“He might at least—suspect.”
“Suspect?” and she laughed a chorus to the canary. “He doesn’t know what suspicion means. He would trust me with Mephistopheles himself. Should he find you here, he would only thank you for entertaining me. He’s the most easy-going fellow in the world.”
The man smiled, released his companion from his embrace, and rose from the settee, upon which the two had been seated.
“I’m afraid, my dear,” he said, “that you presume too much upon his confidence. There is no cord so elastic that it will not snap.”
I waited for no more, but burst into the room, having, in my frenzy of madness, drawn a revolver from my pocket.
“Diable! You?” cried Delbet, starting up in alarm.
“Ah, my husband!” gasped Valerie, covering her blanched face with her hands.
“Sacré! You shall die!” I shouted.
The tolling bell throbbed once again, and then—a short, sharp, loud report and a flash together. A little puff of blue-grey smoke floated ceilingward, a man’s frightened cry pierced the night, and upon the harmonious colours of the flower-strewn carpet Valerie lay dead.