Jacqueline of Golden River | Page 7

H. M. Egbert
Are you safe, Jacqueline?"
Now I saw, under the curtains, what looked like the body of a very small animal. It might have been a woolly dog, or a black lambkin, and it was lying perfectly still.
I pulled aside the curtains and stood between them, and the scene stamped itself upon my brain, as clear as a photographic print, for ever.
The woolly beast was the fur cap of a dead man who lay across the floor of the little room. One foot was extended underneath the bed, and the head reached to the bottom of the wall on the other side of the room. He lay upon his back, his eyes open and staring, his hands clenched, and his features twisted into a sneering smile.
His fur overcoat, unbuttoned, disclosed a warm knit waistcoat of a gaudy pattern, across which ran the heavy links of a gold chain. There was a tiny hole in his breast, over the heart, from which a little blood had flowed. The wound had pierced the heart, and death had evidently been instantaneous.
It was the man whom I had seen staring at us across Herald Square.
Beside the window Jacqueline crouched, and at her feet lay the Eskimo dog, watching me silently. In her hand she held a tiny, dagger-like knife, with a thin, red-stained blade. Her grey eyes, black in the gas-light, stared into mine, and there was neither fear nor recognition in them. She was fully dressed, and the bed had not been occupied.
I flung myself at her feet. I took the weapon from her hand. "Jacqueline!" I cried in terror. I raised her hands to my lips and caressed them.
She seemed quite unresponsive.
I laid them against my cheek. I called her by her name imploringly; I spoke to her, but she only looked at me and made no answer. Still it was evident to me that she heard and understood, for she looked at me in a puzzled way, as if I were a complete stranger. She did not seem to resent my presence there, and she did not seem afraid of the dead man. She seemed, in a kindly, patient manner, to be trying to understand the meaning of the situation.
"Jacqueline," I cried, "you are not hurt? Thank God you are not hurt. What has happened?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know where I am."
I kneeled down at her side and put my arms about her.
"Jacqueline, dear;" I said, "will you not try to think? I am Paul--your friend Paul. Do you not remember me?"
"No, monsieur," she sighed.
"But, then, how did you come here, Jacqueline?" I asked.
"I do not know," she answered. And, a moment later, "I do not know, Paul."
That encouraged me a little. Evidently she remembered what I had just said to her.
"Where is your home, Jacqueline?"
"I do not know," she answered in an apathetic voice, devoid of interest.
There was something more to be said, though it was hard.
"Jacqueline, who--was--that?"
"Who?" she inquired, looking at me with the same patient, wistful gaze.
"That man, Jacqueline. That dead man."
"What dead man, Paul?"
She was staring straight at the body, and at that moment I realized that she not only did not remember, but did not even see it.
The shock which she had received, supervening upon the nervous state in which she had been when I encountered her, had produced one of those mental inhibitions in which the mind, to save the reason, obliterates temporarily not only all memory of the past, but also all present sights and sounds which may serve to recall it. She looked idly at the body of the dead man, and I was sure that she saw nothing but the worn woodwork of the floor.
I saw that it was useless to say anything more upon this subject.
"You are very tired, Jacqueline?" I asked.
"Yes, monsieur," she answered, leaning back against my arm.
"And you would like to sleep?"
"Yes, monsieur."
I raised her in my arms and laid her on the bed, telling her to close her eyes and sleep. She was asleep almost immediately after her head rested Upon the pillow. She breathed as softly as an infant.
I watched her for a while until I heard a distant clock strike three. This recalled me to the dangers of our situation. I struck a match and lit the gas in the bedroom. But the yellow glare was so ghastly and intolerable that I turned it down.
And then I set about the task before me.
CHAPTER III
COVERING THE TRACKS
I thought quickly, and my consciousness seemed to embrace all the details of the situation with a keenness foreign to my nature.
Once, I believe, I had been able to play an active part among the men who were my associates in that adventurous life that lay so far behind me. But eight years of clerkship had reduced me to
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