His interest had been trapped in spite of himself. "You are telling the truth, Julia? You are telling the truth ?" he said with bated breath.
"Bonny," she murmured deprecatingly.
"You are telling the truth? You did not know, actually, what the intent was ?"
"Why do I kneel here at your feet like this? Why are there tears of regret in my eyes? Look at them well. What shall I say to you, what shall I do? Shall I take an oath on it? Fetch a Bible. Open it before me. Hold its pages to my heart as I speak."
He had never seen her cry before. He wondered if she ever had. She cried as one unused to crying, who leashes it, stifles it, not knowing what it is, rather than one who has many times before made use of it for her own ends, and hence knows it is an advantage and lets it flow untrammelled, even abets it.
He waved aside the suggestion that his own skepticism had produced. "And then? And then ?" he pressed her.
"We walked the full length of the deck three times, in harmonious intimacy, as women will together." She stopped for a moment.
"What is it?"
"Something I just remembered. And wish I had not. Her arm was about my waist as we walked. Mine was not about hers, at least, but hers was about me. She chattered again about you, endlessly about you. It was always you, only you."
She drew a breath, as if again feeling the tension of that night, that promenade upon the lonely, darkened deck.
"Nothing happened. He did not accost us. At every shadow I had been ready to stifle a scream, but none of them was he. At last I had no further excuse to keep her out there with me. She asked me how my headache was, and I said it was gone. And she couldn't have dreamed the relief with which I told her so.
"I took her back to her door. She turned to me a moment, I remember, and even kissed my hand in fond good night, she was so taken with me. She said 'I'm so glad we've met, Charlotte. I've never really had a woman friend of my very own. You must come and see me and my--' and then she faltered prettily--'my new husband, visit with us, as soon as we're settled. I shall want new friends badly in my new life.' And then she opened her door and went in. Unharmed, untouched. I even heard her bolt it fast after her on the inside.
"And that was the last I ever saw of her."
She came to a full halt, as if knowing this was the time for it, to gain fullest the effect she wished to achieve.
"No more than that you participated?" he said slowly.
"No more than that I participated. No more than that I took part in it, whatever it was.
"I have thought of it since then," she resumed presently. "I see now what it was, what it must have been. I didn't at the time, or I would never have left her. I had thought he meant to accost her on the deck in some way; brutalize her into some predicament from which she could only extricate herself later by payment of money, or even steal some memento from her to be redeemed later in the same way, to preserve your trust in her and her own good name. It even occurred to me, as I made my way back to my own cabin alone, he might have changed his mind entirely, discarded the whole intention, whatever it had been. I'd known him to do that before, after a scheme was already under way, and without notifying me until afterward."
She shook her head sombrely. "No, he hadn't.
"He must have inserted himself in the cabin while she was gone from it with me, and lain in wait there on the inside. He wanted the opportunity, that was why he had me stroll the deck with her."
"But later--he never told you in so many words what happened in there, inside that cabin of hers?"
She shook her head firmly. "He never told me in so many words. Nor could I draw it out of him. He had no moments of confidence, no moments of weakness, especially not with women. The way in which he told me of it was not meant to be believed; I knew that, and he knew that as well. It was just a catch phrase, to gloss over a thing, to have done with it as quickly as possible. And yet that is the only way in which he would tell me of it, from first to last. And I must be content with that, that was all I got."
"And what was that ?"
"This is the way in which he told me of it, word for word. He came and knocked surreptitiously upon my door, and woke me, about an hour before daylight, when the whole boat was still asleep. He was fully dressed, but whether newly so or still from the night before, I don't know. He had a single scratch on his forehead, over the eyebrow. A very small one, not more than a half-inch mark. And that was all.
"He came in, closed the door carefully, and said to me very business-like and terse in manner, 'Get dressed, I want you for something. Your lady friend of last night had an accident awhile ago and fell from the boat in the dark. She never came up again.' And then he flung my various things at me, stockings and such, one by one, to hurry me along. That was all he told me, then or ever again, that she'd had an accident and fallen from the boat in the dark."
"But you knew?"
"How could I help but know? I told him I knew. He even so much as agreed I might know, admitted I might know. But his answer for that was 'What are you going to do about it?'
"I told him that wasn't in our bargain. 'Card-games are one thing, this another.'
"He carefully took off his ring first, so it wouldn't mar my skin, and he gave me the back of his hand several times, until my head swam, and, as he put it, 'it had taken a little of the religion out of me.' He threatened me. He said if I accused him, he would accuse me in turn. That we would both be jailed for it alike. And I had been seen with her, and he hadn't. That it would serve neither one of us any good, and undo the two of us alike. He also threatened, finally, that he would kill me himself if necessary, as the quickest way of stopping my mouth, if I tried to get anyone's ear.
"Then when he saw he had me sufficiently cowed and intimidated to listen, he reasoned with me. 'She's gone now beyond recall,' he pointed out, 'nothing you can do will bring her back up over the side, and there's a hundred thousand dollars waiting for you when you step off this boat in New Orleans tomorrow.'
"He swung back the door for me, and I adjusted my clothing, and followed him out.
"He took my baggage, the little I had, into his cabin and blended it with his. And hers we removed, between us, from her cabin to mine, to take the place of my own. Not forgetting that caged bird of hers. He took from his pocket her letters from you, and the photograph you had sent her, and I put them in my own pocketbook. And then we bided our time and waited.
"In the confusion of docking and disembarking she was not missed. No passenger remembered her, they were all busy with their own concerns. And each baggage-handler, if he noted her empty cabin at all, must have thought some other baggage-handler had taken charge of her and her belongings. We left the boat separately, he at the very beginning, I almost at the last. And that was not noticed either.
"I saw you standing there, and knew you from your photograph, and when at last the dock had cleared, I approached and stopped there by you. And there's the story, Lou."
She stopped, and settled back upon her own upturned heels, and her hands fell lifeless to her lap, as if incapable of further gesture. She seemed to wait thus, inert, deflated, for the verdict, for his judgment to be passed upon her. Everything about her sloped downward, shoulders, head, and even the curve of her back; only one thing turned upward: her eyes, fixed beseechingly upon his graven face.