TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA!
Poor old Thompson seemed a closed incident. There was nothing to be
found out about him, even regarding his departure from La Chance. Nobody
remembered his going through Caraquet, or even the last time he had been
there. He was not a man any one would remember, anyhow, or one who had
made friends. We put a notice of his death and the circumstances in a
Montreal paper, and I thought that was the end of it all, till Dudley,
to my surprise, stuck obstinately to his idea of tracing Thompson from
Montreal. He told Macartney and me that he had written to a detective
about it, and I think we both thought it was silly. I know I did; and I
saw Macartney close his lips as though he kept back the same thought.
But we gave old Thompson the best funeral we could, over at the Halfway,
with a good grave and a wooden cross. All of us went except Marcia. She
said she had never cared about the poor old thing, and she wasn't going
to pretend it.
It was a bitter day, with no snow come yet. Macartney looked sick and
drawn about the mouth as he stood by the grave, while Dudley read the
prayers out of Paulette's prayer book. I saw her notice Macartney when I
did, and I think neither of us had guessed he had so much feeling. I
stayed a minute or two behind the others, because I'd ridden over,
instead of driving with them; and just before I started for La Chance I
remembered that torn scrap of paper in my room there. I turned hastily
to Billy Jones.
"Those solitaire cards of Thompson's," said I, from no reason on earth
but that to find them had been the last request of the dead man, even if
it did sound crazy. "I'd like them!"
Billy nodded and went into his shack. Presently he came out and said the
cards were gone. He thought he'd put them away somewhere, but they
weren't to be found. It was queer, too, because he remembered replacing
them in their prayer-book sort of case after he'd spread them by the
stove to dry with Thompson's clothes. But his wife said she would find
them and send them over. Which she never did, and I forgot them.
Goodness knows I had reason to.
I did an errand instead of going straight home from Thompson's funeral
that took me into the bush not far from where the boulder had been
placed on my road. It was there or near by I had heard wolves pull down
a man or men; and after I'd tied my horse and done a little looking
around, I found the spot. It was not the scattered bones of two men that
sickened me, or even that the long thighs and shanks of one of them were
the measure of Collins. It was the top of a skull, with the hair still
on it. I did not need the face that was missing. Dunn, with his eternal
chuckle, had had stubbly fair hair without a part in it, clipped close
till it stood on end,--and the same fair hair was on the top of the
skull that lay like a round stone in the frozen bush. Whether the two
had set out to rob me I didn't know. I did know they had not done it,
and that the man Paulette had shot at in the swamp was more of a mystery
than ever.
The ground was too hard to do any burying. I made the bones into a
decent heap and piled rocks into a cairn over them. If I said a kind of
a prayer, too, it was no one's business but that of the God who heard
me; the boys had been young, and they were dead while I lived, which was
enough to make a man pray. I felt better when I had done it.
But when I got home to La Chance the bald story I told Dudley was
wasted. He swore I was a fool, first, for burying two skulls with no
faces and imagining they belonged to Dunn and Collins; and next that
they were still alive and meaning to run a hold-up on us. From where, or
how, he couldn't say. But he kept on at the thing; and the minute he had
half a drink in him--which was usually the first thing in the
morning--he began to worry me to go out and find where they were cached
and hike them out of it; and he kept at it all day. That would not have
worried me much since it was only Dudley, and Macartney and the others
believed my story; but everything else at La Chance began to go crooked,
and every one's nerves got edgy. Marcia was unpleasantly silent, except
when Macartney was there, when she sat in his pocket and they talked low
like lovers,--only that I was always idiotically nervous they might be
talking about Paulette Brown. That was seldom enough though, for half
the time Macartney never showed up, even for meals. He was working like
ten men over the mine, and good, solid, capable work at that. Whatever
had made poor Thompson send him to us he was worth his weight in the
gold he was getting out of La Chance in----Well, in chunks! Which was
one of the reasons he had to work so hard, and brings me to the naked
trouble at La Chance.
We were deadly short of men. Not only were Dunn and Collins dead, but
their grisly end seemed to have scared the others. Not a day went by
that three or four of them did not come for their time, chiefly rockmen
and teamsters,--for we had no ore chute at La Chance. Macartney thought
it was Dudley's fault, for nagging around all the time, and was sore
over it. Dudley said it was Macartney's, though when I pressed him he
said, too, that he did not know why. The men I spoke to before they left
just said they'd had enough of La Chance, but I could feel a sulky
underhand rebellion in the bunk house. I ran the ore hauling as best I
could, and Macartney doubled up the work in the mill. The ore-feeder
acted as crusher-man, too, the engineer was his own fireman, which, with
the battery man and the amalgamator, brought the mill staff down to
four,--but they were the best of our men. The others Macartney turned to
with the rockmen, and in the course of a fortnight he got a few more men
from somewhere he wrote to outside. They were a rough lot; not
troublesome, but the kind of rough that saves itself backache and elbow
grease. Personally, I think they would not have worked at all, if
Macartney had not put the fear of death in them. I caught him at it, and
though I did not hear what he said in that competent low voice of his,
there was no more lounging around and grinning from our new men. But the
trouble among the old men kept on till we had none of them left except
the four in the mill. It did not concern me particularly, except that I
had to work on odd jobs that should not have concerned me either, and I
did not think much about it. What I really did think about--and it put
me out of gear more than anything else at La Chance--was Paulette Brown!
It had been all very well to call her my dream girl and to think I'd got
to heaven because she'd taken the trouble to drive to the Halfway with
me and fight wolves. But she had hardly spoken to me since. And--well,
not only the bones and skull I'd buried had smashed up my theory that it
was only Collins who'd meant to hold up my gold, but I'd smashed it up,
for myself, for a reason that made me wild: Paulette Brown, whose real
name Marcia swore was something else, was still meeting a man in the
dark! Where, I couldn't tell, but I knew she did meet him; and naturally
I knew the man was not Collins, or ever had been. I did my best to get a
talk with her, but she ran from me like a rabbit. I was worried good and
hard. For from what I'd picked up, I knew the man she met could be
nobody at La Chance,--and any outsider who followed a girl there likely
had a gang with him and meant business, not child's play like Collins.
The thing was serious, and I had no right to be trusting my dream girl
and keeping silence to Dudley, but I went on doing it. There is no sense
in keeping things back. I was mad with love for her, and if she had
given me a chance I would have brushed Dudley out of my way like a
straw. I had to grip all the decency I had not to do it, anyway. But if
you think I just made an easy resignation of her and sat back meekly,
you're wrong. I sat back because I was helpless and too stupid to
formulate any way to deal with the situation. I don't know that I was
any more silent than I always am, though Marcia said so. I did get into
the way of pretending to write letters in the evenings, while Marcia and
Macartney talked low, and Dudley went up and down the room in his
eternal trudge of nervousness, throwing a word now and then to Paulette
seated sewing by the fire,--that I kept my back to so that the others
could not see my face.
But one night, nearly a month after Thompson was buried, I came in after
supper, and Paulette was in my usual place. She was writing a letter or
something, and Dudley was preaching to Macartney about the shortage of
men in the bunk house. Marcia, cross as two sticks because she was only
there to talk to Macartney herself, had Paulette's seat by the fire. I
sat down by the table where Paulette was writing, more sideways than
behind her.
If I had chosen to look I could have read every word she was writing.
But naturally I was not choosing to, for one thing, and for another my
eyes were glued to her face. Something in the look of her gave me a sick
shock. She was deadly pale, and under the light of Charliet's
half-trimmed lamp I saw the blue marks under her eyes, and the tight
look round the nostrils that only come to a woman's face when she is
fighting something that is pretty nearly past her, and is next door to
despair. She looked hunted; that was the only word there was for it. It
struck me that look must stop. If I had to march her out into the bush
with me by force next morning, I meant to get a solitary talk with her;
find out what her mysterious business was at La Chance with a man who
had laid up for our gold; and, with any luck, transfer the hunted look
to the face of the man who was hounding her,--for I felt certain he was
still hanging around La Chance.
After that--but there could be no after that to matter to me, with a
dream girl who scooted to Dudley every time I tried to speak to her! I
took a half-glance at him, and it was plain enough he would be no good
to her in the kind of trouble that was on now. If I couldn't have
her--since she didn't want me--I was the only person who could help
her. She was angel-sweet to Dudley, heaven knows, and he was charming to
her when he was himself. When he was not, he had a patronizing,
half-threatening way of speaking to her, as if he knew something ugly
about her, as Marcia had insinuated, that made me boil. She never
resented it either, and that made me boil too. If I had ever seen her
even shrink from him, I don't know that the curb bit I had on myself
would have held. I wished to heaven she _would_ shrink and give me a
chance to step in between her and a man who might love her, as Marcia
said, but who loved drink and drugs better, or he would not have been
talking between silliness and sobriety, as he was that night. And I was
so busy wishing it that Marcia spoke to me three times before I heard
her.
"Nicky, do make Dudley shut up," she repeated, "he won't let any one
else speak! He's been preaching the whole evening that Collins and Dunn
aren't dead, only laid up somewhere round and making the other men
desert, and you ought to go and find them--and now he's worrying us
about that old idiot Thompson, who got himself drowned! For heaven's
sake tell him no one would have bothered to murder the old wretch!"
"Nobody ever thought he was murdered, and I buried Dunn and Collins
right enough," said I absently, with my thoughts still on Paulette. But
Dudley whisked around on me.
"Marcia's talking rot," he exclaimed, his little pig's eyes soberer than
I expected. "I don't mean about those two boys, for I bet they're no
more dead than I am, and it would be just like them to lie low and set
up a smothered strike among the men as soon as you were ass enough to be
taken in by some stray bones! But I do mean it about Thompson. There's
no sense in saying there was nothing queer about the way he came back
and was found dead--because there was! It was natural enough that the
police couldn't trace him in Montreal, for I hadn't a sign of data to
give them: but it's darned unnatural that _I_ can't trace him in
Caraquet. I've sieved the whole place upside down, and nobody ever saw
Thompson after he left Billy Jones's that morning on his way to
Caraquet!"
Macartney stared at him for a minute; then he put down the pipe he was
smoking. "If I thought that, I'd sieve the whole place upside down,
too," he said so quietly that I remembered Thompson had been his best
friend, and that he had looked deadly sick beside his grave. "But I
don't. What it comes to with me is that no one remembers seeing Thompson
in Caraquet that particular time, but no one says he wasn't there!"
"Then where's the----" But Dudley checked himself quick as light. If I
had been quite sure he was himself I should have been curious about what
he had meant to say. But all he substituted was: "Well, nobody remembers
seeing him that day, anyway, except Billy Jones!"
"Seems to me that narrows poor Thompson's potential murderers down to
Billy Jones," said Macartney ironically, since Billy Jones would not
have murdered the meanest yellow pup that ever walked, and Macartney
knew it as well as I did. But Dudley made the two of us sit up.
"Who's to say he didn't?" he demanded. "What darned thing do we know
about him to say that he mightn't have waylaid poor old Thompson for
what money he had on him, and kept him shut up till he had a chance to
say he found him drowned?"
Macartney and I stared at each other. The very thought was so monstrous
that it must have struck him, as it did me, that it was born of Dudley's
drugs and not his intelligence. But it had to be stopped, or heaven knew
whom Dudley would be accusing next.
"For God's sake, Wilbraham, shut up," said Macartney curtly. "You make
me sick. Isn't it enough to have the old man dead, without saying
innocent people killed him!"
"Yes, if they are innocent," Dudley returned so quietly that it
surprised both of us. "But I tell you this, Macartney, and Stretton
too--if any one within a hundred miles of this mine did murder Thompson,
Billy Jones or any one else, it'll come out!" and he jerked his head
around. "Don't you think so, Paulette?"
"I? I never thought of poor old Thompson having been murdered!" She
answered as if she were startled, but she did not turn. "If he was
murdered I pray God it will be found out," she added unexpectedly. She
had made two false starts at her letter and torn them up, but she had
evidently finished it to her liking now, for she sat with the pen poised
over the blank end of the sheet to sign her name. Yet she did not sign
it. She only sat there abstractedly, with her hand lifted from the
wrist.
"There, you see," Dudley crowed triumphantly. "Paulette's no fool: it's
facts she and I are after, Macartney. Why, you take the history of
crimes generally--murders--jewel robberies--kidnapping for money--half
of them with not nearly so much to them as this thing about
Thompson--they're always found out!"
"If you're going to talk this rubbish, I'm going to bed," Marcia burst
out wrathfully. I saw her pause to catch Macartney's eye, but for once
his set gaze was on the floor. She got up, which I don't think she had
meant to do, and flounced out of the room. I had no idea I was going to
be deadly thankful.
Macartney answered Dudley as the door shut behind her. "I don't know
that crimes are always found out, in spite of your faith--and Miss
Paulette's," he argued half crossly. "I could remind you of one or two
that weren't. What about the Mappin murder, way back in nineteen-five?
And that emerald business at the Houstons' country house this spring,
with that dancing and circus-riding girl who used to be at the
Hippodrome--the Russian, who did Russian dancing on her horse's back?
What was her name? I ought to remember. I knew a poor devil of a cousin
of hers out in British Columbia who was engaged to her when it happened,
and he talked about her enough. Oh, yes, Valenka! She had a funny
Christian name too, sort of half Russian, only I forget it. But when
that Valenka girl got away with an emerald necklace from the Houstons'
house no one ever found out how it was done! You must have heard about
her, Stretton?"
I had. Every one had: Macartney need not have troubled to hunt his
memory for her Christian name, though it had only reached me in the
wilderness through a stray New York paper. But before I could say so
Dudley burst out with the same truculence he had used about Billy Jones:
"What d'ye mean Stretton must have heard?"
"Only that Mrs. Houston took a fancy to Valenka and had her down to ride
and dance at a week-end party at her house in Long Island; that on
Sunday morning, Jimmy Van Ruyne, one of the guests, was found in
Valenka's room, soaked with morphine and robbed--not only of the cash in
his pocket in the good old way, but of an emerald necklace he had just
bought at Tiffany's; and that, to this day, no one has ever laid eyes on
that necklace nor on Valenka. She's free and red-handed somewhere, if no
one ever found out who railroaded her and Van Ruyne's emeralds out of
the United States!"
What sent Dudley into a blazing rage was beyond me. But he fairly yelled
at Macartney.
"Free she may be, but when you say 'red-handed' you say a lie! If Jimmy
Van Ruyne was fool enough to think so, it was because no Van Ruyne ever
could see a. b. spelled ab. D'ye know him? Well," as Macartney shook his
head, "he's a rotter, if ever there was one! Got more money than he
knows what to do with and always chasing after women. As for Valenka,
if you think she came out of a circus and was fair game, that's a lie,
too! She was a lady, born and bred. Her mother was American, a Miss
Bocqueraz; and her father was one of the best known men in Petrograd,
and _persona grata_ with one of the Grand Dukes till he got into some
sort of political disgrace and died of it. His daughter came to America
and danced and rode for her living. First because she was beggared; and
second because she'd been taught dancing in the Imperial School at
Petrograd and riding in the Grand Duchess Tatiana's private ring for
_haute manege_; and was a corker at both. She called herself plain
Valenka, and Jimmy Van Ruyne went crazy about her--though Mrs. Houston
didn't know it, or she never would have asked the nasty little cad to a
spring week-end party."
"To lose an emerald necklace and be stabbed and drugged," commented
Macartney drily. "Oh, I'm not saying the Valenka girl wasn't a
marvellous sight on a horse! But what Van Ruyne told the police was that
he gave his string of emeralds to her on the Saturday afternoon, and got
a note from her just after dinner saying that she returned them; only
the case--in the time-honored method this time--was empty when he opened
it! He was blazing. He went straight up to Valenka's room when he found
it out, which was at two in the morning, and said he wanted his
emeralds; and she flew at him with a dagger. After which he knew nothing
at all till a servant came in at eight and found him lying unconscious
in her empty room that she'd just walked out of with his emeralds in her
pocket. And no one's ever laid eyes on her, or on Van Ruyne's emeralds
ever since."
"That's what Van Ruyne says," Dudley began hotly--and went on in a
different voice. "The Valenka girl never stole his emeralds! She may
have cut him across the wrist with one of those knife-things women will
use for paper cutters; I don't say she didn't. Any girl would have been
justified when a man forced his way into her bedroom--for I bet Van
Ruyne didn't let out the whole story of that, if he did let out that he
bullied her when he found her alone! And he didn't lay any stress,
either, on the fact that he was found with the cut artery in his
wrist--that was all the stabbing that ailed him--bound up as a surgeon
would have done it; or that he'd been given just enough morphine to keep
him from wriggling off his bandage and bleeding to death before anybody
came: not Van Ruyne!"
"All that doesn't explain how Valenka got away--or what became of her,"
said Macartney obstinately. "That's the mystery I began on."
I was bored stiff with the whole thing. And whether she had Van Ruyne's
emeralds or not I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka girl's
disappearance: she had probably had some one outside who had taken her
clear away in a motor car. I said so, more because Dudley was glaring at
Macartney like a maniac than anything else. And Dudley caught me up
short. "I won't have either of you say one more word about Valenka in my
house. She was as good as she was pretty; and if some one helped her
away she--deserved it!"
There was something so like honest passion in the break in his voice
that involuntarily I glanced at Paulette, to see if by any chance she
was startled at Dudley's evidently intimate knowledge of a girl none of
us had even heard him speak of--and it took every bit of Indian quiet I
owned not to stare at her so hard that Dudley and Macartney must have
noticed. She was listening, as motionless as if she were a statue. Her
lifted hand still held her pen poised over her unfinished letter; but it
was rigid, as the rest of her was rigid. Whether it was from anger,
surprise, or jealousy of Dudley, I had no idea, but she sat as if she
had been struck dumb. And suddenly I was not sure if she were perfectly
collected,--or absolutely abstracted. For--without even a glance to
show she felt my eyes on her--the carved lines of her poised hand fell
to the level of her wrist that lay flat on the table, and she began to
write the signature to her unfinished letter. I could see every separate
character as she shaped it; and with the blazing enlightenment of what
she set down on paper only a merciful heaven kept my wits in my skull
and my tongue quiet in my head.
For the signature she wrote as plainly as I write it now was not
Paulette Brown. It was Tatiana Paulina--that "queer Christian name, half
Russian too," of the dancing circus-rider, that no one had ever
mentioned,--_Tatiana Paulina Valenka_!