Five Fatal Words (29 page)

Donald's voice dropped so it was almost inaudible. "I swear that his eyes started right out of his head. They moved along mechanically, as if he were reading something, and in a fiftieth of a second I knew what he had found inside that box. Another message. He just sat there holding the thing on his lap. I stood up and looked into the box. There it was. Written in big letters on a half sheet of paper and laid on top of his food: 'Dawn Enlivens a Traitor's Hates.'

"I stood there in the cabin of that plane for three or four minutes so damned scared I couldn't move. I couldn't have moved if the ship had gone into a nose dive. But it didn't. It just kept bearing straight ahead and when I got the courage to look through the window in front of the pilots, they seemed to be perfectly content. After that I didn't have any control over Uncle Theodore. The engines made so much noise I couldn't talk to him.

I sat there debating what to do. It was easy enough to assume that somebody had been in the plane and put the message in the lunch, and from that point that some person had monkeyed with the engine and maybe loosened up the landing gear so we'd crack up when we came down. Fussing with the engine or landing gear was the only idea I had. I didn't dare go up into the cockpit and tell the pilots to come down at the earliest opportunity, for the simple reason I wasn't sure that a wheel hadn't fallen off or something like that. I just sat in my seat and tried to figure out what the hell to do. I hardly dared look at Uncle Theodore at all. He had gone into a sort of glassy-eyed coma.

Even his shaking had stopped. When I finally did decide that something could be done, we were just beginning to move over the foothills of some part of the Appalachian Mountains. The ground underneath looked pretty tough. Woods with snow on them and farms here and there. I decided if I went up and told the pilots they better land right away and that they better plan to make their landing a crash landing, we might get away with it.

Then before I had the sense to do a thing, we slipped into the fog. It came so fast it frightened me. All around us on every side. You couldn't see the ground below any more and I knew the idea of landing was out for the time being. While we were in the fog one of the motors died. There were three of them. I could see the pilot who wasn't at the controls turn around and wave and grin and point as if to assure me that everything was going to be all right. A minute later he started out over some sort of a cat-walk to see what he could do about the motor. He didn't know why it had stopped, but I knew. I expected that the rest of them would also stop in a pretty short time. And with the fog underneath us and all around us, it looked as if the end were pretty near, not only for Uncle Theodore but for all four of us.

"It was at that particular instant that I saw Uncle Theodore at the door that led from the cabin of the plane to the outside. It hadn't occurred to me that he would know what had happened, but I saw that his eyes were fixed on the propeller, which was driven by the dead motor. It was swinging around very slowly. The engine had conked completely. I tried to go after Uncle Theodore, but I wasn't quick enough. He turned back one absolutely maniacal glance toward me, swung the door open and stepped out. I might have been three feet behind him and I didn't think at all, except to have an instantaneous flash that I ought to be with him whatever happened. I don't suppose I jumped a quarter of a second later. The door was still open and I went through it head first."

Donald hesitated. His face lost color at the memory and his voice became slightly uneven. "I had never jumped before, although I knew the rudiments. The ring was in my hand. There wasn't any sensation of falling, or motion, at all. I counted and pulled the ring. There was a terrific jerk on my shoulders and there I was, hanging in the air. I couldn't see the ground. I couldn't see the plane, although for a little while I thought I could hear it faintly. Then there was nothing. I was just standing still in a gray blanket."

"Once or twice I hollered for Uncle Theodore on the chance he might be floating within ear-shot. There wasn't any answer. It seemed to me I hung in the air for half an hour and then, all of a sudden, I saw a patch of darkness underneath me. It shot toward me, became a frozen corn field, and in a second I hit it hard. The parachute fell over sideways. I was dragged along for several feet and then, all of a sudden, I stopped. The fog on the ground wasn't as thick as it had been in the air and there I was in the middle of a big field. I got up, got loose from the collapsed parachute and rubbed myself. I didn't notice the scratch on my head at all."

"I began to look around for Uncle Theodore, walking first in one direction and then in another. It must have been an enormous field, because I walked and walked without coming to the end of it and I couldn't see anything of the country around it on account of the fog. It wasn't dark, but the light was sullen and I knew it would be dark before so very long. I knew we'd jumped so close that he couldn't be very far away, so I went back to my parachute and began to walk in a spiral outward. I suppose that spiral was half a mile across when I saw him. He was dead, Melicent. His parachute never opened and he had died with his hand still clutching the ring. His fall burst open the envelope in which the parachute was contained and I saw why it had never opened. It had been pinned in with one of those enormous safety pins they use on horse blankets."

He did not go on for so long that she said, "Yes?" in a very gentle voice. Then he looked up.

"There is no necessity to dwell on the fact that Uncle Theodore was almost unrecognizable. But I did one thing. I took the blanket pin out of his bursted parachute pack. I don't know yet why I did it. I took it carefully in my handkerchief on the chance they might be able to find fingerprints. But I took it partly because I had arranged to get the parachute for Uncle Theodore and I was afraid if it was generally known that the parachute I got was pinned in, it would get me into so much difficulty that I wouldn't be able to do anything more about finding out who put that pin there. Are those good reasons, Melicent, or was that something very wrong?"

"They are very good reasons."

"I hope so. It wasn't that I was afraid of being accused of something I knew I didn't do. It was just that I couldn't stand the uselessness of being accused of such a thing. It would merely waste time and give the person who did it a better chance to cover his tracks."

He looked at her with eyes into which had suddenly come renewed life and purpose. "You see, that safety pin is the first really absolute and actual proof of murder that we have for any of the Cornwalls. Together with the copper spider that was in Uncle Everitt's hand, it is the only tangible object that we can show for the death of four people." He reached into his inside pocket, withdrew a handkerchief and opened it. It contained a steel safety pin, five or six inches in length. "That's all it took to murder Uncle Theodore. Now, what do you think of it?"

Melicent gazed at him steadily.

"I think," she replied, "that you had better mention this to no one else besides me; and especially not to your Aunt Hannah--if she allows you to see her."

"You mean, Melicent--"

"I mean that, going back over all the deaths in your family, you could not explain that pin to anyone else in the world, probably--except me."

MELICENT returned to Miss Cornwall's door. It was nearly an hour, she suddenly realized, since she had slipped her note in to Hannah saying that Donald had returned and she had gone to see him; but no sooner had she halted again at the door than Miss Cornwall hailed her: "Melicent?"

"Yes."

"You have seen my nephew? Answer me, verbally, only yes or no."

"Yes."

"Write briefly what he told you; be careful how you word it. Slip it under the door." 

Melicent wrote: "Your nephew has arrived safe, except for some scratches made by landing from his parachute leap. Your brother was killed because his parachute had been tampered with." She added, "No one knows by whom." And she slipped it under the door.

There was no acknowledgment and soon Melicent went away. For a few moments, she merely wandered through the great, grim castle, struggling with her dreads.

Murder--unquestioned murder--again had been done; and if she told her employer, by whom she was completely trusted, all the facts which had come to her, would Hannah Cornwall doubt that Donald had put that deadly pin in the parachute? No matter what Hannah would believe or doubt, Melicent fiercely told herself that Hannah was in no condition to consider evidence to-night; therefore, no wrong was done by concealing it from her. Yet--yet--Melicent could not decide what to do.

She went back to Donald who asked her: "Does Aunt Hannah want to see me?"

"Not to-night."

"I'm as glad. I am absolutely all in. It was grand of you to wait up for me." He stood and looked around the room. "This is a weird place, isn't it? 'Alcazar.' You'd think that under the circumstances Aunt Hannah would want to go to any other house in the world than this."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Psychological reasons, maybe. Doesn't it remind you of the kind of place in which Pale Horses would prance, haunting these stone corridors. It's a ghostly old fortress but--say, what's the matter?"

An unwilling, strained sob escaped Melicent. She trembled from head to foot and commenced to cry. "Don't say things like that! Don't! Please don't! I can't stand them any longer!"

There was a brief instant during which he stood before her. Then he sat down beside her and wrapped one long arm around her. With his other hand, he patted her head.

"Melicent, old kid, don't cry. I didn't mean to frighten you. I guess that kind of grimness is a little bit insane. Please don't cry."

She began to sniffle. "I--I--I am sorry. I just lost--control--of myself-for a minute."

"Of course you did. I am sorry and I apologize. That was a dirty trick." She felt him brushing her hair away from her eyes and holding her shoulder in the cup of his hand. He pushed her head back. He bent over her. He kissed her long and ardently on the mouth. After that he stepped away from her with quick fright. "Good Lord! I didn't mean to do that! Honestly, I didn't! Couldn't help it. Terribly sorry."

The eyes Melicent turned up to him were wet with tears but, nevertheless, they laughed at his confusion. He read the emotion they contained with absolute amazement.

"You didn't mind?" he asked uncertainly.

"No," she answered. "I didn't mind."

He said one great, amazed word. "Melicent!"

But she shook her head, still laughing. "Not now. You mustn't kiss me again to-night. Not to-night." The smile faded slowly and for a long time they looked at each other with silent wonder, with profound tenderness.

It was Melicent who first averted her gaze. "You better go to your room. I think the butler is still up. It is one o'clock. We will see each other in the morning, every morning. You mustn't look so disappointed and hurt. You've got to remember the things we will have to do in the next few days. It is very late. I haven't even told you what's happened here at 'Alcazar.'"

"Has anything happened here?" He asked the question as if he had discovered a new power by which he would thwart all untoward accidents in the vicinity of Melicent.

"Oh, nothing like the sort of thing you are thinking of. Only, we learned about the aeroplane accident over the radio. And the whole thing frightened your Aunt Hannah so badly that she's locked in her room and won't speak to anybody. You can only communicate with her by notes pushed under the door. You see, she's afraid somebody will speak a five-word message."

There was another long pause in which the young man and the young woman looked at each other. Then, side by side, they walked into the hall. He took her arm but it was she who helped him up the stairs rather than he who assisted her. When they had covered half the distance along the slow slope of the stone steps he said, "By the way, have you seen Reese at all?"

"I saw him for a little while when he was arranging to get servants to open up this place."

"Did you have any chance to talk to him?"

"Some."

They were in the hall. "Your room is the third on the right. The door's open and one of the servants is there."

"The room with the light on?"

"Yes."

She stopped at her room and he stood in front of her. A bright glow had come into his face. Neither of them moved.

"Just once," he said at last, in a husky voice.

Melicent made no answer at all, except to incline her face toward his.

A little later she closed her door and turned the key in it, and Donald Cornwall walked dizzily down the hall of the great castle.

Melicent opened her eyes with mingled emotions. First, she remembered how Donald had kissed her and that filled her with ecstasy; then she recollected the details of the death of Theodore--and the parachute pin--and she started with guilt. What would she do about that? Should she do anything?

Before she had gone to bed, she had written down a more complete account of the aeroplane accident for Miss Cornwall and still she had refrained from inserting any mention of the pin in the parachute. Melicent reread the account when she had dressed and, leaving it as it was, she went to Miss Cornwall's room and slipped it under the door.

Then she knocked.

"Who is it?" Miss Cornwall's voice was cracked and querulous.

"Melicent. "

"Very well. Don't say any more. But bring me some breakfast. Go down to the kitchen yourself, squeeze the juice of two oranges, open a fresh box of cereal, open a fresh bottle of cream and make coffee from the coffee in the servants' supplies."

Fifteen minutes later Melicent had performed those operations. She brought the tray up to Miss Cornwall's room, knocked on the door, and was admitted. Hannah's face was streaked and lined. Her hands shook and she had lost her upright posture. It seemed to Melicent that during the night her gray hair had turned lighter. She took the tray, stared suspiciously at the food upon it, and then began to eat almost with resignation. She sat with her back to the windows and the only comment she made during the whole meal was upon that fact. "I thought of getting the windows painted but I decided that if I keep my back toward them I will be all right. I have drawn the blind up across the one that looks out on New York City. The chance of another electric sign being turned on there is one I won't take. I will see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing."