"I've given you your chance. You didn't deserve it, but I've given it you--and you've told me nothing but lies. Well, you'll lie no more. This ends it."
Upon that Ste. Marie heard a sudden stumbling shuffle of feet and a low, hoarse cry of utter terror--a cry more animal-like than human. He heard the cry break off abruptly in something that was like a cough and a whine together, and he heard the sound of a heavy body falling with a loose rattle upon the floor.
With the sound of that falling body he had already reached the doorway and torn aside the heavy portière. It was a sleeping-room he looked into, a room of medium size with two windows and an ornate bed of the Empire style set sidewise against the farther wall. There were electric lights upon imitation candles which were grouped in sconces against the wall, and these were turned on, so that the room was brightly illuminated. Midway between the door and the ornate Empire bed Captain Stewart lay huddled and writhing upon the floor, and Olga Nilssen stood upright beside him, gazing down upon him quite calmly. In her right hand, which hung at her side, she held a little flat black automatic pistol of the type known as Brownings--and they look like toys, but they are not.
Ste. Marie sprang at her silently and caught her by the arm, twisting the automatic pistol from her grasp, and the woman made no effort whatever to resist him. She looked into his face quite frankly and unmoved, and she shook her head.
"I haven't harmed him," she said. "I was going to, yes--and then myself--but he didn't give me a chance. He fell down in a fit." She nodded down toward the man who lay writhing at their feet. "I frightened him," she said, "and he fell in a fit. He's an epileptic, you know. Didn't you know that? Oh yes."
Abruptly she turned away shivering, and put up her hands over her face. And she gave an exclamation of uncontrollable repulsion.
"Ugh!" she cried, "it's horrible! Horrible! I can't bear to look. I saw him in a fit once before--long ago--and I couldn't bear even to speak to him for a month. I thought he had been cured. He said--Ah, it's horrible!"
Ste. Marie had dropped upon his knees beside the fallen man, and Mlle. Nilssen said, over her shoulder:
"Hold his head up from the floor, if you can bear to. He might hurt it."