Part 25 (1/2)

”I would like to know what you mean by meddling in my affairs,” began Decherd. ”You are interfering--”

”Yes,” said a voice, soft but very cold, ”I'm interfering. I am going to spoil your chances, Decherd. Sit down.” The man thus accosted involuntarily sank back into a seat. Then a sudden rage caught him, and he half-started up again. This time he saw something blue gleaming dully in the idle hand which hung between Eddring's knees.

”Be careful,” said the latter. ”I told you not to do that. Sit down, now, and listen.” An unreasoning, blind terror seized Henry Decherd, and in spite of himself, he obeyed.

”In the first place, Decherd,” said Eddring, ”I want to say that it was not lucky for you when I got hold of your valise by mistake at the Big House wreck--the time I found that list of claims, and the little old book in French. I have studied all those things over carefully, together with other things. I've been thinking a great deal. That's why I am going to spoil your chances.”

”Does she know?” whispered Decherd, hoa.r.s.ely.

”No, she knows nothing about it at all. She doesn't know who she is-- not even why she happened to take the name of Louise Loisson.”

Decherd gasped, but the cold voice went on. ”You might have told her some of these things. You might have told her who her real mother was, and who her false mother. You might have given her a chance to know herself. I don't fancy that you did. I don't think you told her anything which did not serve your own purposes.”

”We were going to be married,” began Decherd.

”We are going to be married--”

”You _were,_ perhaps,” said Eddring, ”but not now. Oh, I don't doubt that you are willing enough to marry Louise Loisson, and to deceive her after your marriage as you did before. I don't doubt that in the least.”

”What business is it of yours?” said Decherd, now becoming more sullen than bl.u.s.tering.

”I can't say that it was my business at all,” said Eddring. ”It's accident, largely; and surely it was not your fault that I blundered on these matters. It was rather fate, or the occasional good fortune of the innocent. You covered up your trail fairly well; but a criminal will always leave behind him some egotistical mark of his crime, either by accident or by intent. You left marks all along your trail, Decherd--there, there, keep quiet. I don't want to use force with you. I'm not going to be the agent of justice. But it won't be altogether healthy for the man on whose shoulders a great many of these things are finally loaded. You were enterprising, Decherd, and you were an abler man than I thought, far abler; but you undertook too much.

”Now, here's a message from Colonel Blount,” Eddring resumed. ”It looks as though things were coming pretty nearly to a show-down up there. We are going to find out all about that. Incidentally, we are going to find out everything about this poor girl here, whose name and reputation only the mercy of G.o.d kept you from ruining this very night.” The two now sat looking each other fairly and fully in the eye. For the first time in many years Henry Decherd recognized the whip hand.

”I might as well tell you,” said Eddring, ”that I know about the old Loisson estate--a great deal more than its lawful heiress does. I know who paid the taxes on the lands. I know as well as you do about the suit in the United States Supreme Court, where you won and lost at the same time. In that case you proved your client, Delphine, to be Indian, and therefore not French--in plain language, you proved that she was the heiress of the Indian, Paul Loise, and therefore could _not_ inherit certain valuable lands of which we both know.

Before you found yourself on that account forced to pin your faith to the descendants of the French Comte de Loisson, you were willing to use either line of descent, provided it made it possible for you to get possession of these lands. You were willing to deal with a woman of mixed blood, or with one of pure blood, of n.o.ble descent. Let me be frank with you, Decherd. You were playing these girls one against the other. It was Delphine against the descendants of the Comte de Loisson--a delicate game; and you came near winning.”

Decherd pa.s.sed a hand across his forehead, now grown clammy, but he could see no method either of attack or of escape, for the cold gray eye still held him, and the blue barrel hung steady beneath the idle hand, as the same steel-like voice went on:

”I will just go over the proof once more, Decherd,” said Eddring, ”and see if we don't look at it about alike. For instance, if Delphine is Indian, she isn't white. Uncle Sam's Supreme Court says she's Indian. That's record, that's evidence. Take the two girls, one of n.o.ble blood, the other of questionable descent, and they are together equal, _in posse_, as we will say, to these valuable lands.

Do you follow me? Oh, give up thinking of your gun. I'll kill you if you move your hand.

”Very well, then, my friend, it comes simply to a case of cancelation. No matter what you have told or promised either, there can be but one heiress. Mark out one girl, and the other is equal to that estate, we'll say. You yourself marked out Delphine when you proved her to be of Indian descent. That leaves Miss Lady as the heiress of the estate of the Comte de Loisson, doesn't it, Decherd?

”It leaves, also, two ways of getting the estate. You could marry the girl, or kill her. You might possibly get a tax-t.i.tle in the latter case; if you killed the girl the tax-t.i.tle would mature in your name.

You may count that string as broken. Mrs. Ellison, we will say, wanted your paramour, Delphine, canceled, and wanted also to put the remaining claimant out of sight. Then, as mother of this heiress-- the false mother, as you and I know--she thought that she would inherit the lands--and you.

”That was Mrs. Ellison's plan--a very ignorant plan. Then the simple matter of a marriage--or of no marriage--between Mr. Henry Decherd and this Mrs. Alice Ellison, would enable them comfortably to share this estate. That was the way Mrs. Ellison wanted it, perhaps. But you preferred to marry the true claimant, and get rid of Mrs.

Ellison. That was your plan. You wanted to cancel every possible claimant except Miss Lady, and then you wanted to force Miss Lady into a marriage with you. Do I make myself clear to you, Mr. Decherd?

And do I make myself clear that this country isn't big enough for both of us? Keep quiet now. You've come to your show-down right here.

”Meantime, it was part of your scheme, as I now see, to keep Miss Lady away from her friends, to poison her against those friends. You had to live, and you were a lawyer, or a sort of a lawyer. You got hold of these judgment claims against the railroad which discharged me. You told this girl that I stole those claims. You know you lied.

For a time you deluded this poor girl, poisoning her mind, killing her nature with your deceit. None the less, you left behind you open proofs, ready-made for your own undoing. Why, this very name, this stage name of Louise Loisson, was banner enough to bring her real friends to her side. But you didn't know, did you, Mr. Decherd, that I had read the little book, and that I knew the Loisson history? I said it was by chance I found the book. I am ready now to say it was by fate--by justice. It's like the fetish mark on the church-door-- that negro church in the woods--like the sign on Delphine's handkerchief. Guilt always leaves a sign. Justice always finds some proof.

”Now, I have a message from Colonel Blount. Here it is. He says, 'Louise Loisson our Miss Lady.' He has found out something, too, at the other end of the line, hasn't he, Decherd? Notice, he says, 'our Miss Lady.' She is ours, not yours. I am going to take her along with me, back to the Big House, and to her friend, Colonel Blount. He says, 'Watch out for Decherd.' I am watching out for him. He also says that they have caught the leader who has been making all the trouble up there in the Delta, near the Big House plantation.”