Date with Death

by Zenith Brown

  He heard her breath caught again while he was speaking.

  “Oh, no! Don’t call him! You can’t do that, it’s too late. Dr. Smith, you mustn’t call him!”

  “Why not, if he’s there?” Jonas said.

  The desperate urgency in her voice came again over the wire.

  “Oh, please don’t call him!” she implored.

  “All right,” Jonas said. “I guess you mean it’s okay if he takes pot shots at me through the back window.”

  “—Shots? Oh, no no… I don’t believe it!”

  The shocked incredulity in her hushed voice had an authentic quality. But so it had had before.

  “Oh, Dr. Smith… I… I can’t believe it!”

  “Can’t or don’t want to, Miss Darrell?” Jonas inquired. “Tell him in the morning, will you? Tell him I’m still alive and I plan to stay that way. Good night.”

  CHAPTER 20

  He put down the phone. “Well, that’s that,” he thought. “That’s telling ’em.” Then, in a moment or two, the bitter glow of satisfaction he felt at so telling them lost its glow and left nothing but the bitterness prompted by a sneaking suspicion that he Jonas Smith had acted like a first-class skunk. If she hadn’t known about the shot, if she’d heard it and thought it was a car back-firing in the street, he’d certainly done a fine job telling her. A skunk, a louse, he thought—the victim of wounded ego trying to get even.

  It was a filthy trick. He reached for the phone again, wrung by a sharp contrition, and let his hand drop to his side. There was nothing to tell her. The damage was done. He couldn’t make her stop worrying now that she knew. And maybe it was best she did know. She could keep Midshipman Tom Darrell from having the blood of Jonas Smith on his hands and head.

  He edged away from the desk over to the wall switch by the door, to turn on the overhead light, felt his way and found when he reached it that there was no light. The fuse had been blown. He felt for the switch in the reception room, with the same result. He made his way back, closed and locked the terrace window, and went back into the vestibule to go upstairs. As he put his foot on the bottom step, he stopped, listening. There was a knock on the front door. He reached over in the dark, found the knob and opened it.

  She was there, a cotton bathrobe thrown on over her pajamas, her hair pushed back behind her ears, her face white and unnatural, caught in the indistinct rays from the street light over the wall through the trees. Her breath was coming in quick short gasps. She stepped forward a little and put a shaking hand on his arm.

  “Are you… are you all right? You’re… not hurt, are you? He didn’t…”

  He looked steadily at her for an instant.

  “Hit me? No, but it wasn’t his fault. I happened to lean over and he hit my desk lamp instead. But I’m sore as hell, I’ll tell you that.”

  She was shaking so that she reached out and took hold of the white door frame to support herself, and bent her head down on her arm.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! I just can’t believe he did it. I knew he was terribly upset, and nothing like himself… and he said it would be the best thing that could happen to us if something happened to you. But I didn’t think he meant it.—Dr. Smith, I just can’t believe it! I didn’t even know he had a gun. I was in bed when he came barging in. He said he came out of the Yard because he was afraid I was going to get cold feet and make a mess of things. He’s just been up there in his room brooding over everything, and reporting every hour to the Main Office, and… oh, I just don’t know. I was afraid yesterday he might do something crazy, but I can’t believe he meant to… to kill you. If he meant to he would have. He’s one of the best marksmen in the Yard. Maybe he just meant to… to scare you.”

  Jonas grinned suddenly. “He did that all right. He scared me plenty.” His face sobered. “But I’m afraid he shot to hit. My head was right in front of the lamp until I just happened to lean over.”

  “Oh, no.” She pressed her head against the door frame, shaking it back and forth. “It’s so awful. I just don’t know what to do. Have you… called the police?”

  “No,” Jonas said. “Nor Bancroft Hall. I shouldn’t have called you. But I was sore, I guess. I figured you hated me enough to be in on the deal.”

  She had raised her white face and was staring up at him, blank and stricken. “Me? Hate you? I don’t hate you,” she whispered desperately. “After what you’ve done for us… how can you say anything so horrible? I wouldn’t hurt you for… for anything.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  She nodded.

  “Then nothing else matters.”

  He wanted to reach out and take her in his arms, and tell her that nothing mattered except having her there. It didn’t matter if her brother had tried to kill him. The intoxicating sweetness of having her there was making him light in the head. Only the solid fear that one mis-step might shatter the enchanted moment kept him firmly on his side of the threshold.

  “It doesn’t matter, Elizabeth. Nothing does. Because I love you. I meant it last night, and this afternoon. I mean it now. I love you so much that if it would help to have me shot I’d be crazy enough to say go ahead and shoot. Except that I couldn’t see you then—”

  “Oh, don’t say things like that…”

  “I’m not. All I’m saying is, I do love you, Elizabeth. As truly as I know how to say it. And I want you to believe it. I’m not joking. I love you, Elizabeth. You know it, don’t you?”

  “I… thought I knew it, last night.”

  She turned her head away from him.

  “Then I thought I’d made a mistake and it wasn’t me but her, because she’s so much more exciting and everything than I am. And I thought I’d made a fool of myself because I felt the same way about you. I couldn’t get you out of my head all day. That’s why I had to call you up out at the Fergusons’. I was ashamed of myself, but I couldn’t help it. And I was out in the garden so I could be alone, because I was so… so terribly happy, and then I saw you and Philippa…”

  Jonas did not hear the rest of it. It was lost in the folds of his linen coat as he held her tightly in his arms, whispering her name, transmuting its syllables into the tender magic of all his song of love.

  “—Elizabeth, I love you…”

  She raised her face to his. He kissed her softly on the lips. Then he gently disengaged her arms. “I think I liked getting shot at, Elizabeth.”

  “Oh, don’t… don’t say that.”

  He kissed her again. “I’m going to take you home now. I don’t approve of my wife calling on strange men in her pajamas and bathrobe. So come along. And you don’t happen to have an extra fuse at your place, do you?”

  She clung to him for a moment.

  “Oh, Jonas, I’m so miserable, and I’m so happy. And we do. We have a whole box in the kitchen. And I meant to tell you if you don’t like starched shirts you have to take them to the Chinaman on Main Street. Oh, Jonas! I couldn’t have stood it if you’d been in love with her and not me!”

  The fuse in his hand and all the stars in the firmament dancing to light his way to the fuse panel over the kitchen sink, Jonas found the restored electric current pallid stuff compared with the radiance from the airy clouds he walked on. He went through to the consulting room to turn off the overhead light he’d left switched on, and stopped to look around. The thing to do now was clean up the glass and put the shattered lamp out of the way so the bright investigating eyes of Sergeant Digges would not start another routine job. He went around the desk and picked up the wastebasket. Miss Olive’s letter and clipping were still on the floor. He picked them up, started to crumple them and toss them in the basket, and decided that was pure ingratitude. Low opinion of goldfish as he had, they had saved his life that evening. He put both documents in his pocket. He might even write the memoirs of a village doctor some day.

  He picked up t
he glass and the lamp, got a dust pan and a brush, made his way eventually down to the cellar and emptied all the mess into a box. He stuck the box behind a crate in a cobwebby recess in the old foundations of the house. When he went back up, put the empty wastebasket by the desk and looked around, the only thing left to repair was the window pane. That would have to wait till morning.

  He went over to the wall switch.

  “Come on, Roddy. Time for bed.”

  He whistled sharply. Roddy did not move. He slept heavily and peacefully on.

  “Roddy, Roddy boy!”

  Jonas went over to the hearth, knelt down and touched the spotted silken head. He raised the dog’s closed eyelid, held it open for a moment before he let go of it and sat back on his heels, his face as sober as it had ever been in his life. Roddy was drugged. He was breathing rapidly, the pupil of his eye was dilated and unresponsive to the light.

  Jonas sat there motionless for a long time. Someone had drugged his dog. Someone had wanted Roddy to sleep. That was why he’d got no bounding greeting as he came into the house. He remembered the opening eye and feeble tentative wag of the feathered tail on the hearth that he’d been too preoccupied, with the meaning of Tom Darrell outside the wall, to pay any attention to. He put his hand on the dog’s body, feeling for his heart, absently stroking his head. At last he got up, went into the tiny laboratory, prepared a shot of Benzedrine, came back and gave it to him. Still on his knees on the hearth beside the dog, his eyes moved, disturbed, around the room. The window had been open. Anyone could have come in… anyone who knew there was going to be need of a sleeping dog.

  He shook his head slowly. That meant someone must have known Tom Darrell was coming out of the Academy. Someone must have known what he was going to do. That in turn meant design and premeditation. It was someone Tom Darrell could appeal to, and trust. Not Elizabeth. And not Jenny. He was sure of both of them… surer of Jenny than he was of Elizabeth, about this thing, when he was faced squarely with it, but sure of Elizabeth too.

  Jonas’s hand moved slowly to his pocket. The letter there, he thought; the clipping… the bowl of goldfish out on the kitchen sink. It was a fantastic present, but it was a perfect excuse to come in the house—or to be seen coming in.

  He got slowly to his feet. It was fantastic, it was absurd. But nevertheless… Miss Olive Oliphant. Miss Olive with her cat, sending Jenny out to buy goldfish on her way home from a tea. Miss Olive with Tom Darrell’s picture on the mantel of her father’s memorial room, Miss Olive’s pride and devotion to the Darrell family. Her accumulated store of disconcerting and curious information gleaned from magazines and newspapers. Her carefully cut-out knowledge of fish, and cats, and… other animals?

  —And Miss Olive, over there now, keeping the Death Watch.

  Jonas Smith shook his head. A chill passed over his heart nevertheless. He was seeing the child-like china blue eyes, the fresh rosy cheeks, hearing Miss Olive’s child-like voice prattling away. Papa’s child who had never grown up.

  As he bent down to pick up Roddy and carry him upstairs, Jonas was wondering a little grimly if Miss Olive Oliphant had not suddenly become a sinister and very frightening child.

  His uneasiness was not diminished in the morning when he came downstairs to breakfast, Roddy eagerly ahead of him as if a heavy night’s sleep was exactly what he had needed. Martha had put his coffee and toast and a large dish of ripe red strawberries on a bridge table on the terrace.

  “—Wasn’ broke when I lef’ here. Somebody mus’ have broke the lamp too. It ain’ on the desk, an’ there’s fine glass to get in my vacuum an’ ain’ do it no good.”

  Jonas heard as he came out, thinking it was Roddy or herself she was talking to, until he saw Wetherby leaving the terrace and saw a whole pane of glass where there had been the jagged remains of one when he went up to bed.

  “Morning, doctor, sir.” Wetherby was as immaculate and dignified as glazier and handy man as he was as major-domo, nurse and games companion. “Miss Elizabeth told me there’d been an accident. I came over before the Professor he wakes up. He say another glass get broke over here, he going to block the place up with brick and mortar. He sick and tired of replacements. Bes’ he don’t know, then he don’t get all upset and nervous. Bes’ nobody say nothing about it.”

  He looked at Martha, who gave an offended grunt and went back to the kitchen. Jonas sat down and poured himself a cup of coffee. He wondered with a sardonic lack of amusement what they would all have done if it had been his carcass sprawling across the desk. They’d probably have disposed of it neatly and said nothing about it, not to disturb the Professor and make it awkward for the Darrells generally. Which of course was not fair. All it meant was he was jealous that Elizabeth’s waking impulse should be toward protecting her wretched brother and keeping her grandfather from getting nervous and upset, leaving Jonas a poor third in order of importance. He was also a little annoyed at himself for not having considered that Martha would notice the desk lamp was gone, that he hadn’t cleaned up as well as he thought he had, and that he hadn’t met her with a plausible story before she had formed some dark explanation of her own, which from the murky look she gave him obviously had to do with bacchanalian vine leaves in his hair.

  Nor was there any sign of a lifting of the moral ceiling when the door bell rang and she came back outside.

  “It’s that woman again,” she said stonily. “That woman in pants. You want me to let her in ’fore you’ve—”

  A door was only a door to Philippa Van Holt, its purpose to open and admit her when she wanted in.

  “—Jonas!”

  “You’d better bring a cup, Martha,” Jonas said. “Hello, how are you?”

  Philippa stopped in the open french window. “Gee. Struggling young doctors sure have it tough around here, don’t they?”

  She fished a cigarette out of her scarlet linen jacket pocket, lighted it and pulled a chair from the end of the terrace. She flopped down in it, took a long drag from the cigarette and let it feather from her red lips as she leaned her head back against the canvas and closed her eyes.

  “What a night!” she groaned. “Gosh, what a night.”

  Jonas looked at her face in profile across from him. To say it was haggard would have been untrue, but the lines of strain were there, beside the closed lids and the drooping tense line of her mouth.

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to give me a cup of coffee, would you?”

  “Coming up.”

  He pushed the cream and sugar over to her as Martha came in with her cup and saucer.

  “Thanks,” Philippa said. She poured herself some coffee. “I’m an absolute wreck.”

  “What’s the matter?” Jonas had not asked her, having the odd feeling in some way that he would rather not know.

  She put her cup down. “I wish I knew. I’d like to think it was Papa walking. I’m not scared of ghosts.”

  She stopped an instant. “At least I say I’m not. I don’t know. I was certainly scared last night.” She looked at Jonas. “You won’t believe it. I was literally just too damned scared to go downstairs and phone you… or the cops. You can’t turn the hall light on from the second floor, and if I’d gone down in the dark I know I’d have died. I know I would have. I don’t know what got into me. You know what I did?”

  Jonas shook his head. He felt the slight chill in his heart again.

  CHAPTER 21

  “I pushed the dresser across the door,” Philippa said. “It’s one of those big heavy Empire jobs and I don’t think it’s been moved for a hundred years. I tore off one of my fingernails.” She held her hand out. “And I damn near broke my back, getting it away this morning. Last night I was so petrified I could have moved mountains. And then…”

  She looked away and made an unsuccessful attempt to laugh it off.

  “. . . I slept with the shades down and the l
ight on. What little sleep I got. I said I don’t believe in ghosts, but I didn’t take my eyes off the door, even with that monstrous object in front of it. I never was so glad to see daylight in my life.”

  “Was somebody in the house?” Jonas asked quietly.

  “That’s it—I don’t know. I don’t know whether it was somebody in the house, or out in the back garden. Or whether it was somebody, or… something. I know that sounds cockeyed now, but last night it was the most hideous feeling. Maybe the creaks were just the old boards and plaster. Maybe what I thought I heard outside was just the shutters needing oil and the dead branches that needed pruning. I don’t know. If I’d had any sleeping stuff or a bottle of whisky I’d have slugged myself out. But why don’t I shut up? What I’m saying is I was scared and I didn’t get much sleep.”

  She put her head back and closed her eyes again. Jonas sat silent, looking at her.

  “And don’t just tell me it’s nerves, doctor, I’m not a nervous woman.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Jonas said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  It was the truth. It was too disturbing to make any statement. He knew one thing only to be true. They could leave the ghost of Miss Olive Oliphant’s Papa at rest, in St. Anne’s Churchyard or wherever it was it lay.

  “When I first went in, I had an odd sort of feeling,” Philippa said. “Like some people do about cats. I put the chain on the door—one of those sliding arrangements, only Miss Olive’s must have come off the Constitution—it’s big enough to hold up the anchor of the Missouri and it’s been there forever. I got to the bottom step and went back and took it off. I had a queer feeling I might want to get out of there quick. Once when I first came I’d dreamed I was struggling with it. And then I was too scared to take advantage of my foresight.”

  She got abruptly to her feet. “Can I use your phone? I’m going to see if I can get a room at the hotel.”