That Affair at Elizabeth

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

CHAPTER XVII

A Tragedy Unforeseen

For an instant I stood so, rigid with horror, scarcely breathing, scarcely daring to believe my eyes. Then Godfrey snatched the torch from my nerveless fingers, and bent down into the grave.

"Good God!" he murmured, after a moment's inspection of what lay there. "I would never have guessed this! This is a thousand times worse than I imagined! Here, Lester, hold the light. I'll uncover the face," and thrusting the torch into my hands, he attacked the loose earth at the other end of the grave.

I, too, moved somehow to the other end, and threw the light down into the shallow hole. Godfrey worked with desperate energy, hurling the dirt right and left. I watched the flying hands in such an agony of horror as I hope never again to experience; stared down into the deepening hole, with the cold sweat starting out across my forehead at the thought of what any instant might reveal.

Again Godfrey dropped to his knees, and I was conscious of a face growing beneath his hands, almost as if he were calling it out of the darkness. Clearer and clearer it grew, as he brushed away the clinging clay; then he stood erect with a little sigh of mingled horror and satisfaction.

Staring up at us was a face—not a woman's face—not Marcia Lawrence's face—but a man's face, florid, heavy-jowled, with a black moustache; dead, yet not calm in death, but contorted by a hideous grimace, as though chuckling with satisfaction.

"Miss Lawrence may, indeed, have sailed on the Umbria," murmured Godfrey, after a moment's silent contemplation of the ghastly countenance. "She had every reason to flee—to the earth's end, if possible. For she left her husband here!"

I could find no word of answer; my throat was dry, contracted; I felt that I was suffocating. So this was the secret! No wonder we had not guessed it!

"One can easily build up the story," went on Godfrey, in a voice carefully lowered. "She came here called by the note, desperate, ready for anything—ready even to kill the devil who'd written it. For he was a devil, Lester—look at his face!"