“Arrest that man!” she cried, pointing to the cringing ruffian before us. “That man, Francis Vidit, I declare to be the murderer of Mr Morgan!”
Two constables stepped forward quickly, but the man whose Satanic garb was so hideous, uttered a terrible curse, and with his face livid, turned quickly and attacked the men with the knife in his hand. In his desperation he was powerful as a lion, but in a few moments the inspector and the others had overpowered him, and he stood before us held helpless within their grasp.
It was no doubt a smart capture, and the police owed it to Muriel’s calmness and careful arrangements.
“Let my hand go!” the wretched man cried. “I want to get my handkerchief to wipe my face. Don’t hold me so tight; I shan’t hurt you,” he laughed with a hoarse, hideous laugh, which sounded through the place.
Then, with a sudden twist, he freed his hand, and ere they could stop him he had placed something in his mouth and swallowed it.
“You can do what you like with me now, you fools!” he shrieked wildly. “I have no fear of you!”
“Look!” cried Muriel. “See his face! He has poisoned himself!”
All gazed at him, and we saw by the spasmodic working of the muscles of his features that what she said was quite true. The agonies of poisoning had already seized him, and his haggard face, fast swelling, was horrible to behold. For a few moments he writhed in the grasp of the officers, while we all looked on in silence, appalled at the frightful picture he presented; until suddenly, with a piercing shriek, he seemed to stretch out his limbs rigid and straight. Then all the light of a sudden died from his hideously distorted features, and the men in whose grip he was knew by the dead weight upon them that they held only a corpse.
No further need is there to dwell upon the ghastly events of that fateful night, a night that will live within my memory for ever; nor need I describe how we all four left that den of Satan in company with the police. Suffice it to say that the self-destruction of Francis Vidit caused the disbandment of that disgraceful Pagan sect which fortunately found so little support in Christian England. Although the police were, by these revelations of Muriel’s, made aware of the existence of Satanism in London, the suicide of their head made it unnecessary for any details of the cultus diabolicus to be given to the public through the medium of the sensational Press.
At first the revulsion of feeling within me caused me, I confess, to hesitate whether to take as wife a woman who had actually been a votary of Satan, but on calmer reflection, as I drove back to Charing Cross Mansions with my loved one at my side, I saw plainly how she had been victimised and held powerless beneath the terrible thraldom of this murderer Vidit and his accomplice Hibbert, who had without doubt both carried on these practices with a view to gain the subscriptions of those who joined the cult. That she was pure, honest, and upright I had never doubted, and moved to sympathy when I remembered how bitterly she had suffered, I yielded to her entreaty to be forgiven, feeling convinced of her assertion that her suspicion that I was guilty of the murder of my friend was the cause of her casting me aside and acting as she did.