“You are joking,” said Barbara with affected astonishment.
Susan knew it was affected, because if this information had truly been unknown to her, Barbara would have moved heaven and earth not to show surprise.
“No, Barbara, it’s the absolute truth. In fact, you may be even more astonished to learn that I own this ranch.”
Barbara put her hand to her breast and drew back several feet. “No …”
“It’s true,” Blossom concurred with appropriate drama in her tone and gesture. “Absolutely true …”
“Of course,” Barbara went on, coming back to the bed and placing her hand on Susan’s wrist as if surreptitiously searching for a feeble pulse in a wasting victim. “You know I’ve been looking for you all over Nevada.”
“Yes?” said Susan.
“I even hired a detective to find you,” Barbara went on.
“Mr. MacIsaac,” said Susan.
“This is beyond coincidence,” gasped Barbara. “You must have the powers of a medium!”
“Well, now that you’ve found me, I suppose you’ll want Blossom to drive you into Reno so that you can telephone the Albany police.”
“Whatever for? What ever for?”
“So that they can start extradition proceedings against me,” said Susan.
“Oh, what nonsense, Susan. That’s exactly why I’ve been trying to find you. I know you didn’t murder Father. It was all a silly misunderstanding.”
“You mean your father isn’t dead?” Blossom inquired.
“Oh no, not that part,” said Barbara. “Father really is dead. The part about Susan’s having killed him.”
“If I didn’t,” Susan asked. “Who did?”
“It was an anarchist plot,” said Barbara smoothly, rather as if she were explaining why she’d been late for a luncheon appointment, “timed to coincide with the inauguration of the President. Some Socialist friend of Richard Grace’s apparently,” she explained, shaking her head as if to say, That naughty chauffeur of ours …
Susan said nothing. On general principles, she disbelieved everything Barbara Beaumont said. Only thumbscrews or the promise of immediate financial gain could make Jack’s wife tell the truth. Anarchistic plots against Marcellus Rhinelander seemed implausible, to say the least. Susan didn’t know what to believe, so Susan said nothing for the moment. She was glad, however, that Blossom pursued the matter.
“They’ve arrested the man?” asked Blossom.
“It was a woman,” said Barbara, and laughed gaily. “I was right about that part at any rate! So everything’s turned out happily—for everybody.”
“Except for your father,” Blossom pointed out, “who’s still dead.”
“And except for you and Jack, who are getting a divorce,” said Susan. “And except Harmon and me, who are also getting a divorce.”
Barbara laughed another little laugh, gayer than the last one. “I realize I was wrong about you and Father— and about you and Jack. So there’s no reason for Jack and me to get divorced—so of course we’re not. I really do adore the man, you know.” She sighed, as if contemplating the object of her adoration. “And since you didn’t kill Father, there’s no reason for Harmon to divorce you.”
Susan and Blossom exchanged glances.
“This is very strange,” said Blossom.
“It’s just us giddy New Yorkers!” Barbara laughed.
“Whether or not Harmon still wants to be married to me,” said Susan, “I’m not at all certain that I want to remain married to him.”
“Don’t say that,” cried a familiar voice just outside the door.
A masculine voice. Harmon’s.
Susan sighed. It would be.
Harmon sauntered in with a bouquet of flowers even larger than Barbara’s.
“I’ve been a fool,” he said. “An absolute fool. I don’t know how I could ever have imagined—what I imagined. Susan, please forgive me. Please come back with me to New York.”
Blossom said to Susan, “I don’t know where he came from. I don’t even know who he is.”
“He’s my husband,” said Susan to her cousin. “How did you know I was here?” Susan asked Harmon. She was not only bewildered, but, looking at Harmon now, embarrassed that she could have been such a fool as to marry him. She felt rather like one of the dreadfully obtuse heroines of Colleen’s novels. It was obvious, too, that Blossom didn’t think much of him.
“I didn’t know you were here,” said Harmon. “But I came to Nevada to look for you, of course, and believe me, I would have gone to Alaska, or Timbuktu just as readily, and when I got to Reno, I couldn’t find Barbara, I couldn’t find MacIsaac, I couldn’t find anybody, and then finally I ran into the princess, and she told me where Barbara was, so I came here in hope she could shed some light on the business and”—he stopped in apparent embarrassment—“and truth to tell, the flowers were for her, but it looks as if you deserve them more.”
“What I really need now,” said Susan, “is a little rest.”
“I can’t go—and I won’t go—unless you tell me you forgive me,” said Harmon. “And say you’ll go back to New York with me.”
Susan smiled the sweet smile of an invalid. “Oh yes, if you’ll wait a little while, till I can get out of this bed, I’ll be happy to go back to New York with you.”
“Oh,” cried Barbara in a little ecstasy all her own, “we’re all going to be so happy again! We’ll have to take bridge lessons! I met the Culbertsons at a party once, and they said, ‘Barbara, if you ever decide—’”
Harmon interrupted her. “Barbara, let’s go. Susan just told me everything I wanted to hear. Now the only important thing is for her to get well, so that we can all go back to New York and live happily ever after.”
“And take lessons from the Culbertsons?”
“Yes,” said Harmon, “anything.”
Blossom, startled by all this beyond the power of speech, was readying herself to leave as well, but Susan detained her. “Stay with me, Blossom, till I fall asleep. Please?”
“Of course,” said Blossom uncertainly.
Harmon kissed Susan on one cheek, and Barbara kissed her on the other, then left the room. Blossom closed the door tightly after them. She turned around, leaned against the door, and stared at Susan in the bed.
“So what do you think of my choice in husbands?”
“Truthfully? Not much.”
“You don’t think he truly loves me?”
“I don’t know anything about men,” said Blossom. “And I can’t always tell when they’re telling the truth… or when they’re lying out three sides of their mouths at once. But it doesn’t matter what I think about him, does it, really? You’ve already agreed to return to New York with him.”
“When I get out of this bed, I will,” said Susan.
Blossom looked disappointed in her cousin.
“Of course, I fully intend to be in this bed for the next three weeks and five days. Then the divorce becomes final, and I’ll be happy to go back to New York with Harmon. As long as we’re in separate cars on the train, of course.”
Blossom laughed. “You didn’t believe him either?”
“Not for a minute,” Susan said. “There’s something to all this, and I just don’t know what it is. But at least I’m not still wanted for murder.”
“If you ever were,” said Blossom.
“Quite right,” Susan said, thinking of that possibility for the first time. Perhaps Barbara had fabricated the incriminating evidence of Susan’s crime just as Mr. MacIsaac had fabricated the evidence of Harmon’s infidelity. “But the question is, who tried to murder me last night?”
“Barbara?” suggested Blossom.
“Barbara has a fear of airplanes. And whoever flew that plane certainly knew what he was doing—”
“Your husband?”
“If he’s so adamant about staying married to me this morning,” said Susan, “he wouldn’t have tried to kill me last night.”
&n
bsp; “That detective?”
“If he was hired both by Barbara and Harmon to find me, it wouldn’t be him.”
“Maybe it was just some lunatic in a plane,” said Blossom. “Someone who—”
Her voice was suddenly drowned out by the noise of a motor somewhere directly above.
“Oh no,” said Susan, cringing in the bed. “Whoever it is, he’s coming back.”
Blossom rushed to the window, and Susan staggered to her feet, realizing for the first time that her body ached almost as much as her head.
“He’s landing,” cried Blossom. She grabbed Susan to keep her from falling.
Together they stared out the window at the biplane that was landing on a stretch of plain ground just beyond the corral. A dozen frightened horses neighed in their stables.
“Is that it?” asked Blossom. “Can you tell?”
“Yes,” said Susan, “that’s the plane. I’ll never forget the sound of that motor.”
The plane hit the ground, rolled on, slowed, and turned around, at last stopping at the side of the corral. The horses in the stables were frightened anew.
“He probably thought you were killed,” said Blossom. “And now he’s coming back to make sure. The nerve…”
They watched grimly as the pilot hopped out of the cockpit and took off in a run around the corral fence toward them. He wore gray trousers, a dark leather jacket, and goggles.
He got close enough to the window to see Susan and Blossom, and he waved frantically, pulling off his goggles.
“I’ll get the shotgun,” said Blossom, “and this time I won’t load it with salt.”
“Don’t,” sighed Susan. “It’s Jack.”
Part V
JACK AND SUSAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THAT SUSAN WAS at the Excelsior Ranch was proof she loved him.
He’d sent her a single telegram, telling her to come here. No explanation then. No telegram, no telephone call, no letter since then. And still she was here, safe and waiting.
That was trust.
Trust like that came only from love.
He supposed that the woman standing in the window next to her was her cousin Blossom.
Blossom didn’t look like a Blossom. Edwarda, maybe.
Both women disappeared from the window. He stopped and waited for Susan to run out and greet him.
Perhaps he’d even get an embrace. Even though they were both still married to others. He dared not hope for a kiss, but he thought that an embrace was entirely within the bounds of possibility.
What he got was Blossom with a shotgun.
“Inside,” she hissed. With nothing that approached friendliness. “Quick, quick, before anybody sees you.”
She poked the barrel of the shotgun in his back.
“You are Miss Mayback, aren’t you?” he asked uncertainly, but moving forward all the while.
“Yes,” she hissed, and prodded him through the door of a small low building with gray stucco walls. “And don’t waste your breath telling me who you are, because I know.”
He wondered why she seemed so displeased to make his acquaintance. Perhaps he’d landed the plane on some particularly valuable piece of land that only looked like cracked and lifeless desert.
The rifle barrel guided him down a short hallway, and then through an open door into a bedroom. He didn’t need to be guided farther. Susan lay in the bed and regarded him with a cold eye.
“You look terrible,” he said automatically.
“There’s a reason,” said Susan.
“Are you ill?”
“She’s not feeling her best,” said Blossom, coming in with the shotgun. Holding it beneath her arm, as if she were reluctant to put it down within Jack’s reach, she carefully shut the door, fished a key from the pocket of her dress, and locked it. She turned and regarded Jack with a beady eye. “Someone tried to murder her last night.”
“Oh my God!” cried Jack, staring at Susan in the bed. “Oh my God, who—”
“When did you take up flying?” Susan asked.
“What?”
“When did you learn to fly?” she repeated patiently.
“In the War?” Blossom asked sarcastically.
“No,” said Jack, mystified. “But my father flew in the War. And he taught me. Who tried to kill you?”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you knew how to fly a plane?” Susan asked then, coldly ignoring his question.
“Because the subject never came up,” said Jack, more and more mystified. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
Susan still didn’t answer.
“Because someone tried to murder her with an airplane last night,” said Blossom, and looked at Jack with a look that was full of suspicious meaning.
“A biplane,” said Susan.
“That biplane,” said Blossom, pointing out the window with her shotgun.
Jack looked out the window as if to make certain Blossom was pointing to his plane rather than some other biplane that might be about the vicinity of the corral. Then he looked at Susan, who didn’t contradict her cousin’s extraordinary statement and who returned his gaze levelly and without apparent emotion. Then he looked at Blossom, who was patently waiting for some sort of reply.
“You were wondering—I suppose—if I was the one flying the plane as it was trying to murder Susan?”
“Something like that,” said Blossom.
“No,” said Jack. “It wasn’t me.”
“Good,” said Susan cheerfully as she straightened out the covers. “I didn’t really think it was.”
“You believe him?” asked Blossom.
“Of course,” said Susan. “Don’t you?”
Blossom looked at Jack a long time.
“Yes,” she said at last, “I believe him. Or at any rate, the other one is such a liar that it makes me think I’d believe anything this one would say.”
“What other one?”
“Harmon,” Susan explained.
“You know Harmon?” he asked Blossom.
“I met him once,” said Blossom. “About ten minutes ago.”
Jack blinked. “Harmon is here?”
“He came to visit Barbara,” said Susan.
“Barbara is here?” said Jack, blinking harder.
“She brought these flowers,” said Susan, shoving Barbara’s bouquet off the bed and onto the floor. “And Harmon brought these,” she said, tossing them on top of Barbara’s.
“What is Barbara doing here?” said Jack.
“Fulfilling her residence requirement,” Blossom said, still a little sharply. She hadn’t given Jack her entire trust yet, evidently.
“When I was in Reno,” Jack said, “I never left my hotel room for fear I’d run into her. I spent two days trying to find a woman named Blossom who ran a ranch north of Reno. I was on the telephone, talking to a lawyer, asking him, while the chambermaid was making my bed. The lawyer didn’t know, but the chambermaid did.”
“That must have been Enid,” said Blossom. “Enid got into trouble a little while ago, and I did what I could to help her. Sweet girl.”
Jack nodded absently. “What is Harmon doing here?”
“Looking for Barbara, hoping she knew where I was,” said Susan. “He was looking for me so that I could forgive him, and go back to New York with him, and start our happy life all over again.”
Jack stared.
“Are you going to do it?”
Susan laughed. “You idiot. It’s perfectly clear—to you, to me, to Barbara, and to Harmon, that you and I are in love with each other.”
Jack stared.
“I shouldn’t have said that, I suppose,” Susan said, shaking her head at her own impetuousness.
“Yes, you should have,” Blossom interjected.
“But I’m tired, and my head hurts, and everything is very confused right now, and there’s no point in being confused about this. So I’m right, am I not—you are in love with me, aren’t you?”
“I am,” said Jack quickly. “Very much. I love you very much. I love you more than anything else in the world. And I didn’t try to kill you last night.”
Blossom finally put the shotgun aside, standing it in the corner.
“And I love you, too,” said Susan briskly. Then, in case she had been too brisk, she added, “Desperately.”
Susan, Jack, and Blossom sighed a sigh in unison. At least something was clear.
There was a knock at the door.
Susan?
Harmon’s voice.
Are you all right?
“Yes,” Susan called weakly.
May I come in?
“Not now, Harmon.” She thought quickly. “The doctor’s with me.”
Is that the man who came in the plane?
“I sent for him!” Blossom called.
Doctor?
Blossom and Susan looked at Jack.
Jack fisted his hands, and then pressed them against either side of his neck. Then when he answered “Yes?” his voice sounded lower and hoarse.
Is my wife going to be all right?
“With rest, Mr. Dodge!” Jack called.
Let me speak to you before you go!
“Can do!” called Jack.
I’ll be back!
Then his footsteps retreated from the door.
Jack sighed with relief. Harmon hadn’t recognized his voice.
“Quick!” cried Blossom. She grabbed Jack and pushed him over to Susan’s bedside so that his back was to the window.
“Bend over,” she commanded.
Jack leaned over as if he were examining Susan.
The precaution was well taken. A moment later there was a rap at the window, and Harmon appeared there. He waved in at Susan, who pretended to be breathing deeply for benefit of the examination.
Jack placed his hand on her breast as if listening to her heartbeat through a stethoscope.
Blossom pointedly drew the shade down over the window.
“I really don’t understand what is going on here,” said Jack.
Susan removed his hand from her breast. “Neither do I. But maybe together we’ll be able to figure it out. There are a number of questions I need to ask you.”
“Later,” said Blossom. “We have to get him out of here before your husband sees him. Or your wife sees you.” She grinned at Jack. “A piece of work, that one.”
Jack and Susan in 1933 Page 20