was an assassination – a political assassination. Mademoiselle de Bercy had proved a traitress to the group of Internationals to which she belonged: she was condemned to death; the lot fell upon Pauline to execute the sentence; and on the day appointed she executed it, having first stolen from Mr. Osborne the 'celt' and the dagger, so as to cast the suspicion upon him. I tell you this of my sister – of one who to me is dearest on earth; and, having told you all this, is it any longer possible that I should set you free without conditions? You see, do you not, that it is impossible?"