“I took it out of its box very gingerly and put it on. It didn’t want any strings. For it fitted well over the back of my head and quite closely over my face. I looked at myself in the mirror. It was incredible how completely another personality had been fitted on to me with the mask. My own eyes were there shining through the long curled delicate eyelashes, but I could not have identified them myself. I had only to wear some dress no one at Suvlac had seen me in, alter it to give me a look of greater age, and with a mask like that over my head and face my own mother could not have recognised me.
“Yes, but I couldn’t get a mask like that. It was the work of a real artist, a mask as finished as an ode of Horace. And then in a flash the inspiration did come. If I could take Diana’s place! The dress itself showed that she was to take an actual part in the celebration. She was to be the acolyte who swings the censer. If I could take her place—and get away scot-free afterwards! Why, I should be mistress of the position and Diana would be unhurt. I could threaten, I could expose, if the law had a punishment for this particular abomination, I could help the law to inflict it—and Diana would not be touched. If I could only take her place! And the moment after the inspiration came, and whilst I was still standing before the mirror looking through the eye-holes of the mask, came the means of realising it. They just unrolled themselves out in front of me.
“I won’t say that I wasn’t desperately frightened. I was. I knew that I should receive very little mercy from Evelyn Devenish once I was helpless in her hands. I shivered as I stood there. But it wasn’t all from fear. There was excitement in it too.
“I took off the mask—reluctantly—for I fancied that with its removal my inspiration would vanish too, and my plan become an absurdity. But they both remained with me. I held the mask in my hand until I felt sure of them. Then I replaced it in its white cardboard box, set everything in order, and slipped out of the room. The house was still empty. I went down to a bench at the bottom of the garden and, sitting there, worked out my plan step by step, trying to think of every flaw in it, of every possibility of failure. But, of course, the dreadful crime which did ruin it altogether never entered into my mind.
“That evening was of good augury. I had made a guess that Evelyn Devenish was a woman who would never move without a little store of soporifics. I told her after dinner that I was sleeping badly at Suvlac, but that since I didn’t have a doctor’s prescription, I didn’t see how I was going to get a sleeping-draught which it would be worth while to take. Evelyn Devenish first of all laughed contemptuously at my innocence. But she ceased to laugh. She looked at me curiously, and then with a gleam of pleasure.
“ ‘But, of course, I can help you,’ she cried. So I was right in my guess. ‘I have some chloral in crystals. I’ll fetch you a few,’ and she hurried off to her room.
“I think it had come into her head that a good strong sleeping-draught taken by me on the evening of Wednesday week would be a sound proposition. I should be kept out of the way very completely. I was the more sure of that when she returned with a little paper packet. For she particularly insisted that I should let her know in the morning what effect the crystals had had.
“ ‘You must dissolve them in water, of course,’ she said. ‘I have given you quite a small dose to be on the safe side. But it’s important that I should know tomorrow how it has worked.’
“I promised to let her know, and took the crystals to my room. But once there, I was frightened to use them. Yet I had got to use them. I knew nothing about sleeping-draughts. I have slept like a baby all my life. I hadn’t the slightest idea whether it was a weak dose or a strong dose—or even too strong a dose which had been given to me. Yes, that fear was unpleasantly vivid to me. I watched the crystals disappearing in the water under the light of the lamp by my bed and I wondered whether I was not dissolving enough to put me out of the way for good and all. Evelyn’s hard eyes had held so mocking a smile: she had looked me over with such complete contempt. On the other hand, she was probably experimenting—just as I was. She was finding out how much of the chloral was required to induce sleep so profound that nothing would disturb it on the night of Wednesday week—just as I was. I got into bed and drank the glassful of water in a hurry. I was in a panic when I had done it, and I tried quite uselessly not to sleep at all. ‘I won’t,’ I said to myself. ‘I won’t,’ and the next thing I remember was looking at my watch in broad daylight and
