Part 62 (2/2)

Her face was radiant. It became lighted up magically. I knew in that grim hour what a beautiful woman Madame de Stamer 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

AN AFTERWORD

This shall be a brief afterword, for I have little else to say. As Madame had predicted, all antidotes and restoratives were of no avail. She had taken enough of some drug which she had evidently had in her possession for this very purpose to ensure that there should be no awakening, and although Dr. Rolleston was on the spot within half an hour, Madame de Stamer was already past human aid.

There are perhaps one or two details which may be of interest. For instance, as a result of the post-mortem examination of Colonel Menendez, no trace of disease was discovered in any of the organs, but from information supplied by his solicitors, Harley succeeded in tracing the Paris specialist to whom Madame de Stamer had referred; and he confirmed her statement in every particular. The disease, to which he gave some name which I have forgotten, was untraceable, he declared, by any means thus far known to science.

As we had antic.i.p.ated, the bulk of Colonel Don Juan's wealth he had bequeathed to Madame de Stamer, and she in turn had provided that all of which she might die possessed should be divided between certain charities and Val Beverley.

I thus found myself at the time when all these legal processes terminated engaged to marry a girl as wealthy as she was beautiful. Therefore, except for the many grim memories which it had left with me, nothing but personal good fortune resulted from my sojourn at Cray's Folly, beneath the shadow of that Bat Wing which had had no existence outside the cunning imagination of Colonel Juan Menendez.

THE END

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