“Nothing will do him any good,” I said.

“Curious house this,” went on the doctor, “It belongs to a curious sort of woman, too.  I happened to see her once or twice.  I shouldn’t wonder if she were to raise considerable trouble in the track of her pretty feet as she goes along.  I believe you know her well.”

“Yes.”

“Curious people in the house, too.  There was a Carlist officer here, a lean, tall, dark man, who couldn’t sleep.  He consulted me once.  Do you know what became of him?”

“No.”

The doctor had finished wiping his hands and flung the towel far away.

“Considerable nervous over-strain.  Seemed to have a restless brain.  Not a good thing, that.  For the rest a perfect gentleman.  And this Spaniard here, do you know him?”

“Enough not to care what happens to him,” I said, “except for the trouble he might cause to the Carlist sympathizers here, should the police get hold of this affair.”

“Well, then, he must take his chance in the seclusion of that conservatory sort of place where you have put him.  I’ll try to find somebody we can trust to look after him.  Meantime, I will leave the case to you.”

CHAPTER VIII

Directly I had shut the door after the doctor I started shouting for Therese.  “Come down at once, you wretched hypocrite,” I yelled at the foot of the stairs in a sort of frenzy as though I had been a second Ortega.  Not even an echo answered me; but all of a sudden a small flame flickered descending from the upper darkness and Therese appeared on the first floor landing carrying a lighted candle in front of a livid, hard face, closed against remorse, compassion, or mercy by the meanness of her righteousness and of her rapacious instincts.  She was fully dressed in that abominable brown stuff with motionless folds, and as I watched her coming down step by step she might have been made of wood.  I stepped back and pointed my finger at the darkness of the passage leading to the studio.  She passed within a foot of me, her pale eyes staring straight ahead, her face still with disappointment and fury.  Yet it is only my surmise.  She might have been made thus inhuman by the force of an invisible purpose.  I waited a moment, then, stealthily, with extreme caution, I opened the door of the so-called Captain Blunt’s room.

The glow of embers was all but out.  It was cold and dark in there; but before I closed the door behind me the dim light from the hall showed me Dona Rita standing on the very same spot where I had left her, statuesque in her night-dress.  Even after I shut the door she loomed up enormous, indistinctly rigid and inanimate.  I picked up the candelabra, groped for a candle all over the carpet, found one, and lighted it.  All that time Dona Rita didn’t stir.  When I turned towards her she seemed to be slowly awakening from a trance.  She was deathly pale and by contrast the melted, sapphire-blue of her eyes looked black as coal.  They moved a little in my direction, incurious, recognizing me slowly.  But when they had recognized me completely she raised her hands and hid her face in them.  A whole minute or more passed.  Then I said in a low tone:  “Look at me,” and she let them fall slowly as if accepting the inevitable.