Thus fell the second of the two lives which stood between the Baron and the full sum of 50,000_l_. Of this sum the 25,000_l_. which accrues from the relationship between Mrs. Anderton and Madame R** is already his as soon as claimed, but there is no immediate necessity for the claim to be preferred. He may perhaps have thought it better to wait before making such a claim until the first sensation occasioned by the double deaths through which he inherited had passed away. He may have been merely putting in train some plausible story to account for his only now proclaiming a fact of which he had certainly been aware for at least a year. Whatever his reason, however, he certainly for some weeks after Mr. Anderton's death made no movement to establish his claim upon the property, and during this time Madame R** was slowly but surely recovering her strength. But while wisdom thus dictated a policy of delay, the irresistible course of events hurried on the crisis. A letter comes (VII.) filled with threats of the vengeance of jealous love if its cause be not that night removed. It is but a fragment of that letter that is preserved, but its meaning is clear enough, and it is that under threat of revelation of some capital crime, the connection between himself and Madame R** should be finally brought to an end. "_N'en sais-tu bien le moyen?_" That night the condition is fulfilled. Once more the sleeping lady takes her midnight journey to her husband's laboratory. Once more her unconscious hand pours out the deadly draught. But this time it is no slow poison that she takes. It is a powerful and burning acid that even as it awakes her from her trance, shrivels her with a horrible and instant death. One shrill and quickly stifled shriek alarms the inmates of the house, and when they hurry to the spot they find only a disfigured corpse, lying with bare feet and disordered night dress in the darkness of the stormy November night, and with the fatal glass still clasped in its hand. My task is done. In possession of the evidence thus placed before you, your judgment of its result will be as good as mine. Link by link you have now been put in possession of the entire chain. Is that chain one of purely accidental coincidences, or does it point with terrible certainty to a series of crimes, in their nature and execution almost too horrible to contemplate? That is the first question to be asked, and it is one to which I confess myself unable to reply. The second is more strange, and perhaps even more difficult still. Supposing the latter to be the case, are crimes thus committed susceptible of proof, or even if proved, are they of a kind for which the criminal can be brought to punishment? [Footnote 1: "Taylor on Poisons." 2nd edition, p. 98, _et inf._] End of Project Gutenberg's The Notting Hill Mystery, by Charles Felix