Robert Chambers - The Tracer of Lost Persons

"Your arguments and your conclusions are very plausible," she said, "but, fortunately for me, I have been expressly warned against a young man of your description. You are the marble man!"

"It's a mistake! A very dreadful one."

"Then how did you enter this house?"

"I have a key—I mean I found the front door unlatched. Please don't misunderstand me; I know it sounds unconvincing, but I really have a key to number thirty–eight."

He attempted to reach for his pocket and the pistol glittered in his face.

"Won't you let me prove my innocence?" he asked.

"You can't prove it by showing me a key. Besides, it's probably a weapon. Anyhow, if, as you pretend, you have managed to get into the wrong house, why did you bring that suit case up here?"

"It was here. It's mine. I left it here in this passageway."

"In my house?" she asked incredulously.

"In number thirty–eight; that is all I know. I'll open the suit case if you will let me. I have already described its contents. If it has samples of marble in it you must be convinced!"

"It will convince me that it is your valise. But what of that? I know it is yours already," she said defiantly. "I know, at least, that you are the marble man—if nothing worse!"

"But malefactors don't go about carrying samples of Georgia marble," he protested, dropping on one knee under the muzzle of her revolver and tugging at the straps and buckles. In a second or two he threw open the case—and the sight of the contents staggered him. For there, thrown in pellmell among small square blocks of polished marble was a complete kit of burglar's tools, including also a mask, a dark lantern, and a blackjack.

"What—w—w—what on earth is this?" he stammered. "These things don't belong to me. I won't have them! I don't want them. Who put them into my suit case? How the deuce—"

"You are the marble man!" she said with a shudder. "Your crimes are known! Your wretched accomplice will be caught! You are the marble man—or something worse!"

Kneeling there, aghast, bewildered, he passed his hand across his eyes as though to clear them from some terrible vision. But the suit case was still there with its incriminating contents when he looked again.

"I am sorry for you," she said tremulously. "I—if it were not for the marble—I would let you go. But you are the marble man!"

"Yes, and I'm probably a madman, too. I don't know what I am! I don't know what is happening to me. I ought to be going, that is all I know—"

"I cannot let you go."

"But I must! I've got to catch a train."

The feebleness of his excuse chilled her pity.

"I shall not let you go," she said, resting the hand which held the pistol on her hip, but keeping him covered. "I know you came to rob my house; I know you are a thoroughly bad and depraved young man, but for all that I could find it in my heart to let you go if you were not also the marble man !"

"What on earth is the marble man?" he asked, exasperated.

"I don't know. I have been earnestly warned against him. Probably he is a relative of my butler—"

"I'm not a relative of anybody's butler!"

"You say you are not. How do I know? I—I will make you an offer. I will give you one last chance. If you will return to me the jewels that my butler took—"

"Good heavens, madam! Do you really take me for a professional burglar?"

"How can I help it?" she said indignantly. "Look at your suit case full of lanterns and masks—full of marble , too!"

Speechless, he stared at the burglar's kit.

"I am sorry—" Her voice had altered again to a tremulous sweetness. "I can't help feeling sorry for you. You do not seem to be hardened; your voice and manner are not characteristically criminal. I—I can't see your face very clearly, but it does not seem to be a brutally inhuman face—"

An awful desire to laugh seized Kerns; he struggled against it; hysteria lay that way; and he covered his face with both hands and pinched himself.

She probably mistook the action for the emotion of shame and despair born of bitter grief; perhaps of terror of the law. It frightened her a little, but pity dominated. She could scarcely endure to do what she must do.

"This is dreadful, dreadful!" she faltered. "If you only would give me back my jewels—"

Sounds, hastily smothered, escaped him. She believed them to be groans, and it made her slightly faint.

"I—I've simply got to telephone for the police," she said pityingly. "I must ask you to sit down there and wait—there is a chair. Sit there—and please don't move, for I—this has unnerved me—I am not accustomed to doing cruel things; and if you should move too quickly or attempt to run away I feel certain that this pistol would explode."

"Are you going to telephone?" he asked.

"Yes, I am."

She backed away, cautiously, pistol menacing him, reached for the receiver, and waited for Central. She waited a long time before she realized that the telephone as well as the electric light was out of commission.

"Did you cut all these wires?" she demanded angrily.

"I? What wires?"

She reached out and pressed the electric button which should have rung a bell in her maid's bedroom on the top floor. She kept her finger on the button for ten minutes. It was useless.

"You laid deliberate plans to rob this house," she said, her cheeks pink with indignation. "I am not a bit sorry for you. I shall not let you go! I shall sit here until somebody comes to my assistance, if I have to sit here for weeks and weeks!"

"If you'd let me telephone to my club—" he began.

"Your club! You are very plausible. You didn't offer to call up any club until you found that the telephone was not working!"

He thought a moment. "I don't suppose you would trust me to go out and get a policeman?"

"Certainly not."

"Or go into the front room and open a window and summon some passer–by?"

"How do I know you haven't confederates waiting outside?"

"That's true," he said seriously.

There was a silence. Her nerves seemed to trouble her, for she began to pace to and fro in front of the passageway where he sat comfortably on his chair, arms folded, one knee dropped over the other.

The light being behind her he could not as yet distinguish her features very clearly. Her figure was youthful, slender, yet beautifully rounded; her head charming in contour. He watched her restlessly walking on the floor, small hand clutching the pistol resting on her hip.

The ruddy burnished glimmer on the edges of her hair he supposed, at first, was caused by the strong light behind her.

"This is atrocious!" she murmured, halting to confront him. "How dared you sever every electric connection in my house?"

As she spoke she stepped backward a pace or two, resting herself for a moment against the footboard of the bed—full in the gaslight. And he saw her face.

For a moment he studied her; an immense wave of incredulity swept over him—of wild unbelief, slowly changing to the astonishment of dawning conviction. Astounded, silent, he stared at her from his shadowy corner; and after a while his pulses began to throb and throb and hammer, and the clamoring confusion of his senses seemed to deafen him.

"'This is atrocious,' she murmured, halting to confront him."

She rested a moment or two against the footboard of the bed, her big gray eyes fixed on his vague and shadowy form.

"This won't do," she said.

"No," he said, "it won't do."

He spoke very quietly, very gently. She detected the alteration in his voice and started slightly, as though the distant echo of a familiar voice had sounded.

"What did you say?" she asked, coming nearer, pistol glittering in advance.