"It is all lies, lies!"—then fell silent, her eyes sealed to the newly written paper on the table under Saltire's hand. At last, she said quietly: "I must, however, insist upon knowing what he has said about me. What is written on that paper, Mr. Saltire?"
"If you insist, I will read it," he answered. "Though it is scarcely in my province to do so."
"It is only fair that I should hear," she said, with great calmness.
And Saltire read out the terse phrases that bore upon them the stamp of
Death's hurrying hand.
"I am a native of the island Z—— in the West Indies. Isabel Saxby, known as van Cannan, is my wife. While travelling to the Cape Colony on some business of mine, she met van Cannan and his wife and stayed with them at East London. When she did not return to Z——, I came to look for her and found that, Mrs. van Cannan having died, she had bigamously married the widower and come to live at Blue Aloes. I loved her, and could not bear to be parted from her, so, through her instrumentality, I came here as manager. The eldest boy was drowned before my arrival. The youngest died six months later of a bite from one of my specimen tarantulas. The third boy is, I expect, drowned tonight. I take the blame of all these deaths and of Bernard van Cannan's, if he does not return. It was only when all male van Cannans were dead that Blue Aloes could be sold for a large sum enabling us to return to Z——. We would have taken the little girls with us.
"With my dying breath, I take full blame for all on my shoulders. No one is guilty but I.
"[Signed.] RICHARD SAXBY."
"Poor fellow!" said the listening woman gently. "Poor fellow to have died with such terrible delusions torturing him!" She passed her hands over her eyes, wiping away her tears and with them every last trace of violence and anger. Subtly her face had changed back to the babylike, laughing, sleepy face they all knew so well—the face that had held the dead man in thrall and made Bernard van Cannan forget the mother of his children.
"You will please give me that paper, Mr. Saltire," she pleaded, "and you will please all of you forget the ravings of poor Dick Saxby. It is true that I knew him in the past, and that he followed me here, but the rest, as you must realize, are simply hallucinations of a poisoned brain."
Andrew McNeil's dour face had grown bewildered, but softened. Christine—if she had not seen a little too much, if she had not known that lovely golden hair hanging in rich plaits about the woman's shoulders covered the crisped head of a white negress, if she had not overheard impassioned words at midnight, if she had not loved Roddy so well—might have been beguiled. But there was one person upon whom the artist's wiles were wasted.
"I'm afraid it can't be done, Mrs. Saxby," said Saltire gravely. "The testimony of a dying man is sacred—and Saxby's mind was perfectly clear."