“I suppose I shall have to cut it short,” she said. “After all, you must know it almost as well as I do, especially since you had the nerve to play my part with Maida. The worst trick you put over on me was when you pulled Dabney out of the mud—curse the mud, anyway; if it had been a real quicksand he'd have been done for; but his getting back alive that night certainly crossed me, and, as for Maida, she was in a devil's rage. She could n't understand how he'd escaped. She cursed, and raved, and threatened even me. It was all that Jaffrey and I could do to hold her; she was for giving up the whole game and making a getaway before it was too late. As a matter of fact, it was already too late for any one but me. Hovey had you all just where he wanted you. At any instant he could bag you all. I had known that for some time. If it had n't been for your beaux yeux, Janice, and a little bit, perhaps, because of my own pretty ways, all of you would be jailed by now. After you'd rescued your Dabney, I had to play a bold, prompt game. I knew that the spell could n't hold much longer. I could see by the strained look on that boy's face that he was at the snapping point. I told Maida to search the bookcase that night. Action of some kind was necessary to keep her in hand. I did n't know that you had already taken away the paper. Gast had told me about the paper when I was in New York, and the Baron had hinted at its possible hiding-place. He came down here that day to tell me—I'd bribed him for all I was worth. He was going to leave word with Maida. Then, of course, he saw you and the poor fool thought I was playing housekeeper, under 'Dabney's' very nose.
“The night after Dabney's rescue, after you'd saved his life at the risk of your own, I whistled him into the arbor under your window and kissed him for you. Were your maiden dreams disturbed?—No, no, my girl, don't try to get your hands free”—for in my anger at her words I had begun to wrench at my bonds—“you'll just cut your wrists to the bone. Eh, did n't I tell you?” I felt the blood run down my hands, and stopped, gasping with pain. She went on as coolly as before. “I found out that night, when Maida came to me in the wall with her bad news, that you'd got ahead of us. I was n't so much scared as I might have been, for I knew that Brane had had his directions translated into the Slavonic tongue; I suppose the poor, cracked fool did it to protect his treasure from accidental discovery. He was crazed by having all that money in his possession, and not being bold enough to use it. All his actions prove that his mind was quite unbalanced. He just spun a fantastic web of mystery about the hidden stuff because he had n't the nerve to do anything else. I imagine he meant to tell his wife, but he died suddenly of paralysis, and was n't able to do so. He'd hired a priest to help him with the paper, and Gast, shadowing my former lover, and knowing that he had the robe and crown, managed to find out what he'd been doing. Gast did n't get the substance of the paper, but he learned from the priest that an eccentric Englishman, writing a story of adventure, had asked him to translate a paragraph into Old Russian. Gast handed on this information to me, and promised to translate the paragraph when I was lucky enough to find it.
“Janice, when I found out that I'd been fool enough to lose Gast's letter, which he'd sent to me through Maida, and by losing it, had put the means of getting a translation into your hands, I gnawed my fingers! I was half mad then. When you made your first trip to Pine Cone, and Dabney had you shadowed so closely that I could n't follow you myself—I knew that you were sending Gast a letter. I was n't sure you'd dare to meet him, though. I thought you might risk sending him the paper. I risked my own life by bribing George to leave you in Pine Cone to foot it home alone, and I risked it again by following you and laying that trap for you in the woods. I risked it because I was certain that you would have the translation hidden in your dress. I pushed the pine tree over after George had passed; it needed only a push. Nom de Dieu! You cannot know what frenzy seized me when I found out that again you had outwitted me. I wanted to kill you that day. I wanted to beat you to death there, and leave you dead. But you were a little too valuable. I decided to cripple you, to put you out of running for a few days while I got hold of the fool priest myself. That was only yesterday, but it seems an age. You must be made of iron, Janice! You came near defeating me to-night—the insolence of it! You, a chit of a girl!
“This morning I gave Maida a letter for Gast, and I thought it was to mail it that she went out after supper to-night. When I found her note under my plate I had a shock. I was sure she had found out something important. I went down to the bridge. Yes. You may have the satisfaction. Make the most of it. I did go down to the bridge, but I did n't wait long. Ten minutes was enough. Do you suppose Maida would be late for an appointment with me? Not if she was living. No, my girl, I stood there and realized that you might have worked the trick, that you might have sent Maida out of the way, might have decoyed me, might, even at that instant, be on the track of my jewels. God! How I ran back to the house! When I found the kitchen door locked—I knew. I went round to the front door and rang the bell. I was n't going to lose time snooping around for unfastened windows—not with Dabney in the house! I suppose he was sleeping sound because he, too, thought you were safely laid by the heels. Jaffrey answered the bell, and looked surprised, confound him! I gave him some excuse, and went like the wind up to your room. Sure enough, it was empty. I waited till Jaffrey had got back to his bed, and then I hurried down to the kitchen. You know the rest. You know it all now. To the end. But you don't quite know the end.”
CHAPTER XVIII—THE LAST VICTIM
I HAD listened to all this as though to voices in a fever. I had been trying to get up my courage for a leap. It seemed to me now a desperate, hopeless undertaking, but it was easier to die in a struggle than to lie there in cold blood while she strangled me with those long, cold, iron hands. She was not calm. I could see that her eyes were shifting, her arms and legs twitched, her fingers moved restlessly. Black and hard as her lost soul must be, it shrank a little from this killing. The murder of her own child gave her a very ague of dread. It was partly, no doubt, the desire to postpone the hideous act that had kept her spinning out her tale so long. But the end had come now. It was—I knew it well—the last moment of my life. I looked at the candle.
At the same instant I heard a window open somewhere in the house. Thank God! It was morning. The household was awake. The sound was all I needed to fire my courage. I flung myself bodily upon the candle, rolled away, scrambled to my feet, and fled along the passageway with the speed of my despair. She was after me like a flash, but I had an instant's start.
Down the inclined plane I slid. I leapt along the steps, and there at the foot she fell upon me, and we lay panting within a stone's throw of the closet wall. And I realized that our flight had been no more noisy than the scuttling of rats. I gave myself up to death.