Fingers of Fear

by J. U. Nicolson

  “So Grayce, the little fool, wasted her time by telling you all that? I thought she was with you for a very different reason.” She seemed to be looking quite through and beyond my face. Then her manner changed. “Why should you know that?” she demanded.

  “I haven’t any valid reason to give you.” What had she meant about Grayce wasting her time? “I merely thought that with Grayce liable to . . . and Ormond, too, you say . . . it leaves only Gray, so long as you’re not very well. It leaves only Gray and myself to look after things. If I’m to help, I ought to know what to reveal and what to keep under cover.”

  “Yes. Yes, I see that. Perhaps you’re right . . . in a way. Well, I’m going to trust you. Perhaps I’m wrong to do it, but I’m going to. You’ve become a part of all this. I’ve a notion that you can’t leave . . . now.” Grayce’s very words! “Listen: Back of the shelves in the library——”

  “I know about the passage,” I interrupted. “I’ve explored it. I’ve been down the iron stairs from top to bottom.”

  “You’ve certainly learned a lot in the short while you’ve been here! So it was you this morning with the flashlight! I couldn’t see your face. But did Grayce show you the crypt?”

  “The what?”

  “The crypt. The little room at the bottom of——”

  “No, I found it myself. I asked ‘What’ as I did because I was thinking of a . . . well, of a tomb, you know.”

  “Which is exactly what it is. That’s why we call it the crypt.”

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “In the well, yes. Through the pipe, you see. Both bodies are there.”

  I shuddered. This family had not so much as decently interred the bones of Ormond’s and Gray’s father and mother! And of Barbara’s own brother! The two corpses had been slid down the great pipe of wrought iron which I had noted, feeling, even as I looked upon it, that it in some way bore upon much of the mystery surrounding all the persons and all the doings in the house of the Ormeses.

  “But the top opening of the pipe?” I asked. “Where is that?”

  For answer she rose from her chair, crossed the room, flung open a door to the closet in which I had supposed she hung her clothing. I saw that the closet was quite devoid of everything used or worn. And I also saw, projecting from the wall at the back of the little space, such a black and gaping mouth as might have been thought, in older times, to lead to the Pit itself. Down that horrible hole had gone those bodies, then! And this frail woman, this nerve-shattered Barbara with the angel’s face and the gentle, modest manners had lived and slept in this room for days, months, years, and all the while with knowledge that she stood, as it were, at the open door of a tomb! What if one or both of the cadavers had lodged in the pipe, had not slipped all the way through? Did I even then shudder involuntarily at catching with my nostrils a faint, sickening odor of decayed humanity? It may have been fancy, and no doubt it was. But I could be sure that Barbara bent slightly downward toward the mouth of the pipe and drank a long breath from it, contentedly and somewhat greedily, as though she had once luxuriated in the smell of horror that must have been exhaled there.

  Moreover—had she herself gained to the crypt behind me by sliding down that pipe?

  Abruptly she turned away from the place and closed the door, seeing to it that the old-fashioned thumb latch fell properly into place.

  “Now you know that also,” she said, smiling a hard, grim, dry little smile, and dusting her fingers daintily, as though she had been handling something smutty.

  I was profoundly shaken. I had been shown no more than the end of a large pipe of wrought iron. Yet the associations it had, and, more than all else, the satisfaction this strange woman appeared to derive from having that open pipe in her own room—these, I confess, shook me deeply and as I had not yet been shaken by any happening or by the discovery of any previous happening at Ormesby. How very little, after all, do we commonly realize that we, ordinary human beings, clothed, sane and respectable, have within our natures the very hungers of the beast. We read of some brutal murder, some peculiarly atrocious handling of the insensate corpse. We shiver vaguely and give thanks that such things are not done by the people we know and love and respect. And then, when the murderer is caught, he, or she, turns out to be the same sort of decent, respectable, ordinary person we have claimed for our neighbors and for our friends. And we shudder again, deeper within our souls, this time. How could such a person have done the nameless thing that has been done? How could he, or she, have looked upon so horrid a deed and still lived, knowing that his own hands have wrought this ruin, that his own fingers have dabbled with this carrion, that his own soul has triumphed in this shameless union with incestuous, reeking death?

  Hardly aware of what I was saying, I began to tell Barbara of the visitation I had had on my first night at Ormesby, proof of which lay in the mark which was still to be seen below the collar of my shirt.

  “You were . . . kissed?” she asked, absently, and with a curiously flat and brittle quality in her tone.

  “Call it kissing. I suppose a vampire would call it that,” I replied.

  She nodded, slowly, agreeing with what I had said, yet not appearing to be troubled by that at which I plainly hinted.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said I, after a pause, “that even if Grayce were confined in a sanatorium, she might continue telling things. It might be far more dangerous to do that than it is to keep her here.”

  I was watching her carefully. She sat staring straight ahead of her, but her eyes had within them a reddish gleam as she looked, and they were fixed upon that very spot on my throat, hidden though it was by the collar of my shirt, whence the mark of the sucking mouth had not yet faded.

  “Yes,” she said, not bringing her eyes back to meet my own, “that’s what I fear, too. It hasn’t been discussed. Gray and Ormond would both die before they’d consent to anything like that.”

  “But I’ve been thinking, Miss Barbara. . . . What of the water in that old cistern? For that’s what it must have been before the chimney was built over it.”

  “That’s what it was, yes. The cistern leaks. That’s why my brother built over it. Something happened at the bottom, years ago. Water won’t stay in it. A fissure in the granite, I suppose.”

  “But who did all this? I mean, who put the bodies down there? Ormond?”

  “Yes. But I helped. And Hobbs.”

  “He did? Hobbs knows that much? But what of him? Can he be perfectly trusted?”

  “I don’t know. I’m rather desperate, Mr. Seaverns!”

  She sat suddenly upright in her chair, terror showing plainly in her beautiful face. I put out my hand as if to push her shoulder gently, so that she might lie back against her pillow. She moved away from the thrust of my hand, so that only the tips of one or two of my fingers touched the thin silk covering her shoulder. Yet that slightest of touches, even through the silk, was enough to inform me that her flesh was as cold as marble.

  “You’re cold!” I cried.

  “Not at all. I’m rather too warm. I was cold all night, but since breakfast I——”

  “But you’ve not eaten any breakfast,” I interrupted.

  For a moment she looked mockingly and insolently into my eyes, smiling in that grim little way she had. Then she began again to speak of Hobbs.

  “We used to think we could trust him,” she resumed. “My brother tried to kill him . . . once . . . when he was . . . was crazy. Ormond interfered, at some risk to himself, and saved the man’s life. He swore to Ormond that he’d always be his servant. But I don’t know. . . . Of late he’s different . . . since Agnes came. She nags him and his wife so. I wish she’d leave!”

  And I wished I could ease Barbara’s mind by telling her that Agnes would never nag Hobbs and his wife again. But I dared not do it. Already she wa
s at the limit of her full strength. I feared that further trouble, particularly such trouble as my news of Agnes’s murder, would throw her into a fever.

  “I must go now,” I said. “I’ll get Ormond and we’ll go find Grayce. You must try to sleep.”

  “Yes, I ought to rest. But—”

  “I’ll send Gray to you.”

  Rising, I moved my chair back against the wall, where I had found it. Then I laid my hand on the knob of the door. There I hesitated. Something else had come into my mind, and I wanted to ask about it, yet hesitated, both out of shame and because I half feared that the implications contained in my question might agitate this woman too much. Curiosity won the day, however. I had a battle to wage, not only against the curious public, but also against Ormes himself. I needed all the information I could get.

  “There’s one thing more, Miss Barbara. Has your nephew ever said anything to give you an opinion that he’s interested in another woman? Anyone in New York?”

  “Not directly. I did suspect that he was having an affair of some kind when he was here a couple of weeks ago. It was from something he said, though I forget what it might have been. I do remember that it made Agnes angry. But I don’t know it to be a fact, and if it’s true, I don’t know who the woman is, nor anything about her.”

  “Barbara, dear! What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

  I turned swiftly. It was Gray. No, it was Grayce! She was sane. She was clean. She had bathed and dressed. She ran past me, without so much as a glance in my direction, and flung herself on one knee beside Barbara’s chair. She mouthed tendernesses, solicitous questions, reassurances. I caught Barbara’s eye over the girl’s shoulder. She said to me, as plainly as if she had worded it, that she wished to be alone with Grayce, that I need fear no immediate recurrence of the girl’s frenzy. I nodded in understanding. Then I slipped out of the door and across the hall to my own room.

  I was not so sure that Barbara was right. It seemed to me that Grayce might become insane again at any moment. Had I not myself seen her change from tense control, last night, to vicious desire, and back again to something of sanity? I reasoned that these attacks would come upon her more and more frequently until her reason should have been thrown down for ever. Yet there was nothing I could have done to excuse my remaining in Barbara’s room. It might have been that Grayce, sane now, had some remembrance of the things she had done last night, and wanted, undisturbed by the presence of a stranger, to sue her aunt for pardon. Besides, I ought to be rapping on Ormes’s door and informing the plotters there of what had transpired in the garage.

  And then, as to Barbara, I was, at the moment, too puzzled to think with any clearness. Barbara herself . . . Was it possible that that lovely face covered the soul of a fiend? Why had she consented to live all these years with that open pipe debouching into the closet of her room? Why had she stared at my throat, her brown eyes red with hunger? Dimly and vaguely I remembered reading somewhere that a person who had been bitten by a vampire became himself a vampire, that he, in turn, must live on human blood, that he could not ever die and be at peace until his heart had been pierced by a stake. . . .

  And what had Barbara meant by saying that she had been cold all night, but that now, since taking her breakfast . . . ? Was it possible that not Grayce but Barbara had . . . But no! That half-formed notion was too improbably horrible!

  Something must be speedily done with regard to Agnes’s body. If Grayce had killed the woman, was she even now babbling of the murder in her aunt’s room? I wondered whether Hobbs knew of Grayce’s return to the house. Thinking of Hobbs, I grew hungry. I stole out into the hall again, past Ormes’s door, and down the broad stairs. Entering the dining-room, I saw that Gray was there.

  She was seated at table, taking a cup of coffee. She was dressed, as I have said, in blue, and Grayce upstairs had been wearing brown. Even aside from these differences in clothing, however, I wondered how I could have been able to mistake the one sister for the other. There was a likeness, certainly, and a far greater one than the family likeness between Gray and Ormond, or between any of the children and the dead father’s portrait with the wandering evil eyes. Yet where Gray was calm, poised, self-possessed, modest, and sheathed in dignity, Grayce was erratic and nervous, sinuous and sensuous, and with something repellent about her, even in her sober intervals, and with something wild. I had not been given the slightest reason to think that there were twin sisters of Ormond Ormes living in this house. Nevertheless I told myself that I should have suspected something like that from the very first. Undoubtedly it had been Grayce who had admitted us on the midnight of our arrival, for it was Grayce’s deep voice which I had heard then and had heard but a few minutes since in Barbara’s room. I thought that I ought to have known the difference by the voices alone. Yet I had not, and much of what was to follow can be now traced to that mistake.

  Gray wished me a “Good morning” in pleasant fashion, though it seemed to me her eyes spoke of preoccupation.

  “Should I apologize for missing our appointment last night?” she asked.

  “It isn’t necessary. I know that the dogs had to be kenneled. Yet they were loose this morning before daylight.”

  “I know they were.”

  “Of course,” said I, “I know who loosed them. Now I must tell you something else.”

  At this point Hobbs entered, to bring me coffee and something to eat. I needed both. The secret I held, and which I was now resolved to divulge to Gray, had been a secret for several hours. I thought, however, I could afford to keep it until I had completed my meal. Gray, I noticed, was not eating. She had pushed her plate away and I saw that the food on it had not been touched. But she had called for a second cup of coffee.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Hobbs came in again, bearing the girl’s coffee. He paused, after serving it, to glance meaningly at me. I looked squarely into his eyes and nodded slightly. But Gray had seen the interchanged understanding and I felt her glance questioning me.

  “It’s about your sister,” I explained. “She’s upstairs with Barbara.” Gray started up from the table. “No, don’t be alarmed. She’s quite all right—now.”

  “I have just left them together, Miss,” Hobbs added.

  “But . . . with Barbara? She mustn’t be . . . there . . . of all places!”

  Nevertheless, Gray sank back into her chair. Her whole attitude expressed indecision. Her shoulders drooped and she toyed absently with knife and fork. Hobbs left the room. I ate my eggs as hastily as I well could without swallowing them whole. Even so, I fear that Gray must have thought my manners atrocious, if, indeed, she was thinking of me at all. But I wanted that food within myself before I told her of what was to be found in the garage.

  “Tell me,” Gray demanded, leaning far across the table toward me, “was she in there,” nodding in the direction of the library, “with you, last night?”

  Something, to this day I do not know what it was, prompted me to try an experiment.

  “You mean . . . Barbara?” I asked, supposing, of course, that she had meant Grayce.

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “But . . . Why, Good Lord!” I cried. I was rudely jarred.

  “What is it, Mr. Seaverns?”

  “Why, I . . . that is . . . well, I didn’t suppose you actually did mean Barbara, you know,”

  “Then whom . . . ?”

  “But . . . why, she’s . . .”

  “Ah, I see! You thought I meant my sister?”

  “Naturally, yes.”

  Her eyes were vacant. She appeared to have forgotten my presence, I waited for what seemed to be several minutes, though it could not have been so long. I was thinking that Gray could not possibly be jealous of her beautiful aunt, but that . . . At last I ventured to recall myself to her attention.

 
; “Yes,” I said, “it was Grayce. She . . . I mistook her for you. I had just left her when I found you coming in out of the rain. That is, it was only shortly after I’d left her that I heard you entering. Then we talked on the stairs, you’ll remember. Grayce told me . . . well, a lot. Barbara has told me more. I want to have you know that I’m aware of so many of the secrets of Ormesby that you’ve all got to accept me as a friend of the family, whether you like me or not.”

  “Yes?” She eyed me haughtily. “That’s as it may be, perhaps. But I don’t want to quarrel with you. I suppose you mean, you want to help?”

  “I do. In any way I can. I certainly wouldn’t foist myself upon you if I didn’t think I could be of service to you.” She was staring quite through me. “To you in particular, Gray!” I cried.

  She smiled then, wanly.

  “Because I know a lot . . . more, even, than anyone else, at this moment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know,” I asked, somewhat at a loss as to how to begin, “where your sister-in-law is?”

  “Agnes? No, I suppose she went out for air. She was rather nervous and broken-up after Mrs. Hobbs’s accident. I told her to go lie down and rest.”

  “Before I tell you what I mean to tell you regarding her, there’s a question I must ask.”

  “Very well. I’ll answer it if I can.”

  “I doubt,” said I, leaning far across the table and staring into her eyes as she had lately done, “whether you can answer it. Indeed, I’m sure you can’t. It will puzzle you as much as it’s puzzled me, when you’ve heard it. The question is: what is your brother doing here with my wife?”

  “Your what?”

  There was no mistaking the genuineness of her astonishment. I felt that I could reasonably argue from it that Muriel herself was, as yet, unaware of my presence here.