The Red Lady

by Katharine Newlin Burt

The woman began to talk again.

“Yes,” she said, “I am your mother. My name was Wenda Tour, and I married Sergius Gale, who was your father. I am Polish-French, and he was Russian-French. When I married him he was an innocent, little, pale-faced student at the University of Moscow. I was only sixteen, myself, training for a dancer, acting... a clever, abused, gifted young waif, and fairly innocent, too, though I'd always been light-fingered and skillful at all sorts of tricks. I think I was in love with Sergius; at any rate, I was anxious to escape from the trainer, who was a brute. But Sergius began to bore me. Oh, my God! how insufferably he bored me! And he was so wearisomely weak, weaker than most men, and, the Lord knows, they're mostly made of butter, or milk-and-water mixtures. And you bored me dreadfully, too; the very thought of you before you came filled me with a real distaste for life. By the time you made your squalling entrance into the world, I had got myself into rather complicated trouble, and managed to make a scapegoat of your father, the poor fool! It was a sharp business, and it might have made us both rich, but I was clumsier than I am now, and Sergius was a hindrance. It did n't quite go through, and I had to make a get-away, a quick one. I've made some even quicker since then. After he'd spent some sobering and salutary months in a Russian prison, your father came out, reformed and completely cured of his passion for red-haired vixens with a natural taste for crime. I've often wondered how he treated you, little miniature of myself as you were even in your cradle. I don't believe you had a very comfortable childhood, Janice. The crudest thing I ever did, and the wickedest, was to let you come into the world, or, having let you come, to allow you to remain here. I ought to have put you out of your misery before it had really begun. You wouldn't be lying here shaking. You would n't have to pay the piper for me as I fear I shall be forced to make you pay before I leave you to-night. I hate to do it. I honestly do. There must be a soft spot left in me somewhere, but there's no use balking. It's got to be done. It's too good a chance to miss. I can wipe out my past as though it had been written on a slate. You can't blame me yourself, Janice. The jewels mean wealth, and your death means my freedom. When they find you here—and they will find you—they will think that they have found my corpse. Don't you see? Even Maida, even the Baron, even Jaffrey, even the priest, will swear to it—you see. If you had n't been so clever, or a little bit cleverer, you would n't have played my game, or you'd have taken more pains to keep your plan a secret from me. Once I was sure you did n't think your double a ghost, I began to suspect you; when you pulled that lover of yours”—she laughed, and even in my misery I felt the sting of anger and of shame—“of ours, I should say—when you pulled him out of the mud, why, I found myself able to read you like a child's first primer. Oh, you've been a nuisance to me, kept me on pins and needles. I knew you would n't dare to search the house. I suppose you guessed that would mean the end of your life, but you've certainly given me some unhappy minutes. That fool of a Baron, blabbing out his secret to you... but I made it all work out to my salvation. They've nabbed the Baron and the priest; I suppose they'll get Maida to-night; Jaffrey will be caught snoring in his bed”—she chuckled—“and there's an end to all my partners, all the fools that thought they'd come in for a share of booty. The only thing that bothers me is that they'll never know how neatly I bagged them all, and made a get-away myself. They will think me dead. They'll bear witness. They'll point at your dead body, Janice, and say, 'Yes, that's she.' Oh, it's a rare trick I'm playing on the police, on the gang, on every one—especially that cat of a Hovey with his eyes.” She rubbed her lips angrily, a curious, to me inexplicable, gesture. “But it's a poor joke for you, my girl. Playing your hand alone against a lot of hardened old hands like us is a fool's work. That's what it is! Did you think I'd let you run off with a fortune under my very nose? No; you'll have to pay for that insolence. Daughter or no daughter, you'll have to pay. At least, I'll be saving your soul alive. If I had n't got back to you to-night, you'd be a thief flying out into the world. Perhaps your dying to-night is the best thing that could happen to you. I don't know. Looking back—well, it's hard to say.”

She sat there thinking, forgetful of me, and I opened my miserable eyes and stared hopelessly at the clear, hard profile, so beautiful, so evil, so unutterably merciless. She had been sixteen when I was born, twenty years ago. She was now only thirty-six, and yet her face was almost old.

She turned upon me again with her ghastly smile. “You don't look pleased to see your mother, my dear. Perhaps I was a trifle rough with you at our first interview, but you've been spared a great many worse thrashings by having been separated from me at such an early age. I have a devilish temper, as you know. I'd probably have flogged you to death before you were out of your pinafores. I'd like to hear your history—oh, I've kept track of its outlines, I always thought you might some day be useful—but I don't dare take that handkerchief off of your mouth. That handkerchief belonged to my second husband, the Comte de Trème.... Yes, I went up in the world after I'd put Sergius into prison. I've been a great lady. It's a tremendous advantage to any career, to learn the grand air and to get a smattering of education. Poor Trème! He was n't quite the weakling that most of them have been. I have a certain respect for him actually. He was a good man, and no milk and water in his veins, either. If any one could have exorcised the devil in me, it was he. He did his best, but I was too much for him... and in the end, poor fool, he put a bullet into his brain because—oh, these idiot aristocrats!—of the disgrace. It was after Trème, a long while after Trème, when I was queening it in St. Petersburg,—because, you see, I did n't fall into disgrace at all; I let Trème shoulder it; he was dead, and it could n't hurt him, and I was glad to stab that high-nosed family of his,—about three years after his death, I suppose, when the ex-army captain came along. Brane, you know, Theodore Brane——He was a handsome chap, long and lean and blue-eyed. I lost my head over him. I was still pretty young, twenty or thereabouts. He would n't marry me, d—— him! And I was a fool. That's where I lost my footing. Well, this is going to put me back again and revenge me on that cold-blooded coward. We lived together, and we lived like princes—on Trème's fortune. You should have seen his family! It was when the Trème estate was bled dry that I happened to remember those jewels. Yes. I'd seen them in the cathedral at Moscow in a secret crypt, down under the earth. I was a child at the time, a little red-haired imp of nine or ten, and I got round a silly old sheep of a priest, and begged him so hard to let me go down through the trapdoor with him that he consented. He thought it could do no harm, I suppose,—a child of that age! I saw the Beloved Virgin of the Jewels! She stood there blazing, a candlestick made of solid gold burning on her right hand and her left—an unforgettable sight—the robe and the circlet that are here beside us now in Brane's double wall in North Carolina... God! it's strange—this life!

“I often thought of that Holy Wealthy Lady in her crypt. When Brane and I were at an end of our means, and of our wits, and he beginning to get tired of the connection, I made up my mind to have a try at the Moscow Virgin's wardrobe. I did n't tell Brane, though he was a thief himself, cashiered from the British army for looting in India. I thought this scheme would be a bit too stiff for him. I went alone to Moscow, and I became the most pious frequenter of ikons, the most devout of worshipers, a generous patron to all droning priests. And there was one—one with a big, oval Christ-face—that I meant to corrupt. He was rotten to the core, anyway, a grayish-white sepulcher if ever there was one. I got him so that he cringed at my feet. He was a white, soft worm—ugh! I chose him for the scapegoat. That's the real secret of my success, Janice. I never forgot to provide a scapegoat, some one upon whom the police were bound to tumble headlong at the very first investigation. I am afraid you are the scapegoat this time—you and 'Dabney'—this will give his fool-heart a twist, set him to rights until next time.

“It's a rotten trick to play on you, but you should n't have mixed up in it. A sensible girl would n't have taken the bait—a slip of paper handed to her in the street! For shame, Janice! It was my first idea, and I laughed at it. I thought I'd have to think up something better. But it worked. Folly is just as deserving of punishment as crime—more so, I believe. It's only just that a fool should lie tied up and gagged. That's the way the world works, and it's not such a bad world, after all, if you make yourself its master and kick over a few conventions....

“Well, Father Gast ate out of my hand, and thought me as beautiful as one of God's angels, only a little more merciful to the desires of men... and one day he gave me a permit, got a young acolyte of the cathedral to take me down to worship at the shrine of the Most Beloved Virgin of the Jewels. It was dark in the crypt, except for the candle that poor boy carried above his head. The Virgin stood there glistening. I knelt down to pray. The boy knelt down. I snatched the candlestick of gold that stood on the Virgin's right hand and cracked his skull. He dropped without so much as a whimper. Then I stripped our Holy Lady, and came up out of the crypt.”

She stopped to draw a long, long breath, as she must have stopped when, in the dim Kremlin, she had come up out of the bowels of the earth carrying her treasure, leaving the boy acolyte senseless before the naked shrine. For all the terrible preoccupation of my mind, racing with death, I could not help but listen to her story. My imagination seemed to be stimulated by the terror of my plight. I might have been in the crypt; I seemed to smell the damp, incense-laden, close smell of candle-lighted chapels. I felt the weight of the jeweled robe, the fearful necessity for escape.

After her long breath, she began again eagerly.

“I came up out of the crypt, and I called to my Christ-faced baba. He was waiting for me near the altar at his hypocritical prayers. He came quickly over to me, staring at the bundle in my arms, and I kept him fascinated by the smile I wore. I can command the look in my eyes at such moments. It's the eyes that give away a secret. You can see the change of mood, the intention to deceive, the fear, the suspicion, the decision to kill—but even in those days I knew how to guard my eyes. Father Gast looked at me, and I smiled.