Part 37 (2/2)
And Adele Rossignol ran from the room.
As soon as she was gone Vauquier followed to the door, listened, closed it gently, and came back. She stooped down.
”Mlle. Celie,” she said, in a smooth, silky voice, which terrified the girl more than her harsh tones, ”there is just one little thing wrong in your appearance, one tiny little piece of bad taste, if mademoiselle will pardon a poor servant the expression. I did not mention it before Adele Rossignol; she is so severe in her criticism, is she not? But since we are alone, I will presume to point out to mademoiselle that those diamond eardrops which I see peeping out under the scarf are a little ostentatious in her present predicament. They are a provocation to thieves. Will mademoiselle permit me to remove them?”
She caught her by the neck and lifted her up. She pushed the lace scarf up at the side of Celia's head. Celia began to struggle furiously, convulsively. She kicked and writhed, and a little tearing sound was heard. One of her shoe-buckles had caught in the thin silk covering of the cus.h.i.+on and slit it. Helene Vauquier let her fall. She felt composedly in her pocket, and drew from it an aluminium flask--the same flask which Lemerre was afterward to s.n.a.t.c.h up in the bedroom in Geneva. Celia stared at her in dread. She saw the flask flas.h.i.+ng in the light. She shrank from it. She wondered what new horror was to grip her. Helene unscrewed the top and laughed pleasantly.
”Mlle. Celie is under control,” she said. ”We shall have to teach her that it is not polite in young ladies to kick.” She pressed Celia down with a hand upon her back, and her voice changed. ”Lie still,” she commanded savagely. ”Do you hear? Do you know what this is, Mlle.
Celie?” And she held the flask towards the girl's face. ”This is vitriol, my pretty one. Move, and I'll spoil these smooth white shoulders for you. How would you like that?”
Celia shuddered from head to foot, and, burying her face in the cus.h.i.+on, lay trembling. She would have begged for death upon her knees rather than suffer this horror. She felt Vauquier's fingers lingering with a dreadful caressing touch upon her shoulders and about her throat. She was within an ace of the torture, the disfigurement, and she knew it. She could not pray for mercy. She could only lie quite still, as she was bidden, trying to control the shuddering of her limbs and body.
”It would be a good lesson for Mlle. Celie,” Helene continued slowly.
”I think that if Mlle. Celie will forgive the liberty I ought to inflict it. One little tilt of the flask and the satin of these pretty shoulders--”
She broke off suddenly and listened. Some sound heard outside had given Celia a respite, perhaps more than a respite. Helene set the flask down upon the table. Her avarice had got the better of her hatred. She roughly plucked the earrings out of the girl's ears. She hid them quickly in the bosom of her dress with her eye upon the door. She did not see a drop of blood gather on the lobe of Celia's ear and fall into the cus.h.i.+on on which her face was pressed. She had hardly hidden them away before the door opened and Adele Rossignol burst into the room.
”What is the matter?” asked Vauquier.
”The safe's empty. We have searched the room. We have found nothing,”
she cried.
”Everything is in the safe,” Helene insisted.
”No.”
The two women ran out of the room and up the stairs. Celia, lying on the settee, heard all the quiet of the house change to noise and confusion. It was as though a tornado raged in the room overhead.
Furniture was tossed about and over the room, feet stamped and ran, locks were smashed in with heavy blows. For many minutes the storm raged. Then it ceased, and she heard the accomplices clattering down the stairs without a thought of the noise they made. They burst into the room. Harry Wethermill was laughing hysterically, like a man off his head. He had been wearing a long dark overcoat when he entered the house; now he carried the coat over his arm. He was in a dinner-jacket, and his black clothes were dusty and disordered.
”It's all for nothing!” he screamed rather than cried. ”Nothing but the one necklace and a handful of rings!”
In a frenzy he actually stooped over the dead woman and questioned her.
”Tell us--where did you hide them?” he cried.
”The girl will know,” said Helene.
Wethermill rose up and looked wildly at Celia.
”Yes, yes,” he said.
He had no scruple, no pity any longer for the girl. There was no gain from the crime unless she spoke. He would have placed his head in the guillotine for nothing. He ran to the writing-table, tore off half a sheet of paper, and brought it over with a pencil to the sofa. He gave them to Vauquier to hold, and drawing out the sofa from the wall slipped in behind. He lifted up Celia with Rossignol's help, and made her sit in the middle of the sofa with her feet upon the ground. He unbound her wrists and fingers, and Vauquier placed the writing-pad and the paper on the girl's knees. Her arms were still pinioned above the elbows; she could not raise her hands high enough to s.n.a.t.c.h the scarf from her lips. But with the pad held up to her she could write.
”Where did she keep her jewels! Quick! Take the pencil and write,” said Wethermill, holding her left wrist.
Vauquier thrust the pencil into her right hand, and awkwardly and slowly her gloved fingers moved across the page.
”I do not know,” she wrote; and, with an oath, Wethermill s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper up, tore it into pieces, and threw it down.
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