Five Fatal Words

by Edwin Balmer; Philip Wylie

  "Thank you again," acknowledged Donald coolly. "Then by that reasoning, you must logically include Lester and his sister among the suspects, too."

  "Logically," nodded Melicent, "I do."

  "But--illogically?"

  The coolness was gone from him; the challenge of warmth was in his eyes again, in the curve of his lips and inwardly she melted before him.

  "Illogically," murmured Melicent, "you're--you."

  "Louder; I didn't hear it."

  "I can't say it again."

  "If it's anything you can't say again, you must!"

  He had come close to her, so that now he could have heard; but he did not rudely seize her. He never did. Would he ever? Did she want him to? Did he feel that she was preventing him? What did she want of him? What had he become to her?

  She flushed with confusion; and now the opening of a door aided her.

  They had almost forgotten, both of them, that Theodore Cornwall had retired temporarily only to have his new horoscope cast by Priscilla Loring. The sound of the latch reminded them of that fact and of the overwhelming importance he attached to the horoscope.

  Donald and Melicent swung away from each other and to him.

  Theodore Cornwall looked ten years older than he had when he had gone into the room with Priscilla Loring. The leathery texture of the skin of senescence had replaced his healthy sveldtness. His face was blotchy and his mouth was drawn back mechanically so that his teeth were visible through it. He wore a species of grin. Nothing could have told more accurately the effect of his new horoscope upon him. And yet the grin itself had been caused by the faint hope given him by the prophetess.

  He sat down in a chair and put his hands on its arms. Miss Loring swept into the room behind him and also took a chair. Donald, in spite of the appearance of his uncle, attempted to be casual. "Well, what did the stars say?"

  The head of the old man turned mechanically toward his nephew. "There's still a chance left for me, Donald."

  "Of course there is, uncle. There's always a chance. You shouldn't get so worked up."

  Miss Loring laughed without mirth and said in the voice of a sibyl, "You were quite right, young man. It would be futility itself to pit one's emotions against destiny."

  Donald looked at her with scorn. "I don't know about that, either. Speaking as an old pitter of emotions against destiny--"

  "I'd prefer a less flippant attitude, Donald," Theodore Cornwall said slowly. "I've had a great shock. Miss Loring has just read my horoscope. For forty years I've thought that if I lived sensibly my life would be long and secure. Now, because of the idiotic sentimentality of my mother, I find I have been betrayed. I have been buoyed up by false hope."

  "Well," Donald replied, "what do the stars say?"

  Priscilla Loring answered for her client. "The stars which govern the life of man, when consulted on the basis of the true birth of your uncle are indefinite on the subject of his exact end. They tell him, however, what is the best course for him now to pursue.

  They tell him that instead of pursuing a cautious course throughout his life he should, in order to be happy and to live long, pursue a bold course. He should take the conduct of himself into his own hands. He should do and dare. The false prophecy indicated that he should have been a recluse, as he has been all these years. The true prophecy shows that he should have lived the life of daring. He should have gone alone into strange corners of the world. He should have traveled. He should have dared all. He should have held his life at a small premium, and staked it gayly. The stars say that by such a course he would have been better protected against the black hand of doom than by all--this--" She waved at the hospital-like living room in which they sat.

  A sound almost like a groan escaped Theodore Cornwall. "When I think what I have missed locked up here for three decades in silence and austere solitude; when I could have spent my time forcing my way across ice-bound frontiers, or seeking romance in some locked city high in the Himalayas; when I think of the sacrifice I have made to be calm, to be patient, to be cautious. I could have explored the Poles, flown the seas and won acclaim throughout the world."

  Donald interrupted him. "You should never have had your horoscope read in the first place."

  Theodore Cornwall did not take the trouble to reply to that. "All my life I have been a coward to discover, at the end, that I can save myself now only by being what I have never been--bold and daring. And will that save me?" he appealed to Priscilla Loring. "Can you promise that will save me?"

  "The stars," she replied, "promise nothing. You know that well," she rebuked him almost as a child. "They only indicate tendencies. The bold course will have a tendency to save you," she repeated patiently. "The bold course." She looked about at the others, bowed, said her good-nights and departed.

  Theodore, however, followed her to the door for some last few words of comfort and again Donald and Melicent were alone.

  "Well, what do you make of that horoscope?" demanded Donald, frankly puzzled.

  "It surprised me," admitted Melicent.

  "And me. It hardly fits into a theory that she is bent upon his survival--at least until the rest of the family is finished. What I expected was more and more precautions; instead, we get the bolder course."

  Theodore returned to them, made a few formal remarks which betrayed that his attention was far away and immediately went to his room.

  It was after nine o'clock and Melicent knew that, if she did not retire presently, Miss Cornwall would send for her. She had already discovered that the arrangements in Theodore Cornwall's abode were similar to those which Hannah Cornwall had elsewhere.

  Her room adjoined the room of Hannah and they had already made arrangements for their habitual exchange.

  "Can Uncle Theodore suddenly change himself now?" Donald projected aloud. "If he does, how will he go about it and what will happen? I tell you, I can't make that woman out, unless she's sincere; I mean, unless she's sold on her looney horoscopes herself and this is what she thought the stars said to her; and so she passed it on to him.

  But how does a person like Uncle Theodore suddenly make himself reckless and bold?"

  Melicent held out her hand which Donald grasped and suddenly carried to his lips: "Good night. Thank you for your instant of illogicability. I'll never forget it!"

  Melicent awoke in the morning to the sound of hammering so close that it was distinct above the city noises. It came through the window and, when she looked out, she saw that it originated upon the opposite roof, where a number of men were hastily erecting the skeleton of a wood and metal structure.

  Miss Cornwall opened the door from the room which was, theoretically, Melicent's. She was dressed and evidently had been up some time for she complained.

  "Those men began that nearly an hour ago; what do you suppose they're doing?"

  "Putting up an electrical sign," suggested Melicent.

  "What good would an electrical sign be upon that roof? It would be invisible from the street."

  "But there are hundreds of thousands of people who live above the streets in the high buildings."

  "I don't like it," declared Hannah, nervously. "It is directly opposite Theodore's windows. I don't like it. They came long before ordinary working time and are hurrying so."

  Her tone was so vigorous that it was plain that she felt far more than a mere annoyance. "It can't actually harm anyone, Miss Cornwall," Melicent said, mildly, and she exchanged into the other room where she dressed, leaving Miss Cornwall to watch the progress of the sign.

  Breakfast was attended by Lydia and Ahdi Vado, Hannah, Donald and Melicent and Theodore who distinguished the meal by discussing grandly various plans of procedure for himself personally.

  He had swung, in imagination, to extreme enterprise which Hannah did not compliment with any comment at all.

  She had learned how her purpose to shock Theodore into approved precaution for himself had been turned to the very opposite by the new horoscope an
d she was more moody and silent than ever as Theodore, hypnotized by the grandeur of his dreams of boldness, had become almost gay.

  "What in the world can be the object of the sign they're putting up opposite your windows, Theodore?" she complained of it again.

  "Seems to be an advertisement," replied Theodore complacently. "No place for it; but soon enough they'll find it out."

  "What would anyone advertise there?"

  "We'll soon enough see. And now, if I went to China--" He was off again in the expeditions of his mind.

  "China," observed Ahdi Vado, "dwells in the depths of contemplation, indifferent to the ephemerial ripples on the surface of human affairs--such as prosperity, business triumph, even wars. Her essential composure is too profound to be disturbed by--"

  Hannah interrupted with intentional rudeness. "Lydia, you are not encouraging Theodore in this new madness for adventure?"

  "No," denied Lydia. "Of course not."

  "Mr. Reese is calling this morning," announced Hannah.

  "I never liked that lawyer," rejoined Theodore. "No one should know so much as he does of our affairs. He has made himself altogether too--necessary. I dislike and distrust him."

  "Fool," said Hannah, under her breath and, evidently, not referring to the lawyer.

  Shortly after breakfast, Mr. Reese did arrive to be ignored, almost, by Theodore, but Lydia had something to say to him privately, and Hannah took him for a long conference in her room.

  After a while, Melicent was called in.

  "Mr. Reese remains disturbed that I dismissed Granger," began Miss Cornwall.

  "But we have got on quite as well without him as with him, have we not?"

  Melicent had to agree to that.

  "If you have anything to talk over with Mr. Reese, I will leave you," Hannah offered but, after she arose, she delayed at the window.

  "Hats !" she said, staring at the growing sign. "They are advertising hats up here!

  They are putting in the word nearest the roof. It is 'hats.'' She left the room.

  "I asked for this moment with you," explained Mr. Reese, as soon as the door was closed, "to learn from you without reservation how things have gone since I've seen you."

  "One more of the family is gone," returned Melicent, "as of course, you know."

  "But it can hardly be considered that a human agency carried off Alice Wilbur."

  "Did Miss Cornwall tell you of the message Mrs. Wilbur received just before the fog?"

  "Yes, she has told me all. At least, she has assured me it is all. . . . It is plain," he went on after a moment, "that we are in very deep waters. I have talked also with her sister Lydia and at weak moments I feel myself inclining to her explanation of the affairs.

  That is, that no one is really causing these deaths; that they are merely occurring in the resistless march of human fates and that someone, foreseeing the path, sends the warnings. But that, I say, suffices the mind only at its most indulgent moments. There is certainly plan and purpose proceeding about these people."

  "Mr. Reese, why in God's name don't you go to the police ?"

  "Because Alice Wilbur, with sixty other old people, died in the Belgian fog? They would laugh at me. I have been privately investigating the death of Everitt Cornwall, as you know; I have employed the most skillful of the confidential detective services and have turned up nothing--absolutely nothing. I cannot satisfy myself even as to whom I ought to suspect. Can you?"

  "No," confessed Melicent. "Just everybody and nobody."

  Work on the sign, which increasingly annoyed Hannah, progressed. It provoked her particularly because, as the men laid on the framework the outlines of the design later to be illuminated, the letters were not legible to her. The characters were large enough and near enough but they crossed and interfered with each other after the manner of signs, seen in daytime, which are prepared to flash not a single but two or three legends at night. Moreover, it seemed to Miss Cornwall, who let the thing get on her mind, that the workmen, after rushing the first part of the work, deliberately dallied over the finishing touches which were still incomplete when dusk came. She remained sure of the lowest word only--"Hats."

  Theodore had employed the day in no actual, physical expedition; his determination for daring prevailed in the form of plan, only. He had received another visit from Priscilla Loring who, from further study of her charts, seemed to have found elaboration of the stars' intentions for Theodore which she explained to him privately; but she was gone again before dark and Theodore, having worn out the excitement of his stimulated imagination, was once more depressed.

  Donald, who had been out most of the day, had returned and was talking placatingly to his uncle. Melicent and Donald and Theodore were alone in the living room when, directly opposite their windows, the electric sign came "on."

  It blazed in white and red lights; and despite the fact that the living room of the apartment was well illuminated, the glare from the sign shone brightly through the windows.

  "What a confounded nuisance!" Theodore exclaimed, starting up. "Hannah was right for once in her life. It's a nuisance--a nuisance !"

  He stood up and walked to the window. The others followed him casually and together looked out. The sign was bounded by a moving red arrow which shot around the border and outlined the legend to appear. As this flashed on, Melicent noticed that the sign contained five words.

  Five words had preyed upon her mind for so many weeks that the electric sign was not the first brief collection of syllables which she had read and counted and the initials of which she had automatically arranged in her mind.

  DAVIS, EVANS

  and

  TAYLOR,

  HATS.

  The sign flashed and went out; the arrow repeated its run around the border and the sign flashed again. The same words but arranged now in a straight perpendicular: DAVIS

  EVANS

  AND

  TAYLOR,

  HATS.

  CHAPTER X

  MELICENT stood in front of the window as rigid as stone. The cry of Theodore Cornwall, and Donald's voice came to her ear as sounds heard at a great distance. With both hands she clutched two of the leaves of the radiator, which was in front of her. She could feel blood withdrawing from her head. The electric sign went out; but instantly the red arrow reappeared and shot around the border and again, in huge white letters, except for the initials which were red, the five words flashed across the night: DAVIS, EVANS

  and

  TAYLOR,

  HATS

  Infinities of time ticked away. The others were silent; their voices had ceased.

  Melicent was telling herself furiously that the whole affair of this sign was accident and her mind stubbornly replied that the sign was new, they had seen it erected to-day and that this was the first time it had been illuminated; it was directly across the street from Theodore Cornwall's windows; and Theodore was next in line to receive the fatal message of five words arranged so that their initials spelled--death.

  "So that's it, you think! That's it!" said Theodore Cornwall's voice which Melicent now heard. He was not speaking to her, she realized; he was addressing Donald, as he had done a few moments before when she had heard his voice but did not know what he had said; or what Donald had said. But now she heard Donald's reply.

  "Uncle, let's not get excited." Donald was struggling for calmness.

  "But you're excited yourself!"

  "I'm not."

  "You are; and I know why. You think that's it--that it--the five words that have been killing off the family--has come to me !"

  "No, uncle!"

  "Then what's the matter with you, Donald?"

  Melicent turned to them and as the glare from the sign blazed again in their faces, she saw that Theodore had good reason for his question, for Donald was more aghast than he. Not strange when you recalled that Donald had three times witnessed the consequences of such a message; Theodore had had the effects only told to him. Yet--if
this was the fourth message--Theodore was the one now under sentence.

  "Miss Waring! Melicent! What's the matter?" demanded Hannah Cornwall's voice.

  They all spun about. Hannah Cornwall was standing in the doorway at the opposite end of the room; and at sight of her, Donald turned again toward the window and reached for the curtain cord; but his uncle caught his hand and stopped him.

  "What do you want to do?" Theodore firmly demanded.

  "Pull down the shade so she won't see."

  "Leave it up," bid Theodore. "If we've seen it, why shouldn't she?"

  Hannah Cornwall crossed the room; but in spite of the fact that she had fussed over the sign all day, its flashing light did not now engage her.

  "Why are you two struggling?" she challenged her brother and her nephew. "Miss Waring, what is the matter here?"

  Melicent swallowed and gained some muscular mastery of herself. Her first impulse was like Donald's when he moved to draw down the shade; she wanted to keep knowledge of the sign from Miss Cornwall; but it was impossible. She lifted her hand and pointed out the window.

  "The sign, Miss Cornwall," she whispered. "The new electric sign; it's come on."

  At last Hannah saw it. "Davis, Evans and Taylor, Hats," she read it in a whisper; and for her, to whom five-word messages had become hideous portends of death that was not afterwards delayed, there was no interval of doubt or wonder over the meaning. Yet her reaction under the circumstances was grim and surprising.

  She had to say something; very probably (as Melicent later thought) she did not know what she said; she had to say something or become hysterical. At least, she held onto herself. She turned to her brother and said almost sweetly, "You were going to live to be eighty, Theodore?"

  "Eh?" Theodore said. "What are you talking about?"

  Hannah now did for Theodore what Melicent had done for her; she pointed to the sign across the street. "You were going to live to be eighty, Theodore. The five-word messages, about which we told you, were unimportant to you. The idea that we were all to be victims of murder was one to which you could afford to pay no attention as long as your fool horoscopes made you feel that you would be safe." She chuckled; otherwise, Melicent felt, she would have screamed. "Daniel might die, and Everitt and Alice, but as long as your horoscope comforted you, Theodore, you were safe. The message would never come to you. But now it has come--and where is your horoscope?" Again she laughed.