At that moment Juan entered the room, panting and frightened. “Your Honor,” he cried, “I employed a detective; he has this moment returned to say that Miss Motuble is dead by her own hands. Her body was laid, less than an hour ago, in the old private family vault of the Motubles.”
“Everyone knows the place. It was there the child Catalina Martinet was buried,” cried the Governor.
“The detective’s statements are false,” said Julio Murillo. “I mean he has been misinformed. Someone may have been placed in the Motuble tomb, under the name of Marriet Motuble, but the real person is alive and is as strong to-day as anyone of us three.”
“Juan,” asked the Governor, “are you sure no mistake has been made by you in repeating this message?”
“I am sure, your Honor, and I am sorry Señor Julio thinks she is not dead,” said Juan.
“How inhuman!” exclaimed Guillermo Gonzales.
“Maybe so, your honor; but women who make men afraid should die.”
“You have strange ideas of getting rid of annoyances,” said the Governor, trying to hide a smile. “I will ring for you, Juan, when I need you again.”
Juan was getting intensely interested in the affair on hand, and was secretly congratulating himself that he would hear everything; consequently, was very much crestfallen when the Governor very politely invited him to leave the room.
“That part of Miss Motuble’s letter which relates to the deception she practiced by pretending to have been a subject of ‘Memory Fluid,’ is false also; there was no pretension about it. She actually came disguised as a drunken man, and entreated me to give her ‘Memory Fluid.’ Her figure was a splendid disguise, but her actions and voice betrayed her sex to me. By no sign from me did she ever know that I had penetrated her disguise. She certainly is a strange mixture of God’s creation—a strange mixture,” concluded Julio.