And with a sudden movement she flung open the door leading to a small ante-chamber, crying in a hoarse, desperate voice—
“Enter! The guilty one is there?”
We pressed forward, and there saw a thin grey-haired woman who had guilt written plainly upon her drawn white face. She had overheard all our conversation, and had been compelled to remain in that chamber, there being no outlet.
“Joliot!” gasped Mabel, amazed. “My maid!” Then, addressing the cowering, trembling woman, she demanded the truth.
We stood there astonished. There was a silence, long and painful. The contortions of the guilty woman’s features were horrible; in her black eyes burned a fierce light, and she trembled in every limb.
“Yes,” she cried hoarsely, after the question had been repeated, “I killed him! I killed him because I was jealous! I thought that instead of coming to visit your Highness he, in reality, came to visit Miss Grainger. Therefore without knowing why I did it, I dashed into the room where Miss Grainger was at the piano and attacked her. The Prince rose quickly and stretched out his arm to save her. Then rushing upon him I stabbed him to the heart! Since that day,” she added, in her low voice, scarcely audible, “since that day I have lived upon the meagre charity of Roesch, and yesterday came here to take up a position as Miss Grainger’s maid.”
“Your interests were mutual in the preservation of your secret, therefore you resolved to adjust your differences and live together, eh?” remarked Hickman.
She gave vent to a shrill peal of hideous laughter, as though there were something humorous in that grim and terrible tragedy. It jarred upon our nerves, but it also explained to us the ghastly truth.
The woman Natalie Joliot was hopelessly insane.
“Your Highness recognises the state of the wretched woman’s mind,” observed Edna Grainger, with a pitying look. “She has been so ever since the homicidal frenzy which seized her on that fatal night, and I have now taken her beneath my charge, for with me she is as docile as a child.”