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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
that closet. And the odd part of it is, that she never came out. When
Delia returned with more emphatic orders of dismissal, the peddling
gypsy had gone. Nobody had seen her leave the place, but that did
not cause much distress to any one but Mrs. Brane. I think that she
was disturbed; at least I know that she ordered a thorough search of
the house and grounds, for footsteps were running all about
everywhere that day, and lights were kept burning in the house all
night. I think, perhaps, some of the negroes sat up to keep watch.
But the peddler made not so much as a squeak that night. She lay
on a pile of blankets she had carried in on her back, and she ate a
crust of bread and an apple. She was sufficiently comfortable, and
very much pleased with herself. Towards morning she went to sleep
and slept far into the next day.
“So you see, Janice, there I was in the house, and I was sure that
not far from me was Brane's treasure trove. This double wall of
which he had evidently made use—he had built up that queer flight
of steps and made a floor and an inclined plane—convinced me that
I was hot on the track of the jewels. You can guess how I worked to
find them. All to no purpose. I had to be very careful. Rats, to be
sure, make a noise in the walls of old houses, but the noise is barely
noticeable, and it does not sound like carpentry. However, I had
convinced myself, by the end of the third dreary day, that if the robe
and crown were hidden in the double wall, they were very secretly
and securely hidden, and that I should need some further directions
to find them. It was annoying, especially as my provisions had given
out, and I knew that I should have to venture down into the kitchen
at night and pick up some fragments of food. I was glad then and all
the time, that Mrs. Brane's servants were such decrepit old bodies,
half-blind and half-deaf, and altogether stupid. Many's the time I've
crouched behind the junk in that closet and listened to their silly
droning! But it gave me a sad jump when I heard the voice of Mrs.
Brane's first housekeeper.
“She was young and nervous, and had a high, breathless manner
of talking, and she was bent upon efficiency. Well, so was I. I had
decided that, outside of the wall, there were two rooms in the Brane
house that must be thoroughly investigated—the bookroom where
Theodore kept his collection of Russian books, and the room upstairs
in the north wing which he had used as a sort of den, and which,
after his death, Mrs. Brane had converted into a nursery. I think she
must have had a case of nerves after her husband's death, for she
was set on having a housekeeper and a new nurse for Robbie, and
she was always flitting about that house like a ghost. Maybe, after
all, he had dropped her a hint about some money or jewels being
hidden somewhere in the house! That was Maida's notion, for she
says Mrs. Brane was as keen as 'Sara' about cleaning out the old
part of the house, and never left her alone an instant.
“To get back to the first days I spent in this accursed wall... that
housekeeper gave me a lot of misery. In the first place, she slept in
the north wing, the room you had, Janice,”—I was almost
accustomed to this horrible past tense she used towards me; I was
beginning to think of my own life as a thing that was over—“and she
was a terribly light sleeper. Twice, as I was sneaking along that
passageway trying to locate the rooms, she came out with a candle
in her hand, and all but saw me. I decided that my only chance to
really search the place lay in getting rid of the inhabitants of that
northern wing. I thought, perhaps, I could give that part of the
house a bad name. Once it was empty, I could practically live there.
I had n't reckoned with that bull-dog of a Mary.
“It was easy enough to scare the housekeeper. I found out just
where the wall of her bedroom stood, and I got close behind it near
her bed and groaned. That was quite enough. Two nights, and the
miserable thing left. Mrs. Brane got another woman at once, a lazy,
absent-minded woman, and I wasted no time getting rid of her. I
simply stole near to her bed one pitch-black night, and sighed. She
left almost at once.
“Then Mrs. Brane, confound her! sent to New York to Skane for a
detective, and he played house-boy for a fortnight. I had to keep as
still as a mouse. I was almost starved, for I did n't dare take enough
food to hoard, and for a while that detective prowled the house all
night. I must have come near looking like a ghost in those days.
Thank God, the entire quiet bored Skane's man, and reassured the
rest of the household. When he had gone I did n't try ghost-tricks
for sometime. I fed myself up, and did a little night-prowling, down
in the bookroom, and in some of the empty bedrooms, with no
result. Then came the third housekeeper.
“That third housekeeper, my dear daughter, all but did for me. She
was a fussy little female with the sort of energy that goes prying
about for unnecessary pieces of labor. And she lit upon the kitchen
closet. Fortunately, Delia and the other two women were so annoyed
by her methods that they did n't take up her instructions to clean
out the closet with any zeal. So, one morning, I heard her in the
kitchen scolding and carrying on, 'You lazy women, I'll just have to
shame you by doing it myself.'
“Now, while I crouched there, listening to her, it occurred to me
that I had heard her voice before. I racked my frightened brains. I
had never seen the woman, but I was certain that the voice, a
peculiar one, belonged somewhere in my memory. I decided there
might be some useful association. I risked coming into the closet,
and taking a look. Then I fled back and laughed to myself. I had
known that little wax-face when she was a very great somebody's
maid, and I knew enough about her to send her to the chair. Was n't
it luck! I went back into my hole, for all the world like a spider, and
sat there waiting for my prey.
“She did a lot of clattering around in the closet; then, I knew by
the silence, that she'd lit upon the hole. I crept near, and waited for
her, crouched in the dark. She came crawling through the hole—I
can see her silly, pale, dust-streaked face now! I pounced upon her
with all the swiftness and the silence of a long-legged tarantula. I
stopped her mouth before she could squeal, and I carried her back
to the end of the passage here, and I talked to her for about five
seconds. At the end of that time every bone in her body had turned
to water. She had sworn as though to God to hold her tongue, and
to get out of the house; to keep her mouth shut forever and ever,
amen. And I let her go. She scuttled out of the closet like a rat, and
I heard her tell Delia to leave the place alone. The third housekeeper
left the next day, and, as I heard by listening to kitchen gossip, she
gave no reason for her going.
“But, of course, I had had a terrible experience myself. I was n't
going to risk anything like that again. Besides, I was sick of living in
the wall. I got out that night—half the time Delia forgot to lock the
outside door, and always blamed her own carelessness when she
found it open in the morning. I had decent clothes with me, and I
tramped to a station at some distance, and went up to New York. I'd
decided to take a few of my pals in on the game. I had several old
pals in New York, and some introductions. It's a first-class city for
crooks, almost as good as London, and not half so well policed. And
there, my girl, I took the trouble of hunting you up.
“It was n't because I meant to use you at 'The Pines.' It was just
out of curiosity—motherly love”—I wish I could describe the drawling
irony of the expression on her lips. “You are one of the people I've
kept track of. I always felt you might be useful, that I might be able
to frighten you into usefulness. Many's the time I've seen you when
you were a child, and, later, when you were working in Paris. Not
much more than a child then, but such a slim, little, white-faced
beauty. What was it, the work? Oh, yes, you were a little assistant
milliner, and you turned down the chance of being Monsieur le
Baron's maîtresse, and lost your job for the reward of virtue—little
fool! I knew you had gone to America, but I had lost track of your
whereabouts. I soon picked up your tracks, though, and found out
that you were in New York looking for work. Your beauty has been
against you, Janice; it's always against moral and correct living. It's
a great help in going to the devil and beating him at his own game,
however, as you might discover if I were immoral enough to let you
live. The instant I set eyes on you in New York and saw what a
ridiculous copy of your mother you had grown to be, I felt that here
was an opportunity of some sort if I could only make use of it. I
racked my brains, and, as usual, the inspiration came.
“I got Mrs. Brane's advertisement, so far unanswered, and I
handed it to you myself in the street. As soon as I was sure that you
had got the job, I left for 'The Pines.' I slipped in like a thief at night,
one of the nights when Delia forgot to lock the back door. I had
shadowed you pretty closely those days between the time you
answered the advertisement, and left for 'The Pines,' and it was n't a
difficult matter for me to get a copy of your wardrobe. You don't
know what a help it was to me that you chose a sort of uniform. I
knew that you'd be wearing one of those four gray dresses most of
the time.
“After you were in the house, I grew pretty bold, and it was then I
decided to get Robbie out of that nursery. So I made myself up as
the witch that lives under the stairs, and waked him by bending
down over his bed with my hair hanging in his face. I was nearly
caught at it, too, by Mary, and I scared the old women out of the
house—which I had n't in the least intended to do.
“I didn't half like Mrs. Brane's plan of getting a man and wife to
take the place of the old women, and I saw at once the necessity for
Jaffrey and Maida. However, I was determined not to let them know
that there were two red-haired women in the house. I was
fascinated by this plan of using you, Janice, of getting witnesses to
swear to your identity as Madame Trème, of baiting a trap—with you
for bait—into which all of my accomplices would tumble, as they
have tumbled, and, then, as a last stroke, putting an end to you and
making a clean get-away myself. If any one swings for your murder,
it will be Maida, who left 'The Pines' so hurriedly and secretly to-
night.
“There's another reason why I did n't take them into the secret of
your resemblance: I was glad to have them fancy themselves always
under my eye. The risk of their giving themselves away to you was
very small, for I had arranged a signal, without which they were
positively forbidden to show by sign, or look, or word, even when
they seemed to be alone with me, that they had any collusion with
Mrs. Brane's housekeeper, that they thought her anything in the
world but Mrs. Brane's housekeeper. I have my tools pretty well
scared, Janice, and I knew they would obey my orders to the letter.”
In this Madame was wrong. Maida and Jaffrey had both disobeyed
this order. With no signal from me, they had spoken in their own
character to me as though I had indeed been Madame Trème. Like
the plans of most generals, Madame's plans had their weak points.
“You know how it all worked,” she went on, unconscious of my
mental connotations, “and, then, sacre nom de Dieu! came 'Dabney'!
“God! How the rats scuttled in the house the night after he came!
I had Maida to thank for putting me wise. That innocent-faced, slim
youngster, with his air of begging-off punishment—I admit, he'd
have given me very little uneasiness. You see—”
As she talked I had been watching her with the fixity of my
despair, but, a few moments before this last speech of hers
concerning Dabney, the flickering of the light across her face had
drawn my attention to the second candle. It had burned for more
than half its length, and I knew that morning was at hand.
Morning, and a faint hope! The story was not finished, and,
though I thought I could tell the rest myself, the woman was so
absorbed in the delightful contemplation of her triumph and her
cleverness, that I knew she would go on to the end. The wild,
resurgent hope deafened me for a few minutes to her low murmur
of narration. It had come to me like a flash that, with my legs
unbound, I might be able to knock over the candle, put it out, get to
my feet in one lightning spring, and make a dash for the hole in the
closet. Would there not be a chance of my reaching it alive? Would
not the noise of my flight, in spite of my stocking feet and the
handkerchief over my mouth, be enough to attract the attention
even of a sleeping house, much more certainly, of an awakened and
suspicious one? It was, of course a desperate hope, but I could not
help but entertain it. If I could force myself to wait till morning had
surely come, till there was the stir and murmur of awakening life,
surely—oh, dear God!—surely, there might be one little hope of life.
I was young and strong and active. I must not die here in this
horrible wall. I must not bear the infamy of this woman's guilt. I
must not lie dead and unspeakably defiled in the sight of the man I
loved.
 Paul Dabney's face, haggard, wistful, appeared before me, and my
whole heart cried out to its gray and doubting eyes for help, for pity,
for belief.
Unluckily, the woman, sensitive as a cat, had become aware of the
changed current of my thought, of the changed direction of my look.
She, too, glanced at the candle and gave a little exclamation of
dismay that stabbed the silence like a suddenly bared knife.
“Bah!” she said, “it must be daylight, and I have n't half confessed
myself. Pests on the time! We've been here four or five hours. Are
you cramped?”
I was insufferably cramped. The pain of my arms and shoulders,
the cutting of the twine about my wrists, were torment. I was very
thirsty, too. But nothing was so cruel as the sinking of my heart
which her words caused me.
“I suppose I shall have to cut it short,” she said. “After all, you
must know it almost as well as I do, especially since you had the
nerve to play my part with Maida. The worst trick you put over on
me was when you pulled Dabney out of the mud—curse the mud,
anyway; if it had been a real quicksand he'd have been done for; but
his getting back alive that night certainly crossed me, and, as for
Maida, she was in a devil's rage. She could n't understand how he'd
escaped. She cursed, and raved, and threatened even me. It was all
that Jaffrey and I could do to hold her; she was for giving up the
whole game and making a getaway before it was too late. As a
matter of fact, it was already too late for any one but me. Hovey had
you all just where he wanted you. At any instant he could bag you
all. I had known that for some time. If it had n't been for your beaux
yeux, Janice, and a little bit, perhaps, because of my own pretty
ways, all of you would be jailed by now. After you'd rescued your
Dabney, I had to play a bold, prompt game. I knew that the spell
could n't hold much longer. I could see by the strained look on that
boy's face that he was at the snapping point. I told Maida to search
the bookcase that night. Action of some kind was necessary to keep
her in hand. I did n't know that you had already taken away the
paper. Gast had told me about the paper when I was in New York,
and the Baron had hinted at its possible hiding-place. He came down
here that day to tell me—I'd bribed him for all I was worth. He was
going to leave word with Maida. Then, of course, he saw you and
the poor fool thought I was playing housekeeper, under 'Dabney's'
very nose.
“The night after Dabney's rescue, after you'd saved his life at the
risk of your own, I whistled him into the arbor under your window
and kissed him for you. Were your maiden dreams disturbed?—No,
no, my girl, don't try to get your hands free”—for in my anger at her
words I had begun to wrench at my bonds—“you'll just cut your
wrists to the bone. Eh, did n't I tell you?” I felt the blood run down
my hands, and stopped, gasping with pain. She went on as coolly as
before. “I found out that night, when Maida came to me in the wall
with her bad news, that you'd got ahead of us. I was n't so much
scared as I might have been, for I knew that Brane had had his
directions translated into the Slavonic tongue; I suppose the poor,
cracked fool did it to protect his treasure from accidental discovery.
He was crazed by having all that money in his possession, and not
being bold enough to use it. All his actions prove that his mind was
quite unbalanced. He just spun a fantastic web of mystery about the
hidden stuff because he had n't the nerve to do anything else. I
imagine he meant to tell his wife, but he died suddenly of paralysis,
and was n't able to do so. He'd hired a priest to help him with the
paper, and Gast, shadowing my former lover, and knowing that he
had the robe and crown, managed to find out what he'd been doing.
Gast did n't get the substance of the paper, but he learned from the
priest that an eccentric Englishman, writing a story of adventure,
had asked him to translate a paragraph into Old Russian. Gast
handed on this information to me, and promised to translate the
paragraph when I was lucky enough to find it.
“Janice, when I found out that I'd been fool enough to lose Gast's
letter, which he'd sent to me through Maida, and by losing it, had
put the means of getting a translation into your hands, I gnawed my
fingers! I was half mad then. When you made your first trip to Pine
Cone, and Dabney had you shadowed so closely that I could n't
follow you myself—I knew that you were sending Gast a letter. I was
n't sure you'd dare to meet him, though. I thought you might risk
sending him the paper. I risked my own life by bribing George to
leave you in Pine Cone to foot it home alone, and I risked it again by
following you and laying that trap for you in the woods. I risked it
because I was certain that you would have the translation hidden in
your dress. I pushed the pine tree over after George had passed; it
needed only a push. Nom de Dieu! You cannot know what frenzy
seized me when I found out that again you had outwitted me. I
wanted to kill you that day. I wanted to beat you to death there, and
leave you dead. But you were a little too valuable. I decided to
cripple you, to put you out of running for a few days while I got hold
of the fool priest myself. That was only yesterday, but it seems an
age. You must be made of iron, Janice! You came near defeating me
to-night—the insolence of it! You, a chit of a girl!
“This morning I gave Maida a letter for Gast, and I thought it was
to mail it that she went out after supper to-night. When I found her
note under my plate I had a shock. I was sure she had found out
something important. I went down to the bridge. Yes. You may have
the satisfaction. Make the most of it. I did go down to the bridge,
but I did n't wait long. Ten minutes was enough. Do you suppose
Maida would be late for an appointment with me? Not if she was
living. No, my girl, I stood there and realized that you might have
worked the trick, that you might have sent Maida out of the way,
might have decoyed me, might, even at that instant, be on the track
of my jewels. God! How I ran back to the house! When I found the
kitchen door locked—I knew. I went round to the front door and
rang the bell. I was n't going to lose time snooping around for
unfastened windows—not with Dabney in the house! I suppose he
was sleeping sound because he, too, thought you were safely laid by
the heels. Jaffrey answered the bell, and looked surprised, confound
him! I gave him some excuse, and went like the wind up to your
room. Sure enough, it was empty. I waited till Jaffrey had got back
to his bed, and then I hurried down to the kitchen. You know the
rest. You know it all now. To the end. But you don't quite know the
end.”
 CHAPTER XVIII—THE LAST VICTIM

I
HAD listened to all this as though to voices in a fever. I had
been trying to get up my courage for a leap. It seemed to me
now a desperate, hopeless undertaking, but it was easier to die
in a struggle than to lie there in cold blood while she strangled me
with those long, cold, iron hands. She was not calm. I could see that
her eyes were shifting, her arms and legs twitched, her fingers
moved restlessly. Black and hard as her lost soul must be, it shrank a
little from this killing. The murder of her own child gave her a very
ague of dread. It was partly, no doubt, the desire to postpone the
hideous act that had kept her spinning out her tale so long. But the
end had come now. It was—I knew it well—the last moment of my
life. I looked at the candle.
At the same instant I heard a window open somewhere in the
house. Thank God! It was morning. The household was awake. The
sound was all I needed to fire my courage. I flung myself bodily
upon the candle, rolled away, scrambled to my feet, and fled along
the passageway with the speed of my despair. She was after me like
a flash, but I had an instant's start.
Down the inclined plane I slid. I leapt along the steps, and there
at the foot she fell upon me, and we lay panting within a stone's
throw of the closet wall. And I realized that our flight had been no
more noisy than the scuttling of rats. I gave myself up to death.
Madame took me up in her arms as though I had been a little
child, and, soft-footed as a panther, carried me back to the side of
the iron box. There she laid me down and bound my ankles, not
gently, so that the blood flowed under the twine.
Then, with steady hands, she relighted the candle. I saw her face,
livid with rage and fear, pitiless, glaring. She slid her hand into the
pocket of her dress, that gray dress which she had copied from
mine. Again for a fantastic, icy second I had that awful feeling that
she was I, that I was she, that we were of the same spirit and flesh.
When her hand came out it held a slender knife, fine and keen and
delicate as a surgical instrument. With her other hand she sought
and found the beating of my heart.
I now knew the manner of my death. I shut my eyes, and prayed
that it would be over quickly.
There was the faintest sound above my head, and I opened my
eyes. Before the woman saw my deliverance, I saw it. A beam that
had made part of the sill, that crossed the passageway above us,
slid quietly from its place, and into the opening a figure swung and
dropped.
Before even it could reach the ground, the woman had put out the
light and vanished like a ghost. I heard not so much as the rustle of
her dress.
The figure from above landed lightly beside me, and flashed on an
electric lantern. It was Paul Dabney. He bent over me, and drew a
quick, sharp breath. I tried to cry out, “Follow the woman!” but my
bound lips moved soundlessly.
“I have caught you,” he said dully. “It is the end.”
For me it was indeed the end, a far more bitter one than a knife in
my heart. I should be taken. I should be tried for my life. Half a
dozen people would swear that I was Madame Trème. Who would
believe my incredible story? I was lost. I looked up at Paul Dabney
with complete despair.
Footsteps came along the inclined plane, but Dabney did not turn
around. Evidently he expected them, and they did not interest him.
He was shaking, even his white lips were unsteady. I saw his hands
open and shut. The light of the electric lantern, and the light that fell
through the trapdoor which he had so mysteriously opened above
our heads, made him ghastly visible, made the whole passageway,
with its rafters and its red bricks, outlined with plaster, the iron box,
the glimmer of jewels, plain to my sight. I saw two men coming
towards me. Between them, by her arms, they held up Madame
Trème.
“We've got her, sir!” said one of them triumphantly. I recognized
Mrs. Brane's outdoors men, and thought confusedly that one of
these was Hovey, the detective.
Paul Dabney looked slowly around. He looked and raised a shaking
hand to his eyes. He turned again towards me. Then, as though a
current of life had been flashed through his veins, he sprang to my
side, untied my bonds, tore off the silk handkerchief from my mouth.
I was as helpless as a babe, but he lifted me tenderly, and, kneeling,
supported me in his arms.
“Janice,” he said brokenly, “Janice, what does it mean?”
My double laughed. “So now, Hovey, you cat, do you understand
what a fool my pretty daughter and I have made of you? You think
yourself very clever, no doubt. Your reputation is made, is n't it? Now
that you've nabbed the famous Madame of the red-gold strand. No,
no, my friend, not quite so fast.”
She moved her head from side to side, struggling with her
captors. I saw her bend her mouth to her shoulder, bite and tear at
her dress. We all looked at her in a ghastly sort of silence. I could
feel Paul Dabney's quivering muscles and his quick breathing. Then,
for a second, I saw a white pellet on the woman's tongue. It must
have been sewed into the seam of her dress there at the shoulder.
She swallowed convulsively, and stood still, her head thrust forward,
staring in front of her with eyes like stones.
My face must have showed itself to her through the mists of
death, for she spoke once hoarsely: “The girl is quite innocent,” she
said; “she wasn't trying for the jewels. Do you get that, Hovey? Keep
your claws off her.”
Then she gave a great shiver, her face turned blue. Her head
dropped forward, her legs gave way, and the two men held a dead
body in their arms.
CHAPTER XIX—SKANE'S CLEVEREST
MAN

W
ITH the death of Madame Trème, and the arrest of Jaffrey
and of Maida, the danger to “The Pines” was over. It was a
long time, however, before I was allowed to tell my story. I
lay in a darkened room, waited upon by Mary, and the least sound or
word would send me into a paroxysm of hysterical tears. The first
person to whom I recounted my adventures was the detective
Hovey, a certain gray-eyed and demure young man whom I had long
known by another name. Our interview was very formal. I called him
Mr. Hovey, and met his cool and unembarrassed look as rarely as I
could. I was propped up in bed to make my statement. Dr.
Haverstock was present, his hand often stealing to my pulse, and
Mary stood near with a stimulant. She had made me as pretty as she
could, the dear soul; had arranged my hair, and chosen my dainty
dressing-gown, but I must have looked like a ghost; and it seemed
to me that there lay a brand of shame across my face.
Mr. Hovey took down my statement and Dr. Haverstock witnessed
it. I was told that I should have to appear in court at the trial of
Madame's accomplices. At that, I shrank, and looked helplessly at Dr.
Haverstock, and my eyes, in spite of all I could do, filled with tears.
“Oh, my dear,” said the doctor kindly, “it will be a long time yet.
You will be strong enough to face anything.”
“There are some things,” I murmured shakily, “that I shall never
be able to face.” I covered my eyes with my hands, and turned
against the pillow.
I heard Dr. Haverstock whisper something, and I knew that Hovey
and he had left the room. Paul had not said a word to me except the
necessary questions. His face had been expressionless and pale.
What else could I expect? How could any man act otherwise to the
daughter of the famous Madame Trème?
The doctor, Mary, Mrs. Brane, were all wonderfully kind. I broke
down again under Mrs. Brane's kindness.
“Oh, Janice, my poor child,” she said to me when I was at last
allowed to see her, “why did n't you come to me? Why did you try to
bear all this terror and misery yourself?”
I held her hand. “I wish I had come to you, dear Mrs. Brane. I
wish for very many reasons that I had had the humility and good
sense to do so. What now is there, except that statement of my
wretched mother, to keep you, the whole world, every one, from
thinking that I was a thief myself? From putting that construction
upon my insane behavior here?”
“Well, Janice,” she said indulgently, “there is one person to prevent
it. I, for one, would never have the courage to suggest such a theory
in Paul Hovey's presence. He has written up your rescue of him so
movingly, and told the story of it so appealingly, that I think you are
rather in danger of being a sort of national heroine. In the papers,
my dear, you are painted in the most glowing colors. I should n't
wonder if there would be a movie written about you.”
“Paul,” I said,—“Paul has told it?”
“Yes, Paul. And I think he owes you an amende. In fact, we all do.
I engaged a detective the day after Delia and Jane and Annie left,
and very well I knew, of course, that our young student visitor was
Skane's cleverest man. But I did not guess that from the first
moment he suspected you. Poor child! Poor Janice! What misery you
have been through all by your brave, desolate, little self!”
“From the first moment!” I repeated blankly. “From the first
moment Paul thought that I was Madame Trème?”
My mind ran back over that meeting in the bookroom. I
remembered his sharp, sudden speeches, the slight edge to his
voice. I had thought him a coward with that hand in his pocket, and
he, meanwhile, had imagined himself always under the eyes of the
Red-Gold Strand.
 “Yes,” said Mrs. Brane. “One of the force saw you get off the train
at Pine Cone, and was struck by your resemblance to the famous
criminal.” (I remembered the man whose scrutiny had so annoyed
me.) “He reported at headquarters Madame's possible presence, and
they realized at once that if she was in it, the Pine Cone case was
apt to be both dangerous and interesting. There was big game
somewhere. So, without telling me how serious the situation might
be, they chose Hovey, and sent him down here as a student of
Russian literature. They knew that Madame had never come in
contact with him. Paul Hovey has rather a remarkable history,
Janice. Would you care to hear it?”
I bent my head.
“He began life as a young man with great expectations, and a
super-excellent social position. But he was very careless in his choice
of companions. It was the love of adventure, I suppose, like Harry
Hotspur and his crew. At a house-party, not a very reputable one I
am afraid, on Long Island,—this was a good many years ago—he got
mixed up in a very tangled web, and disentangled himself with such
cleverness and resource, discovering the guilty man before the
police had even sniffed a trail, that Skane, half as a joke, urged him
to turn detective. Hovey, too, treated it as a joke, but, not long after,
my dear, the poor boy got himself into trouble—oh, nothing wicked!
It was a matter of holding his tongue and keeping other people safe,
or telling the truth and clearing himself of rather discreditable folly.
He held his tongue, and most people believed his innocence. I think
every one would have stood by him, for he was enormously popular,
if the very people from whom he had the best right to expect mercy
and loyalty had not turned against him—his uncle who had brought
him up, and the girl to whom he was engaged. He was disinherited
and turned out of doors, and the girl, a worldly little wretch,
promptly threw him over. Hovey went straight to Skane, who
welcomed him like a long-lost child. Since then Paul Hovey has
become famous in his chosen line of work. Now you know his
history. I learned it—what was not already public property—from a
man, a friend of Paul's dead father, a man who loves Paul dearly,
and has known him all his life.”
I was not sorry—selfish as the feeling was—to learn that Paul, too,
had a grievance against the world; that he, too, was something of a
waif and stray, another bit of Fate's flotsam like myself.
“And from the first moment he thought I was Madame Trème?”
“Yes—and fell in love with you. A nice situation for a detective,
was n't it? Don't start! You know he did. But I must run away before
I tell you any more secrets. I must leave Paul Hovey to make his
own apologies, to plead his own cause. I am tiring you, as it is. You
are getting much too pink.”
“I will never give Mr. Hovey a chance to make his apologies,” I said
sadly. “And I am certain, dear Mrs. Brane, that he will never try for
the chance. Who would? Who would want to—to love the daughter
of—”
It was here that I broke down, and she comforted me. “Janice,
darling,” she said when I was a little quieter, “Love is a very mighty
god, and though they say he is blind, I believe that he sees like an
immortal. If Paul Hovey loved you in spite of his best will and
judgment, against every instinct of self-preservation, loved you to his
own shame and anguish when he thought you a woman dyed in
crime, a woman who had attempted his life, do you think he will
stop loving you when he knows your history and your innocence?”
She left me before I could answer her question, but she left me
without a ray of hope. I had made up my mind that I would never
marry any one. And I was sure, with the memory of Paul's cold,
questioning looks in our recent interview, that he would never come
to me again.
But he did come.
We met in the sunny bookroom where I had first led him so long—
it seemed very long—ago. I was sitting in the window seat trying
listlessly to read, and listening heartbrokenly to the gay music of a
mocking-bird in the tree outside, when his step sounded in the hall,
and, while I stood, half risen to fly, he came in quietly and stood
before me with his boyish and disarming smile.
My knees gave way, and I dropped back into my place, the book
falling to the floor. I was trembling all over.
“Don't say you won't let me talk to you, Janice,” he pleaded, and
his face was white with earnestness. “Don't try to run away from
me. You must in all fairness hear me out.”
“There is nothing for me to listen to,” I stammered; “I have
nothing to say to you.”
“Perhaps it is nothing to listen to,” he said, “but it is the most
important thing to me in the world. It means my life—that's all.”
“To talk to me?”
“Yes. For God's sake, let us play no tricks with each other now.
There has been too much disguise between us. I mistook you for a
wicked woman—yes—but you knew that I mistook you, you knew
that I loved you better than my own soul, you knew that I suffered
damnably, and you did not undeceive me. I kept a policeman's guard
upon you—yes—I let you find the paper, I let you get the translation,
and, when I could force my heart to give in to my sense of duty, I
tracked you down, and found you with the treasure. I saw your
double go out through the kitchen-garden that night, and I thought,
as I had thought from the beginning, that she was you. I followed
her to the bridge. I followed her back to the house. I let her go into
her hiding-place, and I set two men to watch that entrance while I
went out to make sure of Maida and Jaffrey. Long before that night I
had discovered the other opening to the passage—the opening in
Robbie's window sill—-and had fastened it up so that none of the
gang should light upon it. When I came back at my leisure, thinking
to find my quarry in the hands of my two men, they told me that she
had not come out, that they had waited according to orders, and
had heard a long murmur of voices in the wall. Then I betook myself
to the other opening, and dropped on you from above.” Here, all at
once, his self-control broke down. He came and took my hands,
drawing them up against his heart so that I rose slowly to my feet in
front of him. “Do you know what it was like to me to feel that I was
handing you over to justice? Even then, I loved you. Even then your
beauty and your eyes—Oh, Janice, I can't think of the agony of it all.
Don't make me go over it, don't make me explain it in cold blood. In
cold blood? There is n't a drop of cold blood in my body when I hold
your hands! Are you going to forgive me? Are you going to let me
begin again? May I have my chance?”
I laughed bitterly enough. “Your chance to win the daughter of
Madame Trème?”
At that he gripped me in his arms and kissed me till in the tumult
of my heart I could not hear the music of the mocking-bird.
“My heart has always known you for the lovely and holy thing you
are,” he told me later; “it knew you in spite of my bewildered wits.”
“Did it know me that night in the arbor?” I asked him shakily. And
he was silent. I had to forgive him because he made no attempt to
defend himself. He sat there, miserable and silent, letting my hand
go, till I gave it back to him of my own free will, forgivingly.
And what more is there to tell?
Not long after the trial, Mrs. Brane left “The Pines” to marry Dr.
Haverstock, who, to my great surprise, had been her suitor all these
months. And as for Mary, she is living with Paul and me, and is the
happiest of faithful nurses to our child. Paul's and my daughter is a
little fairy, with demure gray eyes, and the blackest hair that I have
ever seen.
And the treasure, the robe and crown which so bedazzled the
weak head of Theodore Brane, and which drew Madame across the
ocean to her death, they are again in the crypt of the cathedral at
Moscow, where there stands, glittering once more between her
golden candlesticks, our Holy and Beloved Lady of the Jewels.

THE END
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