"You may say you are not one of these brutes--perhaps not. But do you remember the day Lord Delmouth married Lady Evelyn Malling? Such a wealth of wedding presents required careful watching, and a guest was pointed out to me as Murray Wigan, the great detective. I never forget a face, and I never underrate an enemy. I heard that Murray Wigan was inquiring into the mysterious death of the chauffeur. I knew you the moment you came into the house. Who the girl is, I do not care. Your accomplice has nothing to fear--I do not war against women. I sent her to London. When she returns she will learn that you have been and gone. You will be found, Murray Wigan, sixty or seventy miles from London, and since death by this method draws the features strangely, it is doubtful if you will be identified. You were clever to get upon my track, but you pay the penalty."
The perspiration stood out heavily upon me. Fear gripped me, and I was helpless. Yet even in this supreme moment, even when this fiend of a woman fitted that horrible metal cap upon my head, I remembered the marks upon the dead chauffeur. He had been electrocuted as I was to be. It was the frame holding him in a sitting posture which had marked his body--it was this awful chair which had left those depressions on his arms. I was glad to know the truth. It was the ruling passion, strong in death.
The woman crossed to the cupboard quickly. There was a click, the moving of the switch, and then--nothing. Thank God! Nothing. The cap gripped my head, that was all.
The woman looked at me, and then rushed to the door, only to stagger backward as Christopher Quarles and Zena met her on the threshold. Their first thought was for me, and Mrs. Barrymore had the moment for which she had always been prepared, doubtless. The poison pilule had been concealed in a signet ring she wore, and in a few moments she was lying dead in that horrible Tudor room.
That Mrs. Barrymore had invited me to come to tea on the following day, when there was no reason why I should not have stayed then, had aroused Zena's suspicions, and she had watched Mrs. Barrymore's every movement. Until then she knew nothing of the secret of the Tudor room, but she saw her employer go there and examine the cupboard.