Jewel Mysteries Part 15

How completely this answer undid my purpose I could never set down. The man was my only possible hope. In the haste of my conclusions I had never found time to remember that I might not catch him; that every _flaneur_ was. .h.i.ther and thither like a will-o'-the-wisp on such a night. In vain I asked, nay, implored, for information--they could give me none; and when further importunity was plainly a farce, I had no alternative but to go to the Rue Boissiere, in the ultimate hope that Barre's destination was there, and that he had called upon his _fiancee_ before the hour of the appointment. But upon this I was determined, that until I had found him Mademoiselle Bernier should not wear the bracelet, though I stood at her side from that hour to midnight.

My first attempt culminating unfruitfully, I quitted the pa.s.sage of the hotel, being still bent upon the journey to the Rue Boissiere, and was again upon the pavement before the cafe, when I saw the Italian for the third time. He stood upon the very edge of the curbstone, undisguisedly waiting for me, so that upon a sudden impulse, which had wisdom in it, I walked over to him, and this time he did not turn away.

"Forgive the question," said I, in my miserable French, "but you are betraying an interest in my movements which is unusual; in fact, you have followed me from my hotel, I think?"

"Exactly," he replied, having even less of the tongue than I had, though I make no attempt to reproduce the vagaries of his idiom. "I followed you here, as you say----"

"For what purpose, may I ask?"

"To warn you!"

"To warn me!"

"Certainly, since you carry in your pocket the topaz bracelet."

"Oh," said I, taken aback at his false conclusion, "it is that, is it? I am much obliged to you, but I don't happen to possess such a thing."

"_Mon Dieu!_" said he; "then she did not sell it to you?"

"She certainly did not!"

"And she will wear it at the ball to-night?"

"Of course!"

"Mother of G.o.d! she is a dead woman then."

It is often possible to tell from the chord of voice a man strikes in conversation whether he be friend or enemy. I knew from the sympathetic note in this earnest exclamation that I had to do with one who wished well to Mademoiselle Bernier; but the very sorrow of the words struck me chill with fear. It was plain that I must shape a bold course if I would learn the whole moment of the mystery, and observing that the stranger was a man of much shabbiness and undoubted poverty--if that might be judged by his dress--I played the only possible card at once.

"Look here," said I, "this is no time for words like this. Come into the cafe with me, and I will pay you fifty pounds for what you know. It shall be worth a hundred if you convince me that you have done a substantial kindness to Mademoiselle Bernier."

He looked at his watch before he made answer. Then he said,--

"The offer is a fair one, but I do not seek your money. We have two hours in which to save her, but before I go with you, you shall swear to me that anything I may tell you will never be used against me here or in any other country."

"Of course," said I; "you don't think I am a policeman, do you? I have no other interest but that of the lady."

"Nor I," said he; and he followed me into the cafe, but the place was so intolerably full that I bade him come with me to a little wine-shop in the Rue Lafayette, and there we found a vacant table, and I ordered his absinthe and a gla.s.s of coffee for myself. Scarcely, however, had he lighted his cigarette before he began to talk of the matter we had come upon.

"First," said he, "tell me, did Mademoiselle speak of a letter she had received?"

"She not only spoke of it, but she gave it to me to read," I replied.

"Well," said he, "I wrote it."

"I gathered that from your words," said I next; "and of course you wrote it for very good reasons?"

"You shall hear them," said he, sipping freely of his drink. "That bracelet was last worn at the _Mi-Careme_ Ball in Ma.r.s.eilles by a girl named Berthe Duval. She was carried from the ball-room stabbed horribly, at one o'clock in the morning. She died in my arms, for in one week she was to have been my wife."

"And the a.s.sa.s.sin?" I asked.

"Was hunted for by the police in vain," he continued. "I myself offered every s.h.i.+lling that I had to find him, but, despite the activity of us all, he was never so much as named. Let us go back another year--it is painful enough for me because such a retrogression recalls to me the one pa.s.sion of my life--a pa.s.sion beside which the affair at Ma.r.s.eilles is not to be spoken of. G.o.d knows that the memory of the woman I refer to is at this moment eating out my heart. She was an Italian girl, sixteen years old when she died, and I think--why should I not?--that the world has never held a more beautiful creature. Well, she wore the bracelet, now about twenty-six months ago, at the _Mardi Gras_ Ball in Savona, and she fell dead before my very eyes ten minutes after she had entered the ball-room. She had drunk of poisoned coffee, and no man but one knew by whose hand the death had come to her."

"You say no man but one; that one was----"

"Myself!"

"Then you knew who killed the other victim at Ma.r.s.eilles?"

"I knew, as you say; but to know and to arrest are different things."

"Have you any idea as to the man's whereabouts now?"

"Every idea; he was in Paris three days ago--he was in Paris to-day. I should judge it more than likely that he will be at the Opera Ball to-night."

Before he could say more I rose from my chair and summoned the head waiter of the place to me. Then I wrote an urgent message upon a leaf of my note-book, and despatched it by a cab to 32, Rue Boissiere. The message implored Mademoiselle Bernier, as she valued her life, to leave the bracelet at home for this night at any rate.

"Now," said I, "we can talk still at our leisure. You have taken me back to Ma.r.s.eilles fourteen months ago; let us have the chapter in your life which precedes that one."

He finished off his absinthe, and called for another gla.s.s before he would answer me. At last he said,--

"You ask me to speak of things which I would well forget. I have sufficient confidence in you, however, to trust my safety in your hands.

The story is not a long one. Three years ago I was a struggling painter in Savona, giving half my life to a study of the pictures in the cathedral--you may know the work of Antonio Semini there--and the other half to the wors.h.i.+p of Pauline di Chigi, the daughter of a silversmith who lives over against the Hotel Royal. Needless to tell you of my poverty, or of my belief in myself. I lived then in the day-dreams which come at the seed-time of art; they were broken only by the waywardness of the girl, by her womanly fickleness, by the riches of the men who sought her. It would weary you to hear of my long nights of agony following the momentary success of this man or that who wooed her, of my curses upon my own poverty, of my bitterness, and sometimes even of my hopelessness. There is something of this sort in the life of every poor man, but the romance will scarce bear the light of other eyes; it has a place in my story only in so far as it prompted me to steal the topaz, if stealing is the word for the act which gave me its possession.

"But _arrivons_! In the end of the January of last year, I, struggling to embrace a career in which I have failed because I have genius and no talent, obtained a commission from the Dominican monks to go to the Valley of San Bernardo, and to take up my residence there while I retouched some of the more modern and more faded pictures in the sanctuary of Nostra Signora di Misericordia. The shrine and village lie in the mountains five miles above Savona. The former is now regaining its splendor, though grievously pillaged by the French and by later vandals. The work would have been recreation to me had it not been for Pauline, whom I left to the persecution of a fat and soulless trader, and to the solicitations of her father that she would marry him. The new lover loaded her with presents and with the follies of speech which a middle-aged man who is amorous can be guilty of. I could give her nothing but the promise of a future, and that being without market value did not convince her. While she would make pretence of affection for me when we were alone, she did nothing to repulse the other. Thus I left Savona with her kisses on my lips, and rage of her wantonness in my heart; and for three weeks I labored patiently in the mountain village; and my art lifted me even beyond the spell of the girl.

"It was at the end of the third week that my thoughts were ardently recalled to her by a circ.u.mstance which cannot fail to appear remarkable to you. I was walking in the late afternoon of the Sunday in the path which leads one high amongst the mountains, here rising green and purple, and afar with snowcaps above this lovely spot; and, chancing to turn aside from the road and to plunge into a shrubbery, I sat at last upon the log of a tree perched at the side of as wild a glen as I have seen in Italy. Below me were rocks of marble-black, yellow, red--all colors; aloe trees flourished abundantly, springing from every cranny of the dell; and though the reign of winter was not done, flowers blossomed everywhere, and mult.i.tudinous shrubs were rich in green and buds. Here I sat for an hour buried in my musings, and when at last I left it was by an overgrown path across the dingle. I found then that the opposite side of the place was vastly steeper than the one by which I had descended; in fact, I mounted it with difficulty; and when near to the summit, I clung to the saplings and the branches for sheer foothold.

This action brought all my trouble, for of a sudden, just as I had come to the top, a shrub to which I was holding gave at the roots, and giving, sent me rolling to the bottom again with a great quant.i.ty of soft earth all about me and my bones aching indescribably.

"For some minutes I sat, being dizzy and shaken, on the soft gra.s.s. When I could look around me I saw a strange thing. In a mound of the mould which had fallen there was a crucifix of gold. Thickly covered with the clammy earth as it was, dulled and tarnished with long burial, the value of the thing was unmistakable. Rubies were set in the hands for blood, there was a crown of diamonds for thorns; the whole was ornamented with a sprinkling of jewels, whose fire was brilliant even through the pasty clay which clung upon the cross. I need scarce tell you that all the curiosity which is a part of me was whetted at this unexpected sight; and believing that I had come upon a very mine of treasure, I shook the mould off me, and went quickly by the easier path to the hill-top and the place of the landslip.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "When I could look around me, I saw a strange thing."

--_Page 206_]

"Twilight was now rus.h.i.+ng through the mountains, and a steely light, soon to turn into darkness, fell upon the ravine; yet I was able still to see clearly enough for my purpose--and for my disappointment. It is true that the slip of the earth from the hillside disclosed a cavernous hole which had been dug, no doubt, many years ago; but of the kind of treasure whose image had leaped into my mind I saw little. The few bright things that lay about in the part of the trough which remained were entirely such vessels as serve priests in the Ma.s.s. There was a pyx in silver, a paten in gold, and two smaller ones; a monstrance with some exceedingly fine diamonds and the topaz in it, and a gold chalice much indented. I judged at once that these things had been buried either when the French plunderers came to Italy, or after the trouble of '70. It was equally clear that they were the property of the Dominicans whose house was hard by; and either that their present hiding-place was unknown, or that they had been left in concealment for some reason of diplomacy. In any case, the value of the stones in the monstrance was unquestionable; but I am an Italian, as you see, and I believed then, as now, in nothing but omens. For a long while no thought of touching these things, scarce even of handling them--so strong in human flesh is the grain of early superst.i.tion--came to me. I sat there gazing at them and watching the light of the topaz sparkling even above the radiance of the smaller diamonds--sat, in fact, until it was quite dark and the miasma rose from the valley. Then, in one of those flashes of thought which often mean much to a man, I had it in my mind that both the diamonds and the topaz above them would sit well upon the arms of Pauline; I even saw her in my fancy coquetting to me for the present. I began to laugh aloud at the other thoughts, to call them echoes of childish schooling, to handle the chalice and the ring of jewels, and to tell myself that there would be no bigger fool in Europe if I did not take them. Need I tell you that the reasoning convinced me? and quickly, as the cold of the mist grew more intense, I took the baubles in my hand, still lacking the courage to secure the chalice and the crucifix, and rose to leave the place.

"Now, for the first time, I think, you are beginning to see the point of my story. The strangest part of it yet remains. I have told you that dark had fallen upon the ravine as I rose up to quit it, and that mists rose thick from the valley with the early night. You will, therefore, easily understand my discomfiture when, reflected upon the white curtain of fog, I saw the dancing light of a lantern. In the next moment a man, young but ragged, with a full-bearded face, and the cape of a priest about his shoulders, stood swinging his lantern before me, and looking down at the tomb of the jewels by our feet. I know not why, but there was something of such power and command writ upon the monk's face that I have never called him by any other name than the Christ. With what feelings he inspired me I cannot tell you. Terror, human terror, is no word for my experience; my whole being seemed stricken with an apprehension which tortured me and made my brain burn. G.o.d! the memory shakes me even now, and I have seen him thrice since, and the fear is greater every time I look upon his face.

"Thus I stood facing the man when he opened his lips to curse me. I believe now, and shall always believe, that he is nothing but a madman, whose brain has failed from long fasting. Be that as it may, his words ring yet in my ears. If you search the world through, read the curse upon Barbarossa, and all the volumes of anathema, you will never find such a blasting accusation as the man spoke when he saw the monstrance in my hand. So dreadful was it that I reeled before him; and, losing all command, I struck him down with my stick and fled the place. The next day I quitted the valley of San Bernardo, and in a week Pauline was wearing the topaz, set by her father as a bracelet, and the diamonds sparkled upon her fingers. She covered me with kisses for the gift, and in her embraces I forgot the madman of the hills, and my melancholy pa.s.sed.

"The rest of my story you know. Pauline wore the topaz at the _Mardi Gras_ Ball, and died ten minutes after she had entered the room. A year later, having fled from Italy, I became engaged _pour pa.s.ser le temps_ to Berthe Duval, at Ma.r.s.eilles. A man has many love affairs, but only one pa.s.sion. I was not in love with her, but she was rich, and troubled herself to get a smattering of art-talk, which amused me. One day she found the topaz in my studio and begged it of me. She died as you have heard; and I, poor as always, and now pursued by the d.a.m.ning curse, came to Paris, selling the topaz on my way here to M. Georges Barre. I have never ceased to regret that which I did; I have lamented it the most since I saw the exquisite creature who is to be his wife. And when, three days ago, I discovered the madman who had cursed me at San Bernardo in the very Rue Boissiere where Mademoiselle Bernier lives, I determined to save her though the deed cost me a confession and my liberty."

He had ceased to speak, and had drunk off the remainder of his absinthe, while his amazing story, which I could in no way believe, went whirling through my brain, and yet gave to me no shape of reality. At the first I was led to think that he was the madman, and I cracked for sitting there and hearing the extraordinary narration he had contrived; but there was something in his manner which forbade any long continuance of the a.s.sumption; and while I had no leisure to bring critical scrutiny upon his tale, it yet impressed me to immediate action.

"Come," said I, "presuming that your picture is not highly colored, it is quite time we were at the opera; it is striking half-past twelve now.

You know what women are. Mademoiselle Bernier may wear the bracelet in the face of everything I have said; and I am inclined to think with you that it is not wise for her to do so."