First Person Paramount Part 39

"Yes--and no," she said. "Last night they forced me to make a will leaving them my money. They tortured me."

"How?" I gasped.

"They dragged me to the room where you lay bound and senseless. If I had refused to obey they would have cut you into pieces before my eyes."

"My G.o.d!" I cried. "And that broke your will. But I would have deserved it all for doubting you."

"Not quite," she answered, and she smiled in exceeding sadness.

"Marion, dear Marion," I whispered, "you love me still."

She looked up at me and her eyes filled with tears. "How could you treat me so?" she muttered.

I felt the blood rush of a sudden through my veins, singing a veritable poem of joy and triumph. We were both about to die, but Marion loved me, and by that knowledge I was transformed on the instant from a weak half-broken creature into a life-loving and most desperate man. I glanced quietly about me.

While Dr. Vernet ate his breakfast he watched me, but without manifesting suspicion. Beudant stood behind his chair. Sir Charles and Fulton were in earnest converse twenty paces off.

I thought to myself: "I may never get a better chance. Only a coward will permit himself to be slaughtered unresisting.

"Beudant," said I aloud, "will you be good enough to get me another cup of coffee."

The negro nodded, and started to come round the table.

"Dr. Vernet," I said as carelessly as possible, "may I trouble you for the pepper-pot beside you?"

He bowed, and stretched out in order to render me the indicated service. In a flash I had caught his wrist in my left hand, and with my right I seized a heavy carafe of water and hurled it at his head. Next second I leaped across the table, caught him in my arms, when, guided by Vernet's own instinctive clutch to arm himself, I plunged my hand into his breast pocket and found a revolver.

I slipped to the floor and held the stunned and senseless body of Dr.

Vernet before me as a s.h.i.+eld. Sir Charles Venner and Dr. Fulton were already advancing towards me with drawn pistols.

"Stop!" I shouted.

Sir Charles Venner answered me with his revolver. The bullet crashed into Dr. Vernet's brain and I felt my face spattered with blood. I fired in return, and Dr. Fulton, uttering a frightful scream, pitched headlong on the floor.

It was a bad shot, for I had fired at Sir Charles Venner.

For a moment thereafter the latter stood still, and we stared into each other's eyes across the trail of smoke. I became conscious that Dr.

Vernet's dead body was too heavy for me to support longer. It was slipping from my grasp, slipping, slipping. I realized that very soon I should be without my s.h.i.+eld. As at last it fell, I fired, twice in quick succession. I heard an answering shot, then a woman's piercing scream. I fired again. The room was by then full of smoke; I could see nothing, but I heard someone rus.h.i.+ng towards me shouting and cursing.

For a fifth time I fired. There followed the sound of a fall, then a deep and dreadful silence. I waited with my revolver at full c.o.c.k, not daring to breathe, my every nerve on strain, listening and peering vainly through the pall of smoke. Very slowly and gradually the white mist lifted. At my feet the woman I loved was lying very still. Blood was welling in a rich crimson stream from a wound in her breast. Beyond her Sir Charles Venner lay face downwards on the floor. Both his arms were extended at full length, and at a few inches from his clenched right hand was his revolver. Beudant and Dr. Fulton lay beside Sir Charles Venner's body. All seemed dead. Oppressed with a wild and hideous sense of unreality, I stared stupidly before me. A smoke wreath, growing transparent, showed me at length a living face. Jussieu stood within the room, a black statue of horror. Scarcely conscious of what I did, I raised my pistol and pointed it at his breast. He did not move. I fired and he fell.

At the sound Marion's eyes opened. She looked up at me. I uttered a cry of agony and, throwing away my smoking weapon, I sank on my knees beside her.

"Are you hurt?" she breathed.

"No--no--but you--you are wounded--you are dying," I wailed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Jussieu stood within the room, a black statue of horror."

_First Person Paramount_] [_Page 318_]

She gave me a most wonderful and tender smile. "For you," she gasped.

"To save you! He would have killed you--but his bullet is--here." With a great effort she raised one hand and caught at her breast.

"Oh, G.o.d! oh, G.o.d!" I groaned. "Marion, you will not die and leave me!

Tell me what to do."

"Kiss me," she whispered.

But even as I stooped to obey, her spirit fled, and I kissed the lips of a corpse. No other kiss shall my lips know while I have life.

At the fall of noon I carried her from the house of death and buried her in the grave which Sir Charles Venner had destined for us both. It was in the middle of a pine forest, and perhaps that is why the saddest sound on earth to my ears is still the sighing of pines. I left the bodies of my enemies where they had fallen--accursed carrion! I would not have touched them if I could. They were not discovered until more than a week had pa.s.sed, and by then I was a thousand miles away, a desolate and broken-hearted wanderer on the face of the universe. Many years have pa.s.sed and I am now a millionaire, accounted by the world a hard-headed, flinty-hearted financial magnate, and also something of a misogynist. But I have recorded these chapters of my history to show those who come after me, when I am dead, that, rascal as I was, and abandonedly selfish, I was yet capable of pa.s.sion and of constancy, and that no deep-seated hatred of the softer s.e.x has inspired the invincible solitariness of my life.

FINIS.

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