Page:Weird Tales Volume 14 Issue 2 (1929-08).djvu/23

"I had had enough of Switzerland, and we returned to Mourillon the shortest way possible; but, alas! the good southern sun was not enough to cure Maria-Luce. She had always told me that her lungs were not very strong, and from that day on she began to cough. And when at last, a few years later, she stopped coughing she was dead."

Dorat coughed at that to show that he was still very much alive.

"Listen, poor old Chaulieu," he said, "we're all sorry, but as far as Maria-Luce's death is concerned, it is a misfortune which might have occurred under entirely different circumstances, after a damp walk in the woods, for example. The truth of the matter, as far as your story goes, is that they played a rotten joke on you, that's all."

"No!" Chaulieu growled; "not at all. . . . The story only begins to be interesting from now on!

"The following year the Italian papers, and finally newspapers all over the world, were full of the disappearance of a man and a woman. And that is how we knew that our two Italians had been Antonio Perretti and Countess Olivia Orsino. If we had had any doubts, which was impossible because the resemblance between them both was perfect, we would have been convinced by this fact: that they had been traced as far as Soleure, and there the trail ended!

"When Maria-Luce and I learned of this we looked at each other in silence. and the same terrible thought struck us both. The unfortunate pair had wanted to make fun of us. They had hidden in a comer of the hall and after our departure had slipped into our room, where the Scheffei's had murdered them in our place!

"Well, what do you say to that?" he asked, enjoying the astonishment of his friends. "Not so bad, eh? Wait. . . .

"Remembering all we had seen and beard in the vault, and especially Madame Scheffer's frenzied illustration with the goad and pitchfork, we became more and more convinced that these people had gone from pretense to actuality . . . I mean to say, they had carried the reconstruction of the crimes of the 'Inn of Blood' to the finish!

"'Do you remember,' Maria-Luce said to me, 'do you remember how she stared at the countess?' Here Maria-Luce shivered and went on, 'It was terrifying! One might have believed that the countess was already her prey, chained to the wall like the "pretty little brunette" . . . and that she was scratching her eyes out with the pitchfork! Ah, poor wretches! The ruffians may have tortured her, too, for fifteen days, having already cooked Antonio. And when I think . . . when I think that if it hadn't been for that trouble over the coupé, they would never have played that trick as a revenge! . . . It was we who——'

"'Don't think about it,' I exclaimed. But the matter could not rest there. Maria-Luce had nightmares about it at night, and so did I. At last, to get rid of the obsession, we did our duty. We returned to Soleure, and our first move was to go directly to the police, where we told the whole story from beginning to end.

"An inquest followed which brought immediate results. All the details we gave, all the incidents just as they had happened before our eyes, were confirmed. . . . And the Scheffers did not deny a thing. They did not seem in the least phased by it. And yet there were several questions which might well have embarrassed them; but Scheffer had an answer to everything.

"For example, when the judge asked: 'What did the words Monsieur Chaulieu heard mean: "Which one shall we begin on?"' he answered