Jacqueline of Golden River | Page 7

rubbed it softly into a flame
against my trouser leg.
I reached up to the gas above the table, turned it on, and lit the
incandescent mantle, lowering the light immediately. But even then
there was no sound from behind the curtains.
They hung down close together, so that I was able to see only the
gas-blackened ceiling above them and, underneath, the lower edge of

the bed linen, and the bed-frame at the base, with its enamelled iron
feet, The sheets hung straight, as though the bed had not been occupied;
but, though there was no sound, I knew Jacqueline was at the back of
the curtains.
The oppressive stillness was not that of solitude. She must be awake;
she must be listening in terror.
I went toward the curtains, and when I spoke I heard the words come
through my lips in a voice that I could not recognize as mine.
"Jacqueline!" I whispered, "it is Paul. Paul, your friend. 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