"And a wife does not need to be imposed upon by a ferocious ape. Unless you chain the beast up during the night, at least, I shall not remain another minute."
Langon bowed.
"Very well. I shall see that he is chained."
And that had ended the episode, but Minerva did not forget the events of the afternoon. And then she read an item in the Morning Tribune, which stated that Philip Mendoza, a gardener on the Holbrook estate which joined the Langdon property on the south, had succumbed to an attack of influenza. There was nothing startling about the announcement, but to Minerva it seemed a lightning stroke of fate; for Philip Mendoza shared with her a secret which no one else in the whole world knew. During her husband's absence, Minerva had hired Mendoza to build a cement vault in the basement of her home, in which she was storing gold against a possible elopement. She had bound the superstitious Mexican by strange and solemn oaths until she felt secure in the belief that the knowledge of its existence would never pass his lips, and now it could not, for those lips were silenced forever. Minerva had trusted her secret to no other living being, not even Montrose himself. She had exchanged her jewels and many of her other personal belongings for the gold which now reposed safely in the vault.
After she had read the item concerning Mendoza's death, the thought of murdering Langdon and hiding his body in the vault occurred to her, but Minerva knew she could not do it. She was not lacking in physical courage, but the idea of murder seemed too revolting.
However, the suggestion would not down, and at length she hit upon the plan of chloroforming him and placing him in the vault alive. After she had decided to do the deed, she could hardly wait for night to come. The day seemed propitious, for her maid of all work was going to attend a dance at the village, accompanied by the Langdon gardener.
THAT night she secured the jar of chloroform and satisfied that he was asleep, cautiously lifted the lid and extracted the sponge. As if warned of approaching danger, the doctor moved and threw up his arm. Minerva, watching him dispassionately, smiled cynically as she hear him mumble her name. When his breathing became regular again she held the sponge tightly over his face. It was the work of a moment to overpower the sleeping man. When he relaxed and fell back on the pillow, she turned on the light, and her face beamed with satisfaction as she assured herself that the worst part of her work was done. She knew that he was good for a half-hour at least, but she must hurry if she would finish her plan.
With a flashlight, she started for the basement. With superb coolness, she hummed a little song as she felt her way downstairs. On the landing, she stopped and listened. She thought she heard someone following her, but, even as she listened, she knew this could not be. She hesitated only a second, and then, dismissing her feeling of uneasiness, groped her way down the cellar steps.
As she pushed open the cellar door, she stopped again and listened. Some subtle warning of danger carried to her subconscious mind, and she heeded it without thinking. Her sixth sense told her that danger hovered behind her. A board on the stairs above her creaked lightly. She turned her flashlight toward the spot, but there was nothing.
She thought she heard a rat scurry across the floor in front of her and, making a grimace, she picked her way daintily toward the far corner. She kept close to the wall on her right because she dreaded passing close to the spot where Hugo was chained. She experienced a feeling of repugnance at the thought of being so near the ugly beast.
The silence was oppressive. As the lull which precedes the tempest, so the deathly quiet in the musty cellar seemed to her alert senses to presage some sort of eerie doom. Minerva would not acknowledge her fear, but told herself that in a few minutes her task would be finished and she would be free. Free! The word held a world of meaning to the woman who had toyed with the idea for months until eventually nothing else seemed of any moment to her. Even the thought of taking the life of the man who loved her so absolutely that he had tried to keep her against her will, could not deter her from her evil purpose. For five months she had been bargaining and hoarding until the little vault held enough gold to take her and her lover far from the scene of her crime.
She felt along the rock wall until she came to the depression and found the delicate spring which controlled the lock of the vault. Slowly the huge door swung outward. It had been several weeks since she had visited her storehouse and to her sensitive fingers the spring seemed slightly rusty. She tried it twice before she was satisfied that the mechanism was in perfect order, and then, stepping forward into the vault, she picked up a bag of gold which she carried outside and leaned against the cellar wall. She returned and picked up another.
Though Minerva did not realize it, she had hoarded the gold for her flight until it had become an obsession with her and she had come to love the gold for itself. She had become at heart a miser. As she caught the second bag to her bosom, a pleasant thrill warmed her being. She dropped gracefully down upon her knees, and, thrusting her hand inside the sack, she brought out a gleaming mass of gold. She directed the rays of her flashlight upon the yellow metal and caught her breath at its beauty.
All thoughts of the man who lay unconscious upon the bed upstairs, as well as those of the man who was waiting to fly with her, vanished as she fondled the golden metal. While on her knees, she heard a sound behind her that curdled her blood. Langdon had failed to chain up his ape. As the shrill burst of simian laughter sounded behind her, Minerva turned and hurled herself frantically against the massive wall of concrete. In another moment the giant ape swung it shut upon her.
When Doctor Langdon recovered from the effects of the chloroform, he searched wildly for his wife. He labored under the delusion that robbers had broken in and had made away with her. His theory seemed partially substantiated when Hugo brought him a bag of gold, for Langdon decided that the robbers had dropped a part of their night's loot in making a get-away. Though the doctor offered large rewards for the apprehension of the "robbers" and the return of his wife, no clue to her tragic end was ever unearthed.
