on my legs
again, and after a while he helped me to begin business at San Domingo,
under my present name, Peytral, which, in fact, was my mother's maiden
name. There came a sudden push in trade with the United States about
this time, and I went into my affairs with the more energy to distract
my thoughts. In fifteen years--to cut a long story short--I had made the
small competency which I have brought to England with me, with the idea
of a peaceful end to my life and my wife's; though I doubt if I am to
have that now. I doubt it, and I will tell you why. Mr. Hewitt, when I
went away without warning on Thursday night I was dogging Mayes!"

Hewitt nodded, with no sign of surprise. "And the man killed in the
barn?"

"That is one more of his thousand crimes, without a doubt. Though it
differs. Do you know what drew my attention to the murders of the men
Denson and Mason, and so set me thinking? In each case the murder was by
strangulation, and the medical evidence at the inquests showed that it
was effected by means of a tourniquet. In fact, in the second case, the
tourniquet itself was left behind."

"Yes," Hewitt replied, "I loosened it myself--but, unfortunately, I was
too late."

"Well, now," Peytral went on, "in Hayti, in my time, Mayes's enemies had
a habit of dying suddenly in the night, by strangulation, and a
tourniquet was always the instrument. And just as murder was quite a
popular procedure in that accursed place, so strangulation by tourniquet
became for a while the most common form of the crime. It was rapid,
effective, and silent, you see. So that a murder by tourniquet, quite an
unknown thing in this country, took my attention at once, and when
another followed it so soon, I felt something like certainty. And the
triangle was suggestive, too."

"Were Mayes's victims marked in that way in Hayti?"

"No, there was no mark. But"--here Mr. Peytral's features assumed a
curious expression--"there are things which are not believed in this
country--which are laughed at, in fact, and called superstition. You
know something of Hayti, and therefore you must have heard of
Voodoo--the witchcraft and devil-worship of the West Indies. Well, Mayes
was as deep in that as he was in every other species of wickedness. It
sounds foolish, perhaps, here in civilised England, and you may laugh,
but I tell you that Mayes could make men do as he wished, with their
consent or against it! And he used a thing--it was generally k