A Servant of Satan: Romantic Career of Prado the Assassin — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SERVANT OF SATAN. 13° ‘*Qne word more, my dear Berard,” he continued. ‘<I am anxious that these papers should some day or other be made known tothe world. They will convince the public that at any rate 1 am innocent of the brutal murder for which I am about to suffer death. My crimes have been numerous; they have been committed in many different lands, and I have never hesitated to put people out of the way when I found. them to be dangerous to my interests. But whatever I may have done has been accomplished with skill and delicacy. My misdeeds have been those of a man of birth, education, and breeding, whereas the slayer of Marie Aguetant was, as you will find out one of these days, but a mere vulgar criminal of low and coarse instincts, the scum indeed of a Levantine gutter. “‘“And now good-by my dear Berard. I rely on you to respect the wishes of a man whois about to disappear into Nirwana. You see,” he added with a smile, ‘‘I am some- thing of a Buddhist. ’ Almost involuntarily I grasped both his hands firmly in mine. I was deeply moved. All the powers of attraction which he had formerly exercised on meat Madrid came again to the surface, and it was he who gently pushed me out of the cell in order to cut short a painful scene. I'wo days later one of the most remarkable criminals of the age expiated his numerous crimes on the scaffold in the square in front of the Prison de la Grande Roquette. _ Late last night, when alone in my library, I broke the seals of the outer envelope of the parcel which he had con- fided tome. When I saw the name inscribed on the inner covering I started from my chair. It was a name of world- wide fame, one of the most brilliant in the ‘‘ Almanac de Gotha,” and familiar in every court in Europe. However, mindful of my promise to the dead, I locked the package away in my safe. My curiosity, however, was not put toa very severe test, for about a week later the papers of every Fd Eomicbooks.com