Four more figures dashed out through the curtains—two women and two men. The inspector and Monsieur Dupont joined them. Guided by the sounds in front of them, they dashed across the garden at the top of their speed.
A black wall of earth loomed up before them, like the rising of a gigantic wave. It was strongly rivetted, and must have been at least ten feet high. It was quite inaccessible from where the pursuers stopped beneath it.
"Look! Look!" a woman screamed.
They looked up.
"My God!" the inspector exclaimed.
On the height above them, silhouetted against the pale sky of the summer night, they saw a figure—its arms uplifted in an attitude of majesty, of triumphant defiance. The white light of the moon lit up a face terrible beyond words in its pride, its sin, and its utter madness.
"I am the Beauty-Killer! I killed Colette d'Orsel! I killed Margaret McCall. I killed Christine Manderson...."
Another figure scrambled up out of the darkness on to the height, and the silver head of Oscar Winslowe gleamed in the light. For a moment he crouched—then sprang forward with a yell. The two figures swayed backwards in a fierce struggle.
"They will go down!" a man's voice cried. "It is the edge of a gravel pit. The fence will not bear. There is a sheer drop of fifty feet."
"Let them go," another woman sobbed. "It is the best way."