“Please tell me just what has happened?” he begged. “If I can help in any way, you know I will. But you must tell me. Do you realise that it is three o’clock? I should have been in bed, only I went to sleep over the fire here.”
“I know,” she answered. “It is just the wind that has taken away my breath. It was a hard struggle to get here. Listen—you are our friend, Mr. Hamel—Esther’s and mine? Swear that you are our friend?”
“Upon my honour, I am,” he assured her. “You should know that.”
“For eight years,” she went on, her voice clear enough now, although it seemed charged with a curious metallic vibration, “for eight years we’ve borne it, all three of us, slaves, bound hand and foot, lashed with his tongue, driven along the path of his desires. We have seen evil things. We have been on the point of rebellion, and he’s come a little nearer and he’s pointed back. He has taken me by the hand, and I have walked by the side of his chair, loathing it, loathing myself, out on to the terrace and down below, just where it happened. You know what happened there, Mr. Hamel?”
“You mean where Mr. Fentolin met with his accident.”
“It was no accident!” she cried, glancing for a moment around her. “It was no accident! It was my husband who took him up and threw him over the terrace, down below; my husband who tried to kill him; Esther’s father—Gerald’s father! Miles was in the Foreign Office then, and he did something disgraceful. He sold a secret to Austria. He was always a great gambler, and he was in debt. Seymour found out about it. He followed him down here. They met upon the terrace. I—I saw it!”
He was silent for a moment.
“No one has known the truth,” he murmured.
“No one has ever known,” she assented, “and our broken lives have been the price. It was Miles himself who made the bargain. We—we can’t go on, Mr. Hamel.”
“I begin to understand,” Hamel said softly. “You suffer everything from Miles Fentolin because he kept the secret. Very well, that belongs to the past. Something has happened, something to-night, which has brought you here. Tell me about it?”