|I HAD listened to all this as though to voices in a fever. I had been
trying to get up my courage for a leap. It seemed to me now a desperate,
hopeless undertaking, but it was easier to die in a struggle than to lie
there in cold blood while she strangled me with those long, cold, iron
hands. She was not calm. I could see that her eyes were shifting, her
arms and legs twitched, her fingers moved restlessly. Black and hard as
her lost soul must be, it shrank a little from this killing. The murder
of her own child gave her a very ague of dread. It was partly, no doubt,
the desire to postpone the hideous act that had kept her spinning out
her tale so long. But the end had come now. It was--I knew it well--the
last moment of my life. I looked at the candle.
At the same instant I heard a window open somewhere in the house. Thank
God! It was morning. The household was awake. The sound was all I needed
to fire my courage. I flung myself bodily upon the candle, rolled away,
scrambled to my feet, and fled along the passageway with the speed of my
despair. She was after me like a flash, but I had an instant's start.
Down the inclined plane I slid. I leapt along the steps, and there at
the foot she fell upon me, and we lay panting within a stone's throw of
the closet wall. And I realized that our flight had been no more noisy
than the scuttling of rats. I gave myself up to death.
Madame took me up in her arms as though I had been a little child, and,
soft-footed as a panther, carried me back to the side of the iron box.
There she laid me down and bound my ankles, not gently, so that the
blood flowed under the twine.
Then, with steady hands, she relighted the candle. I saw her face, livid
with rage and fear, pitiless, glaring. She slid her hand into the pocket
of her dress, that gray dress which she had copied from mine. Again for
a fantastic, icy second I had that awful feeling that she was I, that I
was she, that we were of the same spirit and flesh. When her hand came
out it held a slender knife, fine and keen and delicate as a surgical
instrument. With her other hand she sought and found the beating of my
heart.
I now knew the manner of my death. I shut my eyes, and prayed that it
would be over quickly.
There was the faintest sound above my head, and I opened my eyes. Before
the woman saw my deliverance, I saw it. A beam that had made part of the
sill, that crossed the passageway above us, slid quietly from its place,
and into the opening a figure swung and dropped.
Before even it could reach the ground, the woman had put out the light
and vanished like a ghost. I heard not so much as the rustle of her
dress.
The figure from above landed lightly beside me, and flashed on an
electric lantern. It was Paul Dabney. He bent over me, and drew a quick,
sharp breath. I tried to cry out, “Follow the woman!” but my bound lips
moved soundlessly.
“I have caught you,” he said dully. “It is the end.”
For me it was indeed the end, a far more bitter one than a knife in my
heart. I should be taken. I should be tried for my life. Half a dozen
people would swear that I was Madame Trème. Who would believe my
incredible story? I was lost. I looked up at Paul Dabney with complete
despair.
Footsteps came along the inclined plane, but Dabney did not turn around.
Evidently he expected them, and they did not interest him. He was
shaking, even his white lips were unsteady. I saw his hands open and
shut. The light of the electric lantern, and the light that fell through
the trapdoor which he had so mysteriously opened above our heads, made
him ghastly visible, made the whole passageway, with its rafters and its
red bricks, outlined with plaster, the iron box, the glimmer of jewels,
plain to my sight. I saw two men coming towards me. Between them, by her
arms, they held up Madame Trème.
“We've got her, sir!” said one of them triumphantly. I recognized Mrs.
Brane's outdoors men, and thought confusedly that one of these was
Hovey, the detective.
Paul Dabney looked slowly around. He looked and raised a shaking hand to
his eyes. He turned again towards me. Then, as though a current of life
had been flashed through his veins, he sprang to my side, untied my
bonds, tore off the silk handkerchief from my mouth. I was as helpless
as a babe, but he lifted me tenderly, and, kneeling, supported me in his
arms.
“Janice,” he said brokenly, “Janice, what does it mean?”
My double laughed. “So now, Hovey, you cat, do you understand what a
fool my pretty daughter and I have made of you? You think yourself very
clever, no doubt. Your reputation is made, is n't it? Now that you've
nabbed the famous Madame of the red-gold strand. No, no, my friend, not
quite so fast.”
She moved her head from side to side, struggling with her captors. I saw
her bend her mouth to her shoulder, bite and tear at her dress. We all
looked at her in a ghastly sort of silence. I could feel Paul Dabney's
quivering muscles and his quick breathing. Then, for a second, I saw
a white pellet on the woman's tongue. It must have been sewed into the
seam of her dress there at the shoulder. She swallowed convulsively, and
stood still, her head thrust forward, staring in front of her with eyes
like stones.
My face must have showed itself to her through the mists of death, for
she spoke once hoarsely: “The girl is quite innocent,” she said; “she
wasn't trying for the jewels. Do you get that, Hovey? Keep your claws
off her.”
Then she gave a great shiver, her face turned blue. Her head dropped
forward, her legs gave way, and the two men held a dead body in their
arms.