The de Bercy Affair

With a newborn trust, which he would have failed ignominiously to explain in words, Winter led his colleagues to Marlborough Street police-station. There, after a brief but earnest colloquy with the station inspector, he asked that Janoc and his sister should be brought to the inspector's office.

Janoc came first, pale, languid, high-strung, but evidently prepared to be led to his death that instant.

He looked at the four men, three in plain clothes and one in uniform, with a superb air of dignity, almost of superiority; in silence he awaited the inquisition which he supposed he would be compelled to undergo, but when no word was spoken – when even that phantom of evil, Clarke, paid no heed to him, he grew manifestly uneasy.

At last steps were heard, the door opened, and Pauline Dessaulx entered. Of course, this brother and sister were Gauls to the finger-tips. Each screamed, each flew to the other's arms; they raved; they wept, and laughed, and uttered incoherent words of utmost affection.

Winter indulged them a few seconds. Then he broke in on their transports.

"Now, Janoc," he said brusquely, "have done with this acting! Why have you given the police so much trouble?"

"Monsieur, I swear – "

"Oh, have done with your swearing! Your sister didn't kill Mademoiselle de Bercy. She wouldn't kill a fly. Come, Pauline, own up!"

"Monsieur," faltered the girl, "I – I – "

"You took the guilt on your shoulders in order to shield your brother?"

Wild-eyed, distraught, she looked from the face of the man who seemed to peer into her very soul to that other face so dear to her. She knew not what to say. Was this stern-visaged representative of the law merely torturing her with a false hope? Dared she say "Yes," or must she persist in self-accusation?

"Janoc," thundered Winter, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Don't you see how she is suffering for your sake? Tell her, then, that you are as innocent as she of this murder?"

The dreamer, the man who would reform an evil world by force, had the one great quality demanded of a leader – he knew a man when he met him. He turned now to Pauline.

"My sister," he said in French, "this gentleman can be trusted. He is no trickster. I had no hand in the slaying of the traitress, just though her death might be."

"Ah, Dieu merci!" she breathed, and fainted.

The police matron was summoned, and the Frenchwoman soon regained consciousness. Meanwhile, Janoc admitted readily enough that he did really believe in his sister's acceptance of the dread mission imposed on her by the revolutionary party in Russia.

"Rose de Bercy was condemned, and my sweet Pauline, alas! was deputed to be her executioner," he said. "We had waited long for the hour, and the dagger was ready, though I, too, distrusted my sister's courage. Then came an urgent letter from St. Petersburg that the traitress was respited until a certain list found among her papers was checked – "

"Found?" questioned Winter.

"By Pauline," said Janoc.

"Ah, stolen?"

Janoc brushed aside the substituted word as a quibble.

"Conceive my horror when I heard of the murder!" he cried with hands flung wide and eyes that rolled. "I was sure that Pauline had mistaken the instructions – "

"Where is the St. Petersburg letter?" broke in Furneaux.

"Sapristi! You will scarce credit. It was taken from me by a man – a Russian agent he must have been – one night in the Fraternal Club, Soho – "

"Clarke, produce it," said Furneaux, grinning.

Clarke flushed, grew white, nervously thumbed some papers in a pocketbook, and handed to Winter the letter which commenced: "St. Petersburg says …" and ended: "You will see to it that she to whose hands vengeance has been intrusted shall fail on the 3d."

Winter read, and frowned. Furneaux, too, read.

"The 3d!" he muttered. "Just Heaven, what a fatal date to her!"

"What was I to think?" continued Janoc. "Antonio shared my view. He met Pauline at the Exhibition, and was ready, if necessary, to vouch for her presence there at the time Rose de Bercy went to her reckoning; but he is not in the inner – he had not heard of the Petersburg order."

"Yet he, and the rest of your gang, were prepared to let Mr. Osborne hang for this crime," said Winter, surveying the conspirator with a condemning eye. But his menace or scorn was alike to Janoc, who threw out his arms again.

"Cré nom!" he cried, "why not? Is he not a rich bourgeois like the rest? He and his class have crushed us without mercy for many a century. What matter if he were hanged by mistake? He could be spared – my Pauline could not. He is merely a rich one, my Pauline is a martyr to the cause!"

"Listen to me, Janoc," said Winter fiercely. "Spout what rubbish you please in your rotten club, but if ever you dare again to plot – even to plot, mind you – any sort of crime against life or property in this free country, I shall crush you like a beetle – like a beetle, do you hear, you wretched – insect! Now, get out!"

"Monsieur, my sister?"

"Wait outside there till she comes. Then leave England, the pair of you, or you will try what hard labor in a British prison can do for your theories."

Janoc bowed.

"Monsieur," he said, "a prison has made me what I am."

Pauline was candid as her brother. She had, in truth, misunderstood the respite given to her mistress, and meant to kill her on the night of the 3d. The visit to the Exhibition was of her own contriving. She had got rid of her English acquaintance, the cook, very easily after meeting Antonio by appointment. Then she left him, without giving a reason, and hurried back to the mansions, where, owing to her intimate knowledge of the internal arrangements, she counted on entering and leaving the flat unseen. She did actually succeed in her mission, but found Rose de Bercy lying dead.

On the floor, close to the body, was a dagger, and she had no doubt whatever that her brother had acted in her stead, so she picked up the weapon, secreted it with the dagger given her in readiness for the crime, and took the first opportunity of hiding herself, lest the mere fact that Janoc was seen in her company should draw suspicion towards him.

"Ah, but the lace? What of the piece of blood-stained lace?" demanded Furneaux.

"I wished to make sure, monsieur," was the astounding reply. "Had she not been dead, but merely wounded, I —Eh, bien! I tore her dress open, in order to feel if her heart was beating, and the bit of lace remained in my hand. I was so excited that I hardly knew what I was doing. I took it away. Afterwards, when Antonio said that the police were cooling in their chase of Osborne, I gave it to him; he told me he could use it to good effect."

"Phew!" breathed Winter, "you're a pretty lot of cutthroats, I must say. Why did you keep the daggers and the diary, sweet maid?"

"The knife that rid us of a traitress was sacred. I thought the diary might be useful to the – to our friends."

"Yet you gave it to Mr. Clarke without any demur?"

The girl shot a look at Clarke in which fright was mingled with hatred.

"He – he – I was afraid of him," she stammered.

Winter opened the door.

"There is your brother," he said. "Be off, both of you. Take my advice and leave England to-night."

They went forth, hand in hand, in no wise cast down by the loathing they had inspired. Clarke looked far more miserable than they, for by their going he had lost the prize of his life.

"Now for Osborne," whispered Furneaux. "Leave him to me, Winter. Trust me implicitly for five minutes – that is all."

Osborne was brought in by the station inspector, that human ledger who would record without an unnecessary word the name of the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury on any charge preferred against either by a responsible member of the force. The young American was calm now, completely self-possessed, disdainful of any ignominy that might be inflicted on him. He did not even glance at Furneaux, but nodded to Winter.