The dark fantastic (27 page)

He threw off one of the many quilts because he was too warm. Then he felt a chill and pulled it back. He seemed to be smothering. He began to fear he was having a heart attack. Perhaps if he turned over—Dr. Caxton had said that if the left arm pressed against the heart . . .

He lay on his back, gasping for air, trying to summon courage to get up and raise a window. The room was suddenly stifling. But he was afraid to leave his bed. And he was loath to call Huse, who had already been up once.

The smothering sensation was in his throat now. Some-

thing was too tight about his neck. He tore frantically at the collar of his borrowed nightshirt.

The collar was not even buttoned. It was open at the throat.

He tried desperately to call his companion. He could make no sound. He was strangling—choking to death—unable to cry for help.

When the crash came the second time it did not even startle him. He was almost gone. But he knew, in his semiconscious state, that the window blind had fallen again and that somehow it had brought relief. Moonlight streamed through the pane once more, and though the window was closed fresh air seemed to blow through the room. Lucius took great gulps of it into his bursting lungs and found that he was able to breathe again. The room seemed full of sweet fresh air.

Otis Huse sat up in bed, muttering, "This is getting to be a habit." But he got up and restored the fallen blind. Half asleep, he crawled back under the covers and was immediately dead to the world. He had replaced the rolled shade on its fixtures, but he had neglected to pull it down.

The moon shone straight into Lucius's eyes. He was ashamed to ask Huse to get out of bed for the third time and, to his disgust, he lacked the nerve to do it himself. So he lay staring at the moonlit window, his body icy with sweat.

He tried to remember afterward whether he closed his eyes or took them from the window, but he was never sure. He could not have told how it came or when; but suddenly it was there: a hand pressed against the windowpane.

There was nothing dim or misty in its shape. It was as vividly outlined against the glass as though the moon were a powerful spotlight. It was a woman's hand, slender, long-fingered, and so white that its texture seemed luminous.

There was curious pathos in the way the hand was pressed against the pane, slightly cupped, as though shading a pair of eyes that were trying to peer into the room. Yet Lucius saw no face, no arm, no body; nothing beyond the window but inky shadow, except for the spot of moonhght illuminating the hand.

While he looked at it he felt a strange compassion for someone, or something, that almost made him weep. As long as this pity gripped him, he was not afraid. As long as he knew no fear, he kept his eyes upon the hand. How long this lasted, he did not know.

Then realization came, and with it fear. Suddenly he told himself that he was looking at a hand that had no arm, and terror swept him so that he cried out hoarsely,

Otis Huse sat up in bed.

Lucius pointed to the window. The hand was gone.

He did not tell Huse what he had seen. He could not. He was still in the grip of a nightmare that tied his tongue. He told himself that in the morning he would tell the lawyer of his experience and let him question it if he dared. But he could not speak of it tonight.

So when Huse climbed out of bed for the third time and drew the blind, shutting out the disturbing moonlight, Lucius turned on his side and went quickly, soundly, to sleep, like a man drugged. He did not waken until voices and footsteps beyond the hall door warned that it was morning and the rest of the household was astir.

Huse was already out of bed. The two men dressed in curious silence. Perhaps it was only the natural glumness of early morning. But for some reason Lucius's resolve to relate his nocturnal experience began to dissipate with daylight. He was certain the lawyer would not believe him; Huse would discredit the whole episode as a nightmare. The thing should have been told at the moment, before any doubts—even his own—had time to germinate. Already Lucius was beginning to wonder if he had been the victim of an exceedingly realistic dream.

And then an odd thing happened. Huse, in dressing, dropped a collar button. It rolled through a crack under the closet door. The walls of this closet were unfinished, and rough two-by-fours left a space of several inches where floor and wall failed to meet. Huse cursed lustily when he saw where the button had gone.

"Damn the luck! It's rolled down that hole. Lend a hand, will you? Your fist is smaller than mine."

Lucius's long slim hand slipped easily under the floor boards and retrieved the missing button; likewise a bundle of rags stuffed between the sleeper and the floor.

"Lucky those rags were there. They kept your button from dropping through to the cellar."

Huse did not answer. He was regarding with queer interest the handful of rags, which were not rags at all, but a homemade doll with a velvet ribbon tied round its neck so tight that its head lolled foolishly to one side.

When Lucius saw the doll his face paled.

"Have you ever seen this before?" asked the lawyer.

Lucius nodded. He had an uncomfortable sensation of being on the witness stand.

"This is the doll my cousin feared, isn't it?"

There was no doubt it was the same doll. Lucius remembered it only too well. He reluctantly admitted as much.

"I wonder how it got under the floor of that closet," said Huse.

"Maybe it fell down there by accident."

"It couldn't have fallen through a crack that narrow." The implication was obvious. The doll had been hidden under the floor.

Sharply Lucius recalled his weird experience of the night. He debated whether or not to tell the lawyer. Desire to prove a point overrode prudence. Briefly he told of the hand he had seen at the window and the peculiar suggestion it carried of eyes peering into the room. Both men glanced at the window from which the bhnd had fallen three times. It was on a direct line with the spot where the doll was found.

For once Huse had no ready argument to sustain his own skepticism. He recalled what the doctor had told him about his cousin's death: that she had choked to death from no apparent cause. All that he had seen in this house, all that he had heard of it suddenly assumed a sinister significance.

"Suppose, for the sake of conjecture—mind, I don't claim to believe any such thing—but suppose your experience last night was something more than nightmare; do you think it was in any way connected with the secret of this doll's hiding place?"

"I do," said Lucius.

"That means you believe this doll was responsible for my cousin's death," said the lawyer.

But Lucius was not prepared to go that far. "Oh no. How could it be?"

"Knowing poor Abigail's fear of this thing," said Huse harshly, "and her nervous state at the time, I should say the sight of this doll with a strangling cord around its neck would have been sufficient to frighten her to death."

Lucius, now thoroughly alarmed, said hastily that he did not think anything of the kind and suggested that they put the doll back where they had found it. But this Huse refused to do.

"In that case, then, we'll show it to Richard," said Lucius, and on this point they finally compromised.

They talked to Richard after breakfast, behind closed doors in the bedchamber, for Lucius made it clear that what they had to tell was for his ears alone. Richard listened calmly to the account of the falling window blind; even Lucius's nocturnal experience failed to move him. But when Huse took up the narrative and told of the rolling collar button and what was found beneath the closet floor, every trace of color drained from Richard's face. There was no question of the shock he received when Thorne's doll was laid before him.

He regarded it for a long moment in silence. Then he said, "Thank you, gentlemen, for coming with this to me. I should have destroyed it long ago. I'd forgotten it was there."

''You mean—you knew about it?" The lawyer's sharp query betrayed collapse of a rapidly building case.

Richard said coolly, "I put it there myself."

For a second the two lifelong antagonists faced each other in open hostility. Lucius, the onlooker, thought, "Richard is lying and Huse knows it."

"My late wife had a morbid fear of this doll," Richard explained. "So I hid it where she could not possibly find it."

"In her own room?" said Huse skeptically.

"Where no one could find it," said Richard. "There are children in this house. The doll was their plaything. The one place they were never allowed to play was in their mother's room." He said children. Both men noted that he pointedly referred to his own small boys, ignoring the girl who had made the doll.

"As for your experience last night, Lucius, I ask you please not to spread that tale around the country. There is nothing extraordinary about a falling window shade. And your dream of suffocation is not remarkable, considering that from boyhood you've suffered from nightmare. I've slept with you too often to be fooled by that." Richard smiled at his friend good-humoredly, but a spot of color burned now in each cheek.

The lawyer said, "Do you consider that choking string around the doll's neck part of your friend's nightmare?"

Richard's eyes blazed. At last he made no effort to hide his feeling toward this uninvited guest.

"I've tried to treat you courteously, Otis Huse, because of your relationship to my children. I don't know what you came here to find, and I'm neither interested nor alarmed. But I do ask you to leave my house because I don't like your libelous insinuations."

Perhaps it was the unlooked-for explosion, perhaps it was the word "libel," which brought the lawyer to realization that he had nothing but dreams and toys on which to found his vague suspicions. He was much too astute to risk a suit for damages, so he took his departure forthwith, leaving his luckless companion to get back to town the best way he could.

"Don't worry, Richard. Otis won't do anything. He's no fool, even if he is mean as gar broth." Lucius tried to reassure his friend when the other man had gone. "Suppose he did find Thorne's doll with a string choking it. No court in the world would call it..." And then at sight of Richard's face he stopped, appalled at his own words.

"I mean—the doll had nothing to do with Abigail's..." He floundered helplessly and gave up. Muttering something about business in Woodridge, he asked if he might have the loan of a horse.

CHAPTER 21

From an upstairs window Judith watched Otis Huse drive away and knew that her hope in that quarter had failed. He had spent a night at Timberley; he had witnessed her discomfiture, but he had not come to her support. If this shrewd, not disinterested attorney had failed to see anything on which to base an accusation of Thorne, there was nothing left to Judith but her fear.

She wondered what the three men had talked about behind the closed door of the room downstairs. All night long she had tormented herself with the fear of what might be discovered by the two who were sleeping there. Once, unable to close her eyes, she had stolen from the bed in the alcove and slipped outdoors, in wrapper and nightgown, to peer through the window of the adjacent room. With her hand pressed to the moonlit pane, shielding her eyes from the eerie radiance, she had been able to satisfy herself that both men were abed and the closet door fast shut. She had crept back into the house and her own bed without waking her husband and fallen at last into slumber.

But now the caucus following breakfast had revived last night's fear. With the men gone she was free to question Richard, but she was afraid she might betray herself. She could no longer trust her tongue to speak her mind's intention.

The feeling of someone close beside her was with her constantly now, prompting her every utterance, possessing her very soul. It was not of her own volition that she quarreled with Richard. She had listened, helpless, last night to her own tirade as it poured from her mouth upon Thorne, knowing that with every word she was driving her lover from her. He had slept by her side in the alcove, in a bed that was strange and comfortless, and not once had he touched or spoken to her. Did he really believe she was lying about the thing she had seen? Or did he think she was losing her mind?

This was the beginning of a significant change in Judith. As winter came on she spent more and more time in her room. She made it bright and cheerful, and there was always a fire to attract visitors, so that gradually it became a family habit to sit in Judith's room instead of the room downstairs. Ann said one day to her daughter Kate, "We sit with Judith now almost as much as we used to sit with Abigail," and then, as the words sank in, mother and daughter exchanged a troubled look.

Judith's most frequent visitor was, surprisingly, young Will. The lad was obliged to pass her door in order to reach his own room, and she always called some pleasant greeting to him. At first he responded sulkily and went on by; then he took to lingering in the doorway; finally he came in and sat down.

He never had much to say, but he seemed flattered that Judith should enjoy talking to him. The talk always turned subtly upon himself. What was he doing these winter days when there was so little work upon the farm? Whom did he see when he went to Woodridge? Why hadn't he attended the housewarming at Tatum's the other night? Because he had no girl to take? Fie! There must be dozens of girls in the neighborhood to choose from.

Little by little the taciturn youth revealed himself to this clever sister-in-law as he had never revealed himself to mother or sisters. And Judith discovered a curious thing about young Will. He was jealous of his older brother. That he was unconscious of this jealousy was as evident as that it existed. But it had been the mainspring of his industry on the farm, just as it had been the stimulus for his adolescent wild oats. Because Richard had been born with that charm which pleases without effort, it had been necessary for young Will to prove himself the better farmer and to boast of his prowess with women,