"Yes, if they are innocent," Dudley returned so quietly that it surprised both of us. "But I tell you this, Macartney, and Stretton too—if any one within a hundred miles of this mine did murder Thompson, Billy Jones or any one else, it'll come out!" and he jerked his head around. "Don't you think so, Paulette?"
"I? I never thought of poor old Thompson having been murdered!" She answered as if she were startled, but she did not turn. "If he was murdered I pray God it will be found out," she added unexpectedly. She had made two false starts at her letter and torn them up, but she had evidently finished it to her liking now, for she sat with the pen poised over the blank end of the sheet to sign her name. Yet she did not sign it. She only sat there abstractedly, with her hand lifted from the wrist.
"There, you see," Dudley crowed triumphantly. "Paulette's no fool: it's facts she and I are after, Macartney. Why, you take the history of crimes generally—murders—jewel robberies—kidnapping for money—half of them with not nearly so much to them as this thing about Thompson—they're always found out!"
"If you're going to talk this rubbish, I'm going to bed," Marcia burst out wrathfully. I saw her pause to catch Macartney's eye, but for once his set gaze was on the floor. She got up, which I don't think she had meant to do, and flounced out of the room. I had no idea I was going to be deadly thankful.
Macartney answered Dudley as the door shut behind her. "I don't know that crimes are always found out, in spite of your faith—and Miss Paulette's," he argued half crossly. "I could remind you of one or two that weren't. What about the Mappin murder, way back in nineteen-five? And that emerald business at the Houstons' country house this spring, with that dancing and circus-riding girl who used to be at the Hippodrome—the Russian, who did Russian dancing on her horse's back? What was her name? I ought to remember. I knew a poor devil of a cousin of hers out in British Columbia who was engaged to her when it happened, and he talked about her enough. Oh, yes, Valenka! She had a funny Christian name too, sort of half Russian, only I forget it. But when that Valenka girl got away with an emerald necklace from the Houstons' house no one ever found out how it was done! You must have heard about her, Stretton?"
I had. Every one had: Macartney need not have troubled to hunt his memory for her Christian name, though it had only reached me in the wilderness through a stray New York paper. But before I could say so Dudley burst out with the same truculence he had used about Billy Jones:
"What d'ye mean Stretton must have heard?"
"Only that Mrs. Houston took a fancy to Valenka and had her down to ride and dance at a week-end party at her house in Long Island; that on Sunday morning, Jimmy Van Ruyne, one of the guests, was found in Valenka's room, soaked with morphine and robbed—not only of the cash in his pocket in the good old way, but of an emerald necklace he had just bought at Tiffany's; and that, to this day, no one has ever laid eyes on that necklace nor on Valenka. She's free and red-handed somewhere, if no one ever found out who railroaded her and Van Ruyne's emeralds out of the United States!"
What sent Dudley into a blazing rage was beyond me. But he fairly yelled at Macartney.
"Free she may be, but when you say 'red-handed' you say a lie! If Jimmy Van Ruyne was fool enough to think so, it was because no Van Ruyne ever could see a. b. spelled ab. D'ye know him? Well," as Macartney shook his head, "he's a rotter, if ever there was one! Got more money than he knows what to do with and always chasing after women. As for Valenka, if you think she came out of a circus and was fair game, that's a lie, too! She was a lady, born and bred. Her mother was American, a Miss Bocqueraz; and her father was one of the best known men in Petrograd, and persona grata with one of the Grand Dukes till he got into some sort of political disgrace and died of it. His daughter came to America and danced and rode for her living. First because she was beggared; and second because she'd been taught dancing in the Imperial School at Petrograd and riding in the Grand Duchess Tatiana's private ring for haute manége; and was a corker at both. She called herself plain Valenka, and Jimmy Van Ruyne went crazy about her—though Mrs. Houston didn't know it, or she never would have asked the nasty little cad to a spring week-end party."