On the red staircase

by Mary Imlay Taylor

“You have neglected to fasten your cabinet door, monsieur,” I said carelessly, “and the papers are falling out.”

He turned his head quickly, and seeing the door pushed open by the protruding papers, he stepped back and closed it. In that moment I changed the cups. He heard the click and glanced around sharply, but I was merely tapping the table with my finger.

“I am waiting your pleasure, M. Ramodanofsky,” I said, as he returned to his place; “a word of explanation, and this interview is closed with equal relief to both.”

“We will drink first, M. le Vicomte,” he replied with cold courtesy of manner, raising his cup and watching me narrowly.

Without hesitation I raised mine and drank. He drained his, and setting the cup aside, turned to me, his hand resting easily on the papers at his side.

“M. de Brousson,” he said, with a sudden grace of manner, “I am not ignorant of the cause of your interest in my ward. I was also of your age once, and I understand it,” he added with a smile which struck me as diabolical; “but you are making a mistake to waste time with my brother; he is as good as dead, and the party in power will never recognize him. Zénaïde is my ward; you should conciliate me.”

I watched him keenly; what new game was this? And what was the change which was coming over his face? Always pale, it was livid now, and the lips were purple. I saw his hands shaking like an old man’s, and he began himself to stare at them, a kind of horror growing in his eyes until his whole expression changed; the smiling mask dropped, and I saw, instead, the face of a demon, every devilish passion contending with the abject fear that I had seen in Polotsky’s, and the cords in his throat stood out.

“I am ill!” he cried thickly; “call for help—or I shall choke—water!”

It was his last word; he fell down on his chair, his whole figure writhing in the convulsion that choked his utterance. There was a small pitcher of water at hand, and I dashed some on his face, and loosened the collar that he was tearing with his fingers. I had seen death too often not to recognize it; even while I knelt beside him, I saw his eyes grow fixed and his jaw fall. He was dead in three minutes after the first paroxysm, and I laid him on the floor and straightened his limbs.

My impulse to call for help was checked by prudence, and by a sudden inspiration too. Looking in the cup, I saw some dregs, and was not slow to draw my own conclusions. For a few moments I stood looking at the body; his face was still distorted, and there was no beauty of repose about the features, and the dignity that had clothed his figure in a false nobility was destroyed forever by that great leveller of humanity. I shuddered, seeing the fate he had so quickly planned for me. The horror of such a corpse made the place a nightmare to me. I threw his handkerchief over his face, and locking the door into the main hall to delay the discovery of the body, I went out by the low door by which he had entered, and securing that, put the key in my pocket, so constituting myself his jailer, as he had once been mine, and shutting the secret from the world. Once out of the place, I stopped an instant to reflect upon my next step. I found myself in a small anteroom, silent and deserted, and through the open door opposite, I saw another room beyond.