They remained that way without moving during an infinite interval. The only sounds were the thuds above them, and the faint steady hissing of the flames. The chill in the cellar had long since vanished, to be replaced by an insidious stuffy heat that choked their nostrils.
And then she screamed.
Oh, blessed Lord, thought Ellery, my trick has worked. As if it matters! Why couldn’t she stick it out until the end? But then she was always a poor, weak fool impressed with her own stupid cunning.
She screamed again. “Yes, I did it! I did it, and I don’t care! I did it and I would do it over again — damn his soul, wherever he is!”
She gulped for breath and a mad glint came into her eyes. “What’s the difference?” she shrieked. “We’re all dead, anyway! Dead and in hell!” She flung her arm at the petrified figure of Mrs. Carreau, crouched over the trembling twins. “I killed — him — and Mark because he knew! He was in love with that... that...” Her voice gurgled off in an incoherent mutter. And it rose again. “She needn’t deny it. That whispering, whispering, eternal whispering—”
“No,” whispered Mrs. Carreau. “It was just about the children, I tell you. There was never anything between us—”
“It was my revenge!” cried the woman. “I made it seem as if those — those sons of hers had killed him... to make her suffer, to make her suffer as she made me suffer. But Mark spoiled the first one. When he said he knew who did it, I had to kill him...”
They let her rave. She was completely mad now; there was froth at the corners of her mouth.
“Yes, and I stole them too!” she shouted. “You thought I couldn’t stand it, putting that ring there—”
“Well, you couldn’t,” croaked Ellery.
She paid no attention. “That’s why he retired, after... He found out — about me. He tried to cure me, take me away from the world, from temptation.” Tears were falling now. “Yes, and he was succeeding, too,” she screamed, “when they came — that woman and her devil’s litter. And the rings, the rings... I don’t care! I’m glad to die — glad, do you hear? Glad!”
It was Mrs. Xavier, the old Mrs. Xavier of the smoking black eyes and heaving breast, tall and swaying in her tattered gown, her skin streaked with tears and grime.
She drew a deep, shuddering breath, looking quickly about her, and then before any of them could move, to their horror she sprang across the cleared space, bowled the petrified Inspector to one side so that he staggered to keep his balance, and scrambled up the cellar stairs with the agility of insane desperation. Before Ellery could follow her she had torn open the cellar door, stopped short, screamed once more, and then plunged through the burst of smoke directly into the flames in the corridor outside.
Ellery was after her in a flash. The smoke and fire made him reel back, coughing and choking. He called urgently, called and coughed and called again in the inferno before him. There was no reply.
And so, after a while, he pushed the door shut and crammed the fragments of Ann Forrest’s dress back in the crack at the bottom. The Inspector staggered up with more water, a stumbling automaton.
“Why,” whispered Miss Forrest with surprise, “she’s... she’s...” She laughed hysterically and flung herself into Dr. Holmes’s arms, sobbing and laughing and choking in horrible sequence.
The Queens came slowly down the stairs.
“But, El,” croaked the Inspector plaintively, like a child, “how — why — I don’t understand.” He passed his sooty hand over his forehead, wincing.
“It was there all the time,” muttered Ellery; his own eyes were dead. “John Xavier loved trinkets, had drawers full of them. But not a single ring. Why?” He licked his lips. “It could only have been, when I thought of kleptomania, because the one nearest and dearest to him — who but his wife? was the kleptomaniac. He was keeping her particular temptation away from her.”
“Mrs. Xavier!” shrilled Mrs. Wheary suddenly, rigid on the coal heap. Her body was shaking spasmodically.
Ellery sank upon the bottom step and buried his face in his hands. “The futility of the whole damned thing,” he said bitterly. “You were right from the beginning, dad — right for the wrong reasons. The extraordinary thing is that when she was accused of her husband’s murder the other day she confessed. Good God, don’t you understand? She confessed! Her confession was sincere. She wasn’t shielding anybody. She caved in, poor weak creature that she — was.” He shivered. “What an idiot I was. By demonstrating that the evidence upon which she was accused was false evidence, I cleared her and gave her the opportunity of capitalizing her exoneration, of feeding our suspicion that she was shielding somebody. How she must have laughed at me!”
“She isn’t laughing — now,” said Mrs. Carreau hoarsely.
Ellery did not hear. “But I was right about the frame-up,” he muttered. “She was framed — by Mark Xavier, as I explained. But the amazing thing about it — the most remarkable part of it all — was that Mark Xavier in framing Mrs. Xavier was unconsciously framing the real murderer! By sheer accident. Don’t you see the ghastly irony of that? Putting the noose about the neck of the guilty person when he thought her innocent! Oh, he really thought the twins guilty when he first framed her, I’m convinced of that. Maybe later on he came to suspect the truth; I think he did. Remember that day we saw him trying to get into Mrs. Xavier’s bedroom? He had realized, from her manner when she had confessed to the crime, that by accident he had framed the right one, and wanted to implicate her even more by leaving some other damaging clue. We’ll never know. It was she who left the jack of diamonds in Mark’s hand after poisoning him; he never had a chance. I never believed that — that a dying man would... could...” He stopped, his head hanging.
Then he looked up and stared at them. He tried to smile. Smith had sunk into a terrified stupor, and Mrs. Wheary was thrashing about on the coal, moaning piteously.
“Well,” he said, with an effort. “I’ve got that off my chest. I suppose now...”
He stopped again, and even as he stopped they all jumped to their feet, babbling: “What was that? What was that?”
It had been a reverberating clap, a sound that shook the house to its foundations and echoed faintly against the surrounding hills.
The Inspector was up the stairs in three bounds. He jerked open the door, shielding his eyes with his arm from the flames. He peered out and up.
He caught a glimpse of the sky — the upper floors had tumbled in long before, charred ruins. Before his feet there was the most peculiar phenomenon — a boiling of millions of little spears. From their sharp points came a steady hissing. Clouds of vapor, more evanescent than smoke, were rising all about.
He closed the door and came down the stairs with infinite care, as if every step were a prayer and a benediction. When he got to the bottom they saw that his face was whiter than paper and that there were tears in his eyes.
“What is it?” croaked Ellery.
The Inspector said brokenly: “A miracle.”
“A miracle?” Ellery gasped with stupid open mouth.
“It’s raining.”