An Eye for an Eye Part 38

"Yes," said Lily simply, "it was." The revelation held her dumbfounded.

"Then Hartmann and Lowry were actually one and the same?" I observed, bewildered.

"Certainly," Eva answered, all her soul in her eyes. "But there was yet a further curious incident. A few days after you had taken that fatal draught from my hand, Madame, in sudden anger, discharged all three servants. Then, when they had gone, she had a small square hole about six inches wide cut in the wall of one of the rooms--a bathroom adjoining my bedroom--close down to the floor, and before it was fitted a sliding panel in the wainscoting. Afterwards she had a strong iron bar placed upon the door, and the whole re-painted and grained. Then, having furnished the place roughly as a living-room, there came secretly late one night the wretched poisoner Hartmann, _alias_ Professor Douglas Dawson, flying from the police for some previous offence, as I afterwards discovered. Some German police-agents had got wind of his whereabouts. He entered that room, and when he was inside Madame fetched an apparatus I had never seen before, a kind of punch, and with it placed a leaden seal upon the door. Fresh servants were at once engaged, and these were told that inside that room was a quant.i.ty of antique furniture belonging to a friend who had gone abroad. Meanwhile Madame herself supplied the fugitive with food, cooked and uncooked, drink and books, and for a fortnight or so he lived there in secret. I held him in loathing and in hatred, yet I dared not utter a word or even flee from that house of terror, knowing well that in such case I, too, would quickly fall a victim to the machinations of what seemed a widespread conspiracy. I was in possession of their secret, and might turn informer. That was the reason those half-dozen bottles of port wine had been so generously given to me by my ingenious employer. I dared scarcely to eat or drink, and often slipped out secretly and bought cooked meat and bread to satisfy my hunger. One day, when Madame had ventured up to London, I chanced to enter the bedroom I had previously occupied. The panel was cautiously pushed back, and the man within asked for something to drink. I answered that I only had some port, all the rest being locked up. `Then give me that,' he said. I hesitated, then in sudden desperation I went to the cupboard where the wine was and handed him an unopened bottle. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, and the panel closed. That wine, Frank," she added, a deathlike pallor on her cheeks, "was the same as that of which you partook. Madame had prepared it with her little syringe as she had done the Benedictine."

She paused, placing her hand upon her panting breast.

"When she returned," she continued at last, for the nervousness which had agitated her at first gave place to strength and confidence, "her first question was of Hartmann. I told her of his request, and how I had acceded to it, giving him a bottle of the wine she had so generously ordered for me. She grew livid in an instant, and stood speechless, glaring at me as though she would strike me dead. Then rushing up to the room she drew back the panel and called him by name. There was no response. In an instant she knew the truth. Without uttering a single word to me, but ordering the servants to close the house as we were going away for a week or two, she made instant preparations for departure, and after seeing everything securely bolted and barred, she left with a trunk on a cab for Fulwell Station, while I, with my small trunk, took refuge with my friends the Blains, with whom I have since remained."

"But the motive of that secret a.s.sa.s.sination at Phillimore Place?" I asked, astounded at her story.

"Only within the past few days have I discovered it," she answered.

"The crime was planned with extraordinary care and forethought. If it were not for this confession which you have wrung from me, the police would never, I believe, have elucidated the mystery. The reason briefly was this. Coulter-Kerr was an Englishman living in Calcutta, who had been left a great indigo estate in the North-West by his uncle, and had returned to England with a view of selling it to a company. The estate, one of the finest in the whole of India, realised a very handsome income, but both he and his wife preferred life in England. Blain, being a speculator and promoter of companies, besides an importer of wines, having been introduced to him, conceived a plan of obtaining this magnificent estate, and with that object had approached Hartmann who in his turn had enlisted the services of Madame Damant, both of them being very desperate characters. Hartmann lived in London, and was supposed to be the most expert toxicologist in the whole world, while Madame was a woman whose previous adventures had earned for her great renown in certain shady circles on the Continent.

"Blain, it appeared, had already been out to India to visit the estate, and on his return had paid a couple of thousand pounds deposit, agreeing to purchase it privately of Kerr for two hundred thousand pounds--the valuation made upon it by a valuer whom he had taken up with him from Bombay--and then to turn it into a company. A date was arranged when the money should be paid over at the house in Phillimore Place in exchange for the deeds duly executed, Hartmann, in whose experiments Kerr was so interested, to be present to witness any doc.u.ment necessary.

In accordance with Blain's request the deeds were therefore prepared beforehand and executed, and all the papers relating to the transaction placed in order in the large deed-box in which they had been brought from India. In accordance with the cunningly-devised plan, Blain called upon the Kerrs on the afternoon arranged--the afternoon of the day of the tragedy--and found Kerr ready with all the legal papers and receipts duly executed. Blain, however, was profuse in his apologies, stating that, owing to some slight difficulty with his bank, he was unable to draw that day, but would do so on the day following, and would return at the same hour. The Kerrs, on their part, expressed regret that they could not ask him to remain to dinner, but explained that they had no servants."

Again she paused. Her story held us all speechless.

"I have already explained how the Kerrs afterwards visited me and took tea, and the terrible tragedy which followed. Hartmann was, without doubt, concealed in that house at the time, watching for the unfortunate man's end, and without delay secured the deed-box and all the receipts and papers, carrying them next door, searching the body of the man, and placing certain things in his pockets, namely, the forged banknotes and the penny wrapped in paper, which would puzzle the police, while Blain had caused that same evening to be posted from the _Grand Hotel_ in Paris, a letter to the man now dead, addressed to Drummond's Bank, expressing satisfaction at the termination of the negotiations, and acknowledging the safe receipt of the deeds and transfers from the messenger he had sent. This was, of course, to carry out the fiction that for several weeks he had been in Paris on business connected with the floating of the company, and to enable him to prove an _alibi_ if ever required. Blain, when in India, took good care that it should be widely known that he intended to purchase the estates, so that his sudden possession would not be considered strange. There was a man, it afterwards transpired, who was actually staying at the _Grand_ in Paris in the name of Blain, and he had posted the letter, while I further discovered that this ingenious swindler had actually borrowed the sum of two hundred thousand pounds for three days to pa.s.s through his bank, so that he might show that he had paid for the property."

"Then Blain is in actual possession of the deeds, which only require the stamp of the courts in India for the property to become his?" Boyd observed.

"Yes," responded my beloved. "But the fear that you have discovered the dead man's ident.i.ty has. .h.i.therto prevented him taking possession or raising money on the deeds. He has placed them somewhere in safety, I suppose, and is now most likely out of the country."

"Absolutely astounding!" I gasped. Then, on reflection, I inquired the meaning of the cards which had so puzzled us.

"Horrible though it may seem," she said, "they were used to cast lots as to who should actually administer the poison, being shuffled and dealt face downwards. There were fifty, only two of which were marked. It was, I have learnt, the mode in which the Anarchists of Zurich cast lots, the person receiving the one with the line to commit the crime, while whoever received the circle became the accomplice and protector.

With grim disregard for consequences these very cards were afterwards used by the a.s.sa.s.sins and their victims to decide upon partners for whist, sometimes being placed beneath the plates at dinner when, on entering the room, the guests were allowed to choose their places, afterwards turning up their cards. This gave rise sometimes to great amus.e.m.e.nt. What would the unfortunate pair have thought could they have known the truth? Alas! I did not know it until too late, or I would have given them warning, regardless of the consequences."

Boyd briefly explained how he had seen Blain throw something into the lake in St. James's Park, whereupon Eva suggested that the object he thus got rid of was no doubt one of the poisoned coins with which Hartmann had supplied him at his request.

I referred to the incident of the telephone, and Eva explained how she had since discovered that Blain had made an inquiry by telephone, in full belief that it was Hartmann who had responded. When next day he discovered his mistake he saw how narrowly he had escaped the police.

Mary's letter to me had, no doubt, been a coincidence, but her subsequent visit was at her mother's instigation, it having been discovered that I was aware of the terrible tragedy.

"You received some type-written letters?" Boyd observed. "Who wrote them?"

"Blain," she replied, surprised that he should be aware of this. "He knew that I had discovered the secret, and wrote urging me to take the utmost precautions to preserve what he guardedly referred to as the Silence."

"But you say that Madame herself took tea with her victims?" I said.

"She did not suffer."

"Certainly not," responded my beloved. "In her expert hand these poisons, discovered by Hartmann, may be fatal to one person and perfectly harmless to another. She no doubt drank some prophylactic first, which at once counteracted any ill effect of poison taken afterwards. Hartmann seems to have re-discovered the secrets dead with the Borgias, for Madame can, I believe, secrete a swift and deadly poison within almost anything."

"Where is she now?" asked Boyd quickly. "We must take immediate steps for her arrest, as well as Blain's."

"Madame has flown to the Continent, but where I have no idea," she replied. "To-night I intended to go to Paris and try to obtain a situation as governess, for I feared to remain longer in England, knowing of the body of Hartmann lying in that closed room at the Hollies."

"You must remain," Boyd said quietly. "Your evidence will be required."

"Ah, no! I cannot," she declared, bursting into a torrent of tears.

"After this confession I--" and her voice was choked by sobs as she covered her haggard face with her hands.

"After this confession, darling," I said tenderly, "I love you none the less."

Then, clasping her swaying figure to me in wild ecstasy, I felt the swell of her bosom against my breast, and I covered her cold, tear-stained cheeks with pa.s.sionate kisses, while she, for the first time, raised her sweet full lips to mine in a fervid, pa.s.sionate caress, and murmured that she loved me.

Ah! what joy was mine at that moment. A new life had been renewed within me, for I knew that by the sacred bond of an undying affection she was bound to me for ever.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

CONCLUSION.

Upon events which occurred immediately afterwards there is little need to dwell, save to declare that the hours that followed were the most joyous of all our lives; and further, that the post and the telegraph that night carried over the seas a demand to the police for the search and arrest of Madame Damant and the unscrupulous schemer Henry Blain.

A little more than a year has now gone by since that well-remembered day of confession, and Eva and I are happily united man and wife, while Lily Lowry no longer toils at her counter but is married to d.i.c.k, against whom Boyd's suspicions were, of course, entirely unfounded. By the death of a maiden aunt, who never gave me sixpence while alive, I have fortunately found myself possessed of sufficient to live independently in a house embowered in trees on the banks of the Exe, in Devon, while d.i.c.k, who is still "the _Comet_ man," lives in a neat villa out at Beckenham. Eva and I are frequent guests there, and on such occasions the conversation often turns to those breathless summer days up the Thames and that extraordinary mystery so intricate and puzzling--a mystery which never, after all, appeared in the _Comet_.

Of Mrs. Blain and Mary we hear but very little. They left Riverdene broken and crushed, poor things, and went to live in a small house at Bournemouth upon the wreck of the fugitive's fortune. No word has since been heard of him, but as the deed-box containing many of the papers was found by the police in a garret in the Rue du Maure in Paris, from which the occupier--an Englishman answering to Blain's description--had mysteriously disappeared, it is almost beyond doubt that he had committed suicide rather than starve. Hartmann's unclaimed scientific discovery is still the wonder of the Royal Inst.i.tution, and Patterson is still stationed at Kensington. As for Madame Damant, she was three months ago arrested in Venice, where, in the course of a sensational trial, it was proved that she had most ingeniously poisoned a wealthy German contractor whom she had inveigled into marriage, and to-day she is serving a life-term of imprisonment. The Italian Government does not give up its subjects for offences committed abroad, or she would otherwise have been brought to London for trial, and the readers of newspapers would have been startled by the details of this, one of the most skilful and extraordinary plots of secret a.s.sa.s.sination ever devised by the devilish ingenuity of man or woman.

The End.