sure she said nothing that would reveal my part in the―ah―enterprise. But Maurice, coming home unexpectedly, came to the bedroom door just as Gabrielle pressed the trigger, the tiniest fraction of a second too late to save his wife's life. His subsequent desire to wipe all memory of the deed from the child's mind made any further effort, or anxiety, on my part unnecessary. I did follow him here, and I used Gabrielle's love for me and her hatred of him―which I had carefully cultivated by deliberately clumsy attempts to make her forgive him for killing her mother-to persuade him to marry me, so that Gabrielle, whom he loved, could be kept close to him. The day he married Lily I swore I would take him away from her―and I did―and I hope my dear sister in hell knows it!"
Her face had changed as she talked―or chanted―her eyes growing wilder, the wildness spreading down from them, making her face less and less human. By now the last trace of sanity was gone from voice and features. She spun to face the girl across the room, flung an arm out toward her, screamed. shrilly:
"You're her daughter, and you're cursed with the same rotten soul and black blood that she and I and all the Dains have had; you're cursed with your mother's death on your hands before you were five; you're cursed with the warped mind and the need for drugs that I've given you in pay for your silly love since you were a baby. Your life will be black as Lily's and mine were black; the lives of those you touch will be black as Maurice's was black; and the—"
"Stop!" Collinson gasped brokenly. "Make her stop!"
Gabrielle Leggett, both hands to her ears, her face twisted with terror, shrieked once—horribly—and fell forward out of her chair.
Reddy was young at the game, but O'Gar and I should have known better than to lose sight of Mrs. Leggett, even for a half-second, no matter how strongly Collinson's gasp and the girl's shriek drew our attention. But we did look at them―if for less than a half-second―and that was long enough.
When we looked at Mrs. Leggett again, she had a gun in her hand, and she had taken a step toward the door.
Nobody was between her and the door. Nobody was behind her, because her back was to the door and by turning she had brought Fitzstephan into her field of vision.
She glared savagely over the black gun, crazy eyes darting from one to an other of us, taking another step backward, snarling:
"Don't you move!"
Pat Reddy shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. I frowned at him, shaking my head. The hall or stairs were better places in which to take her alive. In here somebody would die.
She went over the sill, blew her breath between her teeth with a hissing, spitting sound, and was gone down the hall.
Owen Fitzstephan was first through the door after her. The policeman got in my way, but I was second out. The woman had reached the head of the stairs, at the other end of the dim hall, with Fitzstephan, not far behind, rapidly overtaking her.
He caught her on the mid-floor landing just as I reached the top of the stairs. He had one of her arms pinned to her body, but the hand holding the gun was free. He grabbed at it and missed.
She twisted the muzzle in to his body as I—with my head bent to miss the edge of the floor—leaped down at them.
I landed on them just in time, crashing into them, smashing them into the corner of the wall, sending her bullet, meant for the sorrel-haired man, ripping into a step.
None of us was standing up. I caught with both hands at the flash of her gun, missed, and had her by the waist. Close to my chin, the novelist's
