THE ACCUSER
Henry Decherd paused under the steadfast gaze which met him.
"Decherd," said Eddring, simply, "I want to talk to you. Come and sit
down." They moved a pace or two forward, Eddring taking care that the
other should sit facing the light which streamed through the glass
doors of the cabin.
"Stop! Decherd, I wouldn't do that." Eddring glanced at the hand
which Decherd would have moved toward a weapon. Eddring's own hands
hung idly between his knees as he leaned forward in his chair.
"I would like to know what you mean by meddling in my affairs," began
Decherd. "You are interfering--"
"Yes," said a voice, soft but very cold, "I'm interfering. I am going
to spoil your chances, Decherd. Sit down." The man thus accosted
involuntarily sank back into a seat. Then a sudden rage caught him,
and he half-started up again. This time he saw something blue
gleaming dully in the idle hand which hung between Eddring's knees.
"Be careful," said the latter. "I told you not to do that. Sit down,
now, and listen." An unreasoning, blind terror seized Henry Decherd,
and in spite of himself, he obeyed.
"In the first place, Decherd," said Eddring, "I want to say that it
was not lucky for you when I got hold of your valise by mistake at
the Big House wreck--the time I found that list of claims, and the
little old book in French. I have studied all those things over
carefully, together with other things. I've been thinking a great
deal. That's why I am going to spoil your chances."
"Does she know?" whispered Decherd, hoarsely.
"No, she knows nothing about it at all. She doesn't know who she is--
not even why she happened to take the name of Louise Loisson."
Decherd gasped, but the cold voice went on. "You might have told her
some of these things. You might have told her who her real mother
was, and who her false mother. You might have given her a chance to
know herself. I don't fancy that you did. I don't think you told her
anything which did not serve your own purposes."
"We were going to be married," began Decherd.
"We are going to be married--"
"You _were,_ perhaps," said Eddring, "but not now. Oh, I don't
doubt that you are willing enough to marry Louise Loisson, and to
deceive her after your marriage as you did before. I don't doubt that
in the least."
"What business is it of yours?" said Decherd, now becoming more
sullen than blustering.
"I can't say that it was my business at all," said Eddring. "It's
accident, largely; and surely it was not your fault that I blundered
on these matters. It was rather fate, or the occasional good fortune
of the innocent. You covered up your trail fairly well; but a
criminal will always leave behind him some egotistical mark of his
crime, either by accident or by intent. You left marks all along your
trail, Decherd--there, there, keep quiet. I don't want to use force
with you. I'm not going to be the agent of justice. But it won't be
altogether healthy for the man on whose shoulders a great many of
these things are finally loaded. You were enterprising, Decherd, and
you were an abler man than I thought, far abler; but you undertook
too much.
"Now, here's a message from Colonel Blount," Eddring resumed. "It
looks as though things were coming pretty nearly to a show-down up
there. We are going to find out all about that. Incidentally, we are
going to find out everything about this poor girl here, whose name
and reputation only the mercy of God kept you from ruining this very
night." The two now sat looking each other fairly and fully in the
eye. For the first time in many years Henry Decherd recognized the
whip hand.
"I might as well tell you," said Eddring, "that I know about the old
Loisson estate--a great deal more than its lawful heiress does. I
know who paid the taxes on the lands. I know as well as you do about
the suit in the United States Supreme Court, where you won and lost
at the same time. In that case you proved your client, Delphine, to
be Indian, and therefore not French--in plain language, you proved
that she was the heiress of the Indian, Paul Loise, and therefore
could _not_ inherit certain valuable lands of which we both know.
Before you found yourself on that account forced to pin your faith to
the descendants of the French Comte de Loisson, you were willing to
use either line of descent, provided it made it possible for you to
get possession of these lands. You were willing to deal with a woman
of mixed blood, or with one of pure blood, of noble descent. Let me be
frank with you, Decherd. You were playing these girls one against the
other. It was Delphine against the descendants of the Comte de
Loisson--a delicate game; and you came near winning."
Decherd passed a hand across his forehead, now grown clammy, but he
could see no method either of attack or of escape, for the cold gray
eye still held him, and the blue barrel hung steady beneath the idle
hand, as the same steel-like voice went on:
"I will just go over the proof once more, Decherd," said Eddring,
"and see if we don't look at it about alike. For instance, if
Delphine is Indian, she isn't white. Uncle Sam's Supreme Court says
she's Indian. That's record, that's evidence. Take the two girls, one
of noble blood, the other of questionable descent, and they are
together equal, _in posse_, as we will say, to these valuable lands.
Do you follow me? Oh, give up thinking of your gun. I'll kill you if
you move your hand.
"Very well, then, my friend, it comes simply to a case of
cancelation. No matter what you have told or promised either, there
can be but one heiress. Mark out one girl, and the other is equal to
that estate, we'll say. You yourself marked out Delphine when you
proved her to be of Indian descent. That leaves Miss Lady as the
heiress of the estate of the Comte de Loisson, doesn't it, Decherd?
"It leaves, also, two ways of getting the estate. You could marry the
girl, or kill her. You might possibly get a tax-title in the latter
case; if you killed the girl the tax-title would mature in your name.
You may count that string as broken. Mrs. Ellison, we will say,
wanted your paramour, Delphine, canceled, and wanted also to put the
remaining claimant out of sight. Then, as mother of this heiress--
the false mother, as you and I know--she thought that she would
inherit the lands--and you.
"That was Mrs. Ellison's plan--a very ignorant plan. Then the simple
matter of a marriage--or of no marriage--between Mr. Henry Decherd
and this Mrs. Alice Ellison, would enable them comfortably to share
this estate. That was the way Mrs. Ellison wanted it, perhaps. But
you preferred to marry the true claimant, and get rid of Mrs.
Ellison. That was your plan. You wanted to cancel every possible
claimant except Miss Lady, and then you wanted to force Miss Lady
into a marriage with you. Do I make myself clear to you, Mr. Decherd?
And do I make myself clear that this country isn't big enough for
both of us? Keep quiet now. You've come to your show-down right here.
"Meantime, it was part of your scheme, as I now see, to keep Miss
Lady away from her friends, to poison her against those friends. You
had to live, and you were a lawyer, or a sort of a lawyer. You got
hold of these judgment claims against the railroad which discharged
me. You told this girl that I stole those claims. You know you lied.
For a time you deluded this poor girl, poisoning her mind, killing
her nature with your deceit. None the less, you left behind you open
proofs, ready-made for your own undoing. Why, this very name, this
stage name of Louise Loisson, was banner enough to bring her real
friends to her side. But you didn't know, did you, Mr. Decherd, that
I had read the little book, and that I knew the Loisson history? I
said it was by chance I found the book. I am ready now to say it was
by fate--by justice. It's like the fetish mark on the church-door--
that negro church in the woods--like the sign on Delphine's
handkerchief. Guilt always leaves a sign. Justice always finds some
proof.
"Now, I have a message from Colonel Blount. Here it is. He says,
'Louise Loisson our Miss Lady.' He has found out something, too, at
the other end of the line, hasn't he, Decherd? Notice, he says, 'our
Miss Lady.' She is ours, not yours. I am going to take her along with
me, back to the Big House, and to her friend, Colonel Blount. He
says, 'Watch out for Decherd.' I am watching out for him. He also
says that they have caught the leader who has been making all the
trouble up there in the Delta, near the Big House plantation."
"Delphine!" gasped Decherd, from tightened lips, a pale horror now
written on every feature. "Has she talked?"
"Yes, Delphine! You were able to guess that, were you, Decherd? Thank
you. You were right. I do not know whether or not Delphine has
talked. But whether she has or not, there will presently be no chance
for you. You are at the end of your string, Decherd.
"And now, get up," said Eddring to him sharply, rising. "Get up, you
damned hound, you liar, you thief, you cur. This boat's not big
enough for you and me. The world will be barely big enough for a
little while, if you're careful. We are not afraid of you, now that
we know you. Go back to Mrs. Ellison, if you like. You can't go back
to Delphine now, and you can't speak to Miss Lady again. She is
_our_ Miss Lady. You can't stay on this boat tonight, where that
girl is."
"So you--you're trying to cut in?" began Decherd.
Eddring did not answer.
He caught Decherd by the collar, wrenched the revolver from his
pocket and pushed him down the stair, then dragged him along the
lower deck. They passed a line of sleeping deck-hands too stupid to
observe them. Dragging astern of the boat, high between the two long
diverging lines of the rolling wake, there rode a river skiff at the
end of its taut line.
"Those lights below are at the ferry, eight miles from town," said
Eddring. "Get into the boat."
"For God's sake, can't you get them to slow down?" whined Decherd;
but Eddring shook his head. Decherd let himself over the rail of the
lower deck, and for an instant the strained line bade fair to hold
his weight. Then his feet and legs dropped into the water as he and
the boat approached. Desperately he clambered on, and so fell panting
and dripping into the bow of the skiff. A moment later the boat and
its huddled occupant dropped back into the night, tossing in the wake
of the churning wheels.
From above there came pouring down the somber flood of Messasebe,
bearing tribute of his wilderness, in part made up of broken,
worthless and discarded things.
Eddring gazed after the disappearing boat. He was relaxed, silent,
worn. The grip of a great loneliness seized upon him. What had he
gained? Why had he interfered? The world about him seemed void and
vacant. He felt himself, no less than the other man, a worthless and
discarded thing--a bit of flotsam on the flood of fate.