Five Fatal Words (16 page)

He grabbed her hand. "No; wait here."

"Why?"

"I've started; I might as well say it through. I'll not give you up to anybody--anybody, do you hear? Listen to me!"

She was trying to tear her hand away but he clung to it and pulled her closer. For a moment she fought him but could not get free; on the contrary, he got her within his arms and clasped her close to him and kissed her.

She kept her lips from him but he kissed her face while she struggled. He heard a cry behind her; it was a woman's voice; Miss Cornwall's voice.

They were in sight of the house, and while she struggled, she realized that Miss Cornwall must have returned. Where was Donald, then? Was he with her?

Suddenly Granger let her go and she slipped on a patch of ice and went down to one knee. Granger helped her up, his hands suddenly robbed of their violence. He was very gentle with her and ashamed.

"My God," he whispered. "Now she'll fire me; she'll send me away; and you'll stay--you'll stay."

Melicent at last could look about and she saw Miss Cornwall, but much nearer, Donald. His aunt had shouted but he had run ahead of her. Now, since her struggle with Granger was over, Donald stopped and waited for his aunt. He had no taste, as Melicent well knew, for a scene and now, if it were not for his aunt, he would have gone away; but she came up and drew him on with her. "Granger!" Miss Cornwall accused. "What does this mean?"

He faced her but had nothing to say. "I dispense with your services. You are dismissed from this moment. If you have not apologized to Miss Waring, you may do so; then leave. Pack up your things and come to the house. Your pay will be given you."

Don Cornwall stood breathing rather rapidly but he said not a word; in fact, at this moment, he looked away.

Granger gazed at Miss Cornwall and then at Melicent, to whom he bowed, whispering something she could not hear. He straightened, glanced at Donald and turned on his heel and walked off.

Donald, at the same moment, moved away; and there seemed to Melicent something slightly chivalric in it. With Granger dismissed, he would not stay to make it harder for the man who had been in his aunt's pay.

Melicent's eyes followed Granger's straight figure, and as she stood there with the old lady, the sun seemed less bright and the day colder. The man in whom Mr. Reese had said she could have implicit confidence, if everyone else failed, was being sent away not to return, except for his final pay. And she had liked him.

Miss Cornwall seemed to sense her feeling. "I am sorry, Miss Waring. He might swear never to trouble you again but such a man is not to be trusted. I could never trust him again. I must have complete loyalty to me; and love for one person and loyalty to another are not compatible. There was nothing else to do." Suddenly her sternness broke to anxiety. "But I can count on you, can't I? You won't leave me? You won't go away--or find other interests?" The nervous tension in her voice increased. "You have meant everything to me through this, the most dreadful period of my life. I don't know what I'd have done without you. I'd do anything reasonable to keep you. If you want more money--"

"I'm not staying for money, Miss Cornwall."

"I know. I know," Miss Cornwall emitted a tremulous sigh. "You stay out of complete loyalty to me. You are a fine girl, Miss Waring. A splendid girl, and brave.There isn't much sentiment left in me and I suppose I'm a hard old lady, but as much as I can be of anyone, I am fond of you. I rely on you implicitly."

Melicent said, "Thank you."

That rare instant of human emotion departed as quickly as it had appeared. Miss Cornwall fastened her mind immediately on facts and present problems. "He's gone and that's that. We can get along with some one in his place until we get back to America."

They went to the house together and Miss Cornwall immediately sought her room; Melicent remained downstairs and was at a window when a car drove up to the house and Lester climbed out. He came in the door, nodded to her and helped himself immediately to a drink; at the same time he greeted her. Most of the manner she had first found in him had left him.

"Hello, hello," he said. "They pronounced me cured and told me I could go home."

"How do you feel?"

"I feel terrible." He swallowed his drink. "If you don't mind, I'd like to talk to my aunt about Aunt Lydia." 

"Your aunt is upstairs in her room." 

He left her and she sat down by a window that over-looked the slow, cold river and the spot where Granger had given way to his emotions. As she had felt at the time that there was an under-current to his words when he began to speak to her, she felt now that the whole episode had a significance and a purpose beyond what it seemed. Deliberately Granger had done what he had; not impulsively. He had feigned impulse.

He had liked her, she knew; and she liked him. She could believe, without over-flattering herself, that he might have fallen in love with her; but the Granger whom she knew would not have lost control of himself as he had, except for some planned reason.

What reason?

She was still puzzling over it when Donald Cornwall entered the room, seeking her. He did not refer in any way to the episode with Granger; nor did she.

Later in the day, she learned that Granger had obtained his pay and was gone; but she did not see him. She was alone now, absolutely alone with the Cornwalls and their mounting fates.

On the second day at noon Lydia Cornwall arrived. Her husband did not accompany her, but with her came her maid and Ahdi Vado, the Hindu mystic, to whom she had been devoted for many years. Hannah Cornwall did not go to meet them. The discovery of the fatal message among Alice's papers had shattered Hannah's last remnant of independence, so that she scarcely dared to leave her room even in broad daylight. It was Donald who went to town and Donald who brought back his Aunt Lydia.

When they arrived Melicent was engrossed in reading a long account of the death mist in the English paper printed in Paris. The account offered several explanations then current for the mist, among them the theory that it was merely a very heavy fog which had affected the respiratory systems of the old and the feeble; or that it was an ordinary fog which had held to earth the gaseous waste products of the factories in the district. She had reached the point which described the effect of the lethal miasma and which recounted the death of Alice Cornwall, when Donald appeared with his aunt.

Lydia Cornwall was brought into the house in a wheelchair with something of a flourish. She was a huge, unhealthy woman, with a puffy face, grotesquely diminutive hands and feet, and a deep, wheezy voice. The Hindu rolled her into the living room.

Melicent had a chance to look at him before any introductions were made. Ahdi Vado was not much over five feet in height. His skin was very dark and his profile aquiline. He had black, intent eyes and coal black hair, of which only the edges were visible because his head was swathed in a bright green turban.

In a moment Donald entered the room. "Aunt Lydia, this is Miss Waring--Aunt Hannah's secretary."

The small hand at the end of Lydia Cornwall's heavy arm was held out. "How do you do, my dear." She smiled and the expression somewhat relieved her gross features.

"Miss Waring, may I present my great and trusted friend, Ahdi Vado."

The Hindu bowed. "It is a delight." When he raised his head he was smiling and his smile made the usual emphasis of white teeth always to be found in dark-skinned races. His eyes looked directly at Melicent and she felt in them something very much like impact. Afterward she remembered that she had been a little discouraged to know that Lydia Cornwall was accompanied by a Hindu, but she knew as soon as she saw him that she would never be afraid of him. She was sure that however fanatical he might be, his life was internal and spiritual rather than external and ominous. He would always be in the background.

Lydia Cornwall was talking about him, partly to her and partly to Donald. "You must get to know Ahdi Vado. He has a wonderful mind and a beautiful soul. Some day the whole world will realize that these men who have come to us from monasteries high in the Himalayas carry a message which will bring to all humanity both peace and understanding." She blinked at Ahdi Vado and he repeated his low bow.

"I am grateful."

Lydia Cornwall then addressed Donald. "Where's Hannah?"

"She's in her room."

"What's the matter with her? Sick?"

"Not exactly," Donald answered. "She's indisposed."

"Humph! Indisposed! It is hard to believe. She's been as healthy as a country wife all her life." Lydia turned to Melicent. "I've been the sick member of the family. To look at me you wouldn't think so, but I'd been dead a good many years ago if it hadn't been for Ahdi Vado. Well, if the mountain won't come to Mohammed--Help me upstairs, somebody."

Donald came to her side but the Hindu was already there. She lifted herself laboriously from the wheel-chair and walked out of the room. She leaned heavily on the small, dark-skinned man. Pierre appeared at the door and took her other arm, making Donald's assistance unnecessary. He stayed with Melicent. When the trio on the stairs had moved ponderously out of earshot, he said, "Well?"

"She's the strangest of all the Cornwalls," Melicent answered.

"I have a funny family."

"I didn't mean to offend you."

He looked at her and realized the reason for her apology. "Oh, you didn't offend me. Far from it. As a matter of fact, I think all my aunts and uncles would have been rather fine people if it hadn't been for grandfather's will. That's what warped them. Take Lydia. She's spent most of her life in Europe. She's married to a nobleman and yet she still clings to the solid, informal Anglo-Saxon manner. I am not praising her. Just pointing out the fact. You know--"

He did not speak for so long a time that she prompted him. "Yes?"

"I was thinking about the funny thing about Lydia. Her name doesn't begin with a D, or an E, or an A, or a T, or an H. If we are right about our theory of sequence, if we are right about this whole ghastly affair, she'll be the last one left alive."

"Of course I have thought of that," Melicent said slowly.

"If she proves to be the last survivor, it would be a big break for Bortvia--or at least for the royalist party. Yet ten millions properly placed ought to be enough to bring back the monarchy in a principality of that size. Then what would Aunt Lydia do with the rest of the money? She isn't honestly interested in anything except that Hindu mystic and his religion; and money has no place in that."

"Is it possible," asked Melicent, "that the Grand Duke, her husband--"

Donald shook his head. "Of course I've considered it. He'd marry for money, of course; he has. That's quite according to his code; but murder for money--no, it simply isn't done by his sort. Of course he wants the throne; and I know that murder is one of the oldest and most respectable methods of obtaining, or regaining, a throne; but you murder, then, somebody who has a throne or who stands between you and it. You don't murder, for money to buy back the throne, your wife's relatives. There's a difference."

"Is your Aunt Lydia as sick," asked Melicent, "as she seems to be?"

"Who knows? She doesn't doctor now. She contemplates and depends completely on Ahdi Vado. But I'd say, offhand, she hasn't long to live. Which certainly suggests that, if she is to be the last survivor, the fates aren't going to be over-deliberate in finishing up the others of the family. . . . By the way, I've something for you. Granger sent it to me with the request that I hand it to you."

"Granger?" It was the first mention of him since the episode by the river.

Donald took a letter from his pocket. "He mailed it to me because he was aware that Aunt Hannah does not permit you to receive communications from outsiders."

Melicent took it and opened the sealed envelope and read to herself : My very dear Melicent:

No one can harm me or you for writing your name. Miss Cornwall gave me a chance to apologize to you before I went; but with them there, I could not say a word. If we were alone, what would I say?

Some time I'll tell you, alone with you. I am sorry for one thing--sorrier than ever I can say; that is, that I am separated from you. But I will not be, for long.

Mr. Reese told me he told you that you could always count on me, whoever else failed. You could; that is what makes me most desperate now. I cannot always be near enough to help you as quickly as you may need me.

Do you realize that now you are completely in the Cornwalls' power? And who of them--do you know?--is doing these awful things ? You are trying to figure out the affair; that is one reason you are staying. Do you realize what will happen if you succeed in what you are trying? If they found you really had figured it out, what--do you suppose--would happen to you?

Don't be decieved by what anyone of them says to you. Even if I didn't love you, I couldn't keep any decensy and completely abandon you.

Forever faithfully,

GEORGE GRANGER.

Melicent looked up and met Donald's eyes. The envelope had been handed to her, sealed; and she did not, at that moment, doubt that it was exactly as it had arrived in Donald's hands, that he had not tampered with it.

"All right?" he asked, his eyes steady upon hers.

"All right," she replied.

"Sure of it?" he insisted.

"I--guess so." For what did she
know
of anyone about her? She fled to her room and there reexamined the letter. Plainly it had been hastily written; and Granger had misspelled two words--deceive and decency.

She whipped the letter out of sight as she heard Miss Cornwall approaching the door. It opened and her employer looked in upon her. Hannah Cornwall had in her hand a cablegram.

"This just arrived," she said. "It is from Mr. Reese. Did you in any way communicate with him about Granger's dismissal?"

"I?" returned Melicent. "No; of course not."

"I did not," said Miss Cornwall. "Nor my nephew. So evidently Granger himself must have cabled Mr. Reese, who, of course, previously had heard of my sister Alice's death."