Saturday night he called upon me and demanded money as the price of silence. Having no money available at the time, I put him off until Tuesday, when I gave him the diamonds as part payment. But I was desperate. I knew what being at Upton's mercy would mean, having experienced the same thing with Edge. I determined to kill him. I decided to pretend the diamonds had been stolen, and to so inform you, the police. Upton, I was confident, would thereupon immediately communicate with me. I would make an appointment with him and shoot him down in cold blood, confident that I would have no difficulty in arranging a story that would make me seem justified in having killed this known burglar, in whose possession, doubtless, the stolen diamonds would be found.
'I think the plan would have been successful. However, Ruppert-- pursuing Upton with a grudge of his own to settle--saved me from killing Upton by himself killing him. Ruppert, the man who had traced my course from Devil's Island to Mexico City, had also, either from Upton or by spying on Upton, learned that Mayenne was Leggett, and, with the police after him for Upton's murder, he came here, demanding that I shelter him, returning the diamonds, claiming money in their stead.
'I killed him. His body is in the cellar. Out front, a detective is watching my house. Other detectives are busy elsewhere inquiring into my affairs. I have not been able satisfactorily to explain certain of my actions, nor to avoid contradictions, and, now that I am actually suspect, there is little chance of the past's being kept secret. I have always known--have known it most surely when I would not admit it to myself--that this would one day happen. I am not going back to Devil's Island. My wife and daughter had neither knowledge of nor part in Ruppert's death.
'_Maurice de Mayenne._'
VII. The Curse
Nobody said anything for some minutes after I had finished reading. Mrs. Leggett had taken her handkerchief from her face to listen, sobbing softly now and then. Gabrielle Leggett was looking jerkily around the room, light fighting cloudiness in her eyes, her lips twitching as if she was trying to get words out but couldn't.
I went to the table, bent over the dead man, and ran my hand over his pockets. The inside coat pocket bulged. I reached under his arm, unbuttoned and pulled open his coat, taking a brown wallet from the pocket. The wallet was thick with paper money--fifteen thousand dollars when we counted it later.
Showing the others the wallet's contents, I asked:
'Did he leave any message besides the one I read?'
'None that's been found,' O'Gar said. 'Why?'
'Any that you know of, Mrs. Leggett?' I asked.
She shook her head.
'Why?' O'Gar asked again.
'He didn't commit suicide,' I said. 'He was murdered.'
Gabrielle Leggett screamed shrilly and sprang out of her chair, pointing a sharp-nailed white finger at Mrs. Leggett.
'She killed him,' the girl shrieked. 'She said, 'Come back here,' and held the kitchen door open with one hand, and picked up the knife from the drain-board with the other, and when he went past her she pushed it in his back. I saw her do it. She killed him. I wasn't dressed, and when I heard them coming I hid in the pantry, and I saw her do it.'
Mrs. Leggett got to her feet. She staggered, and would have fallen if Fitzstephan hadn't gone over to steady her. Amazement washed her swollen face empty of grief.
The gray-faced dandified man by the table--Doctor Riese, I learned later--said, in a cold, crisp voice:
'There is no stab wound. He was shot through the temple by a bullet from this pistol, held close, slanting up. Clearly suicide, I should say.'
Collinson forced Gabrielle down to her chair again, trying to calm her. She was working her hands together and moaning.
I disagreed with the doctor's last statement, and said so while turning something else over in my mind:
'Murder. He had this money in his pocket. He was going away. He wrote that letter to the police to clear his wife and daughter, so they wouldn't be punished for complicity in his crimes. Did it,' I asked O'Gar, 'sound to you like the dying statement of a man who was leaving a wife and daughter he loved? No message, no word, to them-- all to the police.'
'Maybe you're right,' the bullet-headed man said; 'but supposing he was going away, he still didn't leave them any--'
'He would have told them--either on paper or talking--something before he went, if he had lived long enough. He was winding up his affairs, preparing to go away, and-- Maybe he was going to commit suicide, though the money and the tone of the letter make me doubt it; but even in that case my guess is that he didn't, that he was killed before he had finished his preparations--maybe because he was taking too long a time. How was he found?'
'I heard,' Mrs. Leggett sobbed; 'I heard the shot, and ran up here, and he--he was like that. And I went down to the telephone, and the bell--the doorbell--rang, and it was Mr. Fitzstephan, and I told him. It couldn't-- there was nobody else in the house to--to kill him.'
'You killed him,' I said to her. 'He was going away. He wrote this statement, shouldering your crimes. You killed Ruppert down in the kitchen. That's what the girl was talking about. Your husband's letter sounded enough like a suicide letter to pass for one, you thought; so you murdered him--murdered him because you thought his confession and death would hush up the whole business, keep us from poking into it any further.'
Her face didn't tell me anything. It was distorted, but in a way that might have meant almost anything. I filled my lungs and went on, not exactly bellowing, but getting plenty of noise out:
'There are half a dozen lies in your husband's statement--half a dozen that I can peg now. He didn't send for you and his daughter. You traced him here. Mrs. Begg said he was the most surprised man she had ever seen when you arrived from New York. He didn't give Upton the diamonds. His account of why he gave them to Upton and of what he intended doing afterwards is ridiculous: it's simply the best story he could think of on short notice to
