The Jade God by Alan Sullivan (snow like ashes series txt) 📕

as anyone else is concerned I’m merely an onlooker. I congratulate you, Burke. It ought to mean promotion.”

The other man indulged in a broad smile. He had had no time to think about promotion yet, but the prospect was distinctly rosy. “That’s very good of you, sir, and this certainly ought to help.”

“So that now the matter of Blunt’s escape does not seem very serious?”

“Well, sir, Dr. Henry told me enough about that trick to show that it’s fooled a good many wiser men than me. It has proved not to be important after all, and I don’t think it will be brought up against me. Is there anything you want me for now?”

“Yes, to make the following arrangement. I’ll be responsible for Martin till morning, and he will then go with your man to the station. Meantime, please understand that I lay no charge whatever against him. As to Blunt, in that case also I lay no charge at present, but reserve the right to do so tomorrow if I wish. Meantime, I’d like it understood, if possible, that you are merely taking him at my request because I found him in my house without my authority. I don’t know the law in such matters but assume that you could not proceed against him till I did actually lay the charge. As for the rest of it, I suppose they will both be needed as witnesses to the confession and suicide. With that, of course, I have nothing to do. Can the matter be left that way for the next day or so?”

Burke pondered. He could not get much further at present than that the Millicent mystery was solved, and his own reputation not only reestablished but enhanced, and there was solid satisfaction in the thought. Already he could see the headlines in the London papers.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I think we could leave it that way, sir. When would you want to talk to these men?”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“All right, Mr. Derrick. I’ll get most of my work out of the way by ten thirty and be ready for you, if that will suit. Nothing more I can do for you here tonight?”

The young man breathed a long sigh of relief. “There’s nothing left to go wrong now, and I’ll put this jade friend, or enemy, of ours back where he belongs for the present. Good night, sergeant, and I’m glad your luck has turned.”

Burke saluted and went out. There was the slight jingle of a chain, and the front door closed. Derrick pushed back the oaken panel. Involuntarily he glanced at the portrait. Millicent seemed satisfied. He was avenged now.

Then over the young man began to creep sensations in which there was no triumph, no pride, no self-congratulation. The blank-faced woman over whom Martin was crouching in the silent cottage seemed to rise up and point a thin accusing finger. Why had he done this thing? Her secret had been torn from her, and her life with it. What had she ever done to Derrick? His lips became dry at the thought, and he felt almost like a murderer himself. What was wrong with his philosophy? Upstairs was Jean waiting for him. He would go to her across the body of another woman.

He struggled with this picture, but it would not down. By what trail had he come to so unexpected a solution? Could it be that it was always thus with those over whom the jade god held its malignant sway? Were their lives at the mercy of undercurrents of whose very existence they were ignorant? What did the image mean to Perkins, or any of them? She knew now, perhaps for the first time, but would he himself ever know? Who was Blunt in this deadly circle, and why should Martin and Perkins, being man and wife, remain yet strangers to one another? Had the jade god come in between? His brain rocked with hazardings like this, and at the end of it all he felt guiltier and guiltier.

He went upstairs and found Jean waiting for him in the hall. She had watched Blunt, swinging one arm, disappear in the fog, walking close to the sergeant. They had stopped at the cottage, where Burke peered in but did not enter. He saw what he expected to see. Blunt did not attempt to look. Then the two passed on through the white gates and were swallowed up. Jean knew that Derrick would now come to her soon.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, “who ever could have dreamed of this?”

He made no answer, for there was none, but the look on his face gave her a new throb of fear.

“What is it, Jack?”

“I don’t know,” he said wearily, “but if it were not for you I would regret having done anything. As it is”⁠—he made a helpless gesture⁠—“see what I have done!”

“Has anything else happened?” she asked timidly.

“No, there’s nothing more to happen now. I’m thinking of Perkins down in the cottage, and that it was I who sent her there. I wish I hadn’t. God, how I wish that!”

“Jack,” she said swiftly, “don’t think of it that way! Dear one, don’t!”

“I’ve done a woman to death,” he said in a half-whisper.

“No, no”⁠—she was trembling with a great longing to comfort him⁠—“no one has. It was all written, and had to be. I am full of the horror of it, too, but you and all of us were only pawns. Perkins’s life was utterly unhappy, and her death, however terrible, can’t be more so. To me it all seems like some law.”

“What law?” he asked dully.

“I can’t explain. She killed my father, we all know that now, but why we don’t know. Nor did she really know why she should kill herself. You did not bring her to her death.”

“But if I had not acted as I have she would be alive now.”

With that his arms went out, and he held her close. For a moment they clung like children, moved by