The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [1309]
Returning to my fair friend, I found her walking backward and forward in a state of excitement wonderful to behold. She had not waited for me to fill her glass--she had begun the generous Moselle in my absence. I prevailed on her with difficulty to place herself at the table. Nothing would induce her to eat. "My appetite is gone," she said. "Give me wine."
The generous Moselle deserves its name--delicate on the palate, with prodigious "body." The strength of this fine wine produced no stupefying effect on my remarkable guest. It appeared to strengthen and exhilarate her--nothing more. She always spoke in the same low tone, and always, turn the conversation as I might, brought it back with the same dexterity to the subject of the Englishman in the next room. In any other woman this persistency would have offended me. My lovely guest was irresistible; I answered her questions with the docility of a child. She possessed all the amusing eccentricity of her nation. When I told her of the accident which confined the Englishman to his bed, she sprang to her feet. An extraordinary smile irradiated her countenance. She said, "Show me the horse who broke the Englishman's leg! I must see that horse!" I took her to the stables. She kissed the horse--on my word of honor, she kissed the horse! That struck me. I said. "You _do_ know the man; and he has wronged you in some way." No! she would not admit it, even then. "I kiss all beautiful animals," she said. "Haven't I kissed _you_?" With that charming explanation of her conduct, she ran back up the stairs. I only remained behind to lock the stable door again. When I rejoined her, I made a startling discovery. I caught her coming out of the Englishman's room.
"I was just going downstairs again to call you," she said. "The man in there is getting noisy once more."
The mad Englishman's voice assailed our ears once again. "Rigobert! Rigobert!"
He was a frightful object to look at when I saw him this time. His eyes were staring wildly; the perspiration was pouring over his face. In a panic of terror he clasped his hands; he pointed up to heaven. By every sign and gesture that a man can make, he entreated me not to leave him again. I really could not help smiling. The idea of my staying with _him_, and leaving my fair friend by herself in the next room!
I turned to the door. When the mad wretch saw me leaving him he burst out into a screech of despair--so shrill that I feared it might awaken the sleeping servants.
My presence of mind in emergencies is proverbial among those who know me. I tore open the cupboard in which he kept his linen--seized a handful of his handkerchiefs--gagged him with one of them, and secured his hands with the others. There was now no danger of his alarming the servants. After tying the last knot, I looked up.
The door between the Englishman's room and mine was open. My fair friend was standing on the threshold--watching _him_ as he lay helpless on the bed; watching _me_ as I tied the last knot.
"What are you doing there?" I asked. "Why did you open the door?"
She stepped up to me, and whispered her answer in my ear, with her eyes all the time upon the man on the bed:
"I heard him scream."
"Well?"
"I thought you had killed him."
I drew back from her in horror. The suspicion of me which her words implied was sufficiently detestable in itself. But her manner when she uttered the words was more revolting still. It so powerfully affected me that I started back from that beautiful creature as I might have recoiled from a reptile crawling over my flesh.
Before I had recovered myself sufficiently to reply, my nerves were assailed by another shock. I suddenly heard my mistress's voice calling to me from the stable yard.
There was no time to think--there was only time to act. The one thing needed was to keep Mrs. Fairbank from ascending the stairs, and discovering--not my lady guest only--but