"Don't say it!" he broke in hoa.r.s.ely. "I know it already!"

"You--_what_?" Her eyes were large, incredulous. "You know that it was I who--who killed Simon Varr?" Amazed, she saw him nod his head, and flinched from the gesture as if it were a blow. "How did you learn that?"

"A score of things pointed to it from the first," he answered miserably. "I would have seen the truth long since if--if something else had not blinded me to it. This morning my eyes were finally opened--" he fumbled in his pocket with shaking fingers--"by these!"

Miss Ocky took the two telegrams, held them shoulder-high to the light, and read them wonderingly. She exclaimed sharply over the one from Kitty Doyle.

"'K. Doyle'! Who is that?"

"A clever woman detective accompanying Janet Mackay--not to New Orleans, but to Montreal! I already knew her destination before you attempted to mislead me."

"A detective following Janet!" Her tone was a vigorous protest. "Oh, you must call her back! It isn't fair to Janet! Promise me you will call her back!"

"I will, at once. Kitty Doyle's usefulness there--is ended!"

She had raised herself slightly in her eagerness; now she relaxed again with a sigh of relief. Creighton, a dull ache in his heart, waited for her to resume the conversation. He would not take the lead.

"So Janet talked in her sleep!" To his horror, Miss Ocky was speaking in her amused, faintly mocking accents as though nothing mattered less than this gruesome discussion of how she came to be exposed. "In a Pullman, too; how very indiscreet! I should have foreseen that and made her stick to day coaches. I knew her failing!"

"It was a paragraph in one of your books that revealed it to me,"

contributed Creighton gloomily. "You once described a bad night you spent due to your companion talking in her sleep. That enabled me to give my operative a tip."

"In one of my own books! The irony of fate, that! Please, Mr.

Creighton, tell me why you happened to have Janet shadowed in the first place. What had she done to deserve this delicate attention? Is it possible that you suspected _her_?"

"I most certainly did." Chin cupped in both hands, his eyes fixed on the floor at his feet, he morosely supplied her with the salient features of the case as he had come upon them, from the discovery of the steel chip that pointed to an inside job to the moment when he learned that only Janet was missing from the house on the occasion of the monk's final appearance. "Then it developed that she hadn't been at the theater, as she was supposed to be. I argued from the return of the notebook that the case was drawing to a climax, so I went to New York to see if she would take advantage of my absence to slip away.

When she did, it seemed pretty conclusive evidence of her guilt. I put Kitty Doyle on her track. Until this morning, the worst I thought of you was that your friendship for Janet had led you to condone her crime."

"Whereas the truth is exactly the reverse! Her friendship and my crime!" She gave a little shiver. "That chip from the dagger--interesting! It really started you on the right track, didn't it? I never knew I'd nicked the blade. Mmph. Extraordinary what trifles may affect our destinies! Funny, don't you think?"

Each word she uttered in that whimsical tone was like a needle p.r.i.c.king his heart. He threw out his hands protestingly, suddenly groaning the very phrase that Janet had used in her troubled dreams.

"Miss Ocky, why did you do it? Why did you do it?"

"Yes, I must tell you about that." Her reply was cool, matter-of-fact, and he did not see that she winced at the pain in his voice. "After all, I can plead extenuating circ.u.mstances. I'll make it short as possible; you can ask questions later if you wish. Meanwhile, please don't interrupt me or I'll lose track of my story.

"I had been away from here twenty-two years. When I came back ten weeks ago I discovered a situation that I had never dreamed existed.

Lucy's letters had never been especially happy or cheerful, but neither had they contained anything to give me even an inkling of the truth. I did not know she was married to a human vampire, a sort of--of spiritual leech! Words can't tell you the difference between the Lucy I left and the Lucy I returned to! It hurt me--oh, it hurt me!

"You won't put down all that I say about Simon to personal prejudice because you have heard enough about him from others to realize how mean and selfish and--and psychically cruel he could be. He never beat Lucy, but that was simply because he specialized in a more refined type of cruelty--and if you want to know which of the two hurts a woman most, there are plenty of unfortunate wives who can tell you!

"Simon owed everything he had in the world to Lucy, for it was the money she brought to their marriage that enabled him to start his own tannery and gave him the opportunity to develop new processes that proved lucrative. Father disapproved of the match, but did not actively oppose it, and when he died shortly after, Simon's feet were on the road to fortune. Remember that, please!

"When I came home, I found he had completely broken Lucy's spirit and was deliberately trying to accomplish the same result in the case of his son. He had all but succeeded, too. Money seems to be the answer to practically every problem in this country to-day, so I was able to come to the boy's rescue. I told you one evening how I decided to put him on his feet, promote his elopement with Sheila Graham, who will make him an excellent wife--and incidentally put a spoke in Simon's wheel!

"I began to study my brother-in-law, and the more I learned about him the more shocked and fascinated I became. Satisfied with the lion's share of the income from the tannery, he refused to develop the business so that Jason's modic.u.m might increase to reasonable proportions. He had always hated Jason since the panic of 1907 when he had to borrow money from him and give him a small interest in the business.

"He hated his manager, Graham, too, because he was beginning to be troublesome. Graham felt that his long and faithful services deserved some greater reward than a small raise in salary, and the one thing Simon could not bear to do was to reward a man according to his deserts! He decided to discharge Graham--but that did not prevent him from threatening Copley with the ruin of Sheila's father if he did not discontinue his attentions to the girl! Pretty?

"I was interested in the working conditions at the tannery, conditions that were unsanitary, primitive--obscene! I met the Maxon person in a grocery, as I told you, but it was before the strike, not after. He told me things, and even with a liberal discount for exaggeration, they were pretty bad.

"It was then I decided to take a hand in Simon's family and business affairs! I have a queer sense of humor at times, and it rather amused me to think of myself as a deputy of Destiny! And--and it just so happened that I was in a position to play fast and loose with no regard for possible consequences to myself.

"I opened my campaign by promoting that strike! I persuaded Maxon, a born agitator, to talk the men into doing it, and I provided him with money so they should not be broken by hardship. Afterwards I found he hypothecated this fund and spent it on a dance-hall girl, so I was obliged to send more money later, in a letter signed by the monk, to a more responsible treasurer! I was a little shocked when Maxon was accused of murder, but my spirit rejoiced at the thought of him in jail! _Snake_!

"The strike only brought out Simon's worst qualities of stubbornness and vindictiveness. He ordered a closed shop, and suspended a lot of innocent, needy clerks without pay. Except that it goaded him to fury, a pleasant achievement to contemplate, I had to write off my strike as a flash in the pan.

"I chanced to discover that Simon's heel of Achilles was his fear of death, so my next scheme was a pious plot to frighten him into behaving like a human being and a good citizen. I had known the legend of the monk all my life, of course, and it was while telling it to Janet one day that I was struck with the idea of employing it to my own ends--though I afterwards pretended to Simon that I first heard of it from Sheila Graham.

"The next time I went to New York I purchased the costume and a pair of large boots from a theatrical supply store. I made a mask myself, and wired the cowl to stay up so that it would give the impression of a tall man. The large boots, of course, were to give a wrong idea of the man's size in case I left tracks.

"Sometimes I kept the outfit in the bottom of a trunk in that closet, there, but more often it was hidden in a cubbyhole of my little house down the hill. There is a very ancient and disreputable typewriter in the attic, there, too, and I used that to write my messages on. I concealed that, by the way, under a loose piece of flooring just as a precaution, though I did not think then that a police case would ever grow out of what I was doing!

"I set the first fire in the tannery, and it fizzled out. Then I wrote my first note to Simon and waylaid him in the trail. I slipped off the disguise in the woods, ran to overtake him and pretended I, too, had seen a 'ghost'. The next day I brought him that historical book and read him the legend, and I had real hopes of humanizing him when I saw how scared he was!

"I followed up this jolt by firing the tannery again, hoping that its destruction would necessitate the building of modern and proper quarters for the men to work in. I was nearly caught that time--Simon had the cunning to order his watchman to make double rounds!

"That night brought things to a sudden head. I had escaped from the tannery yard, run up into the woods and shed my disguise, and came back to stand on the hill and watch the fire.

"It was than that Leslie Sherwood spoke to me and made no bones about expressing his hatred of Simon Varr. I was curious to know why he was so bitter, and I had a sneaking notion that it might have something to do with the way Leslie had suddenly deserted Hambleton and abandoned my sister to his only admitted rival. It did! I asked him to tell me the story back of it and he willingly complied.

"It appears that Simon clerked for a time in a local bank of which Leslie's father was the president, and while there had discovered old Mr. Sherwood guilty of serious defalcations. Sherwood was too deeply involved to extricate himself short of stupendous good luck and years of effort, so Simon cunningly stored away his knowledge against a day when it might come in useful. Blackmail.

"The occasion arrived quickly. Lucy was obviously attached to Leslie, if not secretly engaged to him. Simon went to Leslie and told him he must withdraw with no word of explanation to Lucy under penalty of having his father exposed as a thief! Leslie was knocked galley-west, of course. He went to his father, found that Simon had told the truth, had a row with the old gentleman and departed forthwith, stricken to his soul.

"I don't criticize Leslie for acting that way. He was obeying the queer standards of behavior we have set up in the West. Actually, it never once occurred to him that to kill a blackmailer of that type rather than permit him to ruin a woman's life might be a very righteous deed! I see you wince, Mr. Creighton! Please remember I have lived in the East long enough to imbibe some of its philosophy. I don't consider one human life so much more important than the happiness of many other people!

"Simon's death warrant was nearly signed that night, though he was to have one more chance. I left Leslie and came home, and I won't even try to describe my feelings when I realized how that monster had used his power to sneak into this house and destroy Lucy's happiness!

"The dagger on the table caught my eye and I remembered its inscription. 'I Bring Peace'. Suggestive--very suggestive; I thought of the peace it would bring to a number of persons if any one had the courage to--to play Destiny. I thought of Leslie's expression when he told me he still loved Lucy devotedly, and of hers when she heard the news of his return. There were two more people who would find happiness if Simon were removed.

"I took the dagger, but of course that was dangerous by itself, so I slipped into the study, pried up the roll-top cover of Simon's desk and pouched a notebook that looked as if it must be valuable. Then I had still another idea--it seemed a good one then! The house was still, except for Bates snoring in the pantry. I went out on the piazza and forced the lock of one of the living-room windows with the dagger.

Mmph! Wish I'd noticed that nick! I thought I was only leaving evidence of a burglary!

"The next evening I had a snappy talk with Simon. I told him that the death of old Sherwood--who succeeded in rehabilitating his fortunes before he died--had taken that particular curse off Leslie, and that Leslie had told me everything. Simon merely asked me what I was going to do about it. I suggested divorce--his last chance!--and he turned it down. Just from meanness and malice, he turned it down. Blame me for anything you please, but don't sympathize with Simon; he asked for it!

"I knew a detective was coming on the morrow and I wasn't anxious to take more chances than I had to. The hour was striking--!

"Don't look at me like that! I won't go on with that part of it!

Harrowing and gruesome, and not at all important.

"I'm afraid I didn't take either the police or you very seriously.

More fool I! As I examined my position it seemed to me that I had left absolutely no clue, that I was secure from every suspicion. Mmph. I forgot Janet!

"She and I never had secrets from each other until this affair of Simon Varr. I had discussed him with her and she understood just what a blot on society he was, but I had not confessed to playing Destiny! After the murder, however, she learned of the monk who had been threatening Simon. She knew I detested him, she knew all my points of view, and her old mind began to work. Janet's mind is like the mills of the G.o.ds; it grinds slowly but exceeding fine.

"She watched me, questioned me slyly, and presently began a search for proof of her suspicions. She found the notebook in the back of one of my bureau drawers, and then she found the disguise in the house below the hill. She knew the truth!

"She has a Scotch conscience, which appears to be a terrible affliction! She was horrified at her discovery, almost sickened, but her loyalty to me rose above every other consideration. If she had only come to me--! But she didn't; she elected to follow certain impulses of her own conception.