The de Bercy Affair

"Fully," said Winter.

She turned to Furneaux.

"But you, little man, what do you say?"

"I have never needed to be convinced," he answered. "I have known the truth since the day when we first met."

Something in his manner seemed to trouble her, but those golden brown eyes dwelt on him in a species of scornful surprise.

"Why, then, have you liberated Janoc and his sister?" she demanded.

"Because they are innocent."

She laughed, a nervous, unmirthful laugh.

"But there only remains Mr. Osborne," she protested.

"There is one other, the murderess," he said. Even while she gazed at him in wonder he had come quite near. His right hand shot out and grasped her arm.

"I arrest you, Hylda Prout," he said. "I charge you with the murder of Mirabel Furneaux, otherwise known as Rose de Bercy, at Feldisham Mansions, on the night of July 3d."

She looked at him in a panic to which she tried vainly to give a semblance of incredulity. Even in that moment of terror a new thought throbbed in her dazed brain.

"Mirabel Furneaux!" she managed to gasp.

"Yes, my wife. You committed a needless crime, Hylda Prout. She had never done, nor ever could have done, you any injury. But it is my duty to warn you that everything you now say will be taken down in writing, and may be used in evidence against you."

She tried to wrest herself free, but his fingers clung to her like a steel trap. Winter, too, approached, as if to show the folly of resistance.

"Let go my arm!" she shrieked, and her eyes blazed redly though the color had fled from her cheeks.

"I cannot. I dare not," said Furneaux. "I have reason to believe that you carry a weapon, perhaps poison, concealed in your clothing."

"Idiot!" she screamed, now beside herself with rage, "what evidence can you produce against me? You will be the laughing stock of London, you and your arrests."

"Mrs. Bates knows now who it was she saw on the stairs," said Furneaux patiently. "Campbell, the driver of the taxicab, has recognized you as the person he drove to and from Feldisham Mansions. Mary Dean, the housemaid there, can say at last why she fancied that Mr. Osborne killed her mistress. But you'll hear these things in due course. At present you must come with me."

"Where to?"

"To Vine Street police-station."

"Shall I not be permitted to see Rupert?"

"No."

A tremor convulsed her lithe body. Then, and not till then, did she really understand that the apparently impossible had happened. Still, her extraordinary power of self-reliance came to her aid. She ceased to struggle, and appealed to Winter.

"This man is acting like a lunatic," she cried. "He says his wife was killed, and if that be true he is no fit person to conduct an inquiry into the innocence or guilt of those on whom he wreaks his vengeance. You know why I came here to-night – merely to prove how you had blundered in the past – yet you dare to turn my harmless acting into a justification of my arrest. Where are these people, Campbell and the woman, whose testimony you bring against me?"

Now, in putting that impassioned question, she was wiser than she knew. Furneaux was ever ready to take risks in applying criminal procedure that Winter fought shy of. He had seen more than one human vampire slip from his grasp because of some alleged unfairness on the part of the police, of which a clever counsel had made ingenious use during the defense. If Hylda Prout had been identified by others than Mrs. Bates, of whose presence alone she was aware, she had every right to be confronted with them. He turned aside and told the horrified Jenkins to bring the witnesses from the room in which they had taken refuge. As a matter of fact, Campbell and Mary Dean, in charge of Police Constable Johnson, had been concealed behind the curtains that draped the servants' passage, and Johnson had scarce been able to stifle the scream that rose to the housemaid's lips when she saw on the stairs the living embodiment of her mistress's murderer.

But Furneaux did not mean to allow Hylda Prout to regain the marvelous self-possession which had been imperiled by the events of the past minute.

"While we are waiting for Campbell and the girl you may as well learn the really material thing that condemns you," he said, whispering in her ear with quiet menace. "You ought to have destroyed that gray suit which you purchased from a second-hand clothes dealer. It was a deadly mistake to keep those blood-stained garments. The clothes Osborne wore have been produced long since. They were soiled by you two days after the murder, a fact which I can prove by half a dozen witnesses. Those which you wore to-night, which you are wearing now, are spotted with your victim's blood. I know, because I have seen them in your lodgings, and they can be identified beyond dispute by the man who sold them to you."

Suddenly he raised his voice.

"Winter! Quick! She has the strength of ten women!"

For Hylda Prout, hearing those fateful words, was seized with a fury of despair. She had peered into Furneaux's eyes and seen there the pitiless purpose which had filled his every waking moment since his wife's untimely death. Love and hate had conspired to wreck her life. They had mastered her at last. From being their votary she had become their victim. An agonizing sigh came from her straining breast. She was fighting like a catamount, while Winter held her shoulders and Furneaux her wrists; then she collapsed between them, and a thin red stream issued from her lips.

They carried her to the sofa on which she had lain when for the first and only time in her life those same red lips had met Rupert Osborne's.

Winter hurried to the door, and sent Campbell, coming on tiptoe across the hall, flying in his taxi for a doctor. But Furneaux did not move from her side. He gazed down at her with something of the judge, something of the executioner, in his waxen features.

"All heart!" he muttered, "all heart, controlled by a warped brain!"

"She has broken a blood vessel," said Winter.

"No; she has broken her heart," said Furneaux, hearing, though apparently not heeding him.

"A physical impossibility," growled the Chief Inspector, to whom the sight of a woman's suffering was peculiarly distressing.

"Her heart has dilated beyond belief. It is twice the normal size. This is the end, Winter! She is dying!"

The flow of blood stopped abruptly. She opened her eyes, those magnificent eyes which were no longer golden brown but a pathetic yellow.

"Oh, forgive!" she muttered. "I – I – loved you, Rupert – with all my soul!"

She seemed to sink a little, to shrink, to pass from a struggle to peace. The lines of despair fled from her face. She lay there in white beauty, a lily whiteness but little marred by traces of the make-up hurriedly wiped off her cheeks and forehead.

"May the Lord be merciful to her!" said Furneaux, and without another word, he hurried from the room and out of the house.

Winter, having secured some degree of order in a distracted household, raced off to Marlborough Street; but Furneaux had been there before him, and Osborne, knowing nothing of Hylda Prout's death, had flown to Porchester Gardens and Rosalind.

The hour was not so late that the thousand eyes of Scotland Yard could not search every nook in which Furneaux might have taken refuge, but in vain. Winter, grieving for his friend, fearing the worst, remained all night in his office, receiving reports of failure by telephone and messenger. At last, when the sun rose, he went wearily to his home, and was lying, fully dressed, on his bed, in the state of half-sleep, half-exhaustion, which is nature's way of healing the bruised spirit, when he seemed to hear Furneaux's voice sobbing:

"My Mirabel, why did you leave me, you whom I loved!"

Instantly he sprang up in a frenzy of action, and ran out into the street. At that early hour, soon after six o'clock, there was no vehicle to be found except a battered cab which had prowled London during the night, but he woke the heavy-witted driver with a promise of double fare, and the horse ambled over the slow miles to the yews and laurels of Kensal Green Cemetery.

There he found him, kneeling by the side of that one little mound of earth, after having walked in solitude through the long hours till the gates were opened for the day's digging of graves. Winter said nothing. He led his friend away, and had him cared for.

Slowly the cloud lifted. At last, when a heedless public had forgotten the crime and its dramatic sequel, there came a day when Furneaux appeared at Scotland Yard.

"Hello, Winter," he said, coming in as though the world had grown young again.

"Hello, Furneaux, glad to see you," said Winter, pushing the cigar-box across the table.