“Ompertz! Great Heaven! Look!” he cried hoarsely under his breath.
In an instant Ompertz by a quick stride was at his shoulder. The two men peered forward, with apprehensive intentness, at the girl’s figure. Then, as by a common impulse, they turned and looked at each other aghast. Next moment, Ompertz, to whom familiarity with horrors had given a quicker recovery of nerve and power of action, sprang forward to the motionless figure. Only to recoil with a deep exclamation of wrath and abhorrence. As he turned and his eyes met Ludovic’s, the King saw in them the answer to his gasped question.
“She is dead?”
Ompertz nodded and came close to him, seizing his arm.
“Dead? Yes. Foully murdered for this business. The man is a devil incarnate.”
Without another word, for the horror was too appalling for speech, they went a step forward and saw what the deed had been.
The body of the girl was cunningly lashed to the trunk of a young tree which had been cut down to about the height of her head, and so formed a support to keep her in an erect posture. The attitude was natural, and, from a few paces off, the deception was perfect. But now the grey face, strangely handsome even in its ghastliness, set off in horrible contrast by the rich dress and jewels which, sparkling in the moonlight, mocked the lustreless eyes, was so awful that more than the first glance at it was unendurable. As Ludovic averted his head in an agony of impotent rage and sorrow, Ompertz caught his arm and said in his ear.
“His vengeance will not stop here, sire.”
Ludovic roused himself from the horror that seemed to deprive him of all thought, save one, and understood his meaning.
“We cannot go,” he said desperately, “after that.” He pointed with a shudder to the Tragedy. “Now less than ever, since we know——”