Chapter XV: The Tragedy

That awful, blood-curdling cry of agony and despair rang through and through the silent house, hushed in the repose of slumber. The echoes caught it up and prolonged it in awful, sound waves:

“Murder! Murder! Murder!”

There was no ear in that great house upon which it did not fall. Talbot Strangemore, keeping his wakeful vigil in patient expectation of a summons from Nina, heard it first, and rushed madly from the room out into the faintly-lighted hall. His first thought was of his wife; but when he ran to her apartments, so sacred until now from his intrusion, he found the outer door locked against him, and, horrified and bewildered, he turned away.

In a few moments the corridors were full of excited people running hither and thither, looking into each other’s blanched faces, and asking what was the matter, and was it really a shriek of “Murder” that had roused them from slumber.

Miss Drusilla was there in nightcap and slippers, with a large red shawl hastily thrown over her flapping night-robe. Helen and Virgie were there in dressing-gowns hastily huddled over their white wrappers; all the men were there in various stages of dishabille, the servants were all there too, and but two of the whole household were missing--those two were Mrs. Strangemore and Mrs. St. Alban.

Some ran hastily to one door--some to another--Nina’s was locked; Sibyl had forgotten hers in her joy at witnessing her rival’s flight. They entered readily.

It was Helen Starr who entered first. Her shriek of horror and dismay rang in the hearing of all long afterward. It announced the tragedy that in a minute more every one crowded in to gaze upon.

No one ever forgot that tragic sight in the dimly-lighted room, where some one quickly brightened the lamp for a clearer view. Sibyl St. Alban lay wounded and apparently dying, across the bed, her life-blood staining her white robes and the white counterpane in a ghastly torrent, while a bloody dagger lay carelessly upon the floor.

They crowded around her, and the dim, fast glazing eyes searched their faces with mute yearning until Talbot Strangemore came. Her drawn lips faintly murmured his name:

“Talbot!”

“Sibyl!”

He took her hand compassionately in his and looked at her with dazed, horrified eyes. Some faint fear came over him that she had thrown away her life because she had lost him.

“My poor Sibyl,” he repeated, and the lips she had opened to speak to him closed without a sound, the white lids dropped heavily over the blue imploring eyes in a momentary unconsciousness. Better for him had it been an eternal sleep.

“Let someone bring a doctor,” he said, hastily, and one of the half-dazed men-servants went out to do his bidding.

Miss Drusilla, beginning to recover from the trance of horror which had struck her at first, began to bustle around. She cleared the room first of all the gaping, terrified domestics who were huddled in a group at the foot of the bed, whispering fearfully together.

One man in his retreat picked up the blood-stained dagger and presented it to Miss Drusilla. The housemaid found a letter lying on the floor. She could not read, so she handed it to Helen Starr who stood nearest her.

“Oh, Miss, here’s a letter I found on the floor. Mayhap the bloody murderer who killed that lady dropped it there,” she shuddered.

Helen took it with an answering shiver of fear. She held it out and read the name upon the back, then she held it out to her host.

“Perhaps I had better give it to you, as it is addressed to your wife,” she said.

Talbot Strangemore took it from her hand and looked at it. It was the letter he had slipped under Nina’s door a few hours ago.

“Yes, it belongs to my wife. I wrote it, but how came it here?” he said, full of wonder.

“Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” said some one, and those words although so innocently spoken, suggested a terrible possibility to every one. Every face blanched suddenly, and a silence fell that was more fearful than words.

And in their sudden interest over the letter no one noticed that Sibyl’s eyes had opened languidly again, and that she heard and saw all that was passing around her.

Her first thought was one of terror that she had thrown Talbot’s letter carelessly from her in her wrath and that now it was discovered in her possession. But a moment later some one spoke the thoughtless words, “Perhaps she has been in here and dropped it,” and the sentence conveyed such a sinister idea to her mind that she drew a quick breath and shut her eyes again before Talbot looked around at her and said, decidedly:

“No, I do not believe that Nina has been in this room at all. When Mrs. St. Alban revives from her swoon she will no doubt be able to explain how it came to be in here.”

He crushed it fiercely in his hand, and gazed anxiously at the still white face on the pillow, until the pale gold lashes fluttered open and Sibyl looked up at him with a faint, dying expression.

“You are better, Sibyl. Can you speak to us?” he asked.

“No, I am not better--I--I--am dying,” faintly articulated the victim. “Let some one--bring--pencil and--and paper. Let them take--my--my dying deposition!”

It was Duke Cameron who obeyed her. He looked with sad, pained eyes at the dying face.

“Poor Sibyl,” he said, sorrowfully, as to a hurt child, “I am ready now--what is it you wish me to write?”

She looked at Talbot Strangemore not at him as she answered, slowly and painfully:

“I have been--foully murdered! It was your wife that did it, Talbot Strangemore! It--it was Nina! She was--jealous, mad--she hated me, and in--in her rage she stole upon me in my sleep and--and plunged a knife in my breast! I saw her--she wore a hood and cloak, ready--to fly--to fly from the scene of her crime! I am--am dying, and--she--Nina Strangemore who hated me--is the woman who has cruelly--murdered--me!”