Five Fatal Words (30 page)

Melicent nodded her head in agreement and tried to make her eyes express sympathy. She could not speak, because that had been the command of Hannah Cornwall.

When the meal had been finished, she took the tray.

"I suppose if I want anything I'll have to do without it. But I wish you would come up here and knock three times on my door every hour during the day. I f I don't answer, break the door down. The reason I am speaking so slowly to you is that I have to be sure I don't give myself the message. I have no idea how long I will stay here, or what I will do afterward, but for the present I am relying absolutely on you. I suppose it is unnecessary to say that if this affair terminates successfully I will see that you never have a financial worry during the rest of your life. I presume Donald will make every effort to find out what caused that parachute to fail. And I am living in the hope that the discovery of that fact will put an end to the whole dreadful fate that has taken four of my family and that now threatens me."

Melicent took up the pad and wrote: "Yes, he is working very hard. I understand from the servants that he called Mr. Reese early this morning. He'll be here soon."

"Have you seen Donald to-day?" Miss Cornwall asked.

"Not yet," Melicent wrote, and the pencil scrawl conveyed no iota of the emotion which accompanied her expectation of seeing Donald in a very few minutes.

When Miss Cornwall had finished, Melicent took the tray and went out. She carried in her mind a picture of the old woman, sitting in an upholstered chair, with her back to the light, a revolver in her lap, waiting, listening, dreading.

To what ominous and final ends the affairs of the Cornwall family were rushing!

Melicent went down to have her own breakfast after she left Miss Cornwall. The meal to which she sat down was very similar to that she had prepared for her employer, and as she began to eat she felt the sharp doubt that she had known many times in the past--perhaps she was sitting down to food that had been prepared for Miss Comwall, or perhaps the time would come when the murderer of the Cornwall family would think that she knew too much. Could that--
could
that be Donald? She discarded that thought with an effort of simple courage.

She had finished her bacon and eggs when Donald joined her. Over night his entire attitude toward her had changed. It was something she could realize without defining, and although he did not speak of what had happened to both of them so recently, the indications of it were in his eyes, in a certain tenderness of his voice, and in a certain straightforward and possessive manner which he had adopted toward her. It was more Melicent's matter-of-fact greeting than his own intention which prohibited any display of affection at the breakfast table.

"How do you feel to-day?" she asked.

"Much better, although I am pretty stiff. I must have taken quite a jouncing from that parachute, but at the time I didn't seem to notice it. How are you?"

"I'm all right."

"Did you get some sleep?"

Melicent nodded. "Some."

"That's good. We both need clear heads. Mr. Reese will be here soon."

"I heard you had called him."

"Yes, I expect him almost any minute. How's Aunt Hannah this morning?"

"She's all right."

"Did she ask to see me?"

"No."

To their ears came the sound of the bell that was rung at the front door. "That must be Mr. Reese now," Donald said. "I'd like you to talk to him with me, if you will."

"Certainly."

They left the table and found Mr. Reese standing in the hall. Melicent was flooded by a sense of relief. Here at last was Mr. Reese, a lawyer, a man of the world and a man of the outside world coming to participate in the final attempt to baffle the fate hovering over all the Cornwall affairs. In all that he had done previously--or in all that he had not done--he had been guided or influenced by Miss Cornwall; for he was her lawyer, accustomed to accommodate his activities to her interests and demands. And if he had so far accomplished little or nothing, Melicent suspected that it was because Hannah Cornwall had refused to let him act as he wished. Now, however, since affairs were almost entirely in the hands of Melicent and Donald, they could do as they chose.

Mr. Reese's greeting to them was urbane and it had a cheerful quality which no words spoken under the pall of the atmosphere of "Alcazar" could quite attain. He shook Donald's hand.

"I'm glad to see both of you looking so well," he began. "Considering the conditions which have surrounded you, I think you have stood the strain very well. It would be scarcely correct for me to offer my condolences to you, Mr. Cornwall. The business is a good deal more grim than such amenities permit."

"It is," agreed Donald. "If you'd be good enough to step into this room." He led the way from the hall and stopped at the door for Melicent to enter first. "I have asked Miss Waring to sit with us."

Once they had seated themselves close together and closed all the doors, polite formalities were dropped. Mr. Reese bent forward in his chair, his old but virile face thrust forward, his elbows on his knees. "I don't want to harrow either of you two people unduly," he said. "I have, as you know, been pursuing or directing certain investigations--as wide and as searching investigations as I felt myself able to pursue and not throw the whole affairs of your family, Mr. Cornwall, into the hands of the public authorities and put you all at the mercy of public prosecutors--and the police. Within that limit, I assure you I have done everything that I deemed could be done."

"I am sure that you have," Donald said impatiently.

Mr. Reese caught his tone. "I appreciate that you must be impatient to have my report, to learn what I have learned. I have ascertained several suggestive facts; but it is impossible yet for me to piece them together."

"Perhaps I can," returned Donald, abruptly. "What are they?"

The older man held up his hand. "I will give them to you in a moment; and I will give them much more intelligently if, first, I know everything that you know. Much has happened since I saw you; and perhaps I have not all the earlier occurrences accurately in mind in their right order. It is essential that I know, now, everything that you both know."

"All right," agreed Donald. "I will bring you up to date." And he began in detail, the account of Theodore's death, which he had previously given to Melicent.

As he neared the point in his narrative, at which he had told her of the blanket-pin which he had removed from the parachute, Melicent felt herself become weak, wondering whether he would waver. Quivering with excitement, she did not know whether she wanted him to tell it or omit it; but when, at the point, his voice went on relating the entire circumstance, her heart leaped with a triumphant relief and she was quieter.

She looked to the lawyer to see what effect Donald's admission had upon him and she saw none. Mr. Reese was too old, too experienced in the emergencies of others to betray his own verdict while hearing a case. He made neither interruption nor comment until Donald had finished; then he simply inquired: "That is all?"

Donald wiped his forehead. "Yes; I think that's all. In order that you may be sure that you have all the knowledge that we have of the previous occurrences, I ask Miss Waring to go over with you everything that she has seen or that has come to her. She has been in what I may describe as the central position among us all," Donald smiled a bit ruefully. "Do it for me, will you, Melicent?"

And Melicent did it.

The lawyer and Donald Cornwall sat for almost a full hour listening. During this hour, Donald spoke not at all; he merely watched her. The lawyer spoke only to ask questions to make clearer details he did not understand. Into that hour was crowded the narrative of a young girl who had taken a strange position which brought her face to face with a series of appalling circumstances which she endeavored to detail without passing judgment upon them.

Especially she endeavored not to pass judgment upon Donald, not to color her account either to exonerate or accuse him. She could not accuse him; she could not! And she was too proud, too loyal to him to conceal or alter any circumstance which might seem unfavorable to him. As she approached critical points in her story and at moments when Mr. Reese asked her, in his cold, precise voice, "Where was Donald Cornwall at this time?" she answered honestly and fearlessly.

She could feel Donald watching her, as she had watched him when he told of the pin in the parachute; and so she went through to the end.

At last Mr. Reese rose from the chair in which he had been sitting. "God! What a story! What a life you have led! Young lady, if I'd had an inkling of the sort of thing you were confronting, I wouldn't have hired you if I could have offered you a hundred thousand a year."

"Then," said Melicent quietly, "I'm glad you had no inkling."

The direction of his thoughts became less personal. "I have been following you, trying to find whom you, yourself, suspect as the murderer--or one of the murderers. I could not feel that you suspected, strongly, anyone."

"I don't," said Melicent slowly. "Through it all, I have tried to see who was to blame, who could be suspected, who could be proved guilty, but I can't settle--for any length of time--upon anyone."

"Yet you have suspected several, temporarily." 

Melicent nodded. "Sometimes I have suspected almost--myself."

Mr. Reese turned to Donald. "Whom have you suspected?"

"Two hundred millions of dollars is stake enough, I suppose, for any crime or series of crimes. It is stake enough to stir almost any man," Donald returned. "So I have suspected a good many people. I even suspected you." His eyes met those of the lawyer candidly. "A day or two ago, I could have sworn it was that astrologer, Priscilla Loring--or at least people associated with her. Then that idea washed out. This morning when I woke up, I found myself thinking of Lydia. She's in ill health and her mind takes queer slants. She's insulated herself, you might say, to ordinary human sympathies; you can't tell what a mind like hers might do--or direct. Her very physical helplessness might make her more defiantly determined to outlive all the rest and make her more merciless toward them. Yet--" he halted, looking at Melicent. "What is it! Melicent?"

"I've thought of her," said Melicent. "But I don't now."

"Neither do I," admitted Donald.

"But you both," pursued the lawyer, "suspect people and not fate."

"Fingers put that pin in that parachute," said Donald.

"But fate may use fingers. I mean," explained the lawyer, "it is possible that Theodore Cornwall's parachute was pinned by some moronic or perverted person who could have had no idea whom it would kill. Fate might have simply seen that he got that parachute."

"And also put the message in his lunch box?"

The lawyer nodded. "Yes; there's a flaw there. I was merely admitting all possibilities. There are acts of God and acts of devils; but the devils, at least, can usually be reduced to human form. Your father's death, Donald, does not lend itself to further investigation. He was poisoned, you think; and in that place where he died, any native might have been the agent of anyone. You have no evidence but the suspicion of poison--and the five-word message which preceded his death.

"So we come to Everitt and the five-word message sent to him; and the little copper spider found in his hand. I merely enunciate what is in the minds of both of you when I tell you that probably--no one can prove it now--Everitt Cornwall met his death in this manner: Electrocution was prepared for him. Someone, anticipating his coming, put a wire between the tiles into the bathroom beside the tub."

"You," Reese looked at Melicent, "saw the hole in the plaster in the adjoining room. It was necessary to make a hole there; but after it was made, the wire could be pushed between two tiles on the other side and make no noticeable hole. I think, then, that the copper spider was lightly soldered to the wire and the wire pulled tight so that the spider seemed to be standing on the tile. The wire was then connected with the light socket in the next room and, at the proper time, the current turned on."

"Everitt Cornwall could be counted upon to touch the spider, if he noticed it after he got into the bath; and that is the time he would notice it. He would be standing or sitting in water--immersed in it--thoroughly grounded and so was instantly killed."

"The powerful electric shock had a convulsive action upon the muscles causing his fingers to close on the spider. Possibly he plucked the spider from the wire as he died; possibly the wire had to be pulled away from the other side. At any rate, it was withdrawn; and as soon as possible afterwards, the house was burned. I believe this is what happened."

"So do I," said Donald; and Melicent, on her part, nodded. "Obviously, this series of events required the presence of the murderer in the house at the time."

"Obviously," agreed Donald. "You will remember I was not far away and many strangers, whom you, yourself, supplied, were in the house."

"Also," pursued the lawyer, imperturbably, "either the principal or a confederate was in New York a short time earlier. For the five-word telegram was sent from there."

"You, of course, were in the city and I came from New York just after the electrocution, you remember," Donald reminded Reese.

"But you could not, personally, have sent the message," returned Reese. "For the sender was completely forgotten by the girl who took it. You could not have been."

"Thank you for that," acknowledged Donald.

"I am not exonerating you. I exonerate, now, nobody."

"I was thanking you for believing I would not have been forgotten," Donald corrected him.

"Now the death of Alice Cornwall--of Alice Cornwall Wilbur--leads us into greater difficulties. I have had made, with the aid of the state department and of the Belgian authorities, an exhaustive examination of the character of the fatal fog. I cannot decide for myself whether it was made deadly by nature, by accident, or deliberately by poisons injected in it by man."