The only thing was to release his self–pity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die.

So Mrs Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. ‘I would never have believed it of her ladyship, I wouldn’t!’ she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something to weep for.

Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him.

‘Now, don’t you fret, Sir Clifford!’ she said, in a luxury of emotion. ‘Now, don’t you fret, don’t, you’ll only do yourself an injury!’

His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. ‘There, there! There, there! Don’t you fret, then, then don’t you! Don’t you fret!’ she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his dusky–blond hair and said: ‘There! There! There! There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!’

And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale–blue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last.

So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: ‘Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you’ve come down to!’ And finally he even went to sleep, like a child. And she felt worn out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! Such a come–down! So shameful! And it WAS so upsetting as well.

After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs Bolton. He would hold her h, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said! ‘Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!’ And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same! ‘Do kiss me!’ and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery.

And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna–worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation, the exultation of perversity, of being a child when he was a man.

“You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and intuition,” said he.

Baynes flushed with pleasure.

“I’ve had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week. Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight. But he must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet broke away. However, your man picked her up, and it all ends well. We can’t arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get a statement the better.”

“Every minute she gets stronger,” said Holmes, glancing at the governess. “But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?”

“Henderson,” the inspector answered, “is Don Murillo, once called the Tiger of San Pedro.”

The Tiger of San Pedro! The whole history of the man came back to me in a flash. He had made his name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to civilization. Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering people for ten or twelve years. His name was a terror through all Central America. At the end of that time there was a universal rising against him. But he was as cunning as he was cruel, and at the first whisper of coming trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship which was manned by devoted adherents. It was an empty palace which was stormed by the insurgents next day. The dictator, his two children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them. From that moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity had been a frequent subject for comment in the European press.

“Yes, sir, Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro,” said Baynes. “If you look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and white, same as in the note, Mr. Holmes. Henderson he called himself, but I traced him back, Paris and Rome and Madrid to Barcelona, where his ship came in in ‘86. They’ve been looking for him all the time for their revenge, but it is only now that they have begun to find him out.”

“They discovered him a year ago,” said Miss Burnet, who had sat up and was now intently following the conversation. “Once already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him. Now, again, it is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the monster goes safe. But another will come, and yet another, until some day justice will be done; that is as certain as the rise of to-morrow’s sun.” Her thin hands clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her hatred.

“But how come you into this matter Miss Burnet?” asked Holmes. “How can an English lady join in such a murderous affair?”

“I join in it because there is no other way in the world by which justice can be gained. What does the law of England care for the rivers of blood shed years ago in San Pedro, or for the shipload of treasure which this man has stolen? To you they are like crimes committed in some other planet. But we know. We have learned the truth in sorrow and in suffering. To us there is no fiend in hell like Juan Murillo, and no peace in life while his victims still cry for vengeance.”