"It is a coincidence," she said, still holding my hand.
"What is?"
"Your ring. It is a facsimile of one I gave Hugo."
For an instant the room seemed to reel about me. I knew that she put her lips to my hand and that it fell listlessly to my side as she released it. I knew that next she was looking fixedly and with alarm at some change in my face, and I heard her voice, faint and as if at a distance.
"You are ill, Herr Bastable. You are white as death. What is the matter?"
I must have staggered, too, for she put out her hands and held me.
But at that I made a strenuous effort. "I am all right. This--this has all tried my nerves. I shall be all right in the air"; and with that I walked none too steadily out of the house, dazed and thunderstruck by the sinister truth which her words had revealed with this stunning suddenness.
As soon as I reached the street I stood for a few moments breathing deep draughts of the cool air while I sought to steady my bewildered wits, and then plunged along at a rapid pace.
So it was von Felsen himself who was the murderer. It was all clear enough to me soon. I could see his wily hand throughout. It was he who had started the suspicion against Ziegler with hints and insinuations of treachery dropped stealthily in likely quarters. He had planned it all as a safe background for the deed he contemplated, and had probably written the threatening letter with his own hand.
Driven to bay by the old Jew's determination to force the marriage with Hagar and thus wreck his prospects in every other direction, he had seen that his only escape lay in Ziegler's death; and he had been callous enough to select the very eve of the marriage for the deed.