Sax Rohmer

“ She bent forward and raised her face, in an almost agonized appeal to Val Beverley.
“My dear, my dear,” she said, “forgive me, forgive me! But I loved him so. One day, I think”—her glance sought my face—“you will know. Then you will forgive.”
“Oh, Madame, Madame,” whispered the girl, and began to sob silently.
“Is it enough?” asked Madame de Stämer, raising her head, and looking defiantly at Paul Harley. “Last night, you, M. Harley, who have genius, nearly brought it all to nothing. You passed the door in the shrubbery just when Juan was preparing to go out. ”

“ She sighed in a resigned, weary way, untwining her arm from about Val Beverley, and falling back upon her pillows.
“It is all written here,” she said; “every word of it, my friends, and signed at the bottom. I am a murderess, but it was a merciful deed. You see, I had a plan of which Juan knew nothing. This was my plan.” She pointed to the heap of manuscript. “I would give him relief from his agonies, yes. For although he was an evil man, I loved him better than life. I would let him die happy, thinking his revenge complete. But others to suffer? No, no! a thousand times no! ”

“ He enquired at once, and he found out that Colin Camber, the man who had taken Ysola from him, was living with her at the Guest House, here, on the hill. How shall I tell you the rest?”
“Merciful Heaven!” exclaimed Harley, his glance set upon her, with a sort of horror in his gray eyes, “I think I can guess.”
She turned to him rapidly.
“M. Harley,” she said, “you are a clever man. I believe you are a genius. And I have the strength to tell you because I am happy to-night. Because of his great wealth Juan succeeded in buying Cray’s Folly from Sir James Appleton to whom it belonged. ”

“ But in France a woman’s smile goes farther than in England. I had had my fun. They called me ‘good comrade!’ Perhaps I paid with a kiss. What does it matter? But they heard of me, those Prussian dogs. They knew and could not forgive. ”

“ Of the known occupants of Cray’s Folly on the night of the tragedy we now find ourselves reduced to four, any one of whom, from the point of view of an impartial critic uninfluenced by personal character, question, or motive, or any consideration other than that of physical possibility, might have shot Colonel Menendez. They are, firstly: Myself.
“In order to believe me guilty, it would be necessary to discount the evidence of Knox, who saw me on the gravel path below at the time that the shot was fired from the tower window. ”

“ It is supposed to come from a poisonous place named the Black Belt, and a part of this Black Belt is near, too near, to the hacienda in which Juan sometimes lived.”
Paul Harley started and glanced at me significantly.
“They think, those simple negroes, that it is witchcraft, Voodoo, the work of the Obeah man. It is of two kinds, rapid and slow. Those who suffer from the first kind just decline and decline and die in great agony. Others recover, or seem to do so. It is, I suppose, a matter of constitution. Juan had had this sickness and had recovered, or so the doctors said, but, ah!” ”