A STARTLING TALE
Hardly able to believe that they were actually living this weird thing,
the girls crowded into the shack after the stricken man and found that
he had sunk upon a bench and covered his face with his hands.
Strangely enough, though it had been Mollie who had precipitated this
thing, it was Betty who now took the lead. Softly she went over to the
shrinking man and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"You say you did not kill your brother?" she questioned in so calm a
voice that the girls marveled at her. "You are sure you did not?"
"No! no!" cried the man again raising his haggard face, deep-lined with
the marks of suffering, "No--I am not sure. Can you not see? It is that
that is killing me. Yet in my sane moments I know that he was dead. He
lay there, so white, so still, with only that red, red stream of blood
to mar his whiteness. I leaned down, I listened to his heart----" The
man had evidently forgotten the presence of the girls, engulfed as he
was in the horror of the incident he related. Once more he was living
the tragedy, and the girls, tense, strained, horrified, lived it with
him.
"I listened to his heart," the man repeated, his arms stretched out
before him, his long, delicate hands gripped with a fierceness that made
the knuckles go white. "There was no beating. I put my face close to his
mouth to see if there was breath. But he had stopped breathing--forever!
"My heart went cold. I seized him by the shoulders. I called him by his
name--that brother that I had loved! Oh, how I had loved him. I begged
him to come back to me, to open those gray lips that a moment before had
been beautiful with life--to speak to me--and all the time----" his hand
relaxed and pointed to the floor and the girls followed the movement
fascinated--"there kept spreading and spreading on the rug a deep red
stain--my brother's blood! _Mon Dieu!_ And when I staggered to my feet I
found that the horrible stuff had clung to my fingers--they were dark
and sticky--the fingers of a murderer! I went mad then, I think. I
rushed from the house, from the place. One thing only was in my mind. To
get away--to get away from Paris, that accursed city----" He paused,
staring at the floor, and the girls waited, hardly daring to move for
fear they would break the spell.
"The rest is like a bad dream to me," the man continued in a weary
voice. "Ghost-ridden, haunted, I came to this country incognito--under
what you call an assumed name. For a short time I stayed in New
Orleans----"
"But your violin!" Betty interrupted in a voice that amazed her, it
seemed so little and weak. "Surely you were under contract."
The man turned on her what was almost a pitying look from his sunken
eyes.
"I could not play," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "To have
gone to my manager would have been like going to the hangman--the
electric chair, what you have in this country. No, mademoiselle, I was a
murderer, a man hunted by his fellowmen. There was but one thing for me
to do--to hide, to dodge about like a rabbit from a pack of baying dogs.
Hide!" he added bitterly. "I could not hide from myself.
"Always when the night grows dark and the wind it makes to howl around
this place I can hear my brother's voice uplifted in anger. We quarreled
over something my uncle had said--a foolish quarrel. He called me liar,
and I--something snapped in my brain, I think, and for a moment
everything went red. There was a wine bottle on the table--we had been
drinking--blindly I struck out with it---- Now, when the darkness comes
and the wildcat calls into the night with a scream like a soul in
torment, I hear again the tinkling of that bottle as it shattered, the
short groan, the falling of a heavy body.
"It is a wonder that I have not gone mad," he said. "Many a time I have
prayed that I might or that I might find courage to end this miserable
life and go to join my brother. But I am a coward, a coward----" His
voice lowered till it was almost inaudible and tears trickled through
the long white fingers. "I have not the courage even to die. There is a
tribunal above that I should have to face, more just, more awful, than
any man-made law. There you have what Paul Loup has become."
"But you must not speak that way," said Betty, whose quick mind had been
forging ahead while the man had been speaking. "It is one thing to kill
a man deliberately, and quite another to kill in hot blood, blindly.
Besides," she added eagerly, "you are not even sure that you did kill
your brother. Did you--have you seen the papers since--since you ran
away?"
"No," said the man. His tone was dead, hopeless. "I was afraid of what I
might find there. He was dead, Mademoiselle," he added wearily. "When I
say that there is a doubt of that it is simply to give myself one little
excuse for continuing to live. He did not move, he did not breathe. Ah,
yes, he was dead, quite dead."
There was silence for a moment while Betty thought rapidly. Amy and
Mollie and Grace stared wide-eyed with the feeling that they were
witnessing some tremendous, swift-moving drama.
"Of course," said the man, breaking the silence abruptly, his somber
eyes upon Betty, "there is but one thing left for me now to do. I shall
surrender to the authorities--a thing which I should have done long ago.
Or," he added grimly, "you might rather go with me now. If you left me I
might attempt to escape--so you will think, Mademoiselle?"
There was a lift at the end of the sentence that made it a question and,
startled, the girls looked at Betty to see what she would say.
The Little Captain herself was startled. Evidently the man thought they
had been tracking him, had used their knowledge to trap him.
"Oh, it isn't as you think!" she cried impulsively. "We never had the
slightest little wish to harm you. And please, please," she added
earnestly, "don't give yourself up to the authorities, or do anything
rash until you hear from me again. You may not believe me--I wouldn't
blame you if you didn't----" she went on shyly, for the man had risen
and was staring at her, "but all we want to do is to help you if we
can----" she broke off confusedly for the look in the man's eyes
silenced her.
"You know I am Paul Loup," he cried hoarsely. "You have heard my story,
my confession from my own lips, and still you say that you wish me no
harm! Who are you? what are you? what do you want of me?" He had
advanced toward them, and in a panic the girls moved back toward the
open door. Only Betty stood fearlessly in his path.
"We are the Outdoor Girls, and we are living just at present on Gold Run
Ranch," she said quietly. "We found out who you were because you were
good enough to play for us at a benefit we gave at the Hostess House at
Camp Liberty some time ago. And we came up here because we thought that
you were in trouble and that we might help you. If we can't help you,
I'm sorry." And with head bravely uplifted Betty turned toward the door.
She had almost reached it when he called to her.
"You are a brave girl," said Paul Loup slowly, his eyes intent on
Betty's pretty face, "How do you know that I--the murderer--will not
kill you also for this knowledge you have of me?"
Betty heard the frightened gasp of the girls behind her, but, strangely
enough, she herself felt no fear.
"You wouldn't do that," she said, her clear gaze holding his burning
one. "You could not wish harm to a friend."
"Is that what you wish me to consider you--a friend?" asked the strange
man, feeling suddenly as though something warm and vital had closed
about his heart.
"If you will," replied Betty, reaching out her hand. "I would like very
much to be."
But Paul Loup, for all he was a murderer and an outcast, was also a
Frenchman. With a quick gesture, ignoring her outstretched hand he
caught her in his arms, held her there for a minute, then, releasing
her, kissed her gently, first on one cheek, then on the other.
"I had forgotten there were kind hearts in the world," he murmured
brokenly, turning from her. "You have restored my faith. _Au revoir_, my
friend."
Someway, somehow, the girls found themselves outside that little cabin,
making their way blindly down the path to where their horses were
tethered. In a daze they mounted and rode off down the trail.
When they came to the open trail they found that Betty was crying,
openly, unashamed. Mollie pushed a handkerchief into her hand, but the
Little Captain did not seem to notice it. She stared straight ahead, her
cheeks burning, the tears rolling unchecked down her face.
"Never mind, honey," said Mollie, trying to steady her voice. "It was
hard for you, I know; but I would give anything I own to have made him
feel that way about me. I don't care if he did commit murder. I'm for
him--strong."
"To be all alone," said Betty as though Mollie had not spoken, "and so
heart-hungry that a little sympathy from a stranger----" A sob choked
the rest of her sentence. But a moment later she faced the girls with a
light of resolve shining in her eyes.
"Girls," she said, "I don't believe Paul Loup is a murderer, and some
way or other I'm going to prove it. A man like that just couldn't commit
murder. I know it!"