“Your father, Ernest Neuman.
“I have written the above during my moments of strength for the last four days. Now I have just read it over. I find that it but feebly expresses all that I mean and feel. But
will enlighten you as you read. It is enough. I find also that I have omitted to mention his full name. His name is Nicholas Pathzuol.”
XII.
THE emotions that grew upon me, as I read my father’s message, need not be detailed. How, as I painfully deciphered it, word following upon word added steadily to the weight of those emotions, until at length it seemed as though the burden was greater than I could bear, I need not tell. Indeed, so engrossed had I become by what had gone before, that the sense of the last line did not penetrate my mind. I leaned back in my chair and drew a long breath like one exhausted by an effort beyond his strength. I waited for the commotion of thought and feeling to quiet a little. I was completely horror-stricken and tired out and bewildered.
But by and by it occurred to me, “What did he say the man’s name was?” And languidly I picked up the paper and read the postscript for a second time. The next instant I was on my feet, rigid, aghast, for consternation. What!
Pathzuol! The name of Veronika! My head swam. It was as if I had sustained a terrific blow between the eyes. Could it be that this Pathzuol, the man who had dishonored my mother, the man whom my father had commissioned me to murder, was her father? the father of her who had indeed been murdered, and of whose murder I had been accused? The mere possibility stunned and sickened me. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had been under a pretty tense nervous strain ever since the reception of Tikulski’s letter in the afternoon. This last utterly undid me. My muscles relaxed, my knees knocked together, the perspiration trickled down my forehead. I went off into a regular fit of weeping, like a woman.