Five Fatal Words

by Edwin Balmer; Philip Wylie

  Donald hesitated. His face lost color at the memory and his voice became slightly uneven. "I had never jumped before, although I knew the rudiments. The ring was in my hand. There wasn't any sensation of falling, or motion, at all. I counted and pulled the ring. There was a terrific jerk on my shoulders and there I was, hanging in the air. I couldn't see the ground. I couldn't see the plane, although for a little while I thought I could hear it faintly. Then there was nothing. I was just standing still in a gray blanket.

  Once or twice I hollered for Uncle Theodore on the chance he might be floating within ear-shot. There wasn't any answer. It seemed to me I hung in the air for half an hour and then, all of a sudden, I saw a patch of darkness underneath me. It shot toward me, became a frozen corn field, and in a second I hit it hard. The parachute fell over sideways. I was dragged along for several feet and then, all of a sudden, I stopped. The fog on the ground wasn't as thick as it had been in the air and there I was in the middle of a big field. I got up, got loose from the collapsed parachute and rubbed myself. I didn't notice the scratch on my head at all.

  "I began to look around for Uncle Theodore, walking first in one direction and then in another. It must have been an enormous field, because I walked and walked without coming to the end of it and I couldn't see anything of the country around it on account of the fog. It wasn't dark, but the light was sullen and I knew it would be dark before so very long. I knew we'd jumped so close that he couldn't be very far away, so I went back to my parachute and began to walk in a spiral outward. I suppose that spiral was half a mile across when I saw him. He was dead, Melicent. His parachute never opened and he had died with his hand still clutching the ring. His fall burst open the envelope in which the parachute was contained and I saw why it had never opened. It had been pinned in with one of those enormous safety pins they use on horse blankets."

  He did not go on for so long that she said, "Yes?" in a very gentle voice. Then he looked up.

  "There is no necessity to dwell on the fact that Uncle Theodore was almost unrecognizable. But I did one thing. I took the blanket pin out of his bursted parachute pack. I don't know yet why I did it. I took it carefully in my handkerchief on the chance they might be able to find fingerprints. But I took it partly because I had arranged to get the parachute for Uncle Theodore and I was afraid if it was generally known that the parachute I got was pinned in, it would get me into so much difficulty that I wouldn't be able to do anything more about finding out who put that pin there. Are those good reasons, Melicent, or was that something very wrong?"

  "They are very good reasons."

  "I hope so. It wasn't that I was afraid of being accused of something I knew I didn't do. It was just that I couldn't stand the uselessness of being accused of such a thing.

  It would merely waste time and give the person who did it a better chance to cover his tracks."

  He looked at her with eyes into which had suddenly come renewed life and purpose. "You see, that safety pin is the first really absolute and actual proof of murder that we have for any of the Cornwalls. Together with the copper spider that was in Uncle Everitt's hand, it is the only tangible object that we can show for the death of four people." He reached into his inside pocket, withdrew a handkerchief and opened it. It contained a steel safety pin, five or six inches in length. "That's all it took to murder Uncle Theodore. Now, what do you think of it?"

  Melicent gazed at him steadily.

  "I think," she replied, "that you had better mention this to no one else besides me; and especially not to your Aunt Hannah--if she allows you to see her."

  "You mean, Melicent--"

  "I mean that, going back over all the deaths in your family, you could not explain that pin to anyone else in the world, probably--except me."

  CHAPTER XIV

  MELICENT returned to Miss Cornwall's door. It was nearly an hour, she suddenly realized, since she had slipped her note in to Hannah saying that Donald had returned and she had gone to see him; but no sooner had she halted again at the door than Miss Cornwall hailed her: "Melicent?"

  "Yes."

  "You have seen my nephew? Answer me, verbally, only yes or no."

  "Yes."

  "Write briefly what he told you; be careful how you word it. Slip it under the door." Melicent wrote: "Your nephew has arrived safe, except for some scratches made by landing from his parachute leap. Your brother was killed because his parachute had been tampered with." She added, "No one knows by whom." And she slipped it under the door.

  There was no acknowledgment and soon Melicent went away. For a few moments, she merely wandered through the great, grim castle, struggling with her dreads.

  Murder--unquestioned murder--again had been done; and if she told her employer, by whom she was completely trusted, all the facts which had come to her, would Hannah Cornwall doubt that Donald had put that deadly pin in the parachute? No matter what Hannah would believe or doubt, Melicent fiercely told herself that Hannah was in no condition to consider evidence to-night; therefore, no wrong was done by concealing it from her. Yet--yet--Melicent could not decide what to do.

  She went back to Donald who asked her: "Does Aunt Hannah want to see me?"

  "Not to-night."

  "I'm as glad. I am absolutely all in. It was grand of you to wait up for me." He stood and looked around the room. "This is a weird place, isn't it? 'Alcazar.' You'd think that under the circumstances Aunt Hannah would want to go to any other house in the world than this."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. Psychological reasons, maybe. Doesn't it remind you of the kind of place in which Pale Horses would prance, haunting these stone corridors. It's a ghostly old fortress but--say, what's the matter?"

  An unwilling, strained sob escaped Melicent. She trembled from head to foot and commenced to cry. "Don't say things like that! Don't! Please don't! I can't stand them any longer!"

  There was a brief instant during which he stood before her. Then he sat down beside her and wrapped one long arm around her. With his other hand, he patted her head.

  "Melicent, old kid, don't cry. I didn't mean to frighten you. I guess that kind of grimness is a little bit insane. Please don't cry."

  She began to sniffle. "I--I--I am sorry. I just lost--control--of myself-for a minute."

  "Of course you did. I am sorry and I apologize. That was a dirty trick." She felt him brushing her hair away from her eyes and holding her shoulder in the cup of his hand. He pushed her head back. He bent over her. He kissed her long and ardently on the mouth. After that he stepped away from her with quick fright. "Good Lord! I didn't mean to do that! Honestly, I didn't! Couldn't help it. Terribly sorry."

  The eyes Melicent turned up to him were wet with tears but, nevertheless, they laughed at his confusion. He read the emotion they contained with absolute amazement.

  "You didn't mind?" he asked uncertainly.

  "No," she answered. "I didn't mind."

  He said one great, amazed word. "Melicent!"

  But she shook her head, still laughing. "Not now. You mustn't kiss me again to-night. Not to-night." The smile faded slowly and for a long time they looked at each other with silent wonder, with profound tenderness.

  It was Melicent who first averted her gaze. "You better go to your room. I think the butler is still up. It is one o'clock. We will see each other in the morning, every morning. You mustn't look so disappointed and hurt. You've got to remember the things we will have to do in the next few days. It is very late. I haven't even told you what's happened here at 'Alcazar.'"

  "Has anything happened here?" He asked the question as if he had discovered a new power by which he would thwart all untoward accidents in the vicinity of Melicent.

  "Oh, nothing like the sort of thing you are thinking of. Only, we learned about the aeroplane accident over the radio. And the whole thing frightened your Aunt Hannah so badly that she's locked in her room and won't speak to anybody. You can only communicate with her by notes pushed under the door. You s
ee, she's afraid somebody will speak a five-word message."

  There was another long pause in which the young man and the young woman looked at each other. Then, side by side, they walked into the hall. He took her arm but it was she who helped him up the stairs rather than he who assisted her. When they had covered half the distance along the slow slope of the stone steps he said, "By the way, have you seen Reese at all?"

  "I saw him for a little while when he was arranging to get servants to open up this place."

  "Did you have any chance to talk to him?"

  "Some."

  They were in the hall. "Your room is the third on the right. The door's open and one of the servants is there."

  "The room with the light on?"

  "Yes."

  She stopped at her room and he stood in front of her. A bright glow had come into his face. Neither of them moved.

  "Just once," he said at last, in a husky voice.

  Melicent made no answer at all, except to incline her face toward his.

  A little later she closed her door and turned the key in it, and Donald Cornwall walked dizzily down the hall of the great castle.

  Melicent opened her eyes with mingled emotions. First, she remembered how Donald had kissed her and that filled her with ecstasy; then she recollected the details of the death of Theodore--and the parachute pin--and she started with guilt. What would she do about that? Should she do anything?

  Before she had gone to bed, she had written down a more complete account of the aeroplane accident for Miss Cornwall and still she had refrained from inserting any mention of the pin in the parachute. Melicent reread the account when she had dressed and, leaving it as it was, she went to Miss Cornwall's room and slipped it under the door.

  Then she knocked.

  "Who is it?" Miss Cornwall's voice was cracked and querulous.

  "Melicent. "

  "Very well. Don't say any more. But bring me some breakfast. Go down to the kitchen yourself, squeeze the juice of two oranges, open a fresh box of cereal, open a fresh bottle of cream and make coffee from the coffee in the servants' supplies."

  Fifteen minutes later Melicent had performed those operations. She brought the tray up to Miss Cornwall's room, knocked on the door, and was admitted. Hannah's face was streaked and lined. Her hands shook and she had lost her upright posture. It seemed to Melicent that during the night her gray hair had turned lighter. She took the tray, stared suspiciously at the food upon it, and then began to eat almost with resignation. She sat with her back to the windows and the only comment she made during the whole meal was upon that fact. "I thought of getting the windows painted but I decided that if I keep my back toward them I will be all right. I have drawn the blind up across the one that looks out on New York City. The chance of another electric sign being turned on there is one I won't take. I will see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing."

  Melicent nodded her head in agreement and tried to make her eyes express sympathy. She could not speak, because that had been the command of Hannah Cornwall.

  When the meal had been finished, she took the tray.

  "I suppose if I want anything I'll have to do without it. But I wish you would come up here and knock three times on my door every hour during the day. I f I don't answer, break the door down. The reason I am speaking so slowly to you is that I have to be sure I don't give myself the message. I have no idea how long I will stay here, or what I will do afterward, but for the present I am relying absolutely on you. I suppose it is unnecessary to say that if this affair terminates successfully I will see that you never have a financial worry during the rest of your life. I presume Donald will make every effort to find out what caused that parachute to fail. And I am living in the hope that the discovery of that fact will put an end to the whole dreadful fate that has taken four of my family and that now threatens me."

  Melicent took up the pad and wrote: "Yes, he is working very hard. I understand from the servants that he called Mr. Reese early this morning. He'll be here soon."

  "Have you seen Donald to-day?" Miss Cornwall asked.

  "Not yet," Melicent wrote, and the pencil scrawl conveyed no iota of the emotion which accompanied her expectation of seeing Donald in a very few minutes.

  When Miss Cornwall had finished, Melicent took the tray and went out. She carried in her mind a picture of the old woman, sitting in an upholstered chair, with her back to the light, a revolver in her lap, waiting, listening, dreading.

  To what ominous and final ends the affairs of the Cornwall family were rushing!

  Melicent went down to have her own breakfast after she left Miss Cornwall. The meal to which she sat down was very similar to that she had prepared for her employer, and as she began to eat she felt the sharp doubt that she had known many times in the past--perhaps she was sitting down to food that had been prepared for Miss Comwall, or perhaps the time would come when the murderer of the Cornwall family would think that she knew too much. Could that-- could that be Donald? She discarded that thought with an effort of simple courage.

  She had finished her bacon and eggs when Donald joined her. Over night his entire attitude toward her had changed. It was something she could realize without defining, and although he did not speak of what had happened to both of them so recently, the indications of it were in his eyes, in a certain tenderness of his voice, and in a certain straightforward and possessive manner which he had adopted toward her. It was more Melicent's matter-of-fact greeting than his own intention which prohibited any display of affection at the breakfast table.

  "How do you feel to-day?" she asked.

  "Much better, although I am pretty stiff. I must have taken quite a jouncing from that parachute, but at the time I didn't seem to notice it. How are you?"

  "I'm all right."

  "Did you get some sleep?"

  Melicent nodded. "Some."

  "That's good. We both need clear heads. Mr. Reese will be here soon."

  "I heard you had called him."

  "Yes, I expect him almost any minute. How's Aunt Hannah this morning?"

  "She's all right."

  "Did she ask to see me?"

  "No."

  To their ears came the sound of the bell that was rung at the front door. "That must be Mr. Reese now," Donald said. "I'd like you to talk to him with me, if you will."

  "Certainly."

  They left the table and found Mr. Reese standing in the hall. Melicent was flooded by a sense of relief. Here at last was Mr. Reese, a lawyer, a man of the world and a man of the outside world coming to participate in the final attempt to baffle the fate hovering over all the Cornwall affairs. In all that he had done previously--or in all that he had not done--he had been guided or influenced by Miss Cornwall; for he was her lawyer, accustomed to accommodate his activities to her interests and demands. And if he had so far accomplished little or nothing, Melicent suspected that it was because Hannah Cornwall had refused to let him act as he wished. Now, however, since affairs were almost entirely in the hands of Melicent and Donald, they could do as they chose.

  Mr. Reese's greeting to them was urbane and it had a cheerful quality which no words spoken under the pall of the atmosphere of "Alcazar" could quite attain. He shook Donald's hand.

  "I'm glad to see both of you looking so well," he began. "Considering the conditions which have surrounded you, I think you have stood the strain very well. It would be scarcely correct for me to offer my condolences to you, Mr. Cornwall. The business is a good deal more grim than such amenities permit."

  "It is," agreed Donald. "If you'd be good enough to step into this room." He led the way from the hall and stopped at the door for Melicent to enter first. "I have asked Miss Waring to sit with us."

  Once they had seated themselves close together and closed all the doors, polite formalities were dropped. Mr. Reese bent forward in his chair, his old but virile face thrust forward, his elbows on his knees. "I don't want to harrow either of you two people unduly," he said. "I have, as
you know, been pursuing or directing certain investigations--

  as wide and as searching investigations as I felt myself able to pursue and not throw the whole affairs of your family, Mr. Cornwall, into the hands of the public authorities and put you all at the mercy of public prosecutors--and the police. Within that limit, I assure you I have done everything that I deemed could be done."

  "I am sure that you have," Donald said impatiently.

  Mr. Reese caught his tone. "I appreciate that you must be impatient to have my report, to learn what I have learned. I have ascertained several suggestive facts; but it is impossible yet for me to piece them together."

  "Perhaps I can," returned Donald, abruptly. "What are they?"

  The older man held up his hand. "I will give them to you in a moment; and I will give them much more intelligently if, first, I know everything that you know. Much has happened since I saw you; and perhaps I have not all the earlier occurrences accurately in mind in their right order. It is essential that I know, now, everything that you both know."

  "

  All right," agreed Donald. "I will bring you up to date." And he began in detail, the account of Theodore's death, which he had previously given to Melicent.

  As he neared the point in his narrative, at which he had told her of the blanket-pin which he had removed from the parachute, Melicent felt herself become weak, wondering whether he would waver. Quivering with excitement, she did not know whether she wanted him to tell it or omit it; but when, at the point, his voice went on relating the entire circumstance, her heart leaped with a triumphant relief and she was quieter.

  She looked to the lawyer to see what effect Donald's admission had upon him and she saw none. Mr. Reese was too old, too experienced in the emergencies of others to betray his own verdict while hearing a case. He made neither interruption nor comment until Donald had finished; then he simply inquired: "That is all?"