The de Bercy Affair

"You don't say," mocked Winter.

"But I do, I did," cried Clarke, beside himself with excitement. "I took them out of Janoc's lodgings, and put them in a cab. I would have them in my hands this minute if some d – d thing hadn't occurred, some trick of fate – "

Winter stooped and unlocked a drawer in his writing-desk.

"Are these your daggers?" he demanded, though Clarke was shrewd enough, if in possession of his usual senses, to have caught the note of suppressed astonishment in the Chief Inspector's voice, since this was the first he had heard of Furneaux's deliberate pilfering of the weapons from his colleague.

But something was singing in Clarke's ears, and his eyes were glued on the blades resting there in the drawer. Denial was impossible. He recognized them instantly, and all his assurance fled from that moment.

"Well, there!" he murmured, in a curiously broken voice. "I give in! I'm done! I'm a baby at this game. Next thing, I suppose, I'll be asked to resign – me, who found 'em, and the diary, and the letter telling Janoc not to kill her – yet."

He was looking so fixedly at the two daggers that he failed to see the smile of relief that flitted over Winter's face. Now, more than ever, the Chief Inspector realized that he was dealing with one of the most complex and subtle crimes which had come within his twenty years of experience. He was well versed in Furneaux's sardonic humor, and the close friendship that had existed between them ever since the little Jersey man joined the Criminal Investigation Department had alone stopped him from resenting it. It was clear now to his quick intelligence that Furneaux had actually planned nearly every discovery which either he himself or Clarke had made. Why? He could not answer. He was moving through a fog, blind-folded, with hands tied behind his back. Search where he would, he could not find a motive, unless, indeed, Furneaux was impelled by that strangest of all motives, a desire to convict himself. At any rate, he did not want Clarke to tread on the delicate ground that must now be covered before Furneaux was arrested, and the happy accident which had unlocked Clarke's tongue with regard to the diary would serve admirably to keep him well under control.

"Now, look here, Inspector Clarke," said Winter severely, after a pause that left the other in wretched suspense, "you have erred badly in this matter. For once, I am willing to overlook it – because – because you fancied you had a grievance. But, remember this – never again! Lack of candor is fatal to the best interests of the service. It is for me to decide which cases you shall take up and which you shall leave alone. You know perfectly well that if, by chance, information reaches you with regard to any inquiry which may prove useful to the man in charge of it, it is your duty to tell him everything. I say no more now. You understand me fully, I have no doubt. You must take it from me, without question or protest, that neither Janoc nor his sister was responsible for that crime. They may have been mixed up in it – in some manner now hidden from me – but they had no share in it personally. Still, seeing that you have worked so hard, I don't object to your presence while I prove that I am right. Come with me now to Marlborough Street. Mr. Osborne must be set at liberty, of course, but I shall confront your Anarchist friends with one another, and then you will see for yourself my grounds for being so positive as to their innocence."

"But you yourself arrested Pauline, sir," Clarke ventured to say.

"Don't be an ass!" was the cool rejoinder. "Could I refuse to arrest her? Suppose you told me now that you had killed the Frenchwoman, wouldn't I be compelled to arrest you?"

"Ha!" laughed Clarke, in solemn mirth, "what about C. E. F.? Wouldn't it be funny if he owned up to it?"

Winter answered not a word. He was busy locking the drawer and rolling down the front of the desk. But Clarke did not really mean what he had said. His mind was dwelling on the inscrutable mystery of the daggers which he had last held in his hands in Soho and now knew to be reposing in a locked desk in Scotland Yard.

"Would you mind telling me, sir, how you managed to get hold of 'em?" he asked.

Winter did not pretend ignorance.

"You will be surprised to hear that I myself took them, disinterred them, from the poor creature's grave in Kensal Green Cemetery," he said.

Clarke's jaw dropped in the most abject amazement. The thing had a supernatural sound. He felt himself bewitched.

"From her grave?" he repeated.

"Yes."

"But who put 'em there?"

"Ah," said the other with a new note of sternness in his voice, "who but the murderer? But come, we are wasting time – that unfortunate Osborne must be half-demented. I suppose the Marlborough Street people will let him out on my authority. If not, I must get an order from the Commissioner. By gad, there will be a fiendish rumpus about this business before it is all settled!"

Clarke shivered. He saw a certain well-belovd detective inspector figuring prominently in that "rumpus," and he was in no mind to seek a new career after passing the best part of his life in the C. I. D.

But at Marlborough Street another shock awaited the Chief. He and Clarke were entering the street in a taxi when Furneaux crooked a finger at him from the pavement. Winter could not, nay, he dared not, ignore that demand for an interview.

"Stop here!" he said to Clarke. Then he sprang out, and approached Furneaux.

"Well?" he snapped, "have you made up your mind to end this tragic farce?"

"I am not its chief buffoon," sneered Furneaux. "In fact, I am mainly a looker-on, but I do appreciate its good points to the full."

Winter waved aside these absurdities.

"I have come to free Mr. Osborne," he said. "I was rather hoping that your own sense of fair dealing, if you have any left – "

"Exactly what I thought," broke in the other. "That is why I am here. I hate correcting your mistakes, because I fancy it does you good to discover them for yourself. Still, it is a pity to spoil a good cause. Mere professional pride forces me to warn you against liberating Osborne."

"Man alive, you try me beyond endurance. Do you believe I don't know the truth – that Rose de Bercy was your wife – that you were in that museum before the murder – that you… Oh, Furneaux, you wring it from me. Get a pistol, man, before it is too late."

"You mean that?" cried Furneaux, his eyes gleaming with a new fire.

"Heaven knows I do!"

"You want to be my friend, then, after all?"

"Friend! If you realized half the torture – "

"Pity!" mused Furneaux aloud. "Why didn't you speak sooner? So you would rather I committed suicide than be in your hands a prisoner?"

Winter then awoke to the consciousness that this extraordinary conversation was taking place in a crowded thoroughfare, within a stone's throw of a police-station in which lay three people charged with having committed the very crime he was tacitly accusing Furneaux of, while Clarke's ferret eyes must be resting on them with a suspicion already half-formed.

"I can say no more," he muttered gruffly. "One must forego friendship when duty bars the way. But if you have a grain of humanity left in your soul, come with me and release that unhappy young man – "

Some gush of emotion wrung Furneaux's face as if with a spasm of physical pain. He held out his right hand.

"Winter, forgive me, I have misjudged you," he said.

"Is it good-by?" came the passionate question.

"No, not good-by. It is an alliance, Winter, a wiping of the slate. You don't understand, perhaps, that we are both to blame. But you can take my hand, old man. There is no stain of blood on it. I did not murder my wife. I am her avenger, her pitiless, implacable avenger – so pitiless, so implacable, that I may have erred in my harshness. For Heaven's sake, Winter, believe me, and take my hand!"

The man's magnetism was irresistible. Despite the crushing weight of proof accumulated against him, the claims of old friendship were not to be ignored. Winter took the proffered hand and squeezed it with a vehemence that not only showed the tension of his feelings but also brought tears of real anguish to Furneaux's eyes.

"I only asked you for a friendly grip, Winter," he complained. "You have been more than kind. No matter what happens, don't offer to shake hands with me again for twelve months at least."

There was no comprehending him, and Winter abandoned the effort. Moreover, Clarke's puzzled brows were bent on them.

"An alliance implies confidence," he said, and the official mask fell on his bluff features. "If you can honestly – "

Furneaux laughed, with just a faint touch of that impish humor that the other knew so well.

"Not Winter, but Didymus!" he cried. "Well, then, let us proceed to the confounding of poor Clarke. Peste! he deserves a better fate, for he has worked like a Trojan. But leave Osborne to me. Have no fear – I shall explain, a little to him, all to you."

Clarke writhed with jealousy when Winter beckoned to him. While his chief was paying the cabman, he jeered at Furneaux.

"I had a notion – " he began, but the other caught his arm confidentially.

"I was just telling the guv'nor how much we owe to you in this Feldisham Mansions affair," he said. "You were on the right track all the time. You've the keenest nose in the Yard, Clarke. You can smell an Anarchist through the stoutest wall ever built. Now, not a word! You'll soon see how important your investigations have been."

Clarke was overwhelmed by a new flood. Never before had Furneaux praised him, unless in some ironic phrase that galled the more because he did not always extract its hidden meaning. He blinked with astonishment.