“It was Riley,” recounted Burke, briefly. “Evidently she had taken poison. They found her body in the woods not far from where we discovered the car and the sunken boat. Some children say they saw a man there—he answers the description of Sanchez. Riley is following the clue.”
“What drove her to it? Was there no word, no note?” asked Irene Maddox, awed by the tragedy.
“Yes,” replied Burke. “On a piece of paper she had written, ‘I have mailed a letter to Shelby Maddox. May God forgive me for what I have done. There is nothing left in life for me.’ That is all.”
We gazed at one another in consternation.
“Poor girl!” repeated Kennedy in a low tone. “She was merely a pawn in the hands of another. But it is a dangerous game—this game of hearts—even with the heart of an adventuress.”
“I think we should organize a search for this fellow Sanchez before he can get away,” proposed Johnson Walcott, taking a step toward Kennedy. “My own car is below. We can get up a posse in no time right at the Lodge.”
Before any one could take up the suggestion the door of the room flew open.
There stood Sanchez himself—pale, his eyes staring, his whole manner that of one who had reached the last point of desperation.
Half-way across the room he stopped, faced us, and tossed down on a table before Kennedy a package wrapped in oiled silk.
“That is my revenge!” he exclaimed in a voice almost sepulchral. “I found it in the boat before I scuttled it.”