The Sin That Was His

by Frank L. Packard

“Then suppose”—Raymond dropped his voice still lower—“then suppose you leave him with me until tomorrow. And meanwhile—you understand?”

Monsieur Dupont pondered the suggestion.

“Well, very well—why not?” decided Monsieur Dupont. “Perhaps not a bad idea—perhaps not. And if it does not succeed”—Monsieur Dupont shrugged his shoulders—“well, we know everything anyhow; and I will make him pay through the nose for his tricks! But he is under arrest, Monsieur le Curé, you understand that? There is a cell in the jail at Tournayville that——”

“Naturally—when he is able to be moved,” agreed Raymond readily. “We will speak to the doctor about that. In the meantime he probably could not walk across this room. He is quite safe here. I will be responsible for him.”

“And I will put a flea in the doctor's ear!” announced Monsieur Dupont, moving toward the door. “The assizes are next week, and after the assizes, say, another six weeks and”—Monsieur Dupont's tongue clucked eloquently several times against the roof of his mouth. “We will not keep him waiting long!” Monsieur Dupont opened the door, and, standing on the threshold where he was hidden from the bed, laid his forefinger along the side of his nose. “You are wrong, Monsieur le Curé”—he had raised his voice to carry through the room. “But still you may be right! You are too softhearted; yes, that is it—soft-hearted. Well, he has you to thank for it. I would not otherwise consider it—it is against my best judgment. I bid you good-bye, Monsieur le Curé!”

Raymond closed the door—but it was a moment, standing there with his back to the bed, before he moved. His face was set, the square jaws clamped, a cynical smile flickering on his lips. It had been close—but of the two, as between Monsieur Dupont and himself and the gallows, Monsieur Dupont had been the nearer to death! He saw Monsieur Dupont in his mind's-eye sprawled on the floor. It would not have been difficult to have stopped forever any outcry from that weak thing upon the bed. And then the window; and after that—God knew! And it would have been God's affair! It was God Who had instituted that primal law that lay upon every human soul, the law of self-preservation; and it was God's choosing, not his, that he was here! Who was to quarrel with him if he stopped at nothing in his fight for life! Well, Dupont was gone now! That danger was past. He had only to reckon now with Valérie and her mother—until night came. He raised his hand heavily to his forehead and pushed back his hair. Valérie! Until night came! Fool! What was Valérie to him! And yet—he jeered at himself in a sort of grim derision—and yet, if it were not his one chance for life, he would not go to-night. He could call himself a fool, if he would; that ubiquitous and caustic other self, that was the cool, calculating, unemotional personification of Three-Ace Artie, could call him a fool, if it would—those dark eyes of Valérie's—no, not that—it was not eyes, nor hair, nor lips, they were only part of Valérie—it was Valérie, like some rare fragrance, fresh and pure and sweet in her young womanhood, that——

“Monsieur!”—the man was calling from the bed.

And then Raymond turned, and walked back across the room, and drew a chair to the bedside, and sat down. And Raymond smiled—but not at the bandaged, outstretched form before him. A fool! Well, so be it! The fool would sit here for the rest of the morning, and the rest of the afternoon, and listen to the babbling wanderings of another fool who had not had sense enough to die; and he would play this cursed rôle of saint, and fumble with his crucifix, and mumble his * Latin, and keep this Mademoiselle Valérie, who meant nothing to him, from the room—until to-night. And—what was this other fool saying?

“Monsieur—monsieur, who was that man who just went out?”

Raymond answered mechanically: