He made a movement with his jaws and crunched something between his teeth. They saw a movement of swallowing in his throat. A swift spasm passed over his features; his limbs stiffened into rigidity, and as he stood before them so he fell, as a wooden image might have done. And so died Koda Bux the Pathan, loyal avenger of his master's honour.
For a few moments there was silence—every tongue chained, every eye fixed by the sudden horror of the situation. Garthorne, roused by fear and anger, for a swift instinct told him that Dora had not come to the Abbey for nothing, was able to speak first. He was Sir Reginald now—but why, and how? When a man of this nature is very frightened, he often takes refuge in rage, and that is what Garthorne did. He turned on Sir Arthur and Vane, his hands clenched, and his lips drawn back from his teeth, and said, in a voice which Enid had never heard from him before:
"What does all this mean, Sir Arthur? My father murdered in his own house; his murderer tells you that he has 'done justice,' and avenged your honour—then poisons himself. If any wrong has been done, how did that nigger servant of yours get to know of it? Why should he have been let loose to murder my father? If you had anything against him, why didn't you charge him with it yourself, as a man and gentleman should? You must have been in it the whole lot of you or you wouldn't have been here!
"But, perhaps," he went on, with a sudden change of tone, "you would rather tell the police when they come; there must be some reason, I suppose, for your bringing that woman, a common prostitute, into my house, and into the presence of my wife."
"Oh, you fool, you hypocrite, you have asked for the punishment of your sin, and you shall have it!"
Dora had taken a couple of strides towards him, and faced him—cheeks blazing, and eyes flaming.
"Prostitute! yes, I was; but how do you know it? Because you lived in the same house with me. Yes, up to the very week of your wedding, with me and that man's daughter. You have asked why he was killed. He was killed righteously, because he wasn't fit to live. No, you didn't know that then, and so far you are innocent; but you are guilty of a crime nearly as great. Your father stole Carol's mother from her husband; you stole your wife from the man she loved and would have married but for you.
"It was you who made Vane Maxwell drunk that morning at Oxford, in the hope of wrecking his career. You didn't do that, but you gained your end all the same, and your sin is just as great. How do I know this—how do we know it? I will tell you. Carol Vane, Mr. Maxwell's sister, and yours, went to your wedding. Carol recognised him as her father. Look, there is his photograph taken with her, when Carol was ten years old. If you don't believe that, look at his left arm, and you will find two spear stabs on it, and if that is not enough, I can bring police evidence from France to prove that he committed the crime for which he has died, and now, you—son of a seducer, libertine and thief of another man's love—you have got your answer and your punishment!"
Dora's words, spoken in a moment of rare, but ungovernable passion, had leaped from her lips in such a fast and furious torrent of denunciation, that before the first few moments of the horror she had caused were passed, she had done.
Enid heard her to the end, her voice sounding ever farther and farther away, until at last it died out into a faint hum and then a silence. Vane ran to her, and caught her just as she was swaying before she fell, and carried her to a sofa. It was the first time he had held her in his arms since he had had a lover's right to do so, and all the man-soul in him rose in a desperate revolt of love and pity against the coldly calculating villainy of the man who had used the vilest of means to rob him of his love.