Chapter 4

He pitched at once upon this point and we hurried back.

We had hardly a further word on the way. I was decidedly uneasy about Madame Barras by now, and Marquis' concern was hardly less evident. He raced along in his immense stride, and I had all I could manage to keep up.

It may seem strange that I should have brought such a man as Sir Henry Marquis into the search of this adventure with so little explanation of my guest or the affair. But, one must remember, Marquis was an old acquaintance frequently seen about in the world. To thus, on the spot so to speak, draft into my service the first gentleman I found, was precisely what any one would have done. It was probable, after all, that there 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. This course 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 and in a measure illumined the road. We were easily able to see, when we reached the point, that the cut-under had turned out into the road circling the mountain to the west of the village. The track was so clearly visible in the light, that I must have observed it had I been thinking 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 the track 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 to determine where a wheeled vehicle had stopped.

“It's quite clear,” he replied. “The horse has moved about without going on.”

I now saw it. The hoof-marks of the horse had displaced the dust where it had several times changed position.

“And that's not all,” Marquis continued. “Something has happened to the cut-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 they had skidded on a turn. This would mean little if the cut-under had been moving at the time. But it was not moving; the horse was standing. The cut-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 did not stop here in fright. The horse was entirely quiet here. The hoof marks would show any alarm in the animal, and, moreover, if it had stopped in fright there would have been an inevitable recoil which would have thrown the wheels of the vehicle backward out of their track. No moving animal, man included, stopped by fright fails to register this recoil. We always look for it in evidences of violent assault. Footprints invariably show it, and one learns thereby, unerringly, the direction of the attack.”

He rose, his hand still extended and upon my arm.

“There is only one possible explanation,” he added. “Something happened in the cut-under to throw it violently about in the road, and it happened with the horse undisturbed and the vehicle standing still. The wheel tracks are widened only at one point, showing a transverse but no lateral movement of the vehicle.”

“A struggle?” I cried. “Major Carrington was right, Madame Barras has been 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 he answered me.

“Major Carrington, whoever he may be,” he said, “is wrong; if we exclude a 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 the standing horse, it will be the front wheels of the cut-under that have made, this widened track; the wheels under the driver's seat, and not the wheels under the guest seat, in the rear of the vehicle. There has been a violent struggle in this cut-under, but it was a struggle that took 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 his voice lengthened.

“We do hurry,” he said. “We hurry to the value of knowing that there was no accident here to the harness, no fright to the horse, no attack on the lady, and no change in the direction which the vehicle afterwards took. Suppose we had gone on, in a different form of hurry, ignorant of these facts?”

At this point I distinctly heard again the sound of a heavy animal in the wood. Marquis also heard it and he plunged into the thick bushes. Almost immediately we were at the spot, and before us some heavy object turned 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 a linen carriage lap-cloth wound around his head and knotted, lay there endeavoring 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 the man's head. It was the driver of the cut-under. But we got no gain from his discovery. As soon as his face was clear, he tore out of our grasp and began to run.

He took the old road to the westward of the island, where perhaps he lived. We were wholly unable to stop him, and we got no reply to our shouted queries except his wild cry for help. He considered us his assailants from whom, by chance, he had escaped. It was folly to think of coming up with the man. He was set desperately for the westward of the 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 the mountain 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 having knowledge of the packet of money had waylaid the cut-under. Proud of my conclusion, I put the inquiry to Sir Henry as we hurried along. If we weren'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. “Has she got ninety thousand dollars of your money!” And he set out again in his 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 sum with her in the cut-under on this night. I gave him the story of the matter, briefly, for I had no breath to spare over it. And I asked him what 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 drive away with no eye on her!.... Such trust in the honesty of our fellow creatures!... My word!”

I had to admit the deplorable negligence, but I had not thought of any peril, and I did not know that she carried the money with her until the conversation with my sister. There was some excuse for me. I could not remember 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 this incomparable creature were robbed and perhaps murdered. But were there not some extenuating circumstances in my favor. I presented them as we advanced; my sister and I lived in a rather protected atmosphere apart from all criminal activities, we could not foresee such a result. I had no 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 to realize a profound sense of responsibility; every one, it seemed, saw what I ought to have done, except myself. How had I managed to overlook it? It was clear to other men. Major Carrington had pointed it out to me as I was turning away; and now here Sir Henry Marquis was expressing in no uncertain words how negligent a creature he considered me--to permit my 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 scarcely hold 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 this night'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 mystery that it was idle to interrogate him. And he was walking with a devil's stride.

Still the pointed query of the affair pressed me, and I made another effort.

“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 roadside where it makes a great turn to enter the village from the south. There is a wide border to the road at this point, clear of underbrush, where the forest edges it, and there are here, at the whim of some one, or by chance, two great flat stones, one lying upon the other, but not fitting by a hand's thickness by reason of the uneven surfaces.

What had now happened was evident. The assailants of the cut-under had abandoned it here before entering the village. They could not, of course, go on with this incriminating vehicle.

The sight of the cut-under here had on Marquis the usual effect of any important 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 for his assurance that Madame Barras, was uninjured it would have been impossible. I had a blind confidence in the man although his expressions were so absurdly in conflict.

I started to go on toward the village, but as he did not follow I turned back. Marquis was sitting on the flat stones with a cigarette in his fingers:

“Good heavens, man,” I cried, “you're not stopping to smoke a cigarette?”

“Not this cigarette, at any rate,” he replied. “Madame Barras has already 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 of pine-needles. Marquis was about to take up this charred paper when his eye caught something thrust in between the two stones. It was a handful of torn bits of paper.

Marquis got them out and laid them on the top of the flat stones under his 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 her destructive process. These are five-pound notes, of the Bank of England.”

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 she would escape.”

“Escape!” I cried. “You have been assuring me all along that Madame Barras 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 you tell me in plain words?”

“Surely,” he replied, “she sat here while something was decided, and while she sat here she smoked the cigarette, and while she smoked the cigarette, she destroyed the money. But,” he added, “before she had quite finished, a decision was made and she hastily thrust the remaining bits 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 pocket with the switched-off flash.

“I wish I knew that,” he said.

“Knew what?”

“Which path they have taken,” he replied; “there seem to be two branching from this point, but they pass over a bed of pine-needles and that retains no impression.... Where do these paths lead?”

I did not know that any paths came into the road at this point. But the island 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 cigarette was not quite cold when I picked it up.”

I was right about the direction of the paths but, as it happened, the one 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 taken by the assailants of the cut-under as it was chance that selected the one taken by us.

Marquis was instantly gone, and I hurried along the path, running nearly due east. There was light enough entering from the brilliant moon through the tree-tops to make out the abandoned trail.

And as I hurried, Marquis' contradicting expressions seemed to adjust themselves into a sort of order, and all at once I understood what had happened. The Brazilian adventurer had not taken the loss of his wife and the fortune in English pounds sterling, lying down. He had followed to recover them.

I now saw clearly the reason for everything that had happened: the attack on the driver, and my guest's concern to get rid of the English money which she discovered remaining in her possession; this man would have no knowledge of her gold certificates but he would be searching for his English pounds. And if she came clear of any trace of these five-pound notes, she might disclaim all knowledge of them and perhaps send him elsewhere on his search, since it was always the money and not the 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 few paces on the path were Madame Barras and two men; one at some distance in advance of her, disappearing at the moment behind a spur of the slope that hid us from the sea, and I got no conception of him; but the creature at her heels was a huge foreign beast of a man, in the dress of a 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 shout to Madame Barras I struck at him with the heavy walking-stick. But the creature was not to be taken unaware; he darted to one side, wrenched the stick out of my hand, and dashed its heavy-weighted head into my face. I went down in the bracken, but I carried with me into unconsciousness a vision of Madame Barras that no shadow of the lengthening years can blur.

She had swung round sharply at the attack behind her, and she stood bare-haired and bare-shouldered, knee-deep in the golden bracken, with the glory of the moon on her; her arms hanging, her lips parted, her great eyes wide with terror--as lovely in her desperate extremity as a dream, 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 spur of rock, came out onto the open sea, I found Sir Henry Marquis. He was standing with his hands in the pockets of his loose tweed coat, and he was cursing softly:

“The ferry and the mainland are patroled... I didn't think of their having 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 your bank-vault, were never issued by the Bank of England.”

I stammered some incoherent sentence; and the great chief of the Criminal 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 and she used the accident of Mrs. Jordan's death to get in with it... the rest was all fiction.”

“Madame Barras?” I stuttered. “You mean Madame Barras?”

“Madame the Devil,” he said. “That's Sunny Suzanne. Used to be in the Hungarian Follies until the Soviet government of Austria picked her up to place the imitation English money that its presses were striking off in Vienna.”

IV. The Cambered Foot

I shall not pretend that I knew the man in America or that he was a friend of my family or that some one had written to me about him. The plain truth is that I never laid eyes on him until Sir Henry Marquis pointed him out to me the day after I went down from here to London. It was in Piccadilly Circus.

“There's your American,” said Sir Henry.

The girl paused for a few moments. There was profound silence.

“And that isn't all of it. Nobody presented him to me. I deliberately picked him up!”

Three persons were in the drawing-room. An old woman with high cheekbones, a bowed nose and a firm, thin-lipped mouth was the central figure. She sat very straight in her chair, her head up and her hands in her lap. An aged man, in the khaki uniform of a major of yeomanry, stood at a window looking out, his hands behind his back, his chin lifted as though he were endeavoring to see something far away over the English country--something beyond the little groups of Highland cattle and the great oak trees.

Beside the old woman, on a dark wood frame, there was a fire screen made of the pennant of a Highland regiment. Beyond her was a table with a glass top. Under this cover, in a sort of drawer lined with purple velvet, there were medals, trophies and decorations visible below the sheet of glass. And on the table, in a heavy metal frame, was the portrait of a young man in the uniform of a captain of Highland infantry.

The girl who had been speaking sat in a big armchair by this table. One knew instantly that she was an American. The liberty of manner, the independence of expression, could not be mistaken in a country of established forms. She had abundant brown hair skillfully arranged under a smart French hat. Her eyes were blue; not the blue of any painted color; it was the blue of remote spaces in the tropic sky.

The old woman spoke without looking at the girl.

“Then,” she said, “it's all quite as”--she hesitated for a word--“extraordinary as we have been led to believe.”

There was the slow accent of Southern blood in the girl's voice as she went on.

“Lady Mary,” she said, “it's all far more extraordinary than you have been led to believe--than any one could ever have led you to believe. I deliberately picked the man up. I waited for him outside the Savoy, and pretended to be uncertain about an address. He volunteered to take me in his motor and I went with him. I told him I was alone in London, at the Ritz. It was Blackwell's bank I pretended to be looking for. Then we had tea.”

The girl paused.

Presently she continued: “That's how it began: You're mistaken to imagine that Sir Henry Marquis presented me to this American. It was the other way about; I presented Sir Henry. I had the run of the Ritz,” she went on. “We all do if we scatter money. Sir Henry came in to tea the next afternoon. That's how he met Mr. Meadows. And that's the only place he ever did meet him. Mr. Meadows came every day, and Sir Henry formed the habit of dropping in. We got to be a very friendly party.”

The motionless old woman, a figure in plaster until now, kneaded her fingers as under some moving pressure. “At this time,” she said, “you were engaged to Tony and expected to be his wife!”

The girl's voice did not change. It was slow and even. “Yes,” she said.

“Tony, of course, knew nothing about this?”

“He knows nothing whatever about it unless you have written him.”

Again the old woman moved slightly. “I have waited,” she said, “for the benefit of your explanation. It seems as--as bad as I feared.”

“Lady Mary,” said the girl in her slow voice, “it's worse than you feared. I don't undertake to smooth it over. Everything that you have heard is quite true. I did go out with the man in his motor, in the evening. Sometimes it was quite dark before we returned. Mr. Meadows preferred to drive at night because he was not accustomed to the English rule of taking the left on the road, when one always takes the right in America. He was afraid he couldn't remember the rule, so it was safer at night and there was less traffic.

“I shall not try to make the thing appear better than it was. We sometimes took long runs. Mr. Meadows liked the high roads along the east coast, where one got a view of the sea and the cold salt air. We ran prodigious distances. He had the finest motor in England, the very latest American model. I didn't think so much about night coming on, the lights on the car were so wonderful. Mr. Meadows was an amazing driver. We made express-train time. The roads were usually clear at night and the motor was a perfect wonder. The only trouble we ever had was with the lights. Sometimes one, of them would go out. I think it was bad wiring. But there was always the sweep of the sea under the stars to look at while Mr. Meadows got the thing adjusted.”

This long, detailed, shameless speech affected the aged soldier at the window. It seemed to him immodest bravado. And he suffered in his heart, as a man old and full of memories can suffer for the damaged honor of a son he loves.

Continuing, the girl said: “Of course it isn't true that we spent the nights touring the east coast of England in a racer. It was dark sometimes when we got in--occasionally after trouble with the lights--quite dark. We did go thundering distances.”

“With this person, alone?” The old woman spoke slowly, like one delicately probing at a wound.

“Yes,” the girl admitted. “You see, the car was a roadster; only two could go; and, besides, there was no one else. Mr. Meadows said he was alone in London, and of course I was alone. When Sir Henry asked me to go down from here I went straight off to the Ritz.”

The old woman made a slight, shivering gesture. “You should have gone to my sister in Grosvenor Square. Monte would have put you up--and looked after you.”

“The Ritz put me up very well,” the girl continued. “And I am accustomed to looking after myself. Sir Henry thought it was quite all right.”