If at any time I entertained one shadow of regret in the execution of those who had traduced me and so earned their destruction, it was after we had dwelt for a season with Albert Redmayne beside Como.

The lake itself is so flagrantly sentimental and the environment so serene and suggestive of childlike peace and good-will that I could almost have found it in my heart to lament the innocent book lover's taking off. But Jenny swiftly laughed me out of these emotions.

"Keep your tenderness and sentiment for me," she said. "I will not share them."

We might have killed Albert a thousand times and left no sign--a fact that brings me to that part of my recital I most deplore. But a measure of delay was necessary that we might learn the market value of his books--otherwise Virgilio Poggi would doubtless have robbed us after the old man's death. There was a medieval history of the Borgia family I should myself have greatly treasured under happier circ.u.mstances.

Nevertheless, though things difficult and dangerous we had triumphantly achieved, before this task for a child we failed; and the reason for our collapse was not in Jenny but in me. Had I listened to my austere partner I should have waited only until she had searched for and found her uncle's will. This she did; and as the instrument proved entirely satisfactory, my duty was then to proceed about our business and remember that better an egg to-day than a hen to-morrow. Only an artist's fond pride intervened; nothing but my vanity, my consciousness of power to excel, upset the rightful climax. We were, indeed, both artists, but how incomparably the greater she! How severe and direct, how scornful of needless elaboration! She belonged, mind and body, to the finest period of Greek art, and echoed their stern, soulless simplicity and perfection. Had she won her way with me, we should be living now to enjoy the fruits of our accomplishment.

But though she did not win her way, yet, in defeat, her final, glorious deed was to intercept the death intended for me, that I might still live. Loyal to the last, she sacrificed herself, forgetting, in that supreme moment, how life for me without her could possess no shadow of compensation. When Jenny shook off the dust of the world, I was ready and willing to do the same. As for that future life, in which I most potently believe, since she and I have merited a like treatment, we shall share eternity together and so be in heaven, whatever the Great Contriver may desire to the contrary. Yet who shall presume to dogmatize? "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." And what the Almighty Mind may be pleased to think of any human performance is for the present hidden with Him alone. He did not make the tiger to eat gra.s.s or the eagle to feed on honey.

My wife's deeper sanity and clearer vision always inclined her to distrust our American acquaintance, Peter Ganns. From the first moment that Jenny's eyes fell upon that fine figure of a man, she judged him to be built on a very different mental pattern from Brendon. He was no New World edition of our poor, tame Marco; and the preliminary fact that he should have antic.i.p.ated us and arrived beside Como before he was expected to do so, convinced Jenny that he must prove a factor of extreme gravity in all future calculations.

I, too, perceived his force of character, and rejoiced to do so, for here appeared an enemy worthy of my invention and resource.

It seemed clear that Pietro was a skeptical person--doubtless made so by his dreadful trade. "Thomas" rather than "Peter" should have been his name. He had a disconcerting habit of taking nothing for granted; and his "third eye" as he called it--an eye of the mind--saw a great many things concealed from ordinary observers. He would have made a cla.s.sical criminal.

The artist's pride, that had prevented me from acting so that Ganns should have been invited to discover the murderer of Albert rather than set the task of preserving his friend's life--this false, foolish sense of superiority and security wrecked all. Had Albert slept beneath the waters of Como before Ganns arrived, then not the wit of twenty Peters had ever found him; but while no man living could have saved the life of Redmayne, since had I determined to take it, the predestined sequel to his death was confounded by my own error. Once more Ganns struck before I expected him to do so and I was, too late, confronted with the shattering truth. He had in fact found me out. He returned to England, worked like a mole, dug up my history, no doubt, and so came to the logical conclusion that it appeared more reasonable Michael Pendean should murder Robert Redmayne than the opposite. Having reached this conviction, his reconstruction of each event threw added light; but even so it must have been a spark of prodigious inspiration that identified in Doria the vanished Cornishman.

Ganns is a great man on his own plane. But, though he is a greedy creature who digs his grave with his knife and fork, though his habit of drenching himself with powdered tobacco, instead of smoking like a gentleman, is disgusting, yet I have nothing but admiration for him. His little plot--to treat me to a dose of my own physic and present a forgery of "Robert Redmayne" in the evening dusk--was altogether admirable. The thing came in a manner so sudden and unexpected that I failed of a perfect riposte. To confess that I saw the ghost was dangerous; but to pretend afterwards that I had seen nothing was fatal. His own immense cleverness, of course, appeared in a.s.suring me that he saw nothing, thus tempting me to suspect that I had in reality been a victim of my own imagination. From that moment the battle was joined and I stood at grave disadvantage.

How much or how little he had won from my slip I had yet to learn.

In any case the time was all too short, for I guessed now that Ganns must at least have a.s.sociated me with the unknown--he who had worn Redmayne's clothes and had tried to shoot Brendon in his absence. It was Jenny, of course, who had a.s.sisted me to dig Marco's grave on Griante and who shared my disappointment when we found that Brendon had escaped my revolver. Even so only the accident of biting his tongue saved him. Had I not seen blood flowing from his lips, I should have fired again.

I was not aware that Peter proposed to arrest me on the night of Albert's death, for upon what ground could he do so? Indeed I judged that after my final operations were completed and Albert destroyed, good Ganns would swiftly prove, to his own satisfaction, that I could not be a.s.sociated with that crime and so feel his whole theory open to suspicion. Had I known that Peter was at his goal, my first thought might have been to disappear instantly and only appear again under a new impersonation, a year or two later, when the storm was over. In that case I should have indicated how "Giuseppe Doria" had committed suicide and left every tactful and sufficing proof of the fact.

But I never guessed the majestic heights of Peter's genius and, taking the chance of his temporary absence, slew Albert with a simple trick. There was only Mark Brendon to prevent it; and Jenny, having reserved her final and irresistible appeal for some such vital occasion, found no difficulty in absorbing all Marco's limited intelligence, while awakening for him fond hopes and visions of a notable future in her arms. It needs to be pointed out that this worthy person's infatuation served again and again to prosper the situation for us and handicap the efforts of Peter Ganns; but that Ganns should have trusted him upon that all-important night to shepherd Albert from my attention, only shows how Peter never appreciated the limitations of his a.s.sistant. Yes, even Peter was human, all too human.

While Jenny related her sufferings and made appeal to her listener's overmastering devotion, I left the house and Brendon saw me go. To get a boat, that I might cross to Bellagio, was the work of ten minutes. I took one without troubling the owner, loaded a dozen heavy stones and soon rowed to Villa Pianezzo and ascended the water steps. A black beard was all the disguise I used, save that I had left my coat in the boat and appeared before Redmayne in shirt sleeves.

With trembling accents I related to a.s.sunta, who of course knew me not, that Poggi was taken fatally ill and might hardly hope to last an hour. It was enough. I returned to the boat and in three minutes Albert joined me and offered me untold gold to row as I had never rowed before. A hundred and fifty yards from sh.o.r.e I directed him to pa.s.s into the bow of the boat, explaining that I should so make greater speed. As he pa.s.sed me, the little pole-axe fell. He suffered nothing and in five minutes more, with heavy stones fastened to feet and arms, he sank beneath Como. The pole-axe followed, its work completed. In more s.p.a.cious times the weapon would have become an heirloom. All this happened not two hundred yards from Villa Pianezzo under the darkness.

Then I rowed ash.o.r.e swiftly, returned the boat to the beach un.o.bserved, hid my disguise in my pocket and strolled to a familiar inn. I had occupied but twenty-four minutes from the time of setting out under Brendon's eyes while he sat in the garden. I stopped at this _albergo_ for a considerable period, that a sufficient alibi might be established and the moment of my arrival there prove uncertain, should any future question ever arise concerning it. Then the crash came. I returned home suspecting nothing--to fall like Lucifer, to find all lost, to hold my dead wife in my arms and know that, without her, life was ended for me.

In seemly, splendid fashion she pa.s.sed and it shall not be recorded that the man this glorious woman loved made an end of his days with less distinction and propriety. To die on the gallows is to do what many others have done; I will condescend to no such ignominy. Ganns understood me well enough for that. Did he not warn the police how I had been a dentist, and advised them to examine my mouth with care?

He alone realized something of my genius, but not all. Only our peers can judge us; and such men as I come like lonely comets into the atmosphere of earth and lonely pa.s.s away. Our magnitude terrifies--and the herd of men thanks G.o.d when we disappear. Indeed I was unusually blessed, for I had a greater than myself for companion on my voyage. Like twin stars we cast a blended light; we shone and vanished together, never to be named apart henceforth.

Let not my legacy to Peter Ganns be forgotten, or that I appoint Mark Brendon executor and residuary legatee. With him I have no quarrel; he did his best to save the situation for us. You ask, "How shall a man condemned to death and watched day and night that he may lay no hand upon himself--how shall this man make his own departure?" Before these words are read throughout the world, you will learn the answer to that question.

I think there is nothing more to say.

"_Al finir del gioco, si vede chi ha guadagnato._" "At the end of the game we may see the winner." But not always, for sometimes the game is drawn and honours are easy. I have played a drawn game with Peter Ganns and he will not pretend a victory, or withhold the first applause where it belongs. He knows that, even if we were equal, the woman was greater than either of us.

Farewell, GIUSEPPE DORIA.

Ten days after Peter Ganns had read this narrative and its sequel at his snug home outside Boston, there awaited him, upon his breakfast table, a little parcel from England. The packet suggested an addition to Peter's famous collection of snuffboxes. He had left certain commissions behind him in London and doubted not that a new treasure awaited him. But he was disappointed. Something far more amazing than any snuffbox now challenged his astonished eyes. There came a long letter from Mark Brendon also, which repeated information already familiar to Peter through the newspapers; but added other facts for him alone.

NEW SCOTLAND YARD, 20 October 1921.

MY DEAR PETER GANNS: You will have heard of Pendean's confession and message to you; but you may not have read full details as they concern you personally. I inclose his gift; and it is safe to bet that neither you nor any man will henceforth possess anything more remarkable. He made a will in prison and the law decides that I inherit his personal estate; but you will not be surprised to learn that I have handed it over to the police orphanages of my country and yours in equal proportions.

The facts are these. As the day approached for his execution, extraordinary precautions were taken, but Pendean behaved with utmost restraint, gave no trouble and made no threat. Having completed his written statement, he asked to be permitted to copy it on a type-writer, but leave to do so was not granted.

He kept the communication on his person and he was promised that no attempt to read it should be made until after his execution. Indeed he received this undertaking before he put pen to paper. He preserved a quiet and orderly manner, ate well, took exercise with his guards and smoked many cigarettes.

I may mention that the body of Robert Redmayne was found where he buried it; but the tides have deflected the beach gravels of Bendigo's grave and search there has revealed nothing.

Upon his last night but one, Pendean retired as usual and apparently slept for some hours with the bedclothes up to his face. A warder sat on each side of him and a light was burning.

Suddenly he gave a sigh and held out his hand to the man on his right.

"See that goes to Peter Ganns--it is my legacy," he said. "And remember that Mark Brendon is my heir." He then put a small object into the warder's hand. At the same time he apparently suffered a tremendous physical convulsion, uttered one groan and leaped up into a sitting position. From this he fell forward unconscious. One attendant supported him and the other ran for the prison surgeon. But Pendean was already dead--poisoned with cyanide of pota.s.sium.

You will remember two facts which might have thrown light upon his secret. The first was his accident in Italy as a youth; the second your constant interest in a peculiar, inhuman quality of his expression which you were never able to understand. Both are now explained. With ordinary eyes the secret would have doubtless been swiftly discovered by us. But in his case, so dark were they, that pupil and iris were almost the same colour and hence our failure to explain the artificial mystery of his glance. He had, of course, a secret receptacle upon his person beyond human knowledge or power of discovery, for he says that only his mother knew of his accident. That accident was the loss of an eye. Behind an eye of gla.s.s that took its place had lain concealed, until he required it, the capsule of poison found crushed within his mouth after death.

What the published statement of this knave has done for me you will guess. I am leaving the detective service and have found other occupation. One can only seek to live down my awful experience. Next year my work will bring me to America and, when that happens, I shall be very glad to see you again should you permit me to do so--not that we may speak of the past, with all its futility and bitterness for me, but that we may look forward, and that I may see all is well with you in your days of retirement, honour and ease. Until then I subscribe myself, your admirer and faithful friend,

MARK BRENDON.

Peter opened his parcel.

It contained an eye made of gla.s.s and very exquisitely fashioned to imitate reality. Its prevailing darkness had prevented the truth from appearing, and yet, perfect though it was in l.u.s.tre and pigment, the false thing had given to Pendean's expression a quality that never failed to disturb Peter. It was not sinister, yet he remembered no such cast of countenance within his experience.

Mr. Ganns turned over the little object that had so often met his inquiring gaze.

"A rare crook," he said aloud; "but he is right: his wife was greater than either of us. If he'd listened to her and not his own vainglory, both could be alive and flourishing yet."

The dark brown eye seemed to stare up at him with a human twinkle as he brought out his gold snuffbox and took a pinch.

BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS

EUDOCIA

EVANDER

PLAIN SONG

GREEN ALLEYS

ORPHAN DINAH

MISER'S MONEY

THE GREY ROOM

CHILDREN OF MEN