True Crime & Murder Mysteries Collection. Moffett Cleveland

the detective?"

      "Yes. He believes you innocent, Lloyd, and he's going to prove it."

      "I hope he does, but—tell him to leave this woman alone."

      "Oh, he won't do that; he says he will find out who she is in a few days, anyway. That's why I thought——"

      "I understand," he said comfortingly, "and the Lord knows I want to get out of this hole, but—we've got to play fair, eh? Now let's drop all that and—do you want to make me the happiest man in the world? I'm the happiest man in Paris already, even here, but if you will tell me one thing—why—er—this prison won't cut any ice at all."

      "What do you want me to tell you?" she asked uneasily.

      "You little darling!" he said tenderly. "You needn't tell me anything if it's going to make you feel badly, but, you see, I've got some lonely hours to get through here and—well, I think of you most of the time and—" He took her hand fondly in his.

      "Dear, dear Lloyd!" she murmured.

      "And I've sort of got it in my head that—do you want to know?"

      "Yes, I want to know," she said anxiously.

      "I believe there's some confounded mystery about you, and, if you don't mind, why—er——"

      Alice started to her feet, and Lloyd noticed, as she faced him, that the pupils of her eyes widened and then grew small as if from fright or violent emotion.

      "Why do you say that? What makes you think there is a mystery about me?" she demanded, trying vainly to hide her agitation.

      "Now don't get upset—please don't!" soothed Kittredge. "If there isn't anything, just say so, and if there is, what's the matter with telling a chap who loves you and worships you and whose love wouldn't change for fifty mysteries—what's the matter with telling him all about it?"

      "Are you sure your love wouldn't change?" she asked, still trembling.

      "Did yours change when they told you things about me? Did it change when they arrested me and put me in prison? Yes, by Jove, it did change, it grew stronger, and that's the way mine would change, that's the only way."

      He spoke so earnestly and with such a thrill of fondness that Alice was reassured, and giving him her hand with a happy little gesture, she said: "I know, dear. You see, I love you so much that—if anything should come between us, why—it would just kill me."

      "Nothing will come between us," he said simply, and then after a pause: "So there is a mystery."

      "I'm—I'm afraid so."

      "Ah, I knew it. I figured it out from a lot of little things. That's all I've had to do here, and—for instance, I said to myself: 'How the devil does she happen to speak English without any accent?' You can't tell me that the cousin of a poor wood carver in Belgium would know English as you do. It's part of the mystery, eh?"

      "Why—er," she stammered, "I have always known English."

      "Exactly, but how? And I suppose you've always known how to do those corking fine embroideries that the priests are so stuck on? But how did you learn? And how does it come that you look like a dead swell? And where did you get those hands like a saint in a stained-glass window? And that hair? I'll bet you anything you like you're a princess in disguise."

      "I'm your princess, dear," she smiled.

      "Now for the mystery," he persisted. "Go on, what is it?"

      At this her lovely face clouded and her eyes grew sad. "It's not the kind of mystery you think, Lloyd; I—I can't tell you about it very well—because—" She hesitated.

      "Don't you worry, little sweetheart. I don't care what it is, I don't care if you're the daughter of a Zulu chief." Then, seeing her distress, he said tenderly: "Is it something you don't understand?"

      "That's it," she answered in a low voice, "it's something I don't understand."

      "Ah! Something about yourself?"

      "Ye-es."

      "Does anyone else know it?"

      "No, no one could know it, I—I've been afraid to speak of it."

      "Afraid?"

      She nodded, and again he noticed that the pupils of her eyes were widening and contracting.

      "And that is why you said you wouldn't marry me?"

      "Yes, that is why."

      He stopped in perplexity. He saw that, in spite of her bravest efforts, the girl was almost fainting under the strain of these questions.

      "You dear, darling child," said Lloyd, as a wave of pity took him, "I'm a brute to make you talk about this."

      But Alice answered anxiously: "You understand it's nothing I have done that is wrong, nothing I'm ashamed of?"

      "Of course," he assured her. "Let's drop it. We'll never speak of it again."

      "I want to speak of it. It's something strange in my thoughts, dear, or—or my soul," she went on timidly, "something that's—different and that—frightens me—especially at night."

      "What do you expect?" he answered in a matter-of-fact tone, "when you spend all your time in a cold, black church full of bones and ghosts? Wait till I get you away from there, wait till we're over in God's country, living in a nice little house out in Orange, N. J., and I'm commuting every day."

      "What's commuting, Lloyd?"

      "You'll find out—you'll like it, except the tunnel. And you'll be so happy you'll never think about your soul—no, sir, and you won't be afraid nights, either! Oh, you beauty, you little beauty!" he burst out, and was about to take her in his arms again when the guard came forward to warn them that the time was nearly up, they had three minutes more.

      "All right," nodded Lloyd, and as he turned to Alice, she saw tears in his eyes. "It's tough, but never mind. You've made a man of me, little one, and I'll prove it. I used to have a sort of religion and then I lost it, and now I've got it again, a new religion and a new creed. It's short and easy to say, but it's all I need, and it's going to keep me game through this whole rotten business. Want to hear my creed? You know it already, darling, for you taught it to me. Here it is: 'I believe in Alice'; that's all, that's enough. Let me kiss you."

      "Lloyd," she whispered as he bent toward her, "can't you trust me with that woman's name?"

      He drew back and looked at her half reproachfully and her cheeks flushed. She would not have him think that she could bargain for her lips, and throwing her arms about him, she murmured: "Kiss me, kiss me as much as you like. I am yours, yours."

      Then there was a long, delicious, agonizing moment of passion and pain until the guard's gruff voice came between them.

      "One moment," Kittredge said, and then to the clinging girl: "Why do you ask that woman's name when you know it already?"

      Wide-eyed, she faced him and shook her head. "I don't know her name, I don't want to know it."

      "You don't know her name?" he repeated, and even in the tumult of their last farewell her frank and honest denial lingered in his mind.

      She did not know the woman's name! Back in his lonely cell Kittredge pondered this, and reaching for his little volume of De Musset, his treasured pocket companion that the jailer had let him keep, he opened it at the fly leaves. She did not know this woman's name! And, wonderingly, he read on the white page the words and the name written by Alice herself, scrawlingly but distinctly, the day before in the garden of Notre-Dame.

      Chapter XIV.

       The Woman in the Case

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      Coquenil was neither surprised