In that room in Scotland Yard a tense silence fell. For the first time
we were all conscious of a tiny clock on the inspector's desk, for it
ticked now with a loudness sudden and startling. I gazed at the faces
about me. Bray's showed a momentary surprise--then the mask fell again.
Lieutenant Fraser-Freer was plainly amazed. On the face of Colonel
Hughes I saw what struck me as an open sneer.
"Go on, Countess," he smiled.
She shrugged her shoulders and turned toward him a disdainful back. Her
eyes were all for Bray.
"It's very brief, the story," she said hastily--I thought almost
apologetically. "I had known the captain in Rangoon. My husband was in
business there--an exporter of rice--and Captain Fraser-Freer came often
to our house. We--he was a charming man, the captain--"
"Go on!" ordered Hughes.
"We fell desperately in love," said the countess. "When he returned
to England, though supposedly on a furlough, he told me he would never
return to Rangoon. He expected a transfer to Egypt. So it was arranged
that I should desert my husband and follow on the next boat. I did
so--believing in the captain--thinking he really cared for me--I gave up
everything for him. And then--"
Her voice broke and she took out a handkerchief. Again that odor of
lilacs in the room.
"For a time I saw the captain often in London; and then I began to
notice a change. Back among his own kind, with the lonely days in
India a mere memory--he seemed no longer to--to care for me. Then--last
Thursday morning--he called on me to tell me that he was through; that
he would never see me again--in fact, that he was to marry a girl of his
own people who had been waiting--"
The woman looked piteously about at us.
"I was desperate," she pleaded. "I had given up all that life held
for me--given it up for a man who now looked at me coldly and spoke
of marrying another. Can you wonder that I went in the evening to his
rooms--went to plead with him--to beg, almost on my knees? It was no
use. He was done with me--he said that over and over. Overwhelmed with
blind rage and despair, I snatched up that knife from the table and
plunged it into his heart. At once I was filled with remorse. I--"
"One moment," broke in Hughes. "You may keep the details of your
subsequent actions until later. I should like to compliment you,
Countess. You tell it better each time."