THE SARACEN DAGGER
Next morning, just as the clock was striking eight, Osborne was rising
from his bed after a night of unrest when Jenkins rapped at the door and
came in, deferential and calm.
"Mrs. Marsh below to see you, sir," he announced.
Osborne blinked and stared with the air of a man not thoroughly awake,
though it was his mind, not his body, that was torpid.
"Mrs.," he said, "not Miss?"
"No, sir, Mrs."
"I'll be there in five minutes," he hissed with a fierce arousing of his
faculties, and never before had he flung on his clothes in such a flurry
of haste; in less than five minutes he was flying down the stairs.
"Forgive me!" broke from his lips, as he entered the drawing-room, and
"Forgive me!" his visitor was saying to him in the same instant.
It was pitiful to see her--she, ever so enthroned in serenity, from whom
such a thing as agitation had seemed so remote, was wildly agitated now.
That pathetic pallor of the aged when their heart is in labor now
underlay her skin. Her lips, her fingers, trembled; the tip of her nose,
showing under her half-raised veil, was pinched.
"The early hour--it is so distressing--I beg your forgiveness--I am in
most dreadful trouble----"
"Please sit down," he said, touching her hand, "and let me get you some
breakfast."
"No, nothing--I couldn't eat--it is Rosalind----"
Now he, too, went a shade paler.
"What of Rosalind?"
"Do you by chance know anything of her whereabouts?"
"No!"
"She has disappeared."
Her head bowed, and a sob broke from her bosom.
"Disappeared"--his lips breathed the word foolishly after her, while he
looked at her almost stupidly.
Mrs. Marsh's hand dropped with a little nervous fling.
"She has not been at home all night. She left the house apparently
between four and five yesterday--I was out; then I came in; then you
called.... She has not come home--it is impossible to conceive...."
"Oh, she has slept with some friend," he said, feeling that the world
reeled around him.
"No, she has never done that without letting me know.... She would
surely have telegraphed me.... It is quite impossible even to imagine
what dispensation of God----"
She stopped, her lips working; suddenly covering her eyes with her hand,
as another sob gushed from her, she humbly muttered:
"Forgive me. I am nearly out of my senses."
He sprang up, touched a bell, and whispered to Jenkins, who instantly
was with him: "Brandy--_quick_." Then, running to kneel at the old
lady's chair, he touched her left hand, saying: "Take heart--trust in
God's Providence--rely upon _me_."
"You believe, then, that you may find her----?"
"Surely: whatever else I may fail in, I could not fail now.... Just one
sip of this to oblige me." Jenkins had stolen in, and she drank a little
out of the glass that Osborne offered.
"You must think it odd," she said, "that I come to you. I could not give
a reason--but I was so distracted and benumbed. I thought of you, and
felt impelled----"
"You were right," he said. "I am the proper person to appeal to in this
case. Besides, she was here yesterday----"
"Rosalind?"
"The fact is----"
"Oh, she was here? Well, that is something discovered! I did well to
come. Yes--you were saying----"
"I will tell you everything. Three days ago she wrote me a letter----"
"Rosalind?"
"Are you astonished?"
"I understood--I thought--that your friendship with her had suffered
some--check."
"That is so," said Osborne with a bent head. "You may remember the night
of the dance at the Abbey down at Tormouth. That night, when I was full
of hopes of her favor, she suddenly cast me off like a burr from her
robe--I am not even now sure why--unless she had discovered that my name
was not Glyn."
"If so, she no doubt considered that a sufficient reason, Mr. Osborne,"
said Mrs. Marsh, a chill in her tone. "One does not like the names of
one's friends to be detachable labels."
"Don't think that I blame her one bit!" cried Osborne--"no more than I
blame myself. I was ordered by--the police to take a name. There seemed
to be good reason for it. I only blame my baleful fate. Anyway, so it
was. She dropped me--into the Pit. But she was at the inquest----"
"Indeed? At the inquest. She was there. Singular."
"Deeply veiled. She didn't think, I suppose, that I should know. But I
should feel her presence in the blackest----"
"Mr. Osborne--I must beg--do not make your declarations to _me_----"
"May I not? Be good--be pitiful. Here am I, charged with guilt,
conscious of innocence----"
"Let us suppose all that, but are you a man free to make declarations of
love? One would say that you are, as it were, married for some time to
come to the lady who has lately been buried."
"True," said Osborne--"in the eyes of the world, in a formal way: but in
the eyes of those near to me? Oh, I appeal to your indulgence, your
friendship, your heart. Tell me that you forgive, that you understand
me! and then I shall be so exuberantly gladsome that in the sweep of my
exhilaration I shall go straight and find her, wherever she lies
hidden.... Will you not say 'yes' on those terms?" He smiled wanly, with
a hungry cajolery, looking into her face.
But she did not unbend.
"Let us first find her! and then other things may be discussed. But to
find her! it is past all knowing--Oh, deep is the trouble of my soul
to-day, Mr. Osborne!"
"Wait--hope----"
"But you were speaking of yesterday."
"Yes. She was at the inquest: and when I saw her--think how I felt! I
said: 'She believes in me.' And three days after that she wrote to
me----"
"My poor Rosalind!" murmured Mrs. Marsh. "She suffered more than I
imagined. Her nature is more recondite than the well in which Truth
dwells. What _could_ she have written to you?"
"That I don't know."
"How----?"
"As I was about to open the letter, a telegram came from her. 'Don't
read my letter: I will call for it unopened in person,' it said. Picture
my agony then! And now I am going to tell you something that will move
you to compassion for me, if you never had it before. Yesterday she
called for the letter. I was with you at Porchester Gardens at that very
hour. When I came home, an extraordinary scene awaited me with my
secretary, a Miss Prout.... I tell you this as to a friend, a Mother,
who will believe even the incredible. An extraordinary scene.... Without
the least warning, the least encouragement that I know of, Miss Prout
declared herself in love with me. While I stood astonished, she fainted.
I bore her to a sofa. Soon after she opened her eyes, she--drew--me to
her--no, I will say that I was _not_ to blame; and I was in that
situation, when the library door opened, and who should be there looking
at me but--yes--_she_."
Mrs. Marsh's eyes fell. There was a little pressure of the lips that
revealed scant sympathy with compromising situations. And suddenly a
thought turned her skin to a ghastlier white. What if the sight of that
scene accounted for Rosalind's disappearance? If Rosalind was dead--by
her own act? The old lady had often to admit that she did not know the
deepest deeps of her daughter's character. But she banished the
half-thought hurriedly, contenting herself with saying aloud:
"That made the second time she came to you yesterday. Why a second
time?"
"I have no idea!" was the dismayed reply. "She uttered not one
word--just turned away, and hurried out to her waiting cab--and by the
time I could wring myself free, and run after her, the cab was going
off. I shouted--I ran at top speed--she would not stop. I think a man
was in the cab with her----"
"A man, you say?"
"I think so. I just caught a glimpse of a face that looked out
sideways--a dark man he seemed to me--I'm not sure."
"It becomes more and more mysterious!"
"Well, we must be making a move to do something--first, have you
breakfasted?"
She had eaten nothing! Osborne persuaded her to join him in a hurried
meal, during which his motor-car arrived, and soon they set off
together. He was for going straight to the police, but she shrank from
the notoriety of that final exposure until she had the clear assurance
that it was absolutely necessary. So they drove from friend to friend of
the Marshes who might possibly have some information; then drove home to
Mrs. Prawser's to see if there was news. Osborne had luncheon there--a
polite pretense at eating, since they were too full of wonder and woe to
care for food. By this time Mrs. Marsh had unbent somewhat to Osborne,
and humbly enough had said to him, "Oh, find her, and if she is alive,
every other consideration shall weigh less than my boundless gratitude
to you!"
After the luncheon they again drove about London, making inquiries
without hope wherever the least chance of a clew lay; and finally, near
six, they went to Scotland Yard.
To Inspector Winter in his office the whole tale was told; and, after
sitting at his desk in a long silence, frowning upon the story, he said
at last:
"Well, there is, of course, a great deal more in this than meets the
eye." He spun round to Mrs. Marsh: "Has your daughter undergone anything
to upset her at home lately?"
"Nothing," was the answer. "One of the servants in the house has had a
sort of hysteria: but that did not trouble Rosalind beyond the mere
exercise of womanly sympathy."
"Any visitors? Any odd circumstance in that way?"
"No unusual visitors--except an Inspector Furneaux, who--twice, I
think--had interviews with her. She was not very explicit in telling me
the subject of them."
"Inspector Furneaux," muttered Winter. To himself he said: "I thought
somehow that this thing was connected with Feldisham Mansions." And at
once now, with a little start, he asked: "What, by the way, is the name
of the servant who has had the hysteria?"
"Her name is Pauline," answered Mrs. Marsh--"a French girl."
"Ah, Pauline!" said Winter--"just so."
The fewness of his words gave proof of the activity of his brain. He
knew how Clarke had obtained the diary of Rose de Bercy from Pauline,
and he felt that Pauline was in some undetermined way connected with the
murder. He knew, too, that she was now to be found somewhere in
Porchester Gardens, and had intended looking her up for general
inquiries before two days had passed. That Pauline might actually have
had a hand in the crime had never entered into his speculations--he was
far too hot in these days on the trail of Furneaux, who was being
constantly watched by his instructions.
"I think I will see this Pauline to-night," he said. "Meantime, I can
only recommend you to hope, Mrs. Marsh. These things generally have some
simple explanation in the end, and turn out less black than they look.
Expect me, then, at your residence within an hour."
But when Mrs. Marsh and Osborne were gone he was perplexed, remembering
that this was Thursday evening, for he had promised himself on this very
evening to be at a spot which he had been told by one of his men that
Furneaux had visited on two previous Thursday evenings, a spot where he
would see a sight that would interest him.
While he was on the horns of the dilemma as to going there, or going to
Pauline, Inspector Clarke entered: and at once Winter shelved upon
Clarke the business of sounding Pauline.
"You seem to have a lot of power over her--to make her give up the diary
so promptly," he said to Clarke. "Go to her, then, get at the bottom of
this business, and see if you cannot hit upon some connection between
the disappearance of Miss Marsh and the murder of the actress."
Clarke stood up with alacrity, and started off. Presently Winter himself
was in a cab, making for the Brompton Cemetery.
As for Clarke, the instant he was within sight of Porchester Gardens,
his whole interest turned from Pauline Dessaulx and the vanished
Rosalind to two men whom he saw in the street almost opposite the house
in which Pauline lay. They were Janoc and the Italian, Antonio, and
Antonio seemed to be reasoning and pleading with Janoc, who had the
gestures of a man distracted.
Hanging about near them was a third man, whom Clarke hardly noticed--a
loafer in a long coat of rags, a hat without any crown, and visible
toes--a diminutive loafer--Furneaux, in fact, who, for his own reasons,
was also interested in Janoc in these days.
Every now and again Janoc looked up at the windows of Mrs. Marsh's
residence with frantic gestures, and a crying face--a thing which
greatly struck Clarke; and anon the loafer passed by Janoc and Antonio,
unobserved, peering into the gutter for the cast-aside ends of cigars
and cigarettes.
Instantly Clarke stole down the opposite side of the square into which
the house faced, looked about him, saw no one, climbed some railings,
and then through the bushes stole near to the pavement where the
foreigners stood. There, concealed in the shrubbery, he could clearly
hear Janoc say:
"Am I never to see her? My little one! But I am about to see her! I will
knock at that door, and clasp her in my arms."
"My friend, be reasonable!" pleaded Antonio, holding the arm of Janoc,
who made more show of tearing himself free than he made real
effort--with that melodramatic excess of gesture to which the Latin
races are prone. "Be reasonable! Oh, she is wiser than you! She has
hidden herself from you because she realizes the danger of being seen
near you even in the dark. Be sure that she has longed to see you as
keenly as you hunger to see her; but she feels that there must be no
meeting with so many spying eyes in the world----"
"Let them spy! but they shall not keep me from the embrace of one whom I
love, of one who has suffered," said Janoc, covering his face. "Oh, when
I think of your cruelty--you who all the time knew where she was and did
not tell me!"
"I confess it, but I acted for the best," said Antonio. "She wrote to me
three days after the murder, so that she might have news of you. I met
her, and received from her that bit of lace from the actress's dress
which I put into Osborne's bag at Tormouth, to throw still more doubt
upon him. But she implored me not to reveal to you where she was, lest,
if you should be seen with her, suspicion of the murder should fall upon
you----"
"Her heart's goodness! My sister! My little one!" exclaimed Janoc.
"Only be patient!" wooed Antonio--"do not go to her. Soon she will make
her escape to France, and you also, and then you will embrace the one
the other. And now you have no longer cause for much anxiety as to her
capture, for the dagger cannot be found with her, since it lies safe in
your room in your own keeping, and to-night you will drop it into the
river, where it will be buried forever. Do not go to her----"
These were the last words of the dialogue that Clarke heard, for the
tidings that "the dagger" was in Janoc's room sent him creeping away
through the bushes. He was soon over the railings and in a cab, making
for Soho; and behind him in another cab went Furneaux, whose driver,
looking at his fare's attire, had said, "Pay first, and then I'll take
you."
Clarke, for his part, had no difficulty in entering Janoc's room with
his skeleton-keys--indeed, he had been there before! Nor was there any
difficulty in finding the dagger. There it lay, with another, in the
narrow cardboard box into which Rosalind had put both weapons on finding
them behind the shelf of books in Pauline's room.
Clarke's eyes, as they fell at last upon that Saracen blade which he
knew so well without ever having seen it, pored, gloated over it, with a
glitter in them.
He relocked the trunk, relocked the door, and with the box held fast,
ran down the three stairs to his cab--feeling himself a made man, a head
taller than all Scotland Yard that night. He put his precious find on
the interior front seat of the cab--a four-wheeler; for in his eagerness
he had jumped into the first wheeled thing that he had seen, and, having
lodged the box inside, being anxious to hide it, he made a step forward
toward the driver, to tell him whither he had now to drive. Then he
entered, shut the door, and, as the vehicle drove off, put out his hand
to the box to feast his eyes on its contents again. But the box was
gone--no daggers were there!
"Stop!" howled Clarke.
The cab stopped, but it was all in vain. The loafer, who had opened the
other door of the cab with swift deftness while Clarke spoke to the
driver, had long since turned a near corner with box and daggers, and
was well away. Clarke, standing in the street, glanced up at the sky,
down at the ground, and stared round about, like a man who does not know
in which world he finds himself.
Meantime, Furneaux hailed another cab, again having to pay in advance,
and started off on the drive to Brompton Cemetery--where Winter was
already in hiding, awaiting his arrival.
Something like a storm of wind was tearing the night to pieces, and the
trees of the place of graves gesticulated as if they were wrangling. The
moon had moved up, all involved in heavy clouds whose grotesque shapes
her glare struck into garish contrasts of black against silver. Furneaux
bent his way against the gale, holding on his dilapidated hat, his rags
fluttering fantastically behind him, till he came to the one grave he
sought--the cheerless resting-place of Rose de Bercy. The very spirit of
gloom and loneliness brooded here, in a nook almost inclosed with
foliage. As yet no stone had been erected. The grave was just a narrow
oblong of red marl and turf, which the driven rain now made soft and
yielding. On it lay two withered wreaths.
Furneaux, standing by it, took off his hat, and the rain flecked his
hair. Then from a breast-pocket of his rags he took out a little funnel
of paper, out of which he cast some Parma violets upon the mound. This
was Thursday--and Rose de Bercy had been murdered on a Thursday.
[Illustration: Then from a breast-pocket he took a little funnel of
paper
_Page 219_]
After that he stood there perhaps twenty minutes, his head bent in
meditation.
Then he peered cautiously into the dark about him, took a penknife with
a good-sized blade from a pocket, and with it set to work to make a
grave within the grave--a grave just big and deep enough to contain the
box with the daggers. He buried his singular tribute and covered it
over.
After this he waited silently, apparently lost in thought, for some ten
minutes more.
Then, with that curious omniscience which sometimes seemed to belong to
the man, he sent a strange cry into the gloom.
"Are you anywhere about, Winter?"
Nor was there anything aggressive in the call. It was subdued, sad,
touched with solemnity, like the voice of a man who had wept, and dried
his eyes.
There was little delay before Winter appeared out of the shadow of his
ambush.
"I am!" he said; he was amazed beyond expression, yet his colleague had
ever been incomprehensible in some things.
"Windy night," said Furneaux, in an absurd affectation of ease.
"And wet," said Winter, utterly at a loss how to take the other.
"Odd that we should both come to visit the poor thing's grave at the
same hour," remarked Furneaux.
"It _may_ be odd," agreed Winter.
There was a bitter silence.
Then Furneaux's cold voice was heard again.
"I dare say, now, it seems to you a suspicious thing that I should come
to this grave at all."
"Why should it, Furneaux?" asked his chief bluntly.
"Yes, why?" said Furneaux. "I once knew her. I told you from the first
that I knew her."
"I remember: you did."
"You asked no questions as to how I came to know her, or how long, or
under what circumstances. Why did you not ask? Such questions occur
among friends: and I--might have told you. But you did not ask."
"Tell me now."
"Winter, I'd see you hanged first!"
The words came in a sharp rasp--his first sign of anger.
"Hanged?" repeated Winter, flushing. "You'll see _me_ hanged? _I_
usually see the hanging, Furneaux!"
"Sometimes you do: sometimes you are not half smart enough!"
Furneaux barked the taunt like a dog at him.
Of the two, the big bluff man of Anglo-Saxon breed, mystified and
saddened though he was, showed more self-control than the excitable
little man more French than English.
"This is an occasion when I leave the smartness to you, Furneaux," he
said bitterly, "though there is a sort of clever duplicity which ought
to be drained out of the blood, even if it cost a limb, or a life."
"Ah, you prove yourself a trusty friend--loyal to the backbone!"
"For Heaven's sake, make no appeal to our friendship!"
"What! Appeal? I? Oh, this is too much!"
"You are trying me beyond endurance. Can't you understand? Why keep up
this farce of pretense?"
There was genuine emotion in Winter's voice, but Furneaux's harsh laugh
mingled with the soughing of the laden branches that tossed in the wind.
"Farce, indeed!" he cried. "I refuse to continue it. Go, then, and be
punished--you deserve it--you, whom I trusted more than a brother."
He turned on his heel, and made off, a weird figure in those wind-blown
tatters, and Winter watched him with eyes that had in them some element
of fear, almost of hope, for in that hour he could have forgiven
Furneaux were he standing by his corpse.
But the instinct of duty soon came uppermost. He had seen his colleague
bury something in the grave, and the briefest search brought to light
the daggers in their cardboard coffin. Even in that overwhelming gloom
of night and shivering yews he recognized one of the weapons. A groan
broke from him, as it were, in protest.
"Mad!" he sighed, "stark, staring mad--to leave this here, where he knew
I must find it. My poor Furneaux! Perhaps that is best. I must defer
action for a few hours, if only to give him a last chance."
While the Chief Inspector was stumbling to the gate of the
Cemetery--which was long since closed to all except those who could show
an official permit--one of his subordinates was viewing the Feldisham
Mansions crime in a far different light. Inspector Clarke, in whom
elation at his discovery was chastened by chagrin at his loss, was
walking towards Scotland Yard and saying to himself:
"I can prove, anyhow, that I took the rotten things from his trunk. So
now, Monsieur Janoc, the next and main item is to arrest you!"