She sank back and again struggled vainly with her bonds. Betty rose from her chair and crossed the room towards her, the needle shining bright in her hand. Her hapless prisoner saw it.
“What’s that?” she cried, and she screamed aloud. The extremity of her horror lent to her an unnatural strength. Somehow she dragged herself up and got her feet to the ground. Somehow she stood upright, swaying as she stood.
“You are going to—” she began, and broke off. “Oh, no! You couldn’t! You couldn’t!”
Betty put out a hand and laid it on Ann’s shoulder and held her so for a moment, savouring her vengeance.
“Whose face was it bending so close down over yours in the darkness?” she asked in a soft and dreadful voice. “Whose face, Ann? Guess!” She shook her swaying prisoner with a gentleness as dreadful as her quiet voice. “You talk too much. Your tongue’s dangerous, Ann. You are too curious, Ann! What were you doing in the treasure-room yesterday evening with your watch in your hand? Eh? Can’t you answer, you pretty fool?” Then Betty’s voice changed. It remained low and quiet, but hatred crept into it, a deep, wholehearted hatred.
“You have been interfering with me too, haven’t you, Ann? Oh, we both understand very well!” And Hanaud’s hand tightened upon Frobisher’s shoulder. Here was the real key and explanation of Betty’s hatred. Ann Upcott knew too much, was getting to know more, might at any moment light upon the whole truth. Yes! Ann Upcott’s disappearance would look like a panic-stricken flight, would have the effect of a confession—no doubt! But above all these considerations, paramount in Betty Harlowe’s mind was the resolve at once to punish and rid herself of a rival.
“All this week, you have been thrusting yourself in my way!” she said. “And here’s your reward for it, Ann. Yes. I had you bound hand and foot and brought here. The water-lily!” She looked her victim over as she stood in her delicate bright frock, her white silk stockings and satin slippers, swaying in terror. “Fifteen minutes, Ann! That fool of a detective was right! Fifteen minutes! That’s all the time the arrow-poison takes!”
Ann’s eyes opened wide. The blood rushed into her white face and ebbed, leaving it whiter than it was before.
“Arrow-poison!” she cried. “Betty! It was you, then! Oh!” she would have fallen forward, but Betty Harlowe pushed her shoulder gently and she fell back upon the divan. That Betty had been guilty of that last infamy—the murder of her benefactress—not until this moment had Ann Upcott for one moment suspected. It was clear to her, too, that there was not the slightest hope for her. She burst suddenly into a storm of tears.
Betty Harlowe sat down on the divan beside her and watched her closely and curiously with a devilish enjoyment. The sound of the girl’s sobbing was music in her ears. She would not let it flag.
“You shall lie here in the dark all night, Ann, and alone,” she said in a low voice, bending over her, “Tomorrow Espinosa will put you under one of the stone flags in the kitchen. But tonight you shall lie just as you are. Come!”
She bent over Ann Upcott, gathering the flesh of her arm with one hand and advancing the needle with the other; and a piercing scream burst from Francine Rollard.
“Look!” she cried, and she pointed to the door. It was open and Hanaud stood upon the threshold.
Betty looked up at the cry and the blood receded from her face. She sat like an image of wax, staring at the open doorway, and a moment afterwards with a gesture swift as lightning she drove the needle into the flesh of her own arm and emptied it.
Frobisher with a cry of horror started forward to prevent her, but Hanaud roughly thrust him back.
“I warned you, Monsieur, not to interfere,” he said with a savage note in his voice, which Jim had not heard before; and Betty Harlowe dropped the needle on to the couch, whence it rolled to the floor.
She sprang up now to her full height, her heels together, her arms outstretched from her sides.
“Fifteen minutes, Monsieur Hanaud,” she cried with bravado. “I am safe from you.”
Hanaud laughed and wagged his forefinger contemptuously in her face.
“Coloured water, Mademoiselle, doesn’t kill.”
Betty swayed upon her feet and steadied herself.
“Bluff, Monsieur Hanaud!” she said.
“We shall see.”
The confidence of his tone convinced her. She flashed across the room to her writing-table. Swift as she was, Hanaud met her there.
“Ah, no!” he cried. “That’s quite a different thing!” He seized her wrists. “Moreau!” he called, with a nod towards Francine. “And you, Monsieur Frobisher, will you release that young lady, if you please!”
Moreau dragged Francine Rollard from the room and locked her safely away. Jim seized upon the big scissors and cut the cords about Ann’s wrists and ankles, and unwound them. He was aware that Hanaud had flung the chair from the writing-table into an open space, that Betty was struggling and then was still, that Hanaud had forced her into the chair and snatched up one of the cords which Frobisher had dropped upon the floor. When he had finished his work, he saw that Betty was sitting with her hands in handcuffs and her ankles tied to one of the legs of the chair; and Hanaud was staunching with his handkerchief a wound in his hand which bled. Betty had bitten him like a wild animal caught in a trap.
“Yes, you warned me, Mademoiselle, the first morning I met you,” Hanaud said with a savage irony, “that you didn’t wear a wristwatch, because you hated things on your wrists. My apologies! I had forgotten!”
He went back to the writing-table and thrust his hand into the drawer. He drew out a small cardboard box and removed the lid.
“Five!” he said. “Yes! Five!”
He carried the box across the room to Frobisher,
