Harley nodded dumbly, and suddenly I found Val Beverley’s little fingers twined about mine.
“I agreed,” continued the deep voice. “It was a boon which I, too, would have asked from one who loved me. But to die, knowing another cherished the woman who had been torn from him, was an impossibility for Juan Menendez. What he had schemed to do at first I never knew. But presently, because of our situation here, and because of that which he had asked of me, it came, the great plan.
“On the night he told me, a night I shall never forget, I drew back in horror from him— I, Marie de Stämer, who thought I knew the blackest that was in him. I shrank. And because of that scene it came to him again in the early morning— the moment of agony, the needle pain, here, low down in his left breast.
“He pleaded with me to do the wicked thing that he had planned, and because I dared not refuse, knowing he might die at my feet, I consented. But, my friends, I had my own plan, too, of which he knew nothing. On the next day he went to Paris, and was told he had two months to live, with great, such great care, but perhaps only a week, a day, if he should permit his hot passions to inflame that threatened heart. Very well.
“I said yes, yes, to all that he suggested, and he began to lay the trail— the trail to lead to his enemy. It was his hobby, this vengeance. He was like a big, cruel boy. It was he, himself, Juan Menendez, who broke into Cray’s Folly. It was he who nailed the bat wing to the door. It was he who bought two rifles of a kind of which so many millions were made during the war that anybody might possess one. And it was he who concealed the first of these, one cartridge discharged, under the floor of the hut in the garden of the Guest House. The other, which was to be used, he placed— ”
“In the shutter-case of one of the tower rooms,” continued Paul Harley. “I know! I found it there to-night.”
“What?” I asked, “you found it, Harley?”
“I returned to look for it,” he said. “At the present moment it is upstairs in my room.”
“Ah, M. Harley,” exclaimed Madame, smiling at him radiantly, “I love your genius. Then it was,” she continued, “that he thought himself ready, ready for revenge and ready for death. He summoned you, M. Harley, to be an expert witness. He placed with you evidence which could not fail to lead to the arrest of M. Camber. Very well. I allowed him to do all this. His courage, mon Dieu, how I worshipped his courage!
“At night, when everyone slept, and he could drop the mask, I have seen what he suffered. I have begged him, begged him upon my knees, to allow me to end it then and there; to forget his dream of revenge, to die without this last stain upon his soul. But he, expecting at any hour, at any minute, to know again the agony which cannot be described, which is unlike any other suffered by the flesh— refused, refused! And I”— she raised her eyes ecstatically— “I have worshipped this courage of his, although it was evil— bad.
“The full moon gives the best light, and so he planned it for the night of the full moon. But on the night before, because of some scene which he had with you, M. Harley, nearly I thought his plans would come to nothing. Nearly I thought the last act of love which he asked of me would never be performed. He sat there, up in the little room which he liked best, the coldness upon him which always came before the pang, waiting, waiting, a deathly dew on his forehead, for the end; and I, I who loved him better than life, watched him. And, so Fate willed it, the pang never came.”
“You watched him?” I whispered.
Harley turned to me slowly.
“Don’t you understand, Knox?” he said, in a voice curiously unlike his own.
“Ah, my friend,” Madame de Stämer laid her hand upon my arm with that caressing gesture which I knew, “you do understand, don’t you? The power to use my limbs returned to me during the last week that I lived in Nice.”
She bent forward and raised her face, in an almost agonized appeal to Val Beverley.
“My dear, my dear,” she said, “forgive me, forgive me! But I loved him so. One day, I think”— her glance sought my face— “you will know. Then you will forgive.”
“Oh, Madame, Madame,” whispered the girl, and began to sob silently.
“Is it enough?” asked Madame de Stämer, raising her head, and looking defiantly at Paul Harley. “Last night, you, M. Harley, who have genius, nearly brought it all to nothing. You passed the door in the shrubbery just when Juan was preparing to go out. I was watching from the window above. Then, when you had gone, he came out— smoking his last cigarette.
“I went to my place, entering the tower room by the door from that corridor. I opened the window. It had been carefully oiled. It was soundless. I was cold as one already dead, but love made me strong. I had seen him suffer. I took the rifle from its hiding-place, the heavy rifle which so few women could use. It was no heavier than some which I had used before, and to good purpose.”
Again she paused, and I saw her lips trembling. Before my mind’s eye the picture arose which I had seen from Harley’s window, the picture of Colonel Juan Menendez walking in the moonlight along the path to the sun-dial, with halting steps, with clenched fists, but upright as a soldier on parade. Walking on, dauntlessly, to his execution. Out of a sort of haze, which seemed to obscure both sight and hearing, I heard Madame speaking again.
“He turned his head toward me. He threw me a kiss— and I fired. Did you think a woman lived who could perform such a deed, eh? If you did not think so, it is because you have never looked into the eyes of one who loved with her body, her mind, and with her soul. I think, yes, I think I went mad. The rifle I remember I replaced. But I remember no more. Ah!”
She sighed in a resigned, weary way, untwining her arm from about Val Beverley, and falling back upon her pillows.
“It is all written here,” she said; “every word of it, my friends, and signed at the bottom. I am a murderess, but it was a merciful deed. You see, I had a plan of which Juan knew nothing. This was my plan.” She pointed to the heap of manuscript. “I would give him relief from his agonies, yes. For although he was an evil man, I loved him better than life. I would let him die happy, thinking his revenge complete. But others to suffer? No, no! a thousand times no! Ah, I am so tired.”
She took up the little medicine bottle, poured its contents into the glass, and emptied it at a draught.
Paul Harley, as though galvanized, sprang to his feet. “My God!” he cried, huskily, “Stop her, stop her!” Val Beverley, now desperately white, clutched at me with quivering fingers, her agonized glance set upon the smiling face of Madame de Stämer.
“No fuss, dear friends,” said Madame, gently, “no trouble, no nasty stomach-pumps; for it is useless. I shall just fall asleep in a few moments now, and when I wake Juan will be with me.”
Her face was radiant. It became lighted up magically. I knew in that grim hour what a beautiful woman Madame de Stämer must have been. She rested her hand upon Val Beverley’s head, and looked at me with her strange, still eyes.
“Be good to her, my friend,” she whispered. “She is English, but not cold like some. She, too, can love.”
She closed her eyes and dropped back upon her pillows for the last time.
Chapter 35 AN AFTERWORD
This shall be a brief afterword, for I have little else to say. As Madame had predicted, all antidotes and restoratives were of no avail. She had taken enough of some drug which she had evidently had in her possession for this very purpose to ensure that there should be no awakening, and although Dr. Rolleston was on the spot within half an hour, Madame de Stämer was already past human aid.