It was a defeated Nadia Mdevani who emerged from what proved to be a
prolonged interview with Lieutenant Berry. If, before it, she looked
worn and troubled, her will had at least remained indomitable. If her
voice had flagged, her eyes lost their challenge, yet she had always
managed to convey an impression of impregnable right shall be might. Now
she had yielded everything, to all appearances, and came carrying her
weapon by the blade and laid across her forearm for the victor to accept
the hilt. Her face was haggard; her unquenchable color quenched; her
feet scarcely lifted; she twisted her clasped hands together as though
they were manacled. When she spoke it was in a voice not her own, a
voice in which despair had even surpassed weariness.
“Very well, Mr. Berry,” she said. “I understand perfectly. I shall make
no attempt to escape, I swear. I am not the kind. When I am beaten in
fair play I am as willing to dance to the music as I am when I win and
the tune is gayer. I only ask one favor before I go with you. May I have
a few words with Mr. Belknap in private? That is, if he will condescend
to have a few words with me. He may even put me to the indignity of a
search for concealed firearms if he so desires.” There was a flicker of
the old Nadia as she looked up at Belknap on the last words.
Belknap and Berry exchanged glances, and there was a faint nod of
acquiescence on Berry’s part. It didn’t escape Nadia. She smiled dimly.
“Thank you, Mr. Berry. I will not transgress your orders, on my honor.”
With a little characteristic shrug of a shoulder she motioned Belknap to
follow her. She led him into the library, and, closing the door, leaned
against it as though she had reached the farthermost limit of endurance.
Her drooping figure, her shattered face, so pierced Belknap with their
utter resignation that before he could trust himself to speech she had
spoken.
“The Chamber of Horrors,” she murmured with a dim twitch at the corners
of her sad mouth. “Do you object to seeing me here? It is here we truly
met for the first time. Do you remember last night, the things we said,
and the things we left unsaid? Don’t let’s leave anything unsaid
tonight. Oh, I’m sorry to be so pathetic and so obvious.” She half
lifted her eyes to him and let them fall away, but he had a glimpse of
the pride in them struggling to master an emotion he dared not name.
“Don’t apologize,” he said roughly. “What did he do to you? I’ll kill
the bastard.”
“Oh, my dear, what didn’t he do! But never mind that. I don’t have to
tell you about it, you can see for yourself what I have come to. I am
ashamed. I had so fully intended to go down, if I had to go down, with
flags up—denying, denying, denying—and here I am, not only confessed to
murders, but confessed to murders I never committed. What irony, what
bitter irony!”
“You confessed?” he cried softly, and taking her two arms in his two
hands he drew her unresistingly forward into the room. He drew her to
the light where he could see her face. “Nadia, tell me that is not
true.”
“It is true. There comes a time in these affairs when it is easier to
admit than to deny, or rather, when one becomes careless and callous of
the consequences of guilt. Will someone stop that damned youngster
breaking his heart out there! I _can’t_ tell him where his girl-friend
is because I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she screamed; but
the scream, from sheer exhaustion, scarcely rose above a whisper.
“Hush, dear! Don’t let him worry you. He has lost his head too
dreadfully. And you mustn’t confess, you _mustn’t_, do you hear? Even if
you killed the lot, don’t admit it—_ever_.”
“What else can I do? You have me on so many counts. There’s no use
standing up against circumstantial evidence forever—even if it’s planted
evidence, as this happens to be. I could never prove it. And the way I
feel now the sooner things are over the better. I’m tired, tired out.
I’m rapidly joining that Mrs. Crawford in her state of detachment and
disenchantment. How beautifully she’s behaving now, not a trace of agony
or hysteria; not because she’s thought it out, it isn’t philosophy with
her, but because she’s died and remained alive. It leaves one with a
jolly nonchalance. Well, short of one barb that persists in hurting me
like Hell, I promise you I can go to the chair without a flicker.” His
hands still held her and had unwittingly tightened on her arms. She
looked down at them. “_You’re_ hurting me rather,” she said gently.
“I’m sorry.” He relaxed his hold but did not release her. “Tell me, what
is the pain?” He knew, but he wanted to hear. They both trembled.
“I can’t say it.”
“Yes, you can. There should be nothing left, as you say, that you and I
cannot say to each other. We have been through too much, we have seen
too much, ever to let pride interfere between us again. And you can
depend upon me to the end of creation. I’ll never let them distress
you—never, never, never.”
“As if I hadn’t been distressed!”
“I know. And I have been one of the worst. I’m sorry, so terribly
sorry.”
“_Don’t._”
“Don’t what?”
“You know.” She lifted her eyes, steadily at last, to meet his, and he
saw their depths below depths of suffering.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“I love you.”
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
Suddenly they clung together. And all the time his mind whirled against
itself. How in God’s name, at his time of life, could any woman be doing
this to him! Perhaps even now she was tricking him for a way out for
herself. But he felt her shivering against him, felt her lips, and knew
that was not true. For, together with her love for him, he felt an
overwhelming despair in her that frightened him—as though she fully
intended to go through with her mad confession. It was mad to have
admitted anything! It was going to make his efforts to save her almost
hopeless.
“We mustn’t,” he said huskily, trying to hold her off and only holding
her closer. “We have other things to think of. It’s desperate. They’re
waiting for us. In the first place you must retract whatever you have
said, and we’ll try to clear you in the courts. Failing that, we’ll make
a get-away—Timbuctu or the Gold Coast, it makes no difference to me. I’m
as tired of the game as you are.”
“No—no—no,” she protested. “I won’t let you do that, ever. Oh, my dear,
I didn’t mean to tell you how much I cared. Truly I didn’t. I only meant
to say good-bye to you. I couldn’t deny myself that. I don’t understand
how this other happened. I suppose because we both cared. I hadn’t an
idea you did. You have been considerate in some ways, yes, but not
really kind. But now I see what it’s been for you. You have been
fighting it too, as I have. How cruel to know at the very moment of
separation. For it _is_ good-bye. It can’t be anything else, for either
of us. Please, no—don’t, don’t, don’t kiss me. I can’t bear it.”
“Be still. We are going to get you off, dear heart. You must be brave,
that’s all; and help me.”
“No. I am not going to let you _try_ to get me off. We have you to think
of now. Not me any longer. I am beyond being worried about. I never
expected to escape the fruits of my sins as long as I have. That I
happen to die innocent is a queer twist of fate, nothing more. I would
have died really guilty of something within a month—a year. Who knows?
And I’ve put up a good battle, as battles go in this world. I have just
got around to surrender. I’m through. So it’s fare thee well, dear,
forever and ever, instead of—of ‘they lived—.’” Her voice broke.
“_Stop_ it!” He shook her fiercely. “Pull yourself together, Nadia. For
God’s sake, don’t stand here talking sentimental nonsense. What we have
to do is _plan_. The enemy is outside that door; can’t you realize that?
We’ll have to have every ounce of our wits about us to fend them off.
What did you admit? Tell me that.”
“Everything. Every murder. What was the point of haggling over an extra
one or two. And, what’s more, I’m sticking to it, darling.” She drew a
deep breath. “It’s the only solution. Believe me, it is. Nothing in the
wide world, including death twenty times over, could make me let you
undertake your wild scheme for us. My dear, you are a great man, a
strong one, an esteemed one. I am a wretched little criminal—clever,
yes, but wretched all the same. Do you think loving you, worshiping you
as I do, I could dream of letting you face downright ruin for my sake?
It isn’t to be thought of.”
Nadia stood back and lifted her face to his. Her eyes were wide open,
lucid, adoring, and, to him, the mirrors of love and integrity. Then, as
she gazed at him, the tears, the first he had ever seen her shed, and he
had thought her incapable of tears, welled up and fell quietly across
her cheeks.
“I love you, don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what love
means? I couldn’t let you hurt yourself for me. The very fact of my love
for you makes it absolutely imperative I never retract a word I have
said to them. For my confession puts me out of harm’s way and so puts
temptation out of yours.” Her little smile came, tender now.
Belknap walked away from her and back, restlessly.
“Nadia,” he said slowly, “I have things to say to you I never intended
saying. But I see I must be honest with you to bring you to your senses.
You have got to be shocked into fighting if we are going to save
ourselves for each other. Which is all that’s left that matters—our
having each other—isn’t it?”
“It is,” she whispered breathlessly, a hand at her throat.
“Then you will understand and forgive, for that reason, and for another,
almost as important, that you are no better than I am. We are birds of a
feather and can properly appreciate each other,” he added with a grim
laugh.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we are equally criminals, Nadia. In this case I happen to be the
worse one of the two. I’ve killed five people (that is, if Joel Lacey is
dead yet) since four o’clock this morning. Rather a record, isn’t it? Do
you know, there have been times when I was sure you guessed, _more_ than
guessed. And on top of it I have made you confess to the whole show,
which was also plotted. _I_ planted that circumstantial evidence upon
you, dear. Couldn’t you see? I was intent on beating you at your own
game. God, what a beautiful job I made of it! One of my best. And now to
have it busted up by a slip of a woman. Not that it isn’t worth it,—
Nadia, don’t _look_ at me like that. You’re _not_ looking at me. What
_are_ you—”
The dining-room door behind Belknap had stood ajar by the shadow of an
inch. It was now thrown open and Stebbins and Berry advanced on Belknap.
“Hands up!” Stebbins thundered.
“It’s hands up, Belknap,” Berry said. “Thank you, Miss Mdevani. That was
splendidly done. You acted—”
Berry should have saved his congratulations. As Belknap raised his hands
he drew his pistol from his shoulder holster, and, though he would never
have had the extra second to swing on his captors, he did have the split
fraction of a second to fire straight before him. The shot of his 38
calibre police revolver was deafening. Nadia, shot directly through the
breast, put her two hands where the bullet had entered, and without a
sound fell in an uneven heap at Belknap’s feet.