Five Fatal Words (15 page)

"That is all you know of this?" insisted Miss Cornwall. "Every atom of your knowledge?"

"Every atom."

"Then we do not know even when it came-how long she had it before it-before it found its effect."

"Aunt Hannah!" Donald cried. "Surely you cannot believe--"

She stopped him. "The fog followed it. This came first. She admitted it before she died; and already she had written it down. This is unquestionably Alice's handwriting. So the fog must have been--" She could not voice the thought that filled her mind. If the mist had been poisoned so as to bring about the death of another member of the Cornwall family, then whoever was bent upon exterminating that family had sacrificed to his design the lives of scores of unrelated people. It was unthinkable! Even a homicidal maniac would scarcely conceive and enact so terrible a deed.

Miss Cornwall's mind pursued this path and yet came out in the end with, "Somebody killed all those people ruthlessly, without caring, simply to be sure that my sister's death would be included--and would appear accidental."

Donald ruffled his hair with his left hand, a gesture he used whenever he was under emotional strain. "I've been trying to figure it out, Aunt Hannah, ever since I found that. It seems to mean, if you look only at ourselves, that everyone who died in the Domrey valley was killed by human agency, by some sort of diabolical gas and not mist; yet--yet--"

"Yet--what?" his aunt challenged. "And who shall we look to, if not to ourselves?" At this point, she leaped to her feet and crossed quickly to the door. She gazed out in both directions, closed the door and locked it. She went back to her place without any verbal explanation of the act and neither of the others made reference to it. They knew why she had done it. They followed her feeling. The muzzle of death was turned toward her. The dogs of doom were howling behind her. Anywhere, everywhere there might be ears, eyes, hands, to hear, see and do.

She sat down again and her black silk dress made sibilant sounds as she shook within it. The voice that had always been metallic and true was now uneven. "They have killed Daniel--and Everitt--and Alice; there remain Theodore and Lydia and me."

Suddenly her breath was gone and she seized at the sides of the chair. D--E--A--and Theodore and Hannah!" There had come to her, at that instant, the frightful perception which had reached Donald at sea. "T is Theodore!" she whispered staring at Donald. "T is Theodore; so he comes next! And then--me! We mustn't let them get to Theodore. Don't you see? Don't you see?"

"Of course I see," said Donald dully.

"Why is Lydia left out?"

"We don't know that she is left out," said Donald. "Only left to the last--possibly."

Miss Cornwall was on her feet again. She walked to a window and looked out.

"Do you realize what it will mean if they get to Theodore? He is the only barrier between me and--and them. While he lives and while they stick to this dreadful sequence, I can have some faint hope of peace for myself. But if Theodore should die, then they would be upon me with their poison, their electric wires, their choking mist, their ghastly little messages of death."

Melicent never felt more clearly than she did at that moment what it was to be in Miss Cornwall's place with death moving irrevocably and yet mysteriously always closer to her. She was about to speak a few words to try to calm the old lady, when Donald said abruptly, "I think now we should get the police."

Melicent was astonished at the tone in which Hannah Cornwall answered.

"Never!"

"But, Aunt Hannah--we have lots to go on now--three messages--three deaths--"

"Never!" She was standing. "I would rather run any risk, I would rather die myself than to have to take the prying world into the troubles of my family. If one of us is a, traitor to the others, we--those of us who are left when we find out--we will know; but the world, never! Perhaps I never loved my family as other people love theirs, but no one can ever question my loyalty to them; it is unswerving. We will do what we can. We know little about the circumstances surrounding these deaths. Perhaps, after all, they were accidental--"

"You know that is not true," Donald said calmly.

"Very well, but if the Cornwalls are doomed, then they shall die without public scandal, without seeing their names dragged through the mire of notoriety, without their fates being made a matter of amusement."

Melicent was not given time to consider what Miss Cornwall said. It was not the first occasion at which the old lady had railed against public protection or public investigation. Her words always had rung with deadly conviction and yet, for a fleeting instant, Melicent wondered if they were wholly sincere. The possibility that Hannah Cornwall was involved with the plot against her brothers and sisters had occurred to Melicent in the past; and now there was added the inexplicable fact that when the death mist fell upon the Domrey River valley, Hannah Cornwall already had escaped. If any of the brothers and sisters were traitor to the others, could it be she? If not, did she have, of herself, knowledge which she might be keeping to herself and which dictated this policy of secrecy? Melicent's brain whirled. Her nerves grew as taut as piano wires, and she was still so weak from her sickness that she had little energy on which to draw.

Donald lit a cigarette. "What are we going to do then?"

Miss Cornwall answered after a pause. "There is only one thing to do. We must go back to America. We must go to Theodore. My brother Theodore has been the most careful of all of us in the matter of his own life. He lives in his apartment in New York surrounded by servants whom he trusts. His life itself has been exemplary--although he has crowded it with superstition. He's a vegetarian. A half-dozen doctors call on him every week. I think Father's fortune has been more of an incentive to him to live than it has to any of the others. We must go to him and explain all that has happened. He must never get the death message. He must never die. Before any attempt can be made on him, we must be at his side and he must be forewarned."

Donald nodded slowly. "After all, Aunt Hannah, we have no guarantee that whoever is doing this will stick to the T--H order."

"Except that so far they have adhered to it."

The red-headed young man looked at Melicent. "What do you think?"

"Do you want me to tell you honestly?"

"Of course."

"I think we ought to get the police."

"No!" Hannah Cornwall's eyes blazed. "Not now and never! Not if Theodore dies. Not if I find myself with death upon me, and not afterward. I have seen our names across the daily papers and sickened at the sight so often that never again will the name of Cornwall be scornfully mentioned. Never again will an impudent, stupid, public employee enter my house. That's final."

Donald crossed the room to his aunt's side and patted her shoulder. "I think I understand, Aunt Hannah, and I will do what I can to keep any such trespass from taking place. We will go to America right after the funeral."

"Right after," Miss Cornwall repeated dully.

There was a long silence. Donald recovered from his aunt the message which he had brought and he reexamined it. Melicent reached for it when he returned it and in her turn looked at it for a long time. The words burned into her brain. There was no sense in them, no relation between them. She thought of the other messages:

"Doubtless Even A Tulip Hopes," "Don't Ever Alter These Horoscopes," as she looked at the words before her eyes, "Days Ended, Arrested, Time Hesitates." Would there be another such message in Theodore Cornwall's hands? Still another in Hannah's? A message to send them quivering, perhaps shrieking, toward destruction?

Hannah Cornwall broke the silence by speaking in a tone that intimated she wished to say no more about the messages at that time. "Lydia's coming for the funeral."

"Your other sister," Melicent said.

"I've told you about her," Donald observed to Melicent. "Aunt Lydia is the one who married Grand Duke Strang. She lives in Egypt now because they have been exiled. She doesn't see much of the Grand Duke. He is an old man but he's still trying to bring back the return of the monarchy to Bortvia."

"I remember," Melicent said. "She's coming here?"

"Day after to-morrow."

That ended the discussion. Miss Cornwall repossessed herself of the message and put it in her handbag. A nurse knocked on the door and informed Donald that he was wanted downstairs.

He left the room. Hannah let him out the door and after she secured it again, she said to Melicent. "I am returning to the home which was my sister's. I am assured there is now no danger there. But who knows? Who dreamed of what happened last night? But it may be true that there is no more danger for me there than elsewhere. Of course, convention requires my presence there. Will you return there to me, when you are able?"

"Yes," said Melicent. "And I feel able now."

"I am very glad. It seems that recovery from this strange seizure--when recovery occurs--is rapid and complete. I am very glad indeed; you can understand how I depend upon you. I will go now, with Donald; follow when you can."

She left the room and Melicent reflected that the finding of the third message would undoubtedly make her employer more of a recluse than ever. She would spend not only her nights behind locked doors but also her days.

When the nurse returned, Milicent asked for the doctor and, an hour later, she was allowed to dress and depart. She found that arrangements had been made for a car to drive her to the Domrey and before leaving the hospital, she tried to see Lester Wilbur but was told that he was asleep, so she went on.

Arriving at the mansion, she found a wreath on the door, and about the place a lugubrious silence. Miss Cornwall and Mr. Cornwall, she was told, had returned some time before but had been driven to town together on some errands.

Melicent walked to the river. Tall trees grew along its edge and she sat down beneath them. The sky was bright blue. The sun shone, and although it was cold enough so that an overcoat was necessary, it was still pleasant. During the night a fringe of ice had formed along the edges of the river and she tossed stones out on the crust. Some of them slid until they splashed into the water. Others made holes in the ice and fell through.

She was engaged in this idle enterprise when she heard someone approach her. She turned and was surprised to see Granger walking from the direction of the house. He came up to her, sat down on the root, kicked a large stone loose from the partly frozen ground, and shattered a long stretch of the thin ice with it.

"You all right now?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

"I'm glad," he said, with feeling. "God, if that had got you."

She made no comment and he proceeded. "I seemed to startle you just now."

"I guess I thought you were away, driving Miss Cornwall and Mr. Cornwall."

"You call him Donald, don't you?" demanded Granger jealously.

"Sometimes."

"But not to me. I see." He dropped that tack. "No; I didn't drive them to-day. I drove in the night--to get her away before the mist, and him, too. But I didn't drive them to-day. What's going on, up at the house?"

"Nothing; but I really don't know. I hardly went in."

"Who's coming for the funeral; anybody?"

"Yes; the other sister, Lydia."

"I supposed so; but she is coming, is she? They told you?"

"Yes; she arrives day after to-morrow."

He nodded absently, his eyes traveling over her. They took in her smart shoes, her silk-clad legs, her heavy coat and the great fur collar which was turned up around the back of her head and hid half of her amber-colored hair.

"How do you like your job now?" he demanded.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, how do you like it?"

Melicent looked at him with direct eyes. "It's all right."

He laughed at her. "What would have to happen to phase you? Didn't you mind being nearly killed in the fog the other night?"

"I minded it," Melicent answered simply.

"I was crazy when I thought of you in it."

She made no response to that except to throw another stone which skipped over the ice and disappeared in the water.

Granger sighed. "Don't you like me?"

"Of course I like you. You've always been nice to me, polite, friendly; and we're on the same job. Why do you ask me?"

He sat around a little in order to face her. "You don't love me, though?"

"No," she answered as calmly as she could. "I don't. Do you expect me to love you?"

There was an undercurrent beneath what he was saying which she could feel but which she could not comprehend. It was the undercurrent of his words that startled her more than the surprising direction which they had taken. She reflected that she did like Granger and she was not afraid of him. He was the one person in the whole Cornwall ménage about whom she had no cause for ulterior suspicions.

He answered her questions almost lightly and after a pause. "Oh, I don't know exactly why I asked. It's rude, I know, but I couldn't help it. I haven't seen much of you but I think you're a wonderful girl. I am pretty crazy about you."

The last thing on earth for which Melicent was emotionally prepared at that time was love-making, even verbal love-making. She tried to turn aside whatever words he contemplated saying. "If you're trying to make me interested in you--to which I don't object--then for Heaven's sakes be reasonable about the way you do it. Right now I'm still half-sick and Miss Cornwall is nearly crazy and so am I. There's going to be a funeral day after to-morrow and if I ever get to be a human being again, after all I've been through, why perhaps we could become friends. It's mean of me to talk like that but my nerves are just about broken."

"I see. I'm sorry." He looked about and behind him and then continued. "But I had to say it. I can't always stand aside and say nothing and do nothing while he's making the most of the inside track he's got."

"He," said Melicent, becoming excited. "Who?"

"You know who. Mr. Cornwall to me--Don to you. I tell you I can't stand it." He glanced about and behind him again. Evidently he saw no one for he returned to her; but Melicent arose.