Album (46 page)

“I wanted to get her away, but she refused until she had it. So that last day I sent George for it. It wasn’t to be found, but later that night Lou Hall telephoned that it was there, and I told her.

“She slipped out soon after that, but George must have seen her and followed her. I had not told him she was in the house, but he may have suspected it. He may have suspected all the rest, too. I know he and Lizzie Cromwell had a talk on Saturday, before she left.

“That is all I know, except that my son has stayed at his club since that night, and he seems to feel that I am guilty of something, I hardly know what. I protected him from her for many years, and I consider that he is most ungrateful. Especially since she learned from him when he was a boy that trick of blackening her face.”

For that, as it turned out, had been the secret of her uncanny ability to get about at night during the three attempts she made to get the album. With her black clothing and a pair of black gloves she would be almost invisible on any dark night. Certainly her face was blackened the night of her capture, and I can understand the taxi driver’s statement later on:

“I got a look at her with a lightning flash when I caught her. And I was so scared that I pretty nearly let go!”

Now and then we go back to the Crescent. The Lancaster house is closed, and Margaret lives in Europe; somewhere in Southern Germany. We hear that she is about to be married. Jim and Helen are still there, however, getting along rather better than before, but every now and then the Daltons’ Joseph gravely announces that “Mrs. Wellington has gone again, sir.”

The Daltons are the best of friends, and probably rather more than that. Mother has Aunt Caroline staying with her, and Annie and Mary are back. They all seem to manage quite well together, and Mother is thinking of wearing a little mauve this year. But she has never quite forgiven me my marriage and she left the room abruptly one day when Doctor Armstrong, tapping cheerfully on his black bag, asked me if I wouldn’t soon want him to bring a baby in it.

Although we have buried most of our tragedies, there is still one which survives. In the last house by the gate Mrs. Talbot sits alone; although George goes out dutifully to the Sunday midday dinner, fried chicken and ice cream in summer and roast beef and a fruit pie the rest of the year. He and his father share an apartment downtown, and as an act of pure justice Margaret has turned over to Mr. Talbot the money recovered from under the willow trees.

Otherwise the life goes on much as before. On any summer day Eben’s lawn mower can be heard; children are still taboo on No Man’s Land, Mr. Dalton still practices short golf shots there, and what Helen called its smug and deteriorating peace has again settled down on the Crescent.

Nothing has changed, and it is Herbert’s contention that people really learn nothing after a certain age.

Perhaps that is true. It is certainly a fact that during our last visit there something went wrong with the gas stove, and that he experimented with it after his customary fashion. There was a tremendous report, and Herbert himself was hurled out onto the back porch, almost at my feet.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

He broke off in the middle of a flow of really awful language to look up at me.

“Hurt?” he shouted. “I’ve damned near broken my leg.”

Then he saw that I was laughing, and he grinned boyishly.

“Let’s go home, Lou darling,” he said. “Let’s go where Monday doesn’t have to be wash-day, and nobody ever saw a hatpin, and we can use our newspapers to start a fire and sit by it, and not to roll the doilies on. Let’s go!”

And so we went.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1933 by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Copyright © 1961 by Stanley M. Rinehart Jr., Frederick R. Rinehart and Alan G. Rinehart.

Cover design by Kathleen Lynch

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