THE CLOSING SCENE
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, 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 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.
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.
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 champêtre_ 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 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 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 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. "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!"
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.
"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.
"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."
"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.
* * * * *
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
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe".
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the
speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.
Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
unless otherwise noted.
On the title page, "DISSAPEARANCE" was replaced with "DISAPPEARANCE".
On page 69, "Emile" was replaced with "Émile".