Julian's slumbers of the past night having been more or less disturbed by the various incidents of, first, his drowsy delirium, then of those figures of the watcher and the watched, as well as by the storm and the sight of the departing form of the latter individual, he decided that, during the course of the present day, he would endeavour to obtain some sleep. Especially he determined thus because, now, he knew that there must be no more sleeping at night for him.
Whether he remained in Desolada for the next four nights as he had consented to do, or whether he decided to follow Zara's suggestion and find some excuse for departing at once, he understood plainly that to sleep again when night was over all the house might be fraught with deadly risk to him. What that risk was, what the tangible shape which it would be likely later on to assume, he was not yet able to conclude--but that it existed he had no doubt. Bright and insouciant as he was, with also in his composition a total absence of fear, he was still sufficiently cool, as well as sufficiently intelligent to understand that here, in Desolada, he was not only regarded as an inconvenient interloper, but one who must be got rid of somehow.
"Which proves, if it proves anything," he thought, "that Sebastian knows all about why I am in this country; and also that, secure as his position seems, there is some flaw in it which, if brought to light, will destroy that position. I know it, too, now, am certain that George Ritherdon's story is true--and, somehow, I am going to prove it so. I have muddled the time away too long; now I am going to be a man of action. When I get back to Belize that action begins. Mr. Spranger said I ought to confide in a lawyer, and in a lawyer I will confide. Henceforth, we'll thresh this thing out thoroughly."
Zara had come in again and removed the remnants of the breakfast, and as he had told her that he meant to sleep as long as ever it was possible, she had promised him that he should not be disturbed. Wherefore, he now proceeded to darken the room in every way that he could, without thoroughly excluding the air; namely, by letting down the curtains of the windows as well as by closing the persianas.
"I suppose," he thought to himself, "there is no likelihood of my visitor coming in, in the broad daylight, yet, all the same, I will endeavour to make sure." Upon which he proceeded to put in practise an old trick which in his gunroom days he had often played upon his brother middies (and had had played upon himself); while remembering, as he did so, the merry shouts which had run along the gangway of the lower deck on dark nights over its successful accomplishment. He took a piece of stout cord and tied it across from one side of the window to the other at about a foot and a half from the floor.
"Now," he said, "If any one tries to come in here to-day--well! if they don't break their legs they'll make such a din as will lead to their falling into my hands."
It was almost midday when he laid himself down on the sofa to obtain his much needed rest--midday, and with the sun streaming down vertically and making the apartment, in spite of its being darkened, more like the engine room of a steamer than anything else; yet, soon, he was in a deep refreshing sleep in spite of this disadvantage. A slumber so calm and refreshing that he slept on and on, until, at last, the room grew cool; partly by aid of a gentle breeze which was now blowing down from the summits of the Cockscomb Mountains and partly by the coming of the swift tropical darkness.
Then he awoke, not knowing where he was nor being able to recall that fact even for a moment or so after he was awake, nor to understand why he lay there in the dark. Yet, as gradually he returned to his every-day senses, he became aware that he did not alone owe his awakening to the fact that he had exhausted his desire for slumber, but also to a sound which fell upon his ears. The sound of a slight tapping on his bedroom door.
Astonished at the darkness, which now enveloped the room, more than at anything else--for the tapping he attributed to Zara having brought him his evening meal--he went to the door and turned the key, he having been careful to lock the former securely before going to sleep.
Then, to his surprise, when he had opened the door and peered into the passage, which was also now enveloped in the shadow of night, he saw a figure standing there which was not that of Zara, but, instead, of the half-caste Paz.
"What is it?" he asked, staring at the man and wondering what he wanted. "What! Is anything the matter?"
"Nothing very much," the half-caste answered, his eyes having a strange glitter in them as they rested on Julian's face. "Only, think you like to see funny sight. You like see Señor Sebastian look very funny. You come with me. Quietly."
"What do you mean, Paz?" Julian asked, wondering if this was some ruse whereby to beguile him into danger. "What is it?"
"I show you Massa Sebastian very funny. He very strange. Don't think he find mountain mullet very good for him; don't think he like drink very much with physic-nut oil in it," and he gave that little bleating laugh which Julian had heard before and marvelled at.
Mountain mullet! Physic-nut oil! The very things that Sebastian had suggested to Julian that morning, yet of which Julian had not partaken. The mullet, although Zara had said the men had not caught any for a long time. The phial which he had brought to the room, but the oil of which he had not touched!
"There was no mountain mullet caught--" he began, but Paz interrupted him with that bleating laugh once more, though subdued as befitted the circumstances.
"Ho!" he said. "Nice mountain mullet in Desolada this morning. He order it cook for you. Only--Zara good girl. She love Sebastian, so she give it him and give you trout. Very good girl. But--it make him funny. So, too, physic-nut oil. But that wrong name. Physic-nut oil very much. Not good if mixed with drop of Amancay."
Amancay! Where had Julian heard that name before! Then, swift as lightning, he remembered. He recalled a conversation he had had with Mr. Spranger one evening over the various plants and herbs of the colony, and also how he had listened to stories of the deadly powers of many of them--of the Manzanillo, or Manchineel, of the Florispondio and the Cojon del gato--above all, of the Amancay, a plant whose juice caused first delirium; then, if taken continually, raving madness, and then--death. A plant, too, whose juice could work its deadly destruction not only by being taken inwardly, but by being inhaled.
"The Indians," Mr. Spranger had said, "content themselves with that. If they can only get the opportunity of sprinkling it on the earth where their enemy lies, or of smearing his tent canvas with it, or his clothes, the trick is done. And that enemy's only chance is that he, too, should know of its properties. Then he is safe. For the odour it emits is such that none who have ever smelt it once can fail to recognise its presence. But on those who are unacquainted with those properties--well! God help them!"
He wondered as he recalled those words if he had turned white, so white that, even in the dusk of the corridor, the man standing by his side could perceive it; he wondered, too, if his features had assumed a stern, set expression in keeping with the determination that now was dominant in his mind. The determination to descend to where Sebastian Ritherdon was, to stand face to face with him, to ask him whether it was he who had sprinkled his jacket and his waistcoat, as well as the pillow on which he nightly slept, with the accursed, infernal juice of the deadly Amancay. Ask! Bah! what use to ask, only to receive a lie in return! What need at all to ask? He knew!
"Come," he said to Paz, even as he went back into the room for his revolver. "Come, take me to where this fellow is. Yet," he said pausing, "you say I shall see a funny sight. What is it? Is he mad--or dying?"
"He funny. He eat mountain mullet, he drink physic-nut oil in wine. Zara love him dearly, he----"
"Come," Julian again said, speaking sternly. "Come."
Then they both went along the corridor and down the great staircase.
"Let us go out garden, to veranda," Paz whispered. "Then we look in over veranda through open window. See funny things. Hear funny words." Whereupon accompanied by Julian, he went out by a side door of the long hall, and so came around into the garden in front of the great saloon in which Sebastian always sat in the evening.
Sheltering themselves behind a vast bush of flamboyants which grew close up to where the veranda ran, they were both able to see into the room, when in truth the sight of Sebastian was enough to make the beholders deem him mad.
His coat was off, flung across the back of the chair, but in his hand he had a large white pocket handkerchief with which he incessantly wiped his face, down which the perspiration was pouring. Yet, even as he did so, it was plain to observe that he was seeking eagerly for something which he could not find. A large campeachy-wood cabinet stood up against the wall exactly facing the spot where the window was, and the doors of this were now set open, showing all the drawers dragged out of their places and the contents turned out pell-mell. While the man, lurching unsteadily all the time and with a stumbling, heavy motion in his feet which seemed familiar enough to Julian (since only last night he had stumbled and lurched in the same way), was seizing little bottles and phials and holding them up to the light, and wrenching the corks out of them to sniff at the contents, and then hurling them away from him with an action of despair and rage.
"He look for counter-poison," Paz said, using the Spanish expression, which Julian understood well enough. "Maybe, he not find it. Then he die," and the bleating laugh sounded now very much like a gloating chuckle. "Then he die," he repeated.
"Is there, then, an antidote?" Julian asked.
"Yes. Yes," Paz whispered. "Yes, antidoty, if he find it. If he has not taken too much."
"How can he have taken too much? Why take any?"
For answer Paz said nothing, but instead, looked at Julian. And, in the light that now streamed out across the veranda to where they stood, dimmed and shaded as it might be by the thick foliage and flower of the flamboyant bush, the latter could see that the half-caste's eyes glittered demoniacally and that his fingers were twitching, and judged that it was only by great constraint that the latter suppressed the laugh he indulged in so often.
Then, while no word was spoken between them, Julian felt the long slim fingers of Paz touch his and push something into his hand, something that he at once recognised to be the phial of physic-nut oil; or, rather, the phial that had once contained the physic-nut oil, diluted with the juice of the murderous Amancay.
"All love Sebastian here," the semi-savage hissed, his remaining white teeth shining horribly in the flickering gleam through the flamboyant. "Love him, oh! so dear."
"He find it. He find it," he muttered excitedly an instant afterwards. "Look! Look! Look!"
And Julian did look; fascinated by Sebastian's manner.
For the other held now a small bottle in his hand which he had unearthed from some drawer in the interior of the great cabinet, and was holding it between his eyes and the globe of the lamp, gazing as steadily as he could at the mixture which it doubtless contained. As steadily as he could, because he still swayed about a good deal while he stood there; perhaps because, too, his hands trembled. Then, with a look of exultation on his features and in his bloodshot eyes, plainly to be observed from where the two men stood outside, he tore the stopper out with his teeth, smelt the contents, and instantly seizing a tumbler emptied them into that, drenched it with water, and drank the draught down.
Yet, a moment later, Sebastian performed another action equally extraordinary--he seeming to remember--as they judged by the look of dawning recollection on his face--something he had forgotten! He came, still lurching, a little nearer to the open window, and then in a loud voice--a voice that was evidently intended to be heard at some distance--said:
"Well, good-night, Miriam. Good-night, I am so thankful to think that you are better! Good night."
And as he uttered those words, Julian understood.
"I see his ruse, his trick," he muttered. "He thinks that I am still upstairs, that he is deceiving me, making me believe she is down here. But, though I am not up there, she is! And perhaps in my room again. Quick, Paz! Come. Follow me!"
By the same way that they had descended they now mounted to the floor above. Only, it was not Julian's intention to re-enter his room in the same manner he had left it; namely, by the door opening out of the corridor. To do that would be useless, unavailing. If the woman whom he suspected was in that room now, the first sound of his footstep outside, be it never so light, would serve to put her on the alert, to cause her to flee out on to the balcony and away round the whole length of it, and, thereby, with her knowledge of all the entrances and exits of the house, to evade him.
That, he reflected, would not do. If she escaped him now, then the determination he had arrived at, to this night bring matters to a climax, would be thwarted. Some other way must be found.
"Take me on to the veranda," he whispered to Paz; "to where I shall be outside the room I occupy. This time I will be the watcher gazing in, not the person who is watched."
"I take you," Paz said. "I show you. Same way I get there last night."
"Last night! So! That was you outside, lying low down? It was you?"
But Paz only gave him now that look which he had given before, while he seemed at the same time to be struggling with that bleating laugh of his--the laugh which would surely have betrayed his presence.
"Come," he said, "I put you in big room of all. Old man Ritherdon call it guest room. Sebastian born there."
"Was he?" Julian asked in a whisper, "was he? Was he born there?"
"He born there. Come."
So, doubtless, the half-caste believed--since who in all Honduras disputed it! Who--except Julian himself, and, perhaps, the woman he loved; perhaps, too, her father.
Yet, the information that he was now being led to the room in which he felt sure that it was he who had been born and not the other, filled him with a kind of mystic, weird feeling as they crept along side by side towards it. For the first time since he had come to Desolada, he was about to visit the spot in which he had been given birth--the spot in which his mother had died; the spot wherein he had been stolen from that dying mother's side by his uncle.
Thinking thus, as they approached the door, he wondered, too, if by his presence in that room any inspiration would come to him as to how this other man had been made to supersede him, to appear as himself in the eyes of the little world in which he moved and lived. A man received as being what he was not, without question and with his claim undisputed.
"Go in," Paz whispered now, as he turned the handle. "Go in. From the window you see all that pass--if anything pass. Or you easy get on balcony. Your room there to right, hers there to left. If she go from one to other--then--you surely see."
"You will not accompany me?" Julian asked, wondering for the moment if there was treachery lurking in the man's determination to leave him at so critical a time; wondering, too, if, after all, he was about to warn the woman whom he, Julian, now sought to entrap in some nefarious midnight proceeding, of her danger. Yet, he argued with himself, that must be impossible. If he intended to do that, would he have divulged how Zara had changed one dish of food for another, so that he who set the trap had himself been caught in it; would he have given him so real a sign as to what use the phial had been put to as by placing it, empty, in his hands?
And, even though now Paz should meditate treachery--as, in truth, he did not believe he meditated it--still he cared nothing. What he had resolved to do he would do. What he had begun he would go on with. Now--at once--this very night!
"No. No," Paz said, in answer to his question. "No. I come not with you. I live not here but in plantation mile away. If I found here--he--he--try kill me. But you he will not kill. You big, strong, brave. And," the man continued in a whisper that was in truth a hiss, "it is you who must kill. Kill! Kill! Remember the snake in bed, the shot in wood, the mountain mullet, the Amancay. Now, I go. This is the room."
Then almost imperceptibly he was gone, his form disappearing like a black blur on the still darker, denser blackness of the corridor.
Without hesitation, Julian softly turned the handle and entered the room that gave egress to the balcony which he wished to gain. And although it was as dark as night itself, there was a something, a feeling of space, quite perceptible to his highly-strung senses, which told him that it was a vast chamber--a room suitable for the birth of the son and heir of the great house and its belongings.
"Strange," he thought to himself, "that thus I should revisit the place in which I first saw the light--that I, who in the darkness was spirited away, should, in the darkness, return to it."
Yet, black, impenetrable as all around was, there was an inferior density of darkness at the other end of the great room, away where the window was; and towards that he directed his footsteps, knowing that there, between the laths of the persianas which it possessed in common with every other room in the house, would be his opportunity. There was the coign of vantage through which he could keep watch and make observations.
"For," he thought, "if I see her going from her room to mine I shall know enough, as also I shall do if I see her returning from mine to hers. While, if she does neither, then it will be easy enough to discover whether she has been to that room or is in it still."
He was close by the window now, having felt his way carefully to it; he proceeded slowly so as to stumble against no obstacle nor make any noise; and then he knew that, should any form, however shrouded, pass before this window he could not fail to observe it. It was not so dark outside as to prevent that; also the gleam of the stars was considerable. And as Paz had done outside on the balcony last night, so he did now inside the room. He lowered himself noiselessly to the floor, kneeling on the soft carpet which this, the principal bedchamber possessed, while through a slat a foot from the ground, which he turned gently with his finger, he gazed out.
At first nothing occurred. All was as still, as silent as death; save for sometimes the bark of a distant dog, the chatter of an aroused bird in the palms near by, and the occasional midnight howl of a baboon farther away.
Wonderfully still it was; so undisturbed, indeed, except for those sounds, that almost a breath of air might have been heard.
Then, after half an hour, he heard a noise. The noise being a gentle one, but still perceptible, of the rattle of the persianas belonging to some window a little distance off. And to the left of him. Surely to the left of him!
"She is coming," he thought, holding his breath. "Coming. On her way to my room. To do what? What?"
But now the silence was again intense. Upon the boards of the veranda he could hear no footfall--Nothing. Not even the creak of one of the planks. Nothing! What had she done? What was she doing? Almost he thought that he could guess. Could divine how she--this woman of mystery, this midnight visitor who had crouched near his bed some twenty-four hours ago, who had stolen forth from his room into the storm as a thwarted murderess might have stolen--having now reached the veranda, was pausing to make sure that all was safe; to make sure that there was nothing to thwart her; to disturb her in the doing of that--whatever it might be--which she meditated.
Then there did fall a sound upon his ears, yet one which he only heard because it was close to him; because also all was so still. The sound of an indrawn breath, gentle as the sigh given in its sleep by a little child, yet issuing from a breast that had long been a stranger to the innocence of childhood. An indrawn breath, that was in truth--that must be--the effect of a supreme nervousness, of fear.
"Who is she?" he wondered to himself, while still--his own breath held--he watched and listened. "What is she to him? She is twice his age. Surely this is not the love of the hot, passionate Southern woman! What can she be to him that thus she jeopardizes her life? In my place many men would shoot her dead who caught her as--as--I--shall catch her--ere long."
For he knew now (as he could not doubt!) that no step was to be omitted which should remove him from Desolada, from existence.
"Sebastian and she both know that he fills my place. Well--to-night we come to an understanding. To-night I tell them that I know it too."
While he thus meditated, from far down at the front of the house there once more arose the trolling of a song in Sebastian's deep bass tones. A noisy song; a drinking, carousing song; one that should have had for its accompaniment the banging of drums and the braying of trombones.
"Bah!" muttered Julian to himself, "you are too late, vagabond! Shout and bellow as much as you choose--hoping thereby to drown all other sounds, such as those of stealthy feet and rattling window blinds, or to throw dust in my eyes. Shout as much as you like. She is here on her evil errand--a moment later she will be in my hands."
In truth it seemed to be so. Past where his eyes were, there went now, as that boisterous song uprose, a black substance which obscured the great gleaming stars from them--the lower part of a woman's gown. Amid the turmoil that proceeded from below, she was creeping on towards her goal.
Julian could scarcely restrain himself now--now that she had passed onward: almost was he constrained to thrust aside the blinds of this great window and spring out upon the woman. But he knew it was not yet the time, though it was at hand. She must be outside the window of his own room by now. The time was near.
Therefore, taking care that neither should his knees crack nor any other sound whatever be made by him, he rose to his feet. Then, he put his hand to the side of the laths to be ready to thrust them aside and follow her. But, perhaps, because that hand was not as steady as it should have been, those laths rattled the slightest. Had she heard? No! He knew that could not be, since now he heard the rattling of others--of those belonging to his own room. Those would drown the lesser noise that he had made--those----
He paused in his reflections, amazed. Down where his room was to the right he heard a sound greater than any which could be caused by the gentle pushing aside of a Venetian blind--he heard a smothered cry, and also something that resembled a person stumbling forward, falling!
Then in a moment he recollected. He knew what had happened. He had forgotten to remove the cord he had stretched across the window at midday ere he slept. He had left it there, and she had fallen forward over it.
In a moment he was, himself, on the veranda and outside the window of his own darkened room. In another he was in that room, had struck a match, and saw her--shrouded, hooded to the eyes--over by the door opening on to the corridor and endeavouring to unfasten it. He noticed, too, that one arm, above the wrist, was bandaged. But she was too late. He had caught her now.
"So," he said, "I know who my visitor is at last, Madame Carmaux. And I think I know your object here. Have you not dropped another phial in your fall and broken it? The room is full of the hateful odour of the Amancay poison."
She made him no answer, so that he felt sure she was determined not to let him hear her voice, but he felt that she was trembling all over, even as she writhed in his grasp, endeavouring to avoid it. Then, knowing that words were unnecessary, he opened the door into the corridor and bade her go forth.
"You know this house well and can find your way easily in the dark. Meanwhile, I am now going to descend to have an explanation with the master of Desolada."
Before however, Julian descended to confront Sebastian he thought it was necessary to do two things; first, to light the lamp to see how much of that accursed Amancay had been spilt by the broken phial, and next--which was the more important--to recharge and look to his revolver. For he thought it very likely that after he had said all he intended to say to Sebastian, he might find the weapon useful.
When he had obtained a light by the aid of the matches which he was never without, he saw that his surmises were fully justified. Upon the floor there lay, glistening, innumerable pieces of broken glass and the half of a broken phial, while all around the débris was a small pool of liquid shining on the polished wooden floor. And from it there arose an odour so pungent and so fœtid, that he began almost at once to feel coming over him the hazy, drowsy stupefaction that he had been conscious of last night. So seizing his water-jug he unceremoniously sluiced the floor with its contents, washing away and subduing the noisome exhalation; when taking his revolver from his pocket and seeing carefully to its being charged, he dropped it into his pocket again. He took with him, too, the remnants of the broken phial.
"I shall only return here to pack my few things," he thought to himself, "but, all the same it is as well to have destroyed that stuff. Otherwise the room would have been poisoned with it."
And now--taking no light with him, for his experience of the last two hours had taught him, even had he not known it before, the way down to the garden--he descended, going out by the way that Paz had led him and so around to the lower veranda. A moment later he reached it, and mounting the steps, entered the saloon in which he expected to find Sebastian.
The man was there, he saw at once even before he stood close by the open window. He was there, sitting at the great table where the meals were partaken of; but looking dark and brooding now. Upon his face, as Julian could easily perceive, there was a scowl, and in his eyes an ominous look that might have warned a less bold man than the young sailor that he was in a dangerous mood.
"Has she been with him already," Julian wondered, "and informed him that their precious schemes are at an end, are discovered?"
"Ha!" exclaimed Sebastian, looking fixedly at him, as now Julian advanced into the room, "so you are well enough to come downstairs to-night. Yet--it is a little late. You have scarcely come to sing me those wardroom songs you spoke of, I suppose!"
"No," Julian said, "it is not to sing songs that I am here. But to talk about serious matters. Sebastian Ritherdon--if you are Sebastian Ritherdon, which I think doubtful--you have got to give me an explanation to-night, not only of who you really are, but also of the reason why, during the time I have been in this locality, you have four times attempted my life, or caused it to be attempted."
"Are you mad?" the other exclaimed, staring at him with still that ominous look upon his face. "You must be to talk to me like this."
"No," Julian replied. "Instead, perfectly sane. I was, perhaps, more or less demented last night when under the influence of the fumes of the Amancay plant which had been sprinkled on my pillow, as well as on my jacket and waistcoat; and you also were more or less demented to-night when you had by an accident taken some of the poison into your system, owing to you making a meal of the doctored mountain mullet you had prepared for me--your guest. But--now--we are both recovered and--an explanation is needed."
"My God!" exclaimed Sebastian, "you must be mad!"
Yet, in his own heart, he knew well enough that never was the calm, determined-looking man before him--the man who, hitherto, had been so bright and careless, but who now stood stern as Nemesis at the other end of the table--further removed from madness than he was this night. He knew and felt that it was not with a lunatic but an avenger that he had to deal.
"I am not mad," Julian replied calmly. "Meanwhile, take your right hand out of that drawer by your side, and keep it out. Pistol shots will disturb the whole house, and, if you do not do as I bid you I shall have to fire first," and he tapped his breast significantly as he spoke, so that the other could be in no doubt of his meaning.
"Now," he continued, when Sebastian had obeyed him, he laughing with a badly assumed air of contempt as he did so, all the same, laying his large brown hand upon the table--"now," said Julian, "I will tell you all that I believe to be the case in connection with you and with me, all that I know to have been the case in connection with your various attempts to injure me, and, also, all that I intend to do, to-morrow, when I reach Belize and have taken the most eminent lawyer in the place into my confidence."
As he mentioned the word "lawyer," Sebastian started visibly; then, once more, he assumed the contemptuous expression he had previously endeavoured to exhibit, but beyond saying roughly again that Julian was a madman, he made no further remark for the moment, and sat staring, or rather glaring, at the other man before him. Yet, had that other man been able to thoroughly comprehend, or follow, that glance--which, owing to the lamp being between them, he was not entirely able to do--he would have seen that, instead of resting on his face, it was directed to beyond where he stood. That it went past him to away down to the farther end of the room; to where the open window was.
"Charles Ritherdon," said Julian now, "had a son born in this house twenty-six years ago, and that son was stolen within two or three days of his birth by his uncle, George Ritherdon. You are not that son, and you know it. Yet you know who is. You know that I am."
"You lie," Sebastian said with an oath; "you are an impostor. And even if what you say is true--who am I? I," he said, his voice rising now, either with anger or excitement, "who have lived here all my life, who have been known from a child by dozens of people still alive? Who am I, I say?"
"That at present I do not know. Perhaps the lawyer to whom I confide my case will be able to discover."
"Lawyer! Bah! A curse for your lawyers. What can you tell him, what proof produce?"
And still, as he spoke, he kept his eyes fixed, as Julian thought, upon him, but in absolute fact upon that portion of the room which was in shadow behind where the latter stood.
Upon, too--although Julian knew it not, and did not, indeed, for one moment suspect such to be the case--a white face, that, peeping round the less white curtains which hung by the window, never moved the dark eyes that shone out of it from off the back of the man who confronted Sebastian. Fixed upon, too, the form to which that face belonged, which, even as Sebastian had raised his voice, had drawn itself a few feet nearer to the other; finding shelter now behind the curtains of the next or nearest window.
"I can at least produce the proofs," Julian replied, his eyes still regarding the other, and knowing nothing of that creeping listener behind, "that my presence in Honduras--at Desolada as your invited guest--caused you so much consternation, so much dismay, that you hesitated at nothing which might remove me from your path. What will the law believe, what will these people who have known you from your infancy--as you say--think, when they learn that three times at least, if not more, you have attempting my life?"
"Again I say it is a lie!" Sebastian muttered hoarsely.
"And I can prove that it is the truth. I can prove that this woman, this accomplice of yours--this woman whom my father--not your father, but my father--jilted, threw away, so that he might marry Isobel Leigh, my mother--fired at me with a rifle known to be hers and used by her on small game. I can prove that she poisoned the meal that was to be partaken of by me; that even so late as to-night she drenched the floor of my room--as she meant again to drench the pillow on which I slept--with the deadly juice of the Amancay--with this," and he held before Sebastian the broken phial he had found above.
"You can prove nothing," Sebastian muttered hoarsely, raucously. "Nothing."
"Can I not? I have two witnesses."
"Two witnesses!" the other whispered, and now indeed he looked dismayed. "Two witnesses. Yet--what of that, of them! Even though they could prove this--which they can not--what else can they prove? Even though I am not Charles Ritherdon's son and you are--even though such were the case--which it is not--how prove it?"
"That remains to be seen. But, though it should never be proved; even though you and that murderous accomplice of yours, that discarded sweetheart of my father's, that woman who I believe, as I believe there is a God in Heaven, was the prime mover in this plot----"
"Silence!" cried Sebastian, springing to his feet now, yet still with that look in his eyes which Julian did not follow; that look towards where the white corpse-faced creature was by this time--namely, five feet nearer still to Julian--"silence, I say. That woman is not, shall not, be defamed by you. Neither here or elsewhere. She--she--is--ah! God, she has been my guardian angel--has repaid evil for good. My father threw her off--discarded her--and she came here, forgiving him at the last in his great sorrow. She helped to rear me--his son--to----"
"Now," said Julian, still calmly, "it is you who lie, and the lie is the worse because you know it. Some trick was played on him whom you still dare to call your father, on him who was mine--never will I believe he was a party to it!--and before Heaven I do believe that it was she who played it. She never forgave him for his desertion of her; she, this would be murderess--this poisoner--and--and--ah!"
What had happened to him? What had occurred? As he uttered the last words, accusing that woman of being a murderess in intention, if not in fact--a poisoner--he felt a terrible concussion at the nape of his neck, a blow that sent him reeling forward towards the other side of that table against which Sebastian had sat, and at which he now stood confronting him. And, dazed, numbed as this blow had caused him to become, so that now the features of the man before him--those features that were so like his own!--were confused and blurred, though with still a furious, almost demoniacal expression in them, he scarcely understood as he gave that cry that in his nostrils was once more the sickening overpowering odour of the Amancay--that it was suffocating, stifling him.
Then with another cry, which was not an exclamation this time, but instead, a moan, he fell forward, clutching with his hands at the tablecloth, and almost dragging the lamp from off the table. Fell forward thus, then sank to his knees, and next rolled senseless, oblivious to everything, upon the floor.
"You have killed him!" muttered Sebastian hoarsely, and with upon his face now a look of terror. "You have killed him! My God! if any others should be outside, should have seen"--while, forgetting that what he was about to do would be too late if those others might be outside of whom he had spoken, he rushed to both the windows and hastily closed the great shutters, which, except in the most violent tempests that at scarce intervals break over British Honduras, were rarely used.
And she, that woman standing there above her victim with her face still white as is the corpse's in its shroud, her lips flecked with specks of foam, her hands quivering, muttered in tones as hoarse as Sebastian's:
"Killed him. Ay! I hope so. Curse him, there has been enough of his prying, his seeking to discover the truth of our secret. And--and--if it were not so--then, still, I would have done it. You heard--you heard--how he sneered, gloated over my despair, my abandonment by Charles Ritherdon, so that he might marry that child--that chit--Isobel Leigh. The woman who cursed, who broke my life. Killed him, Sebastian! Killed him! Yes! That at least is what I meant to do. Because, Heaven help me! you were not man enough to do it yourself."
Beatrix Spranger sat alone in her garden at "Floresta," and was the prey to disquieting, nay, to horrible, emotions and doubts. For, by this time, not only had forty-eight hours passed since she had heard from Julian--forty-eight hours, which were to mark the limit of the period when, as had been arranged, she was to consider that all was still well with the latter at Desolada! but also another twelve hours had gone by without any letter coming from him. And then--then--while the girl had become almost maddened, almost distraught with nervous agitation and forebodings as to some terrible calamity having occurred to the man she had learned to love--still another twelve hours had gone by, it being now three days since any news had reached her.
"What shall I do?" she whispered to herself as, beneath the shade of the great palms, she sat musing; "what! what! Oh! if father would only counsel me; yet, instead, he reiterates his opinion that nothing can be intended against him--that he must have gone on some sporting expedition inland, or is on his way here. If I could only believe that! If I could think so! But I know it is not the case. It cannot be. He vowed that nothing should prevent him from writing every other day so long as he was alive or well enough to crawl to the gate and intercept the mail driver; and he would keep his word. What, what," she almost wailed, "can have happened to him? Can they have murdered him?"
Even as the horrid word "murder" rose to her thoughts--a word horrid, horrible, when uttered in the most civilized and well-protected spots on earth, but one seeming still more terrible and ominous when thought of in lawless places--there came an interruption to her direful forebodings. The parrots roosting in the branches during the burning midday heat plumed themselves, and opened their startled, staring eyes and clucked faintly, while Beatrix's pet monkey--still, as ever, presenting an appearance of misery and dark despair and woe--opened its own eyes and gazed mournfully across the parched lawn.
For these creatures had seen or heard that which the girl sitting there had not perceived, and had become aware that the noontide stillness was being broken by the advent of another person. Yet when Beatrix, aroused, cast her own eyes across the yellow grass, she observed that the newcomer was no more important person than a great negro, who carried in one hand a long whip such as the teamsters of the locality use, and in the other a letter held between his black finger and thumb.
"He has written!" she exclaimed to herself, "and has sent it by this man. He is safe. Oh! thank God!" while, even as she spoke, she advanced towards the black with outstretched hand.
Yet she was doomed to disappointment when, after many bows and smirks and a removal of his Panama hat, so that he stood bareheaded in the broiling sun (which is, however, not a condition of things harmful to negroes, even in such tropical lands), the man had given her the letter, and she saw that the superscription was not in the handwriting of Julian, but in that of his supposed cousin, Sebastian.
"What does it mean?" she murmured half aloud and half to herself, while, as she did so, the hand holding the letter fell by her side. "What does it mean?" Then, speaking more loudly and clearly to the negro, "have you brought this straight from Desolada?"--the very mention of that place giving her a weird and creepy sensation.
"Bring him with the gentleman's luggage, missy," the man replied, with the never-failing grin of his race. "Gentleman finish visit there, then come on here pay little visit. Steamer go back New Orleans to-morrow, missy, and gentleman go in it to get to England. Read letter, missy, perhaps that tell you all."
The advice was as good as the greatest wiseacre could have given Beatrix, in spite of its proceeding from no more astute Solomon than this poor black servant, yet the girl did not at first profit by it. For, indeed, she was too stunned, almost it might be said, too paralyzed, to do that which, besides the negro's suggestion, her own common sense would naturally prompt her to do. Instead, she stood staring at the messenger, her hand still hanging idly by her side, her face as white as the healthy tan upon it would permit it to become.
And though she did not utter her thoughts aloud, inwardly she repeated again and again to herself, "His luggage! His luggage! And he is going back to England to-morrow. Without one word to me in all these hours that have passed, and after--after--oh! Without one word to me! How can he treat me so!"
She had turned her face away from the negro as she thought thus, not wishing that even this poor creature should be witness of the distress she knew must be visible upon it, but now she turned towards him, saying:
"Go to the house and tell the servants to give you some refreshment, and wait till I come to you. I shall know what to do when I have read this letter."
Then she went back to her basket-chair and, sitting in the shade, tore open Sebastian's note. Yet, even as she did so, she murmured to herself, "It cannot be. It cannot be. He would not go and leave me like this. Like this! After that day we spent together." But resolutely, now, she forced herself to the perusal of the missive.