“You told Orienta to say that Mr. Stannard said ‘Neither Natalie nor Joyce.’?”
“Yes, for I really think that was what he did mean to say. He wouldn’t implicate me, even with his dying breath, but he tried to clear them. He was a wonderful man, Mr. Ford. Not a good man, perhaps, but a brave one. He would have defended any or all of us, but he had no chance. My love for him has been the mainspring of my whole life. Instead of forgetting him, I grew more madly in love with him year by year. I had no business to come here, and let him paint me. Those hours when I posed for him were the happiest I have ever known. That’s why the portrait is of a happy woman. I hoped against hope that I could yet win him back. But I couldn’t—I can only follow him.”
The quietness of Beatrice’s voice had lulled any suspicions Ford might have had of her intent, and when she drew from the folds of her bodice an etching needle, exactly like the one that had killed Eric, and drove it into her own breast, Ford wheeled suddenly and grasped her hand,—but too late. The deed was done.
At his exclamation, Joyce ran down from the hall above, where she had been listening to Beatrice’s story. She sank down beside the wounded woman and took the drooping figure in her arms.
“Forgive——” moaned Beatrice. “Joyce,—forgive,—I—I loved him so.”
“Yes,—yes,” soothed Joyce, scarce knowing what she said. “What can we do, Mr. Ford? Oh, what can we do?”
“Nothing, I fear. Call help. Shall I ring?” Ford hastened to the nearest bell he could notice and rang it. Immediately people began to gather, servants, family,—and all sorts of contradictory orders were given. But with his finger on the pulse of the dying woman the detective tried to learn yet more facts. “The will,” he asked, bending above her. “Who changed it?”
“Eric himself,” Beatrice answered, “that’s why—oh, Eric!” Her faced beamed with a strange radiance, and then sinking back in Joyce’s arms, Beatrice Faulkner breathed her last.
The next day Alan Ford declared he must hasten away as his engagements were pressing.
“But tell us more of your work,” implored Bobsy Roberts, “give us a few moments more.”