Madame de Stämer shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, blankly. “It is mysterious, the state of his health,” she replied. “An old trouble, which began years and years ago in Cuba.” Harley nodded sympathetically, but I could see that he was not satisfied. Yet, although he might doubt her explanation, he had noted, and so had I, that Madame de Stämer’s concern was very real. Her slender hands were strangely unsteady; indeed her condition bordered on one of distraction. Harley concealed his thoughts, whatever they may have been, beneath that mask of reserve which I knew so well, whilst I endeavoured in vain to draw Val Beverley into conversation with me. I gathered that Madame de Stämer had been to visit the invalid, and that she was all anxiety to return was a fact she was wholly unable to conceal. There was a tired look in her still eyes, as though she had undertaken a task beyond her powers to perform, and, so unnatural a quartette were we, that when presently she withdrew I was glad, although she took Val Beverley with her. Paul Harley resumed his seat, staring at me with unseeing eyes. A sound reached us through the drawing room which told us that Madame de Stämer’s chair was being taken upstairs, a task always performed when Madame desired to visit the upper floors by Manoel and Pedro’s daughter, Nita, who acted as Madame’s maid. These sounds died away, and I thought how silent everything had become. Even the birds were still, and presently, my eye being attracted to a black speck in the sky above, I learned why the feathered choir was mute. A hawk was hovering loftily overhead. Noting my upward glance, Paul Harley also raised his eyes. “Ah,” he murmured, “a hawk. All the birds are cowering in their nests. Nature is a cruel mistress, Knox.” CHAPTER XVI RED EVE Over the remainder of that afternoon I will pass in silence. Indeed, looking backward now, I cannot recollect that it afforded one incident worthy of record. But because great things overshadow small, so it may be that whereas my recollections of quite trivial episodes are sharp enough up to a point, my memories from this point onward to the horrible and tragic happening which I have set myself to relate are hazy and indistinct. I was troubled by the continued absence of Val Beverley. I thought that she was avoiding me by design, and in Harley’s gloomy reticence I could find no shadow of comfort. We wandered aimlessly about the grounds, Harley staring up in a vague fashion at the windows of Cray’s Folly; and presently, when I stopped to inspect a very perfect rose bush, he left me without a word, and I found myself alone. Later, as I sauntered toward the Tudor garden, where I had hoped to encounter Miss Beverley, I heard the clicking of billiard balls; and there was Harley at the table, practising fancy shots. He glanced up at me as I paused by the open window, stopped to relight his pipe, and then bent over the table again.