“My God, Lucie!” he said to the water, “how I love you! My God, how I love you!” and with that he turned and went away.
And presently I too went down into the cave.
He had shot him with a pistol from the back. He lay on his face, and his head was like a trampled bush. Near the body, flung from it in its fall, was a little tin case such as they make for sandwiches; and in it I found, when I could force the nerve to look, the certificate of Milord’s marriage with Miss Lucie.
I put it back; I touched nothing more; like a murderer myself I stole away, and left everything as I had found it. From that day to this the cave shall have held its secret undiscovered. There still the body must be lying as when it fell never to stir again. You know the rest.
I knew it from his own lips: how, a few months after the married couple had returned to England, an Italian courier, discharged in Aosta for drunkenness, had persuaded Geoletti to profit by his knowledge of London, and go there with him; how, from Soho, the potential blackmailer had taken his bearings, and, by the aid of compatriots, run his quarry to earth, and forced an interview upon him and revealed his knowledge and his purpose; how Mr Dalston, temporising a moment, had referred him, for final settlement, to the house of a certain doctor in Kennington, to which he had gone by secret appointment and with what fatal results to himself. The listener needed only these links in the chain of evidence to complete the story for him; and, when they had been supplied, a deep and tragic silence fell upon the room.
Presently, not raising his head, he motioned to the narrator, a gesture of dismissal.
“Go,” I whispered to Geoletti, “and return to the lodge.”
I stood, when we were alone, a moment in indecision; then crossed the room softly.
“If the hurt has come from my hand, sir,” I said, “you will know why I ask you to forgive me for it, will you not?”
He was muttering to himself; he hardly seemed to notice me.