Chapter 24

FULL CONFESSION

Darkness impenetrable about me, and a thick air that I breathed with great gasps that hardly brought relief to my choking throat. And a voice out of the darkness crying ceaselessly in my ears:

"Help me! Help me!"

In that nightmare I saw again those awful scenes as vividly as though they had been etched in phosphorus before my eyes. I saw the last struggle of Pierre and Leroux, and I pursued Lacroix along the tunnel. I saw the cliff toppling forward, and the rock poised in mid-air.

And the voice cried: "Help me! Help me!" and never ceased.

I raised myself and tried to struggle to my feet. I found that I could move my limbs freely, I tried to rise upon my knees, but the roof struck my head. I stretched my arms out, and I touched the wall on either side of me.

I must have been stunned by the concussion of the landslide. By a miracle I had not been struck.

"Help me! Help me!"

I tried to find the voice. I crawled three feet toward it, and the wall stopped me. But the voice was there. It came from under the wall. I felt about me in the darkness, and my hand touched something damp. I whipped it back in horror. It was the face of a man.

There was only the face. Where the body and limbs ought to have been was only rock. The face was on my side of a wall of rock, pinning down the body that lay outstretched beyond.

I recognized the voice now. It was that of Philippe Lacroix.

"Ah, _mon Dieu_! Help me! Help me!"

He continued to repeat the words in every conceivable tone, and his suffering was pitiable. I forgot my own troubles as I tried to aid him. All my efforts were vain. There were tons of rock above him, and under the inch or two of space where the rock rested above the ground I felt the edge of a burlap bag.

He had been pinned beneath the bags of earth and gold which he had prized so dearly; the golden rocks were grinding out his life. He was dying--and he could not take his treasures to that place to which he must go.

I felt one hand come through the tiny opening in the wall and grasp at me.

"Who is it?" he mumbled. "Is that you, Hewlett? For God's sake, kill me!"

I crouched beside him, but I did not know what to say or do. I could only wait there, that he might not die alone.

"Give me a knife!" he mumbled again, clutching at me. "A knife, Hewlett! Don't leave me to die like this! Bring Père Antoine and my mother. I want to tell her--to tell her----"

He muttered in his delirium until his voice died away. I thought that he would never speak again. But presently he seemed to revive again to the consciousness of his surroundings.

"Are you with me, Hewlett?" he whispered.

I placed my hand in his, and he clutched at it with feverish force.

"You will have the gold, Hewlett," he muttered, apparently ignorant that I, too, was a prisoner and in hardly better plight. "You are the last of the four. I tried to kill you, Hewlett."

I said nothing, and he repeated querulously, between his gasps: "I tried to kill you, Hewlett. Are you going to leave me to die alone in the dark now?"

"No," I answered. "It doesn't matter, Lacroix." And, really, it did not matter.

"I wanted to kill you," his voice rambled on. "Leroux is dead. I watched him die. I thought if--you died, too, no one but I would know the secret of the gold. I tried to murder you. I blew up the tunnel!"

He paused a while, and again I thought he was dying, but once more he took up the confession.

"There was nearly a quarter of a ton of blasting powder and dynamite in the cave. You didn't know. You went about so blindly, Hewlett. I watched you when I talked with you that night here. How long ago it must have been! When was that?"

I did not tell him it was yesterday. For it seemed immeasurably long ago to me as well.

"It was stored there," he said. "We had brought it up from St. Boniface by sleigh--so carefully. Leroux intended to begin mining as soon as Louis returned. And when he died I meant to kill you both, so that the gold should all be mine. I told you it was here because I thought you meant to kill me, but I meant to kill you when you had made an end of Leroux. And you killed me. Damn you!" he snarled. "Why did you not let me go?"

He paused, and I heard him gasp for breath. His fingers clutched at my coat-sleeve again and hooped themselves round mine like claws of steel.

"I had a knife--once," he resumed, relapsing into his delirium; "but I left it behind me and the police got it. Isn't it odd, Leroux," he rambled on, "that one always leaves something behind when one has killed a man? But the newspapers made no mention about the knife. You didn't know he was dead, did you, Leroux, for all your cleverness, until that fool Hewlett left that paper upon the table? You knew enough to send me to jail, but you didn't know that it was I who killed him. Help me!" He screamed horribly. "He is here, looking at me!"

"There is nobody here, Philippe," I said, trying to soothe his agony of soul. What a poor and stained soul it was, travelling into the next world alone! "There is nobody but me, Philippe!"

"You lie!" he raved. "Louis is here! He has come for me! Give me your knife, Hewlett. It is for him, not for me. He deserved to die. He tricked me after we had found the gold. He tricked me twice. He told Leroux, thinking that he would win his gratitude and get free from the man's power. And the second time he told Carson."

My heart was thumping as he spoke. I hardly dared to hope his words were true.

"He was my friend," he mumbled. "We were friends since we were boys. We would have kicked Leroux into the street if he had dared to enter our homes. But we owed so much money. And he discovered--what we had done. He wanted our family interest; he wanted to make use of us. And when we found the mine, Louis thought we would never be in need of money again. But Leroux was pressing him, threatening him. And so he told him. Then there were three of us in the secret.

"Leroux had formed a lumber company with Carson, but he did not tell him about the gold. He formed his scheme with Louis. They said nothing to me; they wanted to leave me out. Louis was to get the girl and sell his rights to Simon. But afterward, when he had spent the money Simon had given him, he thought he could get more out of Carson. So he went to him and told the secret. That made four of us--four of us, where there should have been only two."

"What did you do?" I asked, though it was like conducting a postmortem upon a murderer's corpse.

"I went to New York to get my share. I wasn't going to be ousted, I, who had been one of the discoverers. I don't know how much Carson paid Louis, but I meant to demand half. I thought he had the money in his pocket.

"I followed him all that afternoon after he had left Carson's office. I watched him in the street. At night he went to a room somewhere--at the top of a tall building. I followed him. When I got in I found a woman there. Louis was talking to her and threatening her. He said she was his wife. How could she be his wife when he had married Jacqueline Duchaine?

"I didn't care--it was no business of mine. I couldn't see them, because there was a curtain in the way. There was no light in the bedroom. There was a light in the room in which I was. I put it out, so that neither of them should see my face. She might have betrayed me, you know, Simon.

"He spun round when the light went out, and pushed the curtain aside. I was waiting for that. I had calculated my blow. I stabbed him. It was a good blow, though it was delivered in the dark. He only cried out once. But the woman screamed, and a dog flew at me, and I couldn't find his money. So I ran away.

"And then there were only three of us who knew the secret. Then Simon died and there were only two, and now there are only Hewlett and I, and he is dead, poor fool, and I have my gold here. For God's sake give me a knife, Simon!"

His fingers tore at my sleeve in his last agony, and I was tempted sorely. And it was his own knife that I had. The irony of it!

He muttered once or twice and cried out in fear of the man whom he had slain. I heard him gasp a little later. Then the hand fell from my sleeve. And after that there was no further sound.

"Paul!"

It was the merest whisper from the wall. I thought it was a trick of my own mind. I dared not hope.

"Paul! Dearest!"

This was no fancy born of a delirious brain and the thick fumes of dynamite. It came from the wall a little way ahead of me. I crawled the three feet that the little cave afforded and put my hands upon the rock, feeling its surface inch by inch. There was a crevice there, not large enough to have permitted a bird to pass--the merest fissure.

"Jacqueline! Is that you, dear?" I called.

"Where are you, Paul?" she whispered back.

"Behind the wall," I answered. "You are not hurt, Jacqueline?"

"I am lying where you left me, dear. Paul, I--I heard."

"You heard?" I answered dully. What did it matter now?

"Why didn't you tell me, Paul? But never mind. I am so glad, dearest! Can you come through to me?"

I struggled to tear the rocks away; I beat and bruised my hands in vain against them.

"Soon," I muttered. "Soon. Can you breathe well, Jacqueline?"

"It is all open, Paul. It is nearly dawn now."

"I will come when it grows light, Jacqueline," I babbled. "When it grows light!"

She did not know that it would never grow light for me. Again I flung myself against the walls of my prison, battering at them till the blood dripped from my hands. Again and again I flung myself down hopelessly, and then I tried again, clutching at every fragment that protruded into the cave.

And at last, when my despair had mastered me--it grew light.

For a sunbeam shot like a finger through the crevice and quivered upon the floor of the cave. And overhead, where I had never thought to seek, where I had thought three hundred feet of eternal rock pressed down on me, I saw the quiver of day through half a dozen feet of tight-packed débris from the glacier's mouth.

I raised myself and tore at it and sent it flying. I thrust my hands among the stones and tore them down like the tiles from a rotten roof.

I heard a shout; hands were reached down to me and pulled me up, and I was on my feet upon a hillside, looking into the keen eyes of Père Antoine and the face of the Indian squaw.

And the Eskimo dog was barking at my side.