“He sha’n’t escape this time,” growled Moon, looking at Sorley who stared rigidly from the chair he was seated in, not at the officer of the law, but at the cruel face of the wife who had hunted him down. He seemed like a rabbit fascinated by a serpent, and could utter no sound. Even when Moon again recited the formula of arrest he did not speak.
But Miss Grison did. “Ha!” she jeered, pointing a finger of scorn at the motionless man, “now do you receive the wages of iniquity, you beast!”
“Be silent,” said Alan tartly, while the inspector turned to address a few words to Jotty, who looked at him impudently.
“I shall not be silent,” raged the woman; “you know what I am, and who I am in every way, Louisa Sorley—that is my name.” Moon overhearing, turned with a blank look of astonishment. “Yes, you may look and look and look!” she taunted, snapping her fingers. “Louisa Sorley, and that fiend’s lawful wife. Ah!”—she turned furiously on her husband—“you cast me off, you made me hold my tongue by threatening to imprison Baldwin so that you could marry the wealthy slut you set your mind on. I could do nothing, because I had to save my brother; all I could do I did, and that was to steal the peacock. And now the secret has been guessed and the jewels belong to your minx of a niece——”
“Stop that,” cried Fuller in a fierce way; “not a word against my promised wife, Miss Grison.”
“Mrs. Sorley, if you please,” retorted the woman making an ironical curtsey, “and the girl is my niece by marriage as well as your promised wife. But she has the jewels, and much as I hate her I am glad, since this sneaking reptile will not get them into his clutches. I have waited for this hour; for years have I waited; lying in bed, walking during the day, working or playing I have plotted and planned and thought and striven to bring you down to the dust. You scorned me, who loved you, you tortured Baldwin who was your friend, and you drove us both in disgrace from this house. Now it is your turn—yours! yours! yours!” She pointed her finger again and laughed with savage delight. “You shall be driven from the house; you shall go to jail; you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God not have mercy on your soul.”
Moon caught her by the arm, and shook her sternly. “You mustn’t talk like that, you know,” he said in a peremptory manner.
Miss Grison—as it is more convenient to call her—wrenched herself free, and her little lean figure quivered with unrestrained rage. She wore the long black velvet cloak, the early Victorian bonnet, and the drab thread gloves in which Alan had seen her when she had been surprised by himself and Marie in the library. But she was no longer demure, no longer did she compress her thin lips and stare in an unwinking unmeaning way. Her terrible triumph had stirred up the depths of her nature, and she acted like a woman bereft of reason, as indeed she was for the moment.
“Damn you, let me be!” she screeched, getting free at the expense of a torn cloak. “I can speak to my husband, I suppose. Ha! ha! A nice thing it is for me to have a murderer for a husband.”
“I am not a murderer,” wailed Sorley tremulously. “I left Baldwin alive and well. She—she—she——”