The Silver Poppy Part 25

She gave a little smothered cry of indignation, and started to her feet.

Repellier's stern eyes were looking closely, challengingly, into hers, and she sank back in her chair again. Then she laughed a pitiable little laugh, and a touch of color came into her pale lips.

"Mr. Repellier, I must beg of you not to play these practical jokes on me. They are stupid, and besides, my nerves are not of the strongest.

The next thing, and you'll be declaring I have some rhetorical _alter ego_ manufacturing my ma.n.u.scripts for me!" Cordelia laughed again.

Repellier's eyes were not pleasant to look into as he gazed down at the woman in the chair. She once more moved farther back out of the glare of the lowering sun that still streamed irritatingly in through the window.

She opened her lips as though to speak, but remained silent. She was thinking both hard and fast.

"This is far from a joke, Miss Vaughan. I repeat that you did not write The Silver Poppy."

"Then--then why does it bear my name?" It seemed a fair enough question.

"Because you stole it!" he thundered at her.

"Mr. Repellier!" She drew herself up, flaming, flashing at him unspeakable indignation.

"You--you are a coward!" she cried, as a gush of tears came to her eyes.

"Then I am mistaken?" he asked, icily, but more quietly.

"It is all too ridiculous," she said brokenly, over her handkerchief.

"You are more than mistaken. But I should like to know whether you mean this for a joke, or an insult!"

"And on your word of honor as a woman, The Silver Poppy is your rightful property?"

"It is my rightful property."

"And you wrote it out of your own head, with your own hand?"

"I wrote every word of it," was the low response.

"Would you mind telling me, please, just where and at what time you did so?" he asked.

Cordelia rose to her feet impatiently.

"I did not come here, Mr. Repellier, to go into a criminal's witness-box," she said tremulously, "and I cannot stay to answer questions that are neither courteous nor rational. I'm afraid that I really must be going."

She swept to the door.

"One moment, I beg of you, Miss Vaughan," cried Repellier after her. She turned and faced him.

"You are misunderstanding me entirely. I haven't the slightest wish to hurt or offend you in any way. I only want to clear up this mystery, so that my knowledge of the facts may be a protection to you yourself, should the occasion arise."

"A protection to _me_?"

"Yes, to you," he repeated. He motioned her toward the chair again. She hesitated.

"Couldn't you write this to me? Couldn't you put it down on paper, and then I could answer it in the same way. I hate mysteries, and I'm tired this afternoon."

She looked at him almost appealingly.

"It will have to be talked over by us, face to face," he replied. And there was nothing for her to do but to go back to her chair once more.

"Will you let me explain away the mystery as clearly and frankly as I can?" he asked her.

"Certainly!"

Repellier, seating himself opposite her and still looking closely into her face, could see the pupils of the now pale-green eyes contract oddly.

"Three years ago one of the brightest and most scholarly editorial writers on all Park Row was practically thrown into the street by the paper for which he wrote, simply because they regarded him as a man who had gone stale, who had written himself out. To his paper he was a sucked lemon--a squeezed sponge. He was careless, good-natured, and easy-going; and when he came to me for my advice I asked him: Why not make a plunge, and write a book? He was not strong, however; in fact, I had always suspected that he was consumptive, and before his book was half written I saw clearly enough that he could not last long--at least not here in the East. So I, among others, persuaded him to go South--indeed, his doctor and his friends had to _drive_ him away. So off the lonely, broken fellow went to a little town in Kentucky to finish his beloved book. Ah, I see you follow me! I myself was on the point of sailing for Europe--I had to go--and was abroad for over a year. But during that last night we were together in New York he read to me what he had already written of his Great Work. I remember it more or less well--certain things about it stand out distinctly. Long before I came back to New York he was dead, poor fellow. I always thought that his book had died with him. For the first time yesterday I read The Silver Poppy."

He paused, and looked at her searchingly.

"Miss Vaughan, this dead man's book and The Silver Poppy are one and the same creation!"

Her eyes were luminous, and were riveted on his face. All color had faded out of her cheek, and in the dim light her skin looked greenish-yellow and dead. She did not speak for several minutes.

So it was all to end like this! That was the thought which pirouetted insanely up and down the foreground of her consciousness.

"You--you don't mean," she cried huskily, "you can't mean that you believe I--I stole this book?"

"You have refused to let me believe anything else," he answered, without a trace of feeling in his voice.

"But you would not--you dare not make any such--any such absurd belief public!" she cried, leaning closer toward him. The room grew unendurably hot and close, and the walls seemed reeling and swaying about her.

"You would not!" she cried again, in a higher key, putting her hand up to her head.

Their eyes met. She saw but one thing, and that thing was that there dwelt no touch of kindness or commiseration on his face.

"I have my duty to the dead to perform!"

"But they're lies, all lies!" she cried shrilly.

"That, you will have every chance to show when the time comes!"

"They are lies!" she echoed, dazed.

For just a moment he hesitated, perplexed, perhaps almost doubting. He stood before her with a face almost as white as her own.

"Will you swear before G.o.d, your Maker, that this is the truth, and nothing but the truth?"

She stood before him, with her eyes still fixed on his.

"I swear before G.o.d, my Maker, that this is the--No! No! I will _not_!"

she cried hysterically. "I will not! It is all some trick, some cowardly trap! Who are you--who _are_ you, to degrade me in this way? Who are you, that I must answer to you as to a judge? You are detaining me here; you are holding me a prisoner against my will!"

He held up his hand restrainingly.