A night bird screamed in the forest behind them, echoing eerily around the still castle.
In a state of the deepest dejection Edward Povey listened to the story. At times during its recital he would raise his head and look at Gaspar Mozara. The lieutenant, when Edward's head was bent again, eyed his hearer narrowly.
He had told his tale well--circumstantially and yet with the feeling that Anna Paluda, who, sitting rigidly in her chair, never once removed her doubting eyes from his face, did not believe a word he was saying. He found it increasingly difficult to marshal his facts under the fire of those steady watching eyes. Hitherto, this grim lady in black had held no importance for him, but now, as he looked at her and felt her presence, she took on a new individuality. To Mozara it seemed as though an unconsidered pawn belonging to an opponent had crept unobserved up the chess-board of his plans and had become suddenly a force to be reckoned with.
The lieutenant was between two stools. He had told his tale, and was now anxious to be gone, but he felt that no sooner did he leave, so surely some piece of evidence, some vital point in the scheme would occur to him as having been left unsaid.
He had made his way to the little villa as soon as the third-rate medical man, whom Dasso had pressed into the plot, had given the lieutenant permission to get up, a sorrowful figure in deep mourning. His right arm was suspended in a sling of black silk and was tightly swathed in surgical bandages. He had sunk in well-simulated exhaustion into the big chintz-covered arm-chair in the drawing-room facing the sea, and had laid an ebony crutch beside him on the carpet. One leg had been carefully stretched out stiffly before him.
Edward, all unsuspecting, had assisted him in his movements and had opened the windows, letting in the bracing breeze that blew up from the bay. Anna Paluda, however, had merely inclined her head. When the lieutenant entered she had felt only a dull anger against the author of her poor Galva's death. It was only as his story progressed that she grew to doubt the truth of what she was listening to. Gaspar had begun with well-acted expressions of sympathy and with carefully considered phrases of self-condemnation. He told them that the blame of the accident had been entirely his in agreeing to Miss Baxendale's demands for increased speed. The road was one on which he had seldom travelled and they had rounded the spur of the hillside before he was aware of their danger. He had applied the brakes and turned the wheel to keep in the middle of the narrow road but the impetus had been too great. There had been a hideous skid as the car crashed almost broadside into the old and crumbling wall.