"But no," I replied; "I am here precisely on behalf of my friend, Lieutenant Kane."
At this name the old woman began, only to check, a half-startled squawk, lifting her candle as she did so and peering more intently at me. "At this hour, m'sieu?" she demanded huskily. "What could bring you at such an hour?"
"Do I address the Widow Guyot?" I was quick to respond.
"Oui, m'sieu."
"Then, permit me to explain." As briefly as possible I told her who I was; that I had but very recently learned of the presence of Jimmy's wife in Paris, with a relative—learned that she was awaiting the birth of her first child at the house of this excellent woman. "It was my intention to call soon, madame, in any case, and make myself known—feeling there might prove to be many little services a friend would be only too happy to render. But, after this terrible raid, I found it impossible to retire with an easy mind—at least, until I had assured myself that all was well with you here."
On this there came a pause, and the thin-bearded man cleared his throat diligently several times.
"The truth is, m'sieu," he finally hazarded, "that your apprehension was only too just. You arrive at a house of mourning, m'sieu. You arrive, as I did, alas—too late! This poor Madame Kane you would inquire for is dead. The child, on the contrary, still lives."
"Enter, m'sieu," said the Widow Guyot. "We can discuss these things more commodiously within. Doubtless, otherwise, we shall receive attentions from the police; they are nervous to-night. Naturally." She seemed, I thought—in the utter blank depression which had seized me with the doctor's words—offensively calm. Whether, had a doctor been more quickly obtainable, or a more skillful practitioner at last obtained, little Jeanne-Marie's life might have been spared, I am unable to say. I feel certain, however, that the Widow Guyot—under difficult, not to say terrifying circumstances—had kept a cool head, done her best. I exonerate her from all blame. But I add this: Never in my life have I met elsewhere a woman who seemed to me to possess such cold-blooded possibilities for evil. Yet, so far as I know to this hour, her life has always been and now continues industrious and thrifty; harmless before the law. I have absolutely "nothing on her"—nothing but an impression I shall never be rid of, which even now returns to chill me in nights of insomnia: a sense of having met in life one woman whose eyes may now and then have watered from dust or wind, but could never under any circumstances conceivably human have known tears. Other women, too many of them, have bored or exasperated me with maudlin or trivial tears; but never before or since have I met a woman who could not weep. It is a fixed idea with me that the Widow Guyot could not; and the idea haunts and troubles me strangely—though why it should, I am too casual a psychologist even to guess.
At her heels, I crossed a small cluttered shop, following the tremulous flame of the candle through a fantastic shadow dance; Doctor Pollain—who had given me his name with the deprecating cough of one who knows himself either unpleasantly notorious or hopelessly obscure—shuffled behind us. Madame Guyot opened an inner door. Light from the room beyond tempered a little the vagueness about me and ghostily revealed a huddle of ecclesiastical trumpery—rows of thin, pale-yellow tapers; small crucifixes of plaster or base-metal gilded; a stand of picture post-cards; a table littered with lesser gimcracks. The direct rays from Madame Guyot's candle, as she turned a moment in the doorway, wanly illuminated the blue-coiffed, vapid face of a bisque Virgin; gave for that instant a half-flicker, as of just-stirring life, to her mannered, meaningless smile.
The room beyond proved to be a good-sized bedroom, its one window muffled by heavy stuff-curtains of a dull magenta red. A choking, composite odor—I detected the sick pungency of chloroform—emerged from it. I plunged to enter, and for a second instinctively held my breath. On the great walnut double-bed lay a still figure covered with a sheet; the proper candles twinkled at head and foot. But it is needless to describe these things. . . .