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de Bercy Affair

<h2>CHAPTER XVII THE CLOSING SCENE</h2> It was a scared and worried-looking Jenkins who admitted Hylda Prout and the two detectives to Osborne's flat in Clarges Street, Mayfair. These comings and goings of police officers were disconcerting, to put it mildly, and an event had happened but a few minutes earlier which had sorely ruffled his usually placid acceptance of life as it presented itself. Still, the one dominant thought in his mind was anxiety in his master's behalf, and, faithful to its promptings, he behaved like an automaton. Hylda carried herself with the regal air of one who was virtual mistress of the house. She had invited the two men to share her carriage, and there was an assured authority in her voice when she now directed the gray-headed butler to show them into the library while she went upstairs to Mr. Osborne's dressing-room. "And, by the way, Jenkins," she added, "tell Mrs. Bates to come to these gentlemen. They wish to ask her a few questions." "Yes, bring Mrs. Bates," said Furneaux softly. "Don't let her come alone. She might be frightened, [pg 305] and snivel, being a believer in ghosts, whereas we wish her to remain calm." Jenkins thought he understood, but said nothing. Hylda Prout sped lightly up the stairs, and when Jenkins came with the housekeeper, Furneaux crept close to him, pointed to a screened doorway leading to the kitchen quarters, and murmured the one word: "There!" At once he turned to Mrs. Bates and engaged her in animated chatter, going so far as to warn her that the police were trying an experiment which might definitely set at rest all doubts as to Mr. Osborne's innocence, so she must be prepared to see someone descend the stairs who might greatly resemble the person she saw ascending them on the night of the murder. The maisonette rented by the young millionaire was not constructed on the lines associated with the modern self-contained flat. It consisted of the ground floor, and first story of a mid-Victorian mansion, while the kitchen was in a basement. As it happened to be the property of a peer who lived next door—a sociable person who entertained largely—these lower stories were completely shut off from the three upper ones, which were thrown into the neighboring house, thus supplying the landlord with several bedrooms and bathrooms that Osborne did not need. As a consequence, the entrance hall and main staircase were spacious, and the staircase in particular was elaborate, climbing to a transverse [pg 306] corridor in two fine flights, of which the lower one sprang from the center of the hall and the upper led at a right angle from a broad half-landing. Anyone coming down this upper half of the stairs could be seen full face from the screened door used by the servants: but when descending the lower half, the view from the same point would be in profile. At present, however, the curtains were drawn tightly across the passage, and the only occupants of the hall and library were the two detectives, Jenkins, and Mrs. Bates. Hylda Prout did not hurry. If she were engaged in a masquerade which should achieve its object she evidently meant to leave nothing to chance, and a woman cannot exchange her costume for a man's without experiencing difficulty with her hair, especially when she is endowed by nature with a magnificent chevelure. Jenkins returned from the mission imposed by Furneaux's monosyllable,—insensibly the four deserted the brilliantly lighted library and gathered in the somewhat somber hall, whose old oak wainscoting and Grinling Gibbons fireplace forbade the use of garish lamps. Insensibly, too, their voices lowered. The butler and housekeeper hardly knew what to expect, and were creepy and ill at ease, but the two police officers realized that they were about to witness a scene of unparalleled effrontery, which, in its outcome, might have results vastly different from those anticipated. [pg 307] They were sure now that Hylda Prout had killed Rose de Bercy. Furneaux had known that terrible fact since his first meeting with Osborne's secretary, whereas Winter had only begun to surmise it when he and Furneaux were reconciled on the very threshold of Marlborough Street police-station. Now he was as certain of it as Furneaux. Page by page, chapter by chapter, his colleague had unfolded a most convincing theory of the crime. But theories will not suffice for a judge and jury—there must be circumstantial evidence as well—and not only was such evidence scanty as against Hylda Prout, but it existed in piles against Osborne, against Pauline Dessaulx, and against Furneaux himself. Indeed, Winter had been compelled to recall his permission to Janoc and his sister to leave England that day. He foresaw that Hylda Prout, if brought to trial, would use her knowledge of Rose de Bercy's dealings with the Anarchist movement to throw the gravest suspicion on its votaries in London, and it would require no great expert in criminal law to break up the theoretical case put forward by the police by demonstrating the circumstantial one that existed in regard to Pauline Dessaulx. This line of defense, already strong, would become impregnable if neither Janoc nor Pauline were forthcoming as witnesses. So Clarke, greatly to his delight, was told off again to supervise their movements, after they had been warned not to quit Soho until Winter gave them his written permission. [pg 308] Some of the difficulties ahead, a whole troupe of fantastic imageries from the past, crowded in on Winter's mind as he stood there in the hall with Furneaux. What a story it would make if published as he could tell it! What a romance! It began eight years ago at a fête champtre in Jersey. Then came a brief delirium of wedded life for Furneaux, followed by his wife's flight and reappearance as a notable actress. Osborne came on the scene, and quickly fell a victim to her beauty and charm of manner. It was only when marriage was spoken of that Furneaux decided to interfere, and he had actually gone to Osborne's residence in order to tell him the truth as to his promised wife on the very day she was killed. Failing to meet him, after a long wait in the library and museum, during which he had noted the absence of both the Saracen dagger and the celt, already purloined for their dread purposes, he had gone to Feldisham Mansions. During a heart-breaking scene with his wife he had forced from her a solemn promise to tell Osborne why she could not marry him, and then to leave England. The unhappy woman was writing the last word in her diary when Furneaux was announced! No wonder she canceled an engagement for dinner and the theater. She was sick at heart. A vain creature, the wealth and position she craved for had been snatched from her grasp on the very moment they seemed most sure. The murder followed his departure within half an [pg 309] hour. Planned and executed by a woman whom none would dream of, it was almost worthy to figure as the crime of the century. Hylda Prout had counted on no other suspect than the man she loved. She knew he was safe—she assured herself, in the first place, that he could offer the most positive proof of his innocence—but she reckoned on popular indignation alleging his guilt, while she alone would stand by him through every pang of obloquy and despair. She was well prepared, guarded from every risk. Her open-hearted employer had no secrets from her. She meant to imperil him, to cast him into the furnace, and pluck him forth to her own arms. But fate could plot more deviously and strangely than Hylda Prout. It could bring about the meeting of Osborne and Rosalind, the mutual despair and self-sacrifice of Janoc and Pauline, the insensate quarrel between Winter and Furneaux, and the jealous prying of Clarke, while scene after scene of tragic force unfolded itself at Tormouth, in the Fraternal Club, in the dismal cemetery, in Porchester Gardens, and in the dens of Soho. Winter sighed deeply at the marvel of it all, and Furneaux heard him. "She will be here soon," he said coolly. "She is just putting on Osborne's boots." Winter started at the apparent callousness of the man. "This is rather Frenchified," he whispered. "Reminds [pg 310] one of the 'reconstructed crime' method of the juge d'instruction. I wish we had more good, sound, British evidence." "There is nothing good, or sound, or British about this affair," said Furneaux. "It is French from beginning to end—a passionate crime as they say—but I shall be glad when it is ended, and I am free." "Free?" "Yes. When she is safely dealt with," and he nodded in the direction of the dressing-room, "I shall resign, clear off, betake my whims and my weaknesses to some other clime." "Don't be an ass, Furneaux!" "Can't help it, dear boy. I'm a bit French, too, you know. No Englishman could have hounded down Osborne as I have done, merely to gratify my own notions of what was due to the memory of my dead wife. And I have played with this maniac upstairs as a cat plays with a mouse. I wouldn't have done that, though, if she hadn't smashed Mirabel's face. She ought to have spared that. Therein she was a tiger rather than a woman. Poor Mirabel!" Not Rose, but Mirabel! His thoughts had bridged the years. He murmured the words in a curiously unemotional tone, but Winter was no longer deceived. It would be many a day, if ever, before Furneaux became his cheery, impish, mercurial self again. And now there was an opening of a door, and Winter shot one warning glance at the curtains [pg 311] which shrouded the passage to the kitchen. A man's figure appeared beyond the rails of the upper landing, a man attired in a gray frock-coat suit and wearing a silk hat. Mrs. Bates uttered a slight scream. "Well, I never!" she squeaked. "But you did, once," urged Furneaux, instantly alert. "You see now that you might be mistaken when you said you saw Mr. Osborne on that evening?" "Oh, yes, sir; if that is Miss Prout she's the very image——Now, who would have believed it?" "You did," prompted Furneaux again. "But this time you must be more careful. Tell us now who it was you saw on the stair, your master, or his secretary made up to represent him?" Mrs. Bates began to cry. "I wouldn't have said such a thing for a mint of money, sir. It was cruel to deceive a poor woman so, real cruel I call it. Of course, it was Miss Prout I saw. Well, there! What a horrid creature to behave in that way——" "No comments, please," said Furneaux sternly. Throughout he was gazing at Hylda Prout with eyes that scintillated. She was standing now on the half-landing, and her face had lost some of its striking semblance to Osborne's because of the expression of mocking triumph that gleamed through its make-up. "That will do, thank you, Miss Prout," he said. [pg 312] "Now, will you kindly walk slowly up again, reeling somewhat, as if you were on the verge of collapse after undergoing a tremendous strain?" A choked cry, or groan, followed by a scuffle, came from the curtained doorway, and Hylda turned sharply. "Who is there?" she demanded, in a sort of quick alarm that contrasted oddly with her previous air of complete self-assurance. "Jenkins," growled Winter, "just go there and see that none of the servants are peeping. That door should have been closed. Slam it now!" The butler hurried with steps that creaked on the parquet floor. Hylda leaned over the balusters and watched him. He fumbled with the curtains. "It is all right, sir," he said thickly. "Some one is there," she cried. "Who is it? I am not here to be made a show of, even to please some stupid policemen." Winter strode noisily across the hall, talking the while, vowing official vengeance on eavesdroppers. He, too, reached the doorway, glanced within, and drew back the curtains. "Some kitchen-maid, I suppose," he said off-handedly. "Anyhow, she has run away. You need not wait any longer, Miss Prout. Kindly change your clothing as quickly as possible and come with us. You have beaten us. Mr. Osborne must be released forthwith." "Ah!" [pg 313] Her sudden spasm of fear was dispelled by hearing that promise. She forgot to "reel" as she ran upstairs, but Furneaux did not remind her. He exchanged glances with Winter, and the latter motioned Jenkins to take Mrs. Bates to her own part of the establishment. "At Vine Street, I think," muttered Winter in Furneaux's ear. "No, here, I insist; we must strike now. She must realize that we have a case. Give her time to gather her energies and we shall never secure a conviction." Winter loathed the necessity of terrifying a woman, but he yielded, since he saw no help for it. This time they had not long to wait. Soon they heard a rapid, confident tread on the stairs, and Hylda Prout was with them in the library. Both men, who had been seated, rose when she entered. "Well," she said jauntily, "are you convinced?" "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. [pg 314] "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 [pg 315] 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 [pg 316] 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 [pg 317] 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, [pg 318] 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. [pg 319] 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 [pg 320] 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. "Had my letter?" "Yes." "Who has taken my place—Clarke?" "No, not Clarke." "Who, then?" "Nobody, yet. The fact is, Furneaux——" "I've resigned—that is the material fact." "Yes, I know. But you don't mind giving me your advice." "No, of course not—just for the sake of old times." "Well, there is this affair of Lady Harringay's disappearance. It is a ticklish business. Seen anything about it in the paper?" "A line or two." "I'm at my wits' end to find time myself to deal with it. And I've not a man I can give it to——" "Look here, Winter, I'm out of the force." "But, to oblige me." "I would do a great deal on that score." [pg 321] "Get after her, then, without a moment's delay." "But there's my resignation." Winter picked a letter from a bundle, struck a match, set fire to the paper, and lighted a cigar with it. "There goes your resignation!" he said. <hr /> During the following summer Rosalind Marsh and Rupert Osborne were married at Tormouth. It was a quiet wedding, and since that day they have led quiet lives, so it is to be presumed that they have settled satisfactorily the problem of how to be happy though rich. THE END <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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