Three-Ace Artie's fingers were twisting themselves around the bag of gold that he had picked up from the table.
“I thought so!” he snarled. “You were yellow this afternoon. I thought you hadn't the nerve to come here, unless you figured you were safe some way or another. And so you think you are going to hide behind a dead man and the sanctimonious pathos of a dying message! Well, I'll see you both damned first! Do you hear!” White to the lips with the fury that, gathering all through the night, was breaking now, he started toward the other, his hand clutching the bag of gold.
Involuntarily the miner stepped back still closer to the door.
“That's not the way out for you!” whispered Three-Ace Artie hoarsely. “If you take it, I'll drop you in the snow before you're ten yards up the street! Damn you, we'll play this hand out now for keeps! You've started something, and we'll finish it. You've rid the camp and rid Alaska of a tainted smell, have you? You sneaked around behind my back with your cursed righteousness to give me a push further on the road to hell! I know your kind—and, by God, I know your breed! Four years ago on the White Pass you took a man's last dollar for a hunk of bread. He could pay or starve! You sleek skunk—do you remember? Your conscience has been troubling you perhaps, and so you went around the camp and collected this, did you—this!” He held up the bag of gold above his head. “No? You didn't recognise me again? Well, no matter—take it back! Tell Ton-Nugget Camp I gave it back to you—to keep!” In a flash his arm swept forward, and, with all his strength behind it, he hurled the bag at the other's head.
It struck full on the miner's forehead—and dropped with a soft thud on the floor. The man reeled backward, swayed, and clawed at the wall of the shack for support—and while he swayed a red spot dyed his forehead, and a crimson stream ran zigzag down over eye and cheek.
And Three-Ace Artie laughed, and stooped, and picked up his kit bag, and swung one strap over one shoulder as before—Sergeant Marden, stern-faced, was standing on the threshold of the open door.
“I guess my luck is out after all. You win, Murdock!” smiled Three-Ace Artie grimly—and brushed past the sergeant out of the shack.
The dog-team was standing before the door. He dropped his kit bag on the sled, and strode on down the street. Here and there lights were beginning to show from the shack windows. Once a face was pressed against a pane to watch him go by, but no voice spoke to him. It was silent, and it was dark.
Only the snow was white. And it was cold—cold as death.
Presently Sergeant Marden and the dog-team caught up with him.
“He'll need a stitch or two in his head,” said the sergeant gruffly.
Raymond Chapelle, alias Arthur Leroy, alias Three-Ace Artie, made no reply. In his soul was anarchy; in his heart a bitter mockery that picked a quarrel with Almighty God.
CHAPTER III—THE CURÉ
RAYMOND CHAPELLE, once known as Three-Ace Artie, and now, if the cardcase in his pocket could be relied upon for veracity, as one Henri Mentone—though the cardcase revealed neither when nor where that metamorphosis had taken place, nor yet again the nature of Monsieur Henri Mentone's pursuits in life—was engaged in the rather futile occupation of staring out through the car window into a black and objectless night. He was not, however, deeply concerned with the night, for at times he shifted his gaze around the smoking compartment, which he had to himself, and smiled cynically. The winter of the Yukon had changed to the springtime of lower French Canada—it was a far cry from Ton-Nugget Camp, from Dawson and the Pacific, to the little village of St. Marleau on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where the river in its miles of breadth was merging with the Atlantic Ocean!
St. Marleau! That was where Canuck John had lived, where the old folks were now—if they were still alive. The cynical smile deepened. The only friend he had was—a dead man! The idea rather pleased him, as it had pleased him ever since he had started for the East. Perhaps there was a certain sentimentality connected with what he was about to do, but not the sickly, fool sentimentality that he had been weak enough to be guilty of with the Kid in Ton-Nugget Camp! He was through with that! Here, if it was sentiment at all, it was a sentiment that appealed to his sporting instincts. Canuck John had put it up to him—and died. It was a sort of trust; and the only man who trusted him was—a dead man. He couldn't throw a dead man down!
He laughed softly, drumming with his carefully manicured fingers on the window pane. Besides, there was too much gossip circulating between the Pacific Coast and Alaska to make it profitable for a gambler who had been kicked out of the Yukon for malpractice to linger in that locality—even if he had shaved off his beard! The fingers, from the window pane, felt in a sort of grimly ruminative way over the smooth, clean-shaven face. So, as well East as anywhere, providing always that he gave Montreal a wide berth—which he had!
Canuck John, of course, had not meant to impose any greater trust than the mere writing of a letter. But, like Murdock Shaw and the rest of Ton-Nugget Camp, he, Raymond, did not know Canuck John's name. If Canuck John had ever told him, and he had a hazy recollection that the other once had done so, he had completely forgotten it. Of St. Marleau, however, Canuck John had spoken scores of times. That made a letter still possible, of course—to the postmaster of St. Marleau. But it was many years since Canuck John had left there; Canuck John could not write himself and therefore his people would have had no knowledge of his whereabouts, and to write the postmaster that a man known as Canuck John had died in Ton-Nugget Camp was, to say the least of it, open to confusing possibilities in view of the fact that in those many and intervening years Canuck John was not likely to have been the only one who had left his native village to seek a wider field. And since he, Raymond, was coming East in any event, he was rather glad than otherwise that for the moment he had a definite objective in view.
Anyway, Canuck John had been a good sort—and that was all there was to it! And, meanwhile, this filled in, as it were, a hiatus in his own career, for he had not quite made up his mind exactly in what direction, or against whom specifically, he could pit his wits in future—to the best advantage to himself. One thing only was certain, henceforth he would be hampered by no maudlin consideration of ethics, such, for instance, as had enabled him to state truthfully to the Kid that he had never stacked a card in his life. To the winds with all that! He had had his lesson! Fish to his net, hereafter, would be all that came his way! If every man's hand was against him, his own would not remain palsied! For the moment he was in funds, flush, and well provided for; and for the moment it was St. Marleau and his dead friend's sorry legacy—to those who might be dead themselves! That remained to be seen! After that, as far as he was concerned, it was sauve qui peut, and—
Monsieur Henri Mentone looked up—and, with no effort to conceal his displeasure, Monsieur Henri Mentone scowled. A young priest had entered the smoking compartment, and was now in the act of settling himself on the opposite seat.
“Good evening,” nodded the other pleasantly. “I think we have been travelling companions since Quebec.” He produced a cigar, lighted it, and smiled. “It is not a very pleasant night, is it? There appears to be a very high wind.”
Raymond Chapelle rattled a newspaper out of his pocket, rattled it open brusquely—and retired behind it.
“It appears to be windy!” he growled uninvitingly.
He glanced at the remainder of his cigar. It was a very good cigar, and he did not care to sacrifice it by giving the other all the elbow room that the entire smoking compartment of the car afforded—as he, otherwise, would not have hesitated an instant to do! If his soul had nurtured any one especial hatred in its late period of bitter and blasphemous fury, it was a hatred of religion and all connected with it. He detested the sight of a priest. It always made him think of that night in Ton-Nugget Camp when memories had got the better of him. A priest of God! He hated them all. And he made no distinction as between creeds. They were all alike. They were Murdock Shaws! And he, if his father had had his way, would now be wearing a soutane, and dangling a crucifix from his neck, and sporting one of those damnable round hats like the man in front of him!
“Do you know this country at all?” inquired the priest.
“I do not,” Raymond answered curtly from behind his paper.
The other did not appear to notice the rebuff.
“No more do I,” he said engagingly. “I have never been below Quebec before, and I am afraid, unfortunately, that I am about to suffer for my ignorance. I am going to St. Marleau.”
Raymond lowered his paper, and for the first time gave the other more than a casual glance. He found his vis-à-vis to be dark-eyed, of rather pleasant features—this he admitted grudgingly—and a young man of, he judged, about his own age.
“What is the matter with St. Marleau?” Personal interest prompted him to ask the question; nothing could prompt him to infuse even a hint of affability into his tones.
The priest shrugged his shoulders, and smiled whimsically.
“The matter with St. Marleau is that it is on the bank of the river, and that the station is three miles away. I have been talking to the conductor. I did not know that before.”
Raymond had not known it before either. The information did not please him. He had taken it as a matter of course that the railroad would set him down at the village itself.
“Well?” he prompted sourly.
“It was what caused me to take a particular interest in the weather”—the priest waved his cigar philosophically. “I shall have to walk, I presume. I am not expected until to-morrow, and the conductor tells me there is nothing but a small station where we stop.”
Raymond would have to walk too.
“It is unfortunate!” he observed sarcastically. “I should have thought that you would have provided against any such contingencies by making inquiries before you started.”
“That is true,” admitted the priest simply. “I am entirely to blame, and I must not complain. I was pleasurably over-excited perhaps. It is my first charge, you see. The curé of St. Marleau, Father Allard, went away yesterday for a vacation—for the summer—his first in many years—he is quite an old man”—the young priest was waxing garrulous, and was no longer interesting. Raymond peered out of the car window with a new and personal concern in the weather. There was no rain, but the howl of the wind was distinctly audible over the roar of the train.
“I was to have arrived to-morrow, as I said”—the priest was rattling on—“but having my preparations all completed to-day and nothing to detain me, I—well, as you see, I am here.”
Raymond was picturing realistically, and none too happily, a three-mile walk on a stormy night over a black, rutted country road. The prospect was not a soothing one.
“Monsieur is perhaps a commercial traveller?” ventured the young curé amiably, by way of continuing the conversation.
Raymond folded his paper deliberately, and replaced it in his pocket. There was a quick, twisted smile on his lips, but for the first time his voice was cordiality itself.
“Oh, no,” he said. “On the contrary, I make my living precisely as does Monsieur le Curé, except perhaps that I have not always the same certainty of success.”
“Ah!” The young priest leaned forward interestingly. “Then you——”
“Yes,” said Raymond, and now a snarl crept into his voice. “I let some one else toil for the money—while I hold out the hat!” He rose abruptly, and flung his cigar viciously in the general direction of the cuspidor. “I am a parasite on my fellow men, monsieur—a gambler,” he said evenly, and walked to the door.
Over his shoulder he caught the amazement on the young priest's face, then the quick, deep flush of indignation—and then the corridor shut him off from the other, and he chuckled savagely to himself.
He passed on into the main body of the car, took his bag from the rack over the seat that he had occupied, and went on into the next car in the rear. The priest, he had noticed, had previously been occupying the same car as himself. He wanted no more of the other! And as for making a companion of him on the walk from the station to St. Marleau, he would sooner have walked with the devil! As a matter of fact, he was prepared to admit he would not have been wholly averse to the devil's company. But a priest of God! The cynical smile was back on his lips. They were all alike—he despised them all. But he nevertheless confessed to a certain commiseration; he was sorry for God—the devil was much less poorly served!
CHAPTER IV—ON THE ROAD TO ST. MARLEAU
RAYMOND descended from the train on the opposite side from the station platform. He proposed that Monsieur le Curé, pro tem., of St. Marleau, should have a start sufficient to afford a guarantee against the possibility of any further association with the other that night!
A furious gust of wind eddied down the length of the train, caught at his travelling bag, and banged it violently against his knees. He swore earnestly to himself, as he picked his way further back across the siding tracks to guard against the chance of being seen from the platform when the train started on again. It was obviously not going to be a pleasant experience, that walk! It was bad enough where he stood, here on the trackside, somewhat sheltered by the train; in the open the wind promised to attain the ferocity of a young tornado!
The train pulled out; and across the tracks a light glimmered from a window, and behind the light a building loomed up black and formless. The light, filtering out on the platform, disclosed two figures—the priest, and, evidently, the station agent.
Raymond sat down on his bag and waited. It was intensely dark, and he was far enough away to be secure from observation. He grinned maliciously, as he watched a shadowy sort of pantomime in which the priest clutched and struggled continually with his soutane as the wind kept wrapping it around his legs.
The other might be less infatuated with skirts by the time St. Marleau was reached!
The two figures moved down the platform together, and Raymond lost sight of them in the darkness. He rose, picked up his bag, walked a few yards along the track in the opposite direction to that which they had taken, crossed over the mainline, and clambered upon the platform. Here he stumbled over a trunk. The curé's, presumably! He continued on along the platform slowly—under the circumstances a little information from the station agent would not come in amiss. He jammed his slouch hat firmly down on his head, and yanked the brim savagely over his eyes against the wind. This was likely to prove considerably more than he had bargained for! Three miles of it! And for what! He began to call himself a fool. And then, the station agent returning alone from the lower end of the platform, head down, buffeting the wind, and evidently making for the curé's trunk to house it for the night, Raymond stepped forward and accosted the other.
The man brought himself up with a jerk. Raymond drew the other into the shelter of the station wall. In the meagre light from the window a few yards away, he could make out the man's face but very indistinctly; and the other, in his turn, appeared equally at a disadvantage, save that, possibly, expecting it to be an acquaintance from the village, he found a stranger instead.
“'Cré nom!” ejaculated the man in surprise. “And where did you come from?”
“From the train—naturally,” Raymond answered. “You were busy with some one, and I waited.”
“Yes, that is so! I see!” The other nodded his head. “It was Father Aubert, the young curé who is come to the village. He has but just started, and if you are going to St. Marleau, and hurry, you will have company over the road.”
“Never mind about him!” said Raymond shortly. “I am not looking for that kind of company!”
“Tiens!” exclaimed the man a little blankly. “Not that kind of company—but that is strange! It is a bad night and a lonely walk—and, I do not know him of course, but he seemed very pleasant, the young curé.”
“I daresay,” said Raymond, and shrugged his shoulders. “But I do not intend to walk at all if I can help it. Is there no horse to be had around here?”
“But, no!”—the other's tones expressed mild reproof at the question. “If there had been, I would have procured it for the curé. There is nothing. It is as near to the village as anywhere.”
“And that is three miles!” muttered Raymond irritably.
“It is three miles by the road, true, monsieur; but the village itself is not nearly so far. There is a short cut. If you take the path that leads straight ahead where the road turns off to the left to circle the woods, it will bring you to the brow of the hill overlooking the village and the river, and you will come out just where the road swings in again at the tavern. You save at least a mile.”
Raymond brightened.
“Ah! A tavern!” he cried. “That is better! I was beginning to think the cursed——”
“But—wait!” the man laughed suddenly. “It is not what you think! I should not advise you to go there.”
“No?” inquired Raymond, “and why not?”
“She is an old hag, an excommuniée, old Mother Blondin, who lives there—and her son, who is come back for the past week from God knows where with a scar all over his ugly face, is no better. It is not a tavern at all. That is a name we have for it amongst ourselves. We call it the tavern because it is said that she makes her own whiskey-blanc and sells it on the sly, and that there are some who buy it—though when her son is back she could not very well have enough for any customers. He has been drunk for a week, and he is a devil.”
“Your Mother Blondin is evidently no fool!” observed Raymond ironically. “And so it is said there are some who buy it—eh? And in turn I suppose she could buy out every farmer in the village! She should have money, your Mother Blondin! Hers is a profitable business.”
“Yes,” said the other. “For me, that is the way I look at it. It is gossip that her stocking is well lined; but I believe the gossip. It is perhaps well for her if it is so, for she will need it. She is getting old and does not see very well, though, bon Dieu, she is still sharp enough with her wits! But”—his shoulders lifted in a shrug—“the way to the village, eh? Well, whether you take the road or the path, you arrive at Mother Blondin's. You go down the hill from there, and the village is on each side of you along the bank of the river. Ask at the first house, and they will show you the way to Madame Dussault's—that is the only place to go. She keeps a boarding house whenever there is anybody to board, for it is not often that any stranger comes to St. Marleau. Are you going to stay long?”
“I don't know,” said Raymond pleasantly—and ignored the implied invitation for further confidences.
“Well, if you like,” offered the station agent, “you can leave your bag here, and it can go over with the cure's trunk in the morning. He said he would send somebody for it then. You won't find it easy carrying that bag a night like this.”
“Oh, it's only a small one; I guess I can manage it all right,” said Raymond lightly. He extended his hand—the priest was far enough along by now so that he would not overtake the other; and, though it was still early, not much after eight o'clock, the countryside was not given to keeping late hours, and, if he was to reach St. Marleau before this Dussault household, for instance, had retired for the night, it was time he started. “Much obliged for the information! Goodnight!” he smiled, and picked up his bag—and a moment later, the station behind him, was battling in the face of furious wind gusts along the road.
It was very dark; and the road was execrable, full of ruts and hollows into which he was continually stumbling. He had a flashlight in his bag; but, bad as the walking was, it was, after all, he decided, the lesser of the two evils—if he used the flashlight, he ran a very large risk of inviting the companionship of the priest ahead of him! Also, he had not gone very far before he heartily regretted that he had not foregone the few little conveniences that the bag contained, and had left the thing behind. The wind, as it was, threatened to relieve him of it a score of times. Occasionally he halted and turned his back, and stood still for a breathing spell. His mood, as he went along, became one that combined a sullen stubbornness to walk ten miles, if necessary, once he had started, and an acrimonious and savage jeer at himself for having ever been fool enough to bring about his present discomfiture.
Finally, however, he reached the turn of the road referred to by the station agent, and here he stood for a moment debating with himself the advisability of taking the short cut. His eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, he could distinguish his surroundings with some distinctness, and he made out a beaten track that led off in the same direction which, until then, he had been following; but also, a little beyond this again, he made out a black stretch of wooded land. He shook his head doubtfully. The short cut was a mere path at best, and he might, or might not, be able to follow it through the trees. If he lost it, and it would be altogether too easy a thing to do, his predicament would not be enviable. It was simply a question of whether the mile he might save thereby was worth the risk. He shook his head again—this time decisively.
“I'm not much on the 'straight and narrow' anyhow!” he muttered facetiously—and started on again, following the road.
Gradually the road and the trees began to converge; and presently, the road swerving again, this time sharply toward the river, he found himself travelling through the woods, and injected into the midst of what seemed like the centre of some unearthly and demoniacal chorus rehearsing its parts—the wind shrieked through the upper branches of the trees, and moaned disconsolately through the lower ones; it cried and sobbed; it screamed, and mourned, and sighed; and in the darkness, still blacker shapes, like weird, beckoning arms, the limbs swayed to and fro. And now and then there came a loud, ominous crackle, and then a crash, as a branch, dried and rotten, came hurtling to the ground.
“Damn it,” confessed Raymond earnestly to himself, “I don't like this! I wish St. Marleau was where Canuck John is now!”
He quickened his pace—or, rather, tried to do so; but it was much blacker here than out in the open, and besides the road now appeared to be insanely full of twists and turns, and in spite of his efforts his progress was no faster.
It seemed interminable, never-ending. He went on and on. A branch crashed down louder than before somewhere ahead of him. He snarled in consonance with the wind-shrieks and the wind-moans that now came to hold a personal malevolence in their pandemonium for himself. His coat caught once on a projecting branch and was torn. He cursed Canuck John, and cursed himself with abandon. And then abruptly, as the road twisted again, he caught the glimmer of a light through the trees—and his eyes upon the light, rather than upon the ground to pick his way, he stumbled suddenly and pitched forward over something that was uncannily soft and yielding to the touch.
With a startled cry, Raymond picked himself up. It was the body of a man sprawled across the road. He wrenched open his bag, and, whipping out his flashlight, turned it upon the other.
The man lay upon his back, motionless, inert; the white, ghastly face, blood-streaked, was twisted at a sharp angle to the body, disclosing a gaping wound in the head that extended from the temple back across the skull—and a yard away, mute testimony to its tragic work, lay the rotten limb of a tree, devoid of leaves, perhaps ten feet in length and of the thickness of one's two fists, its end jagged and splintered where it had snapped away from its parent trunk.
It was the priest—Father Aubert, the young curé of St. Marleau.
CHAPTER V—THE “MURDER”
RAYMOND stooped to the other's side. He called the man's name—there was no answer. He lifted the priest's head—it sagged limply back again. He felt quickly for the heart beat—there was no sign of life. And then Raymond stood up again.
It was the nature of the man that, the sudden shock of his discovery once over, he should be cool and unperturbed. His nerves were not easily put to rout under any circumstances, and a life in the Great North, where the raw edges were turned only too often, left him, if not calloused, at least composed and, in a philosophical way, unmoved at the sight before him.
“Tough luck—even for a priest!” he muttered, not irreverently. “The man's dead, right enough.”
He glanced around him, and his eyes fixed again on the glimmer of light through the trees. That was the tavern undoubtedly—old Mother Blondin's, the excommuniée. He shrugged his shoulders, and a grim smile flickered across his lips. She too had her quarrel with the church, but even so she would hardly refuse temporary sanctuary to a dead man. The priest couldn't be left here lying in the road, and if Mother Blondin's son was not too drunk to help carry the body to the house, it would solve the problem until word could be got to the village.
He took up his bag—he could not be cumbered with that when he returned to get the priest—and, the trees sparser here on what was obviously the edge of the woods, with the window light to guide him and his flashlight to open the way, he left the road and began to run directly toward the light.
A hundred yards brought him out into a clearing—and then to his disgust he discovered that, apart possibly from another rent or two in his clothing, he had gained nothing by leaving the road. It had evidently swung straight in toward the house from a point only a few yards further on from where he had left the priest, for he was now alongside of it again!
He grinned derisively at himself, slipped his flashlight into his pocket—and, on the point of starting toward the house, which, with only a small yard in front of it, was set practically on the edge of the road itself, he halted abruptly. There was only one lighted window that he could see, and this was now suddenly darkened by a shadowy form from within, and indistinctly he could make out a face pressed close against the window pane.
Raymond instinctively remained motionless. The face held there, peering long and intently out into the night. It was rather strange! His own approach could not have been heard, for the howl of the wind precluded any possibility of that; and neither could he be seen out here in the darkness. What was it that attracted and seemed to fascinate the watcher at the window? Mechanically, he turned his head to look behind and around him. There was nothing—only the trees swaying in the woods; the scream and screech, and the shrill whistling of the wind; and, in addition now, a rumbling bass, low, yet perfectly distinct, the sullen roar of beating waves. He looked back at the window—the face was gone.
Raymond moved forward curiously. There was no curtain on the window, and a step or two nearer enabled him to see within. It was a typical bare-floored room of the habitant class of smaller house that combined a living room and kitchen in one, the front door opening directly upon it. There was a stove at one end, with a box of cordwood beside it; drawn against the wall was a table, upon which stood a lighted lamp; and a little distance from the table, also against the wall, was an old, gray-painted, and somewhat battered armoire, whose top was strewn with crockeryware and glass dishes—there was little else in evidence, save a few home-made chairs with thong-laced seats.
Raymond's brows gathered in a puzzled frown. Diagonally across the room from the window and directly opposite the stove was a closed door, and here, back turned, the man who had been peering out of the window—for the man was the only occupant of the room—was crouched with his ear against the panel. His bewilderment growing, Raymond watched the other. The man straightened up after a moment, faced around into the room, and, swaying slightly, a vicious smile of satisfaction on his lips, moved stealthily in the direction of the table.
And now Raymond had no difficulty in recognising the man from the station agent's vivid, if cursory, description. It was Mother Blondin's son. A devil, the agent had called the other—and the man looked it! An ugly white scar straggled from cheek bone to twisted lip, the eyes were narrow and close set, the hair shaggy, and the long arms dangling from a powerful frame made Raymond think of a gorilla.
Reaching the table, the man paused, looked furtively all around the room, and again appeared to be listening intently; then he stretched out his hand and turned the lamp half down.
Raymond's frown deepened. The other was undoubtedly more or less drunk, but that did not explain the peculiar and, as it were, ominous way in which he was acting. What was the man up to? And where was Mother Blondin?
The man moved down the room in the direction of the stove; and, the light dim now, Raymond stepped close to the window for a better view. The man halted at the end of the room, once more looked quickly all about him, gazed fixedly for an instant at the closed door where previously he had held his ear to the panel—and reached suddenly up above his head, the fingers of both hands working and clawing in a sort of mad haste at an interstice in the wall where the rough-squared timbers came imperfectly together.
And then Raymond smiled sardonically. He understood now. It was old Mother Blondin's “stocking”! She had perhaps not been as generous as the son considered she might have been! The man was engaged in the filial occupation of robbing his own mother!
“Worthy offspring—if the old dame doesn't belie her reputation!” muttered Raymond—and stepped to the front door. “However, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and, if the priest suffered, Mother Blondin can at least thank my interruption incident thereto for the salvage of her cash.” He opened the door and walked in coolly. “Good evening!” he said pleasantly.
The man whirled from the wall—and with a scream, half of pain and half of startled, furious surprise, was jerked back against the wall again. His hand was caught as though in a trap. The hiding place had quite evidently been intended by Mother Blondin for no larger a hand than her own! The man had obviously wormed and wriggled his hand in between the timbers—and his hand would not come out with any greater ease than it had gone in! He wrenched at it, snarling and cursing now, stamping with his feet, and hurling his maledictions at Raymond's head.
“It is not my fault, my friend,” said Raymond calmly. “Shall I help you?”
He started forward—and stopped halfway across the room. The man had torn his hand loose, sending a rain of coin clinking to the floor, and, fluttering after it like falling leaves, a score or two of banknotes as well; and now, leaping around, he snatched up a heavy piece of the cordwood, and, swinging it about his head, his face working murderously, sprang toward Raymond.
The bag dropped from Raymond's hand, and his face hardened. He had not bargained for this, but if——
With a snarl and an oath the man was upon him; the cordwood whistled in its downward sweep, aimed full at his head. He parried the blow with his forearm, and, with a lightning-like movement, side-stepped and sent his right fist crashing to the other's jaw.
It staggered the man for an instant—but only for an instant. Bellowing with rage, dropping the cordwood, heedless of the blows that Raymond battered into his face, by sheer bulk and weight he closed, his arms circling Raymond's neck, his fingers feeling for a throat-hold.
Around the room they staggered, swaying, lurching. The man was half drunk, and, caught in the act of thievery, his fury was demoniacal. Again and again Raymond tried to throw the other off. The man was too big, too powerful for close quarters, and his only chance was an opportunity to use his fists. They panted heavily, the breath of the one hot on the other's cheek; and then, as they swung, Raymond was conscious that the door of the rear room was open, and that a woman was standing on the threshold. It was only a glance he got—of an old hag-like face, of steel-rimmed spectacles, of tumbling and dishevelled gray hair—the man's fingers at last were tightening like a vise around his throat.
But the other, too, had seen the woman.
“Voleur! Thief!” he yelled hoarsely. “Smash him on the head with the stick, mother, while I hold him!”
“You devil!” gritted Raymond—and with a wrench, a twist, his strength massed for the one supreme effort, he tore himself loose, hurling the other backward and away from him.
There was a crash of breaking glass as the man smashed into the armoire; a wild laugh from the woman in the doorway—and, for the first time, a cry from Raymond's lips. The man snatched up a revolver from the top of the armoire.
But quick as the other was, Raymond was quicker as he sprang and clutched at the man's hand. His face was sternly white now with the consciousness that he was fighting for no less than his life. Here, there, now across the room, now back again they reeled and stumbled, struggling for possession of the weapon, as Raymond strove to tear it from his antagonist's grasp. And now the woman, screaming, ran forward and picked up the piece of cordwood, and circling them, screaming still, aimed her blows at Raymond.
One struck him on the head, dazing him a little... his brain began to whirl... he could not wrench the revolver from the man's hand... it seemed as though he had been trying through an eternity... his hands seemed to be losing their strength... another desperate jerk from the other like that and his hold would be gone, the revolver in the unfettered possession of this whisky-maddened brute, whose lips, like fangs, were flecked with slaver, in whose eyes, bloodshot, burned the light of murder... his fingers were slipping from their grip, and——
There was a blinding flash; the roar of the report; the revolver clattered to the floor; a great, ungainly bulk seemed to Raymond to waver and sway before him in most curious fashion, then totter and crash with an impact that shook the house—or was it that ghastly, howling wind!—to the ground.
Raymond reeled back against the armoire, and hung there gasping, panting for his breath, sweeping his hand again and again across his forehead. He was abominably dizzy. The room was swinging around and around; there were two figures, now on the ceiling, now on the floor—a man who lay flat on his back with his arms and legs grotesquely extended, and whose shirt was red-splotched; and a hag with streaming gray hair, who rocked and crooned over the other.
“Dead! Dead! Dead!”—the wail rose into a high and piercing falsetto. The hag was on her feet and running wildly for the front door. “Murder! Thief! Murder! Murder!”
The horrible screeching died away; and a gust of wind, swirling in through the door that blew open after the woman, took up the refrain: “Murder—murder—murder!”
His head ached and swam. He was conscious that he should set his wits at work, that he should think—that somehow he was in peril. He groped his way unsteadily to where his bag lay on the floor. As he reached it, the wind blew the lamp out. He felt around inside the bag, found his flask, and drank greedily.
The stimulant cleared his brain. He stood up, and stared around him in the darkness. His mind was active enough now—grimly active. If he were caught, he would swing for murder! He had only acted in self-defence, he had not even fired the shot, the revolver had gone off in the man's own hand—but there wasn't a chance for him, if he were caught. The old hag's testimony that he had come there as a thief—that was what undoubtedly she believed, and undoubtedly what she would swear—would damn him. And—cursed irony!—that conversation with the station agent, innocent enough then, would corroborate her now! Nor had he any reputation to fall back upon to bolster up his story if he faced the issue and told the truth. Reputation! He could not even give a plausible account of himself without making matters worse. A gambler from the Klondike! The roué of Montreal! Would that save him!
His only hope was to run for it—and at once. It could not be very far to the village, and it would not be long before that precious old hag had alarmed the community and returned with the villagers at her heels. But where would he go? There were no trains! It would be a man-hunt through the woods, and with so meagre a start that sooner or later they would get him. And even if he evaded them at first he would have no chance to get very far away from that locality, and ultimately he would have to reckon on the arrival of the police. It was probable that old Mother Blondin could not recognise him again, for the light had been turned down and she was partially blind; and he was certain that the station agent would not know his face again either—but both could, and would, supply a general description of his dress, appearance and build that would serve equally as well to apprehend him in that thinly populated country where, under such circumstances, to be even a stranger was sufficient to invite suspicion.
Well, if to run for it was his only chance, he would take it! He stooped for his bag, and, in the act, stood suddenly motionless in a rigid sort of way. No! There was perhaps another plan! It seemed to Raymond that he held his breath in suspense until his brain should pass judgment upon it. The priest! The dead priest, only a little way off out there on the road! No—it was not visionary, nor wild, nor mad. If they found the man that they supposed had murdered the old woman's son, they would not search any further. That was absurdly obvious! The priest was not expected until to-morrow. The only person who knew that the priest had arrived, and who knew of his, Raymond's, arrival, was the station agent. But the quarry once run to earth, there would be no reason for anybody, as might otherwise be the case in a far-flung pursuit, going to the station on a night like this. The priest's arrival therefore would not become known to the villagers until the next morning at the earliest, and quite probably not until much later, when some one from the village should drive over to meet the train by which he was expected to arrive. As a minimum, therefore, that gave him ten or twelve hours' start—and with ten or twelve hours free from pursuit, he could take very good care of the “afterwards”! Yes, it was the way! The only way! From what the priest had said in the train, it was evident that he was a total stranger here, and so, being unknown, the deception would not be discovered until the station agent told his story. Furthermore, the wound in the priest's head from the falling limb of the tree would be attributed to the blow the old hag had struck him on the head with the cordwood! The inference, plausible enough, would be that he had run from the house wounded, only to drop at last to the ground on the spot where the priest, dressed as the murderer, was found! And besides—yes—there was other evidence he could add! The revolver, for instance!
Quick now, his mind made up, Raymond snatched the flashlight from his pocket, swept the ray around the floor, located the weapon, and, running to it, picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Every second was counting now. It might be five, or ten, or fifteen minutes before they got back from the village, he did not know—but every moment was priceless. There was still work to be done out there on the road, even after he was through here!
He was across the room now by the rear wall, gathering up the coins and bills that the dead man had scattered on the floor. These, like the revolver, he transferred to his pocket. A thief, had been their cry. That was the motive! Well, he would corroborate it! There would be no mistake—until to-morrow—about their having found the guilty man!
His hand was a slimmer hand than Blondin's—it slipped easily into the chink between the timbers. It was like a hollow bowl inside, and there was more money there. He scooped it out. Twice his hand went in again, until the hiding place was empty; and then, running back across the room, he grabbed up his bag, and rushed from the house.
An instant he paused to listen as he reached the road; but there was only the howl of the storm, no sound that he could hear as yet from the direction of the village—though, full of ominous possibilities, he did not know how far away the village was!
He ran on again at top speed, flashing his way along with his light, the wind at his back aiding him now. It would not matter if a stray gleam were seen by any one, if he could only complete his work in time—it would only be proof, instead of inference, that the murderer had run from the house along the road to the spot where he was found.
He reached the priest, set down his bag, and, taking up the broken limb of the tree, carried it ten yards away around the turn of the road, and flung it in amongst the trees; then he was back once more, and bending over the priest. He worked swiftly now, but coolly and with grim composure, removing the priest's outer garments. He noted with intense relief that there was no blood on the clerical collar—that the blood, due to the twisted position of the other's head, had trickled from the cheek directly to the ground. It would have been an awkward thing—blood on the collar!
It was not easy work. The limp form seemed a ton-weight in his arms, as he lifted it now this way, now that, to get off the other's clothes. And at times he recoiled from it, though the stake he was playing for was his life. It was unnerving business, and the hideous moaning of the wind made it worse. And mostly he must work by the sense of touch, for he could not hold the flashlight and still use both hands. But it was done at last, and now he took off his own clothes, and hastily donned the priest's.
He must be careful now—a single slip, something overlooked in his pockets perhaps might ruin everything, and the ten or twelve hours' start, that was all he asked for, would be lost; but, equally, the pockets must not be too bare! He was hurriedly going through his discarded garments now. Mother Blondin's money and the revolver, of course, must be found there.
The cardcase, yes, that could not do any harm... there were no letters, no one ever wrote to him... the trifling odds and ends must be left in the pockets too, they lent colour if nothing else... but his own money was quite a different matter, and he had the big sum in bills of large denominations with him that he had exchanged for the pokes of gold dust which he had brought from the Yukon. He tucked this money securely away under the soutane he was now wearing, and once more bent over the priest.
He had now to dress the priest in his, Raymond's, clothes. It was not readily accomplished; it was even more difficult than it had been to undress the man; and besides, as he worked now, he found himself fighting to maintain his coolness against a sort of reckless haste to have done with it that was creeping upon him. It seemed that he had been hours at the work, that with every second now the villagers in full cry must come upon him. Curse it, could he never button that collar and knot that tie! Why did the man's head wobble like that! The vest now! Now the coat!
He stood up finally at the end, and flirted his hand across his brow. His forehead was clammy wet. He shivered a little; then, lips tight, he pulled himself together. He must make certain, absolutely certain that he had done nothing, or left nothing undone to rob him of those few precious hours that were so necessary to his escape.
He nodded after a moment in a kind of ghastly approval—he had even hung the other's crucifix around his neck! There remained only the exchange of hats, and—yes, the bag—was there anything in the bag that would betray him? He dropped his own hat on the ground a yard away from the priest's head where the other's hat had rolled, picked up the priest's hat, and put it on—then bent down over the bag.
He lifted his head suddenly, straining his ears to listen. What was that! Only the howl and unearthly moaning of the wind? It must have been, and his nerves were becoming over-strung, for the wind was blowing from the direction of the village, and it seemed as though the sound he had thought he heard, that he could not have defined, had come from the other direction. But the bag! Was there anything in it that he should not leave? He turned the flashlight into its interior, began to rummage through its contents—and then, kneeling there, it was as though he were suddenly frozen into that posture, bereft of all power of movement.
It was only a lantern—but it seemed as though he were bathed in a blistering flood of light that poured full upon him, that burst suddenly, without warning, from around the turn of the road in the direction away from the village. He felt the colour ebb from his face; he knew a sickly consciousness of doom. He was caught—caught in the priest's clothes! Shadowy outlined there, was a horse and wagon. A woman, carrying the lantern, was running toward him—a man followed behind. The wind rose in demoniacal derision—the damnable wind that, responsible for everything that night, had brought this crowning disaster upon him!
A girl's voice rang out anxiously:
“What is it? Oh, what is it? What has happened?” Raymond felt himself grow unnaturally calm. He leaned solicitously over the priest's form.
“I do not know”—he was speaking with sober concern. “I found this man lying here as I came along. He has a wound of some sort in his head, and I am afraid that he is dead.”
The man, stepping forward, crossed himself hurriedly.
The girl, with a sharp little cry, knelt down on the other side of the priest—and in the lantern's glimmer Raymond caught a glimpse of great dark eyes, of truant hair, wind-tossed, that blew about a young, sweet face that was full now of troubled sympathy.
“And you,” she said quickly; “you are the new curé, monsieur. The station agent told us you had come, and we drove fast, my uncle and I, to try and catch up with you.”
Raymond's eyes were on the priest's form. There was no need to simulate concern now, it was genuine enough, and it was as if something cold and icy were closing around his heart. He was not sure—great God, it was not possible!—but he thought—he thought the priest had moved. If that were so, he was doubly trapped! Cries came suddenly from the direction of the village, from the direction of old Mother Blondin's house. He heard himself acknowledging her remark with grave deliberation.
“Yes,” he said, “I am Father Aubert.”