CHAPTER IX
THE NET CLOSES
Léontine had risen from her chair and was standing with her body bent forward, her finger tips poised on the table, her eyes wild with horror. When I turned and told her that Ivan was dead she sprang back, overturning her chair; then swept around the table and dropped on her knees at the head of the couch. Here was no acting, as one could plainly see; and, in fact, Ivan himself had solved the mystery in his last words.
Léontine seemed daft with grief and dismay. "Ivan!" she cried. "Oh, Ivan—my dear! Speak to me! Speak to me!" She stared back at me over her shoulder. "Frank! Frank!" she groaned. "Is there nothing we can do?"
"It is too late," I answered. "The man is dead. Chu-Chu poisoned the ice with prussic acid or some of its deadly combinations. He bribed or coerced Victor. You will never see the man again."
She buried her face in her arms, leaning against the body. One might almost have thought that she had loved Ivan, but I knew that was not so. She liked and admired him, and the two had been not only close associates in their criminal enterprises, but staunch friends as well. More than that, I had always suspected Ivan of a hopeless passion for Léontine. I think, still, that he may have been the only man who had ever loved her in a really clean
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