“‘Yes, I know you thought so—I intended you should. I heard every word that you said, and what little Gretchen said—dear little Gretchen, I had studied it all out, and to play drunk seemed the best way to get at the brute, and it was; they’d have proved it on me if I hadn’t fooled them that way—’ and again his eyes snapped and his face flushed as the humor of the situation rose in his mind. ‘You’ll forgive me, won’t you? Don’t tell Gretchen.’ The light in his eyes was gone now. I’d rather she’d think me drunk than vulgar, and it was vulgar, and maybe cowardly, to hit him, but I couldn’t help that either, and I’m not sorry I did it.’
“‘But I locked you in,’ I persisted. Was this some invention of his fertile imagination, or was it true?
“‘Yes, you locked the door,’ he answered, as he broke into a subdued laugh. ‘I dropped from the window sill when it got dark—it wasn’t high, about fifteen feet, and the waterspout helped—ran down the back way, gave him a crack as he opened the door, and was back in bed by the help of the same spout before he had come to. He was leaving the next day and it was my only chance. I wasn’t out of the room five minutes—maybe less. You’ll forgive me that too, won’t you?’”
Marny stopped and looked into the smouldering coals. For a brief instant he did not speak. Then he rose from his chair, crossed the room, took the miniature from the wall where he had hung it and looked at it steadily.
“What a delightful devil you were, Fiddles. And you were so human.”
“Is he living yet?” I asked.
“No, he died in Gretchen’s arms. I kept my promise, and two months later went back to the village to bring him to America with me, but a forester’s bullet had ended him. It was on the Baroness’s grounds, too. He wouldn’t halt and the guard fired. Think of killing such an adorable savage—and all because the blood of the primeval man boiled in his veins. Oh, it was damnable!”
“And you know nothing more about him? Where he came from?” The story had strangely moved me. “Were there no letters or notebooks? Nothing to show who he really was?”
“Only an empty envelope postmarked ‘Berlin.’ This had reached him the day before, and was sealed with a coat of arms in violet wax.”