The Agony Column

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."