"Don't touch it, for God's sake!" shouted Saxby, lunging forward to stop him, but the deed was already done, though Saltire himself was unprepared for what followed on his lifting the iron. The lid flew up, and, with a soft hiss, something slim and swift as a black arrow darted across the air, seemed to kiss Saxby in passing, and was gone through the open door into the night.
The big man made a strange sound and put his hand to his throat. He swayed a little, and then sank upon a long cane lounge. Christine noticed that his eyes rolled with the same curious evolution as the eyes of Mrs. van Cannan had performed that afternoon. It was as though they turned in his head for a moment, showing nothing but the white eyeball. She wondered why the other men rushed to the sideboard and opened a brandy-bottle, and while she stayed, wondering, Saxby spoke softly, looking at her with his beautiful, melancholy brown eyes.
"I shall be dead in half an hour. Fetch Isabel. Let me see her face before I die."
She knew him for a bad man, false friend, one who could be cruel to a little child; yet it seemed he could love well. That was something. She found herself running through the darkness as she had never run in her life, to do the last behest of Richard Saxby.
When she and Isabel van Cannan returned, they found him almost gone. Saltire and McNeil had worked over him until the sweat dripped from their faces, but he who has been kissed by the black mamba, deadliest of snakes, is lost beyond all human effort. The light was fast fading from his face, but, for a moment, a spurt of life leaped in his eyes. He held out his aims to the woman, and she fell weeping into them. Christine turned away and stared out at the darkness. Saltire had been writing; a sheet of paper upon which the ink was still wet lay upon the table, and in his hand he held a packet of letters.
"I have told everything, Issa," muttered the dying man. "I had to clean my soul of it."
She recoiled fiercely from him.
"'Told everything?'" she repeated, and her face blanched with fury and despair. It seemed as if she would have struck him across the lips, but McNeil intervened.
"Have reverence for a passing soul, woman," said he sternly. "Black as his crimes are, yours are blacker, I'm thinking. He was only the tool of the woman he loved—his lawful wife."
"You said that?" she raved. But Saxby was beyond recriminations. That dark soul had passed to its own place. She turned again to the others, foaming like a creature trapped.