The Paternoster Ruby Part 36

"Knowles,"--she was clinging to my arm, her voice hoa.r.s.e and distressed,--"it is too terrible--too monstrous for belief. I can not do it--can't believe it--unless I hear the words from Uncle Alfred's own lips. He is here now; he did n't go down-town to-day. The horrible charge has been made--confront him with it. He's up-stairs with Aunt Clara."

"Very well," I quietly returned. "You go and ask him, as calmly as possible, to come down to his study. Don't alarm Miss Belle or her mother; it may not be necessary."

Moving blindly toward the stairs, she paused on the first landing and turned to me a tragic face.

"Courage!" I whispered.

Then she found the strength to carry her on to the end of her revulsive errand. I went direct to the study, and waited.

Fluette came in hastily, his manner wild, his face white and haggard.

Genevieve, distressed and heart-broken, followed close behind him. She closed the door. The man began speaking at once, incoherently, in a harsh, strident whisper that signified constricted throat muscles.

"So! It's come at last! You--keep it from--from--my G.o.d! keep it from my wife and daughter!"

I answered him roughly, in an attempt to keep him from breaking completely down.

"Pull yourself together, man! What sort of way is this to act?" I surveyed his abject figure an instant, then added with some bitterness: "It is not I that you fear, but your own conscience."

I was thinking of the women.

He slumped into a chair, clasped his out-stretched hands upon the writing-table, and allowed his head to droop between his arms. At that moment I heard Belle calling "Papa!" She was running lightly down the stairs. Again she called, and I knew that she was coming swiftly toward the library.

Genevieve made a move as if to bolt the door, but I checked her with a gesture. Of what use would it be to bar the way of her who came so impulsively? The dreadful truth must be broken to her. It was a task that no third person might a.s.sume; let her hear it wrung from her father's unwilling lips.

"Papa!" She was approaching quickly. How youthful and self-reliant her voice sounded! The sweet, girlish contralto jarred painfully upon at least two of our tense, waiting group. And Belle continued to advance all unsuspectingly.

"Papa, where are you? Why don't you answer?"

Genevieve ran over to her uncle, and laid one arm across his bowed shoulders.

"Uncle! Uncle!" She shook him, striving in an agitated way to rouse him to a sense of realization. "Uncle! Sit up! Don't go all to pieces, this way! Belle is at the door!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Uncle, Uncle! Sit up! Don't go to pieces this way"]

And sure enough, as the bent figure painfully straightened a light rap sounded upon the panel, and Belle's fresh young voice again called:

"Are you in there, papa? May I come in?"

Genevieve drew suddenly back to a shadowed corner, wringing her hands with a helpless, despairing gesture. Fluette rose unsteadily to his feet. Then the door opened, and Belle stood framed in the doorway.

The man's look darted feverishly between the two girls--Genevieve well-nigh overcome, while the smile on Belle's handsome face quickly gave way to an expression of bewilderment, and then to a dawning one of alarm. Next she rushed into the room, and stopped abruptly. Bending a look of anxious inquiry first upon her cousin and then upon me, she finally confronted her father.

"Papa," she faltered, her voice quaking with the fear that suddenly gripped her heart, "what is it? What does this mean?" Then, as she started blindly toward him, she uttered one piercing, agonizing cry: "Papa!"

Unconsciously he brushed aside her beseeching arms. He did not answer her directly; his words were a response to the charge that I had not yet made.

"Man, you are right," he said huskily, "it is my conscience. It is not you that accuse me, but the pure eyes of these two innocent girls--the unspoken reproach of that broken, white-haired woman who sits in silence up-stairs--those fling the charge into my face--sear it into my very soul--every minute of the day and night.

"Take me. I am guilty. It was I who killed Felix Page."

CHAPTER XXV

"THIMBLE, THIMBLE----"

It is needless to dwell upon the scene in Alfred Fluette's study; I shall take up merely such details as const.i.tute an integral part of this memoir, and hurry along.

After Genevieve had led Belle away, Mr. Fluette quickly mastered himself. The bitter moment of the confession once pa.s.sed, it seemed as if his mind had been relieved of a great burden, and he talked to me with comparative unreserve. But his appearance was in pitiable contrast with what it must have been before he wandered into devious ways. He was crushed, his mien one of hopeless submission to whatever the future might have in store for him.

"First of all," he began, with impressive earnestness, "I want to emphasize the fact that when I snuffed out that man's life I was in imminent peril of my own. When I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the candlestick, if ever a man had murder in his heart Felix Page had at that moment.

"The rest was automatic; I could no more have stayed the deadly blow than I can now hope to escape its consequences. Revolt from almost a lifetime of pitiless, persistent persecution filled me with an irresistible impulse to destroy and rendered my arm invincible."

I went with him, step by step, over the ground that is already familiar. Felix Page had ever been the thorn in his flesh.

"It wasn't as if I had a tangible enemy," he declared; "he would n't come out into the open and fight. His aims were always petty, he perpetually annoyed and hara.s.sed me by mean and ign.o.ble ways, which I was obliged to bear with an a.s.sumption of ignoring them, or else lower myself to his level to meet them. Any bold, decisive stroke would at least have won my respect; but no, the cunning hound knew that my disposition could not forever turn aside his sly thrusts; he knew that, by degrees but inevitably, he was warping my nature, slowly but surely destroying all that was best in me.

"Well," bitterly, "he has succeeded. He has ruined me not only financially, but body and soul as well.

"Time and time again he flaunted in my face some old letters which my wife wrote when she was a mere girl. They were such as any artless, inexperienced girl might write to a man who has for the moment captured her fancy; but how could that be made clear to a public ever greedy for scandal? How would those letters read in the light of my wife's years and the dignity of her present position? Yet the scoundrel has threatened me times without number that he would scatter them broadcast.

"Then--the ruby: that was a crowning stroke. He deliberately stepped in and wrested it from my grasp simply because he in some way found out that I had set my heart upon it for my collection. It was as if he perpetually had his fingers upon the pulse of my desires and intentions; he seemed to divine and antic.i.p.ate my every move.

"But I was soon reconciled to the stone's loss, and I would have remained so had it not been for that creature, Burke. When he put the idea into my mind that perhaps Page had no legal t.i.tle to it, I was tempted--and I fell. He presented to me too good an opportunity to retaliate for me to let it pa.s.s.

"It was a foolish thing for me to do, going to his house that fatal Tuesday night; but there was no other way. Burke was willing to procure the stone from its hiding-place, but flatly refused to a.s.sume the risk of conveying it through the streets. Page was to be away from town that night, so in an evil moment I decided to take the chance.

"You know what happened. I failed to get the gem that night; your unrelaxing vigilance prevented Burke from getting at where he supposed he had hidden it, and at last the Burmese determined to make the attempt Thursday night. Friday morning I was to have again met Tshen-byo-yen to close the deal for the stone, when one of his henchmen notified Burke and me that the attempt had been a failure, that they had succeeded in securing only the replica. We both charged Burke with double-dealing."

I started suddenly at his last words; a possibility had flashed into my mind, so huge and significant that I could comprehend it only by degrees. I spoke with quick eagerness.

"Mr. Fluette, do you think the Burmese would have devoted all these years to recovering the jewel, if they were willing to sell it to the first would-be purchaser that happened along? Doesn't that strike you as a bit peculiar?--as being inconsistent with their unflagging zeal, their tireless efforts to regain what they contend was once stolen from them? Those fellows are very far from home, please bear in mind."

"I never before regarded it in that light," he thoughtfully returned.

He was not interested, and did not press me for an explanation. But his suggestion of Burke's double-dealing had given me an idea which was clearing away one dark corner of the puzzle: the possibility was opening up more rapidly. I looked at him shrewdly.

"Just how did Maillot's story of his experience with Page impress you?"

I asked.

He gave me a quick glance.

"It was amazing. I could not believe that Maillot was wilfully fabricating; yet, to accept his extraordinary story left me, as the only alternative, a conviction that Felix Page had either undergone a change of heart, or else had lost his mind."

"It did n't occur to you that Page might be trying a game of his own?"