Five Fatal Words (31 page)

"Of all the victims of it, I can find none other beside Alice Cornwall who had been threatened. If it was made lethal to destroy those who died, I can find no reason for anyone desiring the death of any of the victims--except her. The spread of such a poison throughout the Domrey valley in order to murder one woman, seems inconceivable. However, I have your word that Alice had just received one of the fatal messages. We will leave the mist for the moment; its implications are still unsolved."

"Let us come to the meteorite which flew into Theodore Cornwall's room. You, Donald, had it examined by the geologists at the university; later, as you ordered, it was delivered to me; and I also had it examined. The report made to me concurred with the report made to you. There is no possible question that it is a bit of meteoric iron; it was indeed a scrap of a star which found its way into Theodore Cornwall's room--and which might have struck and killed him. There is considerable question, however, as to whether God or man sent it on its way. Both the astronomers whom I have consulted--and who, finally, I brought to Theodore Cornwall's apartment--are agreed that it would be practically impossible for a meteorite to strike with the small violence of the iron that flew into that room.

"It struck very hot, I understand; and meteorites become white hot from their flight through the air but yours, I believe, flew no farther than from the opposite roof. Somewhere nearby it had been heated and then, by some catapult-like instrument, it was hurled through the window."

"But," Melicent interrupted, "it was a real meteorite, you said."

"Exactly; one that had fallen somewhere else on the earth and had been cool for perhaps a hundred years--until a murderer, having a very special mission to perform, obtained it and heated it and hurled it in."

"You, too, believe that, Mr. Reese?"

"I have to believe that," replied the lawyer simply, "or to believe that the sky is actually after these people. There remains the fog to bear out that theory; but I can't credit it. Human hands are against us--and human brains--amazingly merciless, calculating brains. Think how they drove Theodore through terror to his death. He was swayed by his stars; they knew it; and they decided to toss a bit of a star into his room. By chance it might strike him and kill him; but if it only fell to the floor, yet it could scarcely fail to affect him. We all know how it drove him to his death."

"Which would not have occurred, however," Donald reminded, "if the parachute had not been pinned."

"I said," agreed the lawyer, "that we were dealing with human hands and brains and purposes. Have either of you ever considered whether the purposes, at least, might not be Hannah's? I've known her better than any of your other aunts and uncles, and better than your father, Donald. Year after year, she's gone on fearing for her life, doubling her dreads, doubling her determination to outlive the rest. I've hired new servants for her every year and helped her carry out the schemes she perpetually devised to protect herself. The basis of her fear was always that one of her sisters or brothers--or people connected with them--would put her out of the way. Suppose in her mind, recently not quite sane, she became so obsessed with this idea that she came to believe that she could protect herself only by making away with the others. She would devise a scheme of murder in self-defense. It is possible that from the servants whom I have hired for her, year after year, and who have been flowing through her house that she found some who fitted into her scheme of assassination in self-defense. She has always drawn and kept at hand great sums in cash. And what could she not promise to them, if her schemes succeeded!"

"You speak," cried Melicent, "as though you were sure she formed such schemes!"

"Are you sure she hasn't?"

"But she's H--she, herself, is H in the sequence D EAT H. And D and E and A and T are gone and it has come to her."

"Who said so?" countered the lawyer. Someone noticed that five of the six members of her family had names, the initials of which combined spelled death; could she not have noticed this too? If the family started to die in that order, it would be logical to believe that she would be the fifth, and hence all suspicion would be averted from her and possibly directed toward Lydia, whose name did not occur in the sequence. Do you get my point?"

"Yes."

"It would leave her to the end, unsuspected; she would be the one to be defended, not to be feared."

Again Melicent broke in. "If you could see her--but she will see no one but me--you could not possibly speak of her as one to be feared."

"Not in person; very likely not," agreed the lawyer. "It is most improbable that she, in person, could have committed any violent deed; but she may have motivated others to do them for her. And now, perhaps, she could not stop them, if she would. Great crimes occur in that way. Someone conceives a scheme not completely picturing, at the same time, the consequences of its execution. But events are started; they cannot be stayed; they seize the stage and run on and on. Subordinate hands become more savage and merciless and at last put the principal in their power. . . . I define the possibility in such detail because, in this extremity, we must consider any hypothesis. You, Miss Waring, have been almost constantly with Miss Cornwall; you can tell me whether you have assembled any evidence to sustain such a presumption."

Melicent slowly shook her head. "Of course her brother Everitt's death occurred shortly after he arrived to visit her; then she went to visit her sister Alice, the fog came, but Miss Cornwall escaped. She brought us all back to visit her brother Theodore; and we all know what followed. However, I have never had any evidence that she is in communication with anyone, unknown to us, who might be acting against her brothers and sisters. She has criticized severely the other members of her family; but that is all."

"Of course an arrangement might have been with some agent, not now connected with the household, before you were originally engaged," the lawyer said. "And there might have been subsequent communication without your learning of it. She is alone, she sends you away whenever she wishes." Reese nodded regretfully. "I wish Granger had stayed. He could have supplemented you in watching her. But I presume the whole thing was too much for him. He came into my office after he returned from Belgium and told me he couldn't stand the job he had. Then he went down to Georgia to be with his mother, who was ill."

"Who was Granger?" Melicent asked. "I remember you told me I could have implicit confidence in him."

Mr. Reese started toward the hall and then stopped. "He was a young chap who came to my office looking for a job a long time ago. He worked for me several years and studied law at night. I learned to depend upon him. But he failed his bar examinations and that discouraged him. He left my employment. Last fall, just about the time Hannah Cornwall was due to change servants, he showed up again, looking for work. It occurred to me that it would be valuable to have someone I knew in Hannah's house, so I brought him along. He expressed great admiration for you, Miss Waring. It is clear, of course, that the difficulty he found in attending Miss Cornwall developed from the fact that he became emotionally attached to you; and you did not reciprocate. You have not heard from him at all since he left?"

"Only the letter which I have mentioned to you," Melicent said.

"I am surprised, remembering how he referred to you when I last saw him. Now I assume I know everything you know; and I have kept nothing from you. If Miss Cornwall will not see me, I had better return to town. Theodore's affairs, of course, must be attended to."

With that, Mr. Reese stepped into the hall, bid them good-by and a moment later they heard the sound of his car moving away from the castle. Donald looked at Melicent.

"I ought to drive in town this morning to make arrangements for Uncle Theodore's funeral. I hate to leave you." He sighed. "I suppose that by to-morrow the house will be full of police and we will both be watched and suspected, and maybe it's for the best. Perhaps we were foolish not to have had the police from the very first. Anyway, I'll try to be back by early afternoon. I'd give a lot to know what Mr. Reese really thinks about the whole thing. I may drop in at his office." He opened the door of a small closet, put on his coat, took his hat in his hand and left the hall.

Melicent walked up the stairs. Her mind was in complete chaos.

She knocked on Hannah Cornwall's door.

"Who is it?"

"Miss Waring."

"Come in."

A certain amount of sunlight came through the tall windows that looked over the Hudson. The day outside was crisp and cold. Melicent picked up her pad and wrote, "Mr. Reese was here. He has just left."

Hannah said, "Give me the facts."

Melicent began to write down the story of the interview, leaving out their suspicion of herself, but admitting freely that she had broken her promise of silence and discussed the mystery of the deaths with the lawyer.

Hannah, a shadow of herself, moved fretfully around the room while she waited for the preparation of the document. No one knew, no one could know, what thoughts, what alarms, what terrors stirred in her wretched soul. She had ceased almost to be a human being, and she lived from minute to minute, hour to hour, with the sole purpose of stretching out that progression of time until safety was somehow assured. To win that safety she had given up definite effort of logical mental process. She stirred back and forth in the ancestral bedroom.

By and by a continuous sound outside the house attracted her restless attention. It drew her gaze through the window and up to the blue sky. The stretch of sky visible was the only thing outside her room on which she had dared to focus her attention. And as she looked into it, she saw an aeroplane there.

She stopped in the center of the room and watched the plane with stupid curiosity.

It was following no fixed course, but turned, spun and gyrated in a variety of complicated maneuvers. She watched it the more intently because it was the first glimpse of life outside her room which she had had in many hours.

Suddenly smoke belched from the aeroplane. A great streak of it across the blue sky. For an instant she thought that it had caught fire, but the smoke stopped and hung in the air, a straight, horizontal line. The plane whirled. The sun flashed upon it and it became a glittering dot as it went back to the place where the smoke had started. Again came the rush of cloud from the plane. This time the line was curved, so that together with the first one which still hung in the air it made a figure not unlike a tightly drawn bow. Perhaps Hannah Cornwall had never seen skywriting before. Certainly she did not recognize that the bow of smoke in the sky was also a letter "D."

Rapidly the plane continued to lay these streaks of smoke, moving like a busy insect in a garden. The whole maneuver interested Hannah and rested her mind. Her instinctive caution caused her to move away from the window; but when she had done so, she reasoned that, since the aeroplane was not even nearly overhead, it could not drop anything to hurt her. She had shut herself in so long. The plane, dodging about so, was interesting.

She returned to the window and pushed it open. It was a casement window and it swung silently on its hinges under the impulse of her hands as--she clung to it, turning to look up, daring only to look into the sky, avoiding even a glance down.

A word stood in the sky! A word which she read before she knew it. A word beginning with D; and next it another word, beginning with E and next it a gigantic A.

She could not stop herself from reading; she could not at once even close her eyes. There were words--the frightful, fatal words warning her of death standing above her in the sky itself!

Perhaps the horror of the uselessness of all her precautions paralyzed her; perhaps she was held helpless, fascinated by the hideous ingenuity of the scheme. Perhaps both influences acted together. But at last, it seems, she shut her eyes; and dizziness came to her. She did not scream. Perhaps, in her paralysis, she could not. Eyes shut, she balanced half out the window, clutching the edge of the casement sash which swung out farther with her weight. And still she made no sound nor opened her eyes.

And thus she was when Melicent saw her. Melicent, obediently writing at the desk, had been absorbed in her record, aware only that Miss Cornwall had opened the window. All that had passed had been in utter silence.

Melicent jumped up; she cried out and she ran for the window. Too late.

For Miss Cornwall's hand had slipped from the sash; she caught at the outside stone sill; but there was ice upon it. Her balance was gone. She made a little shuffling sound, as she slid over the window sill and she began the sheer fall to the frozen river far below. Perhaps even yet she did not open her eyes; but there came to Melicent one wild, desperate, ear-splitting shriek.

Melicent leaned far out the window. One look down. Enough. Melicent looked up and words stared at her from the sky.

Words shredded and torn by the breezes yet words beginning with D and E and A and T and H. The five fatal words of the Cornwalls!

"Decensy," Melicent made out the first word; and with her reading of it something leaped within her to overtop even the horror of the little heap, which had been Hannah Cornwall, on the ice below. For, with the last message of murder, the murderer was betrayed. She knew! Suddenly she knew!

She ran from the room, screaming for Donald.

NO one made answer. No one was near the door. For an instant, in her horrified panic, she turned back to lock the door before she realized that there no longer existed any reason to guard that room. Miss Cornwall was gone from it; Miss Cornwall was, undoubtedly, dead.

It was that, indeed, which she had been running to announce; and to avenge! For the murderer of the Cornwalls was overhead, in the air.

She could hear the drum of his engine and air screw as he completed his last word written in the sky. He could scarcely have seen the fall from the window; he could not know that, already, his purpose was accomplished. Miss Cornwall was dead; but overhead, he twisted and turned in the bright winter sky, writing the last letters of the message in his streamers of smoke.