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Page 14
"'It was just as if they had been given into my hands. There was
a bit of a haze, and you could not see more than a few hundred
yards. I hired a boat for myself, and I pulled after them. I
could see the blur of their craft, but they were going nearly as
fast as I, and they must have been a long mile from the shore
before I caught them up. The haze was like a curtain all round
us, and there were we three in the middle of it. My God, shall I
ever forget their faces when they saw who was in the boat that
was closing in upon them? She screamed out. He swore like a
madman and jabbed at me with an oar, for he must have seen death
in my eyes. I got past it and got one in with my stick that
crushed his head like an egg. I would have spared her, perhaps,
for all my madness, but she threw her arms round him, crying out
to him, and calling him "Alec." I struck again, and she lay
stretched beside him. I was like a wild beast then that had
tasted blood. If Sarah had been there, by the Lord, she should
have joined them. I pulled out my knife, and--well, there! I've
said enough. It gave me a kind of savage joy when I thought how
Sarah would feel when she had such signs as these of what her
meddling had brought about. Then I tied the bodies into the
boat, stove a plank, and stood by until they had sunk. I knew
very well that the owner would think that they had lost their
bearings in the haze, and had drifted off out to sea. I cleaned
myself up, got back to land, and joined my ship without a soul
having a suspicion of what had passed. That night I made up the
packet for Sarah Cushing, and next day I sent it from Belfast.
"'There you have the whole truth of it. You can hang me, or do
what you like with me, but you cannot punish me as I have been
punished already. I cannot shut my eyes but I see those two
faces staring at me--staring at me as they stared when my boat
broke through the haze. I killed them quick, but they are
killing me slow; and if I have another night of it I shall be
either mad or dead before morning. You won't put me alone into a
cell, sir? For pity's sake don't, and may you be treated in your
day of agony as you treat me now.'
"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he
laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of
misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else
our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what
end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which
human reason is as far from an answer as ever."
End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
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