‘I approached the house at twelve, expecting all its inmates to be asleep. Just as I was about to enter it the door opened, and to my astonishment Eleanor herself emerged. I gazed at her retreating figure with a sort of stupid fascination for some time, and then recovered myself, and went in. I had taken off my boots outside, and hence, I suppose my footsteps sounded light as I went upstairs.
‘Well, do you want more? Do you care to hear how I killed her; how I stabbed her in her sleep, lowered her through the window, and came down with the jewel-chest in my arms? I had to mutilate the corpse; the weight would have been too great for me at once. As it was, I made three journeys before I had disposed of all, and thrown everything, including the latchkey, into the sea.
‘Then I walked back to Abertaff—twenty miles it was, and I got there before ten the next morning. I had breakfast, and was still walking the streets when the news came that the murder was discovered.
‘It overwhelmed me. I assure you, Charles Prescott, on the oath of a dying man, that I knew not what I did, till that moment. I was possessed as surely as any of the Galilean sufferers of old. Madness, your modern science calls it. It is all the same. I passed out of it into my ordinary state with a terrible shock, and then I set about playing the part I had looked forward to, of delivering Eleanor, and carrying her off.
‘But it was not to be. I had forgotten that she was not mad, too; I had made no allowance for her, and now I found that my protection, my confidence, was of no value to her, when she had lost the good opinion of the world.
‘Of the world, do I say? Verily, I believe it was you; I believe you unconsciously thwarted me then, as before.
‘I gave way to my frenzy again in secret. Again the demon came back and resumed his sway. He has held me ever since. He holds me now.
‘Yet I can act my part. I deceive all. I just rang for my clerk, and told him I should want him to carry this to your chambers. Fool! He had no suspicion that he was never going to hear me speak again.
‘Good-bye. ’Twere folly to ask you to forgive. I do not wish it. Yet, Eleanor—Eleanor——’
The letter ended abruptly at this point. The reader put on his hat and rushed round to Tressamer’s chambers. It was too late. He found him sitting in a chair, stark and dead, with a dagger driven through his heart.