THE CREEPING SICKNESS
From the ensuing consultation in the library we did not rise until close
upon midnight. To the turbid intelligence of Inspector Aylesbury the
fact by this time had penetrated that Colin Camber was innocent, that
he was the victim of a frame-up, and that Colonel Juan Menendez had been
shot from a window of his own house.
By a process of lucid reasoning which must have convinced a junior
schoolboy, Paul Harley, there in the big library, with its garish
bookcases and its Moorish ornaments, had eliminated every member of the
household from the list of suspects. His concluding words, I remember,
were as follows:
“Of the known occupants of Cray’s Folly on the night of the tragedy we
now find ourselves reduced to four, any one of whom, from the point
of view of an impartial critic uninfluenced by personal character,
question, or motive, or any consideration other than that of physical
possibility, might have shot Colonel Menendez. They are, firstly:
Myself.
“In order to believe me guilty, it would be necessary to discount the
evidence of Knox, who saw me on the gravel path below at the time that
the shot was fired from the tower window.
“Secondly: Knox; whose guilt, equally, could only be assumed by means of
eliminating _my_ evidence, since I saw him at the window of my room at
the time that the shot was fired.
“Thirdly: Madame de Stämer. Regarding this suspect, in the first place
she could not have gained access to the tower room without assistance,
and in the second place she was so passionately devoted to the late
Colonel Menendez that Dr. Rolleston is of opinion that her reason may
remain permanently impaired by the shock of his death. Fourthly and
lastly: Miss Val Beverley.”
Over my own feelings, as he had uttered the girl’s name, I must pass in
silence.
“Miss Val Beverley is the only one of the four suspects who is not in a
position to establish a sound alibi so far as I can see at the moment;
but in this case entire absence of motive renders the suspicion absurd.
Having dealt with the _known_ occupants, I shall not touch upon the
possibility that some stranger had gained access to the house. This
opens up a province of speculation which we must explore at greater
leisure, for it would be profitless to attempt such an exploration now.”
Thus the gathering had broken up, Inspector Aylesbury returning to
Market Hilton to make his report and to release Colin Camber and Ah
Tsong, and Wessex to seek his quarters at the Lavender Arms.
I remember that having seen them off, Harley and I stood in the hall,
staring at one another in a very odd way, and so we stood when Val
Beverley came quietly from Madame de Stämer’s room and spoke to us.
“Pedro has told me what you have done, Mr. Harley,” she said in a low
voice. “Oh, thank God you have cleared him. But what, in Heaven’s name,
does your new discovery mean?”
“You may well ask,” Harley answered, grimly. “If my first task was a
hard one, that which remains before me looks more nearly hopeless than
anything I have ever been called upon to attempt.”
“It is horrible, it is horrible,” said the girl, shudderingly. “Oh,
Mr. Knox,” she turned to me, “I have felt all along that there was some
stranger in the house----”
“You have told me so.”
“Conundrums! Conundrums!” muttered Harley, irritably. “Where am I to
begin, upon what am I to erect any feasible theory?” He turned abruptly
to Val Beverley. “Does Madame de Stämer know?”
“Yes,” she answered, nodding her head; “and hearing the others depart,
she asked me to tell you that sleep is impossible until you have
personally given her the details of your discovery.”
“She wishes to see me?” asked Harley, eagerly.
“She insists upon seeing you,” replied the girl, “and also requests
Mr. Knox to visit her.” She paused, biting her lip. “Madame’s manner is
very, very odd. Dr. Rolleston cannot understand her at all. I expect he
has told you? She has been sitting there for hours and hours, writing.”
“Writing?” exclaimed Harley. “Letters?”
“I don’t know what she has been writing,” confessed Val Beverley. “She
declines to tell me, or to show me what she has written. But there is
quite a little stack of manuscript upon the table beside her bed. Won’t
you come in?”
I could see that she was more troubled than she cared to confess, and
I wondered if Dr. Rolleston’s unpleasant suspicions might have solid
foundation, and if the loss of her cousin had affected Madame de
Stämer’s brain.
Presently, then, ushered by Val Beverley, I found myself once more in
the violet and silver room in which on that great bed of state Madame
reclined amid silken pillows. Her art never deserted her, not even in
moments of ultimate stress, and that she had prepared herself for this
interview was evident enough.
I had thought previously that one night of horror had added five years
to her apparent age. I thought now that she looked radiantly beautiful.
That expression in her eyes, which I knew I must forevermore associate
with the memory of the dying tigress, had faded entirely. They remained
still, as of old, but to-night they were velvety soft. The lips were
relaxed in a smile of tenderness. I observed, with surprise, that she
wore much jewelery, and upon her white bosom gleamed the famous rope
of pearls which I knew her to treasure above almost anything in her
possession.
Again the fear touched me coldly that much sorrow had made her mad. But
at her very first word of greeting I was immediately reassured.
“Ah, my friend,” she said, as I entered, a caressing note in her deep,
vibrant voice, “you have great news, they tell me? Mr. Harley, I was
afraid that you had deserted me, sir. If you had done so I should have
been very angry with you. Set the two armchairs here on my right, Val,
dear, and sit close beside me.”
Then, as we seated ourselves:
“You are not smoking, my friends,” she continued, “and I know that you
are both so fond of a smoke.”
Paul Harley excused himself but I accepted a cigarette which Val
Beverley offered me from a silver box on the table, and presently:
“I am here, like a prisoner of the Bastille,” declared Madame, shrugging
her shoulders, “where only echoes reach me. Now, Mr. Harley, tell me of
this wonderful discovery of yours.”
Harley inclined his head gravely, and in that succinct fashion which he
had at command acquainted Madame with the result of his two experiments.
As he completed the account:
“Ah,” she sighed, and lay back upon her pillows, “so to-night he is
again a free man, the poor Colin Camber. And his wife is happy once
more?”
“Thank God,” I murmured. “Her sorrow was pathetic.”
“Only the pure in heart can thank God,” said Madame, strangely, “but
I, too, am glad. I have written, here”--she pointed to a little heap
of violet note-paper upon a table placed at the opposite side of the
bed--“how glad I am.”
Harley and I stared vaguely across at the table. I saw Val Beverley
glancing uneasily in the same direction. Save for the writing materials
and little heap of manuscript, it held only a cup and saucer, a few
sandwiches, and a medicine bottle containing the prescription which Dr.
Rolleston had made up for the invalid.
“I am curious to know what you have written, Madame,” declared Harley.
“Yes, you are curious?” she said. “Very well, then, I will tell you, and
afterward you may read if you wish.” She turned to me. “You, my friend,”
she whispered, and reaching over she laid her jewelled hand upon my arm,
“you have spoken with Ysola de Valera this afternoon, they tell me?”
“With Mrs. Camber?” I asked, startled. “Yes, that is true.”
“Ah, Mrs. Camber,” murmured Madame. “I knew her as Ysola de Valera. She
is beautiful, in her golden doll way. You think so?” Then, ere I had
time to reply: “She told you, I suppose, eh?”
“She told me,” I replied with a certain embarrassment, “that she had met
you some years ago in Cuba.”
“Ah, yes, although _I_ told the fat Inspector it was not so. How we lie,
we women! And of course she told you in what relation I stood to Juan
Menendez?”
“She did not, Madame de Stämer.”
“No-no? Well, it was nice of her. No matter. _I_ will tell you. I was
his mistress.”
She spoke without bravado, but quite without shame, seeming to glory in
the statement.
“I met him in Paris,” she continued, half closing her eyes. “I was
staying at the house of my sister, and my sister, you understand, was
married to Juan’s cousin. That is how we met. I was married. Yes, it is
true. But in France our parents find our husbands and our lovers find
our hearts. Yet sometimes these marriages are happy. To me this good
thing had not happened, and in the moment when Juan’s hand touched mine
a living fire entered into my heart and it has been burning ever since;
burning-burning, always till I die.
“Very well, I am a shameless woman, yes. But I have lived, and I have
loved, and I am content. I went with him to Cuba, and from Cuba to
another island where he had estates, and the name of which I shall not
pronounce, because it hurts me so, even yet. There he set eyes upon
Ysola de Valera, the daughter of his manager, and, pouf!”
She shrugged and snapped her fingers.
“He was like that, you understand? I knew it well. They did not call
him Devil Menendez for nothing. There was a scene, a dreadful scene, and
after that another, and yet a third. I have pride. If I had seemed to
forget it, still it was there. I left him, and went back to France. I
tried to forget. I entered upon works of charity for the soldiers at a
time when others were becoming tired. I spent a great part of my fortune
upon establishing a hospital, and this child”--she threw her arm around
Val Beverley--“worked with me night and day. I think I wanted to die.
Often I tried to die. Did I not, dear?”
“You did, Madame,” said the girl in a very low voice.
“Twice I was arrested in the French lines, where I had crept dressed
like a _poilu_, from where I shot down many a Prussian. Is it not so?”
“It is true,” answered the girl, nodding her head.
“They caught me and arrested me,” said Madame, with a sort of triumph.
“If it had been the British”--she raised her hand in that Bernhardt
gesture--“with me it would have gone hard. But in France a woman’s smile
goes farther than in England. I had had my fun. They called me ‘good
comrade!’ Perhaps I paid with a kiss. What does it matter? But they
heard of me, those Prussian dogs. They knew and could not forgive. How
often did they come over to bomb us, Val, dear?”
“Oh, many, many times,” said the girl, shudderingly.
“And at last they succeeded,” added Madame, bitterly. “God! the black
villains! Let me not think of it.”
She clenched her hands and closed her eyes entirely, but presently
resumed again:
“If they had killed me I should have been glad, but they only made of
me a cripple. M. de Stämer had been killed a few weeks before this. I
am sorry I forgot to mention it. I was a widow. And when after this
catastrophe I could be moved, I went to a little villa belonging to my
husband at Nice, to gain strength, and this child came with me, like a
ray of sunshine.
“Here, to wake the fire in my heart, came Juan, deserted, broken,
wounded in soul, but most of all in pride, in that evil pride which
belongs to his race, which is so different from the pride of France, but
for which all the same I could never hate him.
“Ysola de Valera had run away from his great house in Cuba. Yes! A woman
had dared to leave him, the man who had left so many women. To me it was
pathetic. I was sorry for him. He had been searching the world for her.
He loved this little golden-haired girl as he had never loved me. But
to me he came with his broken heart, and I”--her voice trembled--“I took
him back. He still cared for me, you understand. Ah!” She laughed. “I am
not a woman who is lightly forgotten. But the great passion that burned
in his Spanish soul was revenge.
“He was a broken man not only in mind, but in body. Let me tell you. In
that island which I have not named there is a horrible disease called
by the natives the Creeping Sickness. It is supposed to come from a
poisonous place named the Black Belt, and a part of this Black Belt is
near, too near, to the hacienda in which Juan sometimes lived.”
Paul Harley started and glanced at me significantly.
“They think, those simple negroes, that it is witchcraft, Voodoo, the
work of the Obeah man. It is of two kinds, rapid and slow. Those who
suffer from the first kind just decline and decline and die in great
agony. Others recover, or seem to do so. It is, I suppose, a matter of
constitution. Juan had had this sickness and had recovered, or so the
doctors said, but, ah!”
She lay back, shaking her finger characteristically.
“In one year, in two, three, a swift pain comes, like a needle,
you understand? Perhaps in the foot, in the hand, in the arm. It is
exquisite, deathly, while it lasts, but it only lasts for a few moments.
It is agony. And then it goes, leaving nothing to show what has caused
it. But, my friends, it is a death warning!
“If it comes here”--she raised one delicate white hand--“you may have
five years to live; if in the foot, ten, or more. But”--she sank her
voice dramatically--“the nearer it is to the heart, the less are the
days that remain to you of life.”
“You mean that it recurs?” asked Harley.
“Perhaps in a week, perhaps not for another year, it comes again, that
quick agony. This time in the shoulder, in the knee. It is the second
warning. Three times it may come, four times, but at last”--she laid
her hand upon her breast--“it comes here, in the heart, and all is
finished.”
She paused as if exhausted, closing her eyes again, whilst we three
who listened looked at one another in an awestricken silence, until the
vibrant voice resumed:
“There is only one man in Europe who understands this thing, this
Creeping Sickness. He is a Frenchman who lives in Paris. To him Juan had
been, and he had told him, this clever man, ‘If you are very quiet and
do not exert yourself, and only take as much exercise as is necessary
for your general health, you have one year to live--’”
“My God!” groaned Harley.
“Yes, such was the verdict. And there is no cure. The poor sufferer must
wait and wait, always wait, for that sudden pang, not knowing if it will
come in his heart and be the finish. Yes. This living death, then, and
revenge, were the things ruling Juan’s life at the time of which I tell
you. He had traced Ysola de Valera to England. A chance remark in a
London hotel had told him that a Chinaman had been seen in a Surrey
village and of course had caused much silly chatter. He enquired at
once, and he found out that Colin Camber, the man who had taken Ysola
from him, was living with her at the Guest House, here, on the hill. How
shall I tell you the rest?”
“Merciful Heaven!” exclaimed Harley, his glance set upon her, with a
sort of horror in his gray eyes, “I think I can guess.”
She turned to him rapidly.
“M. Harley,” she said, “you are a clever man. I believe you are a
genius. And I have the strength to tell you because I am happy to-night.
Because of his great wealth Juan succeeded in buying Cray’s Folly from
Sir James Appleton to whom it belonged. He told everybody he leased it,
but really he bought it. He paid him more than twice its value, and so
obtained possession.
“But the plan was not yet complete, although it had taken form in
that clever, wicked brain of his. Oh! I could tell you stories of the
Menendez, and of the things they have done for love and revenge, which
even you, who know much of life, would doubt, I think. Yes, you would
not believe. But to continue. Shall I tell you upon what terms he had
returned to me, eh? I will. Once more he would suffer that pang of death
in life, for he had courage, ah! such great courage, and then, when the
waiting for the next grew more than even his fearless heart could bear,
I, who also had courage, and who loved him, should----” She paused, “Do
you understand?”
Harley nodded dumbly, and suddenly I found Val Beverley’s little fingers
twined about mine.
“I agreed,” continued the deep voice. “It was a boon which I, too, would
have asked from one who loved me. But to die, knowing another cherished
the woman who had been torn from him, was an impossibility for
Juan Menendez. What he had schemed to do at first I never knew. But
presently, because of our situation here, and because of that which he
had asked of me, it came, the great plan.
“On the night he told me, a night I shall never forget, I drew back in
horror from him--I, Marie de Stämer, who thought I knew the blackest
that was in him. I shrank. And because of that scene it came to him
again in the early morning--the moment of agony, the needle pain, here,
low down in his left breast.
“He pleaded with me to do the wicked thing that he had planned,
and because I dared not refuse, knowing he might die at my feet, I
consented. But, my friends, I had my own plan, too, of which he knew
nothing. On the next day he went to Paris, and was told he had two
months to live, with great, such great care, but perhaps only a week,
a day, if he should permit his hot passions to inflame that threatened
heart. Very well.
“I said yes, yes, to all that he suggested, and he began to lay the
trail--the trail to lead to his enemy. It was his hobby, this vengeance.
He was like a big, cruel boy. It was he, himself, Juan Menendez, who
broke into Cray’s Folly. It was he who nailed the bat wing to the door.
It was he who bought two rifles of a kind of which so many millions were
made during the war that anybody might possess one. And it was he who
concealed the first of these, one cartridge discharged, under the floor
of the hut in the garden of the Guest House. The other, which was to be
used, he placed--”
“In the shutter-case of one of the tower rooms,” continued Paul Harley.
“I know! I found it there to-night.”
“What?” I asked, “you found it, Harley?”
“I returned to look for it,” he said. “At the present moment it is
upstairs in my room.”
“Ah, M. Harley,” exclaimed Madame, smiling at him radiantly, “I love
your genius. Then it was,” she continued, “that he thought himself
ready, ready for revenge and ready for death. He summoned you, M.
Harley, to be an expert witness. He placed with you evidence which could
not fail to lead to the arrest of M. Camber. Very well. I allowed him to
do all this. His courage, _mon Dieu_, how I worshipped his courage!
“At night, when everyone slept, and he could drop the mask, I have seen
what he suffered. I have begged him, begged him upon my knees, to allow
me to end it then and there; to forget his dream of revenge, to die
without this last stain upon his soul. But he, expecting at any hour, at
any minute, to know again the agony which cannot be described, which is
unlike any other suffered by the flesh--refused, refused! And I”--she
raised her eyes ecstatically--“I have worshipped this courage of his,
although it was evil--bad.
“The full moon gives the best light, and so he planned it for the night
of the full moon. But on the night before, because of some scene which
he had with you, M. Harley, nearly I thought his plans would come to
nothing. Nearly I thought the last act of love which he asked of me
would never be performed. He sat there, up in the little room which he
liked best, the coldness upon him which always came before the pang,
waiting, waiting, a deathly dew on his forehead, for the end; and I, I
who loved him better than life, watched him. And, so Fate willed it, the
pang never came.”
“You watched him?” I whispered.
Harley turned to me slowly.
“Don’t you understand, Knox?” he said, in a voice curiously unlike his
own.
“Ah, my friend,” Madame de Stämer laid her hand upon my arm with that
caressing gesture which I knew, “you do understand, don’t you? The power
to use my limbs returned to me during the last week that I lived in
Nice.”
She bent forward and raised her face, in an almost agonized appeal to
Val Beverley.
“My dear, my dear,” she said, “forgive me, forgive me! But I loved him
so. One day, I think”--her glance sought my face--“you will know. Then
you will forgive.”
“Oh, Madame, Madame,” whispered the girl, and began to sob silently.
“Is it enough?” asked Madame de Stämer, raising her head, and looking
defiantly at Paul Harley. “Last night, you, M. Harley, who have genius,
nearly brought it all to nothing. You passed the door in the shrubbery
just when Juan was preparing to go out. I was watching from the window
above. Then, when you had gone, he came out--smoking his last cigarette.
“I went to my place, entering the tower room by the door from that
corridor. I opened the window. It had been carefully oiled. It was
soundless. I was cold as one already dead, but love made me strong. I
had seen him suffer. I took the rifle from its hiding-place, the heavy
rifle which so few women could use. It was no heavier than some which I
had used before, and to good purpose.”
Again she paused, and I saw her lips trembling. Before my mind’s eye
the picture arose which I had seen from Harley’s window, the picture
of Colonel Juan Menendez walking in the moonlight along the path to
the sun-dial, with halting steps, with clenched fists, but upright as a
soldier on parade. Walking on, dauntlessly, to his execution. Out of a
sort of haze, which seemed to obscure both sight and hearing, I heard
Madame speaking again.
“He turned his head toward me. He threw me a kiss--and I fired. Did you
think a woman lived who could perform such a deed, eh? If you did not
think so, it is because you have never looked into the eyes of one who
loved with her body, her mind, and with her soul. I think, yes, I think
I went mad. The rifle I remember I replaced. But I remember no more.
Ah!”
She sighed in a resigned, weary way, untwining her arm from about Val
Beverley, and falling back upon her pillows.
“It is all written here,” she said; “every word of it, my friends, and
signed at the bottom. I am a murderess, but it was a merciful deed. You
see, I had a plan of which Juan knew nothing. This was my plan.” She
pointed to the heap of manuscript. “I would give him relief from his
agonies, yes. For although he was an evil man, I loved him better than
life. I would let him die happy, thinking his revenge complete. But
others to suffer? No, no! a thousand times no! Ah, I am so tired.”
She took up the little medicine bottle, poured its contents into the
glass, and emptied it at a draught.
Paul Harley, as though galvanized, sprang to his feet. “My God!” he
cried, huskily, “Stop her, stop her!” Val Beverley, now desperately
white, clutched at me with quivering fingers, her agonized glance set
upon the smiling face of Madame de Stämer.
“No fuss, dear friends,” said Madame, gently, “no trouble, no nasty
stomach-pumps; for it is useless. I shall just fall asleep in a few
moments now, and when I wake Juan will be with me.”
Her face was radiant. It became lighted up magically. I knew in that
grim hour what a beautiful woman Madame de Stämer must have been. She
rested her hand upon Val Beverley’s head, and looked at me with her
strange, still eyes.
“Be good to her, my friend,” she whispered. “She is English, but not
cold like some. She, too, can love.”
She closed her eyes and dropped back upon her pillows for the last time.