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Page 140
"Merciful Heaven!" exclaimed Harley, his glance set upon her, with a
sort of horror in his gray eyes, "I think I can guess."
She turned to him rapidly.
"M. Harley," she said, "you are a clever man. I believe you are a
genius. And I have the strength to tell you because I am happy to-
night. Because of his great wealth Juan succeeded in buying Cray's
Folly from Sir James Appleton to whom it belonged. He told everybody he
leased it, but really he bought it. He paid him more than twice its
value, and so obtained possession.
"But the plan was not yet complete, although it had taken form in that
clever, wicked brain of his. Oh! I could tell you stories of the
Menendez, and of the things they have done for love and revenge, which
even you, who know much of life, would doubt, I think. Yes, you would
not believe. But to continue. Shall I tell you upon what terms he had
returned to me, eh? I will. Once more he would suffer that pang of
death in life, for he had courage, ah! such great courage, and then,
when the waiting for the next grew more than even his fearless heart
could bear, I, who also had courage, and who loved him, should----" She
paused, "Do you understand?"
Harley nodded dumbly, and suddenly I found Val Beverley's little
fingers twined about mine.
"I agreed," continued the deep voice. "It was a boon which I, too,
would have asked from one who loved me. But to die, knowing another
cherished the woman who had been torn from him, was an impossibility
for Juan Menendez. What he had schemed to do at first I never knew. But
presently, because of our situation here, and because of that which he
had asked of me, it came, the great plan.
"On the night he told me, a night I shall never forget, I drew back in
horror from him--I, Marie de St�mer, who thought I knew the blackest
that was in him. I shrank. And because of that scene it came to him
again in the early morning--the moment of agony, the needle pain, here,
low down in his left breast.
"He pleaded with me to do the wicked thing that he had planned, and
because I dared not refuse, knowing he might die at my feet, I
consented. But, my friends, I had my own plan, too, of which he knew
nothing. On the next day he went to Paris, and was told he had two
months to live, with great, such great care, but perhaps only a week, a
day, if he should permit his hot passions to inflame that threatened
heart. Very well.
"I said yes, yes, to all that he suggested, and he began to lay the
trail--the trail to lead to his enemy. It was his hobby, this
vengeance. He was like a big, cruel boy. It was he, himself, Juan
Menendez, who broke into Cray's Folly. It was he who nailed the bat
wing to the door. It was he who bought two rifles of a kind of which so
many millions were made during the war that anybody might possess one.
And it was he who concealed the first of these, one cartridge
discharged, under the floor of the hut in the garden of the Guest
House. The other, which was to be used, he placed--"
"In the shutter-case of one of the tower rooms," continued Paul Harley.
"I know! I found it there to-night."
"What?" I asked, "you found it, Harley?"
"I returned to look for it," he said. "At the present moment it is
upstairs in my room."
"Ah, M. Harley," exclaimed Madame, smiling at him radiantly, "I love
your genius. Then it was," she continued, "that he thought himself
ready, ready for revenge and ready for death. He summoned you, M.
Harley, to be an expert witness. He placed with you evidence which
could not fail to lead to the arrest of M. Camber. Very well. I allowed
him to do all this. His courage, _mon Dieu_, how I worshipped his
courage!
"At night, when everyone slept, and he could drop the mask, I have seen
what he suffered. I have begged him, begged him upon my knees, to allow
me to end it then and there; to forget his dream of revenge, to die
without this last stain upon his soul. But he, expecting at any hour,
at any minute, to know again the agony which cannot be described, which
is unlike any other suffered by the flesh--refused, refused! And I"--
she raised her eyes ecstatically--"I have worshipped this courage of
his, although it was evil--bad.
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