Chapter XXXIX: You Never Can Tell

For a moment Devreaux and Alison stared at Dexter as though they were not quite sure whether he had taken leave of his senses. There was a suggestion of a smile on his lips as he faced them in the failing twilight.

"All of which explains why Stark hated me so," he remarked after an interval of silence. "He knew it was I who had arrested his wife, and he could not help blaming me for the tragic circumstances that came afterwards."

"Wait!" expostulated the colonel. "You say that the one who was shot in the upper bunk was a woman in man's clothes--Mrs. Stark--and that there was nobody in the cabin when the shooting took place but her and Mudgett?"

"Yes," insisted Dexter serenely. "The record in the snow outside the cabin showed that no one entered or left the place during my short absence. No one else could have been there." He shook his head in self-depreciation. "The explanation has struck me all in a heap with the discovery of this hidden telephone system. I should have seen it long ago. The facts were all there before me the night of the double killing. But Alison's appearance on the scene confused the facts, and I was led away from the simple and obvious solution of the affair--the only possible solution."

"I still don't see what you're getting at," said the puzzled Devreaux.

Dexter faced the colonel, confident and clear-eyed, as a man who at last finds solid ground underfoot. "This:" he asserted. "Before I left the cabin I forced my two prisoners to get into the bunks, and bound their feet to the posts. The one I'm now certain was Mrs. Stark was tied in the upper bunk. The head of the bunk touched the chimney, and as Alison tells us, there was a secret cubby hole there, with a telephone in it. The woman was handcuffed, but the chain gave her five or six inches' play. She could have used her hands. She could take out the telephone, call one of Stark's stations, and return the instrument without my being the wiser."

"I follow you so far," admitted the colonel, "but--"

"When I came back to the cabin I heard a woman's voice in the darkness behind the door. She said something about there being police in the valley, of being betrayed. I recall her words: 'Lifeless tongues never talk.' 'There's one thing left to do,' she said, 'and I'm going to do it.' After that the voice stopped; there was a silence, broken by a cry for mercy--Mudgett crying in fear and horror; then a shot, followed quickly by another shot. The door was barred, but I broke in, found my prisoners dead, the windows shut--nobody there."

"Well?" urged Devreaux in a sharp undertone.

"What are the usual emotions of a prisoner arrested for a capital crime?" inquired the corporal with seeming irrelevance. "Anger," he answered for himself, before Devreaux could reply--"bitterness, hopelessness, despair, blackness crushing upon him from all directions. You've arrested plenty of them. You know. And such were the reactions of my prisoner in the upper bunk.

"I had taken a big pistol from her when she tried to shoot me in the doorway. But I hadn't searched her for other weapons. Careless! She must have had another gun concealed about her person." Dexter thrust his hand into his pocket, and brought forth Alison's little pearl-handled revolver. "This one!

"You said you carried this in your bag," he remarked in an aside, glancing at the girl. "Could Mrs. Stark have taken it without your knowing?"

"Yes, she had opportunities," Alison answered unsteadily. "She might have done so."

"She did," answered Dexter coolly. "She must have."

"You're trying to tell me--" blurted out Devreaux, aghast.

"I'm telling you what happened, the only thing that could have happened. Mrs. Stark may have thought that Mudgett had betrayed her people to the police. At any rate she mistrusted him. He was a weakling, and he was our prisoner. She could be certain that we could force him to turn state's evidence against her husband. But she saw her chance to stop that danger. Handcuffed as she was, she could use a revolver.

"There can be no other explanation," Dexter went on grimly. "She leaned over the edge of the bunk and shot Mudgett, and a moment later turned the weapon on herself and pulled the trigger."

Devreaux gazed at the younger man in somber fascination. "You mean to say it was--"

"Murder and suicide!" said the corporal.

"But," protested the superintendent, "the revolver--you told me you found it on the opposite side of the room, by the door."

"With two chambers empty." Dexter nodded. "The dead prisoner was lying across the upper bunk, with the arms hanging out over the side. There must have been a sharp reflex after death, and the revolver was flung across the room from the unclasping fingers."

"But the front door was barred on the inside," objected Devreaux.

The corporal shrugged his shoulders. "Yes. That was one of the things that started me off on a false trail. I was too quick in jumping at conclusions--taking it for granted that a third person had barred the door."

"Your prisoners were tied to the bunks. Neither of them could have--"

"Of course not," agreed Dexter. "The answer's much simpler than that." He smothered a faint laugh. "I recall now that I slammed the door behind me when I left the cabin. It was a lift bar, like the one here, swinging on a pivot. The jolt must have thrown it down, and it dropped back into place and fastened itself."

"De corpor'l he fin' out effryt'ing," broke in a deep voice from the other side of the room.

The two officers turned with a start to stare across the gloomy chamber. In their deep absorption they had forgotten that the four prisoners could hear all that was said. They now perceived that they had an interested group of listeners. One of the men was on his knees, and as they peered into the shadow they made out the swarthy features of the giant half-breed, Doucet.

"What's that you said?" asked Devreaux gruffly.

"Mees Stark she keel Mudgett, and den shoot herself, lak de corpor'l tell. _Oui_! I talk to 'er dat night on tel'phone."

"You!" exclaimed Dexter.

"_Oui_. But, yes. She call up, say she been arrest' for shootin' dat constable."

"Where were you?" demanded the corporal.

"In a cabin farder down de valley. She call to talk wid Stark, 'er 'osband, but he away somew'eres. I dunno w'ere to fin' 'eem. Nobody in de cabin but me."

"And she told you what she had decided to do?"

"For sure. She say police have come. Nobody to help her but only me, an' wan man no good. She afraid dis Mudgett, he spill dose beans. So she say, 'I fix 'im--I shoot him. An' den I shoot myself. Dose police ain't gon' take me and hang me.' An' den she say good-by, an' say no more. _Voila tout_!"

Dexter and the colonel exchanged a glance of keen significance. "I guess that settles it," said Devreaux soberly.

"No question!" The corporal looked out the window with ruminative eyes. "It's queer how people's minds work under stress," he mused. "This woman had a weapon concealed--she might have waited and taken a chance on getting me. But she must have gone temporarily out of her head. I've seen it hit other prisoners like that--crazed and desperate, like trapped animals. The voice I heard had that sound. She was the nervous, high-strung sort that seem to be able to face anything, and then suddenly go all to pieces. She must have acted on the first mad impulse, without allowing herself time for second thought."

"Mental blow-up!" said the colonel. "Yes, I've seen them that way. In any event we know now what happened. There really was no mystery at all, if we'd had sense enough to put two and two together." He turned to Alison and his iron features relaxed for a moment in a kindly smile. "And I guess that lets you out, my dear," he said.

The girl drew a quivering breath, and blinked hard to keep back the tears. She tried to speak, but her voice seemed to fail her.

"We'll have to make our report," resumed Devreaux, "but you've nothing to fear. When a hard boiled old mounted man like me is ready to accept a chain of facts such as this, you may be sure others will be easily convinced. You'll come off with flying colors. And I don't mind telling you that I'm very glad indeed."

Dexter likewise turned, and for a moment he held the girl under his grave scrutiny. "I don't need to tell you that I too am glad," he said. He faced her in silence for a moment, and his mouth drooped in a smile of weariness and sadness. "I should have known it all from the beginning," he went on in a low voice. "Knowing you, I should have gone on believing in you with blind, unquestioning faith. I did for a while, and then--something happened to remind me that I was a policeman--and I forced myself to look at what I thought was evidence, instead of looking at you. I'm sorry, Alison."

He lingered for a space with yearning glance, and then he drew a harsh breath, turned abruptly and strode out of the cabin.

Leaving the doorway, he moved with heavy, dragging steps, down through the fringe of timber to the edge of the rapids. He found a flat-topped bowlder on the beach where the water ran awash, and sat down to gaze off across the tumbling stream. For a while he sat with his arm on his knee, motionless and listless, listening to the rush of the rapids, his head bent to the soft evening breeze. But presently he stirred, and his hand reached into his tunic pocket. He brought out his pipe, fumbled for a match and struck a light. But as he started to apply the flame to the tobacco, he caught the sound of a quick, light step in the gravel behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a slight figure standing in the shadow. The pipe dropped unheeded to the ground as he stumbled to his feet. "Alison!" he breathed.

"Yes." The figure came forward and sat down on the bowlder.

"You believed in me all the while," said a quiet voice.

He leaned forward, trying to see the girl's face in the gathering dusk.

"I knew," she went on quietly, "even if you didn't. You thought it your duty to weigh the evidence you had found, and to be cold and stern and unyielding. But in your heart you knew that everything was all right. You may have deceived yourself, David, but you never deceived me."

"You don't hold it against me?" he asked unsteadily. "Really, Alison, I must have believed. I couldn't have doubted--"

"Of course not," she returned. She got up from the bowlder and stood beside him. They faced each other for a moment, two shadows, dimly outlined in the purple twilight. Then, naturally and inevitably as clouds drifting together, the shadows merged, and without quite knowing how it all came about, Dexter found Alison in the circle of his one useful arm, warm and trembling and clinging, found himself holding her in a breathless, stunning embrace.

"Oh, my dear," he gasped. "Whatever I may have thought, I loved you--in spite of everything."

"I knew!" she whispered. "And I know now why it all happened as it did--why I was forced to run away to this terrible wilderness. I thought it was tragedy, and it was for this!"

She spoke incoherently, between tears and laughter, her face against his shoulder.

His hand went up, and his fingers strayed through her soft, tumbled hair. "Alison! Look at me!"

Slowly she lifted her head, but as their glances met they were startled by a loud coughing sound behind them, "I feared as much," said a gruff voice.

In confusion they drew apart, and turned to see a short, stocky shape standing on the edge of the beach.

"Oh--Colonel Devreaux!" said Dexter awkwardly.

"Yes." The old man advanced and fixed them with his grim scrutiny. "It looks to me as though I'd lost one of my best boys. I dislike to say it, but I'm afraid you're dropped from the rolls of the mounted."

"Just a moment," he went on as the corporal tried to speak. "Unless my eyes have gone bad, I take it that you two have a sort of an understanding between you. And the service is no place for a man's wife." He was silent for a moment as he measured Dexter up and down with his eyes. "You would have gone high in the ranks of the police," he said in a musing voice. "Now that you're leaving us I don't mind telling you that you've got the stuff. And that's why I know you'll go higher still outside the police--in civilian life. Your job from this time on is to make this girl happy."

The colonel turned on his heel, but before he could move away Alison stepped impulsively forward, caught him by both shoulders and kissed his stern-drawn lips.

"I wanted to," she said with a fluttering laugh. "I've wanted to do it for a long time."

Devreaux chuckled to himself, and his glance shifted back to the corporal. "I told you long ago," he remarked--"women--you never can tell about 'em. You're luckier than most of us. You've found the one in a billion. Hold on to her, David." The colonel drew a breath that sounded very much like a sigh, faced about abruptly, and strode off into the darkness.

"Like this!" said Alison. She found Dexter's hand, and drew his arm about her shoulders. "Your officer told you what to do. Tight--tighter!" She looked up at him with a tremulous smile, and her eyes slowly closed. "Still your prisoner," she whispered softly--"just like this--always."

THE END