The Crime and the Criminal Part 71

"Indeed! I am glad to hear it. I hope that she is well."

"She is well. She's better than many of us ever will be. She's at rest."

"At rest? How?"

"As it was told to me. She is dead."

"Dead! Mr. Haines?"

"Yes, murdered. As I saw it in the vision, so it is."

Mrs. Carruth looked at Mr. Haines as if she felt that he had a somewhat singular method of imparting information--especially of such a peculiar kind.

"If what you say is correct, you have such a queer way of putting things. I never can quite make you out. I need not tell you how sorry I am."

"You have cause for sorrow. The grief is about half yours."

"Half mine? What do you mean?"

"I have loved you, true and faithful, since the first time I set eyes on you. Before ever Daniel did."

The sudden change of subject seemed, not unnaturally, to take the lady aback.

"What nonsense are you talking? What did you mean by saying the grief's half mine?"

"I'm coming to it, in time. I want to put to you this question. Will you have me, now, just as I am?"

"I will not; neither now or ever. How many more times am I to tell you that? Jack Haines, I do believe you're more than half insane."

"I may be. So'll you be before I'm through." Raising the big forefinger of his right hand, he wagged it at her solemnly. "There's some one come between us. Yes. That aristocrat."

"Aristocrat? What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Yes. The blood-stained Townsend. I knew he was stained with blood when first I saw him inside this room. But I did not know with whose blood he was stained, or I would have called him to his account right there and then. I did not know he was stained with the blood of my girl."

"Jack!"

The name came from her with an unconscious recurrence to the days which were gone.

"Yes. This is the man who has stolen what ought by rights to have been mine--the slayer of my girl."

"It's not true! You coward! You know you lie!"

"I do not lie."

"You do lie! What proof have you?"

"Enough and to spare--for him, for me, and for you."

"Out with it, then. Let's hear what some of it's like."

Mrs. Carruth was standing by the little centre table. Rising from his chair, Mr. Haines went and stood at the other side of it. Resting his hands on the edges, he leaned over it towards her.

"Have you heard of the Three Bridges tragedy?"

She looked at him just once. In that one look she saw something, on his face or in his eyes, which, to use an expressive idiom, seemed to take the stiffening all out of her. She dropped into a chair as if he had knocked her into it. She caught at the arms. Her complexion a.s.sumed a curious tinge of yellow. There was a moment's pause. Then, from between her rigid lips, there came one word.

"Yes."

"The woman who was killed was Loo--my Loo."

She shuddered, as if attacked by sudden ague.

"It's a lie!"

"It's not a lie. It's gospel truth. And Townsend killed her."

Her rejoinder, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, might have struck him as an odd one.

"You can't prove it."

"I can prove it. And the police can prove it, too."

Half rising from her chair, she turned to him, every muscle in her body seemed to be quivering with excitement.

"The police? Do they know it?"

"They do. To-morrow the whole world will know it. They've laid hold of the wrong man. They've found it out just before it's a bit too late.

They hope to have hold of your friend Townsend soon. They're hoping wrong. His first reckoning will be with me. When that is through, neither he nor I will care who has what's left. Since I have loved you, true and faithful, all these years, I calculated I would come and ask you if, when all is done, you'd give me my reward. We might make a happy ending of it, you and me together, over on the other side.

But if you won't, you won't. So I'm through. I've only one word left--good-bye."

He held out his hand to her. So far as she was concerned, it went unheeded. Indeed, it would seem, from the eager question which she asked, that most of what he had been saying had gone unheeded too.

"Are you sure the police are after him? Are you sure?"

He looked at her from under the shadow of his bushy, overhanging eyebrows, in silence, for a moment. Then he said, more in sorrow than in anger--

"So your last thought is of him? Well, I'm sorry!"

Without anymore elaborate leave-taking than was comprised in these few words. Mr. Haines went from the room and from the house.

Mrs. Carruth seemed scarcely conscious of the fact of his departure.

All her faculties and all her thoughts seemed far away. Indeed, it was only after a lapse of some seconds that, looking about her, with a start, she appeared to recognise that she was alone. Getting up, she began to pace feverishly about the room, as if only rapid movement could enable her to control the fires which were mounting in her blood.

"I wonder if it's true! I wonder if it is! Perhaps that explains why it is he hasn't come. I may have been misjudging him. Perhaps he can't come. Suppose he is arrested. Perhaps he doesn't know what it is the police have discovered. He's nearly certain not to know. Who's to tell him? I will go and tell him! This instant! Now! I will warn him against the police and against Jack Haines. I will save him yet, yet. He shall owe it all to me."

With her hands she brushed her hair from her brow--the hair which she had so carefully arranged.

"After all I have longed for, after all I have lived through, I do believe that for him I should esteem the world well lost."