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de Bercy Affair

<h2>CHAPTER XIV THE ARRESTS</h2> As Furneaux and Osborne were being driven rapidly to Poland Street, bent on the speedy release of Rosalind, Inspector Winter, for his part, was seeking for Furneaux in a fury of haste, eager to arrest his colleague before the latter could arrest Osborne. At the same time Clarke, determined to bring matters to a climax by arresting Janoc, was lurking about a corner of Old Compton Street, every moment expecting the passing of his quarry. Each man was acting without a warrant. The police are empowered to arrest "on suspicion," and each of the three could produce proof in plenty to convict his man. As for Winter, he knew that where Osborne was Furneaux would not be far that day. Hence, when in the forenoon he received notice from one of his watchers that Furneaux had that morning deliberately fled from observation, he bade his man watch Osborne's steps with one eye, while the other searched the offing for the shadow of Furneaux, on the sound principle that "wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together." Thus Osborne's ride to Holland Park to see Hylda [pg 247] Prout had been followed; and, two hours afterwards, while he was still waiting for Hylda's arrival, Winter's spy from behind the frosted glass of a public-house bar had watched Furneaux's arrival and long wait on the pavement. He promptly telephoned the fact to Winter, and Winter was about to set out westward from Scotland Yard when the detective telephoned afresh to say that Mr. Osborne had appeared out of the house, and had been accosted by Furneaux. The watcher, quite a smart youngster from a suburban station, hastened from his hiding-place. Evidently, Furneaux was careless of espionage at that moment. He hailed a cab without so much as a glance at the man passing close to Osborne and himself on the pavement, and it was easy to overhear the address given to the driver—a house in Poland Street. Why to Poland Street Winter could not conceive. At all events, the fact that the drive was not to a police-station inspired him with the hope that Osborne's arrest was for some reason not yet an accomplished fact, and he, too, set off for Poland Street, which happily lay much nearer Scotland Yard than Holland Park. Meantime, Osborne and Furneaux were hastening eastward in silence, Osborne with his head bent between his clenched hands, and an expression of face as wrenched with pain as that of a man racked with neuralgia. It was now that he began to feel in reality the tremendousness of the vow he had just [pg 248] made to marry Hylda Prout, in order to set Rosalind free. Compared to that his impending arrest was too little a thing for him to care about. But as they were spinning along by Kensington Gardens, a twinge of curiosity prompted him to ask why he was to be arrested now, after being assured repeatedly that the police would not formulate any charge against him. Furneaux looked straight in front of him, and when he answered, his voice was metallic. "There was no escaping it, Mr. Osborne," he said. "But be thankful for small mercies. I was waiting there in the street for you, intending to pounce on you at once, but when I knew that you had sacrificed yourself for Miss Marsh, I thought, 'He deserves to be permitted to release her': for, to promise to marry Miss Prout——" "What are you saying? How could you possibly know that I promised to marry Miss Prout?" Osborne's brain was still seething, but some glimmer of his wonted clear judgment warned him of the exceeding oddity of the detective's remark. "Well, you told me that you had 'bought' the knowledge of her whereabouts with 'your youth and your life'—so I assumed that there could be no other explanation." "Still, that is singularly deep guessing——!" "Well, if you demand greater accuracy, I foresaw exactly what would be the result of your interview with your late secretary, in case you really did care [pg 249] for Miss Marsh. Therefore, I brought about the interview because——" "You brought it about?" cried Osborne in a crescendo of astonishment. "Yes. You see I am candid. You are aware that I knew where Miss Marsh could be found, and I might have given you the information direct. But I preferred to write a note telling you that you must depend on Miss Prout for tidings." "Ah! it was you, then, who sent that note! But how cruel, how savagely cruel! Could you not have told me yourself? Don't you realize that your detestable action has bound me for life to a woman whom—Oh, I hope, since you are about to arrest me, that you will prove me guilty, for if I live, life henceforth will hold nothing for me save Dead Sea fruit!" He covered his eyes, but Furneaux, whose face was twitching curiously, laid a hand on his knee, and said in a low voice: "Do not despair. You are not the only man in the world who suffers. I had reasons—and strong reasons—for acting in this manner. One reason was that I was uncertain of the depth of your affection for Miss Marsh, and I wished to be as certain as you have now made me." "But how on earth could that concern you, the depth or shallowness of my affection for Miss Marsh?" asked Osborne in a white heat of anger and indignation. "Nevertheless, it did concern me," answered Furneaux [pg 250] dryly; "I cannot, at present, explain everything to you. I had a suspicion that your affection for Miss Marsh was trivial: if it had been, you would then have shown a criminal forgetfulness of the dead woman whom so recently you said you loved. In that event, you would have found me continuing the part I have played in regard to you—anything but a friend. As matters stand, I say I may yet earn your gratitude for what to-day you call my cruelty." Osborne passed his hands across his eyes wearily. "I fear I can neither talk myself, nor quite understand what you mean by your words," he murmured. "My poor head is rather in a whirl. You see, I have given my promise—I have sworn on the Bible to that woman—nothing can ever alter that, or release me now. I am—done for——" His chin dropped on his breast. He had the semblance of a man who had lost all—for whom death had no terrors. "Nevertheless, I tell you that I forecasted the result of your interview with Hylda Prout," persisted Furneaux. "Even now I do not see your reason for despair. I knew that Miss Prout had an ardent attachment to you; I said to myself: 'She will surely seek to sell the information in her possession for what she most longs for, and the possibility is that Osborne may yield to her terms—always provided that his attachment to the other lady is profound. If it is not profound, I find out by this device; [pg 251] if it is profound, he becomes engaged to Miss Prout, which is a result that I greatly wish to bring about before his arrest.'" "My God! why?" asked Osborne, looking up in a tense agony that might have moved a less sardonic spirit. "For certain police reasons," said Furneaux, smiling with the smug air of one who has given an irrefutable answer. "But what a price I pay for these police reasons! Is this fair, Inspector Furneaux? Now, in Heaven's name, is this fair? Life-long misery on the one hand, and some trick of officialism on the other!" The detective seemed to think the conversation at an end, since he sat in silence and stared blankly out of the window. Osborne shrank into his corner, quite drooping and pinched with misery, and brooded over his misfortunes. Presently he started, and asked furiously: "In what possible way did Hylda Prout come to know where Miss Marsh was hidden, to use your own ridiculous word?" "Miss Prout happens to be a really clever woman," answered Furneaux. "In the times of Richelieu she would have governed France from an alcôve. You had better ask her herself how she obtained her knowledge. Still, I don't mind telling you that Miss Marsh has been imprisoned in a wine-cellar by a certain Anarchist, a great man in his way, and that your former secretary has of late days developed [pg 252] quite an intimate acquaintance with Anarchist circles——" "Anarchist?" gasped Osborne. "My Rosalind—imprisoned in a wine-cellar?" "It is a tangled skein," purred Furneaux with a self-satisfied smirk; "I am afraid we haven't time now to go into it." The cab crossed Oxford Circus—two minutes more and they were in Soho. Winter at that moment was on the lookout for Furneaux at the corner of a shabby street which traverses Poland Street. As for Clarke, he had vanished from the nook in Compton Street where he was loitering in the belief that Janoc would soon pass. In order to understand exactly the amazing events that were now reaching their crisis it is necessary to go back half an hour and see how matters had fared with Clarke.... During his long vigil, he, in turn, had been watched most intently by the Italian, Antonio, who, quickly becoming suspicious, hastened to a barber's shop, kept by a compatriot, where Janoc was in hiding. Into this shop he pitched to pant a frenzied warning. "Sauriac says that Inspector Clarke has been up your stairs—may have entered your rooms—and I myself have just seen him prowling round Old Compton Street!" Agitation mastered Janoc; he, who so despised those bunglers, the police, now began to fear them. [pg 253] Out he pelted, careless of consequences, and Antonio after him. He made straight for his third-floor back, and, losing a few seconds in his eagerness to unlock the door, rushed to the trunk in which he had left the two daggers, meaning to do away with them once and for all. And now he knew how he had blundered in keeping them. He looked in the trunk and saw, not the daggers, but the gallows! For the first time in his life he nearly fainted. Political desperadoes of his type are often neurotic—weak as women when the hour of trial is at hand, but strong as women when the spirit has subdued the flesh. During some moments of sheer despair he knelt there, broken, swaying, with clasped hands and livid face. Then he stood up slowly, with some degree of calmness, with no little dignity. "They are gone," he said to Antonio, pointing tragically. Antonio's hands tore at his hair, his black eyes glared out of their red rims with the look of a hunted animal that hears the hounds baying in close pursuit. "This means the sure conviction either of her or me," went on Janoc. "My efforts have failed—I must confess to the murder." "My friend!" cried Antonio. "Set free Miss Marsh for me," said Janoc, and he walked down the stairs, without haste, yet briskly—Antonio [pg 254] following him at some distance behind, with awe, with reverence, as one follows a conqueror. Janoc went unfalteringly to his doom. Clarke, seeing him come, chuckled and lounged toward him. "It is for me you wait—yes?" said Janoc, pale, but strong. "There may be something in that," said Clarke, though he was slightly taken aback by the question. "You have the daggers—yes?" This staggered him even more, but he managed to growl: "You may be sure of that." "Well, I confess! I did it!" At last! The garish street suddenly assumed roseate tints in the detective's eyes. "Oh, you do?" he cried thickly. "You confess that you killed Rose de Bercy on the night of the 3d of July at Feldisham Mansions?" "Yes, I confess it." Clarke laid a hand on Janoc's sleeve, and the two walked away. As for Antonio, in an ecstasy of excitement he cast his eyes and his arms on high together, crying out, "O Dio mio!" and the next moment was rushing to find a cab to take him to Porchester Gardens. Arrived there, he rang, and the instant Pauline appeared, she being now sufficiently recovered to attend to her duties, his right hand went out in a warning clutch at her shoulder. "Your brother is arrested!" he cried. [pg 255] With her clenched fists drawn back, she glared crazily at him, and her face reddened for a little while, as if she were furious at the outrage and suddenness of his news. Then her cheeks whitened, she went faint, sank back into the shelter of the hall, and leant against an inner doorway, her eyes closed, her lips parted. "Oh, Pauline, be brave!" said Antonio, and tears choked his voice. After a time, without opening her eyes, she asked: "What proofs have they?" "They have found the daggers in his trunk." "But I have the daggers!" "No, that woman who lived here, your supposed friend, Miss Marsh, stole the daggers from you, and Janoc secured them from her." She moaned, but did not weep. She, who had been timid as a mouse at sight of Clarke, was now braver than the man. Presently she whispered: "Where have they taken him to?" "He will have been taken to the Marlborough Street police-station." After another silence she said: "Thank you, Antonio; leave me." Passionately he kissed her hand in silence, and went. She was no sooner alone than she walked up to her room, dressed herself in clothes suited for an out-of-door mission, and went out, heedless and dumb when a wondering fellow-servant protested. She called [pg 256] a cab—for Marlborough Street; and now she was as calm and strong as had been her brother when he gave himself up to Clarke. Her cab crossed Oxford Circus about ten minutes ahead of the vehicle which carried Furneaux and Osborne; and as she turned south to enter Marlborough Street, she saw Winter, who had lately visited her, standing at a corner awaiting the arrival of Furneaux. "Stop!" Pauline cried to her driver: and she alighted. "Well, you are better, I see," said Winter, who did not wish to be bothered by her at that moment. "Sir," said Pauline solemnly in her stilted English, "I regret having been so unjust as to tell you that it was either Mr. Furneaux or Mr. Osborne who committed that murder, since it was I myself who did it." "What!" roared Winter, stepping backward, and startled most effectually out of his official phlegm. "Sir," said Pauline again, gravely, calmly, "it was not a murder, it was an assassination, done for political reasons. As I have no mercy to expect, so I have no pardon to ask, and no act to blush at. It was political. I give myself into your custody." Winter stood aghast. His brain seemed suddenly to have curdled; everything in the world was topsy-turvy. "So that was why you left the Exhibition—to [pg 257] kill that poor woman, Pauline Dessaulx?" he contrived to say. "That is the truth, sir. I could bear to keep it secret no longer, and was going now to the police-station to give myself up, when I saw you." Still Winter made no move. He stood there, frowning in thought, staring at nothing. "And all the proofs I have gathered against—against someone else—all these are false?" he muttered. "I am afraid so, sir," said Pauline, "since it was I who did it with my own hands." "And Mr. Osborne's dagger and flint—where do they come in?" "It was I who stole them from Mr. Osborne's museum, sir, to throw suspicion upon him." "Oh, come along," growled Winter. "I believe, I know, you are lying, but this must be inquired into." Not unkindly, acting more like a man in a dream than an officer of the law, he took her arm, led her to the cab from which she had just descended, and the two drove away together to the police-station higher up the street. Thus, and thus only, was Inspector Furneaux saved from arrest that day. Two minutes later he and Osborne passed the very spot where Pauline found Winter, and reached Poland Street without interference. Furneaux produced a bunch of keys when he ran [pg 258] up the steps of the house. He unlocked the door at once, and the two men entered. Evidently Furneaux had been there before, for he hurried without hesitation down the kitchen stairs, put a key into the cellar door, flung it open, and Osborne, peering wildly over his shoulder, caught a glimpse of Rosalind sitting on the ground in a corner. She did not look up when they entered—apparently she thought it was Janoc who had come, and with fixed, mournful eyes, like one gazing into profundities of vacancy, she continued to stare at the floor. Her face and air were so pitiable that the hearts of the men smote them into dumbness. <div class="image-center" style="max-width: 500px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill004.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="700" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> She did not look up when they entered Page 258 </div> </div> Then, half conscious of some new thing, she must have caught sight of two men instead of the usual one, for she looked up sharply; and in another moment was staggering to her feet, all hysterical laughter and sobbings, like a dying light that flickers wildly up and burns low alternately, trying at one instant to be herself and calm, when she laughed, and the next yielding to her distress, when she sobbed. She put out her hand to Osborne in a last effort to be graceful and usual; then she yielded the struggle, and fainted in his arms. Furneaux produced a scent-bottle and a crushed cigar, such as it was his habit to smell, to present them to her nose.... But she did not revive, so Osborne took her in his arms, and carried her, as though she were a child, up the stone steps, and up the wooden, and out to [pg 259] the cab. Furneaux allowed him to drive alone with her, himself following behind in another cab, which was a most singular proceeding on the part of a detective who had arrested a man accused of an atrocious murder. Half-way to Porchester Gardens Rosalind opened her eyes, and a wild, heartrending cry came from her parched lips. "I will have no more wine nor water—let me die!" "Try and keep still, just a few moments, my dear one!" he murmured, smiling a fond smile of pain, and clasping her more tightly in a protecting arm. "You are going home, to your mother. You will soon be there, safe, with her." "Oh!"—Then she recognized him, though there was still an uncanny wildness in her eyes. "I am free—it is you." She seemed to falter for words, but raised her hands instinctively to her hair, knowing it to be all rumpled and dusty. Instinctively, too, she caught her hat from her knee, and put it on hurriedly. She could not know what stabs of pain these little feminine anxieties caused her lover. No spoken words could have portrayed the sufferings she had endured like unto her pitiful efforts to conceal their ravages. At last she recovered sufficiently to ask if her mother expected her. "I am not sure," said Osborne. "I am not your deliverer; Inspector Furneaux discovered where you were, and went to your rescue." [pg 260] "But you are with him?" and an appealing note of love, of complete confidence, crept into her voice. "I merely happen to be with him, because he is now taking me to a felon's cell. But he lets me come in the cab with you, because he trusts me not to run away." His smile was very sad and humble, and he laid his disengaged hand on hers, yielding to a craving for sympathy in his forlornness. But memories were now thronging fast on her mind, and she drew herself away from both hand and arm. She recalled that her last sight of him was when in the embrace of Hylda Prout in his library; and, mixed with that vision of infamy, was a memory of her letter that had been opened, whose opening he had denied to her. And that snatch of her hand as from a toad's touch, that shrinking from the pressure of his arm, froze him back into his loneliness of misery. They remained silent, each in a corner, a world between them, till the cab was nearly at the door in Porchester Gardens. Then he could not help saying from the depths of a heavy heart: "Probably I shall never see you again! It is good-by now; and no more Rosalind." The words were uttered in a tone of such heart-rending sadness that they touched some nerve of pity in her. But she could find nothing to say, other than a quite irrelevant comment. "I will tell my mother of your consideration for me. At least, we shall thank you." [pg 261] "If ever you hear anything—of me—that looks black——" he tried to tell her, thinking of his coming marriage with Hylda Prout, but the explanation choked in his throat; he only managed to gasp in a quick appeal of sorrow: "Oh, remember me a little!" The cab was at the door. She put out her hand, and he shook it; but did not offer to escort her inside the house. It was Furneaux who led her up the steps, and Osborne heard from within a shrill outcry from Mrs. Marsh. Furneaux waited until the door was closed. Then he rejoined Osborne. They went, without exchanging a syllable of talk, to Marlborough Street police-station, where Janoc and his sister were already lodged. Arrived there, Furneaux formally arrested him, "on suspicion," charged with the murder of Rose de Bercy. "But why now?" asked Osborne again. "What has happened to implicate me now more than before?" "Oh, many things have happened, and will happen, that as yet you know nothing of," said Furneaux, smiling at the stolid station inspector, a man incapable of any emotion, even of surprise, and Osborne was led away to be searched for concealed weapons, or poison, before being placed in a cell. Half an hour afterwards Furneaux walked into Winter's quarters. His chief, writing hard, hardly glanced up, and for some time Furneaux stood looking at his one-time friend with the eyes of a scientist who contemplates a new fossil. [pg 262] "Well, I have Osborne safe," he said at last. "You have, have you?" muttered Winter, scribbling rapidly; but a flush of anger rose on his forehead, and he added: "It will cost you your reputation, my good fellow!" "Is that all?" cried Furneaux mockingly. "Why, I was looking out for worse things than that!" Winter threw down his pen. "You informed me last night," he snarled, "that by this hour Miss Marsh would have returned to her home. I need not ask——" "I have just taken her there," remarked the other coolly. Winter was thoroughly nonplused. Everybody, everything, seemed to be mad. He was staring at Furneaux when Clarke entered. The newcomer's hat was tilted a little backward, and there was an air of business-like haste in him from the creak of his boot soles to the drops of perspiration shining on his brow. He contrived to hold himself back just long enough to say, "Hello, Furneaux!" and then his burden of news broke from him: "Well, I've got Janoc under lock and key all right." "Oh, you've got somebody, too, have you?" groaned Winter. "And on what charge, pray, have you collared Janoc?" "Why, what a question!" cried Clarke. "Didn't I tell you, sir——?" "So true," said Winter; "I had almost forgotten. [pg 263] You've grabbed Janoc, and the genius of Mr. Furneaux is sated by arresting Mr. Osborne——" Clarke slapped his thigh vigorously, doubling up in a paroxysm of laughter. "Osborne! Oh, not Osborne at this time of day!" He leered at Furneaux in comic wonder—he, who had never dared question aught done by the little man, save in the safe privacy of his thoughts. "And I have arrested Pauline," said Winter in grim irony. "Who has?" asked Clarke, suddenly agape. "I, I say. Pauline is my prize. I wouldn't be left out in the cold." And he added bitterly: "We've all got one!—all guilty!—a lovely story it will make for the newspapers. I suppose, to keep up the screaming farce, that we each ought to contrive to have our prisoner tried in a different court!" Clarke's hands went akimbo. He swelled visibly, grew larger, taller, and looked down from his Olympus at the others. "But I never dream at night," he cried. "When I arrest a man for murder he is going to be hanged. You see, Janoc has confessed—that's all: he has confessed!" Winter leaped up. "Confessed!" he hissed, unable to believe his ears. "That's just it," said Clarke—"confessed!" "But Pauline has confessed, too!" Winter almost screamed, confronting his subordinate like an adversary. [pg 264] And while Clarke shrank, and gaped in dumb wonder, Furneaux, looking from one to the other, burst out laughing. Never a word he said, but turned in his quick way to leave the room. He was already in the corridor when Winter shouted: "Come back, Furneaux!" "Not I," was the defiant retort. "Come back, or I shall have you brought back!" Winter was in a white rage, but Furneaux pressed on daringly, whistling a tune, and never looking round. Clarke, momentarily expecting the roof of Scotland Yard to fall in, gazed from Furneaux to Winter and from Winter to Furneaux until the diminutive Jersey man had vanished round an angle of a long passage. But nothing happened. Winter was beaten to his knees, and he knew it. <hr class="hr2" /> [pg 265] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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