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

Derrick nodded sympathetically. There was no such fiber of courage here as had been transmitted to her daughter. She was gentle and patient, and her heart centered on Jean, but she was not the woman to grasp a situation like the present one. He wondered how much Millicent had taken her into his confidence, how much she actually comprehended of the real man who sometimes seemed to look out of those painted eyes, then concluded that this could only have been fractional. She might have soothed his secret fears, but she could never understand them. Her mind was too ordered, her horizon too defined. She loved as a mother, and mourned as a wife. That was her existence. There could be no object gained in probing this gentle breast.

But, with Jean, Derrick knew it was different. Hers were eyes that saw, and a brain that pierced beyond the obvious. She had her mother’s charm but her father’s imagination. Derrick knew, and it fortified him to know it, that she could follow, pace by pace, wherever he led, and that her vision might even be keener than his. She, like himself, responded to whispers from the unknown and was also undismayed. So when he told his story it was to her rather than her mother that the tale was recited.

Both listened in rapt attention, Mrs. Millicent in sheer wonder, Jean with a keen and fascinated absorption. When he came to the finding of the kris, the older woman shivered, but Jean, her eyes cloudy with thought, did not stir. When he concluded, he felt that while Mrs. Millicent’s heart was lacerated afresh, Jean was possessed of more profound and vital emotions. And it was she who spoke first.

“It is very strange that the peddler should tell you something I meant to tell you but forgot.”

“Yes?”

“It’s about the study. You remember, mother, how it always was?”

“Yes, dear.”

“The desk stood in the other corner, not where it is now, so that father looked out of the window. The sofa was between the fireplace and the window, and the screen between the door into the hall and the desk. Did the peddler seem to know that?”

“He did not say so but appeared to notice that things were changed. I asked Perkins about it then, and she told me what you have.”

“Don’t you think that in spite of what you found at the cottage he was really the guilty man?”

“But why?”

“For one thing, he might easily have had that⁠—that weapon in his pack without you seeing it, and⁠—”

She broke off, and stared at the bangle on her wrist, slowly drew it off, and handed it to Derrick.

“Please, I can’t wear it now.”

He nodded understandingly, pinched at the twisted metal which was shaped oddly like a serpent, and put it in his pocket. Jean breathed a little faster.

“And, apart from that,” she went on, “doesn’t he seem to you to have been the superior intelligence? Your description of him is not that of an ordinary man, and he seems to have very nearly mesmerized those who were there, including the sergeant. Don’t you see that perhaps Martin and Perkins are, or were, only tools in his hands, and he represented to them some power they had to obey without question. One could then understand the look you say was on Martin’s face when the man died, and,” she added, “it would also explain Perkins acting as she did after dinner.”

“But Perkins was shaken beyond words.”

“Yes, because it meant that though the peddler was dead, the power behind him still operated.”

Mrs. Millicent got up unsteadily. “Jean, dear, I’ll have to leave you to talk the rest of this over alone. I’m sorry, darling, but⁠—but⁠—”

She went out hurriedly, and the girl was silent for a moment.

“Please don’t be upset about mother, and really it’s much better.” She put her hand impulsively on his. “Do you begin to see what it has meant to carry the mystery and the terror alone? She could not help me, and I’m glad for her sake.” She looked in his eyes with such utter confidence and appeal that he thought his heart would break.

“Oh, my dear, my dear,” he whispered, “you don’t know yet how well I understand. It will take all my life to show you.”

Jean turned pale, and from her parted lips came a little sigh of content that, faint as it was, penetrated his very soul. Then she breathed quickly, smiling at him as though she thanked him for a perfect understanding, and for knowing her spirit so well that he could afford not to say more.

“Is it not possible,” she continued quietly⁠—“and of course it is possible; we both realize it⁠—that Martin was unconsciously guilty? I mean that not till after it had happened did he realize what had taken place. If Blunt could dominate him yesterday, why not then?”

“Stranger things have happened,” he admitted.

“Well, if that’s the case it also explains Martin’s helplessness and Perkins’ silence. She knows that Martin did it while under this influence, while they both know that, now Blunt is dead, the influence cannot be proved. It would sound like a fairy-story in court.”

He nodded gravely. “All that may be. Does anything else occur to you in this connection?”

“Nothing about the others at the moment, but Blunt sticks in my mind. You say he was partly Oriental?”

“He had native blood. I’m sure of that.”

“Then he was probably occult. Father was, but I have never told mother that. And death might not mean much to him, as after death he would expect his soul to live on in some other body. The poison he took must have been almost instantaneous, and⁠—”

She looked up suddenly. The big figure of Sergeant Burke was coming rapidly up the narrow brick walk that led to the porch. Hat off, he mopped at his red brow. A bicycle stood against the gate.

“He seems very upset. Perhaps you’d better speak to him, Jack.”

She used the word before she knew it and