The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "She roused a little while ago," he said, trying to speak quietly, and as though Audrey's rousing were not the wonder that it was. "She seemed very comfortable. And now she's sleeping."

  "The dear child!" said Mrs. Haverford. "If she had died, after everything - " Her plump face quivered. "Things have never been very happy for her, Clayton."

  "I'm afraid not." He went to a window and stood looking out. The city was not quiet, but its mighty roar of the day was lowered to a monotonous, drowsy humming. From the east, reflected against low-hanging clouds, was the dull red of his own steel mills, looking like the reflection of a vast conflagration.

  "Not very happy," he repeated.

  "Some times," Mrs. Haverford was saying, "I wonder about things. People go along missing the best things in life, and - I suppose there is a reason for it, but some times I wonder if He ever meant us to go on, crucifying our own souls."

  So she did know!

  "What would you have us do?"

  "I don't know. I suppose there isn't any answer."

  Afterward, Clayton found that that bit of conversation with Mrs. Haverford took on the unreality of the rest of that twenty-four hours. But one part of it stood out real and hopelessly true. There wasn't any answer!

  CHAPTER XLIII

  Anna Klein had gone home, at three o'clock that terrible morning, a trembling, white-faced girl. She had done her best, and she had failed. Unlike Graham, she had no feeling of personal responsibility, but she felt she could never again face her father, with the thing that she knew between them. There were other reasons, too. Herman would be arrested, and she would be called to testify. She had known. She had warned Mr. Spencer. The gang, Rudolph's gang, would get her for that.

  She knew where they were now. They would be at Gus's, in the back room, drinking to the success of their scheme, and Gus, who was a German too, would be with them, offering a round of drinks on the house now and then as his share of the night's rejoicing. Gus, who was already arranging to help draft-dodgers by sending them over the Mexican border.

  She would have to go back, to get in and out again if she could, before Herman came back. She had no clothes, except what she stood up in, and those in her haste that night were, only her print house-dress with a long coat. She would have to find a new position, and she would have to have her clothing to get about in. She dragged along, singularly unmolested. Once or twice a man eyed her, but her white face and vacant eyes were unattractive, almost sodden.

  She was barely able to climb the hill, and as she neared the house her trepidation increased. What if Herman had come back? If he suspected her he would kill her. He must have been half mad to have done the thing, anyhow. He would surely be half mad now. And because she was young and strong, and life was still a mystery to be solved, she did not want to die. Strangely enough, face to face with danger there was still, in the back of her head, an exultant thrill in her very determination to live. She would start over again, and she would work hard and make good.

  "You bet I'll make good," she resolved. "Just give me a chance and I'll work my fool head off."

  Which was by way of being a prayer.

  It was the darkest hour before the dawn when she reached the cottage. It was black and very still, and outside the gate she stooped and slipped off her shoes. The window into the shed by which she had escaped was still open, and she crouched outside, listening. When the stillness remained unbroken she climbed in, tense for a movement or a blow.

  Once inside, however, she drew a long breath. The doors were still locked, and the keys gone. So Herman had not returned. But as she stood there, hurried stealthy footsteps came along the street and turned in at the gate. In a panic she flew up the stairs and into her room, where the door still hung crazily on its hinges. She stood there, listening, her heart pounding in her ears, and below she distinctly heard a key in the kitchen door. She did the only thing she could think of. She lifted the door into place, and stood against it, bracing it with her body.

  Whoever it was was in the kitchen now, moving however more swiftly than Herman. She heard matches striking. Then:

  "Hsst!"

  She knew that it was Rudolph, and she braced herself mentally. Rudolph was keener than Herman. If he found her door in that condition, and she herself dressed?! Working silently and still holding the door in place, she flung off her coat. She even unpinned her hair and unfastened her dress.

  When his signal remained unanswered a second time he called her by name, and she heard him coming up.

  "Anna!" he repeated.

  "Yes?"

  He was startled to hear her voice so close to the door. In the dark she heard him fumbling for the knob. He happened on the padlock instead, and he laughed a little. By that she knew that he was not quite sober.

  "Locked you in, has he?"

  "What do you want?"

  "Has Herman come home yet?"

  "He doesn't get home until seven."

  "Hasn't he been back at all, to-night?"

  She hesitated.

  "How do I know? I've been asleep!"

  "Some sleep!" he said, and suddenly lurched against the door. In spite of her it yielded, and although she braced herself with all her strength, his weight against it caused it to give way. It was a suspicious, crafty Rudolph who picked himself up and made a clutch at her in the dark.

  "You little liar," he said thickly. And struck a match. She cowered away from him.

  "I was going to run away, Rudolph," she cried. "He hasn't any business locking me in, I won't stand for it."

  "You've been out."

  "No!"

  "Out - after him!"

  "Honest to God, Rudolph, no. I hate him. I don't ever want to see him again."

  He put a hand out into the darkness, and finding her, tried to draw her to him. She struggled, and he released her. All at once she knew that he was weak with fright. The bravado had died out of him. The face she had touched was covered with a clammy sweat.

  "I wish to God Herman would come."

  "What d' you want with him?"

  "Have you got any whisky?"

  "You've had enough of that stuff."

  Some one was walking along the street outside. She felt that he was listening, crouched ready to run; but the steps went on.

  "Look here, Anna," he said, when he had pulled himself together again. "I'm going to get out of this. I'm going away."

  "All right. You can go for all of me."

  "D'you mean to say you've been asleep all night? You didn't hear anything?"

  "Hear what?"

  He laughed.

  "You'll know soon enough." Then he told her, hurriedly, that he was going away. He'd come back to get her to promise to follow him. He wasn't going to stay here and -

  "And what?"

  "And be drafted," he finished, rather lamely.

  "Gus has a friend in a town on the Mexican border," he said. "He's got maps of the country to Mexico City, and the Germans there fix you up all right. I'll get rich down there and some day I'll send for you? What's that?"

  He darted to the window, faintly outlined by a distant street-lamp. Three men were standing quietly outside the gate, and a fourth was already in the garden, silently moving toward the house. She felt Rudolph brush by her, and the trembling hand he laid on her arm.

  "Now lie!" he whispered fiercely. "You haven't seen me. I haven't been here to-night."

  Then he was gone. She ran to the window. The other three men were coming in, moving watchfully and slowly, and Rudolph was at Katie's window, cursing. If she was a prisoner, so was Rudolph. He realized that instantly, and she heard him breaking out the sash with a chair. At the sound the three figures broke into a run, and she heard the sash give way. Almost instantly there was firing. The first shot was close, and she knew it was Rudolph firing from the window. Some wild design of braining him from behind with a chair flashed into her desperate mind, but when she had felt her way into Katie's room he had gone. The garden below was quie
t, but there was yelling and the crackling of underbrush from the hill-side. Then a scattering of shots again, and silence. The yard was empty.

  The hill paid but moderate attention to shots. They were usually merely pyrotechnic, and indicated rejoicing rather than death. But here and there she heard a window raised, and then lowered again. The hill had gone back to bed. Anna went into her room and dressed. For the first time it had occurred to her that she might be held by the police, and the thought was unbearable. It was when she was making her escape that she found a prostrate figure in the yard, and knew that one of Rudolph's shots had gone home. She could not go away and leave that, not unless - A terrible hatred of Herman and Rudolph and all their kind suddenly swept over her. She would not run away. She would stay and tell all the terrible truth. It was her big moment, and she rose to it. She would see it through. What was her own safety to letting this band of murderers escape? And all that in the few seconds it took to reach the fallen figure. It was only when she was very close that she saw it was moving.

  "Tell Dunbar he went to the left," a voice was saying. "The left! They'll lose him yet."

  "Joey!"

  "Hello," said Joey's voice. He considered that he was speaking very loud, but it was hardly more than a whisper. "That wasn't your father, was it? The old boy couldn't jump and run like that."

  "Are you hurt?"

  He coughed a little, a gurgling cough that rather startled himself. But he was determined to be a man.

  "No. I just lay down here for a nap. Who was it that jumped?"

  "My cousin Rudolph. Do you think I can help you into the house?"

  "I'll walk there myself in a minute. Unless your cousin Rudolph - " His head dropped back on her arm. "I feel sort of all in." His voice trailed off.

  "Joey!"

  "Lemme alone," he muttered. "I'm the first casualty in the American army! I - " He made a desperate effort to speak in a man's voice, but the higher boyish notes of sixteen conquered. "They certainly gave us hell to-night. But we're going to build again; me and - Clayton Spen - "

  All at once he was very still. Anna spoke to him and, that failing, gave him a frantic little shake. But Joey had gone to another partnership beyond the stars.

  CHAPTER XLIV

  The immediate outstanding result of the holocaust at the munitions works was the end of Natalie's dominion aver Graham. She never quite forgave him the violence with which he threw off her shackles.

  "If I'd been half a man I'd have been over there long ago," he said, standing before her, tall and young and flushed. "I'd have learned my job by now, and I'd be worth something, now I'm needed."

  "And broken my heart."

  "Hearts don't break that way, mother."

  "Well, you say you are going now. I should think you'd be satisfied. There's plenty of time for you to get the glory you want."

  "Glory! I don't want any glory. And as for plenty of time - that's exactly what there isn't."

  During the next few days she preserved an obstinate silence on the subject. She knew he had been admitted to one of the officers' training-camps, and that he was making rather helpless and puzzled purchases. Going into his room she would find a dressing-case of khaki leather, perhaps, or flannel shirts of the same indeterminate hue. She would shed futile tears over them, and order them put out of sight. But she never offered to assist him.

  Graham was older, in many ways. He no longer ran up and down the stairs whistling, and he sought every opportunity to be with his father. They spent long hours together in the library, when, after a crowded day, filled with the thousand, problems of reconstructions, Clayton smoked a great deal, talked a little, rather shame-facedly after the manner of men, of personal responsibility in the war, and quietly watched the man who was Graham.

  Out of those quiet hours, with Natalie at the theater or reading up-stairs in bed, Clayton got the greatest comfort of his life. He would neither look back nor peer anxiously ahead.

  The past, with its tragedy, was gone. The future might hold even worse things. But just now he would live each day as it came, working to the utmost, and giving his evenings to his boy. The nights were the worst. He was not sleeping well, and in those long hours of quiet he tried to rebuild his life along stronger, sterner lines. Love could have no place in it, but there was work left. He was strong and he was still young. The country should have every ounce of energy in him. He would re-build the plant, on bigger lines than before, and when that was done, he would build again. The best he could do was not enough.

  He scarcely noticed Natalie's withdrawal from Graham and himself. When she was around he was his old punctilious self, gravely kind, more than ever considerate. Beside his failure to her, her own failure to him faded into insignificance. She was as she was, and through no fault of hers. But he was what he had made himself.

  Once or twice he had felt an overwhelming remorse toward her, and on one such occasion he had made a useless effort to break down the barrier of her long silence.

  "Don't go up-stairs, Natalie," he had begged. "I am not very amusing, I know, but - I'll try my best. I'll promise not to touch on anything disagreeable." He had been standing in the hail, looking up at her on the stair-case, and he smiled. There was pleading behind the smile, an inarticulate feeling that between them there might at least be friendship.

  "You are never disagreeable," she had said, looking down with hostile eyes. "You are quite perfect."

  "Then won't you wait?"

  "Perfection bores me to tears," she said, and went on up the stairs.

  On the morning of Graham's departure, however, he found her prepared to go to the railway-station. She was red-eyed and pale, and he was very sorry for her.

  "Do you think it is wise?" he asked.

  "I shall see him off, of course. I may never see him again."

  And his own tautened nerves almost gave way.

  "Don't say that!" he cried. "Don't even think that. And for God's sake, Natalie, send him off with a smile. That's the least we can do."

  "I can't take it as casually as you do."

  He gave up then in despair. He saw that Graham watched her uneasily during the early breakfast, and he surmised that the boy's own grip on his self-control was weakened by the tears that dropped into her coffee-cup. He reflected bitterly that all over the country strong women, good women, were sending their boys away to war, giving them with prayer and exaltation. What was wrong with Natalie? What was wrong with his whole life?

  When Graham was up-stairs, he turned to her.

  "Why do you persist in going, Natalie?"

  "I intend to go. That's enough."

  "Don't you think you've made him unhappy enough?"

  "He has made me unhappy enough."

  "You. It is always yourself, Natalie. Why don't you ever think of him?" He went to the door. "Countermand the order for the limousine," he said to the butler, "and order the small car for Mr. Graham and myself."

  "How dare you do that?"

  "I am not going to let you ruin the biggest day in his life."

  She saw that he meant it. She was incredulous, reckless, angry, and thwarted for the first time in her self-indulgent life.

  "I hate you," she said slowly. "I hate you!"

  She turned and went slowly up the stairs. Graham, knocking at her door a few minutes later, heard the sound of hysterical sobbing, within, but received no reply.

  "Good-by, mother," he called. "Good-by. Don't worry. I'll be all right."

  When he saw she did not mean to open the door or to reply, he went rather heavily down the stairs.

  "I wish she wouldn't," he said. "It makes me darned unhappy."

  But Clayton surmised a relief behind his regret, and in the train the boy's eyes were happier than they had been for months.

  "I don't know how I'll come out, dad," he said. "But if I don't get through it won't be because I didn't try."

  And he did try. The enormous interest of the thing gripped him from the start; There was romance
in it, too. He wore his first uniform, too small for him as it was, with immense pride. He rolled out in the morning at reveille, with the feeling that he had just gone to bed, ate hugely at breakfast, learned to make his own cot-bed, and lined up on a vast dusty parade ground for endless evolutions in a boiling sun.

  It was rather amusing to find himself being ordered about, in a stentorian voice, by Jackson. And when, in off moments, that capable ex-chauffeur condescended to a few moments of talk and relaxation, the boy was highly gratified.

  "Do you think I've got anything in me?" he would inquire anxiously.

  And Jackson always said heartily, "Sure you have."

  There were times when Graham doubted himself, however. There was one dreadful hour when Graham, in the late afternoon, and under the eyes of his commanding officer and a group of ladies, conducting the highly formal and complicated ceremony of changing the guard, tied a lot of grinning men up in a knot which required the captain of the company and two sergeants to untangle.

  "I'm no earthly good," he confided to Jackson that night, sitting on the steps of his barracks. "I know it like a-b-c, and then I get up and try it and all at once I'm just a plain damned fool."

  "Don't give up like that, son," Jackson said. "I've seen 'em march a platoon right into the C.O's porch before now. And once I just saved a baby-buggy and a pair of twins."

  Clayton wrote him daily, and now and then there came a letter from Natalie, cheerful on the surface, but its cheerfulness obviously forced. And once, to his great surprise, Marion Hayden wrote him.

  "I just want you to know," she said, "that I am still interested in you, even if it isn't going to be anything else. And that I am ridiculously proud of you. Isn't it queer to look back on last Winter and think what a lot of careless idiots we were? I suppose war doesn't really change us, but it does make us wonder what we've got in us. I am surprised to find that I am a great deal better than I ever thought I was!"

  There was comfort in the letter, but no thrill. He was far away from all that now, like one on the first stage of a long journey, with his eyes ahead.