The La Chance Mine Mystery

"Who's to say he didn't?" he demanded. "What darned thing do we know about him to say that he mightn't have waylaid poor old Thompson for what money he had on him, and kept him shut up till he had a chance to say he found him drowned?"

Macartney and I stared at each other. The very thought was so monstrous that it must have struck him, as it did me, that it was born of Dudley's drugs and not his intelligence. But it had to be stopped, or heaven knew whom Dudley would be accusing next.

"For God's sake, Wilbraham, shut up," said Macartney curtly. "You make me sick. Isn't it enough to have the old man dead, without saying innocent people killed him!"

"Yes, if they are innocent," Dudley returned so quietly that it surprised both of us. "But I tell you this, Macartney, and Stretton too – if any one within a hundred miles of this mine did murder Thompson, Billy Jones or any one else, it'll come out!" and he jerked his head around. "Don't you think so, Paulette?"

"I? I never thought of poor old Thompson having been murdered!" She answered as if she were startled, but she did not turn. "If he was murdered I pray God it will be found out," she added unexpectedly. She had made two false starts at her letter and torn them up, but she had evidently finished it to her liking now, for she sat with the pen poised over the blank end of the sheet to sign her name. Yet she did not sign it. She only sat there abstractedly, with her hand lifted from the wrist.

"There, you see," Dudley crowed triumphantly. "Paulette's no fool: it's facts she and I are after, Macartney. Why, you take the history of crimes generally – murders – jewel robberies – kidnapping for money – half of them with not nearly so much to them as this thing about Thompson – they're always found out!"

"If you're going to talk this rubbish, I'm going to bed," Marcia burst out wrathfully. I saw her pause to catch Macartney's eye, but for once his set gaze was on the floor. She got up, which I don't think she had meant to do, and flounced out of the room. I had no idea I was going to be deadly thankful.

Macartney answered Dudley as the door shut behind her. "I don't know that crimes are always found out, in spite of your faith – and Miss Paulette's," he argued half crossly. "I could remind you of one or two that weren't. What about the Mappin murder, way back in nineteen-five? And that emerald business at the Houstons' country house this spring, with that dancing and circus-riding girl who used to be at the Hippodrome – the Russian, who did Russian dancing on her horse's back? What was her name? I ought to remember. I knew a poor devil of a cousin of hers out in British Columbia who was engaged to her when it happened, and he talked about her enough. Oh, yes, Valenka! She had a funny Christian name too, sort of half Russian, only I forget it. But when that Valenka girl got away with an emerald necklace from the Houstons' house no one ever found out how it was done! You must have heard about her, Stretton?"

I had. Every one had: Macartney need not have troubled to hunt his memory for her Christian name, though it had only reached me in the wilderness through a stray New York paper. But before I could say so Dudley burst out with the same truculence he had used about Billy Jones:

"What d'ye mean Stretton must have heard?"

"Only that Mrs. Houston took a fancy to Valenka and had her down to ride and dance at a week-end party at her house in Long Island; that on Sunday morning, Jimmy Van Ruyne, one of the guests, was found in Valenka's room, soaked with morphine and robbed – not only of the cash in his pocket in the good old way, but of an emerald necklace he had just bought at Tiffany's; and that, to this day, no one has ever laid eyes on that necklace nor on Valenka. She's free and red-handed somewhere, if no one ever found out who railroaded her and Van Ruyne's emeralds out of the United States!"

What sent Dudley into a blazing rage was beyond me. But he fairly yelled at Macartney.

"Free she may be, but when you say 'red-handed' you say a lie! If Jimmy Van Ruyne was fool enough to think so, it was because no Van Ruyne ever could see a. b. spelled ab. D'ye know him? Well," as Macartney shook his head, "he's a rotter, if ever there was one! Got more money than he knows what to do with and always chasing after women. As for Valenka, if you think she came out of a circus and was fair game, that's a lie, too! She was a lady, born and bred. Her mother was American, a Miss Bocqueraz; and her father was one of the best known men in Petrograd, and persona grata with one of the Grand Dukes till he got into some sort of political disgrace and died of it. His daughter came to America and danced and rode for her living. First because she was beggared; and second because she'd been taught dancing in the Imperial School at Petrograd and riding in the Grand Duchess Tatiana's private ring for haute manége; and was a corker at both. She called herself plain Valenka, and Jimmy Van Ruyne went crazy about her – though Mrs. Houston didn't know it, or she never would have asked the nasty little cad to a spring week-end party."

"To lose an emerald necklace and be stabbed and drugged," commented Macartney drily. "Oh, I'm not saying the Valenka girl wasn't a marvellous sight on a horse! But what Van Ruyne told the police was that he gave his string of emeralds to her on the Saturday afternoon, and got a note from her just after dinner saying that she returned them; only the case – in the time-honored method this time – was empty when he opened it! He was blazing. He went straight up to Valenka's room when he found it out, which was at two in the morning, and said he wanted his emeralds; and she flew at him with a dagger. After which he knew nothing at all till a servant came in at eight and found him lying unconscious in her empty room that she'd just walked out of with his emeralds in her pocket. And no one's ever laid eyes on her, or on Van Ruyne's emeralds ever since."

"That's what Van Ruyne says," Dudley began hotly – and went on in a different voice. "The Valenka girl never stole his emeralds! She may have cut him across the wrist with one of those knife-things women will use for paper cutters; I don't say she didn't. Any girl would have been justified when a man forced his way into her bedroom – for I bet Van Ruyne didn't let out the whole story of that, if he did let out that he bullied her when he found her alone! And he didn't lay any stress, either, on the fact that he was found with the cut artery in his wrist – that was all the stabbing that ailed him – bound up as a surgeon would have done it; or that he'd been given just enough morphine to keep him from wriggling off his bandage and bleeding to death before anybody came: not Van Ruyne!"

"All that doesn't explain how Valenka got away – or what became of her," said Macartney obstinately. "That's the mystery I began on."

I was bored stiff with the whole thing. And whether she had Van Ruyne's emeralds or not I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka girl's disappearance: she had probably had some one outside who had taken her clear away in a motor car. I said so, more because Dudley was glaring at Macartney like a maniac than anything else. And Dudley caught me up short. "I won't have either of you say one more word about Valenka in my house. She was as good as she was pretty; and if some one helped her away she – deserved it!"

There was something so like honest passion in the break in his voice that involuntarily I glanced at Paulette, to see if by any chance she was startled at Dudley's evidently intimate knowledge of a girl none of us had even heard him speak of – and it took every bit of Indian quiet I owned not to stare at her so hard that Dudley and Macartney must have noticed. She was listening, as motionless as if she were a statue. Her lifted hand still held her pen poised over her unfinished letter; but it was rigid, as the rest of her was rigid. Whether it was from anger, surprise, or jealousy of Dudley, I had no idea, but she sat as if she had been struck dumb. And suddenly I was not sure if she were perfectly collected, – or absolutely abstracted. For – without even a glance to show she felt my eyes on her – the carved lines of her poised hand fell to the level of her wrist that lay flat on the table, and she began to write the signature to her unfinished letter. I could see every separate character as she shaped it; and with the blazing enlightenment of what she set down on paper only a merciful heaven kept my wits in my skull and my tongue quiet in my head.

For the signature she wrote as plainly as I write it now was not Paulette Brown. It was Tatiana Paulina – that "queer Christian name, half Russian too," of the dancing circus-rider, that no one had ever mentioned, —Tatiana Paulina Valenka!

CHAPTER X

I INTERFERE FOR THE LAST TIME

"Must I go now – in the moonlight clear?Would God that it were dark,That I might pass like a homeless houndMen neither miss nor mark."The Ransom.

Tatiana Paulina Valenka!

I sat as still as if I had been stabbed. It was no wonder she had laughed when I asked her if she could ride, no wonder I had thought she moved like Pavlova. Paulette Brown, whom Dudley had brought to La Chance, was Tatiana Paulina Valenka, who had or had not stolen Van Ruyne's emeralds! But the blood sprang into my face at the knowledge, for – by all the holy souls and my dead mother's name – she was my dream girl too! And I believed in her.

All the same, I was thankful Marcia had flounced out of the room before Dudley let loose. It was no wonder she had thought she had seen Paulette Brown before. The wonder was that she had ever forgotten how she had seen her – dancing at the Hippodrome on her four horses as no girl ever had danced – or forgotten the story about her that she had said was "queer"! If Marcia's eyes had fallen on the signature mine were on now, I knew her first act would have been to write to Jimmy Van Ruyne; that even if she had only heard Dudley defending an ostensibly absent Valenka she would have written – for Marcia was no fool. Then and there I made up my mind that Marcia should never guess the whole of what she already half-guessed about Paulette Brown; there were ways I could stop that.

As for Dudley – But a sudden tide of respect for Dudley, in spite of his drink and all his queerness, rose flood-high in me. It had been Dudley, of course, who had got Paulette away, – for I could not think of her as Tatiana Paulina. How, I did not know; I knew he had not been one of the Houstons' week-end party; but he had done it somehow, and spirited Paulette out to La Chance. As for the rest, a fool could have told that he respected and believed in her. If it had been risky bringing Marcia out into the wilderness with her, it had been clever too, because it was so bold that Marcia had never suspected it. Even I never would have, if Macartney had not brought up Miss Valenka's name. I knew he had done it merely to get Dudley off his cracked idea that Billy Jones might have murdered Thompson, but I was suddenly nervous that Dudley's fool vehemence over a missing girl might have set Macartney on the track of things, – and heaven knows that, except he was a competent mine superintendent, I knew little enough how far it would be safe to trust Macartney. But suddenly one thing I did know flashed over me. Macartney and Marcia were a firm, or going to be; and I was instantly scared blue that he might turn around and see that name Paulette Brown had signed to her letter, lying plain under the living-room lamp! I knew I had to wake Paulette up to what she had done and shut up Dudley before he let out any more intimate details the public had never known, like Van Ruyne's bandaged wrist. I yawned and got up, with one hand on the table, and my forefinger pointing straight to that black signature of Tatiana Paulina Valenka that ought to have been Paulette Brown.

"I'm like Marcia, Miss Paulette; I'm going to bed unless you can turn off Dudley's eloquence. Oh, I'm so sorry – I'm afraid I've blotted your letter," I said. I tapped my finger on it soundlessly – and she looked down, – and saw!

I said once before that my dream girl had good nerves; she had iron ones. I need not have been afraid she would exclaim. She said quite naturally: "No, it's all right. And it wasn't a letter, anyhow. It was only something I wanted to make clear." She picked it up, folded it small, gathered up the bits of paper she had written on and torn up, and turned round to Dudley. "What are you talking about all this time?"

But if her glance warned him to hold his tongue, as heaven knows her mere presence would have warned me, Dudley was too roused to care. "I was talking about that liar, Van Ruyne," he said, glaring at Macartney.

"He may be a liar, all right," said Macartney rather unpleasantly. "Only, if that Valenka girl didn't steal his emeralds, Mr. Wilbraham, who did?"

"That cousin of hers you said you knew; Hutton, or whatever you said his name was," Dudley retorted, like a fool, for Macartney had never mentioned the man's name. "How, I don't know, but I'm certain of it. He was more in love with her than Van Ruyne, and more dangerous, for all you say he was a good sort. Why, he was the kind to stick at nothing. Miss Valenka had had the sense to turn him down hard; and I believe he stole that necklace of Van Ruyne's from her during the short time she had it – either just to get her into trouble and be revenged on her, or to get her into his power. Whichever it was – to blackmail her – for he'd cadged on her for money before her father died – or to scare her into going to him for help – I'd like to hunt the worthless hound down for it. And I'd never stop till I got him!"

"Like poor old Thompson's murderer," Macartney commented rather drily, "and with no more foundation." But the thought of Thompson seemed to have brought his self-command back to him; he tried to smooth Dudley down. "I don't honestly believe old Thompson could have been murdered," he said gently, "or that Miss Valenka's cousin could have stolen those jewels, for any reason. He seemed a pretty good sort when I knew him in British Columbia. He was a clever mining engineer, too."

"He might have been the devil for all I care! Only if ever I come across him I'll get those emeralds out of his skin," Dudley exploded. Paulette gave one glance at him. It would have killed me; but even Dudley saw how he was giving himself away to a stranger.

"Why under heaven do you work me up about abstract justice, Macartney?" he growled. "You know how I lose my temper. Talk about something else, for goodness sake!"

"Not I – I'm going to bed," Macartney returned casually. Dudley always did work himself up over things that were none of his business, and the Valenka argument evidently had not struck his superintendent as anything out of the ordinary. He nodded and went out. Paulette strayed to the fireplace, and I saw her handful of papers blaze up before she moved away. I was thankful when that signature of Tatiana Paulina Valenka was off the earth, even if Macartney had gone out of the room. Paulette said good night, and went out on his heels.

I heard Macartney ask her something as she passed him where he stood in the passage, getting on his coat to go over to the assay office, where he slept. I thought it was about Marcia, from the tone of his voice, and from Paulette's answer, cursory and indistinct through the closed door: "I know. I'm going to." She added something I could not hear at all, but I heard Macartney say sharply that to-morrow would be too late.

Paulette said "yes," and then "yes" again, as though he gave her a message. Then she spoke out clearly: "There's nothing else to say. I'll do it now." I heard her move away, I thought to Marcia's door. Macartney went out the front door, banging it.

I had no desire to go to bed. I felt as if I had walked from Dan to Beersheba and been knocked down and robbed on the way. I knew my dream girl was not mine, now or ever, because she was Dudley's, but I had never thought of her being anything like Tatiana Paulina Valenka. It was not the jewel story that hit me: I knew she had not stolen Van Ruyne's old necklace, no matter how things looked. It was that she must care for Dudley, or she would never have let him bring her out here. And another thing hit me harder still, and that was Hutton, – the cousin Macartney said was engaged to her, and Dudley said cadged on her, till he ended by branding her as a thief and getting away with the spoils. And the crazy thought that jumped into my head, without any earthly reason, was that it was just Hutton who had been hounding her at La Chance; that, while I had been addling my brains with suspecting Collins, it was Hutton that Paulette Brown – whose real name was Valenka – had stolen out to meet in the dark!

Once I thought of it, I was dead sure Hutton had followed her to La Chance. I knew from my own ears that she hated and distrusted the man for whom she had once mistaken me, that it was he from whom she had tried to protect my gold; and I wondered with a horror that made me too sick to swear, if it were Hutton himself, and not Dunn nor Collins, who had cached that wolf dope in my wagon! If it were, he had not cared about wolves killing the girl who drove with me, so long as he got my gold. But there I saw I was making a fool of myself, for he could not have known she was going. I steadied my mind on the thing, like you steady a machine.

If Hutton had been hanging around La Chance, either from so-called love, or to get Paulette into a mess with our gold, as Dudley swore he had with Van Ruyne's emeralds, he could not have been seen about the mine, – for Macartney would have recognized him and given him away. He must be cached in the bush somewhere, waiting his chance to grab our gold and incriminate Paulette, as common sense told me she expected. I was sure as death he had a gang somewhere, for no outsider would try to run that business alone; Collins and Dunn might have been on their way to join it the night they got scuppered, very likely: they were just devils enough. But if they had started out to meet Hutton at my corduroy road they had never got there, and I was pretty sure the rest of the gang hadn't either, and Hutton – alone – had been scared to shoot at us and give himself away.

That thought assured me of two things. It was Dunn and Collins who had hidden the wolf bait in my wagon, for Hutton could never have done it and reached the corduroy road before us; and Paulette must really hate Hutton savagely, for she must have known whom she was shooting at on my swamp road! That made me feel better – a little – but there was something I wanted to know. I turned on Dudley for it.

"Look here, I never heard anything about Valenka but newspapers' stories, till to-night. But, if you know the inside of the business, how did that cousin Macartney was talking of ever get hold of that emerald necklace? Didn't Macartney imply he was in British Columbia?"

"He was more likely anywhere than where he'd have to work – if he could get money out of a girl," Dudley snapped. "What I think is that he was masquerading as a servant in the Houstons' house – a chauffeur, perhaps – anything, that would let him hang round and drive a girl half wild. He was a plain skunk. I don't know how he managed the thing, but I know he was there in the Houstons' house, somehow, if Paulette doesn't think so" – he forgot all about the Valenka – "and that he took those emeralds; left the girl powerless even to think so; and disappeared. I never saw him; don't even know what he looks like. But if ever I get a chance I'll hand him over to the law as I'd hand a man I caught throwing a bomb at a child!"

I said involuntarily: "Shut up!" I knew it was silly, but I felt as if walls might have ears in a house that sheltered Paulette Brown, – though I knew Marcia was in bed and asleep, and there was no one else who could hear. "You're never likely to see him here, anyhow," I added, since I meant to see him myself first, somehow; after which I trusted he was not likely to matter. And I thought of something to change the subject. "What were you going to say to-night about no one having seen poor old Thompson – when you cut yourself off?"

"Oh, that," Dudley replied almost carelessly. "It mayn't amount to anything, and I only shut up because I didn't want Macartney to take the wind out of my sails by saying so. It was just that if Thompson ever went to Caraquet it ought to be simple enough to find the boy who took his horse back to Billy Jones, and – there's apparently no such boy in Caraquet! What set me on Billy Jones first was that he stammered and stuttered about not knowing him, till I don't believe there ever was any such boy. He's never been heard of since, any more than if he'd gone into the ground. And what I want to know is why? – if it's all straight about Thompson and Billy Jones!"

I was silent, remembering – I don't know why – the half-dead boy I had carried home to Skunk's Misery. There was no cause to connect him with the return of Thompson's horse to the Halfway, yet somehow my mind did connect him with it, obstinately. I had never really discovered how he had been hurt by a falling tree, and without reason some animal instinct told me the two things belonged together and that they were queer. But before I could say so, Dudley burst into unexpected speech, his little pig's eyes as fierce as a tiger's: "Look here, Stretton! I'm going to find out who drowned Thompson, and who took Van Ruyne's emeralds – and hand them both over to the law, if I die for it. And when I say that you know I mean it!"

I did. But once more I made no answer, for I thought I heard Marcia in the passage. I am quick on my feet, and I was outside the door before I finished thinking it. But it was not Marcia outside; it was only Macartney. Yet I stopped short and stared at him, for it was a Macartney I had never seen. He was close to the living-room door, just as if he had been listening to Dudley, and his face was the face of a devil. I never want to see set eyes like his again. But all the effect they had on me was to make me furiously angry, and I swore at him.

"What the devil's the matter with you, Macartney? What do you want?"

"My keys," roughly. "I left them somewhere around this passage and I had to come back for them; I couldn't get into my office. As for what's the matter" – he lowered his voice and motioned me some feet away, out of the light from the living-room door – "I heard all Wilbraham said just now, and by gad, the man's crazy! We've got to get him off all that rot about Billy Jones, or any one else, murdering Thompson; it's stark madness. Both of us know Billy wouldn't murder a cat! And there's another thing, too! I heard all Wilbraham said about that Valenka girl's cousin, and I wish you'd tell him to go slow on it. I was in too much of a rage, or I'd have gone in and told him myself. Dick Hutton was a friend of mine; no matter how much he was in love with a girl who'd got sick of him for Van Ruyne, he wasn't the kind to sneak round the Houstons' house as a servant. I won't let any one say that with impunity. It's no use my telling Wilbraham so in the state he's in to-night, but you might gently hint it when you've a chance. I wish to heaven he'd give up drink and drugs and being an amateur detective!" He shrugged his shoulders with a complete return to his ordinary manner. "I'm sorry I startled you just now, but I was too cursed angry to say I was here. Oh, there are my keys!" He stooped, picked them up off the floor, and went out with a careless good night.

"Was that Macartney?" Dudley inquired as I went back to him. "I thought he'd gone!"

"Forgot the office key and came back for it." I felt no call to enter on Macartney's embassy regarding Hutton. "Going to bed?"

Dudley gulped down a horn of whisky that would have settled any two men in the bunk house, nodded, and shut the door behind him. I put out the light and sat on in the living room alone, how long I don't know. I had nothing pleasant to think of, either. It was no use my trying to imagine that Tatiana Paulina Valenka was not going to marry Dudley, whatever I had hoped about Paulette Brown. As far as any chance of her loving me was concerned, I had lost my dream girl forever. She was none of my business any more, except that – "By gad, she is my business," I thought in a sudden bitter fury, "as far as Hutton and our gold! If I'm right, and he's hiding round here, I'll put a stopper on any more hold-ups. And I'll make good and sure she never goes out to meet him again, too!"