All Bayard’s hints and outright statements swept with a rush back into my consciousness. Who was out there? Why was he trying to enter the room in so furtive a fashion?
My heart was pounding so furiously that I felt sure the thing at the window must hear it. The door to the hall was much farther from me than the window and was locked. If I screamed, would I succeed in rousing the sleeping house before I myself could be silenced? Was I to sit there as if frozen and let my patient be murdered? Was I —
There was another faint sound from the window, and then a pause, as if the intruder were listening again to be sure no one had discovered his presence. Through the breathless silence came the soft beating of the rain and the overpowering sweet scent of the rain-wet roses.
It was then that I knocked the lamp off the table.
I did not do it purposely. I was trying to get to my feet, fumbling blindly for support with my eyes fixed on the shadow at the window. The lamp went over with a dull crash on the thick rug and the bulb in it smashed and there was a sort of scrambling noise on the balcony. The shadow was gone.
“What’s that? Nurse! Miss Keate! What’s the matter?” It was my patient, of course.
“N-nothing,” I said shakily. “Nothing.”
“What was that noise?” His voice grew sharper as he grew wide awake. “Turn on the light. What was that noise?”
My trained instinct for protecting my patient’s rest asserted itself.
“Nothing,” I said more quietly. “I put out my hand and accidentally knocked the lamp off the table. The bulb in it broke. That’s all.”
“Oh,” he said, and after a thoughtful moment repeated in a less doubtful way, “Oh.”
And after all, how could I be certain it was anything else? It could so easily be some deceiving play of lights and shadows on the rain-drenched balcony. And windows have been known to creak before now.
It was then, however, that I made a mistake. Instead of going to the window, watching and listening for any sign of a retreating figure, I went to the bathroom, turned on a small light, and left the door into the bedroom ajar. My patient, drowsy with the opiate Dr. Bouligny had ordered for the night, had gone back to sleep at once, so the light did not disturb him, and I felt infinitely safer and more normal. I am not as a rule afraid of the night.
But it is not surprising that I still did not sleep, and I think it was around two o’clock that a second attempt was made to enter Bayard Thatcher’s room. It came this time from inside the house, and I was first aware of it when I heard some faint sound of motion in the hall and then the barest click of the latch. The door was, of course, still locked, and I cannot describe my feelings when I sat there in the soft light watching that polished doorknob turn and twist. Finally I walked quietly to the door and bent my head to listen, and I’m sure I heard a kind of panting sound — like a dog on a hot day.
This time the desperate courage of extreme terror moved me. I clutched for the key and turned it in the lock, although I don’t know what I intended to do. But my fingers shook and were clumsy, and the key stuck, and it was a long ten seconds before I managed to get the door open.
There was nothing there.
A dim night light burned in the empty hall. Its rows of closed doors and the shining stairs descending into blackness told me nothing. Or — no! Had not my eyes caught some motion there along the opposite wall? But there was nothing — Ah, the mirror!
It hung at an angle opposite me so that it reflected to my point of vision the wall and doors on a line with my own door but toward the front of the house. And one of those doors was moving. Moving slowly and stealthily, but moving.
There was no light in the room beyond. But I was sure that in the narrowing black aperture there was a face, a pair of eyes. Someone watching me, witnessing my terror — some pair of eyes I could not see actually meeting mine in the mirror.
It was an extraordinarily terrifying moment. But the door closed finally, and remained closed, while I stood as if rooted to the spot. I have always felt it a distinct credit to my nerves that I retained the presence of mind to step into the hall, count, and find it was the second door from the windows.
Probably I would not have had that presence of mind if I had known that while my eyes had been riveted on the reflection of that closing door I was under observation from an entirely unsuspected quarter. Only when I turned from counting the doors did I discover that a man had come silently from somewhere — up the stairs, I supposed — and stood on the landing of the stairs watching me with languid, half-closed eyes.
I very nearly screamed. I would have screamed had not my throat been suddenly paralyzed. For a moment that seemed at least ten we stood there, I with my hand on the door of my patient’s room, ready to flee inside, and he clinging to the railing of the stairs.
He was a young man, around thirty, with more than a faint resemblance to Bayard Thatcher about his nose and forehead; his chin, however, was undecided, his mouth pale and a little loose, and his eyes heavy lidded and languid. Gradually my fear subsided. This must be the mysterious Dave Thatcher of whom they had spoken — Janice’s husband.
It was a strange encounter. Neither of us spoke; neither of us seemed to breathe; it was exactly as if we were held by a spell entirely without animation. He just stood there looking dreadfully pallid and weary and drained of life. When he started on up the stairs he moved so languidly, with such a curious lack of animation, that it did not break the spell at all. I retreated into the bedroom and leaned against the door.
He was not drunk; I was sure of that. But he looked and moved as if he were only half-conscious. It was as if his spirit had gone and only his body moved about in a sort of catalepsy. What was he doing wandering about in that condition in the middle of the night when the rest of the house had sunk into slumber hours ago?
It is perhaps not necessary to say that I got no sleep that night. Dawn found me still sitting tensely on the edge of the chaise longue, which I had pulled well out of the revealing path of light from the bathroom, and my eyes simultaneously on the door and the window — which, since they were directly opposite each other, sounds a little involved but was very simple under the circumstances. About three the rain stopped, which was a relief: I was weary with trying to detect any sounds from the balcony through its gently muffling whisper.
By the time the sun came up I had decided two things: one, that Bayard Thatcher had very likely been the victim of a murderous attack and was like to be a completer victim; the other, that I would leave the case at once.
I did not leave the case; I have never left a case, though time was to come when I regretted bitterly that I had not taken to my heels at the first hint of anything unusual.
As the cool dawn crept softly into the room and the sun touched the tops of the elms I rose, flexed my cramped muscles, and went to turn off the bathroom light. As I returned, my patient moved his wounded arm, stirred, and muttered something. I approached the bed, thinking he had called me. He was still asleep. But as I bent over he said very distinctly:
“Damn you, Allen Carick,” and then added with difficulty, “Nita’s — grave.”
I’m sure that’s what he said; I’ve gone over and over it in my mind since then. It’s true he spoke as if it was only after a struggle that he got the words out, but it’s always that way when people talk in their sleep, and, as I say, the words were very distinct.
Then the words died in a mumble, he stirred again, opened his eyes, and looked at me with a perplexity that was tinged with alarm.
“What — who on earth —” His face cleared. “Oh, you’re the nurse, of course. You look like a Valkyrie with your hair streaming about like that. You gave me a sort of shock. I’ve — been dreaming.”
“What were you dreaming?” I moved to get my cap and hairpins.
“Dreaming? Oh, some absurdity. Rained last night, didn’t it?”
“Yes. It rained.”
At the mirror I put up my hair and pinned on my wh
ite cap.
Then I went to the balcony window. The rain-drenched garden looked clean and bright and gay, as if it had just had its face washed and liked it; here and there I caught the bright sparkle of drops of rain glittering on the tender green foliage. The lawn was vividly green, a fat robin was digging happily for worms, and somewhere in the trees a blue jay, in an unwontedly tender mood, tinkled its light descending scale of little bells.
Already my night terror was becoming dream-like and uncertain. Uncertain. I glanced at the balcony. The steamer chair had been folded up against the wall. And there were two more inescapable proofs that the watcher on the balcony had been real and material and no fancy of my own imagination. One was a small irregular blotch of mud: it looked as if it might have been a footprint, but was not at all distinct in outline. But the day before, the balcony floor had been spotlessly clean.
The other was a damp white envelope which lay as it seemed to have fallen directly under the slightly projecting window ledge.
Later the thing which was most to interest me was the fact that the steamer chair had been carefully folded up and leaned against the wall. I had left it with its bright canvas exposed, and no one had gone to the balcony from the room since then. As everyone knows, a steamer chair is an extremely awkward thing to fold and is annoyingly whimsical and confusing in its contortions. No ordinary prowler or thief would take the trouble to fold it up and protect it from the rain.
But at the moment I bent and picked up the envelope.
There was no address on it, and it was not sealed. I opened it.
CHAPTER III
“What’s that?” asked Bayard sharply. “What’s that?”
I had already removed the paper inside the envelope. It was an ordinary piece of writing paper, folded and slipped into the envelope. But the strange thing about it was that it was entirely blank; I might have had some glimmer of understanding if there had been writing on it, but as it was I was entirely baffled.
“Give that to me,” ordered Bayard Thatcher curtly. “That’s meant for me. What do you mean, opening and reading it?”
“It is not addressed to you or anyone else,” I said with spirit. “Here it is. And it’s merely a blank piece of paper.”
He took it eagerly, examined it with one sharp glance, and then looked angrily at me.
“There was something inside it. You took it.”
“I did no such thing!”
Possibly my righteous indignation convinced him; at any rate, he merely frowned at the paper. Then suddenly he smiled, as if he had arrived at some explanation of it.
“Toss it into the waste basket, Miss Keate,” he said. “It’s only a record of another attempt to best me.” And he lay there smiling at the pineapple bedpost. It was just then, I believe, that a thought crossed my mind to the effect that whoever was so determined to expedite Bayard Thatcher’s final exit might possibly have a good and sufficient reason for so doing. There was no getting around the fact that there was an occasional look in his yellow-gray eyes that sent a kind of crinkle up my spine. And while a man in fear for his life may be a little nervous, I did not like the way in which he spoke to me.
However, duty is duty.
“See here, Mr. Thatcher,” I began. “I’ve come to the conclusion that you may be right in — what you told me yesterday. Early in the morning. You said, you know, that someone in the house was trying to murder you.”
“Not in the house, Miss Keate,” he interjected. “I said ‘someone in the family,’ didn’t I? At least, that’s what I meant to say.”
“Someone in the family, then,” I amended. “Though I can’t believe it, really. Still — well, if there’s any chance of that being the truth of the matter, I think we can take steps to prevent it happening again.”
“You can take it for granted that I didn’t shoot myself, Miss Keate,” he said dryly. “Now, then, why have you changed your mind? What scared you during the night?”
I told him briefly, suppressing my encounter with Dave Thatcher — or at least, with the man I thought to be Dave Thatcher — and leaving out my terror. Thus reduced it was merely a matter of someone having been on the balcony and the doorknob turning and a bedroom door closing. He listened seriously enough, but was not, so far as I could see, particularly frightened.
“And what steps do you suggest taking?” he asked when I had finished.
“Why — tell your family. Tell the doctor. Call the police.”
“My family?” he said mockingly. “But they already know it. And the doctor knows it. And there are no police in C —; there’s the county sheriff, though. And I believe a constable who got the job when his livery stable passed out. The county sheriff built his house with money borrowed from Hilary’s bank.”
“A detective from the city.”
He laughed at that and did not even reply.
“Well,” I said, rather nettled, “if you insist on getting yourself shot, I can’t help it. But why don’t you leave? I can help you on the train, and you’ll be perfectly able to be up and around today if you like. The wound is doing very well, and you aren’t exactly helpless.”
“No,” he said shortly. “No. I can’t leave now. But understand this, Miss Keate: it isn’t pleasant to know that somebody’s out gunning for me. But I happen to have the upper hand. And threats don’t mean much. So forget all this, will you? I must have been half out of my head with the stuff the doctor gave me to talk so much. Are you going to stay on the job?”
“I’ve never yet left a patient,” I said with spirit. “But if there’s real danger, I think you’re a fool to stay on.”
“Spoken with decision,” he remarked, coldly amused. “Don’t be alarmed. I shan’t need you more than a day or two.”
Later I recalled that I happened to look at my watch as I turned away from him. It was exactly ten minutes after four.
He lapsed again into silence, and I managed to doze a little, waking in time to help him into a dressing gown and slippers and hold the mirror while he shaved with one hand, preparatory to going downstairs to breakfast.
“After all,” he said as I remonstrated, fearing the exertion would send his temperature up, “after all, it is my shoulder that’s wounded. Not my legs. And I don’t expect to turn handsprings down the stairs.”
Janice and Adela were already at the table when we arrived at the door of the stately dining room, and Adela started up with a little cry.
“Why, Bayard! I didn’t expect you down this morning! Are you sure you are strong enough? Is he strong enough for this, Miss Keate? Florrie, set a place for Mr. Bayard. Sit here, Bayard.”
And Janice said, more coolly:
“Good-morning, Bayard. You must be recuperating rapidly.”
It was odd, that breakfast, with both women scrupulously polite to Bayard and talking blandly of gardens.
“The gladioluses are doing well.”
“It was a good plan to put snapdragons with them. Shall I tell Higby to clip the privet hedge this morning?”
“Yes. Yes, you might.”
Not a word of Dave, who again failed to appear. No more of Bayard’s wound, although once, when I leaned over to butter his roll, I caught a bleak look in Adela’s eyes, and her face was all at once hard as if it had been touched with granite. But she said, prolonging the accented syllables in the curious way she had, which seemed affected and consciously elegant:
“Is there anything you’d especially like, Bayard? I’ll tell Emmeline to make some caramel custard. You always like that. Florrie, ask Emmeline to come here, please.”
It was her only concession to his invalidism.
It just happened that Emmeline stood directly behind Bayard’s chair while Adela made her request for the caramel custard.
“Baked or boiled, ma’am?” she asked harshly, her eyes on the top of Bayard’s head, and her hands clutching themselves in such a particularly hungry way that for a startled instant I was in some doubt as to whether she meant the custard.
“Baked,” said Adela. “That’s all, Emmeline.”
Apparently the household followed its normal routine after that; Janice in the garden, Florrie polishing the slender old red mahogany, the upholstery of which had faded to a soft rose beige, Dave not to be seen, the clip of Higby’s pruning scissors sounding through the opened windows of the library where my patient had retired, and Adela’s voice coming from the telephone in her pleasant little morning room — giving precise grocery orders and running to earth a scandal anent some bottles of cod-liver oil missing from the last hospital bundle of the Benevolent Aid Society. They had, it developed, been diverted by a Mrs. Whiting.
Lunch time came and passed. I remember thinking that Janice might have got overtired working in the sultry heat of the garden, for there wasn’t a speck of color in her face; her eyes were rather hollow, with faint black marks under them, and there were soft, moist little curls about her temples.
“I’m going to the farm for butter and eggs this afternoon,” she said rather lifelessly. “Shall I get some buttermilk, Adela?”
“Why, yes,” said Adela. “Yes, you might. Two quarts. When are you going?”
“About two-thirty, I imagine. I’m going to stop at the garage to get a tire mended, and it’s a good half hour’s run out to the farm.”
“You won’t be back in time for the Benevolent Society meeting?”
“No. But I’ll stop and bring you home if you like.”
“Do. You’ll be along about four or four-thirty? You’d better not wait in the car but come right in. There’s not much business to see to, but I might be delayed a little, and it’s awfully warm after the rain.”
It was just then that Dave came into the room.
For it was Dave, that pallid, lifeless young man who had stood on the stair landing in the dead of night and stared at me. Not that there was the faintest cognizance of that encounter in his manner as, at Adela’s few words, he nodded briefly at me and slipped into a chair.
Murder by an Aristocrat Page 3