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Page 111
"I was so startled that I ran to the door before I remembered that I
could not walk."
She glanced aside at me with a tired smile, and laid her hand upon my
arm in an oddly caressing way, as if to say, "He is so stupid; I should
not have expressed myself in that way."
Truly enough the Inspector misunderstood, for:
"I don't follow what you mean, Madame," he declared. "You say you
forgot that you could not walk?"
"No, no, I expressed myself wrongly," Madame replied in a weary voice.
"The fright, the terror, gave me strength to stagger to the door, and
there I fell and swooned."
"Oh, I see. You speak of fright and terror. Were these caused by the
sound of the shot?"
"For some reason my cousin believed himself to be in peril," explained
Madame. "He went in dread of assassination, you understand? Very well,
he caused me to feel this dread, also. When I heard the shot, something
told me, something told me that--" she paused, and suddenly placing her
hands before her face, added in a whisper--"that it had come."
Val Beverley was watching Madame de St�mer anxiously, and the fact that
she was unfit to undergo further examination was so obvious that any
other than an Inspector Aylesbury would have withdrawn. The latter,
however, seemed now to be glued to his chair, and:
"Oh, I see," he said; "and now there's another point: Have you any idea
what took Colonel Menendez out into the grounds last night?"
Madame de St�mer lowered her hands and gazed across at the speaker.
"What is that, Monsieur l'inspecteur?"
"Well, you don't think he might have gone out to talk to someone?"
"To someone? To what one?" demanded Madame, scornfully.
"Well, it isn't natural for a man to go walking about the garden at
midnight, when he's unwell, is it? Not alone. But if there was a lady
in the case he might go."
"A lady?" said Madame, softly. "Yes--continue."
"Well," resumed the Inspector, deceived by the soft voice, "the young
lady sitting beside you was still wearing her evening dress when I
arrived here last night. I found that out, although she didn't give me
a chance to see her."
His words had an effect more dramatic than he could have foreseen.
Madame de St�mer threw her arm around Val Beverley, and hugged her so
closely to her side that the girl's curly brown head was pressed
against Madame's shoulder. Thus holding her, she sat rigidly upright,
her strange, still eyes glaring across the room at Inspector Aylesbury.
Her whole pose was instinct with challenge, with defiance, and in that
moment I identified the illusive memory which the eyes of Madame so
often had conjured up in my mind.
Once, years before, I had seen a wounded tigress standing over her
cubs, a beautiful, fearless creature, blazing defiance with dying eyes
upon those who had destroyed her, the mother-instinct supreme to the
last; for as she fell to rise no more she had thrown her paw around the
cowering cubs. It was not in shape, nor in colour, but in expression
and in their stillness, that the eyes of Madame de St�mer resembled the
eyes of the tigress.
"Oh, Madame, Madame," moaned the girl, "how dare he!"
"Ah!" Madame de St�mer raised her head yet higher, a royal gesture,
that unmoving stare set upon the face of the discomfited Inspector
Aylesbury. "Leave my apartment." Her left hand shot out dramatically in
the direction of the door, but even yet the fingers remained curled.
"Stupid, gross fool!"
Inspector Aylesbury stood up, his face very flushed.
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