Food was brought to them and each one made an effort to eat, an effort wholly for the benefit of the other.
The first part of the meal was spent in complete silence, but eventually Donald Cornwall began to talk in a random manner about his family.
"I suppose I could say that Uncle Everitt was my favorite in the family. Father had two brothers and three sisters. I don't imagine you have met any of them."
Melicent shook her head. "No."
"Theodore is the other uncle and besides Hannah there are Alice and Lydia. Alice lives in Belgium. She has three children--cousins of mine--whom I haven't seen for years and years. They're all pretty gay, I guess. Alice's crazy about them and she spoiled them.
Then here's Lydia. She was a snobbish little chit in the 70s and 80s, or whenever she was a chit. She made grandfather Silas thoroughly peeved by marrying Grand Duke Vladamir Strong of Bortvia. Lydia was a born title-seeker and Silas was a democrat of the first water, so auntie went abroad to live and has stayed there pretty much of the time. I guess things have been tough in Bortvia since it became a republic, and Lydia and her husband and the prince regent are all living in exile in Egypt. That's everybody but Theodore.
Uncle Theodore is a crank. He's a vegetarian and about every two years he makes a big announcement of what he'll do with grandfather's money if he inherits it. His last idea was to build an endowed highway clear across the United States bearing the family name, and free to all people. No toll bridges and no grade crossings."
Donald Cornwall stopped and looked at Melicent, who was silent. Then he continued to talk. "All of them had ideas for disposing of that money. Aunt Hannah wants to start a Greek university, with everybody wearing togas, I think. Poor old dad had the only really sound plan of the bunch. He was interested in medicine and wanted to start a foundation to study tropical diseases. That's why we were in Dutch Guiana. But dad's gone and now Uncle Everitt's gone. Well, they're getting old and I suppose everybody gets old eventually." He put down his knife and fork as if he had given up all pretense of eating. "Funny, that electric light thing. Fairly common accident."
"I am terribly sorry," Melicent said quietly.
His answer came after an interval and it did not seem connected with what she said. He spoke speculatively. "The thing that puzzles me is that it must have been an accident. A pure accident. You could see how it all happened. He reached up to turn on the bracket light and touched the empty socket instead. I can't understand it."
To that Melicent made no reply. She knew what he could not understand. The young man from South America had been thinking his uncle was the victim of a murder.
And now that train of thought was upset because it was obvious that Everitt Cornwall had died by mischance.
People moved through the house upstairs. Servants, one or two officials from the small town of Williamsborough, and the coroner. After they left the dining room Donald joined the people on the floor above and Melicent was again left to the empty rooms and the silence. She had spent a day and a half and one night in the house, but already it seemed to her that she had lived through a month of empty and inactive silence. She dreaded the hour of bedtime.
Its approach was remorseless. Miss Cornwall descended the staircase and looked into the library. Her face was strained but her voice was firm. "We will retire now, Miss Waring."
Melicent followed the old lady up the stairs. No words passed between them and they carried out the ritual on which they had agreed. Miss Cornwall went into her room and locked the door. Melicent went into hers. She undressed and put on the long nightgown and lace cap. She waited and presently there was a knock on the door. They exchanged rooms. No word was spoken. The door was locked. Melicent moved through the dark to the great canopied bed.
When she lay down she realized that she was exhausted from the strain of that long and fantastic day. In the morning she had read the letter which voiced Donald Cornwall's suspicions. At noon Everitt Cornwall had arrived. Later in the afternoon his nephew had appeared and the lemon-colored roadster. Now Everitt Cornwall lay dead and his nephew was secretly mystified because the death was the result of accident and not of murder.
Those thoughts were merely fragments in her mind because superimposed upon them was a repetition of the terror of the night before. It crept through the dark like a cold, invisible mist. It penetrated corners of her mind with imagined episodes, in which she, lying in the antique bed, was mistaken for Miss Cornwall by somebody or the something which was, perhaps even at that moment, moving through the house carrying doom for three more venerable members of the family. She could even imagine that stalking thing was chuckling because one Cornwall had been eliminated by fate.
Lying in the dark, she heard the shuffling steps of officials come to confirm the fact that the death of Everitt Cornwall was accidental. Through the casement windows came the slam of doors and the hum of motors. Voices died. People ceased to walk through the house. Silence descended. She listened. The clock downstairs repeated its dull strikes at intervals, which seemed infinite. It was eleven o'clock, eleven-thirty, twelve, half-past twelve, one. Not a sound in the house. No one outside. Nothing but her fear, her tense waiting. She wondered if Hannah Cornwall was awake in the next room--
awake and trembling. She wondered if Donald Cornwall was also awake and what he was thinking. His presence in the house lent her a mysterious reassurance, the reassurance always given to a woman who knows that her outcry will summon a man. She had thought that she would be able to sleep better because of his presence, but sleep was almost impossible to her.
At two o'clock she was dozing. At three she was awake again and heard the clock strike. Then, when the hours were their blackest, there descended over the whole house not restfulness but numbness. Melicent lay with her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell unevenly. The first dim ray of dawn came through the casement windows like the spreading of a slow stain. It made the bed and the girl dimly visible through the narrowly opened windows and across the floor, in a slow meandering stream, it dispersed and reformed. It rose higher in the room and touched the girl's face. At once she stirred. A second eddy of it, misty and unsubstantial, blew over her.
She opened her eyes. She drew in a sharp breath. It was smoke. Instantly she was on her feet. She ran toward the door that led to the hall. The aura of smoke was not there.
It was not near the door which led into her own bedroom, where Miss Cornwall was asleep. Again she crossed the room. It was coming through the casement windows. Her eyes tried to pierce the grayness outside, but she could see no sign of fire. She listened.
Finally she believed she could detect a crackling sound.
There was a fire somewhere in the house. Melicent shuddered at the realization of a new terror so swiftly come upon Blackcroft, but she acted quickly and definitely. She stuffed the lace nightcap under the sheets. Instinctively, with both hands, she pushed back her disheveled hair. Then she stepped to the door that led to Miss Cornwall's room. She knocked lightly. She heard a creak in response, then footfalls. The door was unlocked and opened slightly. A chain prevented the aperture from widening.
"Who is it?" Miss Cornwall whispered.
"Me--Miss Waring. I smell smoke. There's a fire somewhere."
"Wait." The chain was unlocked. The door swung back. Miss Cornwall stood in the murky light. She was dressed exactly as Melicent had been and in her hand was a revolver. Melicent's mind cataloged both the chain on the door and the gun as further precautions taken by the old lady. For the moment she ignored them. "Smoke," she repeated. "Wood smoke, I think. It came through my windows."
Miss Cornwall made no explanations or apologies. She stepped into the other room. She sniffed. The alarm on her face increased. Melicent realized that in spite of her fear she was endeavoring to think and presently she put her thoughts in fragmentary words. "There's a fire somewhere, all right. You put on a bathrobe, lock me in my room here, and go out from your room. Find out what's burning and come back and tel
l me."
Hastily Melicent obeyed. She guessed why Miss Cornwall would not go out to look for the source of the smoke--the smoke might be a trick to get her into the hall.
"Maybe I'd better take your revolver."
In the old lady's eyes was an expression that showed she knew why Melicent wished to take that precaution. She considered for a fraction of a second. "There's another one in the bureau drawer yonder. Take that."
Melicent put on a bathrobe, procured the other gun, shut the door between her room and Miss Cornwall's, and then stepped into the dim hall. The smell of smoke was a little stronger. Melicent went at once to its source, although afterward she was never sure how she knew where to go. Over the carpet, almost running, she made her way to the door of the room in which Everitt Cornwall had died. At the door she hesitated and shuddered. She held the gun in her right hand and turned the knob with her left. The smoke inside was not as thick as she had expected. She trembled as she stepped across the threshold. There was no need for further doubt. From the bathroom came a furious crackling. Melicent rushed across the room, threw open the bathroom door for a second, and then closed it. The inside of that room was in flames. The windows were wide open and smoke poured from them. In the interval in which the door had been open heat had beat against her.
She ran from the bathroom. She had not cried out an alarm and still she did not.
The fire seemed localized and was not spreading rapidly; and if, as Miss Cornwall thought, the fire had been set, an alarm and confusion would be what they who set the fire undoubtedly wanted.
In the hall, Melicent stopped and spun about with a sudden, eerie feeling that, aside from the fire, things were not as they had been. Then she realized what had stopped her. The room next to the burning bathroom was one which had been locked and long unused. Melicent remembered that subconsciously. Now, however, the door stood open.
Inside was the dancing light of flame.
Melicent looked into that room. Flame was licking along the wall from the corner.
The smoke it made poured through open windows. She had an impression of dust and disuse, of cobwebs and time-stained slip covers on bulgy furniture. But in the lurid light, she saw two things. The dust on the floor at the wall next to the bathroom was tracked by feet and marked as if some one had knelt there; and on the wall itself was a great, jagged hole in the plaster. The hole was white and new and the material knocked down when the hole was made lay scattered on the floor. Even while she looked, the flames began to lick the edge of the orifice.
The hole, which did not go completely through the wall--for she was sure there was no hole on the opposite side in the bathroom--was about at the height of the top of the bath tub and directly opposite the position of the tub on the other side of the wall.
How Everitt Cornwall could have been killed through this hole which did not itself pierce the wall, she could not think. That was no instant for thought; but that it had something to do with his death, she was suddenly sure. He had been killed ! Murdered!
The five words of a meaningless message which had spelled death was no chance.
Again it had come as a warning just before--murder! For murder had been here! How?
She would never know if she fled the flames now; no one would ever know; for the flames would destroy everything. That was the meaning of the flames; that was the purpose of the fire--to make away with telltale traces.
Was there more here to see; in that corner of the room where the smoke clouded and the flame lent no light; what was there? She ought to see; before everything was forever obliterated she ought to see.
She crept toward the corner; and terror suddenly seized her. Some one was behind her; a man quietly had come into the room.
CHAPTER IV
MELICENT whirled and faced him: the flare of the flames gave light to see his figure but the smoke veiled his features. He was big and powerful; he had a pistol in one hand.
She had the pistol which Miss Cornwall had given her and she held it raised and pointed at him. Suppose he fired--the thought flew through her mind--she could pull the trigger and shoot him, too, before she fell, before his bullet could complete its effect by death.
Her heart was hammering, but she held her hand steady.
"Hello!" she heard. "Hello, how did you get here?"
It was Donald Cornwall's voice; his hand was down and hers with the pistol dropped at her side.
"How did you?"
"Smelt the smoke," said Donald Cornwall. "How long you been here?"
"Just now."
"Why were you staying in here?"
Why had she been staying in a burning room without raising an alarm? A natural enough question. From no one yet had there been an outcry; if she had made none, neither had he, and she knew that his reasons must resemble her own. Before calling about them clamor and confusion he meant to investigate this strange fire.
"Did you see anyone else?" he asked her, stepping close to her. He had a dressing gown over his pajamas, and he stared at her in the flare of the flame.
"Nobody," she said.
"Hear anything?"
"No, but there's a hole in the wall--there!"
"Where?"
"There!"
There where the flames burned yellow and red. He could not see it; she could not see it herself, now, but she knew it was there. "It went through the plaster, right there!
Opposite the bath tub on the other side."
"What was it?"
"Just a hole."
"What else did you see?"
"Nothing."
They were breathing smoke and were half-blinded by it, and it was useless to remain. He caught her wrist and drew her out of the room. Still neither of them shouted an alarm. Something more than flames stirred in the old house that night, something more to be feared than fire.
"Where's my aunt?"
"In her room. She smelt the smoke. She locked the door after me."
"You better get her out. I'll rouse the others."
"All right."
The pressure on her wrist went tighter. Then he let her go and strode down the hall. Melicent rapped on Miss Cornwall's door.
"Who is it?" came the challenge.
"Melicent Waring."
"Anyone with you now?"
"No one!'
Miss Cornwall opened the door; Melicent squeezed in, and the door was instantly secured behind her.
"Who was that with you?"
"Your nephew."
"You woke him up?"
"No; he found me--in the room beyond your brother's bathroom."
"Why were you there?"
"That's where the fire is--and in the bathroom."
"Where my brother died?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. How bad's the fire?"
"I came back to help you out of the house."
"What's Donald doing?"
"He's getting the servants up."
Miss Cornwall somewhat regained composure and concealed her revolver in her nightdress. "I've called the fire department in Williamsborough. It is a volunteer department, so it may take some time, but then a fire spreads slowly at first. There are fire extinguishers in the linen closet and in the pantries downstairs, tell Donald."
"You want me to leave you?"
"I will know when I should abandon the house."
Nothing at the moment could be gained by telling Miss Cornwall of the strange hole in the wall which the flames had hid; it would only increase her fright which was so great that fear of the fire for itself seemed scarcely to disturb her at all.
Melicent went out and in the hall met Donald Cornwall leading Hardy and some of the other servants with fire extinguishers and pails. They stood in the hall and slung water and squirted chemicals at the burning walls. Granger ran up with more extinguishers which he had brought from the garage, but they were of no use. They smothered the surface flame but the fire was inside the walls and also broke out below.
Smoke came u
p the stairs.
"This house," said Donald Cornwall, "is going to go. Maybe we've got five minutes."
Melicent was admitted again to Miss Cornwall's room. She found her employer filling a huge suitcase which was in the middle of the floor. Miss Cornwall was dressed and there was a tin box at her feet. She looked up momentarily. "I have expected something like this for years and thank God some one woke up when it happened. Get your things together, Miss Waring."
Melicent opened the door to her room but she was unable to enter--smoke puffed out at her. She slammed the door.
She realized that she was still dressed in Miss Cornwall's night clothes, although she had discarded the cap. Miss Cornwall stopped packing and thought for a moment.
"I'll lend you something." She rummaged in one of the closets and held out to Melicent a long, black skirt and sweater.
"That plaster is hot," observed Miss Cornwall. "The fire got into your room between the walls." She stooped for an instant to close the huge suitcase. "Help me with this and we will leave."
Melicent pulled on the clothes and she helped tug the big suitcase to the door which Miss Cornwall unlocked. Donald Cornwall and Granger were still fighting the fire but the servants had disappeared. Donald seized his aunt's arm but she refused to escape until he picked up her tin box; then he hurried her down the stairs.
Granger grabbed the big suitcase, and Melicent, holding her breath, ran down before him and they gained the outside air together. Somewhere in the house was the sound of falling timbers and the gray dawn was illuminated by a flickering yellow light.
From the lawn it was easy to see that the house was doomed--the flames, eating up between the walls, reached the roof and blazed through and the wind blew drafts which sucked the fire through the vitals of the old mansion. Donald Cornwall and Granger had run back into the house but the servants stayed outside and gathered in a staring, whispering half-circle behind their employer.
The flaming roof threw a garish glow and Miss Cornwall made a brief survey of her house in the light from its own destruction. Then she turned her back to it and called Hardy to order him to check up on the servants. Everyone was out and Donald and Granger at last reappeared, stumbling through the great front door. They lay down on the grass, gasping for air.
Five Fatal Words Page 6
