The path followed by the madman's brain was easy to pursue once the clue
found. He had been cheated into the belief that Camilla's body rested in
that coffin, and when he had discovered that it did not rest there he
had determined that the mistake should be rectified, the false made
true. That had seemed to him logical and just. She was supposed to be
in the coffin; she should really be in the coffin; she should be forced
and jammed into it. And his lunatic and inhuman fancy had added even to
that conception. She should be drugged and carried to the vault, and
drugged again, and then immured, unconscious, but alive; and if by
chance she awoke from the chloroform sleep after he had finished
screwing in the screws, so much the better! So it was that his mind had
worked. And the scheme had been executed with that courage, that
calmness, that audacity, that minute attention to detail, of which only
madmen at their maddest appear to be capable. Beyond any question the
scheme would have succeeded had not Hugo, the moment Albert Shawn
uttered the word 'cemetery,' perceived the general trend of it in a
single wondrous flash of intuition. He had guessed it, and even while
afraid to believe that he was right, had known absolutely and
convincingly that he was right.
Camilla murmured some phrase, and gave a sigh as she lay on the
gravelled path.
She had recovered from the fatal torpor in the cool night air. He said
nothing, because he felt that he could do nothing else. Albert and Simon
were certainly looking for him in the maze of the cemetery; they would
find him soon. It did not seem to him extraordinary that he had left
them in that sudden, swift fashion without a word.
Then he heard, or thought he heard, a noise in the vault, and, summoning
all his strength of will, he descended the steps again and glanced
within. Ravengar was there. Had he been there all the time, hidden
behind the door? Or had he fled and stealthily returned? Only Ravengar
could say. He had taken up the image from the corner and was replacing
it in the coffin. It was as if he had bowed his obstinate purpose to
some higher power which was inscrutable to him. Children and madmen can
practise this singular and surprising fatalism. Disturbed, he raised his
head and caught sight of Hugo. They gazed at one another by the
flickering candle.
'Where's the man who helped you?' Hugo demanded faintly.
He had not much heart, much force, much firmness left. Ravengar's eyes,
at once empty and significant, blank and yet formidable, startled him.
He had the revolver and the handcuffs in his pocket, but he could not
have used them. Ravengar's eyes, so fiendish and so ineffably sad,
melted his spine. Ravengar stepped forward and Hugo stepped back.
'Let me pass,' said Ravengar, in the tone of one who has suffered much
and does not mean to suffer much more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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