III. The Lost Lady
It was a remark of old Major Carrington that incited this adventure.
"It is some distance through the wood--is she quite safe?"
It was a mere reflection as he went out. It was very late. I do not knowhow the dinner, or rather the after-hours of it, had lengthened. It musthave been the incomparable charm of the woman. She had come, this night,luminously, it seemed to us, through the haze that had been on her--thesmoke haze of a strange, blighting fortune. The three of us had beencarried along in it with no sense of time; my sister, the ancient MajorCarrington and I.
He turned back in the road, his decayed voice whipped by the stimulus ofher into a higher note.
"Suppose the village coachman should think her as lovely as wedo--what!"
He laughed and turned heavily up the road a hundred yards or so to hiscottage set in the pine wood. I stood in the road watching the wheelsof the absurd village vehicle, the yellow cut-under, disappear. The oldMajor called back to me; his voice seemed detached, eerie with the thinlaugh in it.
"I thought him a particularly villainous-looking creature!"
It was an absurd remark. The man was one of the natives of the island,and besides, the innkeeper was a person of sound sense; he would knowprecisely about his driver.
I should not have gone on this adventure but for a further incident.
When I entered the house my sister was going up the stair, the butlerwas beyond in the drawing-room, and there was no other servant visible.She was on the first step and the elevation gave precisely the heightthat my sister ought to have received in the accident of birth. Shewould have been wonderful with those four inches added--lacking beauty,she had every other grace!
She spoke to me as I approached.
"Winthrop," she said, "what was in the package that Madame Barrascarried away with her tonight?"
The query very greatly surprised me. I thought Madame Barras had carriedthis package away with her several evenings before when I had put herEnglish bank-notes in my box at the local bank. My sister added theexplanation which I should have been embarrassed to seek, at the moment.
"She asked me to put it somewhere, on Tuesday afternoon.... It wasforgotten, I suppose.... I laid it in a drawer of the library table....What did it contain?"
I managed an evasive reply, for the discovery opened possibilities thatdisturbed me.
"Some certificates, I believe," I said.
My sister made a little pretended gesture of dismay.
"I should have been more careful; such things are of value."
Of value indeed! The certificates in Madame Barras' package, that hadlain about on the library table, were gold certificates of the UnitedStates Treasury--ninety odd of them, each of a value of one thousanddollars! My sister went:
"How oddly life has tossed her about.... She must have been a mereinfant at Miss Page's. The attachment of incoming tots to the oldergirls was a custom.... I do not recall her.... There was always a stringof mites with shiny pigtails and big-eyed wistful faces. The oldergirls never thought very much about them. One has a swarm-memory,but individuals escape one. The older girl, in these schools, fanciedherself immensely. The little satellite that attached itself, with itsadoration, had no identity. It had a nickname, I think, or a number....I have forgotten. We minimized these midges out of everything that coulddistinguish them.... Fancy one of these turning up in Madame Barras andcoming to me on the memory of it."
"It was extremely lucky for her," I said. "Imagine arriving from theinterior of Brazil on the invitation of Mrs. Jordan to find that ladydead and buried; with no friend, until, by chance, one happened on yourname in the social register, and ventured on a school attachment ofwhich there might remain, perhaps a memory only on the infant's side."
My sister went on up the stair.
"I am glad we happened to be here, and, especially, Winthrop, if youhave been able to assist her.... She is charming."
Charming was the word descriptive of my sister, for it is a thing ofmanner from a nature elevated and noble, but it was not the word forMadame Barras. The woman was a lure. I mean the term in its large andcatholic sense. I mean the bait of a great cosmic impulse--the mostsubtle and the most persistent of which one has any sense.
The cunning intelligences of that impulse had decked her out withevery attractiveness as though they had taken thought to confound allmasculine resistance; to sweep into their service those refractory unitsthat withheld themselves from the common purpose. She was lovely, as theaged Major Carrington had uttered it--great violet eyes in a delicateskin sown with gold flecks, a skin so delicate that one felt that a kisswould tear it!
I do not know from what source I have that expression but it attachesitself, out of my memory of descriptive phrases, to Madame Barras. Andit extends itself as wholly descriptive of her. You will say that thelong and short of this is that I was in love with Madame Barras, but Ipoint you a witness in Major Carrington.
He had the same impressions, and he had but one passion in his life, adistant worship of my sister that burned steadily even here at theend of life. During the few evenings that Madame Barras had been into dinner with us, he sat in his chair beyond my sister in thedrawing-room, perfect in his early-Victorian manner, while Madame Barrasand I walked on the great terrace, or sat outside.
One had a magnificent sweep of the world, at night, from that terrace.It looked out over the forest of pines to the open sea.
Madame Barras confessed to the pull of this vista. She asked me at whatdirection the Atlantic entered, and when she knew, she kept it always inher sight.
It had a persisting fascination for her. At all times and in nearly anyposition, she was somehow sensible of this vista; she knew the lightsalmost immediately, and the common small craft blinking about. To-nightshe had sat for a long time in nearly utter silence here. There was afaint light on the open sea as she got up to take her leave of us; whatwould it be she wondered.
I replied that it was some small craft coming in.
"A fishing-boat?"
"Hardly that," I said, "from its lights and position it will be someswifter power-boat and, I should say, not precisely certain about thechannel."
I have been drawn here into reminiscence that did not, at the time,detain me in the hall. What my sister had discovered to me, followingMajor Carrington's remark, left me distinctly uneasy. It was very nearlytwo miles to the village, the road was wholly forest and there would beno house on the way; for my father, with an utter disregard for cost,had sought the seclusion of a large acreage when he had built thisabsurdly elaborate villa on Mount Desert Island.
Besides I was in no mood for sleep.
And, over all probability, there might be some not entirely imaginarydanger to Madame Barras. Not precisely the danger presented in MajorCarrington's pleasantry, but the always possible danger to one who iscarrying a sum of money about. It would be considered, in the world ofcriminal activities, a very large sum of money; and it had been lyinghere, as of no value, in a drawer of the library table since the dayon which the gold certificates had arrived on my check from the Bostonbank.
Madame Barras had not taken the currency away as I imagined. It wasextremely careless of her, but was it not an act in character?
What would such a woman know of practical concern?
I spoke to the butler. He should not wait up, I would let myself in; andI went out.
I remember that I got a cap and a stick out of the rack; there was noelement of selection in the cap, but there was a decided subconsciousdirection about the selection of the stick. It was a heavy blackthorn,with an iron ferrule and a silver weight set in the head; picked up--bymy father at some Irish fair--a weapon in fact.
It was not dark. It was one of those clear hard nights that are notuncommon on this island in midsummer; with a full moon, the roadwas visible even in the wood. I swung along it with no particularprecaution; I was not expecting anything to happen, and in fact, nothingdid happen on the way in
to the village.
But in this attitude of confidence I failed to discover an event of thisnight that might have given the whole adventure a different ending.
There is a point near the village where a road enters our private one;skirts the border of the mountain, and, making a great turn, enters thevillage from the south. At this division of the road I heard distinctlya sound in the wood.
It was not a sound to incite inquiry. It was the sound of someconsiderable animal moving in the leaves, a few steps beyond the road.It did not impress me at the time; estrays were constantly at large inour forests in summer, and not infrequently a roaming buck from thenear preserves. There was also here in addition to the other roads,an abandoned winter wood-road that ran westward across the island toa small farming settlement. Doubtless I took a slighter notice of thesound because estrays from the farmers' fields usually trespassed on usfrom this road.
At any rate I went on. I fear that I was very much engrossed with thememory of Madame Barras. Not wholly with the feminine lure of her,although as I have written she was the perfection of that lure. Onepassed women, at all milestones, on the way to age, and kept beforethem one's sound estimates of life, but before this woman one lost one'shead, as though Nature, evaded heretofore, would not be denied. But theweird fortune that had attended her was in my mind.
Married to Senor Barras out of the door of a convent, carried to Riode Janeiro to an unbearable life, escaping with a remnant of herinheritance in English bank-notes, she arrives here to visit the one,old, persisting friend, Mrs. Jordan, and finds her dead! And what seemedstrange, incredible beyond belief, was that this creature Barras hadthought only of her fortune which he had depleted in two years to thesomething less than twenty thousand pounds which I had exchanged for herinto our money; a mere fragment of her great inheritance.
I had listened to the story entranced with the alluring teller of it;wondering as I now wondered, on the road to the village, how anythingpretending to be man could think of money when she was before his eye.
What could he buy with money that equaled her! And yet this curiousjackal had seen in her only the key to a strong-box. There was behindit, in explanation, shadowed out, the glamor of an empire that SenorBarras would set up with the millions in his country of revolutions, andthe enthusiasms of a foolish mother.
And yet the jackal and this wreckage had not touched her. There was nostain, no crumpled leaf. She was a fresh wonder, even after this, out ofa chrysalis. It was this amazing newness, this virginity of blossom fromwhich one could not escape.
The word in my reflection brought me up. How had she escaped fromBarras?
I had more than once in my reflections pivoted on the word.
The great hotel was very nearly deserted when I entered.
There was the glow of a cigar where some one smoked, at the end of thelong porch. Within, there was only a sleepy clerk.
Madame Barras had not arrived... he was quite sure; she had gone out todinner somewhere and had not come in!
I was profoundly concerned. But I took a moment to reflect beforedeciding what to do.
I stepped outside and there, coming up from the shadow of the porch, Imet Sir Henry Marquis.
It was chance at its extreme of favor. If I had been given theselection, in all the world, I should have asked for Sir Henry Marquisat that decisive moment.
The relief I felt made my words extravagant.
"Marquis!" I cried. "You here!"
"Ah, Winthrop," he said, in his drawling Oxford voice, "what have youdone with Madame Barras; I was waiting for her?"
I told him, in a word, how she had set out from my house--myconcern--the walk down here and this result. I did not ask him at themoment how he happened to be here, or with a knowledge of our guest.I thought that Marquis was in Canada. But one does not, with success,inquire of a C.I.D. official even in his own country. One met him in themost unexpected places, unconcerned, and one would have said at leisure.
But he was concerned to-night. What I told brought him up. He stood fora moment silent. Then he said, softly, in order drat the clerk behind usmight not overhear.
"Don't speak of it. I will get a light and go with you!"
He returned in a moment and we went out. He asked me about the road, wasthere only one way down; and I told him precisely. There was only theone road into the village and no way to miss it unless one turned intothe public road at the point where it entered our private one along themountain.
He pitched at once upon this point and we hurried back.
We had hardly a further word on the way. I was decidedly uneasy aboutMadame Barras by now, and Marquis' concern was hardly less evident. Heraced along in his immense stride, and I had all I could manage to keepup.
It may seem strange that I should have brought such a man as Sir HenryMarquis into the search of this adventure with so little explanationof my guest or the affair. But, one must remember, Marquis was an oldacquaintance frequently seen about in the world. To thus, on the spotso to speak, draft into my service the first gentleman I found, wasprecisely what any one would have done. It was probable, after all, thatthere had been some reason why the cut-under had taken the other road,and Madame Barras was quite all right.
It was better to make sure before one raised the village--and Marquis,markedly, was beyond any aid the village could have furnished. Thiscourse was strikingly justified by every after-event.
I have said that the night was not dark. The sky was hard with stars,like a mosaic. This white moonlight entered through the tree-tops andin a measure illumined the road. We were easily able to see, when wereached the point, that the cut-under had turned out into the roadcircling the mountain to the west of the village. The track was soclearly visible in the light, that I must have observed it had I beenthinking of the road instead of the one who had set out upon it.
I was going on quickly, when Marquis stopped. He was stooping over thetrack of the vehicle. He did not come on and I went back.
"What is it?" I said.
He answered, still stooping above the track.
"The cut-under stopped here."
"How do you know that?" I asked, for it seemed hardly possible todetermine where a wheeled vehicle had stopped.
"It's quite clear," he replied. "The horse has moved about without goingon."
I now saw it. The hoof-marks of the horse had displaced the dust whereit had several times changed position.
"And that's not all," Marquis continued. "Something has happened to thecut-under here!"
I was now closely beside him.
"It was broken down, perhaps, or some accident to the harness?"
"No," he replied. "The wheel tracks are here broadened, as though theyhad skidded on a turn. This would mean little if the cut-under had beenmoving at the time. But it was not moving; the horse was standing. Thecut-under had stopped."
He went on as though in a reflection to himself.
"The vehicle must have been violently thrown about here, by something."
I had a sudden inspiration.
"I see it!" I cried. "The horse took fright, stopped, and then bolted;there has been a run-away. That accounts for the turn out. Let's hurry!"
But Marquis detained me with a firm hand on my arm.
"No," he said, "the horse was not running when it turned out and it didnot stop here in fright. The horse was entirely quiet here. The hoofmarks would show any alarm in the animal, and, moreover, if it hadstopped in fright there would have been an inevitable recoil which wouldhave thrown the wheels of the vehicle backward out of their track. Nomoving animal, man included, stopped by fright fails to registerthis recoil. We always look for it in evidences of violent assault.Footprints invariably show it, and one learns thereby, unerringly, thedirection of the attack."
He rose, his hand still extended and upon my arm.
"There is only one possible explanation," he added. "Something happenedin the cut-under to throw it violently about in the road, and ithappened with the
horse undisturbed and the vehicle standing still. Thewheel tracks are widened only at one point, showing a transverse but nolateral movement of the vehicle."
"A struggle?" I cried. "Major Carrington was right, Madame Barras hasbeen attacked by the driver!"
Marquis' hand held me firmly in the excitement of that realization.He was entirely composed. There was even a drawl in his voice as heanswered me.
"Major Carrington, whoever he may be," he said, "is wrong; if we excludea third party, it was Madame Barras who attacked the driver."
His fingers tightened under my obvious protest.
"It is quite certain," he continued. "Taking the position of thestanding horse, it will be the front wheels of the cut-under that havemade, this widened track; the wheels under the driver's seat, and notthe wheels under the guest seat, in the rear of the vehicle. There hasbeen a violent struggle in this cut-under, but it was a struggle thattook place wholly in the front of the vehicle."
He went on in his maddeningly imperturbable calm.
"No one attacked our guest, but some one, here at this precise point,did attack the driver of this vehicle."
"For God's sake," I cried, "let's hurry!"
He stepped back slowly to the edge of the road and the drawl in hisvoice lengthened.
"We do hurry," he said. "We hurry to the value of knowing that there wasno accident here to the harness, no fright to the horse, no attack onthe lady, and no change in the direction which the vehicle afterwardstook. Suppose we had gone on, in a different form of hurry, ignorant ofthese facts?"
At this point I distinctly heard again the sound of a heavy animal inthe wood. Marquis also heard it and he plunged into the thick bushes.Almost immediately we were at the spot, and before us some heavy objectturned in the leaves.
Marquis whipped an electric-flash out of his pocket. The body of a man,tied at the hands and heels behind with a hitching-strap, and with alinen carriage lap-cloth wound around his head and knotted, lay thereendeavoring to ease the rigor of his position by some movement.
We should now know, in a moment, what desperate thing had happened!
I cut the strap, while Marquis got the lap-cloth unwound from about theman's head. It was the driver of the cut-under. But we got no gain fromhis discovery. As soon as his face was clear, he tore out of our graspand began to run.
He took the old road to the westward of the island, where perhaps helived. We were wholly unable to stop him, and we got no reply to ourshouted queries except his wild cry for help. He considered us hisassailants from whom, by chance, he had escaped. It was folly to thinkof coming up with the man. He was set desperately for the westward ofthe island, and he would never stop until he reached it.
We turned back into the road:
Marquis' method now changed. He turned swiftly into the road along themountain which the cut-under had taken after its capture.
I was at the extreme of a deadly anxiety about Madame Barras.
It seemed to me, now, certain that some gang of criminals havingknowledge of the packet of money had waylaid the cut-under. Proud of myconclusion, I put the inquiry to Sir Henry as we hurried along. If weweren't too late!
He stopped suddenly like a man brought up at the point of a bayonet.
"My word!" He jerked the expression out through his tightened jaws. "Hasshe got ninety thousand dollars of your money!" And he set out again inhis long stride. I explained briefly as I endeavored to keep his pace.It was her own money, not mine, but she did in fact have that large sumwith her in the cut-under on this night. I gave him the story of thematter, briefly, for I had no breath to spare over it. And I asked himwhat he thought. Had a gang of thieves attacked the cut-under?
But he only repeated his expression.
"My word!... You got her ninety thousand dollars and let her driveaway with no eye on her!.... Such trust in the honesty of our fellowcreatures!... My word!"
I had to admit the deplorable negligence, but I had not thought of anyperil, and I did not know that she carried the money with her until theconversation with my sister. There was some excuse for me. I could notremember a robbery on this island.
Marquis snapped his jaws.
"You'll remember this one!" he said.
It was a ridiculous remark. How could one ever forget if thisincomparable creature were robbed and perhaps murdered. But were therenot some extenuating circumstances in my favor. I presented them as weadvanced; my sister and I lived in a rather protected atmosphere apartfrom all criminal activities, we could not foresee such a result. I hadno knowledge of criminal methods.
"I can well believe it," was the only reply Marquis returned to me.
In addition to my extreme anxiety about Madame Barras I began now torealize a profound sense of responsibility; every one, it seemed, sawwhat I ought to have done, except myself. How had I managed to overlookit? It was clear to other men. Major Carrington had pointed it out to meas I was turning away; and now here Sir Henry Marquis was expressing inno uncertain words how negligent a creature he considered me--to permitmy guest, a woman, to go alone, at night, with this large sum of money.
It was not a pleasant retrospect. Other men--the world--would scarcelyhold me to a lesser negligence than Sir Henry Marquis!
I could not forbear, even in our haste, to seek some consolation.
"Do you think Madame Barras has been hurt?"
"Hurt!" he repeated. "How should Madame Barras be hurt?"
"In the robbery," I said.
"Robbery!" and he repeated that word. "There has been no robbery!"
I replied in some astonishment.
"Really, Sir Henry! You but now assured me that I would remember thisnight's robbery."
The drawl got back into his voice.
"Ah, yes," he said, "quite so. You will remember it."
The man was clearly, it seemed to me, so engrossed with the mysterythat it was idle to interrogate him. And he was walking with a devil'sstride.
Still the pointed query of the affair pressed me, and I made anothereffort.
"Why did these assailants take Madame Barras on with them?"
Marquis regarded me, I thought, with wonder.
"The devil, man!" he said. "They couldn't leave her behind."
"The danger would be too great to them?"
"No," he said, "the danger would be too great to her."
At this moment an object before us in the road diverted our attention.It was the cut-under and the horse. They were standing by the roadsidewhere it makes a great turn to enter the village from the south. Thereis a wide border to the road at this point, clear of underbrush, wherethe forest edges it, and there are here, at the whim of some one, or bychance, two great flat stones, one lying upon the other, but not fittingby a hand's thickness by reason of the uneven surfaces.
What had now happened was evident. The assailants of the cut-underhad abandoned it here before entering the village. They could not, ofcourse, go on with this incriminating vehicle.
The sight of the cut-under here had on Marquis the usual effect of anyimportant evidential sign. He at once ceased to hurry. He pulled up;looked over the cut-under and the horse, and began to saunter about.
This careless manner was difficult for me at such a time. But forhis assurance that Madame Barras, was uninjured it would have beenimpossible. I had a blind confidence in the man although his expressionswere so absurdly in conflict.
I started to go on toward the village, but as he did not follow I turnedback. Marquis was sitting on the flat stones with a cigarette in hisfingers:
"Good heavens, man," I cried, "you're not stopping to smoke acigarette?"
"Not this cigarette, at any rate," he replied. "Madame Barras hasalready smoked it.... I can, perhaps, find you the burnt match."
He got the electric-flash out of his pocket, and stooped over.Immediately he made an exclamation of surprise.
I leaned down beside him.
There was a little heap of charred paper on the brown bed ofpine-needles. Ma
rquis was about to take up this charred paper when hiseye caught something thrust in between the two stones. It was a handfulof torn bits of paper.
Marquis got them out and laid them on the top of the flat stones underhis light.
"Ah," he said, "Madame Barras, while she smoked, got rid of some money."
"The package of gold certificates!" I cried. "She has burned them?"
"No," he replied, "Madame Barras has favored your Treasury in herdestructive process. These are five-pound notes, of the Bank ofEngland."
I was astonished and I expressed it.
"But why should Madame Barras destroy notes of the Bank of England?"
"I imagine," he answered, "that they were some which she had, by chance,failed to give you for exchange."
"But why should she destroy them?" I went on.
"I conclude," he drawled, "that she was not wholly certain that shewould escape."
"Escape!" I cried. "You have been assuring me all along that MadameBarras is making no effort to escape."
"Oh, no," he replied, "she is making every effort."
I was annoyed and puzzled.
"What is it," I said, "precisely, that Madame Barras did here; can youtell me in plain words?"
"Surely," he replied, "she sat here while something was decided, andwhile she sat here she smoked the cigarette, and while she smoked thecigarette, she destroyed the money. But," he added, "before she hadquite finished, a decision was made and she hastily thrust the remainingbits of the torn notes into the crevice between these stones."
"What decision?" I said.
Marquis gathered up the bits of torn paper and put them into his pocketwith the switched-off flash.
"I wish I knew that," he said.
"Knew what?"
"Which path they have taken," he replied; "there seem to be twobranching from this point, but they pass over a bed of pine-needles andthat retains no impression.... Where do these paths lead?"
I did not know that any paths came into the road at this point. But theisland is veined over with old paths. The lead of paths here, however,was fairly evident.
"They must come out somewhere on the sea," I said.
"Right," he cried. "Take either, and let's be off... Madame's cigarettewas not quite cold when I picked it up."
I was right about the direction of the paths but, as it happened, theone Marquis took was nearly double the distance of the other to the sea;and I have wondered always, if it was chance that selected the one takenby the assailants of the cut-under as it was chance that selected theone taken by us.
Marquis was instantly gone, and I hurried along the path, runningnearly due east. There was light enough entering from the brilliant moonthrough the tree-tops to make out the abandoned trail.
And as I hurried, Marquis' contradicting expressions seemed to adjustthemselves into a sort of order, and all at once I understood what hadhappened. The Brazilian adventurer had not taken the loss of his wifeand the fortune in English pounds sterling, lying down. He had followedto recover them.
I now saw clearly the reason for everything that had happened: theattack on the driver, and my guest's concern to get rid of the Englishmoney which she discovered remaining in her possession; this man wouldhave no knowledge of her gold certificates but he would be searchingfor his English pounds. And if she came clear of any trace of thesefive-pound notes, she might disclaim all knowledge of them and perhapssend him elsewhere on his search, since it was always the money and notthe woman that he sought.
This explanation was hardly realized before it was confirmed.
I came out abruptly onto a slope of bracken, and before me at a fewpaces on the path were Madame Barras and two men; one at some distancein advance of her, disappearing at the moment behind a spur of theslope that hid us from the sea, and I got no conception of him; but thecreature at her heels was a huge foreign beast of a man, in the dress ofa common sailor.
What happened was over in a moment.
I was nearly on the man when I turned out of the wood, and with a shoutto Madame Barras I struck at him with the heavy walking-stick. But thecreature was not to be taken unaware; he darted to one side, wrenchedthe stick out of my hand, and dashed its heavy-weighted head intomy face. I went down in the bracken, but I carried with me intounconsciousness a vision of Madame Barras that no shadow of thelengthening years can blur.
She had swung round sharply at the attack behind her, and she stoodbare-haired and bare-shouldered, knee-deep in the golden bracken, withthe glory of the moon on her; her arms hanging, her lips parted, hergreat eyes wide with terror--as lovely in her desperate extremity as adream, as, a painted picture. I don't know how long I was down there,but when I finally got up, and, following along the path behind the spurof rock, came out onto the open sea, I found Sir Henry Marquis. He wasstanding with his hands in the pockets of his loose tweed coat, and hewas cursing softly:
"The ferry and the mainland are patroled... I didn't think of theirhaving an ocean-going yacht...."
A gleam of light was disappearing into the open sea.
He put his hand into his pocket and took out the scraps of torn paper.
"These notes," he said, "like the ones which you hold in yourbank-vault, were never issued by the Bank of England."
I stammered some incoherent sentence; and the great chief of theCriminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard turned toward me.
"Do you know who that woman is?"
"Surely," I cried, "she went to school with my sister at Miss Page's;she came to visit Mrs. Jordan...."
He looked at me steadily.
"She got the data about your sister out of the Back Bay biographies andshe used the accident of Mrs. Jordan's death to get in with it... therest was all fiction."
"Madame Barras?" I stuttered. "You mean Madame Barras?"
"Madame the Devil," he said. "That's Sunny Suzanne. Used to be in theHungarian Follies until the Soviet government of Austria picked her upto place the imitation English money that its presses were striking offin Vienna."
The Sleuth of St. James's Square Page 3