The Law and the Lady

I started to my feet, and looked at Miserrimus Dexter. I was too much agitated to be able to speak to him.

My utmost expectations had not prepared me for the tone of absolute conviction in which he had spoken. At the best, I had anticipated that he might, by the barest chance, agree with me in suspecting Mrs. Beauly. And now his own lips had said it, without hesitation or reserve! "There isn't the shadow of a doubt: Mrs. Beauly poisoned her."

"Sit down," he said, quietly. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Nobody can hear us in this room."

I sat down again, and recovered myself a little.

"Have you never told any one else what you have just told me?" was the first question that I put to him.

"Never. No one else suspected her."

"Not even the lawyers?"

"Not even the lawyers. There is no legal evidence against Mrs. Beauly. There is nothing but moral certainty."

"Surely you might have found the evidence if you had tried?"

He laughed at the idea.

"Look at me!" he said. "How is a man to hunt up evidence who is tied to this chair? Besides, there were other difficulties in my way. I am not generally in the habit of needlessly betraying myself--I am a cautious man, though you may not have noticed it. But my immeasurable hatred of Mrs. Beauly was not to be concealed. If eyes can tell secrets, she must have discovered, in my eyes, that I hungered and thirsted to see her in the hangman's hands. From first to last, I tell you, Mrs. Borgia-Beauly was on her guard against me. Can I describe her cunning? All my resources of language are not equal to the task. Take the degrees of comparison to give you a faint idea of it: I am positively cunning; the devil is comparatively cunning; Mrs. Beauly is superlatively cunning. No! no! If she is ever discovered, at this distance of time, it will not be done by a man--it will be done by a woman: a woman whom she doesn't suspect; a woman who can watch her with the patience of a tigress in a state of starvation--"

"Say a woman like Me!" I broke out. "I am ready to try."

His eyes glittered; his teeth showed themselves viciously under his mustache; he drummed fiercely with both hands on the arms of his chair.

"Do you really mean it?" he asked.

"Put me in your position," I answered. "Enlighten me with your moral certainty (as you call it)--and you shall see!"