The Passenger from Calais | Page 6

How dare you judge me without knowing the facts, without a shadow of proof?" She sprang to her feet and passed to the door, where she turned, as it were, at bay.
"I have the very best proof, from your own lips. I heard you and your maid talking together at Calais."
"A listener, Colonel Annesley? Faugh!"
"It was forced on me. You stood under my window there." I defended myself indignantly. "I wish to heaven I had never heard. I did not want to know; your secrets are your own affair."
"And my actions, I presume?" she put in with superb indifference.
"And their consequences, madam," but the shot failed rather of effect. She merely smiled and shook her head recklessly, contemptuously. Was she so old a hand, so hardened in crime, that the fears of detection, arrest, reprisals, the law and its penalties had no effect upon her? Undoubtedly at Calais she was afraid; some misgiving, some haunting terror possessed her. Now, when standing before me fully confessed for what she was, and practically at my mercy, she could laugh with cool and unabashed levity and make little of the whole affair.
If I had hoped that I had done with her now, when the murder was out, I was very much mistaken. She had some further designs on me, I was sure. She wanted to make use of me, how or in what way I could not imagine; but I soon perceived that she was anxious to be friends. The woman was in the ascendant, and, as I thought, the eternal feminine ever agog to attract and subjugate the male, she would conquer my admiration even if she could not secure my esteem.
Suddenly, and quite without my invitation or encouragement, she reseated herself by my side.
"See, Colonel Annesley, let us come to an understanding." She said it quite gaily and with no shadow of apprehension left in her, not a sign of shame or remorse in her voice. Her mood had entirely changed. She was d��bonnaire, frolicsome, overflowing with fun.
"What do you mean to do? Give me into custody? Call in the gendarmes at the next station? Have me taken red-handed with the--stolen property--the 'swag,' you know the word, perhaps, in my possession?"
"I am not a police officer; it's not my business," I answered gruffly. I thought this flippancy very much misplaced.
"Or you might telegraph back to England, to London, to Scotland Yard: 'The woman Blair in the Engadine express. Wire along the line to authorities, French and Swiss, to look out for her and arrest preparatory to extradition.'"
"I would much rather not continue this conversation, Mrs. Blair."
"I am not 'Mrs. Blair,'" she cried, laughing merrily as at a tremendous joke. "It is only one of my aliases. I am better known as Slippery Sue, and the Countess of Plantagenet, and the Sly American, and dashing Mrs. Mortimer, and--"
"Oh, please, please spare me. It does not matter, not a row of pins, what you are called. I would rather not have the whole list," I interrupted her, but could not check her restless tongue.
"You shall hear, you must know all about me and my famous exploits. I was the heroine of that robbery at Buckingham Palace. I was at the State Ball, and made a fine harvest of jewels. I have swept a dozen country-houses clean; I have picked pockets and lifted old lace from the shop counters, and embezzled and forged--"
"And turned pirate, and held up trains, and robbed the Bank of England," I added, falling into her humour and laughing as she rose to her full height; and again her mood changed, dominating me with imperious air, her voice icily cold in manner, grave and repellent.
"Why not? I am a thief; you believe me to be a common thief."
CHAPTER IV.
I was too much taken aback to do better than stammer out helplessly, hopelessly, almost unintelligibly, a few words striving to remind her of her own admission. Nothing, indeed, could take the sting out of this, and yet it was all but impossible to accuse her, to blame her even for what she had done.
She read that in my eyes, in my abashed face, my hands held out deprecating her wrath, and her next words had a note of conciliation in them.
"There are degrees of wrong-doing, shades of guilt," she said. "Crimes, offences, misdeeds, call them as you please, are not absolutely unpardonable; in some respects they are excusable, if not justifiable. Do you believe that?"
"I should like to do so in your case," I replied gently. "You know I am still quite in the dark."
"And you must remain so, for the present at any rate," she said firmly and sharply. "I can tell you nothing, I am not called upon to do it indeed. We are absolute strangers, I owe you