THE BEAUTY-KILLER
Four more figures dashed out through the curtains--two women and two
men. The inspector and Monsieur Dupont joined them. Guided by the sounds
in front of them, they dashed across the garden at the top of their
speed.
A black wall of earth loomed up before them, like the rising of a
gigantic wave. It was strongly rivetted, and must have been at least ten
feet high. It was quite inaccessible from where the pursuers stopped
beneath it.
"Look! Look!" a woman screamed.
They looked up.
"My God!" the inspector exclaimed.
On the height above them, silhouetted against the pale sky of the summer
night, they saw a figure--its arms uplifted in an attitude of majesty,
of triumphant defiance. The white light of the moon lit up a face
terrible beyond words in its pride, its sin, and its utter madness.
"I am the Beauty-Killer! I killed Colette d'Orsel! I killed Margaret
McCall. I killed Christine Manderson...."
Another figure scrambled up out of the darkness on to the height, and
the silver head of Oscar Winslowe gleamed in the light. For a moment he
crouched--then sprang forward with a yell. The two figures swayed
backwards in a fierce struggle.
"They will go down!" a man's voice cried. "It is the edge of a gravel
pit. The fence will not bear. There is a sheer drop of fifty feet."
"Let them go," another woman sobbed. "It is the best way."
And, even as she spoke, there was the sound of tearing woodwork. The
struggling figures stood out for an instant with startling
clearness--then disappeared like the sudden shutting off of a moving
picture. And the whole night seemed to wince at the thud that followed.
"We must go down," the man's voice said, breaking the silence in an
awestruck whisper. "There is a way round the other side."
They followed him round the edge of the pit. It seemed like walking
round the world. They descended a steep slope--and then, in the vast
gray silence, a circle of pale faces surrounded the dead bodies of Oscar
Winslowe, and John Tranter.