And then came before his examiners a mere physical wreck,—the shadow of his former self,—caught at the high tide of a career of crime and debauchery, a much less bulky party than the truculent Jehu of Madame Lascelles's cab, yet no less important a witness than that same driver. He was accompanied by a priest. He had been brought hither in an ambulance from the Hôtel-Dieu, where he had been traced several days before and found almost at death's door. His confession was most important of all. He had struck Lieutenant Waring as that officer turned away from Lascelles's gate, intending only to down and then kick and hammer him, but he had struck with a lead-loaded rubber club, and he was horrified to see him drop like one dead. Then he lost his nerve and drove furiously back for Bridget. Together they returned, and found Waring lying there as he had left him on the dripping banquette. "You've killed him, Mike. There's only one thing to do," she said: "take his watch and everything valuable he has, and we'll throw him over on the levee." She herself took the knife from his overcoat-pocket, lest he should recover suddenly, and then, said the driver, "even as we were bending over him there came a sudden flash of lightning, and there was Lascelles bending over us, demanding to know what it meant. Then like another flash he seemed to realize what was up, sprang back, and drew pistol. He had caught us in the act. There was nothing else to do; we both sprang upon him. He fired, and hit me, but only in the arm, and before he could pull trigger again we both grappled him. I seized his gun, Bridget his throat, but he screamed and fought like a tiger, then wilted all of a sudden. I was scared and helpless, but she had her wits about her, and told me what to do. The lieutenant began to gasp and revive just then, so she soaked the handkerchief in chloroform and placed it over his mouth, and together we lifted him into the cab. Then we raised Lascelles and carried him in and laid him on his sofa, for he had left the door open and the lamp on the table. Bridget had been there before, and knew all about the house. We set the pistol back in his hand, but couldn't make the fingers grasp it. We ransacked the desk and got what money there was, locked and bolted the doors, and climbed out of the side window, under which she dropped the knife among the bushes. 'They'll never suspect us in the world, Mike,' she said. 'It's the lieutenant's knife that did it, and, as he was going to fight him anyhow, he'll get the credit of it all.' Then we drove up the levee, put Waring in Anatole's boat, sculls and all, and shoved him off. 'I'll muzzle Jim,' she said. 'I'll make him believe 'twas he that did it when he was drunk.' She took most of the money, and the watch and ring. She said she could hide them until they'd be needed. Then I drove Philippes up to town until I began to get so sick and faint I could do no more. I turned the cab loose and got away to a house where I knew they'd take care of me, and from there, when my money was gone, they sent me to the hospital, thinking I was dying. I swear to God I never meant to more than get square with the lieutenant. I never struck Lascelles at all; 'twas she who drove the knife into his heart."
Then, exhausted, he was led into an adjoining room, and Mrs. Doyle was marched in, the picture of injured Irish innocence. For ten minutes, with wonderful effrontery and nerve, she denied all personal participation in the crime, and faced her inquisitors with brazen calm. Then the chief quietly turned and signalled. An officer led forward from one side the wreck of a cabman, supported by the priest; a door opened on the other, and, escorted by another policeman, Mrs. Dawson re-entered, holding in her hands outstretched a gingham apron on which were two deep stains the shape and size of a long, straight-bladed, two-edged knife. It was the apron that Bridget Doyle had worn that fatal night. One quick, furtive look at that, one glance at her trembling, shrinking, cowering kinsman, and, with an Irish howl of despair, a loud wail of "Mike, Mike, you've sworn your sister's life away!" she threw herself upon the floor, tearing madly at her hair. And so ended the mystery of Beau Rivage.
There was silence a moment in Cram's pretty parlor when the captain had finished his story. Waring was the first to speak:
"There is one point I wish they'd clear up."
"What's that?" said Cram.
"Who's got Merton's watch?"
"Oh, by Jove! I quite forgot. It's all right, Waring. Anatole's place was 'pulled' last night, and he had her valuables all done up in a box. 'To pay for his boat,' he said."
* * * * * *
A quarter of a century has passed away since the scarlet plumes of Light Battery "X" were last seen dancing along the levee below New Orleans. Beau Rivage, old and moss-grown at the close of the war, fell into rapid decline after the tragedy of that April night. Heavily mortgaged, the property passed into other hands, but for years never found a tenant. Far and near the negroes spoke of the homestead as haunted, and none of their race could be induced to set foot within its gates. One night the sentry at the guard-house saw sudden light on the westward sky, and then a column of flame. Again the fire-alarm resounded among the echoing walls of the barracks; but when the soldiers reached the scene, a seething ruin was all that was left of the old Southern home. Somebody sent Cram a marked copy of a New Orleans paper, and in their cosey quarters at Fort Hamilton the captain read it aloud to his devoted Nell: "The old house has been vacant, an object of almost superstitious dread to the neighborhood," said the Times, "ever since the tragic death of Armand Lascelles in the spring of 1868. In police annals the affair was remarkable because of the extraordinary chain of circumstantial evidence which for a time seemed to fasten the murder upon an officer of the army then stationed at Jackson Barracks, but whose innocence was triumphantly established. Madame Lascelles, it is understood, is now educating her daughter in Paris, whither she removed immediately after her marriage a few months ago to Captain Philippe Lascelles, formerly of the Confederate army, a younger brother of her first husband."
"Well," said Cram, "I'll have to send that to Waring. They're in Vienna by this time, I suppose. Look here, Nell; how was it that when we fellows were fretting about Waring's attentions to Madame, you should have been so serenely superior to it all, even when, as I know, the stories reached you?"