'We are alone in this house,' replied the unsuspecting lady. 'The servant who admitted you has gone out on a short errand, and you need fear no interruption.'
'Then, madam, I have to inform you that—'
While uttering these words, the Dead Man advanced towards Mrs. Stevens, who stood in the centre of the apartment; he assumed an air of profound mystery, and she, supposing that he was about to whisper in her ear, inclined her head toward him. That movement was her last on earth; in another instant she was prostrate upon the carpet, her throat encircled by the fingers of the ghastly monster; her countenance became suffused with a dark purple—blood gushed from her mouth, eyes and nostrils—and in a few minutes all was over!
The murderer arose from his appalling work, and his loathsome face assumed, beneath his mask, an expression of demoniac satisfaction.
''Tis done!' he muttered—'damn the old fool, she thought I was a friend of her accursed nephew's. But I must leave the corpse in such a situation that it may be supposed the old woman committed suicide.'
He tore off the large shawl which the poor lady had worn, and fastened it about her neck; then he hung the body upon the parlor door, and placed an overturned chair near its feet, to lead to the supposition that she had stood upon the chair while adjusting the shawl about her neck and then overturned it in giving the fatal spring. This arrangement the Dead Man effected with the utmost rapidity and then forcing open a bureau which stood in the parlor, he took from the drawer various articles of value, jewelry, &c., and a pocket-book containing a considerable sum of money—forgetting, in his blind stupidity, that the circumstances of a robbery having taken place, would destroy the impression that the unfortunate old lady had come to her death voluntarily by her own hands.
The murderer then fled from the house and that night he and Archer, in the mysterious depths of the Dark Vaults, celebrated their bloody exploits by mad orgies, horrid blasphemy, and demoniac laughter.
We left Clinton weltering in his blood upon the floor of the temple in the conservatory. The poor mangled youth was discovered in that deplorable situation shortly after the perpetration of the abominable outrage which had deprived him of the blessed gift of speech forever. He was conveyed to the residence of Dr. Schultz, a medical gentleman of eminent skill, who stopped the effusion of blood, and pronounced his eventual recovery certain. But oh! who can imagine the feelings of the unfortunate boy, when returning consciousness brought with it the appalling conviction that the faculty of expressing his thoughts in words was gone forever, and henceforward he was hopelessly dumb! By great exertion he scrawled upon a piece of paper his name and residence; a carriage was procured, and he was soon beneath the roof of his master, Mr. Sydney, under the kind care of honest Dennis and the benevolent housekeeper.
And Sydney—alas for him! Immured in that awful sepulchre of crime, the Tombs—charged with the deed of murder, and adjudged guilty by public opinion—deserted by those whom he had regarded as his friends, suffering from confinement in a noisome cell, and dreading the ignominy of a trial and the horrors of a public execution—his fair fame blasted forever by the taint of crime—what wonder that he, so young, so rich, so gifted with every qualification to enjoy life, should begin to doubt the justice of divine dispensation, and, loathing existence, pray for death to terminate his state of suspense and misery!
But we must not lose sight of Josephine Franklin; her adventures at the masquerade hall were of too amorous and exciting a nature to be passed lightly over, in this mirror of the fashions, follies and crimes of city life.—Our next chapter will duly record the particulars of the fair lady's romantic intrigues on that brilliant and memorable occasion.