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Anyone looking for Paul Ducharme would have paid small attention to me, and to any friend of Valmont's I was equally unrecognisable. I strolled in leisurely manner to the Great Eastern Hotel on the Quay, and asked the clerk if a portmanteau addressed to Mr. John Wilkins had arrived that day from London.
Ducharme merely laughed and kept her seat. "Did he, the doctor feller, ever ask you anything about his death?" she asked. Alves looked at her blankly. "When he signed that paper you gave the undertaker?" continued the Duchesse. "I don't know what you mean!" Alves exclaimed, closing the door and walking away from the woman. "How did he die?" Mrs. Ducharme whispered.
The real one was a fine gentleman, even if he did liquor bad." "I told you," Alves repeated, "that I didn't care to talk of my affairs. What do you want?" "I've come here to talk of your affairs," Mrs Ducharme answered insolently. "And I guess you'll listen. He, I don't mean the doctor, the real 'un, came of rich, respectable folks.
I took him from his prison one midnight, and gave him a bed in my Soho room, taking care in bringing him away that he would never recognise the place where he had been incarcerated. In my dealings with him I had always been that old man, Paul Ducharme. Next morning I said to him: 'You spoke of Eugène Valmont. I have learned that he lives in London, and I advise you to call upon him.
Ducharme he's a Frenchman knew her in Decatur where he worked in a restaurant, and he came to Peory to get rid of her. And he got a job and was real steady and quiet. Then we got married, and Ducharme was as nice a man as you ever knew. But we wasn't married a week we had a kafe together before she got wind o' his being married and come to town.
But I didn't tell you: I found 'em in Peory in a place not fit for hogs to live in, and I watched my chance and gave it to the woman. But Ducharme came in and he pushed me out, and I fell, and guess I cracked my head. That's when my eye began to hurt. The kafe business ran out, and I followed them to Chicago. And here I been for three months, doing most anything, housework generally.
She followed him to the station without protest, fascinated by his strong will. Sommers bought a ticket to St. Louis and handed it to her with a dollar. "Remember, if I see or hear of you again," he put his finger in his waistcoat pocket, significantly. "And there are other powders," he added grimly. "Ducharme has gone back to Peory.
"He was ill last night, but I thought nothing of it. When I returned from an errand this noon, he had fallen into a kind of stupor last night he was so excited and I was alarmed. I had Mrs. Ducharme telephone for you then. He did not come out of his stupor," she added in a low tone. Sommers stepped back to the bedside.
The woman's scheme of extracting blackmail flashed instantly into Alves's mind. "You foul creature," she gasped, "you know it is an abominable lie " "Think so? Well, Ducharme didn't think so when I told him, and there are others that 'ud believe it, if I should testify to it!" Alves walked to and fro, overwhelmed by the thoughts of the evil which was around her. At last she faced Mrs.
Then I guess Mrs. Preston gave him some, when she came in. But you can't touch me," she added impudently. "The healer said you had done a criminal act in signing that certificate. You and she better look out." Sommers stepped across the room and opened the inner door. Mrs. Ducharme gave one glance at the silent figure and shrieked: "You killed her! You killed her! Let me out!"
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