Did he have the key? Was this the explanation of his sudden activity? The thought made me hasten my steps, but although I put forth my best efforts it was close upon midnight before I sighted the great hedge that surrounded de Pintra’s mansion. I half-expected to find the gateway guarded, but to my relief the avenue was as deserted as the highway had been.
Cautiously I passed along the drive leading to the mansion. I am not usually nervous at such times, but something in the absolute stillness of the scene, something menacing in the deep shadows cast by the great trees, unnerved me and made me suspicious of my surrounding.
Once, indeed, I fancied that I heard a stealthy footstep advancing to meet me, and with a bound I sprang from the driveway and crouched among the thick shrubbery, listening intently. But after a few moments I became reassured and resumed my journey, avoiding this time the graveled drive and picking my way noiselessly across the grass, skirting the endless array of flower-beds and shrubbery.
Fortunately the moon came out, or I might have lost my way; and before long the black line of shadow cast by the mansion itself fell at my feet. Peering ahead, I saw that I had approached the right wing of the house. It was here that my own room was located, and with a low exclamation of relief I was about to step forward into the path when my eyes fell upon a sight that caused me to suddenly halt and recoil in horror.
It was a man’s arm showing white in the moonlight, and extending from beneath a clump of low bushes.
For a few moments I gazed at it as if fascinated, but quickly recovering myself I advanced to the bushes and gently withdrew the body until it lay exposed to the full rays of the moon. I fully expected to recognize one of our conspirators, but when I turned the man over a face was disclosed that was wholly unknown to me—that of a dark, swarthy person of evident intelligence and refinement.
He had been shot squarely between the eyes, and doubtless had met death instantly. I was about to consider the man a government spy who had been killed by Paola or some other of the conspirators, when I discovered, with a start of dismay, that the man’s left hand had been completely severed at the wrist. Also the hand was missing, and although I searched the ground carefully in the neighborhood, I could find no trace of it.
This discovery gave me ample food for thought. The only plausible reason for the hasty amputation of the hand had doubtless been to secure a ring which the dead man had worn—the secret key to Dom Miguel’s vault probably, since the murder had been committed at this place.
In whose possession, then, was the ring now? Madam Izabel, the Emperor’s spy, had first stolen it. Then another had murdered her for its possession—not a conspirator, for all had denied any knowledge of the ring. Could it have been the man who now lay dead before me? And, if so, who was he? And had the government again managed to secure the precious jewel and to revenge Madam Izabel’s assassination by mutilating this victim in the same way that she had been served?
But if the dead man was not one of the few leaders of the conspiracy who knew the secret of the ring, how should he have learned its value, and risked his life to obtain it from Madam Izabel?