To my unspeakable amazement, she, at the sight of her husband (whom, I had every reason to suppose, she would not recognise), started violently, and, catching her breath, exclaimed—
“What! You! Henry Fairchild! Henry Fairchild! Here! Good God!”
“Yes, dear Miriam,” Fairchild answered, coming forward, and putting out his hand to take hold of hers.
But she drew quickly away from him.
“Miriam again! Miriam! What farce is this? Am I really in a mad-house? Or have I gone mad? I believe you are both maniacs, that you call me Miriam. Or is it some charade that you are acting for my bewilderment? And you, Henry Fairchild! What are you doing here? You, of all men! Oh! this is some frightful trick that has been played upon me! This glib-tongued old man, with his innocent face and his protestations of benevolence, has trapped me here to send me back across the river. But why so much ceremony about it. Call your officers at once, and give me up to them. One thing I'll promise you: they'll never get me back there alive. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! And so, Mr. Fairchild, your friend, Roger Beecham, is dead. I came to town last night for the especial purpose of calling upon him, and settling our accounts; and then I learned that he had died from natural causes. Well, there is one consolation: unless the dogma of hell be a pure invention, he is roasting there now. I daresay I shall join him there presently, and then we will roast together! What a blow his death must have been to you, his faithful Achates!” During the first part of her speech, it was plain that poor Fairchild simply fancied her to be raving in delirium; but when she mentioned that name, Roger Beecham, an expression of terrified amazement, mingled with blank incomprehension, fell upon his face, and he stood staring at her, with knitted brows and parted lips, like a man dumbfoundered and aghast.
“Oh, I hope he died hard!” she cried. “I hope his mortal agony was excruciating and long-drawn out. I hope his death-bed was haunted and surrounded by twenty thousand hateful memories!” Fairchild found his tongue.
“Roger Beecham,” he repeated, as if dazed. “What do you know of Roger Beecham?”
“That's good! That's exquisite!” cried she. “What do I know of Roger Beecham? You play your comedy very well, though I confess I don't see the point of it. What does Louise Massarte know of Roger Beecham? What does she not know of him?”
Fairchild became rigid.
“Louise Massarte!” he gasped. “What have you to do with Louise Massarte?—the murderess of Beecham's wife! Was she—for God's sake, was she related to you? Long ago I noticed a certain resemblance—a certain remote resemblance—such a resemblance as might exist between an angel and a devil. But why do you speak to me of her? What can you know of her? Louise Massarte!—— Dr. Benary, what has happened to my wife? She is delirious. Yet how comes she to know these names? What can be done?”