Dorothy turned over the photograph and read with a wry smile the “legend” pasted there:
Two members of famous family adopt professions—Left to right, Miss Vera and Miss Dorothy Deane, daughters of the late distinguished jurist, Stephen Deane, Chief Justice of the District Court of Appeals, desert the ballroom and pink teas for professional life. Miss Vera Deane is a graduate trained nurse, while her younger sister has found her metier as a journalist, and ably conducts the society section of the Morning Tribune.
Tossing aside the photograph, Dorothy picked up the afternoon newspaper and was about to turn to the society page when she stopped, her attention arrested by a display heading:
BRUCE BRAINARD A SUICIDE
KILLS HIMSELF AT PORTER HOMESTEAD
The lines beneath were meager as to details, but Dorothy absorbed the printed words a dozen times before their whole meaning dawned upon her. At the end she drew a long, long breath. Bruce Brainard! His very name conjured up scenes she had prayed to forget; and now he was dead, a suicide. She raised her hands to her throbbing temples and burst into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter. Truly the Fates had a perverted sense of humor—to bring Bruce Brainard, Vera, and Hugh Wyndham together for a final meeting! Suddenly her laughter changed to tears, and noiseless sobs shook and racked her slender body until she sank back in her chair exhausted with emotion. She was regaining some hold on her customary composure when the insistent clamor of her desk telephone effectually aroused her.
“Hello! Yes,” she called into the instrument, steadying her voice. “Society editor, yes; no, we don’t take engagements over the ‘phone—No, we can’t break the rule; sorry, but you will have to send it in signed, or bring the news in person. Good-by,” and she rang off.
Her right hand instinctively sought her assignment book; the telephone message had brought her back to the everyday routine; she could not permit her thoughts to wander afield; but first there was one thing she must do, and she again turned to the telephone. It was some minutes before she got the toll station, and there she met disappointment—the telephone at the Porter homestead had been temporarily disconnected; she could not talk to her sister.
But why had not Vera telephoned her? The question worried her as she turned the pages of her book, searching for the entries falling on that date. Then she recalled that, after her talk with the indignant Mr. Anson Smith that morning, she had covered her ears with the bedclothes and gone comfortably to sleep, letting the telephone ring itself out. The fact that she had been up all night “covering” the White House entertainment and had crawled into bed at twenty minutes past five in the morning did not, at the moment, seem an adequate excuse for having neglected the telephone—she had deliberately but unintentionally cut herself off from communication with Vera, and bitter tears came to her eyes at the thought. Vera might be needing her at that very moment! The thought was not quieting, and she had reached for her hat when again the telephone broke the silence.
“What is it?” she demanded, and her voice sounded shrill even in her own ears.
“Society editor,” came a woman’s voice over the wire. “Please look in the Congressional Directory and tell me if Mr. John Graham is still a representative.”
“What state is he from?” questioned Dorothy.
“I don’t recollect,” was the reply, and with a subdued, “Wait a moment,” Dorothy set down the receiver and feverishly turned the pages of the Congressional Directory until she reached the index and ran down the list of names. “There’s no John Graham in the book,” she shouted into the telephone a second later.
“Sure you have the last edition? Thanks.”
Dorothy put back the receiver with a relieved sigh. A glance at her wrist watch showed her that it was already a quarter of five—and the foreman was waiting for early copy. There was no time to hunt up Vera, and with her nerves on edge she turned to her list of assignments and telephoned to first one hostess and then another, getting dinner and lunch lists until she had a formidable number before her. But one hostess remained uncalled, and with renewed zeal she resorted to the telephone again.
“This is Miss Deane, society editor, Morning Tribune,’ she explained. “I will be greatly obliged if you will give the names of your dinner guests tonight for tomorrow’s paper.”
“I give dinners to my friends, not for the newspapers,” came the frigid reply, and Dorothy heard the bang of the telephone receiver at the other end of the wire.
“Waugh!” she exclaimed aloud, turning back to her typewriter. “So Mrs. Purse thinks she has arrived—and last year she was sending in her own dinner lists to the newspapers, as well as the names of guests at entertainments to which she was invited.”
Dorothy’s skilled fingers flew over the typewriter as her active brain put in fitting phrases the information she had secured over the telephone, and later, in some instances, she rewrote the important social events chronicled in the evening newspapers. She had almost completed her task when the door opened and the office boy ushered in a much-talked-about divorcee whose career had provided entertainment for staid Washingtonians.
Dorothy was a favorite of hers and she greeted her warmly. “No, I can’t sit and gossip,” she announced, standing by the partly open door. “I only came to bring you this data about our dramatic club,” laying a folded manuscript on the desk perilously near the paste pot. “Dress it up in your own style, Dorothy. I congratulate you on your society column; it’s the best in town.”
“Indeed,” and Dorothy flushed with pleasure. “I did not think you would ever bother to read it.”
“I always read the social news to keep track of the entertainments to which I am not bidden given by women who owe me invitations.” A faint hardness crept into her voice, and was gone instantly as she bade Dorothy a cordial good-by and departed.
Rewriting the dramatic club article proved more of a task than Dorothy had bargained for; thoughts of Vera, of Bruce Brainard, and last—of Hugh Wyndham, projected themselves before the typed words, and in desperation she seized the scissors and, shortening the manuscript, she pasted the remainder on her copy paper. She was busy marking her copy when the telephone bell called her back to the instrument.
“Good evening, Miss Deane,” said a soft, purring voice, which Dorothy instantly recognized as belonging to a well known society belle, who had seen more seasons than she was willing to admit. “For particular reasons I am anxious to attend the breakfast tomorrow which the Japanese Ambassador is giving. Can’t you use your influence to get me an invitation?”
“But I have no influence in that quarter,” protested Dorothy. “The invitations are strictly limited to members of the Cabinet and their wives.”
“Oh! Don’t you know any way by which I can procure an invitation?”
“I see no way for you to be eligible for an invitation unless you can marry the Attorney General, the only bachelor in the Cabinet circle, before ten o’clock,” retorted Dorothy, her sense of fun getting the better of discretion. A faint “Oh!” preceded the hanging up of the opposite receiver, and Dorothy went back to her work. But she was again doomed to interruption, and this time she answered the telephone with a wrathful, “Well, what is it?”
“Mrs. Marvin, Dorothy,” sounded a cheerful voice. “I want you to take down this list of patronesses for our charity ball. Get your pencil—there are one hundred names.”
“Oh, Mrs. Marvin!” gasped Dorothy. “Can’t you send them into the office? I’ll pay the messenger.”
“I haven’t time to write them out,” declared Mrs. Marvin firmly, and Dorothy jabbed her pencil with vicious force into the pad as she started to take down the names. “Hello, don’t ring off,” called Mrs. Marvin at the end of five minutes. “Remember, Dorothy, those names must appear in tomorrow’s paper, and be sure and give us an excellent send-off; it’s for charity, you know.”
“Yes, yes, good-by,” and, dropping the receiver, Dorothy rubbed her aching ear and stiff arm.
“T
aking one consideration with another, with another, A policeman’s life is not a happy one—”
chanted a voice from the door, and, glancing up, Dorothy saw one of the reporters watching her. “Cheer up, Miss Deane,” he said, advancing farther into the room. “You haven’t been standing on the ‘sacred soil’ of Virginia for hours in a biting east wind, watching a front door for news. I’m frozen inside and out,” blowing on his hands as he spoke. “But, oh, it’s a big story—”
At the mention of Virginia, Dorothy had glanced at him eagerly, but the question burning her lips was checked by the telephone’s loud call.
“Do answer it for me,” she begged, sitting down at her typewriter. “Say I’m busy,” in frenzied desperation; “say I’m dead!” And paying no further attention to her companion she commenced her story about the charity ball. Tom Seaton’s voice interrupted her.
“The lady wants to know if she can give a dance on January 20th without butting in on a dozen parties that night,” he explained, hugging the receiver against his chest.
Dorothy hunted up the date in her assignment book, and slammed it shut with vigor.
“Tell her there are only seven dinners scheduled so far for that night,” she directed, and in the moment’s respite she copied off the names of the charity ball patronesses. She had completed her task when Seaton replaced the telephone, and straddled the only other chair in the room.
Usually Dorothy did not encourage loiterers, and had sometimes given offense by her abrupt refusal to stand around and gossip; but she was never too busy to listen to a hard-luck story, and her ready sympathy for human frailty had gained her a warm place in the regard of her happy-go-lucky co-workers on the paper.
“Have you been out to the Porter homestead?” she inquired, handing her mass of corrected copy to a begrimed messenger from the composing-room who appeared at that instant.
“I have; and I can’t speak highly of the hospitable instincts of the owners of Dewdrop Inn,” answered Seaton. “This little ‘dewdrop’ was positively congealed while waiting for the inquest to adjourn.”
“An inquest!” echoed Dorothy. “Did they hold it so soon?”
“They did, and never had the decency to let us in. Every paper was represented, and we had to cool our heels until the coroner came out and announced—”
“Miss Deane”—the office boy poked his head inside the door—“the ‘boss’ wants ye.”
“In a minute.” Dorothy rose and turned breathlessly to Sea ten. “What did the coroner announce?”
“He said that evidence, brought out at the inquest, proved conclusively that Bruce Brainard was murdered, and—”
Murdered! Dorothy stared at him aghast. Dimly she realized that he was still speaking, but his words were meaningless. Bruce Brainard murdered—and under the same roof with her sister, Vera—and Hugh Wyndham! Something snapped inside her brain; she felt herself going, and threw out her hands hopelessly—
“Hully gee! Help, boys!” roared Seaton, bending over her. “She’s fainted.”
Chapter VI
The Wall Between
Vera Deane scanned the handsomely appointed dinner table and its vacant places with mixed feelings, and Murray, hovering solicitously behind her chair, answered her unspoken thought.
“Mrs. Porter and Miss Millicent are taking dinner in their boudoir,” he explained. “Selby is serving them, and Mrs. Porter gave most particular orders that you should have a good dinner, Miss Deane.”
“I don’t believe I can eat,” protested Vera, declining bread and butter. “I have no appetite tonight.”
“Just try this soup, miss,” coaxed Murray. “It’s one of cook’s specialties. And you know, miss,” added Murray artfully, setting the plate with its smoking contents before her, “what with one thing and another, they’ve given you no rest today, and Dr. Noyes always said humans must eat to keep their machinery going.”
“Quite true,” smiled Vera. Murray was a favorite of hers, and his extreme loquaciousness often amused her. The footman was too well trained to overstep the gulf lying between their positions; he had been told off to wait upon the nurses and assist them in their care of Craig Porter on the latter’s arrival from France, and, having a natural aptitude for caring for the sick, they found him extremely useful.
Vera had not been slow in discovering Murray’s one hobby, a hobby which, seven years before, had almost cost him his place, Mrs. Porter not having taken kindly to his lugubrious countenance and depressed manner when waiting upon the table. She expressed her feelings to his former employer, a friend of long standing, who responded impressively: “My dear, Murray’s an excellent servant, with one little weakness—his health. The more certain he is that he suffers from a mortal disease, the more enjoyment he gets out of life. Just ask him now and then, ‘Murray, how are you feeling?’ and he will be your slave.”
Mrs. Porter had promptly followed the advice, and whenever she found the footman looking preternaturally solemn had cheered him immensely by inquiring for his health. Both Nurse Hall and Vera Deane had quickly discovered his hobby, and the younger nurse had advanced in his esteem by listening patiently to descriptions of every new symptom his fancy conjured up. The fact that he failed lamentably in the proper use of medical and anatomical terms never disturbed him—his last confidence to Dr. Noyes having been that he was suffering from inflammation of the semicolon.
Vera found Murray’s opinion of the excellence of the soup justified, and ate the remainder of the dinner with more zest than she had imagined possible an hour before. The relief of being alone was an additional fillip to her jaded nerves. Upon being excused from the inquest that afternoon she had gone at once to the branch telephone in Mrs. Porter’s boudoir, only to find that the instrument had been disconnected and that she could not communicate with her sister Dorothy. She had then returned to Craig Porter’s bedroom, and in trying to satisfy Mrs. Hall’s insatiable curiosity as to what had transpired at the inquest she had had no time to herself before dinner was announced.
“No coffee tonight, Murray,” she said, pushing back her chair. “I am going upstairs to Mr. Porter, so that Mrs. Hall can have her dinner immediately.”
“Mrs. Hall had tea earlier in the afternoon,” was Murray’s unexpected response. “She told me that Mrs. Porter had given her permission to spend the night in Washington.”
“Oh!” Vera’s expression was blank. “Is Mrs. Porter sending her into town?”
“No, miss; Mr. Hugh took the car just after the inquest adjourned and hasn’t returned yet. I hear tell”—Murray paused, dessert dish in hand—“that Mrs. Hall arranged with one of the ’tecs to have a taxi sent out from the city for her.” And without more ado he disappeared into the pantry.
Vera was a trifle out of breath when she entered Craig Porter’s bedroom. Mrs. Hall, chart in hand, was standing by the mahogany desk, and her face cleared at sight of Vera.
“Why didn’t you let me know you wished to go off duty a little earlier?” asked Vera reproachfully. “I would have hurried back—”
“Because I knew it would rest you to have your dinner in peace and quiet. I have arranged Mr. Porter for the night and given him his nourishment. All you have to do is to follow the doctor’s directions; they are pinned to the chart.”
“Of course I will follow the doctor’s orders,” responded Vera, much offended by her companion’s manner as well as her words, “I will obey instructions as I have done heretofore.”
Mrs. Hall looked at her oddly, a look which Vera missed as she crossed the room to arrange the window blinds.
“Are you nervous about staying up alone next to that—?” asked Mrs. Hall, and a turn of her head indicated the room occupied by Bruce Brainard the night before.
“Not in the least,” answered Vera; she was having some difficulty in closing the heavy outside blinds and her voice was somewhat muffled. She jerked her head inside the room again and closed the window. “There is a motor car coming up the drive—it looks li
ke a taxi.”
It’s probably for me.” And Mrs. Hall disappeared into the dressing-room which connected Craig Porter’s bedroom and the room which she and Vera shared.
Left to herself Vera went thoughtfully over to the desk. She was still writing when Mrs. Hall reappeared, bag in hand.
“Will you please mail this letter for me in the city?” asked Vera. “I won’t be a moment finishing it.”
“You’ll find blotting-paper in the lower desk drawer,” announced Mrs. Hall, stopping to button her heavy coat up about her throat. “It wastes time blowing on the ink.” Vera reddened. “If it is only a note to your sister, why not give me a verbal message?”
Vera’s color deepened. “I prefer to write,” she answered stiffly.
“As you wish; I only made the suggestion to save time,” and Mrs. Hall glanced significantly at the clock.
Vera’s hot temper got the upper hand. “On second thought, I’ll not detain you longer,” she said, and her long, slender fingers made mince-meat of the letter she had been writing. With a mumbled “good night,” Mrs. Hall left the room, and, turning, Vera stared contemplatively at the door. What had come over her companion? It was not like Mrs. Hall to be so cantankerous.
Vera spent the next hour in performing her accustomed duties, and when she finally took her seat near the shaded night light she was conscious of utter weariness, a weariness more akin to mental exhaustion than she had known in many months—the day’s horrors were telling upon her, and her mental state was reacting upon her physical strength. A footstep outside the partly open hall door caused her to hasten across the room as Murray appeared, tray in hand.
The Moving Finger Page 5
