The de Bercy Affair

"And she has said such a thing of me? She has declared that I left – ?"

"Yes, she has. Why trouble to deny it? You did leave – By the way, have you a brother or any other relative in London – ?"

"I – I, sir! A brother? Ah, mon Dieu! Oh, but, sir – !"

"Really you must calm yourself. You went away from the Exhibition at an early hour. There is no doubt about it, and you must have a brother or some person deeply interested in you, for some man afterwards got hold of the cook, Bertha Seward, and begged her for Heaven's sake not to mention your departure from the Exhibition that night. He gave her money – she told me so. And Inspector Clarke knows it, as well as I, for Hester Seward has told me that he went to question her – "

"M'sieur Clarke!" – at the name of "Clarke," which she whispered after him, the girl's face turned a more ghastly gray, for Clarke was the ogre, the griffon, the dragon of her recent life, at the mere mention of whom her heart leaped guiltily. Suddenly, abandoning the struggle, she fell back from her sitting posture, tried to hide her face in the bedclothes, and sobbed wildly:

"I didn't do it! I didn't do it!"

"Do what? Who said you had done anything?" asked Winter. "It isn't you that Mr. Clarke suspects, you silly child, it is a man named – "

She looked up with frenzied eyes to hear the name – but Winter stopped. In his hands the unhappy Pauline was a little hedge-bird in the talons of a hawk.

"Named?" she repeated.

"Never mind his name."

She buried her head afresh, giving out another heart-rending sob, and from her smothered lips came the words:

"It wasn't I – it was – it was – "

"It was who?" asked Winter.

She shivered through the whole of her delicate frame, and a low murmur came from her throat:

"You have seen the diary – it was Monsieur Furneaux."

Oddly enough, despite his own black conviction, this was not what Winter expected to hear.

He started, and said sharply:

"Oh, you are stupid. Why are you saying things that you know nothing of?"

"May Heaven forgive me for accusing anyone," she sobbed hoarsely. "But it was not anybody else. It could not be. You have seen the diary – it was Mr. Furneaux, or it was Mr. Osborne."

"Ah, two accusations now," cried Winter. "Furneaux or Osborne! You are trying to shield someone? What motive could Mr. Furneaux, or Mr. Osborne, have for such an act?"

"Was not Mr. Osborne her lover? And was not Mr. Furneaux her – husband?"

"Her – !"

In that awesome moment Winter hardly realized what he said. Half starting out of his chair, he glared in stupor at the shrinking figure on the bed, while every drop of blood fled away from his own face.

There was a long silence. Then Winter, bending over her, spoke almost in the whisper of those who share a shameful secret.

"You say that Mr. Furneaux was her husband? You know it?"

She trembled violently, but nerved herself to answer:

"Yes, I know it."

"Tell me everything. You must! Do you understand? I order you."

"She told me herself when we were friends. She was married to him in the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris on the 7th of November in the year '98. But she soon left him, since he had not the means to support her. I have her marriage certificate in my trunk."

Winter sat some minutes spellbound, his big round eyes staring at the girl, but not seeing her, his forehead glistening. This, then, supplied the long-sought motive. The unfaithful wife was about to marry another. This was the key. An affrighting callousness possessed him. He became the cold, unbending official again.

"You must get up at once, and give me that certificate," he said in the tone of authority, and went out of the room. In a little while she placed the paper in his hands, and he went away with it. Were she not so distraught she might have seen that it shook in his fingers.

Now he, like Clarke, held all the threads of an amazing case.

The next afternoon Furneaux was to arrest Osborne – it was for him, Winter, then, to anticipate such an outrage by the swift arrest of Furneaux. But was he quite ready? He wished he could secure another day's grace to collate and systematize each link of his evidence, and he hurried to Osborne's house in order to give Osborne a hint to vanish again for a day or two. Nevertheless, when at the very door, he paused, refrained, thought that he would manage things differently, and went away.

On one of the blinds of the library as he passed he saw the shadow of a head – of Osborne's head in fact, who in that hour of despair was sitting there, bowed down, hopeless now of finding Rosalind, whom he believed to be dead.

Though Mrs. Marsh had that evening received a note from Janoc: "Your daughter is alive," as yet Osborne knew nothing of it. He was mourning his loss in solitude when a letter was brought to him by Jenkins. He tore it open. After an uncomprehending glare at the written words he suddenly grasped their meaning.

The writer believes that your ex-secretary, Miss Hylda Prout, could tell you where Miss Rosalind Marsh is imprisoned.

"Imprisoned!" That was the word that pierced the gloom and struck deepest. She was alive, then – that was joy. But a prisoner – in what hole of blackness? Subject to what risks? In whose power? In ten seconds he was rushing out of the house, and was gone.

During the enforced respite of a journey in a cab he looked again at the mysterious note. It was a man's hand; small, neat writing; no signature. Who could have written it? But his brain had no room for guessing. He looked out to cry to the driver: "A sovereign for a quick run."

To his woe, Hylda Prout was not in her lodgings when he arrived there. During the last few days he had known nothing of her movements. After that flare-up of passion in the library, the relation of master and servant had, of course, come to an end between them; and the lady of the house in Holland Park where Hylda rented two rooms told him that Miss Prout had gone to see her brother for the weekend, and was not expected back till noon on the following day.

And Osborne did not know where her brother lived! His night was dismal with a horror of sleeplessness.

Long before midday he was in Hylda's sitting-room, only to pace it to and fro in an agony of impatience till two o'clock – and then she came.

"Oh, I have waited hours – weary hours!" he cried with a reproach that seemed to sweep aside the need for explanations.

"I am so sorry! – sit here with me."

She touched his hand, leading him to a couch and sitting near him, her hat still on, a flush on her pale face.

"Hylda" – her heart leapt: he called her "Hylda"! – "you know where Miss Marsh is."

She sprang to her feet in a passion.

"So it is to talk to me about another woman that you have come? I who have humbled myself, lost my self-respect – "

Osborne, too, stood up, stung to the quick by this mood of hers, so foreign to the disease of impatience and care in which he was being consumed.

"My good girl," he said, "are you going to be reasonable?"

"Come, then," she retorted, "let us be reasonable." She sat down again, her hands crossed on her lap, a passionate vindictiveness in her pursed lips, but a mock humility in her attitude.