by Rufus King
“It was all coincidence, Bill. Just gossip.”
“Be that as it may. Black Tor abruptly stopped being considered an Adirondack health spot, especially in the opinion of the late Alice’s former circle of gentlemen friends. It got a Name.”
“I gather that.”
“The Abbott-Lawrence deaths bred later rumors, all unpleasant and, I must admit, unconfirmed—they’ve a peach of a lake there where two people were drowned—and the ultimate conclusion remains that Marlow is as crazy as they come.”
“You ought to get a spot on NBC for bedtime stories.”
“This is no bedtime story. You pack up in the morning, Ann, and get out of there.”
“I’m beginning to think that I will. It was all right until Appleby came. More than all right. It was delightful.”
“Appleby? Appleby!”
“Yes, Ludwig Appleby.”
“He’s one of them.”
“One of what?”
“One of Alice’s old crowd.”
“He asked me whether I came from Boston. He asked me whether I knew the Charings.”
“Ann—you get out tonight.”
“I can’t!”
“No, I suppose you can’t. And anyhow it would be Appleby’s neck that was in danger, not yours.”
“Honestly, Bill! You’re such a comfort.”
“Well, beat it in the morning. Ocelots or no ocelots. Just forget about it now, dear, and get a good night’s sleep.”
CHAPTER VI
Thunder aggravated the nervous and irritable edge of a night that had been divided between fitful sleep and hours of wakefulness in a house where murder and tragedy still left their bitter stamp.
Ann’s watch said half-past eight, but the windows were sullen oblongs of dark lead ripped at intervals by a blinding jag of lightning, with a resultant shatter of the roar. And so, she thought, it storms. A typical mountain storm graciously sporting about the encircling peaks. In fact, right in her lap.
She rang for Danning. Her awakening moments were never of the witless type, and Ann grasped at once the assurance that all planes would be grounded at Black Tor until this local performance ceased. A torrential rain was accompanying the general bravura and slashed the windowpanes with frustrated bullets of water. There could be no tactfully swift departure until it stopped, all of it, including its effectively startling noise.
Trapped.
Momentarily the thought amused her, and her smile still lingered when Danning came in.
“Good morning,” Danning said, and added, “What a day!”
“We could probably tell better if we could see it.”
“It’s because of the northern lights the night before last. They were all trailing and green, like loose fingers. They always mean one of these things within forty-eight hours.”
“How long does one of these things last?”
“Two days, three days, then the sun comes out again. We usually get a couple of them during a summer. What will you have for breakfast?”
“Orange juice, coffee, and toast, please.”
“That will never last you, Miss Ledrick. Have some creamed finnan haddock.”
“I will have some with pleasure. It’s difficult to break loose from the drugstore routine.”
“I’m sorry there are no papers this morning. We bring them in by plane from Albany, but of course everything is grounded.” A resounding thunderclap perioded the observation. “You can see what I mean.”
“Indeed I can. Are these storms always so clinging? Don’t they ever move over and pick out another peak?”
“Oh yes, they just circle around. Just about when you think they’ve gone for good they come back.”
Danning left, and Ann saw no sense in waiting to have breakfast either en negligé or in bed. There were too many sound effects and far too much gloom for any svelte dawdling. She bathed and dressed and, going into the living room, found a birch log fire brightly burning and breakfast being arranged by Danning on a coffee table before it.
“Miss Marlow suggests that you join her when you’ve finished,” Danning said. “Her rooms are at the end of the hallway. She thinks that if you brought your camera you might catch some interesting views of the ocelots because of the storm. She says it makes them atavistic.”
“I can imagine it would. A good thunderbolt, and away goes that house-pet look.”
“They’re dears, really, and just as cute as they can be.”
“How big are they?”
“Oh, about three feet long.”
“Merely good-sized kittens.”
Danning smiled and said they were like kittens in their own fashion, of course. Then she left, and Ann ate while briskly dissecting a resume of Bill’s telephoned catalogue of horrors. What it amounted to in the cold light (black) of day was that Marlow’s son Fred had been convicted of killing his wife and had been electrocuted.
All the rest was surmise and rumor. The shotgun could have gone off accidentally when Abbott tripped, and Lawrence’s Christmas basket of goodies could conceivably have contained a pâté jar riddled with ptomaine. As for the two drownings in the pretty local lake, such gemlike bodies of mountain water were famous for their icy coldness and their general tricks. A plunge, a gasp, a cramp, a tombstone. Dreiser, Ann thought, in a sentence.
She collected her camera, some flash bulbs, and some packs of 2 ¼ X 3 ¼ super-fast panchromatic film, the emulsion on which was so sensitive that she felt assured of stopping all and any atavistic snarls in the fraction of a flick.
It occurred to her as she walked along the long hallway that all of Bill’s horrors were not resolved. Appleby remained. Was he slated for lilies via the accident route too? Ann recalled Marlow’s odd greeting of Appleby last night before dinner: “Good evening, Ludwig. This pleasure is becoming increasingly frequent.”
Certainly barbs had lain in it. Of the most well-bred sort. An iron foot in a velvet shoe. But it hadn’t bothered Appleby, and it inferred that his visits had been both numerous and on the impromptu side. And Appleby still hadn’t broken his neck. Ann found it comforting.
She sensed a certain abstraction in Estelle Marlow’s good morning, an abstraction which Estelle immediately explained by saying: “Justin has just gone through one of his distressing nights. I suppose that the storm may have accented it. I sat with him for a while after Dr. Johnson left. You’ll forgive me if I seem somewhat blunted.”
“Of course. I’m terribly sorry about Mr. Marlow.”
“It isn’t unusual, although his attacks have been growing more frequent. It’s a wretched combination of neuritis and a pernicious anemia. Dr. Johnson is splendid. He stays here and has his own house on the grounds. He has brought in several of the best specialists for consultation, but I’m afraid—” Estelle’s voice trailed off, then her smile came quickly, as though to reassure herself against dark thought. “Everything is being done. It’s one of those lingering things.”
“He seemed so well last night.”
“He was well. But, as I say, the storm, and there are times when Ludwig Appleby upsets him.”
Estelle did not pursue this. Instead she led Ann through a living room and into a duplex arrangement that had been converted for the ocelots’ indoor use. A great skylight and an air-conditioning system made the place a conservatory suitable for the more modest of the Paraguayan trees up which the ocelots could climb and sit.
The cats were nervous and on edge. One was of tawny yellow ground color, while the other two were of reddish gray, and all were handsomely marked with black spots, streaks, and blotches. The tawny one paced irritably beneath a tree upon a limb of which his companions pressed in sullen plaques.
“I’d better stay until they get used to you, dear,” Estelle said. “Will it bother your work? I know how artists hate being observed.”
“No, I wish that you would.”
“That one slouching around on the floor is Herriot, dear, and the two in the trees are Clemençau and Madame de Staël.”
Ann put a film pack in the Graflex and took a few experimental shots. The flash bulbs, due to the competition of intermittent lightning-and-thunder effects, failed to impress the ocelots at all. She finished the pack with some close-ups and was removing it to exchange it for an unexposed one when Washburn came in rapidly and went at once to Estelle.
Later, when talking it over with Sergeant Hurlstone of the state police, Ann recalled in detail the things that she did with the exposed film pack just removed from the camera. She was replacing the protective covering about it and putting it back in its cardboard container while Washburn was saying to Estelle: “Mr. Marlow requests that you come at once, Miss Marlow.”
The urgency in Washburn’s voice was reflected by Estelle.
“He is worse?”
“Considerably, I’m afraid. He requests that you bring Miss Ledrick with you.”
(The film pack was now in its carton and the flap closed. Ann still held it in her hand. The camera was on the floor.)
Estelle said swiftly and with an intensity that made her voice vibrant, “Ann dear, come with me at once.”
She took Ann by the arm and all but impelled her toward the door. The exposed film pack, closed in its carton, was still in Ann’s hand.
“Quickly, Ann dear. Every moment may count.”
CHAPTER VII
Marlow’s bedroom was completely ducal. The bed, a massive piece still handsomely sound since it had served its purpose for Napoleon during the Empire, was lost in the room’s proportions, and Marlow was comparatively lost in the bed. A uniformed nurse built on stolidly efficient lines stood on guard as Ann, still impelled by Estelle, came to rest at the bedside.
Marlow’s face was drawn and pale, but his eyes were open, and their expression held the same kindliness which had been in them during his greeting of Ann last night. Both hands were resting on the coverlet, and their fingers seemed almost transparent in their thinness.
Estelle said with hospital cheeriness, “Justin dear, you startled us. You look splendid. Where is Dr. Johnson?” Marlow’s voice was quite clear but weak.
“He is coming.” He smiled at Ann. “Crises are usually attended by a touch of the ludicrous, Miss Ledrick. In this instance, a bath. Dr. Johnson will arrive dripping.”
“I wouldn’t talk too much, Mr. Marlow,” the nurse said.
“Forgive me—Miss Ledrick, Miss Ashton. Miss Ashton is the Florence Nightingale of our community. As for the talking, I must do so while I can. Estelle, will you sit with Miss Ashton in the living room, please? I have something to discuss with Miss Ledrick.”
“I shouldn’t leave you, Mr. Marlow.”
“You shouldn’t upset me, Miss Ashton. Go, please—or you won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
Miss Ashton turned professionally anxious eyes on Estelle.
“You know how it is when he’s like this.”
“I do,” Estelle said. Her eyes locked with Marlow’s. “Are you certain this is wise, Justin?”
“No, I am not. Unfortunately it is imperative.”
“Then come, Miss Ashton.”
A flash and a deep roll of thunder shattered against tall windows as Miss Ashton followed Estelle from the room.
“You are thinking,” Marlow said to Ann as the roar died away, “that this is most extraordinary, Miss Ledrick. It is.”
“Naturally, Mr. Marlow.”
“I am weak and find words increasingly difficult. Sit here, will you? Sit close to me.”
Thin and translucent fingers patted the coverlet of the bed, and a strong revulsion of nervous fright gripped Ann. It was compounded of Bill’s utterly horrible digest over the telephone, of the storm, and, oddly enough, of a montage-like mental picture of Ludwig Appleby and the Charings of Boston.
The revulsion passed rapidly, and Ann felt in its wake a recurrent liking and sympathy for this sick and, yes, dying old gentleman whose smile was begging her to understand some problem which obviously was presenting difficulties of the strongest nature toward being explained.
She sat on the bed. The exposed film pack was still in her hand. Marlow noticed it and looked at it for a moment reflectively.
“You were at work, Miss Ledrick?”
“Yes. Just one set of exposures.”
“You like this work?”
“Very much.”
His hand reached out, whether toward hers or to the film pack Ann did not know, but her reaction at the touch of his fingers was involuntarily to draw her own hand away, leaving the pack on the bedcover. Marlow’s fingers closed over the pack, and he lifted it and examined it.
“Are you satisfied that photography offers you a career, Miss Ledrick?”
“There is nothing else that does, Mr. Marlow.”
Again the thunder pealed, and Ann wondered while reverberations rolled and died away toward what point Marlow was with such difficulty driving. She felt it to be more than the accepted eccentricities of the old and sick and rich, some purpose that involved her precisely.
She noted that Marlow almost fondled the film pack for a moment and then kept it pressed in his hand, and the hand resting quietly on his chest. The impression was clear that he regarded the pack not as an object in itself, but rather as something that belonged to her and that holding it brought him a sense of comfort and of pleasure.
He said in the dead silence that followed the clap, “There is no time. I must come directly to the point, Miss Ledrick. You were brought here to Black Tor for a purpose. One utterly divorced from your photography or the portraiture of Estelle’s ocelots. They were the device I employed for getting you to come. No—do not be alarmed. What I have done has been because I believed it to be the best. For you. I did so only after nights of torture and of doubt and the fear that my physical condition might worsen suddenly to a dangerous point. You shall be my judge.”
Marlow’s voice broke queerly with the effect of an engine suddenly bereft of power. He said, “I had a son.”
“Yes. I know, Mr. Marlow.”
“You are familiar with my tragedy?”
“I know what I suppose people in general know.” Marlow’s fingers tightened convulsively about the film pack, and he pressed it more closely against his chest, as though to conquer some inner pain.
“Then you know nothing, Miss Ledrick.” His voice was very weak. “Nothing that specifically concerns you. I—some water, if you please—this brief distress—”
Ann stood up swiftly. He was dying. His eyes had closed. His lips were betrayed into a gentle flutter. In panic she ran into the living room.
She said to the nurse, “Miss Ashton, go to him. I am afraid Mr. Marlow is dying.”
Estelle started to follow Miss Ashton into the bedroom, but some compulsion caused her to stop beside Ann and look searchingly into Ann’s eyes.
“Did Justin tell you, dear?”
“He started to tell me something, and then his voice died away.”
“Tell me—tell me what he said.”
There had been time enough by now for Ann to appreciate exactly what it was that Marlow had said, in especial concerning the pictures of the ocelots having been a device to get her up to Black Tor. She felt the normal anger of anyone when placed in the position of a dupe. Her sympathy and liking for Marlow dissipated, and with it ebbed her similar regard for his cousin Estelle.
Oddly enough, the more this former tide receded, the more strongly flowed a need for Bill. To see him, to talk with him, to go back to the rut of a placid normality.
Bill’s telephoned commentary with its theme of charnel houses and madness lost its flip detachment and grew personal to herself. Some basis to it must and did exist and she, through dupery, was being woven into its pattern along with the devastating Alice, two swains, two unfortunate bathers, and an electrocuted son. Ann did not want to be included at all. She wanted only to pack at once and go.
Estelle observed her intently while Ann thought this.
“Justin did say something, dear. He s
aid something which has distressed you. I know. I can read it in your face.”
“Yes, Miss Marlow, he did. He admitted that taking the ocelots was nothing more than a device to get me up here. Why?”
“Oh, that—”
Estelle paused as the hall door swung open and a stout, harassed-looking gray-haired man nodded curtly to them and hurried into the bedroom.
“That is Dr. Johnson,” Estelle said. His arrival brought her an emotional letdown, and she sank into a chair. “It has been a strain. I know how selfish that sounds. I can’t help it. My life has been a taut wire for months. It has been especially terrible because there is nothing anyone can do. Each day, each tomorrow could have been the end.”
Estelle closed her eyes and pressed dimpled fingers against her temples.
“You still haven’t answered my question, Miss Marlow.”
“Please—that contraption over there is a cellaret. Just lift the lid, dear, and it all comes apart. I’d like some bourbon, straight.”
Ann opened the cellaret and got the drink. She handed it to Estelle.
“I must insist on leaving here, Miss Marlow. I shall go as soon as it can be arranged.”
Estelle drank the bourbon. Her eyes became velvet pansies clouded over with tears.
“Ann, it is hard for me to believe that that is all that Justin said.”
“He did add that this trickery was all for my own good. Is he sane?”
“Perfectly. Justin is one of the sanest and most brokenhearted men on earth. As for why he wanted you up here, I haven’t the right to tell you. Only he can do that.”
Then Dr. Johnson was back with them and saying to Estelle, “Not yet. I remain astonished at his stamina. Miss Ledrick?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Mr. Marlow asked me to say that he would resume his talk with you later. I believe he will be strong enough to do so toward five this afternoon.”
“I will have returned to New York by then, Doctor.”
“Oh? I gathered that you were staying for a while. Well, I shall drop in later, Miss Marlow. Good-by, Miss Ledrick.”
“Good-by, Doctor.”
Dr. Johnson opened the door, and Ann saw, standing in the hallway, the heavy figure of Ludwig Appleby. Appleby waited until the doctor had passed and then came in.
