"YOU HAVE KILLED HIM!"
Before however, Julian descended to confront Sebastian he thought it
was necessary to do two things; first, to light the lamp to see how
much of that accursed Amancay had been spilt by the broken phial, and
next--which was the more important--to recharge and look to his
revolver. For he thought it very likely that after he had said all he
intended to say to Sebastian, he might find the weapon useful.
When he had obtained a light by the aid of the matches which he was
never without, he saw that his surmises were fully justified. Upon the
floor there lay, glistening, innumerable pieces of broken glass and
the half of a broken phial, while all around the _débris_ was a small
pool of liquid shining on the polished wooden floor. And from it there
arose an odour so pungent and so f[oe]tid, that he began almost at
once to feel coming over him the hazy, drowsy stupefaction that he had
been conscious of last night. So seizing his water-jug he
unceremoniously sluiced the floor with its contents, washing away and
subduing the noisome exhalation; when taking his revolver from his
pocket and seeing carefully to its being charged, he dropped it into
his pocket again. He took with him, too, the remnants of the broken
phial.
"I shall only return here to pack my few things," he thought to
himself, "but, all the same it is as well to have destroyed that
stuff. Otherwise the room would have been poisoned with it."
And now--taking no light with him, for his experience of the last two
hours had taught him, even had he not known it before, the way down to
the garden--he descended, going out by the way that Paz had led him
and so around to the lower veranda. A moment later he reached it, and
mounting the steps, entered the saloon in which he expected to find
Sebastian.
The man was there, he saw at once even before he stood close by the
open window. He was there, sitting at the great table where the meals
were partaken of; but looking dark and brooding now. Upon his face, as
Julian could easily perceive, there was a scowl, and in his eyes an
ominous look that might have warned a less bold man than the young
sailor that he was in a dangerous mood.
"Has she been with him already," Julian wondered, "and informed him
that their precious schemes are at an end, are discovered?"
"Ha!" exclaimed Sebastian, looking fixedly at him, as now Julian
advanced into the room, "so you are well enough to come downstairs
to-night. Yet--it is a little late. You have scarcely come to sing me
those wardroom songs you spoke of, I suppose!"
"No," Julian said, "it is not to sing songs that I am here. But to
talk about serious matters. Sebastian Ritherdon--if you are Sebastian
Ritherdon, which I think doubtful--you have got to give me an
explanation to-night, not only of who you really are, but also of the
reason why, during the time I have been in this locality, you have
four times attempted my life, or caused it to be attempted."
"Are you mad?" the other exclaimed, staring at him with still that
ominous look upon his face. "You must be to talk to me like this."
"No," Julian replied. "Instead, perfectly sane. I was, perhaps, more
or less demented last night when under the influence of the fumes of
the Amancay plant which had been sprinkled on my pillow, as well as on
my jacket and waistcoat; and you also were more or less demented
to-night when you had by an accident taken some of the poison into
your system, owing to you making a meal of the doctored mountain
mullet you had prepared for me--your guest. But--now--we are both
recovered and--an explanation is needed."
"My God!" exclaimed Sebastian, "you must be mad!"
Yet, in his own heart, he knew well enough that never was the calm,
determined-looking man before him--the man who, hitherto, had been so
bright and careless, but who now stood stern as Nemesis at the other
end of the table--further removed from madness than he was this night.
He knew and felt that it was not with a lunatic but an avenger that he
had to deal.
"I am not mad," Julian replied calmly. "Meanwhile, take your right
hand out of that drawer by your side, and keep it out. Pistol shots
will disturb the whole house, and, if you do not do as I bid you I
shall have to fire first," and he tapped his breast significantly as
he spoke, so that the other could be in no doubt of his meaning.
"Now," he continued, when Sebastian had obeyed him, he laughing with a
badly assumed air of contempt as he did so, all the same, laying his
large brown hand upon the table--"now," said Julian, "I will tell you
all that I believe to be the case in connection with you and with me,
all that I know to have been the case in connection with your various
attempts to injure me, and, also, all that I intend to do, to-morrow,
when I reach Belize and have taken the most eminent lawyer in the
place into my confidence."
As he mentioned the word "lawyer," Sebastian started visibly; then,
once more, he assumed the contemptuous expression he had previously
endeavoured to exhibit, but beyond saying roughly again that Julian
was a madman, he made no further remark for the moment, and sat
staring, or rather glaring, at the other man before him. Yet, had
that other man been able to thoroughly comprehend, or follow, that
glance--which, owing to the lamp being between them, he was not
entirely able to do--he would have seen that, instead of resting on
his face, it was directed to beyond where he stood. That it went past
him to away down to the farther end of the room; to where the open
window was.
"Charles Ritherdon," said Julian now, "had a son born in this house
twenty-six years ago, and that son was stolen within two or three days
of his birth by his uncle, George Ritherdon. You are not that son, and
you know it. Yet you know who is. You know that I am."
"You lie," Sebastian said with an oath; "you are an impostor. And even
if what you say is true--who am I? I," he said, his voice rising now,
either with anger or excitement, "who have lived here all my life, who
have been known from a child by dozens of people still alive? Who am
I, I say?"
"That at present I do not know. Perhaps the lawyer to whom I confide
my case will be able to discover."
"Lawyer! Bah! A curse for your lawyers. What can you tell him, what
proof produce?"
And still, as he spoke, he kept his eyes fixed, as Julian thought,
upon him, but in absolute fact upon that portion of the room which was
in shadow behind where the latter stood.
Upon, too--although Julian knew it not, and did not, indeed, for one
moment suspect such to be the case--a white face, that, peeping round
the less white curtains which hung by the window, never moved the dark
eyes that shone out of it from off the back of the man who confronted
Sebastian. Fixed upon, too, the form to which that face belonged,
which, even as Sebastian had raised his voice, had drawn itself a few
feet nearer to the other; finding shelter now behind the curtains of
the next or nearest window.
"I can at least produce the proofs," Julian replied, his eyes still
regarding the other, and knowing nothing of that creeping listener
behind, "that my presence in Honduras--at Desolada as your invited
guest--caused you so much consternation, so much dismay, that you
hesitated at nothing which might remove me from your path. What will
the law believe, what will these people who have known you from your
infancy--as you say--think, when they learn that three times at least,
if not more, you have attempting my life?"
"Again I say it is a lie!" Sebastian muttered hoarsely.
"And I can prove that it is the truth. I can prove that this woman,
this accomplice of yours--this woman whom my father--not _your_
father, but _my_ father--jilted, threw away, so that he might marry
Isobel Leigh, my mother--fired at me with a rifle known to be hers and
used by her on small game. I can prove that she poisoned the meal that
was to be partaken of by me; that even so late as to-night she
drenched the floor of my room--as she meant again to drench the pillow
on which I slept--with the deadly juice of the Amancay--with this,"
and he held before Sebastian the broken phial he had found above.
"You can prove nothing," Sebastian muttered hoarsely, raucously.
"Nothing."
"Can I not? I have two witnesses."
"Two witnesses!" the other whispered, and now indeed he looked
dismayed. "Two witnesses. Yet--what of that, of them! Even though they
could prove this--which they can not--what else can they prove? Even
though I am not Charles Ritherdon's son and you are--even though such
were the case--which it is not--how prove it?"
"That remains to be seen. But, though it should never be proved; even
though you and that murderous accomplice of yours, that discarded
sweetheart of my father's, that woman who I believe, as I believe
there is a God in Heaven, was the prime mover in this plot----"
"Silence!" cried Sebastian, springing to his feet now, yet still with
that look in his eyes which Julian did not follow; that look towards
where the white corpse-faced creature was by this time--namely, five
feet nearer still to Julian--"silence, I say. That woman is not, shall
not, be defamed by you. Neither here or elsewhere. She--she--is--ah!
God, she has been my guardian angel--has repaid evil for good. My
father threw her off--discarded her--and she came here, forgiving him
at the last in his great sorrow. She helped to rear me--his
son--to----"
"Now," said Julian, still calmly, "it is you who lie, and the lie is
the worse because you know it. Some trick was played on him whom you
still dare to call your father, on him who was mine--never will I
believe he was a party to it!--and before Heaven I do believe that it
was she who played it. She never forgave him for his desertion of her;
she, this would be murderess--this poisoner--and--and--ah!"
What had happened to him? What had occurred? As he uttered the last
words, accusing that woman of being a murderess in intention, if not
in fact--a poisoner--he felt a terrible concussion at the nape of his
neck, a blow that sent him reeling forward towards the other side of
that table against which Sebastian had sat, and at which he now stood
confronting him. And, dazed, numbed as this blow had caused him to
become, so that now the features of the man before him--those features
that were so like his own!--were confused and blurred, though with
still a furious, almost demoniacal expression in them, he scarcely
understood as he gave that cry that in his nostrils was once more the
sickening overpowering odour of the Amancay--that it was suffocating,
stifling him.
Then with another cry, which was not an exclamation this time, but
instead, a moan, he fell forward, clutching with his hands at the
tablecloth, and almost dragging the lamp from off the table. Fell
forward thus, then sank to his knees, and next rolled senseless,
oblivious to everything, upon the floor.
"You have killed him!" muttered Sebastian hoarsely, and with upon his
face now a look of terror. "You have killed him! My God! if any others
should be outside, should have seen"--while, forgetting that what he
was about to do would be too late if those others might be outside of
whom he had spoken, he rushed to both the windows and hastily closed
the great shutters, which, except in the most violent tempests that at
scarce intervals break over British Honduras, were rarely used.
And she, that woman standing there above her victim with her face
still white as is the corpse's in its shroud, her lips flecked with
specks of foam, her hands quivering, muttered in tones as hoarse as
Sebastian's:
"Killed him. Ay! I hope so. Curse him, there has been enough of his
prying, his seeking to discover the truth of our secret. And--and--if
it were not so--then, still, I would have done it. You heard--you
heard--how he sneered, gloated over my despair, my abandonment by
Charles Ritherdon, so that he might marry that child--that
chit--Isobel Leigh. The woman who cursed, who broke my life. Killed
him, Sebastian! Killed him! Yes! That at least is what I meant to do.
Because, Heaven help me! you were not man enough to do it yourself."