The Avenger Part 40

Madame de Melbain turned, if possible, a shade paler.

"Yes!" she said slowly, "I have heard of that. We have all heard of that.

I want to tell you, Mr. Wrayson, what that fresh evidence consists of."

Wrayson bowed and waited. Somehow he felt that he was on the eve of a great discovery.

"Both before my marriage and afterwards," Madame de Melbain said quietly, "I wrote to--Captain Fitzmaurice. I was always impulsive--when I was younger, and my letters, especially one written on the eve of my marriage, would no doubt decide the case against me. Captain Fitzmaurice was killed--in Natal, but in a mysterious way news has reached me of the letters since his death."

"In what way?" Wrayson asked.

For the first time, Madame de Melbain glanced a little nervously about her. Against listeners, however, they seemed absolutely secure. There was no hiding-place, nor any one within sight. Upon the land was everywhere the silence of a great heat. Even in the shade where they sat the still air was hot and breathless. Down in the valley the cows stood knee deep in the stream, and a blue haze hung over the vineyards.

"Nearly eighteen months ago," Madame de Melbain continued, "I received a letter signed by the name of Morris Barnes. The writer said that he had just arrived from South Africa, and had picked up on one of the battlefields there a bundle of letters, which he had come to the conclusion must have been written by me. He did not mince matters in the least. He was a blackmailer pure and simple. He had given me the first chance of buying these letters! What was my offer?"

A sharp e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n broke from Wrayson's lips. Louise signed to him to be silent.

"Amy was with me when the letters came," Madame de Melbain continued.

"She left at once for England to see this man. The sum he demanded was impossible. All that she could do was to ask for time, and to arrange to pay him so much a month whilst we were considering how to raise the money. He accepted this, and promised to keep silence. He kept his word, but for a time only. He made inquiries, and he seems to have come to the conclusion that the money was on the other side. At any rate, he approached the advisers of my husband. He was in treaty with them for the letters--when he--when he met with his death!"

Wrayson had a feeling that the heat was becoming intolerable. He dared not look at Louise. His eyes were fixed upon the still expressionless face of the woman whose story was slowly unfolding its tragic course.

"A rumour of this," Madame de Melbain continued, "reached us in Mexonia!

I telegraphed to Amy! She and Louise were at their wits' ends. Louise decided to go and see this man Barnes, to make her way, if she could, into his flat, to search for and, if she could find them, to steal these letters. She carried out her purpose or rather her attempted purpose. The rest you know, for it was you who saved her!"

"The man," Wrayson said hoa.r.s.ely, "was murdered."

Madame de Melbain inclined her head.

"So I have understood," she remarked.

"He was murdered," Wrayson continued in a harsh, unnatural voice, "on that very night, the night when he was to have made over these letters to your--enemies! The message was telephoned to me! He was to go to the Hotel Francis. He was warned that there was danger. And there was! He was murdered--while the cab waited--to take him there!"

Her eyes held his--she did not flinch.

"The man who telephoned to me--Bentham his name was, the agent of your enemies,--he, too, was murdered!"

"So I have heard," she said calmly.

"The letters!" he faltered. "Where are they?"

"No one knows," she answered. "That is why I live always on the brink of a volcano. Many people are searching for them. No one as yet has succeeded. But that may come at any moment."

"Madame," he said, "can you tell me who killed these men?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"I cannot," she answered coldly.

"Madame," he declared, "the man Barnes was a pitiful blackmailing little Jew! For all I know, he deserved death a dozen times over--ay, and Bentham too! But the law does not look upon it like that. Whoever killed these men will a.s.suredly be hanged if they are caught. Don't you think that your friends are a little too zealous?"

She met his gaze unflinchingly.

"If friends of mine have done these things," she said, "they are at least unknown to me!"

He drew a short choking breath of relief. Yet even now the mystery was deeper than ever! He began to think out loud.

"A friend of yours it must have been," he declared. "Barnes was murdered when in a few hours he would have parted with those letters to your enemies; Bentham was murdered when he was on the point of discovering them! There is some one working for you, guarding you, who desires to remain unknown. I wonder!"

He stopped short. A sudden illumining idea flashed through his mind. He looked at Madame de Melbain fixedly.

"This man Duncan who has disappeared so suddenly," he said thickly. "Whom did you say--who was it that he reminded you of?"

Madame de Melbain lost at last her composure. She was white to the lips, her eyes seemed suddenly lit with a horrible dread. She pushed out her hands as though to thrust it from her.

"He was killed!" she cried. "It was not he! He is dead! Don't dare to speak of anything so horrible!"

Then, before they could realize that he was actually amongst them, he was there. They heard only a cras.h.i.+ng of boughs, the parting of the hedge. He was there on his knees, with his arms around the terrified woman who had sobbed out his name. Louise, too, swayed upon her feet, her fascinated eyes fixed upon the newcomer. Wrayson understood, then, that in some way this man had indeed come back from the dead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE WAS THERE ON HIS KNEES, WITH HIS ARMS AROUND THE TERRIFIED WOMAN"]

CHAPTER x.x.xI

RETURNED FROM THE TOMB

The intervention which a few seconds later abruptly terminated an emotional crisis was in itself a very commonplace one. Monsieur the proprietor deemed the moment advisable for solving a question which was beginning to distract his better half in the kitchen. He advanced towards them, all smiles and bows and gestures.

"Monsieur would pardon his inquiring--would Monsieur and the ladies be taking _dejeuner?_ A fowl of excellence unusual was then being roasted, the salad--Monsieur could see it growing! And Madame had thought of an omelet! There was no cooler place in all France on a day of heat so extraordinary as the table under the trees yonder. And as for strawberries--well, Monsieur could see them grow for himself! or if it was _fraises de Bois_ that Madame preferred, the children had brought in baskets full only that morning, fresh and juicy, and of a wonderful size."

Wrayson interrupted him at last.

"Let luncheon be served as you suggest," he directed. "In the meantime--"

Monsieur Jules understood and withdrew with more bows and smiles. The significance of his brief appearance upon the lawn was a thing of which he had not the least idea. Yet after his departure, the strain to a certain extent had pa.s.sed away. Only Madame de Melbain's eyes seemed scarcely to leave the face of the man who stood still by her chair.

"Alive!" she murmured, grasping his hand in hers. "You alive!"

Louise had taken his other hand. He was imprisoned between the two.

"Yes!" he said, "I made what they called a wonderful recovery. I suppose it was almost a miracle."

"But your death," Louise declared, "was never contradicted."

"A good deal of news went astray about that time," he remarked grimly. "I was left, and forgotten. When I found what had been done, I let it go. It seemed to me to be better. I went up to Rhodesia, and of course I had the devil's luck. I've come back to Europe simply because I couldn't stand it any longer. I was not coming to England, and I had no idea of seeing you, Emilie! I travelled here on a little pilgrimage."

"It was fate," she murmured.