“You—you intend to arrest me?” Sir Bernard gasped at last, with some difficulty, his brow like ivory beneath the tight-drawn skin. A change had come over him, and he was standing with his back to a bookcase, swaying unsteadily as though he must fall.
“I certainly do,” was Ambler Jevons’ prompt response. “You have been the means of committing a double murder for the purposes of gain—because you knew that your friend Courtenay had left a will in your favour in the event of his wife’s decease. That will has already been proved; but perhaps it may interest you to know that the latest and therefore the valid will is in my own possession, I having found it during a search of the dead man’s effects in company with my friend Boyd. It is dated only a month before his death, and leaves the fortune to the widow, and in the event of her death to her sister Ethelwynn.”
“To me!” cried my love, in surprise.
“Yes, Miss Ethelwynn. Everything is left to you unreservedly,” he explained. Then, turning again to the clever impostor before him, he added: “You will therefore recognise that all your plotting, so well matured and so carefully planned that your demoniacal ingenuity almost surpasses the comprehension of man, has been in vain. By the neglect of one small detail, namely to sufficiently disguise your identity when dealing with Curtis, I have been enabled, after a long and tedious search, to fix you as the man who on several occasions was made up to present in the night the appearance of the dead Courtenay. The work has taken me many tedious weeks. I visited every wig-maker and half the hairdressers in London unsuccessfully until, by mere chance, the ruffian whom you employed to entrap my friend Boyd gave me a clue to the fact that Curtis made wigs as well as theatrical costumes. The inquiry has been a long and hazardous one,” he went on. “But from the very first I was determined to get at the bottom of the mystery, cost me what it might—and I have fortunately succeeded.” Then, turning again to the cringing wretch, upon whom the terrible denunciation had fallen as a thunderbolt, he added: “The forgiveness of man, Sir Bernard Eyton, you will never obtain. It has been ever law that the murderer shall die—and you will be no exception.”
The effect of those words upon the guilty man was almost electrical. He drew himself up stiffly, his keen, wild eyes starting from his blanched face as he glared at his accuser. His lips moved. No sound, however, came from them. The muscles of his jaws seemed to suddenly become paralysed, for he was unable to close his mouth. He stood for a moment, an awful spectacle, the brand of Cain upon him. A strange gurgling sound escaped him, as though he were trying to articulate, but was unable; then he made wild signs with both his hands, clutched suddenly at the air, and fell forward in a fit.
I went to him, loosened his collar, and applied restoratives, but in ten minutes I saw that he was beyond human aid. What I had at first believed to be a fit was a sudden cessation of the functions of the heart—caused by wild excitement and the knowledge that punishment was upon him.
Within fifteen minutes of that final accusation the old man lay back upon the carpet lifeless, struck dead by natural causes at the moment that his crimes had become revealed.
Thus were the Seven Secrets explained; and thus were the Central Criminal Court and the public spared what would have been one of the most sensational trials of modern times.
The papers on Monday reported “with deepest regret” the sudden death from heart disease of Sir Bernard Eyton, whom they termed “one of the greatest and most skilful physicians of modern times.”