The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "Well," she said, "I did think, Clara, that if you didn't have any sense, you would have some consideration for Carrie."

  I had been addressing the envelope to Bill, and so I shoved a sheet of paper over it.

  "I'm not going to try to read what you are writing," she said rudely.

  "What do you mean about Carrie?'

  "She's almost ill, that's all. How could anyone have had any idea that Roger and you--" She fairly choked.

  "Roger and I are only glad to be together again," I said defiantly. Then I changed to a wistful tone.- Just hearing it made me sorry for myself. "We are old friends; Carrie knew that. It is cruel of you all to to spoil the little bit of happiness I can get out of life."

  "What about Bill V

  "Bill?' I said vaguely. "Oh Bill! Well, Bill would never stand in the way of my being true to myself. He would want me to be happy."

  I put my handkerchief suddenly to my eyes, and she gave me a scathing glance.

  "I'm going to telephone Bill," she said. "You're not sane, Clara. And when you come back to your senses it may be too late."

  She flounced out, and I knew she would call Bill if she could. From the window I could see that Harry Delaney had Roger by the arm and was walking him up and down. It was necessary, if the fun was to go on, to disconnect the telephone. I ran down to the library and dropped the instrument on the floor twice, but when I put it to my ear to see if it was still working I found it was, for Central was saying: "For the love of heaven, something nearly busted my eardrum!"

  Ida had not come down yet, and the telephone was on a table in the corner, beside a vase of flowers. When I saw the flowers I knew I was saved. I turned the vase over and let the water soak into the green cord that covers the wires. I knew it would short-circuit the telephone, for once one of the maids at home, washing the floor, had wet the cord, and we were cut off for an entire day.

  During the afternoon I gave Harry Delaney the letter to Bill. Harry was going to the little town that was the post office to get something for Carrie.

  "You won't forget to mail it, will you, Harry?" I asked in a pathetic voice.

  He read the address and looked at me.

  "What are you writing to Bill for, Clara? He'll be home in the morning."

  I looked confused. Then I became frank.

  "I'm writing him something I don't particularly care to tell him."

  He fairly groaned and thrust the thing into his pocket.

  "For refined cruelty and absolute selfishness," he said, "commend me to the woman with nothing to do but to get into mischief."

  "Will you promise to mail it?"

  "Oh, I'll mail it all right," he said; "but I give you until six o'clock this evening to think it over. I'm not going to the station until then."

  "To think over what?" I asked, my eyes opened innocently wide. But he flung away in a fury.

  It was rather fun that afternoon. If my party had been dreary on Sunday it was nothing to Carrie's. They'd clearly all agreed to stay round and keep Roger and me apart. Everybody sulked, and the men got the Sunday newspapers and buried themselves in them. Once I caught Roger dropping into a doze. He had refused the paper and had been playing up well, sitting back in his chair with his cap over his eyes and gazing at me until everybody wiggled.

  "Roger," I called, when I saw his eyes closing, "are you game for a long walk?"

  Roger tried to look eager.

  "Sure," he said.

  "Haven't you a particle of humanity?" Carrie demanded. She knew some of them would have to go along, and nobody wanted to walk. It was boiling. "He has been up since dawn and he's walked miles."

  Roger ignored her.

  "To the ends of the world with you, Clara," he said, and got up.

  In the end they all went. It was a tragic-looking party. We walked for miles and miles, and Carrie was carrying her right shoe when we got back. It was too late to dress for dinner, and everyone was worn out. So we went in as we were.

  "I'm terribly sorry it's nearly over," I babbled as the soup was coming in. "It has been the most wonderful success, hasn't it? Ida, won't you have us all next week? Maybe we can send the husbands to the yacht races."

  "Sorry," said Ida coldly; "I've something else on."

  Worried as they were, nobody expected us to run away. How to let them know what had happened, and put a climax to their discomfiture, was the question. I solved it at last by telling Powell to come in at midnight with the sleeping medicine Carrie had given her for me. I knew, when she found I was not there, she would wait and at last raise the alarm. What I did not know was that she would come in half an hour early, and cut off our lead by thirty minutes.

  The evening dragged like the afternoon, and so thoroughly was the spice out of everything for them all, that when I went upstairs at ten-thirty Ida Elliott was singing Jim's praises to Wilbur Bayne, and Carrie had got out the children's photographs and was passing them round.

  As I went out through the door Roger opened for me, he bowed over my hand and kissed it.

  "Oh, cut it out!" I heard Peter growl, and there was a chorus from the others.

  I had to stop in the hall outside and laugh. It was the last time I laughed for a good many hours.

  By eleven I was ready. Everyone was upstairs, and Carrie had found out about the telephone by trying to call up her mother to inquire about the chil dren. I had packed a small suitcase and at Roger's whistle I was to drop it out the window to him. Things began to go wrong with that, for just as I was ready to drop it someone rapped at my door. I swung it too far out, and it caught Roger full in the chest and carried him over backward. I had just time to see him disappear in the shrubbery with a sort of dull thud when Alice Warrington knocked again.

  She came in and sat on the bed.

  "I don't want to be nasty, Clara," she said, "but you know how fond I am of you, and I don't want you to misunderstand Roger. It's his way to make violent love to people and then get out. Of course you know he's being very attentive to Maisie Brown. She's jealous of you now. Somebody told her Roger used to be crazy about you. If she hears of this--"

  "Clara!" said Roger's voice under the window.

  Alice rose, with the most outraged face I've ever seen.

  "He is positively shameless," she said. "As for you, Clara, I can't tell you how I feel."

  "Clara!" said Roger. "I must speak to you. Just one word."

  Alice swept out of the room and banged the door. I went to the window.

  "Something seems to have broken in the dratted thing," he said. "It smells like eau de Cologne. J'm covered with it."

  As it developed later it was eau de Cologne. I have never got a whiff of it since that I don't turn fairly sick. And all of that awful night Roger fairly reeked with it.

  Well, by midnight everything was quiet, and I got downstairs and into the drive without alarming anyone. Roger was waiting, and for some reason or other possibly the knock he seemed less en thusiastic.

  "I hope Harry remembered the letter to Bill," he said. "Whether this thing is a joke or not depends on the other person's sense of humor. What in heaven's name made you put scent in your bag?"

  He had his car waiting at the foot of the drive, and just as I got in we heard it thunder.

  "How far is it to your mother's?"

  "Twelve miles."

  "It's going to rain."

  "Rain or not, I'm not going back, Roger," I said. "Imagine Bill's getting that letter for nothing."

  He got into the car and it began to rain at once. Everyone knows about that storm now. We had gone about four miles when the sky fairly opened. The water beat in under the top and washed about our feet. We drove up to the hubs in water, and the lights, instead of showing us the way, only lit up a wall of water ahead. It was like riding into Niagara Falls. We were pretty sick, I can tell you.

  "Why didn't you look at the sky?" I yelled at Roger, above the beating of the storm. "Bill can always tell when it's going to storm."

 
"Oh, damn Bill!" said Roger, and the car slid off the road and into a gully. Roger just sat still and clutched the wheel.

  "Aren't you going to do something?" I snapped. "I'm not going to sit here all night and be drowned."

  "Is there anything you could suggest?"

  "Can't you get out and push it?"

  "I cannot."

  But after five minutes or so he did crawl out, and by tying my suitcase straps round one of the wheels he got the car back into the road. I daresay I was a trifle pettish by that time.

  "I wish you wouldn't drip on me," I said.

  "I beg your pardon/' he replied, and moved as far from me as he could.

  We went on in silence. At last:

  "There's one comfort about getting that soaking," he said: "it's washed that damned perfume off."

  There's one thing about Bill, he keeps his temper. And he doesn't raise the roof when he gets his clothes wet. He rather likes getting into difficulties, to show how well he can get out of them. But Roger is like a cat. He always hated to get his feet wet.

  "If you had kept the car in the centre of the road you wouldn't have had to get out," I said shortly.

  "Oh, well, if you're going back to first causes," he retorted, "if you'd never suggested this idiotic thing I wouldn't be laying up a case of lumbago at this minute."

  "Lumbago is middle-aged, isn't it?"

  "We're neither of us as young as we were a few years ago."

  That was inexcusable. Roger is at least six years older than I am. Besides, even if it were true, there was no necessity for him to say it. But there was no time to quarrel, for at that moment we were going across a bridge over a small stream. It was a river now. The first thing I knew was that the car shook and rocked and there was a dull groaning underneath. The next minute we had gone slowly down about four feet and the creek was flowing over us.

  We said nothing at first. The lights went off almost immediately, as the engine drowned, and there we sat in the flood, and the first thing I knew I was crying.

  "The bridge is broken!" said Roger, above the rush of the stream.

  "I didn't think you were washing the car," I whimpered. "We'll be drowned, that's all."

  The worst of the storm was over, but as far as I was concerned it might just as well have been pouring. When Roger got his matches and tried to light one it only made a sick streak of phosphorescence on the side of the box. To make things worse, Roger turned round, and where the road crossed the brow of the hill behind us there was the glow of automo bile lamps. He swore under his breath.

  "They're coming, Clara," he said. "That fool of a maid didn't wait until midnight."

  The thought of being found like that, waist-deep in water, drove me to frenzy. I knew how they'd laugh, how they'd keep on laughing for years. They'd call us the Water Babies probably, or some thing equally hateful. I just couldn't stand the thought.

  I got up.

  "Let them think we're drowned anything," I said desperately. "I will not be found like this."

  Roger looked about like a hunted animal.

  "There's there's a house near here on the hill," he said. Afterward I remembered how he hesitated over it. "We could get up there, I'm pretty sure."

  He looked back.

  "They seem to have stopped," he said. "Perhaps the other bridge has gone."

  He lifted me out and set me on the bank. He was not particularly gentle about it, and I was all he could carry. That's one thing about Bill he's as strong as an ox and as gentle as a young gazelle.

  Well, we scurried up the bank, the water pouring off us, and I lost a shoe. Roger wouldn't wait until I found it, but dragged me along, panting. Sud denly I knew that I hated him with a deadly hatred. The thought of how nearly I had married him made me shiver.

  "I wish you'd let go of me," I said.

  "Why? You can't climb alone in the silly clothes you wear."

  "Perhaps not, but I don't like you to touch me."

  "Oh, if you feel like that " He let me go, and I almost fell. "You know, Clara, I am trying hard to restrain myself, but this is all your doing."

  "I suppose I broke the bridge down," I said bit terly, "and brought on the rain, and all the rest of it."

  "Now I recognise the Clara I used to know," he had the audacity to say, "always begging the question and shifting the responsibility. For heaven's sake don't stop to quarrel! They've probably found the car by this time."

  We got to the house and I fell exhausted on the steps. To my surprise Roger got out a bunch of keys and fitted one to the lock.

  "I know these people," he said. "I--I sometimes come out in the fall for a bit of shooting. Place is closed now."

  The interior looked dark and smelled musty. I didn't want to go in, but it was raining again and there was nothing else to do.

  "Better overcome your repugnance and give me your hand," he said. "If we turn on a light they'll spot us."

  Oh, it is all very well to say, looking back, that we shoulcl have sat in the car until we were found, and have carried it all off as a part of the joke. I couldn't, that's flat. I couldn't have laughed if I'd been paid to.

  We bumped into a square hall and I sat down. It was very quiet all at once, and the only thing to be heard was the water dripping from us to the hard wood floor.

  "If that's a velvet chair you're on it will be ruined," said Roger's voice out of the darkness.

  "I hope it is. Where is the telephone?"

  "There is a telephone closet under the stairs."

  "You know a lot about this house. Whose is it?"

  "It's the Brown place. You know it."

  "Maisie Brown's!"

  "Yes." He was quite sullen.

  "And you have a key like one of the family! Roger, you are engaged to her!"

  "I was," he said. "The chances are when this gets out I won't be."

  I don't know why now, but it struck me as funny. I sat and laughed like a goose, and the more I laughed the harder Roger breathed.

  "You've got to see me through this, Clara," he said at last. "You can't telephone Carrie you've fixed all that. But you can get your mother. Tell her the circumstances and have her send a car for you. I'll stay here to-night. And if you take my advice you'll meet Bill at the train to-morrow morning and beat Carrie to it. She'll be in town with a line of conversation by daybreak."

  He found some dry matches and led me to the telephone. Something in the way I dripped, or because I padded across the floor in one stocking foot, made him a trifle more human.

  "I'll close the curtains and light the log fire," he said. "Things are bad enough without your taking pneumonia."

  The moment I took the receiver off the hook I knew the wires were down somewhere. I sat for a moment, then I opened the door. Roger was on his knees lighting the fire. He looked very thin, with his clothes stuck to him, and the hair that he wore brushed over the bare place had been washed down, and he looked almost bald.

  "Roger," I said, with the calmness of despair, "the wires are down!"

  "Hush," said Roger suddenly. "And close that door."

  It seemed rather foolish to me at the time. Since they had followed us, they'd know perfectly well that if Roger was there I was.

  In walked Maisie Brown and about a dozen other people!

  I can still hear the noise they made coming in, and then a silence, broken by Maisie's voice.

  "Why, Roger!" she said.

  "Awfully surprising to see you here I mean, I expect you are surprised to see me here," said Roger's voice, rather thin and stringy. "The fact is, I was going by, and it was raining hard, and j--"

  "Then that was your car in the creek?"

  "Well, yes," Roger admitted, after a hesitation. He was evidently weighing every word, afraid of committing himself to anything dangerous.

  "I thought you were at Carrie Smith's."

  "I was on my way home."

  Everybody laughed. It was about a dozen miles to Roger's road home from Carrie's.

  "
Come on, now, there's a mystery. Own up," said a man's voice. "Where's the beautiful lady? Drowned?"

  Luckily no one waited for an answer. They demanded how he had got in, and when he said he had a key they laughed again. Some one told Maisie she might as well confess. If Roger had a key to the house it required explanation.

  If ever I heard cold suspicion in a girl's voice, it was in Maisie' s when she answered:

  "Oh, we're engaged all right, if that's what you mean," she said. "But I think Roger and I--"

  They didn't give her a chance to finish, the idiots! They gave three cheers, and then, as nearly as I could make out, they formed a ring and danced round them. They'd been to a picnic somewhere, and as the bridges were down they were there for the night.

  Do you think they went to bed?

  Not a bit of it. They found some canned things in a pantry, and fixed some hot drinks and drank to Maisie and Roger. And I sat in the telephone closet and tried not to sneeze.

  I sat there for two hours.

  About two o'clock I heard Maisie say she would have to telephone home, and if a totally innocent person can suffer the way I did I don't know how a guilty one could live. But Roger leaped in front of her.

  "I'll do it, honey," he said. "I--I was just thinking of telephoning."

  They were close to the door.

  "Don't call me honey," Maisie said in a tense voice. "I know about Carrie Smith's party and who was there. After the way Clara has schemed all these years to get you back, to have you fall into a trap like that! It's sickening!"

  She put her hand on the knob of the door.

  "Listen, darling," Roger implored. "I--I don't care a hang for anyone but you. I'm perfectly wretched. I--"

  He pulled her hand off the knob of the door and I heard him kiss it.

  "Let me call your mother," he said. "She'll know you are all right when Fm here."

  Well, I had to listen. The idea of her saying I'd tried to get him back, when everybody knows how he carried on when I turned him down! I hadn't given him a thought for years.

  "Did you make love to Clara?"

  "Certainly not. Look here, Maisie, you can af ford to be magnanimous. Clara's a nice woman, but she's years older than you are. You know who loves you, don't you?"