Fifty Candles

by Earl Derr Biggers

  He laughed outright now, an unkind sneering laugh, and once more hatred of him blazed in my heart. Why had I been such a fool as to come?

  The doorbell rang, a loud peal, and Drew ran to the hall, where Hung Chin- chung was already opening the outer door. Through the curtains I saw a huge rosy-cheeked policeman outlined against the fog.

  “Hello, Mr. Drew,” he said cheerily.

  “Hello, Riley,” cried the old man. Running forward he seized the policeman’s hand. “I’m back again.”

  “And glad I am to see you,” said Riley. “I knew the house was closed, and seein’ all the lights, I thought I’d look in and make sure everything was okay.”

  “We landed late today,” replied Drew. “Everything is certainly okay. You’ll see plenty of lights here from now on.”

  He stood on the threshold, chatting gaily with the patrolman. Hung Chin-chung came into the library where I sat and, taking up a log, stooped to put it on the fire. The flicker of light played on his face, old, lined, yellow like a lemon left too long in the sun, and glinted in those dark inscrutable little eyes.

  Drew sent Riley on his way with a genial word and returned to the library. Hung stood awaiting him, evidently about to speak.

  “Yes, yes—what is it?” Drew asked.

  “With your permission,” said Hung, “I will go to my room.”

  “All right,” Drew answered. “But be back here in half an hour. You’re to serve dinner, you know.”

  “I will serve it,” said Hung, and he went noiselessly out.

  “What was I saying?” Drew turned to me. “Ah, yes—the girls—the girls will be down in a minute. Bless them! That Little Mary Will—like a breath of springtime from her own mountains. Ah, youth—youth! All I have gained, all that I have—I’d swap it tonight for youth. My boy, you don’t know what you’ve got.”

  I stared at him. He’ll steal your shirt, and you’ll beg him to take the pants too. Thus inelegantly had old Drew been described to me in China, and there was some truth in it, surely. Where was my hatred of a moment ago? Confound it, there was something likable about him after all.

  I stared at him no longer, for now outside the curtains I could see Mary Will coming down the stairs. Many beautiful women had come down those stairs in the days when social history was making in that old house on Nob Hill—women whose loveliness was now but a fast-fading memory on peeling canvas. But none, I felt quite certain, was fairer than Mary Will. The lights shone softly on her red- brown hair and on those white shoulders that were youth incarnate. She was wearing—well, I can’t describe it, but it was unquestionably the very dress she should have worn. Thank God she had it and had put it on! She came into the library, and all the gloom and staleness fled.

  “My dear—my dear!” Henry Drew met her, his eyes alight with admiration. “You are a picture, and no mistake. You carry me back—indeed you do—back to the time when these rooms were alive with youth and beauty.” He waved a hand to the portrait of a woman in the post of honor above the fireplace. “You are very like her. My first wife, you know.” He stood for a moment, pathetic, unhappy, weighed down by the years. more human than I had ever seen him before. “I don’t imagine you two will object to being left alone,” he said finally, attempting a smile. “I’m going to have a look at the table. Want everything just right.” He crossed the hall and disappeared.

  “Well, Mary Will—here I am,” I announced.

  “Sure enough,” smiled Mary Will.

  “This afternoon,” said I, “at four o’clock, you put me out of your life forever. Twice since then I’ve popped back. And I’ll go on popping, and popping, until you’re a sweet gray-haired old lady, so you might as well take me and have done.”

  “Too bad,” mused Mary Will, “about the fog. If you could have seen all those other girls—”

  “Don’t want to see them,” I said firmly, “Tell me, how do you like it here in the family vault?”

  She shuddered. “It’s a bit oppressive. I’m going to strike out for myself tomorrow. Mr. Drew gave me a check tonight—I can live on that until I get a job.”

  “The cost of living is frightfully high.”

  “But worth it—don’t you think?” she asked.

  “With you—undoubtedly.”

  “You just keep going round in circles,” she complained.

  “You’ve got me going round in circles,” I laughed. I came close to her before the fire. “Mary Will—I’ve never been in San Francisco before. And I’ve never been married. Two new experiences. I’d like to tackle them together. Tomorrow, after the fog lifts, and I’ve seen and rejected all the other girls, I’ll meet you with a license in my pocket.”

  “Oh, dear—you are so sudden.”

  “It’s girls like you that make men sudden.”

  “I never gave you any encouragement, I’m sure,” she protested.

  “You let me look at you. Encouragement enough.”

  “Look at me—and pity me.”

  “Now don’t start that. It’s love!”

  “No—pity.”

  “Love, I fell you.”

  This might have gone on indefinitely, but suddenly Carlotta Drew’s voice broke in, calling, and Mary Will fled, just as I had nearly got her hand. She fled, and that dim room was instantly old and stale again.

  I stood alone with the past. My thoughts were most jumbled, chaotic. Drews—Drews innumerable—were looking down at me, wondering, perhaps, about this stranger who dared make love in the very room where they themselves had laughed and loved in the old far days. Wonderful days that glittered with the gold men were extracting from California’s soil. Gone now, forever. And lovely ladies, turned to dust. Ugh—unpleasant thought! Look at the windows. Need washing, don’t they? Or is it the heavy yellow fog from the tule-fields, pressing close against the paces, trying to get in? Quiet—oppressively quiet—what has become of everybody? No sound save the slow deliberate clicking of the big clock in the hallway. The voice of Time, who had conquered all these people on the wall. “I’ll—get—you—too. “I’ll—get—you—too.” Was the clock really saying that? All right—some day, perhaps—but not yet. Now I had youth. “My boy, you don’t know what you’ve got.” Oh, yes, I do. Youth—and Mary Will. She, too, must be mine. She had looked wonderful. Where was she? Was I to be left alone forever with the confounded clock?

  Suddenly from across the hall came a cry, sharp, uncanny, terrible. I ran out in the direction from which it had come and stood on the threshold of the Drew dining room. Another room of many memories, of stern faces on the wall. A table was set with gleaming silver and white linen, and in its center stood a cake, on which fifty absurd pink candles flickered bravely.

  There appeared to be no one in the room. On the other side of the table a French window stood open to the fog, and I went around to investigate. I had taken perhaps a dozen steps when I stopped, appalled.

  Old Drew was lying on the carpet, and one yellow lean hand, always so adept at reaching out and seizing, held a corner of the white tablecloth. There was a dark stain on the left side of his dress coat; and when I pulled the coat back, I saw on the otherwise spotless linen underneath a great red circle that grew and grew. He was quite dead.

  I stood erect, and for a dazed uncertain moment I stared about the room. Beside me, on the table, fifty yellow points of flame trembled like human things terrified at what they had seen.

  * * *

  CHAPTER IV

  As I stood there with Henry Drew’s dead body at my feet and those silly candles flaring wanly at my side, I heard the big clock in the hallway strike the half hour, and then the scurry of feet on the stairs. Cleared now of its first amazement, my mind was unusually keen. Henry Drew done for at last! By whom? Again my eye fell upon the open French window and, stepping to it, I looked out. My heart stopped beating—for amid the shadows and the fog I thought I saw a blacker shadow, which passed in the twinkling of an eye.

  I stepped quickly from the room. The light f
rom the window at my back penetrated a few feet only on a narrow veranda, from which steps led down into a garden, I judged. It was unexplored country to me, the dark was impenetrable, but I stepped off into tall damp grass almost to my knees.

  The tule-fog seemed glad to have me back. Its clammy embrace was about my ankles; from the bare branches of the trees above, it dripped down on my defenseless head. I took several steps to the right, and ran into an unexpected ell of the house. As I stood there, uncertain which way to go, something brushed against my face, something rough, uncanny, that sent a shiver down my spine. Wildly I swung my arms in all directions, but they touched only empty air and fog.

  Still swinging my arms, stumbling amid flower beds, hunting in vain for a path, I continued to explore. My feet caught in a tangle of vines, and I came near sprawling on the wet grass. Righting myself with difficulty, I stopped and looked about me. The light from the room I had left was no longer visible. I was lost in a jungle that was only the Drew back yard. For a moment, I stood tense and silent. How I knew it I can not say, but I was conscious that I was not alone. Close at hand some human creature waited, holding its breath, alert, prepared. I did not see, I did not hear—I felt. Suddenly I lunged in the direction where I imagined it to be—and instantly my intuition was proved correct. I heard someone back away, and then quick heavy footsteps crunched on a gravel walk.

  He had shown me the path, and for that I thanked him. Following as speedily as I could in his wake, I came to a gate in the high wall at the rear. It was swinging open. Through this, no doubt, the murderer had gone, and I stepped out into the alley. I could see no one; there was no sound whatever. Then I started and almost cried aloud—but it was only an alley cat brushing against my legs.

  My quarry had vanished into the fog, and to look for him would be to hunt the proverbial needle in the good old haystack. It came to me then that I had been all kinds of a fool, rushing out of the Drew house like that at the moment of my gruesome discovery. I had not meant to come so far, of course—but here I was, and there was nothing to do but hurry back. How about Mary Will? Had she, perhaps, been the second person to enter the dining room and been frightened half to death by what she found there?

  I swung back to reenter the garden—and at that instant the gate banged shut in my face. The wind? Nonsense, there was no wind. With a sickening sense of being tricked, I put my hand on the knob. I turned and pushed. As I expected, the gate was securely locked on the inside.

  What should I do now? Wait here at the gate, holding my friend of the fog a prisoner inside? Useless, I reflected; there must be many ways of escape—a neighbor’s yard on either side. Before I had waited five minutes, he would be well on his way to safety. No—I must get back to the house as quickly as I could. Since I could not return by way of the garden, only one course remained—I must follow the alley until I came to a cross-street, then travel that until I came to the street where Henry Drew’s house stood. But what was the name of the street where it stood?

  All at once I realized that I hadn’t the faintest idea. No matter, I must get back to that front door somehow. A short distance down, an alley lamp made an odd shape in the fog. I hurried toward it. Just beyond I stepped out into the cross-street and paused. Left or right? Left, of course.

  The clammy yellow fog stuck closer than a brother. On my feet I wore patent leather shoes, recently purchased on my return to human society in Shanghai. Their soles were almost as they had been when I left the shop, and I slipped and skidded unmercifully on the damp sidewalk. A small matter—but one that somehow filled me with a feeling of helplessness and rage. What a spectacle I must present! Served me right, though. I had no business at Henry Drew’s confounded party.

  As best I could, I hurried on, staring at the house-fronts. But their owners couldn’t have told them apart in the mist. My search was hopeless. I had given up and was standing beneath a street lamp when I heard footsteps.

  Debonairly out of the fog walked Parker, the ship’s doctor, humming a tune as he walked. He stopped and stared at me. A fine sight I must have been, too—wild- eyed, with evening clothes, no overcoat, no hat.

  “Good lord, Winthrop!” he said. “What’s happened to you?”

  There was no friendliness in his tone, and it came to me suddenly—a sickening premonition—that this was the last man it was good for me to meet just now. I resolved to make the best of my plight.

  “Parker, a terrible thing has happened. Old man Drew has been murdered.”

  “You don’t say? Who killed him?”

  “I don’t know. How the devil should I?” His cool unconcerned tones maddened me. “I had reached the house, and was waiting for him in the library. Hearing a cry, I ran into the diningroom. He was there—dead—on the floor.”

  “Really? And now you are wildly, running the streets. Hunting for a policeman, perhaps?”

  I was not unaware of the sneering implication in his words, but I strove to keep my temper.

  “I’m trying to get back to the house,” I said calmly. “As I was standing beside the old man’s body I saw someone moving outside an open window.”

  I outlined briefly the series of small adventures that had followed. He heard me out, then tossed away his cigarette, and I saw a faint smile on his cruel face. It occurred to me that I would have to repeat my story—repeat it again and again—and that I was destined to see that smile of unbelief on other faces.

  “Very interesting,” said Parker, still smiling. “I wish I could be of some help, old man. But as a matter of fact I’m in the same fix as you. I started to walk to the house, and lost my way.”

  “At any rate,” I answered, “you must know the address.”

  “Don’t you?” He laughed loudly. “I say, that’s funny.”

  “To you, perhaps,” I said.

  “Pardon me. My sense of humor breaks out at most unseemly times. I do know the address, of course. The house is on California Street.” He mentioned a number.

  “There are no street signs on the lamps,” I said.

  “No. But at each corner the name of the street is carved in the sidewalk. Let’s try that.”

  We walked along to the nearest crossing. Neither of us had a match; but by stooping and running his fingers along the damp walk Parker came upon the name carved in the stone. I leaned over beside him, and we began to spell it out. It was in such a silly posture that Riley the policeman found us as his big bulk emerged from the fog.

  “What the hell?” said Riley, not without reason.

  “It’s Riley!” I cried. “Good enough!”

  “Who are you?” he wanted to know.

  “A friend of Mr. Drew,” I told him. “I was there a while ago when you called to see if everything was okay.”

  “Sure,” he said “You was sitting in the library.”

  “Of course. Riley—Mr. Drew has bees murdered.”

  “Murdered! He can’t be. I was just talkin’ to him.”

  I told him of the events since his call at the Drew house, and repeated the lame story of my actions following my discovery of the crime. He made no comment.

  “How about you?” he said, turning to Parker.

  “I met this young man by chance,’ Parker told him. “I was on my way to Mr. Drew’s house, where I had been invited for dinner, and I became confused in the fog.”

  Riley shook his head.

  “I don’t mind sayin’ you both sound fishy to me,” he remarked. “We’ll go back to the house. You lads follow me—wait a bit. Second thoughts is best. You lead the way.”

  He pointed with his night stick, and meekly we set out. Riley pounded along at our heels. We must have been far afield, for we walked some distance, passing several corners where motorcars honked dubiously. At last Riley halted us before the Drew house, and we climbed the steps. Finding the door unlocked, we entered with Riley close behind.

  * * *

  CHAPTER V

  The life of the Drew household appeared to be at the moment ce
ntered in the great hall into which we came. Carlotta Drew was lying back on a big sofa at the left, indulging in the luxury of mild hysterics, and Mary Will bent over her, a bottle of smelling salts in her hand. A little old woman with a kindly face, evidently a servant, was weeping silently near the stairs, and at the moment of our entrance, Hung Chin-chung emerged from the dining room with no sign of emotion on his inscrutable face.

  “Mary Will,” I said gently.

  She lifted her head and looked at me. There was terror in her eyes, but at sight of me it appeared to give way to an intense relief.

  “You’ve come back,” she said, as though in surprise. “Oh—I’m so glad you’ve come back.”

  At the moment I did not understand the full meaning of her words. Carlotta Drew sat up at sight of Doctor Parker and abandoned her mechanical exhibition of grief. Perhaps she remembered the effect of tears on even the most careful makeup.

  “Now, what’s it all about?” boomed Riley. “Mrs. MacShane—” He turned to the old servant.

  “The poor man!” wept Mrs. MacShane. “In there—in the dining room—”

  “Has anyone called the station?”

  “Sure, I called ‘em,” said the old woman, evidently efficient even under stress.

  “They’ll be sendin’ a detective over,” said Riley. “No one leaves—that’s understood.”

  He passed on into the tragic room where the candles were burning. Hurrying to Mary Will’s side, I began once more the tale of my adventures since finding the millionaire’s body. As I spoke in a low voice I thought she looked at me in an odd way. My heart sank. Was even Mary Will going to doubt my story?

  Riley returned.

  “It’s hard to realize, Mrs. MacShane,” he said. “He was a kind man—you know that. Many’s the time, on cold nights, he had me in from the misty streets for a drop—but no matter.”

  There was a brisk knock at the front door, and a figure muffled in a huge coat stepped into the hall. Close behind came two policemen in uniform. At sight of the figure leading the way, Riley was all respect.