Lindy, the firelight painting roses in her face, turned dark eyes of wonder toward him.
“Wanted me? But what in the world for? He knows that I’m perfectly hopeless about cuts and bandages.”
“Still, I think he wants you.” … He struck a long chord of silver lamentation on the guitar. “Chatty, child, you aren’t expecting us to start singing at this time of night, are you?”
“Oh, Kit, you stopped right bang in the middle of ‘Clinch Mountain’—please finish it—please.”
“Just this one then, since the Baird tribal motto is never start anything you don’t finish. What comes after ‘Jack o’ diamonds’, Joel?”
“Rye whiskey,” prompted Joel.
“Righto!” He flung his head back against the dark cushions and once more the music, gay and bitter, flooded the room:
“‘Rye whiskey, rye whiskey,
You’re no friend to me—
You killed my old daddy—
Now, damn you, try me!
You may boast of yore—’”
A voice called from somewhere beyond the darkness that was the hall, the darkness that was the stairs: “Lindy!”
“You see, I was right,” said the red-headed young man.
Lindy slipped to her feet, shaking out filmy draperies, her lips curved in rueful amusement.
“Curioser and curioser,” she remarked in the little velvet voice. “I feel exactly like Alice—‘How the creatures do order one about!’ Still, as hostess—”
“Lindy!”
Something in that distant summons caused her to drop the light words as though they were broken toys. She caught the scarf about her, called, “Coming!” clearly, and was gone on winged feet, leaving the group about the fire staring after her with expressions that ranged from blank bewilderment to unconcealed outrage.
“Well, of all the confounded gall!” commented Joel Hardy. “Why didn’t he whistle for her like a dog?”
“Possibly because a dog can’t whistle.” Kit Baird smiled down inscrutably at his guitar. “Where were we?
“‘You may boast of yore knowledge
An’ brag of yore sense,
’Twill all be forgotten
A hundred years hence …
A—hundred—years—hence—’
And with that prudent reminder, comrades, I vote that we abandon the lute for the more serious business of the evening. Are all the lights out in the service quarters, Trudi?”
“Dunno; I’ll cut around and make sure.”
“Larry, you might see that that door at the back of the chapel’s unlocked. What time is it, anyway?”
“About ten to twelve.”
Hanna, who had been tranquilly peeling chestnuts into a little copper bowl, gave a sudden wail of dismay.
“Ten minutes to twelve? Oh, heavens, that’s simply too dreadful. Gavin, I absolutely forgot that I’d told Mademoiselle that I’d call up to find out how Jeff’s cold is.”
Gavin said easily, “Well, my dear, that’s no very harrowing catastrophe. We’ll try the first thing in the morning; the little beggar was getting on all right when we left.”
“No, no—I know perfectly well that she’ll sit there till dawn waiting to hear from me; you know how appallingly conscientious she is. Do hurry; it ought to be easy to get a call through at this time of night.”
“Then if someone will be good enough to show me where the phone is—”
“In that cubby hole to the right of the stairs.” Joel followed him to the door. “Here, I’ll turn the light on for you out there. It’s one of the old-fashioned kind; you know you have to turn that handle like a blooming barrel organ before you can raise central. Can you manage it?”
“Perfectly, thanks. Any other messages, Hanna?”
“Just that we’ll surely be home late Friday night. Oh, and kisses for Jeff.”
“Is it the handle at the side of the box that you mean, Hardy? Do you have to give any special signal?”
“No, just crank it like a Ford. What’s the matter—can’t you raise anyone?”
“Not a soul. Possibly I’m turning it the wrong way.”
“Here, let me have a go at it. Maybe it’ll recognize the old familiar touch.… No, sir—someone’s asleep at the switch.”
“Possibly they use carrier pigeons around these parts after eleven,” suggested Kit helpfully.
“The darn thing’s deader than the Dead Sea, if you ask me. Not a crackle out of it. See here, how about this storm?”
Jill cried, “Oh, but of course it’s the storm! If it could pull up trees and tear down bridges, what couldn’t it do to a telephone wire? Well, now we are marooned!” She added in the electrified silence, “Children, children, we won’t be able to get anyone to fix the bridge!”
A small cold voice by the fire said, “No—not anyone.… Not anyone for anything.… We waited too long … now it’s too late.”
Trudi demanded sternly, “Is that little bird of evil omen at it again? Put a bag over her head, Joel! Personally, I’ve always ached to live in a house without a telephone for even five minutes. Come on back, Gavin, you won’t make it work by looking dignified and reproachful.… Aha, the prodigal children back, and just about in time, what’s more. That clock’s going to be tolling twelve before we know it. Were there any lights upstairs except the ones on the two landings, Lindy?”
Lindy, her face bent over the abandoned card table by the door, said in her exquisite and unruffled voice, “I’m not sure. Did you turn out the one behind you, Doug?”
Doug steadied himself with a hand on the sofa. Even in the firelight it was obvious that he was drunk with something headier than wine: he was swollen and flushed with some immense and secret triumph that made the earth itself reel beneath his feet.
He said, “Yes. Don’t know about the others, though—thought I saw one down the third-floor landing.”
Trudi announced solemnly, “Doug King, I’ve been waiting for this night ten years. The last time we were out here, you bet me that next time you were the Hider you’d find a place that I couldn’t dig you out of for two hours. You bet me ten dollars. Does it stand?”
“It stands.”
“Is this the next time?”
“This is the next time.”
“You hear him, children—he’s the Hider. Sure you understand the rules of this game, Gavin? You, Ray?”
The girl by the fire who could not warm her hands said, “Sure,” and moved deeper into the shadows.
“All right, then. We’ll put out this fire. Get that bucket, Kit, it still has some water in it. Swash it over those embers in the corner … we don’t want even a glimmer.”
The room plunged headlong into darkness, as though it had long been avid of it and could no longer wait.
Doug King, moving cautiously toward the figure silhouetted against the window, whispered, “That you, Jill?”
She said, “Yes.… Why? What is it?”
“Whisper, will you? Listen, I want to try out that hiding stunt we planned last time—you know, the Purloined Letter stuff—the most obvious place in the house, where no one in God’s world would think of looking. How about the big sofa in front of the fire?”
“Splendid. Oh, Doug, I’ve been trying all evening to get hold of you; there’s something I simply have to ask you, something really important.”
“All right, all right—later … only for the Lord’s sake don’t give me away! Make sure that the coast’s clear before you come in…. Look out—there goes the clock.”
Trudi’s voice rose above the slow strokes like a trumpet calling to battle, “To the third landing, everyone. To the landing!”
“Hey, look out—that’s not the way to the stairs!”
“Catch that light down by Jill’s room, someone.”
“Can’t we even light a cigarette, Trudi?”
“Not a chance! All present and accounted for? Let’s go!”
“Good-night, wait a minute: I can’t even find the gong. Got
a luminous dial on that watch of yours, Gavin?”
“All right, stand clear, everyone!”
The voices, drifting farther and farther away into the shadows, fell abruptly into silence, leaving the great room, waiting, transfixed, in a silence deeper still. One voice rose again.
“Three minutes from the time this gong strikes till it strikes again. Stand perfectly still, everyone. We can all hear, you know, even if we can’t see. Now!”
It rang out with a long clang that was at once a warning and a menace, echoing and reverberating as though it would never have done … and suddenly was done, leaving something behind more disturbing than all its clamour.
Silence.…
Silence, with even the wind holding its breath to listen.…
Silence deeper than the darkness … the long, intolerable silence of suspended breath.…
Far away, from the landing, there was small sound of stifled laughter, a board creaked and the room, feeling something colder than the wind pass through it, shuddered, and was still.…
The gong! And instantly the night was filled again with sounds. The sound of small distant scurryings on the stairs, of hands brushing cautiously along panelled walls, of rebellious whispers trailing to silence.… The sound of furtive breathing; of less furtive stumbles; of a voice raised sharply in inarticulate protest; of a sudden and anonymous break of laughter.…
In the room feet ran light and swift, and were gone… something fell, with a frantic and unretrieved clatter… a voice said “Damn “softly, and another voice in the distance said “Hush-h-h” more softly still. Silence … and feet again … and silence.
In the darkness near the sofa there was a little stir, and a breathless murmur edged with laughter … and almost before the murmuring had faded someone screamed—frantically, appallingly, as though horror itself had found a tongue. It tore through the house like something alive and frenzied with terror, and from the house clamour rose to greet it.
Instantly the darkness was filled with running feet and voices running before them.
“Who is it?”
“What’s the matter?”
“For God’s sake, where are the lights?”
“Make her stop, make her stop, can’t you?”
“Oh, God, can’t anyone find those lights?”
And suddenly someone had found the lights.…
Jill Leighton was standing quite still by the sofa, her hands thrust stiffly in front of her, staring straight ahead with dreadful and distended eyes. The hands were red from finger tip to knuckle, from knuckle to wrist … and she was staring straight at the ghastly huddle that had been Douglas King.
Chapter V
The group in the doorway stood staring at her like lunatics frozen in a nightmare, tranced in incredulous horror, staring at the red hands stretched out stiffly as a doll’s—staring at what lay beyond them.… Upstairs a door slammed, there was a quick clatter on the stairs, and someone shouted peremptorily: “Hey, what’s the racket down there? Holding a mass meeting?”
Kit Baird said in a low voice, “Shut up, you fool,” and Larry asked quietly from the hall, “Is something wrong?”
The voice from the stairs inquired in tones of startled indignation: “How do you get that way? What’s going on down there anyway?”
Chatty Ross, clinging to the table by the door, said in a flat little monotone:
“It’s Jill—Jill Leighton. She’s killed Doug King.”
And the girl with the red hands screamed again, straining frantically to push them farther from her.
Larry Redmond, shouldering his way through the huddled figures, said as quietly as before, “Stand still, darling. Close your eyes—don’t try to move. That’s my girl.” He took the dreadful little hands in his, wrapping his handkerchief about them, lifted her in his arms, and swung to confront the faces, still frozen in the dark doorway: “I gather you’d have stood there and let her go stark, staring mad before your eyes! You’re a fine crew, I’ll say that for you.” He stood, surveying them with a bitter and icy contempt. “Get a glass of water, someone.”
Sherry reached out and poured it blindly, the glass chattering against the lip of the pitcher, unheeded and unrestrained, while he remarked in a voice that wavered and slipped abruptly from control, “Well, this is s-some party, I’ll tell the world. S-some party.”
He put the pitcher down with a crash, and turned his face to the wall, his shoulders heaving.
It was Lindy who retrieved it and carried it across the floor. It was filled to the brim, but not a drop spilled; and though she was whiter than the girl in Larry’s arms, the voice of silver and dreams was as unshaken as her hand. She said gently, “Put her down there, Larry—in the chair, that way. See, she hasn’t fainted: she’s all right.” She knelt, slipping a hand behind the tawny head, holding the glass to the blanched lips. “Darling we didn’t mean to frighten you. It was just that people in a nightmare don’t move or act or speak like real people … and for a minute we were all in a nightmare. Drink this for Lindy—drink it for Lindy, because she loves you so.”
Jill, staring over the rim of the glass with the eyes of a desperate child, whispered through the stiffened lips:
“Lindy, I thought he was asleep…. Lindy, I thought he was asleep and I tried to wake him.… I tried—”
She pushed the glass from her, a terrible revulsion contracting her face, and buried her head on Lindy’s shoulder, shaken with something more dreadful than tears.
Larry asked, his eyes still gray ice, “Who was in this room at the time the lights went on? Incidentally, just why were the lights turned on?”
Kit, leaning against the door jamb, inquired with mild interest, “Are you the Prosecutor, Larry? Jill screamed—didn’t you hear her?”
“No; I was out near the linen press on the second floor. The first thing that I heard was Joel shouting from the stairs, and I came on down past him. Were you all standing where you are now when the lights went up? Who turned them up?”
Kit suggested equably, “Ask us one thing at a time; some of us might get rattled.”
“Were you all here when the lights went on?”
“To the best of my belief, all of us that are here now were here when the lights went on. But we aren’t all here now, are we?”
“Who’s missing?”
“Well, I don’t see Ray Hardy, for one. And for another, Gavin Dart.”
Hanna, who had been standing immobile, her golden head thrown back against the white-panelled wall, stirred at the sound of the name as though waking from some deep dream, gave a little sigh, and crumpled quietly to her knees.
Trudi demanded drearily, “Now what in the name of Heaven did she do that for? Hanna!” She knelt, shaking her gently. “It’s no good; she’s passed out absolutely; cold as ice, too. Sherry, if you’re tired of acting like a two-year-old infant, you might hand me some whiskey in a glass, and I’ll see whether I can wedge it between her teeth.”
Sherry, shaken and humble, brought her the little tumbler. “Trudi, I’m sorry I’m such a fool, but it was because I remembered all of a sudden how we’d been going target shooting before breakfast, and the way he was kidding me about my tie—that purple one, you know.… I’m sorry, honey—”
She cried in a tone of strange, constrained violence, “Oh, Sherry, for God’s sake! Stop gabbling, will you, and find Gavin Dart? Hanna’s liable to go completely off her head when she comes out of this, and I’d a good deal rather have Gavin around.”
Larry Redmond strode by them, his eyes the eyes of a crusader, stern with some secret purpose.
“I’ll get them. Dart! Gavin Dart!”
A voice from somewhere far away in the service quarters called distantly, “Coming!” and Joel turned mechanically toward the stairs.
“I’ll hunt up Ray, and see that she turns in. It’s going to be rotten enough for her anyway, poor kid, but I’ll appreciate anything any of you can do to keep her out of it as much as possible.”
&
nbsp; Larry, barring the doorway with an outstretched arm, said implacably:
“Unfortunately, none of us can do anything whatever; she is quite as much involved as anyone here. Nor can you hunt her up, as you put it; there are going to be no more private conferences here to-night, I can assure you. If you have any communications to make to your wife, you’ll make them in the presence of witnesses.”
Joel, his dark, charming face livid with the enraged astonishment that all but extinguished his voice, stammered furiously: “Have you g-gone off your head? Who in hell do you think you are, anyway? And who in hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Larry replied with ominous distinctness, “To one of the disinterested little group that was trying to pin this unspeakable thing on the girl that I intend to marry. And if you think I’ve gone off my head, just try to pin it on her again!”
Gavin Dart inquired pleasantly from the door to the left of the fireplace: “Anyone call me?”
His eyes, penetrating and alert, reached the sofa.… After a long moment he asked, unmoving:
“What is it? An accident?”
Kit, as motionless as he said evenly, “Hardly.… It’s murder. Your wife has fainted.”
The man in the doorway came forward instantly, passing within an inch of the sofa with its dreadful burden.
Trudi glanced up; in the pitiless brilliance of the light it was easy to see the dark rings about her eyes. “She’s coming to; she’ll want you, Gavin.”
Gavin Dart, kneeling beside her, said, “You say that she fainted? That’s absolutely unlike Hanna; I’ve never known her to faint in her life. But I suppose this came as a simply appalling shock?”
Kit, his blue eyes burning black in his colourless face, remarked in a voice detached as judgment itself, “She didn’t faint because of this, if you mean Doug King’s murder. She fainted when she heard that you weren’t here.…” He took his hands from his pockets, crossing the threshold of the hall in one long stride. His eyes had not once moved from the sofa; they did not move from it now. “As a matter of fact, however, we’ve rather neglected to establish that there’s been a murder. Or if it comes to that, whether there’s even been a death. Is anyone here up on post-mortems or ante-mortems, if necessary?”
Hide in the Dark Page 16
