Citadel of Fear

by Francis Stevens

  “We have a visitor, Cliona,” put in Rhodes in his pleasantest manner. “Miss Reed, let me make you acquainted with my wife.”

  “Oh,” murmured Cliona, peering around her brother, behind whose shielding bulk the visitor seemed to have retreated. “I’m so glad to know you, Miss Reed. Won’t you come upstairs and remove your wraps? I see that as usual Colin has scorned to carry an umbrella, and I fear has let you suffer the consequences.”

  Pause and silence.

  “As for that, though, I don’t suppose any umbrella would survive a wind such as we have had all evening. We’ll have a little supper in a few minutes, and something hot to prevent all three of you from catching your death of cold.”

  No answer nor acknowledgment from the mysterious one.

  “Will you come with me, Miss Reed?”

  No response to that, either.

  It is rather difficult to continue a flow of cordial welcome addressed to a dark, motionless, speechless figure, whose very presence carries an ominous foreboding. And while her tongue had run lightly enough, Cliona’s mind was a confusion of surmise.

  Who on earth could this strange woman be? Reed? Reed? Why, that Evan the name of the man who owned the queer stock-farm. And Colin had come openly to Green Gables, which he was not to do till the bungalow affair was finished.

  Was the mystery solved, then? And what had this Miss Reed to do with it? Why lead Colin brought her here, in the middle of the night and without warning? When he had phoned her at seven o’clock there had been nothing definite to report, or so he said.

  Cliona ceased to speak, and one of those sudden ghastly silences overtook all four of them-the kind that the ideal hostess is supposed never to allow. Cliona wanted to be an ideal hostess-she looked appealingly from Rhodes to Colin.

  The latter realized that the time had come when he must begin to explain. With a sigh for the task ahead of him, he turned to his Dusk Lady.

  “Take off your coat, child,” he said gently. “This is my sister that I told you of. You’ll find only kindness in this house.”

  Cliona and Tony looked at her, fascinated. The situation had passed beyond conventional handling. There was something here which only Colin understood.

  They beheld a magnolia pale face, with crimson lips and starry, frightened eyes, but no words came from her.

  “Oh!” cried Cliona again involuntarily, and Rhodes echoed the exclamation in his mind. Where had Colin discovered this girl with her unearthly beauty and equally unearthly manner? In South America? Spanish, perhaps? She looked like a Latin of some sort.

  “Let me take your things,” offered Cliona, realizing that the girl’s coat was as wet as Colin’s own.

  “Shall I remove them here?”

  The mysterious Miss Reed asked the question of O’Hara, as though she regarded him as the arbiter of even her smallest acts.

  “You may as well.” He took off his own ulster and thoughtfully flung it over the umbrella-stand in the entry. It was too wet for Cliona’s hall-rack.

  Miss Reed wore no hat, only the hood of her coat. Unfastening the coat itself, she slipped lithely out of it, leaving it in O’Hara’s hands.

  A startled and simultaneous gasp issued from three mouths at once, but Colin’s was the most expressive. Saints above, he was glad there had been no occasion for her to remove that coat in the train or station!

  Save that her feet were no longer bare, there stood his Dusk Lady exactly as she had stood upon the rug in Reed’s entrance-hall while he stooped to examine Marco’s body. Her green gown, wet as ever, clung to body and limbs in the revealing lines of a thin bathing suit. Her dark hair hung in the same beautiful but informal curls, and for the first time Colin was painfully aware of those worn places in her gown through which bare limbs shone whitely.

  Her eyes darted from one face to another of those about her, frightened, questioning. They were all, even her “lord,” looking at her in the strange way that no one had ever regarded her before the beginning of her long time of sadness. In the place of her nativity, no such tremendous and burdensome value was laid on mere costume as “civilization” places there, and little indeed had been her chance to learn. In the house at Undine she had been kept close and guarded.

  Something was wrong. What was it?

  Glancing at his sister’s flushed, astounded face, O’Hara wished with all his heart that he had not so much-so very much explaining ahead of him. To introduce a crazed and half-clad maiden and the fact that he was in his own opinion a murderer, all in the same hour-well —

  With another deep, weary sigh Colin undertook the beginning of his task.

  It was morning. Wind and rain had followed night into the past, and a glorious late October sun was doing its utmost to cast a last glamour of summer over the shivering, storm-denuded trees and to gild the sodden leaf-carpet that covered lawns and gardens. But it found more success when it peered in the windows of Cliona’s breakfast room, already a sufficiently cheerful apartment.

  Though the hour was near noon, Cliona and Rhodes were first at table. With a very thoughtful brow she was putting slices of bread into an electric toaster, while her husband glanced mechanically through the morning paper.

  Casting it aside, he picked up the first edition of a so-called afternoon journal which had a paradoxical habit of appearing at 11 A.M. Therein he came on an item which changed his perfunctory interest to keen attention and caused him, after twice reading it, to fold up the sheet and with a very pale face thrust it in his pocket.

  Cliona’s attention had been riveted on the toast, but, glancing up, she saw that something was wrong.

  “Are you not feeling well?” she asked quickly. “What’s the matter, Tony?”

  He smiled reassuringly. “Nothing that coffee won’t mend, dear. A slight headache. Last night’s revelations were a trifle upsetting, though you weren’t upset, were you?”

  He gave her an admiring glance. Dainty and fresh in her plain house-gown of blue linen, her appearance denied the sleepless night behind them.

  “You are the only woman in the world, I believe, who could bear such a strain in the way you are doing. Frankly, I thought Colin was crazy himself to come here with that girl and that story so soon after your illness. But I see he knows you better than I do!”

  “Not better-differently.” She smiled back at him, then grew extremely grave.

  “Tony, are we going to let him do it?’

  “What? Give himself up? Now, Cliona, I don’t see what else he can do. If he had been content to leave the girl where he found her, go quietly home and keep still afterward, I doubt if he could have been connected with the mur-the death of this man Marco. No one would have paid any attention to her story, even if she had the sense to tell it.

  “But as it is, and having removed the girl from her father’s house, and having been recognized by that conductor and very likely several other people, there is no possibility of his not being connected with it. No one who knows Colin is ever going to believe that he meant to kill the man, and the provocation was probably greater than he says. His bringing the girl here is proof enough of his good intentions, and now that the thing has gone so far the only course for him is to plead either justifiable or involuntary manslaughter.

  “I’m no criminal lawyer, but I think when Reed’s place is investigated, and everything is cleared up and the evidence laid before an impartial jury, Colin will get off scot free. This beautiful insane girl, left to the mercy of a huge ape and a probable degenerate, is bound to appeal to popular sympathy amazingly.

  “But you and I have our work cut out in dealing with that unruly conscience of Colin’s. He says he meant to kill the man and that he wishes to take the consequences. If he says the same thing in court, and when the relative bulk of Colin and Marco is considered, the court is likely to take him at his word! I’m not trying to frighten you, darling, but I wish you to realize that Colin must-be-persuaded!”

  Cliona looked at him quite calmly.

/>   “He has to be persuaded to more than that-he has to be persuaded that ‘twas not he but that big monkey, Genghis Khan, who killed Marco!”

  Rhodes opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. A woman’s conscience is a tender thing, but it is not like a man’s. Cliona, most innocent of women, considered perjury a small price for her brother’s life and liberty. Yet after all it was no more perjury than what her husband had himself proposed.

  Rhodes possessed a deep and genuine friendship for his wife’s brother. But he also knew the violence and impetuosity of the man. In his heart he believed that Colin had, as he insisted, intended for one furious moment the death of Marco. However, to his masculine mind there was a difference between the lie involved in a plea of involuntary manslaughter and the bolder lie which shifted the whole burden to another’s shoulders, even though they were the shoulders of a beast.

  And at that moment Colin himself appeared.

  If possible he looked more depressed than on the previous night. Having shamed himself before these two, he must now go and shame himself before a less sympathetic audience at city hall. And the girl he loved was as mad as a hatter! The world looked very cold and bare to Colin O’Hara that morning, despite its sunshine.

  “Where’s my-Miss Reed?” he demanded as he seats himself.

  “Your Miss Reed is still in bed,” retorted Cliona with an attempt at lightness. “I ordered her breakfast sent up.”

  “Oh! All right.”

  Colin attacked his breakfast, served by the dignified butler whom the Rhodes had acquired with their large menage. But he found his appetite surprisingly slight. The instant they were alone he laid down his grapefruit spoon, leaned back and thrust his hands in his pockets.

  “I’m going in town now.”

  “Yes,” said Cliona quietly. “And we are going with you.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Before anyone goes,” Rhodes interposed with great firmness, “we shall have to talk things over a little further.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” began Colin in his most obstinate manner, but just then the door opened and a timid, beautiful face appeared in the aperture.

  “May I-is it fitting that I enter?”

  “Of course-come right in, dear. Did you find it too lonely in your room?”

  Cliona, though she had good cause to dislike this ************** who had brought sorrow to all of them, was incapable of treating her in other than a kindly manner. Rising she went to the door and opened it for her fair and singular guest.

  The green gown was no longer in evidence, though Colin darkly suspected it of being somewhere beneath the pale lavender peignoir which now adorned her person. Cliona knew better. That unfortunate garment had been removed by herself at 3 A.M., after an expenditure of diplomacy sufficient to settle the fate of nations, but barely enough to persuade her guest out of it and into one of her own dainty nightrobes.

  Under Cliona’s guidance the girl entered and seated herself in the fourth chair at the small, square table, facing Colin. Every motion she made, every glance of her bright, mournful eyes, expressed the timidity of a graceful wild creature, anxious to please and to believe in the sincerity of those about it, but intensely conscious of the strangeness of its surroundings.

  She had been given no opportunity to tell her story. Last night they had all seemed desperately concerned over the killing of one who she well knew deserved his death-so concerned that no attention could be spared her, and every effort she made to speak-went wrong, some way.

  They would look at her, kindly, pityingly-and very courteously indicate that silence on her part was greatly to be preferred. The more important part of her story she had not dared even begin on. That was for her lord’s ear alone. Surely he, who was so irrevocably bound to her, must understand and believe.

  Strange how the speaking or withholding of one word will sometimes affect whole destinies! One word-one of several names that were on her very tongue-tip-and the hindering veil of miscomprehension would have fallen.

  But she deemed her “lord” as ignorant of those names as everyone else of the few she had been allowed to meet in this mad world that lay outside her native hills. She knew him and he her, and they knew each other not at all-a paradox that was to cost dear before the finish.

  The girl was beautiful enough, in all conscience-more beautiful in the morning sunshine than he had thought her by the lights of night. Her hair was dry now, and had that dull black softness about her face which had caused O’Hara to name her “Dusk Lady” on first sight. Her smooth skin possessed a pearly, translucent whiteness, almost like alabaster with a faint pink light behind it, and her eyes were pleadingly, deceptively intelligent. Yet just now Rhodes felt that Colin himself was a sufficient problem and the presence of his insane protégée superfluous.

  “Did you sleep well, Miss Reed?” he inquired.

  And she replied with an admirable simplicity: “I slept.”

  “And why not?” demanded Colin, heavily cheerful. “You’re out of that house, and not even your father shall put you back there, little lady.”

  “My-father? Oh! You mean he who names himself Chester Reed? He is not my father.”

  “No?” Rhodes tried to look interested. “Your name not Reed, then?”

  The girl drew herself up with a funny little air of hauteur, and replied surprisingly: “I have no name!”

  A pained expression flashed across O’Hara’s frank face. Again he was troubled by that double emotion-shame for her pitiful speeches, and, deeper than that, a sympathy which took no count of madness.

  She saw the pain in his eyes, the momentary astonishment of the two other faces, and its instant veiling behind that kindly, intolerable tolerance with which well-bred sanity confronts an unsound mind. She saw, for she shrank back in her chair and her dark eyes glimmered.

  “You know, dear child,” said Cliona gently, “because we all have names ourselves, we get in the habit of expecting other people to have them, too. But indeed, if you are wishing it to be so, you need have no name with us.”

  Frowning, the girl glanced from one to another, as if trying to determine exactly what they, their surprise and Cliona’s too-soothing assurance might really mean. The she said in a very low tone, speaking only to herself, it seemed: “All the customs are so strange!”

  “They are that,” conceded O’Hara with suspicious heartiness. “But now don’t you be troubling your mind for the matter a minute longer. What do we care for names-the four of us here? Faith, ‘tis the same to us if there were no names at all in the world-you need none, little lady, nor your mother nor your father — “

  “Oh,” cried the girl, brightening unexpectedly, “but of course my father had a name, and gave one to my mother likewise, but for me, I am not wed. Do your unwed maidens bear names, then?”

  “Generally.” Rhodes sighed. He supposed they must humor the poor girl. “If you would tell us your father’s name we could call you that, you know-that is if you object to ‘Miss Reed.’”

  For the first time she laughed. “To call me as if I were my father! How strange are your customs!”

  Then she looked anxiously about the table.

  “I have heard him say that some harm had come to his name-what, I did not understand-so that it would bring him sorrow in this, the land of his birth. But you are my friends-you will not speak it to others. You are friends, are you not?”

  Colin, though he groaned in the soul of him, nodded and smiled bravely. Rhodes laughed in a kindly, encouraging way, and Cliona, filled with pity, leaned over and kissed the poor, sick girl on her beautiful forehead.

  “We are friends,” she replied softly. Then: “Oh-what is it, Masters?”

  The butler, who had just entered, straightened himself with a resolutely passive face. “There are two men in the reception hall, and they asked me to tell you, Mr. Rhodes, that they are from headquarters and wish to see Mr. O’Hara at once. One of them says his name is MacClellan, sir.
”

  Masters had come to Green Gables shortly after O’Hara’s departure for “South America,” and consequently, though MacClellan had previously visited the house several times, he was unknown to the butler. But Masters did know that he disapproved of a household in which red-haired giants appeared at breakfast dressed in worn, water-proofed khaki, and were then called upon by plainclothes men.

  However, Masters’ inward disturbance was nothing compared to the consternation roused by his announcement in the bosoms of three of his hearers.

  No one said anything, but their eyes, meeting across the table, spoke volumes. Then Rhodes turned to his stately servitor with what calmness he could command at the moment.

  “All right, Masters. Go tell them to wait a few minutes-right there in the hall.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Masters’ restraining presence removed, O’Hara came straight to the point.

  “They traced me so soon! Indeed, I’ve never given that lad MacClellan credit for such intelligence. Well, it’s sorry I am, Tony, that they should take me from your house.”

  But as Colin was rising from the table, Rhodes stopped him.

  “Wait a minute! I don’t think they’ve come for that, and I want you not to see them. I have something to tell you — “

  “Let it wait!” Colin shook off his brother-in-law’s hand and stood up. His face was darkly flushed but his eyes shone with a grim determination. He dominated the rest of them like a giant at a pigmies tea-party.

  “Not see them? Would you have me sneak out the back door, then? Be sure they’ll see me if I’m in the house-and I’ll not run away. Do you stay here.”

  He strode to the door, but his last command was disregarded. When he entered the reception hall Rhodes was behind him, still protesting, while Cliona and the strange girl brought up the rear.

  “Ah, Mr. O’Hara!” And MacClellan’s rather heavy and stolid, countenance brightened as he beamed upon the advancing Irishman in a manner singularly cordial to be bestowed upon a murder-suspect. “I thought I might find you here. Quick work, eh? I suppose you’ve read all about it in the early afternoon editions?”