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Updated: May 23, 2025
"At what hour?" "The light is there yet." That he was about to make some strange revelation I divined. I detected the fact, too, that he believed this revelation would be unpleasant to me; and in this I found an explanation of his earlier behaviour. He had seemed distraught and ill at ease when he had joined Madame de Staemer, Miss Beverley, and myself in the drawing room.
Indeed it more closely resembled a studio, being partly lighted by a most curious dome. It was furnished in a manner quite un-English, but very luxuriously. A magnificent oaken staircase communicated with a gallery on the left, and at the foot of this staircase, in a mechanical chair which she managed with astonishing dexterity, sat Madame de Staemer.
"You approve of the efforts of my chef?" said the Colonel. "He is worthy of his employer," I replied. Colonel Menendez bowed in his cavalierly fashion and Madame de Staemer positively beamed upon me. "You shall speak for him," said the Spaniard. "He was with me in Cuba, but has no reputation in London. There are hotels that would snap him up." I looked at the speaker in surprise.
"Yes. That was where I first met Madame de Staemer. She used to be very wealthy, you see, and she established this hospital in France at her own expense, and I was one of her assistants for a time. She lost both her husband and her fortune in the war, and as if that were not bad enough, lost the use of her limbs, too." "Poor woman," I said. "I had no idea her life had been so tragic.
For instance, as a result of the post-mortem examination of Colonel Menendez, no trace of disease was discovered in any of the organs, but from information supplied by his solicitors, Harley succeeded in tracing the Paris specialist to whom Madame de Staemer had referred; and he confirmed her statement in every particular.
Harley and I had obtained his official permission to withdraw, and the physician was visiting Madame de Staemer, who lay in a state of utter prostration. "What do you mean, Harley?" "I mean that he will presently make some tragic blunder. Good God, Knox, to think that this man had sought my aid, and that I stood by idly whilst he walked out to his death. I shall never forgive myself."
She seems to be unaware of the presence of everyone except Miss Beverley. The only words she has spoken since recovering consciousness have been, 'Don't leave me!" "Hm," muttered Harley. "You have not attended Madame de Staemer before, doctor?" "No," was the reply, "this is the first time I have entered Cray's Folly since it was occupied by Sir James Appleton."
"Madame de Staemer is a very remarkable woman," said Paul Harley. "Remarkable?" replied the Colonel. "The spirit of all the old chivalry of France is imprisoned within her, I think." He passed cigarettes around, of a long kind resembling cheroots and wrapped in tobacco leaf.
The atmosphere of Cray's Folly seemed to become charged with unrest. Of Madame de Staemer and Miss Beverley I saw nothing up to the time that I retired to dress. Having dressed I walked into Harley's room, anxious to learn if he had formed any theory to account for the singular business which had brought us to Surrey.
It was a pose which he often adopted when in reality he was keenly interested in his surroundings. It baffled me, however, as effectively as it baffled others, and whilst at one moment I decided that he was studying Colonel Menendez, in the next I became convinced that Madame de Staemer was the subject upon his mental dissecting table.
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