CHAPTER VI—THE JAWS OF THE TRAP
VOLEUR! Thief! Murder! Murder!”—it rose a high, piercing shriek, and the wind seemed to catch up the words and eddy them around, and toss them hither and thither until the storm and the night and the woods were full of ghouls chanting and screaming and gibbering their hideous melody: “Voleur! Thief! Murder! Murder!”
The girl, from the other side of the prostrate priest, rose in quick alarm to her feet, and lifted the lantern high above her head to peer down the road.
“Listen!” she cried. “What does it mean? See the lights there! Listen!”
The lantern lifted now, Raymond could no longer see the priest's face. He slipped his hand in desperately under the man's vest. He had felt there once before for the heart beat when he had first stumbled upon the other. In God's name, where was his nerve! He needed it now more than he had ever needed it in all his dare-devil career before. He had thought the priest had moved. If the man were alive, he, Raymond, was not only in a thousandfold worse case than if he had run for it and taken his chances—he had forfeited whatever chance there might have been. The mere fact that he had attempted to disguise himself, to assume the priest's garments as a means of escape, damned him utterly, irrevocably upon the spot. His hand pressed hard against the other's body. Yes, there was life there, a faint fluttering of the heart. No—no, it was only himself—a tremor in his own fingers. And then a miserable sense of disaster fell upon him. The wind howled, those shrieks still rang out, there came hoarse shouts and the pound of running feet, but above it all, distinct, like a knell of doom, came a low moan from the priest upon the ground.
Sharply, as though it were being suddenly seared and burned, Raymond snatched away his hand; and his hand struck against something hard, and mechanically he gripped at it. The man was alive! The glare of lanterns, many of them, flashed from the turn of the road. The village was upon the scene. The impulse seized him to run. There was the horse and wagon standing there. His lips tightened. Madness! That would be but the act of a fool! It was his wits, his brain, his nerve that was his only hope now—that cool, callous nerve that had never failed him in a crisis before.
A form, unkempt, with gray, streaming, dishevelled hair, rushed upon him and the priest, and thrust a lantern into the faces of them both. It was the old hag, old Mother Blondin.
“Here he is! Here he is!” she screamed. “It is he!”—her voice kept rising until, in a torrent of blasphemous invective, it attained an ear-splitting falsetto.
It seemed to Raymond that a hundred voices were all talking at once; that the villagers now, as they closed in and clustered around him, were as a multitude in their numbers; and there was light now, a blaze of it, from a host of accursed lanterns jiggling up and down, each striving to thrust itself a little further forward than its fellow. And then upon Raymond settled a sort of grim, cold, ironical composure. The stakes were very high.
“If you want your life, play for it!” urged a voice within him.
The old hag, in an abandoned paroxysm of grief, rage and fury, was cursing, and shaking her lantern and her doubled fist at the priest; and, not content with that, she now began to kick viciously at the unconscious form.
Raymond rose from his knees, and laid one hand quietly upon her arm.
“Peace, my daughter!” he said softly. “You are in the presence of Holy Church, and in the presence perhaps of death.”
She whirled upon him, her wrinkled old face, if possible, contorted more furiously than before.
“Holy Church!” she raved. “Holy Church! Ha, ha! What have I to do with Holy Church that kicked me from its doors! Will Holy Church give me back my son? And what have you to do with this, you smooth-faced hypocrite! It is the law I want, not you to stand there and mumble while you smugly paw your crucifix!”
It came quick and sharp—an angry sibilant murmur from the crowd, a threatening forward movement. Mechanically, Raymond's fingers fell away from the crucifix. It was the crucifix, dangling from his neck, that he had unconsciously grasped as he had snatched away his hand from the priest's body—and it was the crucifix that, equally unconscious of it, he had been grasping ever since. Strange that in his agitation he should have grasped at a crucifix! Strange that the act and his unconscious poise, as he held the crucifix, should have lent verisimilitude to the part he played, the rôle in which he sought sanctuary from death!
His hand raised again. The murmuring ceased; the threatening stir was instantly checked. And then Raymond took the old woman by the shoulders, and with kindly force placed her in the arms of the two nearest men.
“She does not know what she is saying,” he said gently. “The poor woman is distraught. Take her home. I do not understand, but she speaks of her son being given back to her, and——”
“It is a murder, mon père,” broke in one of the men excitedly. “She came running to the village a few minutes ago to tell us that her son had been killed. It is this man here in the road who did it. She recognises him, you see. There is the wound in his head, and she said she struck him there with a piece of wood while he was struggling with her son.”
The old woman was in hysteria now, alternately sobbing and laughing, but no longer struggling.
“Murdered! Her son—murdered!” Raymond gasped in a startled way. “Ah, then, be very good to her! It is no wonder that she is beside herself.”
They led her laughing and crying away.
“The law! The law! I demand the law on him!”—her voice, now guttural, now shrill, quavering, virulent, out of control, floated back. “Sacré nom de Dieu, a life for a life, he is the murderer of my son!”
And now, save for the howling of the storm, a silence fell upon the scene. Raymond glanced quickly about him. What was it now, what was it—ah, he understood! They were waiting for him. As though it were the most obvious thing in the world to do, as though no one would dream of doing anything else, the villagers, collectively and singly, laid the burden of initiative upon his clerically garbed shoulders. Raymond dropped upon his knees again beside the priest, pretending to make a further examination of the other's wound. He could gain a moment or two that way, a moment in which to think. The man, though still unconscious, was moaning constantly now. At any moment the priest might regain his senses. One thing was crucial, vital—in some way he must manouvre so that the other should not be removed from his own immediate surveillance until he could find some loophole of escape. Once the man began to talk, unless he, Raymond, were beside the other to stop the man's mouth, or at least to act as interpreter for the other's ramblings—the man was sure to ramble at first, or at least people could be made to believe so—he, Raymond, would be cornered like a rat in a trap, and, more to be feared even than the law, the villagers, in their fury at the sacrilege they would consider he had put upon them in the desecration of their priest, would show him scant ceremony and little mercy.
He was cool enough now, quite cool—with the grim coolness of a man who realises that his life depends upon his keeping his head. Still he bent over the priest. He heard a girl's voice speaking rapidly—that would be the girl with the great dark eyes who had come upon him with the lantern, for there was no other woman here now since he had got rid temporarily of that damnable old hag.
“... It is Father Aubert, the new curé. Labbée, at the station, told us he had arrived unexpectedly. We have brought his trunk that he was going to send for in the morning, and we drove fast hoping to catch up with him so that he would not have to walk all the way. We found him here kneeling beside that man there, that he had stumbled over as he came along. Labbée told us, too, of the other. He said the man seemed anxious to avoid Monsieur le Curé, and hung around the station until Father Aubert had got well started toward St. Marleau. He must have taken the path to the tavern, or he would not have been here ahead of Monsieur le Curé, and——”
Raymond reached into the open travelling bag on the ground beside him, took out the first article coming to hand that would at all serve the purpose, a shirt, and, tearing it, made pretense at binding up the priest's head.
“My thanks to you, mademoiselle!” he muttered soberly under his breath. “If it were not for the existence of that path——!” He shrugged his shoulders, and, his head lowered, a twisted smile flickered upon his lips.
The girl had ceased speaking. They were all clustered around him, watching him. Short exclamations, bearing little evidence of good will toward the unconscious man, came from first one and then another.
“... Meurtrier!... He will hang in any case! ... The better for him if he dies there!... What does it matter, the blackguard!...”
Raymond rose to his feet.
“No,” he said reprovingly. “It is not for us to think in that way. For us, there is only a very badly wounded man here who needs our help and care. We will give that first, and leave the rest in the hands of those who have the right to judge him if he lives. See now, some of you lift him as carefully as possible into the wagon. I will hold his head on my lap, and we will get to the village as quickly as we can.”
It was a strange procession then that began to wend its way toward the village of St. Marleau. The wagon proved to be a sort of buckboard, and Raymond, clambering upon it, sitting with his back propped against the seat, held the priest's head upon his knees. Upon the seat itself the girl and her uncle resumed their places. With the unconscious man stretched out at full length there was no room for the trunk; but, eager to be of service to their new curé, so kind and gentle and tender to even a criminal for whom the law held nothing in reserve but the gallows and a rope, who was tolerant even of Mother Blondin in her blasphemies, the villagers quarrelled amongst themselves for the privilege of carrying it.
They moved slowly—that the wounded man might not be too severely jarred. Constantly the numbers around the wagon were augmented. Women began to appear amongst them. The entire village was aroused. St. Marleau in all its history had known no such excitement before. A murder in St. Marleau—and the murderer caught, and dying they said, was being brought back to the village in the arms of the young curé, who had, a cause even for added excitement, arrived that evening instead of to-morrow as had been expected. Tongues clacked and wagged. It was like a furious humming accompaniment to the howling of the wind. But out of respect to the curé who held the dying man on his knees, they did not press too closely about the wagon.
They passed the “tavern,” which was lighted now in every window, and some left the wagon at this point and went to the “tavern,” and others who had collected at the “tavern” joined the wagon. They began to descend the hill. And now along the road below, to right and left, lights twinkled from every house. They met people coming up the hill. There were even children now.
Head bent over the priest, that twisted smile was back on Raymond's lips. The man moaned at intervals, but showed no further sign of returning consciousness. Would the other live—or die? Raymond's hands, hidden under the priest's head, were clenched. It was a question of his own life or the other's now—wasn't it? What hell-inspired ingenuity had flung him into this hideous maze in which at every twist and turn, as he sought some avenue of escape, he but found, instead, the way barred against him, his retreat cut off, and peril, like some soulless, immutable thing, closing irrevocably down upon him! He dared not leave the priest; he dared not surrender the other for an instant—lest consciousness should return. But if the man died!
Raymond's face, as a ghastly temptation came, was as white as the upturned face between his knees. If the man died it would be simple enough. For a few days, for whatever time was necessary, he could play the rôle of priest, and then in some way—his brain was not searching out details now, there was only the sure confidence in himself that he would be equal to the occasion if only the chance were his—then in some way, without attendant hue and cry, without the police of every city in America loosed upon him, since the “murderer” of the old hag's son would be dead, he could disappear from St. Marleau. But the man was not dead—yet. And why should he even think the man would die! Because he hoped for it? His lips twitched; and his hands, with a slow, curious movement, unclenched, and clenched again—and then with a sort of mental wrench, his brain, alert and keen, was coping with the immediate situation, the immediate danger.
The girl and her uncle were talking earnestly together on the seat. And now, for all that he had not thrust himself forward in what had so far transpired, the man appeared to be of some standing and authority in the neighbourhood, for, turning from the girl, he called sharply to one of the crowd. A villager hurried in response to the side of the wagon, and Raymond, listening, caught snatches of the terse, low-toned instructions that were given.
The doctor at Tournayville, and at the same time the police... yes—to-night... at once....
“Bien sur!” said the villager briskly, and disappeared in the crowd.
Then the girl spoke. Raymond could not hear very distinctly, but it was something about her mother being unprepared, and from that about a room downstairs, and he guessed that they were discussing where they would take the wounded man.
He straightened up suddenly. That was a subject which concerned him very intimately. There was only one place where the priest could go, and that was where he, Raymond, went. They were on the village street now, and, twisting his head around to look ahead, he could make out the shadowy form of the church steeple close at hand.
“Monsieur,” he called quietly to the man on the seat, “we will take this poor fellow to the presbytère, of course.”
“Oh, but, Father Aubert”—the girl turned toward him quickly—“we were just speaking of that. It would not be at all comfortable for you. You see, even your own room there will not be ready for you, since you were not expected to-night, and you will have to take Father Allard's, so that if this man went there, too, there would be no bed at all for you.”
“I hardly think I shall need any bed to-night, mademoiselle,” Raymond said gravely. “The man appears to be in a very critical condition. I know a little something of medicine, and I could not think of leaving him until—I think I heard your uncle say they were going to Tournayville for a doctor—until the doctor arrives.”
“Yes, Monsieur le Curé,” said the man, screwing around in his seat, “that is so. I have sent for the doctor, and also for the police—but it is eight miles to Tournayville, and on a night like this there will be a long while to wait, even if the doctor is to be found at once.”
“You have done well, monsieur,” commended Raymond—but under his breath, with a savage, ironical jeer at himself, he added: “And especially about the police, curse you!”
“But, Monsieur le Curé,” insisted the girl anxiously, “I am sure that——”
“Mademoiselle is very kind, and it is very thoughtful of her,” Raymond interposed gratefully; “but under the circumstances I think the presbytère will be best. Yes; I think we must decide on the presbytère.
“But, yes, certainly—if that is Monsieur le Curé's wish,” agreed the man. “Monsieur le Curé should know best. Valérie, jump down, and run on ahead to tell your mother that we are coming.”
Valérie! So that was the girl's name! It seemed a strangely incongruous thought that here, with his back against the wall, literally fighting for his life, the name should seem somehow to be so appropriate to that dark-eyed face, with its truant, wind-tossed hair, that had come upon him so suddenly out of the darkness; that face, sweet, troubled, in distress, that he had glimpsed for an instant in the lantern's light. Valérie! But what was her other name? What had her mother to do with the presbytère, that the uncle should have sent her on with that message? And who was the uncle, this man here, and what was his name? And how much of all this was he, as Father Aubert, supposed already to know? The curé of the village, Father Allard—what correspondence, for instance, had passed between him and Father Aubert? A hundred questions were on his lips. He dared not ask a single one. They had turned in off the road now and were passing by the front of the church. He lowered his head close down to the priest's. The man still moaned in that same low and, as it were, purely mechanical way. Some one in the crowd spoke:
“They are taking him to the presbytère.”
At the rear of the wagon, amongst the bobbing lanterns, surrounded by awe-struck children and no less awe-struck women, he saw the trunk being trundled along by two men, each grasping one end by the handle. The crowd took up its spokesman's lead.
... To the presbytère.... They are going to the presbytère.... The curé is taking him to the presbytère...
“Yes, damn you!” gritted Raymond between his teeth. “To the presbytère—for the devil's masquerade!”
CHAPTER VII—AT THE PRESBYTÈRE
IT was Valerie who held the lamp; and beside her in the doorway stood a gentle-faced, silverhaired, slim little old lady—and the latter was another Valerie, only a Valerie whom the years in their passing had touched in a gentle, kindly way, as though the whitening hair and the age creeping upon her were but a crowning. And Raymond, turning to mount the stoop of the presbytère, as some of the villagers lifted the wounded priest from the wagon, drew his breath in sharply, and for an instant faltered in his step. It was as though, framed there in the doorway, those two forms of the women, those two faces that seemed to radiate an innate sanctity, were like guardian angels to bar the way against a hideous and sacrilegious invasion of some holy thing within. And Valerie's eyes, those great, deep, dark eyes burned into him. And her face, that he saw now for the first time plainly, was very beautiful, and with a beauty that was not of feature alone—for her expression seemed to write a sort of creed upon her face, a creed that frankly mirrored faith in all around her, a faith that, never having been startled, or dismayed, or disillusioned, and knowing no things for evil, accepted all things for good.
And Raymond's step faltered. It seemed as though he had never seen a woman's face like that—that it was holding him now in a thrall that robbed his surroundings momentarily of their danger and their peril.
And then, the next instant, that voice within him was speaking again.
“You fool!” it whispered fiercely. “What are you doing! If you want your life, play for it! Look around you! A false move, a rational word from the lips of that limp thing they are carrying there behind you, and these people, who believe where you mock, who would kneel if you but lifted your hand in sign of benediction, would turn upon you with the merciless fury of wild beasts! You fool! You fool! Do you like the feel of hemp, as it tightens around your neck!”
And then Raymond lifted his head, and his eyes, and with measured pace walked forward up the steps to where the two women stood.
Valérie's introduction was only another warning to him to be upon his guard—she seemed to imply that he naturally knew her mother's name.
“Father Aubert, this is my mother,” she said.
With a sort of old-world grace, the elder woman bowed.
“Ah, Monsieur le Curé,” she said quickly, “what a terrible thing to have happened! Valérie has just told me. And what a welcome to the parish for you! Not even a room, with that pauvre unfortunate, misérable and murderer though he is, and——”
“But it is a welcome of the heart, I can see that,” Raymond interposed, and smiled gravely, and took both of the old lady's hands in his own. “And that is worth far more than the room, which, in any case, I shall hardly need to-night. It is you, not I, who should have cause to grumble, for, to my own unexpected arrival, I bring you the added trouble and inconvenience of this very badly wounded and, I fear, dying man.”
“But—that!” she exclaimed simply. “But Monsieur le Curé would never have thought of doing otherwise! Valérie meant only kindness, but she should not have made any other suggestion. It is for nothing else, if not this, the presbytère! Le pauvre misérable”—she crossed herself reverently—“even if he has blood that thought of doing otherwise! Valérie meant only kindness, but she should not have made any other suggestion. It is for nothing else, if not this, the presbytère! Le pauvre misérable”—she crossed herself reverently—“even if he has blood that is not his own upon him.”
They were coming up the steps, carrying the wounded priest.
“This way!” said the little old lady softly. “Valérie, dear, hold your lamp so that they can see. Ah, le pauvre misérable; ah, Monsieur le Curé!”
The girl leading, they passed down a short hallway, entered a bedroom at the rear of the house, and Valérie set the lamp upon the table.
Raymond motioned to the men to lay the priest upon the bed. He glanced quietly about him, as he moved to the priest's side. He must get these people away—there were reasons why he should be alone. Alone! His brain was like some horrible, swirling vortex. Why alone? For what reasons? Not that hellish purpose that had flashed so insidiously upon him out there on the ride down to the presbytère! Not that! Strange how outwardly calm, how deadly calm, how composed and self-possessed he was, when such a thought had even for an instant's space found lodgment in his soul. It was well that he was calm, he would need to be calm—he was doing what that inner monitor had told him to do—he was playing the game—he was playing for his life. Well, he had only to dismiss these men now, who hung so curiously awe-struck about the bed, and then get rid of the women—no, they had gone now; Valérie, with her beautiful face, and those great dark eyes; and the mother, whose gray hair did not seem to bring age with it at all, and—no, they were back again—no, they were not—those were not women's steps entering the room.
He had been making pretence at loosening the priest's collar, and he looked up now. The trunk! He had forgotten all about the trunk. The newcomers were two men carrying the trunk. They set it down against the wall near the door. It was a little more than probable that they had seized the opportunity afforded by the trunk to see what was going on in the room. They would be favoured amongst their fellows without! They, too, hats in hand, stared, curious and awe-struck, toward the bed.
“Thank you, all of you,” Raymond heard himself saying in a low tone. “But go now, my friends, go quietly; madame and her daughter will give me any further assistance that may be needed.”
They filed obediently from the room—on tiptoe—their coarse, heavy boots squeaking the more loudly therefor. Raymond's hands sought the priest's collar again, to loosen it this time with a definite object in view. He had changed only his outer garments with the other. He dared not have the priest undressed until he had made sure that there were no tell-tale marks on the underclothing; a laundry number, perhaps, that the police would pounce instantly upon. He found himself experiencing a sort of facetious soul-grin—detectives always laid great stress upon laundry marks!
Again he was interrupted. With the collar in his hand, his own collar, that he had removed now from the priest's neck, he turned to see Valérie and her mother entering the room. They were very capable, those two—too capable! They were carrying basins of water, and cloths that were obviously intended for bandages. He had not meant to use any bandages, he had meant to—what?
He forced a grave smile of approval to his lips, and nodded his head.
The elder woman glanced about her a little in surprise.
“Oh, are the men gone!” she exclaimed. “Tiens! The stupids! But I will call one of them back, and he will help you undress le pauvre, Father Aubert.”
It was only an instant before Raymond answered; but it seemed, before he did so, that he had been listening in a kind of panic for long minutes dragged out interminably to that inner voice that kept telling him to play the game, play the game, and that only fools lost their heads at insignificant little unexpected denouements. She was only suggesting that the man should be undressed; whereas the man must under no circumstances be undressed until—until——
“I think perhaps we had better not attempt it in his condition until the doctor arrives, madame,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, as though his words were weighted with deliberation. “It might do far more harm than good. For the present, I think it would be better simply to loosen his clothing, and make him as comfortable as possible in that way.”
“Yes; I think so, too,” said Valérie—she had moved a little table to the bedside, and was arranging the basins of water and the cloths upon it.
“Of course!” agreed the little old lady simply. “Monsieur le Curé knows best.”
“Yes,” said Valérie, speaking in hushed tones, as she cast an anxious look at the white, blood-stained face upon the bed, “and I think it is a mercy that Father Aubert knows something about medicine, for otherwise the doctor might be too late. I will help you, Monsieur le Curé—everything is ready.”
He knew nothing about medicine—there was nothing he knew less about! What fiend had prompted him to make such a claim!
“I am afraid, mademoiselle,” he said soberly, “that my knowledge is far too inadequate for such a case as this.”
“We will be able to do something at least, father”—there was a brave, troubled smile in her eyes as she lifted them for an instant to his; and then, bending forward, with deft fingers she removed the torn piece of shirt from the wounded man's head.
And then, between them, while the mother watched and wrung out the cloths, they dressed the wound, a ghastly, unsightly thing across the side of the man's skull—only it was Valerie, not he, who was efficient. And strangely, as once before, but a little while before, when out there in front of the house, it was Valerie, and not the man, and not the wound, and not the peril in which he stood that was dominant, swaying him for the moment. There was a wondrous tenderness in her hands as she worked with the bandages, and sometimes her hands touched his; and sometimes, close together, as they leaned over the bed together, her hair, dark, luxuriant, brushed his cheek; and the low-collared blouse disclosed a bare and perfect throat that was white like ivory; and the half parted lips were tender like the touch of her fingers; and in her face at sight of the gruesome wound, bringing an added whiteness, was dismay, and struggling with dismay was a wistful earnestness and resolution that was born of her woman's sympathy; and she seemed to steal upon and pervade his senses as though she were some dream-created vision, for she was not reality at all since his subconsciousness told him that in actual reality no one existed at all except that moaning thing upon the bed—that moaning thing upon the bed and himself—himself, who seemed to be swinging by a precarious hold, from which even then his fingers were slipping away, over some bottomless abyss that yawned below him. “Valérie! Valérie!” He was repeating her name to himself, as though calling to her for aid from the edge of that black gulf, and——
“Fool!” jeered that inner voice. “Have you never seen a pretty girl before? She'd be the first to turn upon you, if she knew!”
“You lie!” retorted another self.
“Where's Three-Ace Artie gone?” inquired the voice with cold contempt.
Raymond straightened up. Valérie, turning from the bed, gathered the basins and soiled cloths together, and moved quietly from the room.
“Will he live, father?”—it was the little gray-haired woman, Valérie's mother, Valérie's older self, who was looking up into his face so anxiously, whose lips quivered a little as she spoke.
Would the man live! A devil's laugh seemed suddenly to possess Raymond's soul. They would be alone together, that gasping, white-faced thing on the bed, and himself; they would be alone together before the doctor came—he would see to that. There had been interruption, confusion... his brain itself was confusion... extraneous thoughts had intervened... but they would be alone presently. And—great God!—what hellish mockery!—she asked him if this man would live!
“I am afraid”—he was not looking at her; his hand, clutching at the skirt of the soutane he wore, closed and tightened and clenched—“I am afraid he will not live.”
“Ah, le pauvre!” she whispered, and her eyes filled with tears. “Ah, Monsieur le Curé, I do not know these things so well as you. It is true that he is a very guilty man, but is not God very good and tender and full of compassion, father? Oh, I should not dare to say these things, for it is you who know what is right and best”—she had caught his sleeve, and was leading him across the room. “And Mother Church, Monsieur le Curé, is very merciful and very tender and very compassionate too—and, oh—and, oh—can there not be mercy and love even for such as he—must he lose his soul too, as well as his life?”
Raymond, in a blind, wondering way, stared at her. The tears were streaming down her cheeks now. They had halted before a low, old-fashioned cupboard, an armoire much like the armoire in the old hag's house, and now she opened the doors in the lower portion, and took out a worn and rusty black leather bag, and set it upon the top of the armoire.
“It is only to show you where it is, father, if—if it might be so—even for him—the Sacrament”—and, turning, she crossed the room, and meeting Valérie upon the threshold drew the girl away with her, and closed the door softly.
It was a bag such as the parish priests carried with them on their visits to the sick and dying. Raymond eyed it sullenly. The Sacrament!
“What have I to do with that!” he snarled beneath his breath.
“Are you not a priest of God?”
He whirled like a flash, startled, sweeping his glances around the room. And then he laughed in smothered, savage relief. It was only that voice within that chose a cursed mockery this time to put him upon his guard.
He was staring now at the sprawled form on the bed, at a red stain that was already creeping through the fresh bandages. His face grew hard and set; a flush came and died away, leaving it an ashen gray.
And then he stepped to the door—and listened—and locked it.
CHAPTER VIII—THOU SHALT NOT KILL
IT seemed as though the stillness of death were already in the room; a stillness that was horrible and unnerving in contrast with the shrill swirling of the wind without, and the loud roar and pound of the waves breaking upon the shore close at hand beneath the windows.
His face still set as in a rigid mould, features drawn in hard, sharp lines, then ashen gray now even upon the lips, Raymond crossed from the door to the nearer of the two windows. It was black outside, inky black, unnaturally black, relieved only by a wavering, irregular line of white where the waves broke into foam along the rocky beach—and this line, as it wavered, and wriggled, and advanced, and receded seemed to lend an uncanny ghostlike aspect to the blackness, and, as he strained his eyes out of the window, he shuddered suddenly and drew back. But the next instant he snarled fiercely to himself. Was he to lose his nerve because it was black outside, and because the waves were running high and creaming along the shore! He would have something shortly that would warrant him in losing his nerve if he faltered now—the hemp around his neck, rasping, chafing at his throat, the horrible prickling as the rough strands grew taut!
He clutched at his throat mechanically, rubbing it with his fingers mechanically—and, as fiercely as before, snarled again. Enough of this! He was neither fool nor child. There was a sure way out from that dangling noose, cornered, trapped though he was—and he knew the way now. He reached up and drew down the window shade, and passed quickly to the other window and drew down the shade there as well.
And then he turned, and stepped to the bed, and bent over the priest.
There was the underclothing first. He must make sure of that—that there would be no marks of identification—that there would be nothing to rise up against him, a mute and mocking witness to his undoing. He loosened the man's clothing. It would not be necessary to take off the outer garments. It was much easier here with the man on a bed, and a light in the room than it had been out there on the road, and—ah! Lips compressed, he nodded sharply to himself. The undergarments were new. That precluded laundry marks—unless the man had had some marking put upon them himself. No, there was nothing—nothing but the maker's tag sewn in on the shirt at the back of the neck. He turned the priest over on the bed to complete his examination. There was nothing on any other part of the garments. The socks, then, perhaps? He pulled up the trousers' legs hurriedly. No, there was nothing there, either. He reached out to turn the priest over again—and paused. He could snip that maker's tag from the neck of the shirt just as easily in the position in which the man now lay, and—and the man's face would not be staring up at him. There was a cursed, senseless accusation in that white face, and the lip muscles twitched as though the man were about to shout aloud, to scream out—murder! If only the fool had died out there in the woods, and would stop that infernal low moaning noise, and those strangling inhalations as he gasped for breath!
Automatically, Raymond's fingers sought his penknife in its accustomed place in his vest pocket—and slipped down a smooth, unobstructed surface. His eyes followed his fingers in a sort of dazed, perplexed way, and then he laughed a little huskily. The soutane! He had forgotten for the moment that he was a priest of God! It was the other who wore the vest, it was in the other's pocket that the knife was to be found. He had forgotten the devil's masquerade in the devil's whispering that was in his soul!
He snatched the knife from the vest pocket, opened it, cut away the cloth tag, and with infinite pains removed the threads that had held the tag in place. He returned the knife to the vest pocket, and tucked the little tag away in one of his own pockets; then hastily rearranged the other's clothing again, and turned the man back into his original position upon the bed.
And now! He glanced furtively all around the room. His hands crept out, and advanced toward the priest. It was a very easy thing to do. No one would know. No one but would think the man had died naturally. Died! It was the first time he had allowed his mind to frame a concrete expression that would fit the black thing that was in his soul.
A bead of sweat spurted out from his forehead. His hands somehow would not travel very fast, but they were all the time creeping nearer to the priest's throat. He had only to keep on forcing them on their way... and it was not very far to go... and, once there, it would only take an instant. God, if that white face would not stare up at him like that... the eyes were closed of course... but still it stared.
Raymond touched his lips with the tip of his tongue, and again and again circled the room with his eyes. Was that somebody there outside the window? Was that a step out there in the passageway? Were those voices that chattered and gibbered from everywhere?
He jerked back his hands, and they fell to his sides, and he shivered. What was it? What was the matter? What was it that he had to do? It wasn't murder. That was a lie! The man wouldn't live anyhow, but he might live long enough to talk. It was his life or the other's, wasn't it? If he were caught now, there was no power on earth could save him. On earth? What did he mean by that? What other power was there? It was only a trite phrase he had used.
What was he hesitating about? It was the only chance he had.
“Get it done! Get it done, and over with, you squeamish fool!” prodded that inner voice savagely.
His hands crept out again. Of course! Of course! He knew that. He must get it done and over with. Only—only, great God, why did his hands tremble so! He lifted one of them to his forehead and drew it away dripping wet. What did that voice want to keep nagging him for! He knew what he had to do. It was the only way. If the priest were dead, he, Raymond, would be safe. There would be no question as to who the murderer of Blondin was—and the priest would be buried and that would be the end of it. And—yes! He had it all now. It was almost too simple! He, Raymond, as the curé of the village, after a day or two, would meet with an accident. A boating accident—yes, that was it! They would find an upturned boat and his hat floating on the water perhaps—but they would never find the body! He need only, in the interval of those few days, gather together from somewhere some clothes into which he could change, hide in the woods after the “accident,” and at night make his final escape.
“Of course!” snapped the voice impatiently. “I've been telling you that all along! There would be no further investigation as to the murder; and only a sorrowful search along the shore, free from all suspicion, for the body of Father Aubert. Well, why don't you act? Are you going to fling your life away? Are you afraid? Have you forgotten that it is growing late, that very soon now the doctor and the police will be here?”
Afraid! No; he wasn't afraid of God or devil, or man or beast—that was his creed, wasn't it? Only that damnable face still stared up at him, and he couldn't get his hands near enough to—to do the work.
Slowly, inch by inch, his face as white and set as chiselled marble, his hands crept forward again. How soft the bare, exposed throat looked that was almost at his finger tips now. Would it feel soft to the touch, or—he swayed unsteadily, and crouched back, that cold shiver passing over him. It was strange that he should shiver, that he should find it cold. His brain was afire, and it whirled, and whirled, and whirled; and devils laughed in his soul—and yet he stood aghast at the abhorrent deed.
Wait! He would be able to think clearly in an instant. He must do it—or die himself. Yes, yes; it was the touch of his flesh against the other's flesh from which he shrank, the feel of his fingers on the other's throat that held him back—that was it! Wait! He would remedy that. That would have been a crude, mad way in any case. What had he been thinking of! It would have left a mark. It would have been sure to have left a mark. Perhaps they would not have noticed it, but it would have invited the risk. There was a better way, a much better way—and a way in which that face wouldn't be able to stare up at him any more, a way in which he wouldn't hear that moaning, and that rattling, and that struggling for breath. The man was almost dead now. It was only necessary to take that other pillow there, and hold it tightly over the other's face. That wouldn't leave any mark. Yes, the pillow! Why hadn't he thought of that before! It would have been all over by now.
Once more his hands began to creep up and outward. He leaned far over the bed, reaching for the pillow—and something came between the pillow and his hands. He glanced downward in a startled way. It was the crucifix hanging from his neck. With a snarl, he swung it away. It came back and struck against his knuckles. He tried to wrench it from his neck. It would not come—but, instead, one hand slipped through the chain, and pushed the crucifix outward, and for an instant held it there between him and that white, staring face. He pulled his hand away. And the crucifix swung backward and forward. And he reached again for the pillow, and the crucifix was still between. And his hands, trembling, grew tangled in the chain.
“Thou shalt not kill!”—it was not that inner voice; it was a voice like the girl's, like Valerie's, soft and full of a divine compassion. And her fingers in tenderness seemed to be working with that bandaged head; and the dark eyes, deep and steadfast, were searching his soul. “Thou shalt not kill!”
And with a low, horror-stricken cry, Raymond staggered backward from the bed, and dropped into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.