Five Fatal Words (3 page)

"I beg your pardon," interrupted Melicent, "but may I ask, was it a natural death?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"Because of an implication I gathered from your tone."

"I meant none. Daniel Cornwall's death was, of course, natural; it should have been almost expected. He was not a young man and he had chosen to live in a very trying country; however, it immensely disturbed Miss Cornwall and filled her with forebodings.

You will have to deal with them undoubtedly. Here is Miss Cornwall now, I believe."

Miss Cornwall stepped into the room. Melicent had been so much impressed by her features that she had given little attention to her dress, which she now saw swept the floor and was cut in a style long since forgotten, a style that belonged to the era of horse cars and round-hatted policemen.

"I have had your suitcases sent to your room, Miss Waring. I will wish to talk to you after dinner, which you will eat with me in the dining room. Until then I am afraid I will be busy instructing the new servants in their duties. You may pass the time as you wish. But I trust that you will not leave the grounds." She turned to Mr. Reese. "I would like to have a few words with you."

Melicent withdrew from the library and found herself left entirely to her own resources. She remembered the hours that followed all the rest of her life. She used them to explore the house and immediate grounds. It was an extraordinarily large house and contained more than forty rooms, many of which were locked, many others of which bore no marks of occupancy for decades. Suites of rooms had been modernized, and in those, apparently, Miss Cornwall and her guests, if she had any, made their dwelling. The grounds were under formal cultivation for several acres around the house. Beyond that on either side were woods--woods in which there were paths that led to small lakes, a path that led along a brook, an old bridle path on which there were no footprints of horses, and a path that led to a Japanese garden.

On the other side of the Japanese garden were acres of woodland and out of the woods, apparently following no path, suddenly stepped Mr. Granger.

"Hello!" he hailed as he saw Melicent.

"Hello."

Granger looked about quickly and then advanced close to her. "Do you know where you are now?" he asked her. "I saw, in the car, you hadn't the least idea."

"No, I hadn't," admitted Melicent. "But I have now."

"That's good. We have the bond of arriving here together in common, and probably under rather similar compulsions. I am going to presume on it. What do you do here ?"

"I haven't been told yet. What do you do?"

"I am yet to be told entirely, but, as Reese said, I can fly, and there's an airplane kept back there," he nodded into the woods. "Beyond this patch of trees there's another clearing with level ground enough for a take-off and a neat little one passenger ship in a hangar." Granger stopped and demanded suddenly: "You're the answer to C. V. 164, aren't you?" Melicent nodded. "As you're C. K. 122."

"Exactly; then I'll show you this. My predecessor at piloting was moved out before I was moved in; but he stuck this in under a dial where another pilot was sure to find it." And Granger handed over a much-folded paper on which was written:

"The old dame never leaves the ground; she never even looks at the ship; but it's always got to be ready. You go up now and then to prove it. That's all. Figure it out your own way; and good luck to you."

Melicent looked up. "Have you started to figure it out?" she asked.

"A quick, emergency get-away would be my present guess," observed Granger, taking back the paper. "Now some day do as much for me. Beautiful place, isn't it?"

"It is very beautiful, but--"

"Say it!"

"Lonesome, isn't it?"

"Lonesome doesn't start to say it. It's gruesome. Going back to the house?" he invited and then corrected, "Perhaps we'd better not go back together."

"Why not?"

"I don't know why not, but I'm affected that way by the place. I live over the garage. Meet me here sometimes, will you?"

Melicent found Miss Cornwall in the library and, evidently, expecting her.

"You have not been off the place, Miss Waring?"

"No, but I have been all through the house and on several of the paths. It is very beautiful."

Miss Cornwall nodded. "It is quite lovely. Dinner will be in fifteen minutes; it is always punctual."

At dinner Miss Cornwall and Melicent sat at opposite ends of a long table and were served by a uniformed servant. Few words passed between them during the meal.

Of course, Melicent had no basis for comparison, but she felt that her employer must be more abstracted than usual; that is, she could not believe that anyone could spend so much of her time, ordinarily, staring into empty space.

Mr. Reese had departed, Miss Cornwall said, but added no other information.

From what Melicent knew, therefore, this old woman was alone in the great house with her and with Granger, who was dining elsewhere, and with the staff of strange servants which she had engaged to-day. Well, it was what she chose.

After the meal was over, the two went into the library, and when Miss Cornwall made no suggestion Melicent selected a book and read at it. Miss Cornwall soon picked up another book and read it, repeating the words to herself. At least, that was what Melicent thought she was doing when she saw her lips move; but after a time Miss Cornwall spoke audibly.

She probably was not aware that her whisper could be heard, but it was very quiet in the room and Melicent was decidedly on edge.

"Doubtless even a tulip hopes," she made out the whispered and rewhispered words. "Doubtless even a tulip hopes." With repetition, they became so distinct that Melicent was sure this was what she was saying, meaningless as it was: "Doubtless even a tulip hopes." Suddenly Miss Cornwall became aware that she was speaking audibly:

"Did you hear what I said?" she demanded.

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"'Doubtless even a tulip hopes,'" repeated Melicent.

"Does it mean anything to you?"

"No."

"See if you can find any meaning in it. Now it is time to go to bed. You will come with me, please."

They went upstairs together and through a long hall. Miss Cornwall stopped at a door. "This is my room." She opened it. Behind the door was a vast room with casement windows and canopied bed. Both women entered it. Another door in the room was opened by Miss Cornwall and she beckoned Melicent to follow her through it. She switched on the electric lights and a second chamber proved also to be a bedroom--a smaller, brighter, and more ordinary bedroom. "This is your room," Miss Cornwall said.

For a moment she hesitated and then looked directly at the girl. "I suppose you will want to know why I haven given no name to your duties and just what they are."

Melicent grew tense. She realized that now and at last she was going to know the answer to the mystery of the advertisement. "Yes," she said, "I do."

A curious expression came on the woman's face, an expression that made it haggard, an expression composed of fear and determination, an expression that alarmed Melicent. Miss Cornwall's voice was almost a whisper. "Nominally you will be my secretary. It will be necessary at this time for you to swear that under no circumstances and to no one you utter a syllable about the arrangements I will now discuss. Swear."

Melicent felt the hand of the old woman on her shoulder. "Of course," she said falteringly, "I swear."

"Nominally you will be called my secretary," Miss Cornwall repeated, "but it is not for that I am paying you five thousand dollars a year. Your only real duty will be very simple. It is this: Each night at nine-fifteen we will both retire. You will go into your room and lock the door. I will go into my room and lock the door. On your bed I have laid out a nightdress and night cap. When you are ready and I am ready we will open the door between our rooms. You will go into my room and I will go into yours. We will turn out the lights immediately and lock the door between our rooms. You will spend the night in my bed and I will spend it in your bed in your room. That is your sole real duty."

Half an hour later they had exchanged rooms. Melicent dressed in a long nightgown and wearing a nightcap, was lying in the canopied bed, alone, behind locked doors, and her blood ran cold with a kind of horror that she had never known existed in this modern world.

THE first night Melicent spent at Blackcroft was a night of absolute terror. What had happened to her had happened so quickly that it was not until she was alone in the dark that she realized its full and horrible portent. Miss Cornwall had made her dress in night clothes like her own and made her sleep in the big bedroom in the canopied bed for a reason that became obvious to Melicent. Miss Cornwall was afraid. She was afraid of somebody or something. She was afraid that somebody or something would steal up to her bed at night and she had hired another person to live in her house and be a substitute for her every night after she had retired, so that the some one or the something, if it appeared, would wreak its vengeance upon, not Miss Cornwall, but her employee--upon Melicent.

During the first half hour the idea was so horrible that Melicent could entertain no other. Not a single person in the house, not a single person in the world, would realize that she and Miss Cornwall had changed places. She wondered if she would ever be able to sleep in the long year that lay ahead. She thought frantically of getting up and leaving the house, which had suddenly grown ominous. But it would be worse to move through those empty halls in the dark than it would be to wait, terror stricken and weak, until the coming of daylight. Not five thousand, not ten thousand, not any sum of money could repay her for three hundred and sixty-five nights of unrelieved dreadfulness. She lay on her pillow, in the ruffles on the dress and the lace cap, the living substitute for Miss Cornwall in case anyone was bent upon doing ill to that old lady.

Melicent could feel the perspiration oozing from the palms of her hands. Noises in the trees outside the window or inarticulate noises in the house brought her automatically up on her elbow, waiting for she did not know what. In an hour the house became utterly silent. But in that hour Melicent had regained a little of her normal self-control. She was able to think and reason. She fought back the terrors of the dark and the horror of her strange occupation, and tried to reassure herself. Mr. Reese had said that Miss Cornwall was eccentric. Perhaps Miss Cornwall had no real fear, no real enemy, but only a phobia, a dread of going to sleep that was founded on empty imagination. Perhaps she had no real reason for wanting some one else disguised as herself to sleep in her bed every night.

Perhaps it was just the working of a warped, tortuous, and unhappy mind. Perhaps she, Melicent, was in less danger here than in her own apartment in New York.

Melicent was well educated. She knew something about psychology and she knew it was quite possible for a human being to invent some such plan merely to appease its own inner mental disturbances and not because that person had physical enemies. Half of Melicent's mind was alert for the footsteps of an unknown assassin; the other half was groping along the paths of deliberate logic for strength to spend the night--a year of nights--in the great dark room lying in the canopied antique bed.

Little fragments of thought helped the latter half of her mind. Mr. Reese had said that other women had held the position Melicent now held and had expressed their satisfaction with it at the end of a year. That thought gave Melicent courage. Other women had slept in that great bed, trembling, as she was trembling, for the first few nights, and finally accepted the process as routine. Doubtless she would also grow accustomed to it. Doubtless at the end of a year when she left the bizarre services of Miss Cornwall, she would be glad that she had earned so much money and she would laugh at this first awful night.

She knew that she was not going to sleep and yet she had been carefully instructed by Miss Cornwall never, under any circumstances, to turn on her light. She could see nothing except the vague gray corners that represented the casement windows.

Before she had retired she had noticed that those windows were arranged so that they could be opened only a little way, and she had noticed also that the frames were made of metal. The door to the hall was locked. It was like all the other doors in the house, heavy oak, but there was no reassurance in these thoughts, because, while they might merely indicate that Miss Cornwall was afraid to go to sleep without taking abnormal steps to protect herself, they might also indicate that she had reasons to take those steps.

The airplane which Miss Cornwall never used but ordered always ready for use might be part of the same aberration, and, equally well, it might be a sanely provided means of sudden escape from a real and tangible danger.

There was the sudden death of Miss Cornwall's brother which had given her a great shock; was there a secret in that death? Melicent's mind went on and on. More than a million a year income for each of the Cornwalls when they were six; so the share of each was even greater now; and it would be greater yet, if another were killed. But how could anyone who had a million a year want more? Melicent could not imagine it; but she knew that greed for money seemed only to grow with gains.

After an interminable time Melicent realized that she could hear a clock striking somewhere in the house. A deep-voiced clock that chimed every quarter of an hour.

Thereafter her frozen vigilance was punctuated by those chimes.

"Doubtless even a tulip hopes!" Meaningless; but Miss Cornwall, who had repeated it over and over, knew it was meaningless, and she wanted a meaning for it.

Why?

Melicent heard the clock strike twelve and one and two. Then lightly and fitfully she fell into slumber. At an indefinite time afterward she opened her eyes with a start of terror and perceived that the gray light of day was seeping through the casement windows. She woke up enough to remember her situation, but the return of light reassured her and presently she managed to sink into a real, restful sleep, which lasted for a few hours. She was awakened again by the turning of the key in the door that led to her own room, which Miss Cornwall occupied.