The Four Corners of the World

by A. E. W. Mason

"You found the lamp in the hall?" he said, in a low voice. "Beside the letters? Come! We must understand this. My mind will go unless I am quite sure."

She followed him into the living-room and saw that his dead daughter was no longer there. She stood aside whilst, with a patience which wrung her heart, Endicott worked out by the footprints of the intruder and this and that sure sign the events of those tragic minutes, until there was no doubt left.

"Elsie wrote eight letters," he said. "Seven are in the hall. Here is the eighth, addressed and stamped upon the table where she wrote."

The letters had to be sent down the valley to the inn early in the morning. So when she had finished, she had carried them into the hall--all of them, she thought--and she had taken the lamp to light her steps. Whilst she was in the hall, and whilst all this side of the house was in darkness Ahmed Ali had slipped into the room from the lane by the brook. There were the marks of his feet coming from the door.

"But was that possible?" Endicott argued. "I was on the hillside, the moon shining from behind my shoulders on to the house. There were no shadows. It was all as clear as day. I must have seen the man come along the little footpath to the door, for I was watching the house. I saw the light in this room disappear. Wait a moment! Yes. Just after the light went out I struck a match and lit my pipe."

He had held the match close to his face in the hollow of his hands, and had carefully lit the pipe; and after the match had burned out, the glare had remained for a few seconds in his eyes. It was during those seconds that the Asiatic had crossed the lane and darted in by the door.

The next step then became clear. Elsie, counting her letters in the hall, had discovered that she had left one behind, she knew where she had left it. She knew that the moonlight was pouring into the room; and, leaving the lamp in the hall, she had returned to fetch it. In the moonlit room she had come face to face with the Asiatic.

He had been close to the screen when she met him, and there he had stood. No doubt he had begun by asking her for opium. No doubt, too--perhaps through some unanswered cry of hers, perhaps because she never cried out at all, perhaps on account of a tense attitude of terror not to be mistaken even in that vaporous silvery light--somehow, at all events, he had become aware that she was alone in the house; and his words and his demands had changed. She had backed away from him against the wall, moving the screen and the chair, and upsetting a book upon the table there. That was evident from the disorder in this corner. Upon the table stood Endicott's chemicals for developing his photographs. Endicott saw the picture with a ghastly distinctness--her hand dropping for support upon the table and touching the bottles which she had arranged herself.

"Yes, she knew that that one nearest, the first she touched was the poison, and meant--what? Safety! It's awful, but it's the truth. Very probably she screamed, poor girl. But there was no one to hear her."

The noise of the river leaping from rock pool to rock pool had drowned any sound of it which might else have reached to Endicott's ears. The scream had failed. In front of her was a wild and desperate Pathan from the stokehold of a liner. Under her hand was the cyanide of potassium. Endicott could see her furtively moving the cork from the mouth of the bottle with the fingers of one hand, whilst she stood watching in horror the man smiling at her in silence.