"And--and seeing what had happened, Paulton, I truly believe, went mad,"
said the prostrate man. "It took Whichelo, and Henderson and myself,
all our strength to hold him down. Gwen was on the sofa, in hysterics.
What surprised me was that nobody in the street outside was attracted by
the uproar. I suppose they couldn't hear it through the double windows.
I won't go into further details of that awful night. I can't bear to
think of them, even now. But from that night onward, Paulton had me in
his power. It was Whichelo who suggested embalming Sutton's body and
hiding it in the house. He would himself perform the embalming. He had
embalmed bodies in Mexico, and understood the process."
He remained silent for some seconds.
"And so that was done," he continued. "Paulton and Henderson had left
the house, the former satisfied at the thought that he could now use me
as his cat's-paw--and by Heaven! he has done so! The coin we had in the
house, some genuine, but most of it base, we hid away with the body
between the ceiling and the floor. None knew our secret but my wife,
Gwen--who almost revealed it during an attack of brain fever, which
resulted from the shock she had received--Paulton, Henderson and myself.
Vera was not old enough to know, but when she reached her seventeenth
year, we decided to tell her the whole story, deeming it wiser, for
various reasons, to do so. And now you understand."
"And during all the years I have known you," I said, "where has Paulton
been? What became of Whichelo, and of Henderson? I met Whichelo for
the first time in my life, just after you had left Houghton so
mysteriously. Yet you say you have known him all these years."
"Whichelo joined his brother in Mexico City, and remained there for many
years," he replied. "Paulton and Henderson continued their clever work
of money-making, though mostly in Rome, and in Barcelona, where they had
a number of accomplices. And I was bled--blackmailed by Paulton to the
extent of nearly all my fortune--month after month, year after year. My
wife, as you know, has her own fortune, and there were reasons why he
could not touch that without incriminating himself, so for years I have
had to live almost entirely on her means. Some years ago, Paulton and
Henderson were both arrested in Paris on a charge of forgery of Russian
bank-notes. They were tried, and sentenced to ten years' penal
servitude. At the end of seven years, they were released. Paulton
returned to England, and began once more to blackmail me. Worse, he had
seen Vera, and at once told me he should marry her. If I refused my
consent he would, he declared--"
The poor fellow who had once bought a knighthood, stopped, gasping for
breath. I laid my hand upon his arm, as I thought to soothe him, but he
pushed it off quite roughly.
"Some months ago he sent me an ultimatum. If I still refused to let my
girl marry him, he--would call before the last day of--March--and--"
"Yes? Yes?" I exclaimed, unable now to restrain my curiosity.
"He declared he would disclose all he knew, take Vera from me by a plan
that he explained, and that I saw I could not frustrate, and encompass
the death of any persons to whom he thought I might have revealed the
secret concerning him. Also he would tell the police the truth about
the murder of his half-brother. He believed that you and I being such
intimate friends, I had told you about him. Also he believed, for some
reason, that my butler, James, knew something. He said he would kill
you both. One of his accomplices was Judith, whom, a year ago, Gwen
unsuspectingly engaged as maid. She, it seems, had kept Paulton posted
in all that was happening in Houghton. I was driven to my wits' ends--
entirely desperate--though--you--you never suspected it."
"But the photograph," I exclaimed, as I noticed a curious change
suddenly come over him, "that photograph of Paulton--why was it at
Houghton?"
"We always kept it there, that Vera might never fail to identify
Paulton, should she ever meet him. When we told Vera, in her
seventeenth year, all that had happened years ago, we showed her that
portrait for the first time. It was my idea to set it in the
morning-room recently, so that my poor girl might never forget what the
man looked like who had sworn to take her from me."
"Could you not have removed the--that hidden body?" I exclaimed,
anxious to get from him as many facts as possible, in the short time he
had still to live. "What proof could he then have had--?"
"Don't--ah! don't!" he interrupted. "There were reasons--of--of course,
had it been possible, I--a water-pipe had burst in my house--it had
caused the body to stain the ceiling--and--also there were--" and his
thin, bony fingers clutched at the air in frantic gesture.
His sentences were now disjointed, their meaning could not be followed.
Now he was straining terribly his mouth gaped, his dry throat emitted a
strange, rasping sound. I seized his wasted wrist. His pulse was
almost still. Now his face was growing ashen, his eyes were staring
into space--their intelligence was fading.
The nurse entered, and glanced at me significantly.