She said she loved Commodus so
much that she was willing to save him even at the cost of her own life.
Eclectus and Laetus acclaimed her plan and were overjoyed at their
opportunity, for all three hated Furfur. Yet, all three shrank from going
into the room with Narcissus. He, entering alone, mistook the two
sleepers, who had changed clothes, and by mistake for Furfur, strangled
Commodus. After his victim was indubitably dead and past any possibility
of reviving he summoned his accomplices and, when Marcia shrieked and
fainted, for the first time realized his blunder.
Then, frantic, he seized Furfur and strangled him to death long before
Eclectus had revived Marcia from her swoon.
As Agathemer told it to me all this came out in a haphazard tangle of
unfinished sentences, interruptions, fresh starts, questions, answers,
repetitions and explanations.
Meanwhile the day had dawned gray and lowering. Of all my strange
experiences none were more eery than that talk with Agathemer, beginning
in the dark and, with his form and features and expressions effaced,
gradually becoming more and more visible. And towards the end of his
disclosures he checked himself in the middle of a word and, raising his
hand, whispered:
"Hark!"
Silent and tense, we listened.
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