I do not propose to enter into details, but so it was that Roger Coverly died.  Following a brief sojourn abroad, we presently returned again to the Bell House.  This gratification of her bloodthirsty desires had done no more than to whet the feline appetite of Nahemah, and she forced me to impose new and almost insupportable conditions upon Sir Burnham, with the result, as is known, that from being a very wealthy man he became an impoverished one.

I even held a mortgage on Friar’s Park on behalf of Nahemah; for by this time I had fully recognized the fact that like a second Frankenstein, I had raised up a monster which sooner or later must devour me.

Her indiscretions threatened daily to result in exposure; and after the death of Sir Burnham, which occurred a short time later, these increased in number and audacity.  The dying baronet had impressed upon his wife the necessity of following my guidance in all things.  Undoubtedly he died hoping that Lady Coverly might live out her days in ignorance of the grim secret of the Bell House.  This dying wish of his was gratified.  The loss of her son, so closely followed by that of her husband, prostrated Lady Coverly in a mental illness from which she never recovered, although I exercised all my skill in an endeavor to restore her reason.  She spent the remainder of her days in a semi-comatose state which so closely resembled death that to this present moment I do not know the exact hour at which dissolution took place.

In the man Hawkins, once a game-keeper of Sir Burnham’s, I found an instrument ready to my hand.  I closed the Park to the public and took all those precautions for preserving my secret which prudence dictated:  this at the cost of a reputation in Upper Crossleys which few men would have survived, but which troubled me not at all, since it left me undisturbed to those studies which to me were everything.

The death of Sir Burnham, however, had raised a new danger; for in the person of Sir Marcus Coverly, the heir, I perceived a formidable enemy, who because of his wealth might redeem Friar’s Park, and, because of the fact that he belonged to a cadet line, might care nothing for the skeleton in Sir Burnham’s cupboard.

I have said that science is callous, and I admit that it needed little prompting from Nahemah to urge me to take the next step.  It is worthy of note, however, from a scientific point of view, that whilst I was prompted by motives of expediency, she was actuated solely by a lust to destroy everything that bore the name of Coverly.

My experiments for some time past had been directed to the discovery of new instruments of warfare.  Particularly I had addressed myself to the preparation of a gas which should possess the peculiar properties of hlangkuna, and by inhalation affect the lung tissues, thus producing instantaneous results.  In this I had succeeded a short time prior to Sir Burnham’s death, and one of the future belligerents had approached me.