|IN vain I tortured my wits; here and there a word was comprehensible.
I made out the number 5 and fairly ground my teeth. Here was the key to
the secret; here was my chart, and I could not decipher it. I folded up
the paper with great care, ripped open a seam of my mattress, and folded
the mystery in. By night I would keep it there; by day I would carry
it about on my body. Somehow, I would think out a way to decipher it;
I would go to New York and interview a priest of the Greek Church. If
necessary I would bribe him to secrecy... my brain was full of plans,
more or less foolish and impossible. At any rate, I reasoned that the
Red-haired Woman, not finding any paper in the bookcase, would do one
of two things--either she would suspect a previous theft and disposal of
the treasure and give up her perilous mission, or she would suspect me
whom she had found once at night before the book-shelves. In this case
I was, of course, both in greater danger, and, also, providentially
protected. At least, she would not kill me till she had got that paper
out of my possession. My problem was, first, to find the meaning of my
valuable chart, then to put it in her way, and, while she endeavored
to get a translation--I could not believe her to possess a knowledge of
ecclesiastical Russian--it was my part to rifle the hoard and to set the
police on her track. When I had the meaning of the paper, I would send
word to the police at Pine Cone. Till then, I would play the game alone.
So did my vanity and wounded feelings lead me on, and so very nearly to
my own destruction.
After I had finished sewing up my mattress-seam, I put out my light and
went to stand near my window. Unconsciously affected by my fears, I kept
close to the long, dark curtain, and stood still, looking down at the
silvered garden paths, the green-gray lines of the box, the towering,
fountain-like masses of the trees, waving their spray of shadow tracery
across the turf. I stood there a long time brooding over my plans--it
must have been an hour--before I saw a figure come out into the garden.
It was Paul Dabney. He was walking quietly to and fro, smoking and
whistling softly. I could hear the gravel crunch beneath his feet.
All at once he stopped short and threw up his head as though at a
signal. He tossed away his cigarette. He stared at the arbor, the one
where poor Mary used to watch her little charge at play, and then,
as though he were drawn against his will, he went slowly towards it,
hesitated, bent his head a little, and stepped in. I heard the low
murmur of his voice. I thought that Mrs. Brane was in the arbor, and my
heart grew sick with jealousy. I was about to drag myself away from
the window when another figure came out of the arbor and stood for an
instant in the bright moonlight looking straight up to my window. I grew
cold. I stood there holding my breath. I heard a little, low,
musical, wicked laugh. The creature--my own cloak drooping from her
shoulders--turned and went back into the shelter of the vine. My God!
What was she about to do to Paul, the blind fool to sit there with that
horrible thing and to fancy that he sat with me? Having failed in her
attempt to drown him, she was now beguiling him out of the house for a
few hours, in order to give one of her accomplices a chance to search
the bookcase. I had no scruples about playing eavesdropper. I took off
my shoes and hurried noiselessly down the stairs. I stole to a shuttered
window in the dining-room, and, inch by inch, with infinite caution, I
raised the sash. I was so near to the arbor that a hand stretched out
at the full length of its arm could touch the honeysuckle vines. I stood
there and strained my ears.
The woman was speaking so low that it was but a gentle thread of voice.
It was extraordinarily young and sweet, the tone--sweeter than my voice,
though astonishingly like it.
“Why did I save you, Paul Dabney?” she was murmuring, “can't you guess?
_Now_, can't you guess?”
There came the sound of a soft, long-drawn, dreadful kiss. I burned with
shame from head to foot.
“You devil--you she-devil!” said Paul Dabney in low, hot speech; “you
can kiss!”
I could bear no more. She must be in his arms. What was the reason
for this deviltry, this profanation of my innocence and youth, this
desecration of my name? I hated and loathed Paul Dabney for his hot
voice, for his kiss. He thought that he held _me_ there in his arms,
that he insulted _me_, tamely submissive, with his words, “You devil,
you she-devil...” I fled to my room. I threw myself upon my bed. I
sobbed and raved in a crazed, smothered fashion to my pillow. I struck
the bed with my hands. I do not know how long that dreadful meeting
lasted; I realized, with entire disregard, that _while_ it lasted Sara
was searching the bookcase. To this day I can think of it only with a
sickness of loathing. Once I fancied that I heard Paul Dabney's step
under my window. But I hid my head, covered my ears. I lay in a still
fever of rage and horror all that night. The insult--so strange and
unimaginable a one--to my own unhappy love was more than I could bear. I
wanted to kill, and kill, and kill these two, and, last, myself.