"My mother and I, we were all alone." She smoothed out a little fold in her dress. "We had but the one message from the family of my betrothed—that they withdrew the word of their son."
Kane looked up quickly. "Yes?" he urged. "And then?"
"Then came to us Hermann Deutch, who in the old days sold our wine. He gave us escort to Naples, for my mother could go no farther, and returned to attend our property. It was all in a ruin. The house had burned. The cattle were gone. The laborers, too, nor would any return. The land none would buy. It was a place accursed. Our money was soon all gone." She paused, struggling with a sudden sob. "Hermann Deutch, to stay on he had lost his position, and he took one that was poor but in Naples, to be near me. He was all that came near us, who had word or dealing with us, while my mother grew too weak to live. When she, too, died, I married him. There was the scandal, sir, to account for my marriage."
She looked with deep, mild scorn at Kane. He remained imperturbable, while Herrick blushed for him.
"There was one thing more. Mr. Deutch had spent much for us and before he could take me from Naples he must save something from what work he had. One month came upon another in that terrible city and we had not gone. So the time came when I, like other women, thought to have a child. One night there were fire-works at the seashore and, to liven my mind, he made me go. As we came home there was a lonely bit of beach, though toward the cars. Out of the dark a voice called some words at us and something fell—it rang on a stone at our feet. They had thrown a kind of dagger. Sirs," said Mrs. Deutch, "it was a triangular knife."
Kane gave a cry with a strange note of satisfaction.
But the tears were running down Mrs. Deutch's face. "The shock and the fear, they were too much for me. I never bore my child. God has never given me a child to love except Christina. Tell me what all this can be to her?"
"Do you know what aphasia is, Mrs. Deutch? And doesn't Mr. Deutch suffer, occasionally, from a confusion of words?"
"Not so much that it could be called by a name. Except that one time. Mr. Deutch has been all his life an excited man. And when that knife fell at my feet he was like one crazed. Then he forgot language, sir, and could not speak well for days. English and German he ran together, and what of French he knows with what Italian. Though he knew well what he wished to say. And there is yet a smear in his brain where the words may sometimes a little mix together. But—Christina?"
"Mrs. Deutch, what did all this suggest to you? Of what did you think you were the victims?"