For a moment Blakely had
blazed with indignation, but Plume's sorrow, and utter innocence of
wrong intent, stilled his wrath and led to his answer: "Every letter
of Mrs. Plume's I burned before she was married, and I so assured her.
She herself wrote asking me to burn rather than return them, but there
were letters and papers I could not burn, brought to me by a poor
devil that woman Elise had married, tricked into jail, and then
deserted. He disappeared afterward, and even Pinkerton's people
haven't been able to find him. Those papers are his property. You and
Colonel Byrne are the only men who have seen them, though they were
somewhat exposed just after the fire. She made three attempts to get
me to give them up to her. Then, I believe, she strove to get Downs to
steal them, and gave him the money with which to desert and bring them
to her. He couldn't get into the iron box; couldn't lug it out, and
somehow, probably, set fire to the place, scratching matches in there.
Perhaps she even persuaded him to do that as a last resort. He knew I
could get out safely. At all events, he was scared out of his wits and
deserted with what he had. It was in trying to make his way eastward
by the Wingate road that there came the last of poor Ups and Downs."
And so the story of this baleful influence over a weak, half-drugged
girl, her mistress, became known to Plume and gradually to others.
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