Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/336

 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