Part 9 (1/2)

The big man made a strange sound and put his hand to his throat. He swayed a little, and then sank upon a long cane lounge. Christine noticed that his eyes rolled with the same curious evolution as the eyes of Mrs. van Cannan had performed that afternoon. It was as though they turned in his head for a moment, showing nothing but the white eyeball. She wondered why the other men rushed to the sideboard and opened a brandy-bottle, and while she stayed, wondering, Saxby spoke softly, looking at her with his beautiful, melancholy brown eyes.

”I shall be dead in half an hour. Fetch Isabel. Let me see her face before I die.”

She knew him for a bad man, false friend, one who could be cruel to a little child; yet it seemed he could love well. That was something.

She found herself running through the darkness as she had never run in her life, to do the last behest of Richard Saxby.

When she and Isabel van Cannan returned, they found him almost gone.

Saltire and McNeil had worked over him until the sweat dripped from their faces, but he who has been kissed by the black mamba, deadliest of snakes, is lost beyond all human effort. The light was fast fading from his face, but, for a moment, a spurt of life leaped in his eyes.

He held out his aims to the woman, and she fell weeping into them.

Christine turned away and stared out at the darkness. Saltire had been writing; a sheet of paper upon which the ink was still wet lay upon the table, and in his hand he held a packet of letters.

”I have told everything, Issa,” muttered the dying man. ”I had to clean my soul of it.”

She recoiled fiercely from him.

”'Told everything?'” she repeated, and her face blanched with fury and despair. It seemed as if she would have struck him across the lips, but McNeil intervened.

”Have reverence for a pa.s.sing soul, woman,” said he sternly. ”Black as his crimes are, yours are blacker, I'm thinking. He was only the tool of the woman he loved--his lawful wife.”

”You said that?” she raved. But Saxby was beyond recriminations. That dark soul had pa.s.sed to its own place. She turned again to the others, foaming like a creature trapped.

”It is all lies, lies!”--then fell silent, her eyes sealed to the newly written paper on the table under Saltire's hand. At last, she said quietly: ”I must, however, insist upon knowing what he has said about me. What is written on that paper, Mr. Saltire?”

”If you insist, I will read it,” he answered. ”Though it is scarcely in my province to do so.”

”It is only fair that I should hear,” she said, with great calmness.

And Saltire read out the terse phrases that bore upon them the stamp of Death's hurrying hand.

”I am a native of the island Z---- in the West Indies. Isabel Saxby, known as van Cannan, is my wife. While travelling to the Cape Colony on some business of mine, she met van Cannan and his wife and stayed with them at East London. When she did not return to Z----, I came to look for her and found that, Mrs. van Cannan having died, she had bigamously married the widower and come to live at Blue Aloes. I loved her, and could not bear to be parted from her, so, through her instrumentality, I came here as manager. The eldest boy was drowned before my arrival. The youngest died six months later of a bite from one of my specimen tarantulas. The third boy is, I expect, drowned tonight. I take the blame of all these deaths and of Bernard van Cannan's, if he does not return. It was only when all male van Cannans were dead that Blue Aloes could be sold for a large sum enabling us to return to Z----. We would have taken the little girls with us.

”With my dying breath, I take full blame for all on my shoulders. No one is guilty but I.

”[Signed.] RICHARD SAXBY.”

”Poor fellow!” said the listening woman gently. ”Poor fellow to have died with such terrible delusions torturing him!” She pa.s.sed her hands over her eyes, wiping away her tears and with them every last trace of violence and anger. Subtly her face had changed back to the babylike, laughing, sleepy face they all knew so well--the face that had held the dead man in thrall and made Bernard van Cannan forget the mother of his children.

”You will please give me that paper, Mr. Saltire,” she pleaded, ”and you will please all of you forget the ravings of poor d.i.c.k Saxby. It is true that I knew him in the past, and that he followed me here, but the rest, as you must realize, are simply hallucinations of a poisoned brain.”

Andrew McNeil's dour face had grown bewildered, but softened.

Christine--if she had not seen a little too much, if she had not known that lovely golden hair hanging in rich plaits about the woman's shoulders covered the crisped head of a white negress, if she had not overheard impa.s.sioned words at midnight, if she had not loved Roddy so well--might have been beguiled. But there was one person upon whom the artist's wiles were wasted.

”I'm afraid it can't be done, Mrs. Saxby,” said Saltire gravely. ”The testimony of a dying man is sacred--and Saxby's mind was perfectly clear.”

”How could it have been? And do not call me 'Mrs. Saxby,' please.”

She still spoke patiently, but a smouldering fire began to kindle in her eyes.

”You see,” he continued, exhibiting the packet of letters to which he now added the testimony, ”I have here the certificate of your marriage to Saxby six years ago in the West Indies--and also proof of the possession by you of a large amount of antimony. You may, of course, be able to explain away these things, as well as Saxby's testimony, but you will understand that I cannot oblige you by handing them over.” A silence fell, in which only her rapid breathing could be heard. ”There is one thing, however, you can do, that will perhaps help a little.