THE TRAGEDY.
That awful, blood-curdling cry of agony and despair rang through and
through the silent house, hushed in the repose of slumber. The echoes
caught it up and prolonged it in awful, sound waves:
“Murder! Murder! Murder!”
There was no ear in that great house upon which it did not fall.
Talbot Strangemore, keeping his wakeful vigil in patient expectation
of a summons from Nina, heard it first, and rushed madly from the
room out into the faintly-lighted hall. His first thought was of his
wife; but when he ran to her apartments, so sacred until now from his
intrusion, he found the outer door locked against him, and, horrified
and bewildered, he turned away.
In a few moments the corridors were full of excited people running
hither and thither, looking into each other’s blanched faces, and
asking what was the matter, and was it really a shriek of “Murder” that
had roused them from slumber.
Miss Drusilla was there in nightcap and slippers, with a large
red shawl hastily thrown over her flapping night-robe. Helen and
Virgie were there in dressing-gowns hastily huddled over their white
wrappers; all the men were there in various stages of dishabille, the
servants were all there too, and but two of the whole household were
missing--those two were Mrs. Strangemore and Mrs. St. Alban.
Some ran hastily to one door--some to another--Nina’s was locked;
Sibyl had forgotten hers in her joy at witnessing her rival’s flight.
They entered readily.
It was Helen Starr who entered first. Her shriek of horror and dismay
rang in the hearing of all long afterward. It announced the tragedy
that in a minute more every one crowded in to gaze upon.
No one ever forgot that tragic sight in the dimly-lighted room, where
some one quickly brightened the lamp for a clearer view. Sibyl St.
Alban lay wounded and apparently dying, across the bed, her life-blood
staining her white robes and the white counterpane in a ghastly
torrent, while a bloody dagger lay carelessly upon the floor.
They crowded around her, and the dim, fast glazing eyes searched their
faces with mute yearning until Talbot Strangemore came. Her drawn lips
faintly murmured his name:
“Talbot!”
“Sibyl!”
He took her hand compassionately in his and looked at her with dazed,
horrified eyes. Some faint fear came over him that she had thrown away
her life because she had lost him.
“My poor Sibyl,” he repeated, and the lips she had opened to speak to
him closed without a sound, the white lids dropped heavily over the
blue imploring eyes in a momentary unconsciousness. Better for him had
it been an eternal sleep.
“Let someone bring a doctor,” he said, hastily, and one of the
half-dazed men-servants went out to do his bidding.
Miss Drusilla, beginning to recover from the trance of horror which had
struck her at first, began to bustle around. She cleared the room first
of all the gaping, terrified domestics who were huddled in a group at
the foot of the bed, whispering fearfully together.
One man in his retreat picked up the blood-stained dagger and presented
it to Miss Drusilla. The housemaid found a letter lying on the floor.
She could not read, so she handed it to Helen Starr who stood nearest
her.
“Oh, Miss, here’s a letter I found on the floor. Mayhap the bloody
murderer who killed that lady dropped it there,” she shuddered.
Helen took it with an answering shiver of fear. She held it out and
read the name upon the back, then she held it out to her host.
“Perhaps I had better give it to you, as it is addressed to your wife,”
she said.
Talbot Strangemore took it from her hand and looked at it. It was the
letter he had slipped under Nina’s door a few hours ago.
“Yes, it belongs to my wife. I wrote it, but how came it here?” he
said, full of wonder.
“Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” said some one, and those
words although so innocently spoken, suggested a terrible possibility
to every one. Every face blanched suddenly, and a silence fell that was
more fearful than words.
And in their sudden interest over the letter no one noticed that
Sibyl’s eyes had opened languidly again, and that she heard and saw all
that was passing around her.
Her first thought was one of terror that she had thrown Talbot’s letter
carelessly from her in her wrath and that now it was discovered in
her possession. But a moment later some one spoke the thoughtless
words, “Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” and the sentence
conveyed such a sinister idea to her mind that she drew a quick breath
and shut her eyes again before Talbot looked around at her and said,
decidedly:
“No, I do not believe that Nina has been in this room at all. When Mrs.
St. Alban revives from her swoon she will no doubt be able to explain
how it came to be in here.”
He crushed it fiercely in his hand, and gazed anxiously at the still
white face on the pillow, until the pale gold lashes fluttered open and
Sibyl looked up at him with a faint, dying expression.
“You are better, Sibyl. Can you speak to us?” he asked.
“No, I am not better--I--I--am dying,” faintly articulated the victim.
“Let some one--bring--pencil and--and paper. Let them take--my--my
dying deposition!”
It was Duke Cameron who obeyed her. He looked with sad, pained eyes at
the dying face.
“Poor Sibyl,” he said, sorrowfully, as to a hurt child, “I am ready
now--what is it you wish me to write?”
She looked at Talbot Strangemore not at him as she answered, slowly and
painfully:
“I have been--foully murdered! It was your wife that did it, Talbot
Strangemore! It--it was Nina! She was--jealous, mad--she hated me,
and in--in her rage she stole upon me in my sleep and--and plunged a
knife in my breast! I saw her--she wore a hood and cloak, ready--to
fly--to fly from the scene of her crime! I am--am dying, and--she--Nina
Strangemore who hated me--is the woman who has cruelly--murdered--me!”