VI
The Beau’s thin lips twitched like a snarling dog’s. “Damn you!” he shouted. “I tell you I did. You’re not going to railroad her to the guillotine.”
“Of course not,” soothed Bailey. “I’m not in the habit of railroading people. I know you fairly well, Nash, and I thought that telegram would do the trick. You see, folks, I sent a wire, signed by one of the Beau’s apache friends, telling him that his sweetheart, Mazie Lee, had been arrested for this murder, and that she would be railroaded. As a matter of fact, Miss Lee is already on her way to England.”
Nash grated his teeth. “You devil.”
“It won’t do any good to indulge In personalities. I know who the murderer is, and I’ll produce him very shortly. Before I do, I want to clear up all the threads. I suppose everyone knows that the Beau is a member of a most respected family in Sussex, England. He organized the London Bank Gang, and later operated extensively in the United States. Sheppard, his cousin, was also a member of that gang. Now I want you, Denise, to tell me why you helped him, and why you confessed to Sheppard’s murder.”
The girl looked at Nash, paled, and then said bravely, “I was afraid that my father had killed him, as he had often threatened to do, and I wanted to protect him.”
“Your father?” said Bailey questioningly.
Denise made a gesture toward Monsieur Robert, the blind man.
“Nash and Sheppard had my father in their power. I aided them whenever they demanded it to save him. They treated me brutally at times, but I never dared resent it. When Sheppard was killed I believed that father did it. The thought was natural, for he was on his way to Marseilles with Nash’s cousin, and it could have been done while Sheppard slept. But father believed that I had slipped in, and killed the fellow. So he confessed to save me.”
Bailey pressed her cold fingers reassuringly. “It was very noble—very self-sacrificing of you both. But why did you assume the blame, Monsieur Bertal?”
“I,” said the chemist, his ascetic lips tightening, “was once a member of the London Bank Gang. I am an Englishman, though I have lived so long in France that I have almost forgotten the fact. Nash, with Sheppard’s connivance, did me a great wrong—never mind what. I pretended to have forgotten, and aided him while he was in Marseilles. But I had not forgotten — the old scars were still open. Through him I came to know Denise, and love her as a father. I writhed impotently at his treatment of her, which, to a girl of her spirit, was intolerable. When Sheppard was killed I had reasons to believe that she had done it, though there were others just as eager. When I learned of her arrest I decided to sacrifice myself for her. I am old and of little use—while she— Well, it doesn’t matter.
“Sheppard, I suppose, had intended carrying nothing on his person that would identify him if anything happened. But he overlooked one of my cards. It was probably due to that that Nash believed I had killed his cousin, and in revenge sent his apaches to erase me from the scheme of things. I apologize for striking you, Bailey, but I wanted them to succeed, for I am very tired of life.”
“Have you anything to say, Nash?” asked the agent.
“Everything they’ve said is true,” Beau growled. “But I’d like to know who killed Johnny—damn his murderer!”
“The man who killed Sheppard thought he was you.”
Nash looked at Bailey with narrowing eyes.
“Who was it? You’ve got me just as you caught Eddie Lenoir, and the rest of the old gang, but I’m satisfied so long as Mazie is safe. If those apaches of mine had been just a bit quicker they would have killed you, and my plan would have worked out perfectly. But they didn’t. Now, the least you can do is to tell me who killed Johnny Sheppard.”
Bill touched a bell on the prefect’s desk. Two burly gendarmes came in with a stoop-shouldered, slack-chinned man of middle age between them—the man who had annoyed Bailey with his chatter in the Restaurant Haxo the day before.
“Harry Carstairs, by God!” cried Nash, taking an involuntary step backward.
“The murderer of John Sheppard, Beau,” said Bailey quietly, “and the man whose wife and fortune you stole—”
“I— I—why, I thought he was dead. How—how did you find him, Bailey—”
“I’ll admit that it was as much a matter of good luck as judgment,” the agent admitted. “Every indication pointed to Sheppard having been murdered in mistake for Nash. In his day the Beau made many enemies, but the man who had most cause to hate him was Harry Carstairs, The case is notorious even yet in the criminal circles of London. But Carstairs had disappeared—dropped out of sight entirely. He was reported to have died in Antwerp years ago.”
Sheppard had been killed by someone on the train—someone in his particular car. I eliminated the three passengers — Mademoiselle Girard, Madame Berthier and Monsieur Robert. That should leave only a member of the train crew. I examined the roof of the car. By the scratches of hobnailed shoes, it was apparent that someone had laid there, then swung down to the steps. I knew that in his earlier days Carstairs had been a railroader on the Midland and Sussex. Then, like a flash, I recalled a conversation I had heard in the Restaurant Haxo yesterday afternoon — a railway man berating an inferior for having kept out of sight all the way from Paris to Marseilles.
“So I lined up the crew, and picked out the man who had been in the restaurant. He denied any knowledge of the crime, of course. When I called him Carstairs, and outlined what I believed to have happened, he broke down, and confessed that he actually committed the crime.
“In the words of the song, that’s all there is, there isn’t any more.” He took Denise’s hand, “except for one thing. Will you come to America with me?”
She bowed her splendid head.
“Yes,” she whispered, “I’ll go anywhere in the world—with you!”