what’s coming now?”

The lips lengthened into a smile, the lower jaw dropped, and from her
mouth came the laughter we had heard just now through the gramophone. And then the dead mouth spoke, with a mumble of unintelligible words, a
bubbling torrent of incoherent syllables. “I’ll turn the full current on,” he said. The head jerked and raised itself, the lips struggled for utterance,
and suddenly she spoke swiftly and distinctly. “Just when he’d got his razor out,” she said, “I came up behind him,
and put my hand over his face, and bent his neck back over his chair
with all my strength. And I picked up his razor and with one slit--ha,
ha, that was the way to pay him out. And I didn’t lose my head, but I
lathered his chin well, and put the razor in his hand, and left him
there, and went downstairs and cooked his dinner for him, and then an
hour afterwards, as he didn’t come down, up I went to see what kept
him. It was a nasty cut in his neck that had kept him----”

Horton suddenly withdrew the two poles of the battery from her head,
and even in the middle of her word the mouth ceased working, and lay
rigid and open. “By God!” he said. “There’s a tale for dead lips to tell. But we’ll get
more yet.”

Exactly what happened then I never knew. It appeared to me that as he
still leaned over the table with the two poles of the battery in his
hand, his foot slipped, and he fell forward across it. There came a
sharp crack, and a flash of blue dazzling light, and there he lay face
downwards, with arms that just stirred and quivered. With his fall the
two poles that must momentarily have come into contact with his hand
were jerked away again, and I lifted him and laid him on the floor. But
his lips as well as those of the dead woman had spoken for the last
time. The Outcast




The Outcast


When Mrs. Acres bought the Gate-house at Tarleton, which had stood so
long without a tenant, and appeared in that very agreeable and lively
little town as a resident, sufficient was already known about her past
history to entitle her to friendliness and sympathy. Hers had been a
tragic story, and the account of the inquest held on her husband’s
body, when, within a month of their marriage, he had shot himself
before her eyes, was recent enough, and of as full a report in the
papers as to enable our little community of Tarleton to remember and
run over the salient grimness of the case without the need of inventing
any further details--which, otherwise, it would have been quite capable
of doing. Briefly, then, the facts had been as follows. Horace Acres appeared to
have been a heartless fortune-hunter--a handsome, plausible wretch,
ten years younger than his wife. He had made no secret to his friends
of not being in love with her but of having a considerable regard for
her more than considerable fortune. But hardly had he married her than
his indifference developed into violent dislike, accompanied by some
mysterious, inexplicable dread of her. He hated and feared her, and on
the morning of the very day when he had put an end to himself he had
begged her to divorce him; the case he promised would be undefended,
and he would make it indefensible. She, poor soul, had refused to grant
this; for, as corroborated by the evidence of friends and servants,
she was utterly devoted to him, and stated with that quiet dignity
which distinguished her throughout this ordeal, that she hoped that he
was the victim of some miserable but temporary derangement, and would
come to his right mind again. He had dined that night at his club,
leaving his month-old bride to pass the evening alone, and had returned
between eleven and twelve that night in a state of vile intoxication. He had gone up to her bedroom, pistol in hand, had locked the door,
and his voice was heard screaming and yelling at her. Then followed
the sound of one shot. On the table in his dressing-room was found a
half-sheet of paper, dated that day, and this was read out in court. “The horror of my position,” he had written, “is beyond description
and endurance. I can bear it no longer: my soul sickens....” The
jury, without leaving the court, returned the verdict that he had
committed suicide while temporarily insane, and the coroner, at their
request, expressed their sympathy and his own with the poor lady, who,
as testified on all hands, had treated her husband with the utmost
tenderness and affection. For six months Bertha Acres had travelled abroad, and then in the
autumn she had bought Gate-house at Tarleton, and settled down to the
absorbing trifles which make life in a small country town so busy and
strenuous. *       *       *       *       *

Our modest little dwelling is within a stone’s throw of the Gate-house;
and when, on the return of my wife and myself from two months in
Scotland, we found that Mrs. Acres was installed as a neighbour, Madge
lost no time in going to call on her. She returned with a series of
pleasant impressions. Mrs. Acres, still on the sunny slope that leads
up to the table-land of life which begins at forty years, was extremely
handsome, cordial, and charming in manner, witty and agreeable, and
wonderfully well dressed. Before the conclusion of her call Madge,
in country fashion, had begged her to dispose with formalities, and,
instead of a frigid return of the call, to dine with us quietly next
day. Did she play bridge? That being so, we would just be a party of
four; for her brother, Charles Alington, had proposed himself for a
visit.... I listened to this with sufficient attention to grasp what Madge was
saying, but what I was really thinking about was a chess-problem which
I was attempting to solve. But at this point I became acutely aware
that her stream of pleasant impressions dried up suddenly, and she
became stonily silent. She shut speech off as by the turn of a tap, and
glowered at the fire, rubbing the back of one hand with the fingers of
another, as is her habit in perplexity. “Go on,” I said. She got up, suddenly restless. “All I have been telling you is literally and soberly true,” she said. “I thought Mrs. Acres charming and witty and good-looking and friendly. What more could you ask from a new acquaintance? And then, after I had
asked her to dinner, I suddenly found for no earthly reason that I very
much disliked her; I couldn’t bear her.”

“You said she was wonderfully well dressed,” I permitted myself to
remark.... If the Queen took the Knight----

“Don’t be silly!” said Madge. “I am wonderfully well dressed too. But behind all her agreeableness and charm and good looks I suddenly
felt there was something else which I detested and dreaded. It’s no
use asking me what it was, because I haven’t the slightest idea. If
I knew what it was, the thing would explain itself. But I felt a
horror--nothing vivid, nothing close, you understand, but somewhere in
the background. Can the mind have a ‘turn,’ do you think, just as the
body can, when for a second or two you suddenly feel giddy?