As if to fling a taunt in the face of approaching death, the woman was laughing. It sounded wildly unreal and fantastic, and the spectators stood as if gripped by an unearthly enchantment. It seemed as though the woman’s spirit was flitting away on waves of hysterical mirth.
The sounds grew husky, then ceased. The woman’s glazing orbs looked out over the fringe of faces. A fluttering ray struggled with the blinding film before her eyes, and she seemed to be looking for someone who was not there. She stirred as if trying to gather her waning energies. Her lips trembled, a few faint sounds broke on the tense silence, and again her gaze strayed gropingly over the crowd.
“Mr.—Mr. Shei,” she whispered.
Those closest to her recoiled as from a physical blow. The name spoken by the dying woman had contributed the final touch of weirdness to the scene. The two words went from mouth to mouth in a succession of solemn whispers. Faces turned rigid and white, and men and women looked at one another with mute fear in their eyes.
Then someone with more presence of mind than the others, suggested calling a physician. A strain of drawling laughter from the dying woman mocked the proposal. It rose to a shrill pitch, then died abruptly in a low sing-song moan that was like a chant of death. The lips were still moving, but the onlookers knew, even without the sagging of the body and the broken light in the eyes, that the woman was dead. A spell seemed to have lifted and an oppressive essence appeared to have gone out of the air.
“Awful!” wailed a woman, edging away from her place in the huddled throng. “I shall hear that laugh as long as I live. And what was that she said about Mr. Shei?”
The name and the prefix were all anyone had been able to make out, but they had been enough to send a thrill of fear and astonishment through the crowd. Of the mysterious “Mr. Shei” little was known except that he was a versatile and very elusive criminal, with a penchant for deep scheming and spectacular tactics, and that so far the police had matched their wits against him in vain. He flashed in and out like a meteor, without leaving trace or clew, and his audacity and impudence were as dumfounding as the magnitude of his exploits.
“Did she mean,” inquired someone, “that Mr. Shei was here—that she saw him?”
“What else could she have meant?” The speaker cast an uncertain glance at the dead woman. The grayness and the rigidity of her features clashed bizarrely with the brilliant coloring of her gown. “Likely as not Mr. Shei murdered her.”
“But there is no wound. And she made no outcry. She only laughed. And such a laugh! I can hear it still!”