But I was content. For, of course, Camilla was not precisely in that coffin. Camilla had not been suffering from precisely typhoid fever. In strict fact, she had never been ill the least bit in the world. In strict fact, she had been spirited out of the hotel one night, and at the very moment when her remains were crossing the Channel in charge of an inconsolable widower, she was in the middle of the Mediterranean on a steamer. The coffin contained a really wonderful imitation of her outward form, modelled and coloured by the American sculptor in a composition consisting largely of wax. The widower's one grief was that he was forced to separate himself from his life's companion for a period of, at least, a week.
A pretty enough scheme, wasn't it, Polycarp? We shall shortly bury the wax effigy in Brompton Cemetery, with the assistance of Hugo's undertakers, and a parson or so, and grave-diggers, and registrars of deaths, and so on and so on. Louis Ravengar will breathe again, thankful that typhoid fever has relieved him of an unpleasant incubus, and since Camilla is underground, he will speedily forget all about her. She will be absolutely safe from him. The inconsolable widower will ostentatiously seek distraction in foreign travel, and in a fortnight, at most, will, under another name, resume his connubial career in a certain villa unsurpassed, I am told, for its picturesque situation.
To-morrow or the next day I must make that new will, dispensing with the shutting-up of the flat. The secret instructions, however, will stand.
You may wonder why I confide all this to the phonograph, Polycarp. I will tell you. The record will be placed by me to-morrow in my safe in your vault. To-night I shall lock it up in the safe here. When I am dead, Polycarp, you will find that the secret instructions instruct you to realize all my estate, and to keep the proceeds in negotiable form until a lady named Mrs. Catherine Pounds, a widow, comes to you with an autograph letter from me. You will hand everything to that lady, or to her representative, without any further inquiry. But it has struck me this very day, Polycarp, that you, with your confounded suspicious and legal nature, when you see Mrs. Catherine Pounds, if she should come in person, may recognise in her a striking resemblance to Camilla. And you may put difficulties in the way, and rake up history which was not meant to be raked up. This phonographic record is to prevent you from doing so, if by chance you have an impulse to do so. Think it over carefully, Polycarp. Consider our situation, and obey my instructions without a murmur. The thought of the false death certificates and burial certificates, and of the unprofessionalism of Darcy, will abrade your legal susceptibilities; but submit to the torture for my sake, Polycarp. You are human. I shall add to the letter which Mrs. Catherine Pounds will bring you a note to say that if you have any scruples, you are to listen to the phonographic records in the safe; if not, you are to destroy the phonographic records.
Do I seem gay, Polycarp?
I ought to be. I have carried through my scheme. I have outwitted Ravengar. I have saved Camilla from death at his hands. I can look forward to an idyll—brief, perhaps, but ecstatic—in a villa with the loveliest view on all the Mediterranean. I ought to be gay. And yet I am not. And it is not the knowledge of my fatal disease that saddens me. No; I think I have been saddened by a day and a night spent with that coffin. It is a fraud of a coffin, but it exists. And when I saw it just now occupying the drawing-room, it gave me a sudden shock. It somehow took hold of my imagination. I was obliged to look within, and to touch the waxen image there. And that image seemed unholy. I did not care to dwell on the thought of it going into the ground, with all the solemnities of the real thing. What do you suppose will happen to that waxen image on the Judgment Day, Polycarp? Surely, someone in authority, possibly a steward, fussy and overworked, will exclaim: 'There is some mistake here!' I can hear you say that I am mad, Polycarp, that Francis Tudor was always a little 'wrong.' But I am not mad. It is only that my brain is too agile, too fanciful. I am a great deal more sane than you, Polycarp.
And I am trying to put some heart into myself. I am trying to make ready to enjoy the brief ecstatic future where Camilla awaits me. But I am so tired, Polycarp. And there's no disguising the fact that it's an awful nuisance never to be quite sure whether you won't fall down dead the next minute or the next second. I must go in and have another glance at that singular swindle of a coffin.
The phonograph went off into an inarticulate whirr of its own machinery. The recital was over. Tudor must have died immediately after securing the record in the safe in his bedroom, where Hugo had just listened to it.
'She lives!' was Hugo's sole thought.