“Charity and mercy,” repeated Ramon soberly. “Yes, dearest. But not liberty to continue their crimes––to do to others what they did to us!”
A spasm of pain crossed his face, and she bent over him solicitously.
“Oh, what is it, Ramon? Speak to me!”
“Nothing, dear, it’s all right now. Just a twinge of the old pain.”
“Those murdering fiends, who made you suffer so!” she cried, and added with feminine illogicality: “I’m not sorry, after all, that they’re in prison! I’m glad they’ve got their just deserts. Oh, Ramon, I’ve been afraid to distress you by asking you, but did you tell the truth at the trial––all the truth, I mean? Was that really all you remember?”
“Yes, dear,” he replied a trifle wearily. “When I left Mr. Blaine’s office that day, I was hurrying along Dalrymple Street, when just outside the Colossus Building, a boy about fifteen––that one who is in the reformatory now––collided with me. Then he looked up into my face, and grasped my arm.
“‘You’re Mr. Hamilton, aren’t you?’ he gasped. 313 ‘Oh, come quick, sir! Mr. Ferrand’s had a stroke or something, and I was just running to get help. You don’t remember me, I guess. I’m Mr. Ferrand’s new office-boy, Frankie Allen. You was in to see him about ten days ago, don’t you remember?’
“Well, as I told you, ’Nita dearest, old Mr. Ferrand was one of my father’s best friends. His offices were in the Colossus Building, and I had been in to see him about ten days before––so in spite of Mr. Blaine’s warning, I was perfectly unsuspecting. Of course, I didn’t remember his office-boy from Adam, but that fact never occurred to me, then. I went right along with the boy, and he talked so volubly that I didn’t notice we had gotten into the wrong elevator––the express––until its first stop, seven floors above Mr. Ferrand’s. They must have staged the whole thing pretty well––Carlis and Paddington and their crew––for when I stepped out of the express elevator, there was no one in sight that I remember but the boy who was with me. I pressed the button of the local, which was just beside the express––there was a buzz and whirring hum as if the elevator had ascended, and the door opened. As I stepped over its threshold, I felt a violent blow and terrific pain on the back of my head, and seemed to fall into limitless space. That was all I knew until I woke up in the hospital where Mr. Blaine had taken me after discovering and rescuing me, to see your dear face bending over mine!”
“One of Paddington’s men was waiting, and hit you on the head with a window-pole, as you stepped into the open elevator shaft,” Blaine supplemented. “It was all a plant, of course. You only fell to the roof of the elevator, which was on a level with the floor below. There they carried you into the office of a fake company, 314 kept you until closing time, and got you out of the building as a drunkard, conveying you to Mac Alarney’s retreat in his own machine. Nobody employed in the building was in their pay but the elevator man, and he’s got his, along with the rest! Paddington’s scheme wasn’t bad; if he’d only been on the square, he might have made a very brilliant detective!”
“How terrible his death was!” Anita shuddered. “And how unexplainable! No one ever found out who stabbed him, there in the park, did they?”