"Come," he said, "so far as you are concerned, you have nothing to complain of. You offered, I believe, to give it up yourself on one condition."
She looked at him with sudden eagerness.
"Well?" she cried, impatiently.
"That condition," he said, "shall be complied with."
She looked into his face with strange intentness.
"You mean," she said slowly, "that I shall know who it was that killed my husband?"
"Yes!" the Colonel answered.
A sudden cry rang through the room. Louise was on her feet. She came staggering towards them, her hands outstretched.
"No!" she screamed, "no! Father, you are mad! Send the woman away!"
He smiled at her deprecatingly.
"My dear Louise!" he exclaimed, "our word has been pa.s.sed to this young woman. Besides," he added, "circ.u.mstances which have occurred within the last hour with our young friend upstairs would probably render an explanation imperative! I am sorry for your sake, my dear young lady," he continued, turning to Mrs. Barnes, "to have to tell you this, but if you insist upon knowing, it was I who killed your husband."
Louise fell back into her chair and covered her face with her hands. The Baroness looked shocked but not surprised. Wrayson, dumb and unnerved, had staggered back, and was leaning against the table. Mrs. Barnes had already taken a step towards the door. She was very pale, but her eyes were ablaze. Incredulity struggled with her pa.s.sionate desire for vengeance.
"You!" she exclaimed. "What should you want to kill him for?"
The Colonel sighed regretfully.
"My dear young lady," he said, "it is very painful for me to have to be so explicit, but the situation demands it. I killed him because he was unfit to live--because he was a blackmailer of women, an unclean liver, a foul thing upon the face of the earth."
"It"s a d.a.m.ned lie!" the girl hissed. "He was good to me, and you shall swing for it!"
The Colonel looked genuinely distressed.
"I am afraid," he said, "that you are prejudiced. If he was, as you say, kind to you, it was for his own pleasure. Believe me, I made a careful study of his character before I decided that he must go."
She looked at him with fierce curiosity.
"Are you a G.o.d," she demanded, "that you should have power of life or death? Who are you to set yourself up as a judge?"
"Pray do not believe," he begged, "that I arrogate to myself any such position. Only, unfortunately, as regards your late husband"s character there could be no mistake, and concerning such men as he I have very strong convictions."
Wrayson, who had recovered himself a little, laid his hand upon the Colonel"s shoulder.
"Colonel," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "you"re not serious! You can"t be! Be careful. This woman means mischief. She will take you at your word."
"How else should she take me?" the Colonel asked calmly. "I suppose her prejudice in favour of this man was natural, but all I can say is that, under similar circ.u.mstances, I should act to-day precisely as I did on the night when I found him about to sell a woman"s honour, for money to minister to the degraded pleasures of his life."
The woman leaned towards him, venomous and pa.s.sionate.
"You"re a nice one to preach, you are," she cried hysterically, "you, with a man"s blood upon your hands! You, a murderer! Degraded indeed!
What were his poor sins compared with yours?"
The Colonel shook his head sadly.
"I am afraid, my dear young lady," he said, "that I should never be able to convert you to my point of view. You are naturally prejudiced, and when I consider that I have failed to convince my own daughter"--he glanced towards Louise--"of the soundness of my views, it goes without saying that I should find you also unsympathetic. You are anxious, I see, to leave us. Permit me!"
He held open the door for her with grave courtesy, but Wrayson pushed him aside. He had recovered himself to some extent, but he still felt as though he were moving in some horrible dream.
"Colonel!" he exclaimed hoa.r.s.ely, "you know what this means! You know where she will go!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""TO THE NEAREST POLICE STATION! THAT"S WHERE I"M OFF.""]
"If he don"t, let me tell him," she interrupted. "To the nearest police station! That"s where I"m off."
Wrayson glanced quickly at the Colonel, who seemed in no way discomposed.
"Naturally," he a.s.sented. "No one, my dear young lady, will interfere with you in your desire to carry out your painfully imperfect sense of justice. Pray pa.s.s out!"
She hesitated for a moment. Her poor little brain was struggling, perhaps, for the last time, to adapt itself to his point of view--to understand why, at a moment so critical, he should treat her with the easy composure and tolerant good-nature of one who gives to a spoilt child its own way. Then she saw signs of further interference on Wrayson"s part, and she delayed no longer.
The Colonel closed the door after her, and stood for a moment with his back against it, for Wrayson had shown signs of a desire to follow the woman whose egress he had just permitted. He looked into their faces, white with horror--full of dread of what was to come, and he smiled rea.s.suringly.
"Amy," he said, turning to the Baroness, "surely you and Wrayson here are possessed of some grains of common sense. Louise, I know, is too easily swayed by sentiment. But you, Wrayson! Surely I can rely on you!"
"For anything," Wrayson answered, with trembling lips. "But what can I do? What is there to be done?"
The Colonel smiled gently.
"Simply to listen intelligently--sympathetically if you can," he declared. "I want to make my position clear to you if I can. You heard what that poor young woman called me? Probably you would have used the same word yourself. A murderer!"
"Yes!" Wrayson muttered. "I heard!"
"When I came back from the Soudan twelve years ago, I had been instrumental in killing some thousands of brave men, I dare say I had killed a score or so with my own hand. Was I a murderer then?"
"No!" Wrayson answered. "It was a different thing."
"Then killing is not necessarily murder," the Colonel remarked. "Good!
Now take the case of a man like Morris Barnes. He belonged to the cla.s.s of humanity which you can call by no other name than that of vermin.
Whatever he touched he defiled. He was without a single good instinct, a single pa.s.sable quality. Wherever he lived, he bred contamination.
Whoever touched him was the worse for it. His influence upon the world was an unchanging one for evil. Put aside sentiment for one moment, false sentiment I should say, and ask yourself what possible sin can there be in taking the life of such a one. If he had gone on four legs instead of two, his breed would have been exterminated centuries ago."
"We are not the judges," Wrayson began, weakly enough.
"We are, sir," the Colonel thundered. "For what else have we been given brains, the moral sense, the knowledge of good or evil? There are those amongst us who become decadents, whose presence amongst us breeds corruption, whose dirty little lives are like the trail of a foul insect across the page of life. I hold it a just and moral thing to rid the world of such a creature. The sanct.i.ty of human life is the canting cry of the falsely sentimental. Human life is sacred or not, according to its achievements. Such a one as Morris Barnes I would brush away like a poisonous fly."
"Bentham!" Wrayson faltered.
"I killed him, sir!" the Colonel answered, "and others of his kidney before him. Louise knew it. I argued with her as I am doing with you, but it was useless. Nevertheless, I have lived as seemed good to me."