The Case Of The Lamp That Went Out Part 15

When the detective entered Mrs. Bernauer's room the housekeeper rose slowly from the large armchair in front of her table. She was very pale and her eyes were full of terror. She made no move to speak, so Muller began the conversation. He put down his hat, brought up a chair and placed it near the window at which the housekeeper had been sitting.

Then he sat down and motioned to her to do the same.

"You are a faithful servant, all too faithful," he began. "But you are faithful only to your master. You have no devotion for his wife."

"You are mistaken," replied the woman in a low tone.

"Perhaps, but I do not think so. One does not betray the people to whom one is devoted."

Mrs. Bernauer looked up in surprise. "What--what do you know?" she stammered.

Muller did not answer the question directly, but continued: "Mrs.

Thorne had a meeting recently with a strange man. It was not their first meeting, and somehow you discovered it. But before this last meeting occurred you spoke to the lady's husband about it, and it was arranged between you that you should give him a signal which would mean to him, 'Your wife is going to the meeting.' Mrs. Thorne did go to the meeting.

This happened on Monday evening at about quarter past nine. Some one, who was in the neighbourhood by chance, saw a woman's figure hurrying through the garden, down to the other street, and a moment after this, the light of this lamp in your window was seen to go out. A hand had turned down the wick--it was your hand.

"This was the signal to Mr. Thorne. The mirrors over his desk reflected in his eyes the light he could not otherwise have seen as he sat by his own window. The signal, therefore, told him that the time had come to act. This same chance watcher, who had seen the woman going through the garden, had seen the lamp go out, and now saw a man's figure hurrying down the path the woman had taken. The man as well as the woman came from this house and went in the direction of the lower end of the garden.

"A little while later a shot was heard, and the next morning Leopold Winkler was found with a bullet in his back. The crime was generally taken to be a murder for the sake of robbery. But you and I, and Mr.

Herbert Thorne, know very well that it was not.

"You know this since Wednesday noon. Then it was that the idea suddenly came to you, falling like a heavy weight on your soul, the idea that Winkler might not have been killed for the sake of robbery, but because of the hatred that some one bore him. Then it was that you lost your appet.i.te suddenly, that you drove into the city with the excuse of errands to do, in order to read the papers without being seen by any one who knew you. When you came home you searched everywhere in your master's room: you made an excuse for this search, but what you wanted to find out was whether he had left anything that could betray him. Your fright had already confused your mind. You were searching probably for the weapon from which he had fired the bullet. You did not realise that he would naturally have taken it with him and thrown it somewhere into a ravine or river beside the railway track between here and Venice. How could you think for a moment that he would leave it behind him, here in his room, or dropped in the garden? But this was doubtless due to the confusion owing to your sudden alarm and anxiety--a confusion which prevented you from realising the danger of the two peculiarly hung mirrors in Mr. Thorne's room. These should have been taken away at once.

This morning my sudden appearance at the garden gate prevented you from making an examination of the place of the murder. Your swoon, after I had spoken to you in the butler's room, showed me that you were carrying a burden too heavy for your strength. Finally, this afternoon, you drove to the main telegraph office in the city, as you thought that it would be safer to telegraph Mr. Thorne from there. Your telegram was very cleverly written. But you might have spared the last sentence, the request that Mr. Thorne should get the Viennese papers of these last days. Believe me, he has already read these papers. Who could be more interested in what they have to tell than he?"

The housekeeper had sat as if frozen to stone during Muller's long speech. Her face was ashen and her eyes wild with horror. When the detective ceased speaking, there was dead silence in the room for some time. Finally Muller asked: "Is this what happened?" His voice was cutting and the glance of his eyes keen and sharp.

Mrs. Bernauer trembled. Her head sank on her breast. Muller waited a moment more and then he said quietly: "Then it is true."

"Yes, it is true," came the answer in a low hoa.r.s.e tone.

Again there was silence for an appreciable interval.

"If you had been faithful to your mistress as well, if you had not spied upon her and betrayed her to her husband, all this might not have happened," continued the detective pitilessly, adding with a bitter smile: "And it was not even a case of sinful love. Your mistress had no such relations with this Winkler as you--I say this to excuse you--seemed to believe."

Adele Bernauer sprang up. "I do not need this excuse," she cried, trembling in excitement. "I do not need any excuse. What I have done I did after due consideration and in the realisation that it was absolutely necessary to do it. Never for one moment did I believe that my mistress was untrue to her husband. Never for one moment could I believe such an evil thing of her, for I knew her to be an angel of goodness. A woman who is deceiving her husband is not as unhappy as this poor lady has been for months. A woman does not write to a successful lover with so much sorrow, with so many tears. I had long suspected these meetings before I discovered them, but I knew that these meetings had nothing whatever to do with love. Because I knew this, and only because I knew it, did I tell my master about them. I wanted him to protect his wife, to free her from the wretch who had obtained some power over her, I knew not how."

"Ah! then that was it?" exclaimed Muller, and his eyes softened as he looked at the sobbing woman who had sunk back into her chair. He laid his hand on her cold fingers and continued gently: "Then you have really done right, you have done only what was your duty. I pity you deeply that you--"

"That I have brought suspicion upon my master by my own foolishness?"

she finished the sentence with a pitifully sad smile. "If I could have controlled myself, could have kept calm, n.o.body would have had a thought or a suspicion that he--my pet, my darling--that it was he who was forced, through some terrible circ.u.mstance of which I do not know, to free his wife, in this manner, from the wretch who persecuted her."

Mrs. Bernauer wrung her hands and gazed with despairing eyes at the man who sat before her, himself deeply moved.

Again there was a long silence. Muller could not find a word to comfort the weeping woman. There was no longer anger in his heart, nothing but the deepest pity. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the drops that were dimming his own eyes.

"You know that I will have to go to Venice?" he asked.

Mrs. Bernauer sprang up. "Officially?" she gasped, pale to her lips.

He nodded. "Yes, officially of course. I must make a report at once to headquarters about what I have learned. You can imagine yourself what the next steps will be."

Her deep sigh showed him that she knew as well as he. In the same second, however, a thought shot through her brain, changing her whole being. Her pale face glowed, her dulled eyes shot fire, and the fingers with which she held Muller's hand tightly clasped, were suddenly feverishly hot.

"And you--you are still the only person who knows the truth?" she gasped in his ear.

The detective nodded. "And you thought you might silence me?" he asked calmly. "That will not be easy--for you can imagine that I did not come unarmed."

Adele Bernauer smiled sadly. "I would take even this way to save Herbert Thorne from disgrace, if I thought that it could be successful, and if I had not thought of a milder way to silence a man who cannot be a millionaire. I have served in this house for thirty-two years, I have been treated with such generosity that I have been able to save almost every cent of my wages for my old age. With the interest that has rolled up, my little fortune must amount to nearly eight thousand gulden. I will gladly give it to you, if you will but keep silence, if you will not tell what you have discovered." She spoke gaspingly and sank down on her knees before she had finished.

"And Mr. Thorne also--" she continued hastily, as she saw no sign of interest in Muller's calm face. Then her voice failed her.

The detective looked down kindly on her grey hairs and answered: "No, no, my good woman; that won't do. One cannot conceal one crime by committing another. I myself would naturally not listen to your suggestion for a moment, but I am also convinced that Mr. Thorne, to whom you are so devoted, and who, I acknowledge, pleased me the very first sight I had of him--I am convinced that he would not agree for a moment to any such solution of the problem."

"Then I can only hope that you will not find him in Venice," replied Mrs. Bernauer, with utter despair in her voice and eyes.

"I am not at all certain that I will find him in Venice when I leave here to-morrow morning," said Muller calmly.

"Oh! then you don't want to find him! Oh G.o.d! how good, how inexpressibly good you are," stammered the woman, seizing at some vague hope in her distraught heart.

"No, you are mistaken again, Mrs. Bernauer. I will find Mr. Thorne wherever he may be. But I may arrive in Venice too late to meet him there. He may already be on his way home."

"On his way home?" cried the housekeeper in terror, staggering where she stood.

Muller led her gently to a chair. "Sit down here and listen to me calmly. This is what I mean. If Mr. Thorne has seen in the papers that a man has been arrested and accused of the murder of Leopold Winkler, then he will take the next train back and give himself up to the authorities.

That he makes no such move as long as he thinks there is no suspicion on any one else, no possibility that any one else could suffer the consequences of his deed--is quite comprehensible--it is only natural and human."

Adele Bernauer sighed deeply again and heavy tears ran down her cheeks, in strange contrast to the ghost of a smile that parted her lips and shone in her dimmed eyes.

"You know him better than I do," she murmured almost inaudibly, "you know him better than I do, and I have known him for so long."

A moment later Muller had parted from the housekeeper with a warm, sincere pressure of the hand.

"Lieutenant Theobald Leining was here on a visit to his sister last March, wasn't he?" the detective asked as Franz led him out of the gate.

"Yes, sir; the Lieutenant was here just about that time," answered the old man.

"And he left here on the 16th of March?"

"On the 16th? Why, it may have been--yes, it was the 16th--that is our lady's birthday. He went away that day." Franz bowed a farewell to this stranger who began to appear uncanny in his eyes, and shutting the gate carefully he returned to the house.

"What does the man want anyway?" he murmured to himself, s.h.i.+vering involuntarily. Without knowing why he turned his steps towards Mrs.

Bernauer's room. He opened the door hesitatingly as if afraid of what he might see there. He would not have been at all surprised if he had found the housekeeper fainting on the floor as before.

But she was not fainting this time. She was very much alive, for, to Franz's great astonishment, she was busied at the packing of a valise.

"Are you going away too?" asked Franz. Mrs. Bernauer answered in a voice that was dull with weariness: "Yes, Franz, I am going away. Will you please look up the time-tables of the Southern railroad and let me know when the morning express leaves? And please order a cab in time for it.

I will depend upon you to look after the house in my absence. You can imagine that it must be something very important that takes me to Venice."

"To Venice? Why, what are you going to Venice for?"