Five Fatal Words (14 page)

The one thing about the mist which made it almost unthinkable as a murderer's toll was that it had killed not only Alice Cornwall Wilbur, but dozens of other people. No matter how fanatical his motive, no murderer would ruthlessly take scores of innocent lives on the chance that one intended victim would be included among them.

That was the thought uppermost in her mind and she knew that was the thought which was tantalizing Donald Cornwall. Unless--and this alternative was almost too terrible for contemplation--unless Donald Cornwall himself was an agent behind previous murders in his family. She banished the idea but a more immediate enigma remained to torment her. How had Donald Cornwall and his Aunt Hannah escaped this death plot?

Had they received a forewarning of the tenuous terror that was to slink down the Domrey River valley? If so, why had they not given the warning to others?

It seemed to Melicent, as she lay there and recollected the especial precautions for escape that Hannah Cornwall had taken, that she must have known that the house of her sister was in some sort of danger. And to Melicent it seemed that the knowledge could only have come from the source of the danger.

Yet, if this was murder which had been done, then it was murder on a scale such as had never been committed before. Individual murders by esoteric, untraceable poison.

Murders in houses that burned and destroyed evidence. Murders that now included so many other people and came from such gigantic causes that there would be no investigation of personal motives.

She was conscious that Donald Cornwall was looking steadily at her face. He was on the verge of saying something personal when he changed his mind. "I'll be going now. I am sorry I have tormented you with all this detail. It must be very terrible for you. If anything could be done to make amends for what you have suffered, believe me, I'd do it. But for the moment there is nothing we can do. You must rest and be sure that you will get the very best of care in the world. I"--he smiled uncomfortably--"I took the liberty of sending to Paris for a specialist on respiratory troubles. He'll be here to see you this evening."

Melicent nodded, and said "Thank you."

Once again there came to her a feeling she had had many times--a consciousness of the immense power of money to accomplish whatsoever the possessor of that money desired. All the Cornwalls accepted that power as something ordinary and normal. Before she had taken her strange position, it had seemed to her that the potential delight of wealth was fascinating and romantic. Now, all the thrill had been dissipated from it and she could see only the fear which money could engender.

He held out his hand and she took it; and with his clasp, any idea that he could have been concerned in the previous deaths and that he could have had any warning of this last, fled from her. She was sure that he knew no more than she; indeed, that he knew not even as much; for recollection of the last words of Alice Cornwall had returned to her.

"Your aunt," she said, "your Aunt Alice received a message!"

"What?"

"The day before--she took me to town--we had a talk.

I told her about the messages that came to your father and your uncle; and it frightened her. I asked her why she was frightened. I asked, 'Did you also receive a message?'"

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'No!' But when she denied it, I wondered about it; she was so frightened. Last night--in the last words she spoke, after she recognized me, she told me she had received a message."

"What message? What was it? What did it say?"

"She didn't tell me; perhaps she tried to but couldn't. All she could say was-I think I can remember exactly--'The message--came to me--I burned it--but wrote it down.'"

"That was all?"

"That was all."

"Thank you," said Donald Cornwall. "Thank you, Melicent. But now you must sleep; you must try not to think of this any more. I'll follow that up. Poor kid," he said and, patted her hands; then, as if she already were asleep, he tiptoed awkwardly from the room.

She had slept. The nurse had brought her some food and she had found herself able to eat. It was growing dark when she heard Hannah Cornwall's voice outside the door talking to the nurse in a hoarse whisper. "You are sure she's strong enough to see me?"

The nurse answered in French.

Miss Cornwall said, "I am very glad of that," and pushed the door open. She came directly to Melicent's bed. And the girl lying there noticed at once that her employer had changed. There was decision in every line of her sharp angular face, and yet that decision instead of making her countenance more reserved, made it seem strangely human and almost kind. Anyone who knew Hannah Cornwall would have said that she had passed through an ordeal and emerged with a great victory.

When she sat down beside Melicent, however, her face was again natural and she talked with her ordinary, calm directness. There was nothing of the loquacity that had characterized her sister Alice; nothing of the democratic geniality of her nephew Donald.

"Poor Miss Waring. I am afraid I have subjected you not only to private anxiety and tribulation, but to very real danger. An apology for that would be quite useless, would it not?"

"It is all right," Melicent answered. "It wasn't your fault."

"How do you feel now?"

"Very much better."

Miss Cornwall's face expressed transitory relief. "Donald tells me he has sent to Paris for a specialist for you and also for Lester. I heartily approve of that, although the doctor here says that you are both well out of danger." She paused and rearranged her dress, which was black. Since they had left Blackcroft she had worn only mourning, and that costume was now serving to mark a threefold sorrow. "I came for more reasons than just to visit you. I wonder if you feel strong enough to have a talk with me?"

Melicent realized that the talk in prospect was the explanation for the obscure change which had come over her. Even the manner in which Miss Cornwall addressed her was different. She smiled. "I am quite strong. I'd be glad to talk."

"I must warn you at the outset that it will be a difficult subject for discussion. I want to talk to you about the death of my two brothers and my sister."

Melicent felt her flesh tingle, "Yes?"

There was a long pause and then Miss Cornwall commenced to speak in an even tone. "I will be perfectly frank. We will have to go back in our minds to the day when you arrived in my house. And I may say here that I am going to tell you what I am going to tell you partly because I believe you know it already, or at least suspect it, and partly because in the time we have been together I have found you in every way an admirable person might add to that, a courageous and very intelligent person."

Melicent said nothing, and her employer drew in a breath, which was tremendous.

"On the morning after you arrived at Blackcroft you found me reading a letter. It was a letter which had greatly upset me. I had the letter, but later it occurred to me that you might find that letter and read it. I was so obsessed with one emotion--an emotion from which I have never been able to free myself--fear--fear for my life--that I left that letter almost hoping you would find it. I wanted some one else to understand my predicament, to share my worry over it and perhaps to help me prepare for it. The letter came from Donald. He had written to tell me that an autopsy showed the possibility that his father's recent death in Dutch Guiana had been caused by poison administered to him.

Donald reminded me that since the last of us to survive was to inherit father's entire fortune, it would be to the advantage of one of us to insure the removal of the rest of us.

Such a thing is hard to believe and yet I can almost understand it myself after brooding about that will for thirty years. Donald also told me that before his father died he had received a five-word message and that was apparently meaningless; but even at that time Donald wrote that he suspected some one was trying to do away with the Cornwalls. I don't know whether you saw that letter or not, and I won't ask you."

Melicent was almost overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude at this confidence.

For the moment it carried her away and she met it with candid admission. "I did see it. I found the letter and read it."

Miss Cornwall looked at her with appreciation. "I am glad you told me. It is like you to do that. I will try to be brief. The contents of that letter terrified me. You know what happened afterward. Everitt arrived and Donald. On the day of his arrival Everitt was killed. It has been my impression ever since you went into that burning room that you saw something that made you feel his death was unnatural."

"I did," Melicent answered quietly. "I saw a hole in the plaster of the room opposite the bath; the hole was directly opposite the tub in which your brother died."

Miss Cornwall's pale and somewhat withered old hands rose and fell slowly on her knees. Her voice was very low when she spoke. "You should have told me, child. But I can understand why you did not. You must know what I was going through in the hours before Everitt died, because I know you must have understood the strange message that came for him over the telephone."

Melicent looked out of the window at the darkening sky. "I did understand it," she said softly. "Only I couldn't believe my senses."

"Quite so. I could scarcely believe my own. I feared and I doubted at the same time. But after Blackcroft burned I thought it would be best to go away. I came here to visit Alice because, while Alice and I have never been very close, it seemed to me she was one member of my family whom I could trust implicitly. I did not think very clearly of the risk. It is hard to accustom yourself to the thought that some one wants to kill you.

It is hard even when you have taken precautions against it all your life. Of course, I admit freely that in substituting you for myself at night I have ruthlessly endangered your person. I am--I have been--a coward, and my only excuse is that under the same circumstances anyone else would be a coward."

"I understand," Melicent said.

"Now I have told you all; is there anything more that you can tell me?"

Melicent started up at this demand, for it was no less than that.

"Did your nephew tell you that your sister also had received a message?"

"Alice! What? When?"

"On the day before she died--or earlier; I don't know. I'll tell you all I do know. On the day before the mist she took me shopping--" Melicent related, simply, exactly what had happened and what Alice Wilbur had said just before her death.

In the strange, contrary way of the Cornwalls, Hannah Cornwall now combatted any increase of fear.

"Alice must have been delirious. You put the idea into her head. The fog could not be murder. The whole country, the whole world is reading about it. I understand that professors in every quarter of the globe are trying to explain it. The newspapers are full of it. It can have nothing to do with one family--even with the Cornwall family."

Suddenly she stopped; some one had come into the room. It was Donald.

"How are you?" he said to Melicent. "All right, they say; are you all right? Hello, Aunt Hannah."

"Donald, what have you?"

He had a folded paper in his hand, holding it as one does a document of importance, and this Hannah Cornwall instantly had seen.

"Nothing," said Donald.

"It's Alice's notepaper." The crest was visible. "And her writing."

"Yes," said Donald, and asked of Melicent, "what have you two been doing?"

"I've just told her," said Melicent, "that your Aunt Alice said she'd received a message."

"She said, as I remember," went on Donald, "that she received one, burned it, but later wrote it down. What she said corresponds with what I found in her room."

"You've been back to her house?" his aunt demanded.

"Yes; the fog's cleared away. I brought this from Aunt Alice's room. It was in her desk; you see, she'd written it herself--evidently a message she'd received and burned up, as she said, and then written down from memory." He read: "Days Ended, Arrested, Time Hesitates!"

"Alice had that!"

"Do you want to see? It's in her own writing."

Hannah Cornwall stretched out a shaking hand for it.

THE five words, in her sister's handwriting, held her fascinated. Hannah Cornwall could not take her eyes from them. Her hands, which held the sheet of notepaper flat before her, trembled with terror and after a moment she began to whisper to herself:

"Days Ended, Arrested, Time Hesitates."

The world around her stood still and out of the immeasurable silence came the sound of Melicent's voice as she spoke to Donald.

"Where did you find it?"

"In her desk," repeated Donald's voice as if from far away.

"In sight?" asked Melicent. "I mean, your aunt Alice had left it out?"

"Not exactly," said Donald. "It was in her desk with some other personal memoranda; she'd neither left it plainly in sight nor hidden it, if that's what you mean. It was just--there."

Hannah Cornwall succeeded in recalling herself from the isolation of her fright.

"My sister Alice left no notation with this? No explanation of how the original message came to her?"

"There was nothing I could find, Aunt Hannah," replied Donald gently, "which bore any connection or suggested any explanation of this paper at all."

"You searched?"

"Yes; of course I searched."

Miss Cornwall turned to Melicent. "You have told me everything--
everything," 
she emphasized, "which my sister told you of this message?"

"Everything," Melicent assured her. "When she had me out shopping, on the day before the fog, I told her of the messages which had come to others of the family; I asked her if she had ever received such a message; and she denied it, then."

"But in such manner that you then doubted her."

"Yes; I did--a little. It was only when she was dying that she told me she had received a message--and had burnt it but later had written it down."