The Sin That Was His

by Frank L. Packard

In a curiously futile way Raymond's hand dropped from the breast of his soutane to his side. Valérie and her mother seemed to be swirling around in circles in the hall before him. He forced himself to speak naturally:

“And then?”

Valérie's eyes were on her mother.

“I did not want to alarm you, mother,” she went on rapidly; “and so I told you I was going for a drive. I ran to uncle's house. He was out somewhere. I could go as well as any one, and if Henri Mentone had a friend lurking somewhere in the village there would be nothing to arouse suspicion in a girl driving alone; and, besides, I did not know who this friend might be, and I did not know who to trust. I told old Adèle that I wanted to go for a drive, and she helped me to harness the horse.”

And now, as Raymond listened, those devils, that had chuckled and screeched as the lumpy earth had thudded down on the lid of Théophile Blondin's coffin, were at their hell-carols again. It was not just luck, just the unfortunate turn of a card that the man had dropped the money and the note. It was more than that. It seemed to hold a grim, significant premonition—for the future. Those devils did well to chuckle! Struggle as he would, they had woven their net too cunningly for his escape. It was those devils who had torn his coat that night in the storm, as he had tried to force his way through the woods. It was his coat that Henri Mentone was wearing. He remembered now that the lining of the pocket on the inside had been ripped across. It was those devils who had seen to that—for this—knowing what was to come. A finger seemed to wag with hideous jocularity before his eyes—the finger of fate. He looked at Valerie. It was nothing for her to have driven to Tournayville, she had probably done it a hundred times before, but it seemed a little strange that Henri Mentone's possible escape should have been, apparently, so intimate and personal a matter to her.

“You were afraid, you said, Mademoiselle Valerie,” he said slowly. “Afraid—that he would escape?”

She shook her head—and the colour mounted suddenly in her face.

“Of what then?” he asked.

“Of what was in the note,” she said, in a low voice. “I knew I had time, for nothing was to be done until the presbytère was quiet for the night; but the plan then was to—to put you out of the way, and——”

His voice was suddenly hoarse.