Five Fatal Words

by Edwin Balmer; Philip Wylie

  She felt she had frightened him from it as she had frightened him from locking her up. She felt the truth of what she had said; he did not believe that she had thrown Hannah Cornwall from the window. Then why had he accused her? Especially when he lacked the nerve to see the accusation through.

  He had no nerve; merely a mind and a mood.

  Why had he wanted the police--he who had been as completely opposed as any of the Cornwalls to outside interference?

  Her thought went from him. Where was Donald now? She wanted and needed Donald as never before. She went downstairs and soon encountered Sibley, who seemed to have been posted to guard the front door.

  "Has Mr. Cornwall phoned?"

  "No, Miss Waring." Sibley showed his surprise at seeing her unrestrained. "If he calls, I will be here."

  "Yes, Miss Waring. I am not to let you go out. No one is to go out."

  "Except with Baroness Strang's permission, you mean."

  "Yes, Miss Waring."

  "Who tells you what she permits and forbids?"

  "Mr. Vado."

  Melicent retreated to one of the great rooms and dropped into a chair. Her mind was ceasing to spin.

  The death message of the Cornwalls again had been written and this time written in the sky; and death instantly had followed. Indeed, it had come before this message had even been completed. Could the writer of the message have counted upon death corning to Hannah Cornwall as it had?

  No; of course he could not. He could not possibly have planned it. Indeed, only by accident could he be aware that she had fallen and died. He could not have made his complicated maneuvers in the sky and also have watched her window. No; the chances were that, unless he had since heard from some one here at Alcazar, he was ignorant that she was dead.

  Therefore, if he had planned to bring about her death in some other way, he was probably still proceeding with his plan. Having written his message and flown away, he would return to do what next he had planned to do--unless he heard from some one here or unless the news got out.

  News got out when you told things to the police. Then the papers promptly had it.

  Call the police and everyone knew. Who wanted to call the police just now? Ahdi Vado.

  Melicent arose and walked slowly about the great room.

  Ahdi Vado controlled Lydia Cornwall who, at last, was the sole survivor of her generation, to whom all the two hundred millions now would come so that she unrestrictedly could give, grant, bequeath and bestow them as she wished. A stake, indeed; a stake for any man or set of men!

  Ahdi Vado, in his present position, must step cautiously and circumspectly indeed--especially if he had played any part in the events--(he called them always fates)--

  which had brought him to this moment.

  But who could connect him with any of them? Granger, it was, who had written the words in the sky, she believed; and Granger and Ahdi Vado had never seen each other, so far as she knew; they had never been in the Cornwall entourage at, the same time; for Granger had gone before Lydia and the Hindu had come.

  Some one was descending the stairs. Ahdi Vado. Melicent retreated so that he would not see her and then she approached the front hall so that she heard what he said to Sibley at the door.

  "Mr. Cornwall has phoned?" he asked.

  "No, sir. And Miss Waring has just asked that."

  "If he telephones, say to him that the Baroness Strang wishes him to return immediately; and say nothing to Miss Waring. I am taking a little air. I will be near and soon return."

  Sibley opened the door and Ahdi stepped out. Melicent's impulse was to call out to detain him; but her mind told her he could not be departing. No, his place close beside Lydia never was so precious as now.

  She considered, for an instant, attempting persuasion with Sibley, but she abandoned the idea for a more direct course. The lower windows of Alcazar were barred and the windows at this level were high, even on the side of the forest; but at the windows of this great room were curtain loops of silken rope. She loosed two and knotted them, tied an end to a massive table, lifted the window and let herself down.

  No one noticed her. Sibley soon would feel the winter draft; but she already was in the woods where Ahdi Vado was walking.

  She hid behind a tree none to soon, for he looked about not with a mere glance but searching the woods behind him. He proceeded and she kept him in sight, concealing herself. He was, she found, methodical. At intervals of half a minute he halted and looked about; then he went on.

  He came, at last, to a little clearing where a garden once had been. He stepped into this open space after a careful inspection ahead and on both sides. Now he drew from his pocket a colored cloth which he shook out and laid on the ground. He put a few small stones on it; he arose, looked about, then produced from another pocket a second red cloth which he shook out, spread and weighted down similarly. He stood back, looked up at the sky and bent, shifting slightly the position of the second cloth; he looked up again then, satisfied, and quickly and silently retreated.

  Melicent boldly stepped from behind the tree which had hid her. She felt no fear of him; a cool fury overrode all other feeling. She walked into the clearing.

  Ahdi Vado both saw and heard her and he stopped. She glanced at him, saw that he waited at the edge of the trees and she disdained him to study the cloths he had laid on the ground.

  They were large kerchiefs of a pattern common enough and spread out, one might carelessly say, to dry. A person coming upon them accidentally would give them no especial thought; but Melicent observed that they were laid with their points toward each other, so they would look like diamonds from above; they were about ten feet apart and directly in line north and south.

  They would not be seen, of course, except by some one who stumbled upon this little clearing--or by some one flying overhead. Placed in the very center of the clearing, they would be visible and distinguishable against the gray ground to anyone flying for a good distance in every direction.

  With an effort of will, Melicent refused even a glance at the Hindu as she stooped and pulled one of the red kerchiefs about so that it would look like a square, not a diamond, to anyone flying on the line of the river. Ahdi Vado had not moved; so she picked up the second kerchief and laid it down to look like a square to the right of the other and ten feet away. Having changed both the positions and pattern of the kerchiefs, she straightened and faced the Hindu.

  "Is that the opposite signal position, Ahdi?" she said.

  "Opposite?"

  "Have I placed them now to mean 'Come on with our plan' ?"

  "Plan?"

  "You had them placed to say 'Never mind any more; she's dead.' I want to bring him back and find out what you meant to do; are they right now for that?"

  "I do not," enunciated the Hindu quietly, "comprehend you."

  "Oh; yes, Ahdi, I think you do. If you won't tell me whether they're right, now, for what I want, we'll leave them. They're different, anyway. Going back to Alcazar?"

  Her cool fury, which left no place for fear, continued to sustain her. She was not afraid of the Hindu at all.

  He might be armed; he might not. She scarcely considered it; she was sure he would not use a weapon himself ; he could not even strike with his fists. Personal violence she still could not associate with him, though now she walked beside him believing him the planner of the killing of them all. Poison; the copper spider; the fog; the reheated meteorite; the pinned parachute--spawn, all of them, of his dreamy brain. What else had been planned for Hannah Cornwall and now was unneeded?

  With queer curiosity, she wanted to know. She almost asked him, she had become so sure of him now. She was so sure, indeed, that she began to doubt whether the flyer--

  he who had misspelled his D-word in the sky--was Granger. For how could Granger and he have met?

  Yet Granger, if he went in for crime, was the perfect partner for this mystic, this dreamer; one to plan, the other to perform.

  Side by s
ide, and now not speaking, they returned to the house; and his willingness to return did not, to Melicent, deny his complicity. He controlled Lydia; he was sure of her; why should he fear a girl? Moreover, at last he had almost gained his goal.

  They entered the great door of the castle. Donald was there.

  Donald hailed: "Melicent, hello!" And he spoke to Ahdi Vado.

  "Let him go upstairs," said Melicent to Donald. She did not care what the Hindu now said to Lydia; and she feared for Lydia, as yet, no harm. She had to be alone with Donald.

  He drew her into one of the great rooms far from others' eyes and ears. "Melicent, I couldn't trace him. I got a pilot at a flying field to take me to a couple of airports. But I had no track. He might be anywhere. I got thinking of things here--and of you; so I flew back."

  "You're just in time, I think!"

  "For what?"

  "Him--he'll be back!"

  "How do you know?"

  "I don't; I just think so. Donald, Ahdi Vado here in the house, works with him!"

  "Ahdi! You were just out walking with him!"

  "Yes; that is partly why I know. You see, Donald, Granger--we'll call the flyer that, anyway--can't know that anything more is unnecessary. They must have had a plan to carryon after the message."

  "Yes," said Donald. "I thought of that."

  "Well, Ahdi had to get him word to do nothing more. He thought, first, he'd send word through the police."

  "Through the police?"

  "By calling in the police; that would make it public, so Granger could read what happened. Maybe I stopped Ahdi from calling the police; maybe he figured that way would be too slow. He couldn't phone Granger or he daren't; so he spread signals to the sky."

  "Signals ?"

  "Yes; handkerchiefs which he laid on the ground in a clearing out there. He thought he was alone; but I followed him and saw him. We just got back."

  "Then he knows you saw him?"

  "Yes; he knows, also, that I changed the signals; but what can he do? If he objects, he proves they are signals. He has to leave them alone. I changed them, I said. I figured they meant, 'Don't come; don't do any more; she's dead.' I don't know what I made them to mean when I shifted them, but it must be something else. Anyway, Granger's got to fly over them to find out what he's to do--or if he's to do nothing.

  There're always aeroplanes flying along the Hudson. He could fly along the river, no one suspecting anything. He wouldn't use the same plane as before, I suppose."

  There were few more words and Donald was gone.

  Gone again from her; and again into the air. For his pilot, he said, was waiting on a frozen field a mile away. The pilot, Frisby, had been a pursuit flyer in the war and, in the years since, had thousands of hours in the air. He could do anything.

  But Melicent had no inkling of what such a man could do until she saw it. She thought of Donald and Frisby finding Granger's plane and merely pursuing it until it came to the ground somewhere. She was wholly unprepared for what she witnessed from her window.

  Aeroplanes passed, now and then; on the tail of each swooped a gray-barred monoplane which showed two open cockpits; two shoulders and heads. Then the gray-barred plane swerved away. Blue wings appeared and followed the west bank of the river, flying northward; and from below a cloud--a few clouds specked the sky--the gray-barred plane materialized. It was over the blue wings; it seemed almost to scrape the blue machine; and then it did not turn away.

  It swept above and in front of blue wings, bearing it down. At frightful speed and there in the air, it cut across the blue aeroplane's path like a speeding car forcing another to the curb.

  Melicent stood up, violently shaking. In the double cockpit plane, she knew, were Donald and Frisby; in the other, Granger! This was proof of their recognition.

  Granger spun below them and dropped away. Frisby spun, too, and was on him again. He and Donald seemed to zoom upon the blue machine, willing to collide.

  Willing? They seemed to seek collision there in the air; they seemed to offer Granger no choice but collision.

  Melicent knew enough to realize that, if the planes struck high in the air, the pilots could jump in parachutes. So Donald and Frisby were willing to leap if they could force Granger to leap, too.

  She watched them, her hands clenched and damp with cold perspiration. Donald would leap again, if he could make Granger leap, too! Donald, who had leaped and, after landing, had found the body of Theodore whose parachute had not opened. Suppose his now was pinned, too!

  She was holding her breath and she gasped with relief when she saw Granger had got away. Frisby missed a maneuver; now he was on the blue plane again. They passed close by and puffs of haze floated from Granger's cockpit; she could see his arm outstretched; he was firing a pistol.

  Donald didn't fire back; nor Frisby. Were they hit, one of them? Donald hit? She couldn't see. She could see only that the gray-barred plane was upon the blue machine and dogging it down. Down, down they dogged him. Down!

  He twisted and turned; he dropped over on the side, but they did not let him go.

  What flying! Oh, what flying! Granger got clear; he righted himself and tried to rise, but Frisby was about and at him so swiftly that the blue plane pointed up too steeply. It seemed to try to go into a loop, but it failed. It fell back on its tail and, lacking altitude, did not right itself, but plunged and crashed into the river not two miles from where Miss Cornwall that morning had fallen.

  The gray-barred plane circled over; a boat was steaming up the river. The gray-barred plane flew low beside it and the boat whistled acknowledgment to its signals. The boat headed for the wreck in the river and the gray-barred plane flew away. Melicent dropped into a chair and hid her face in her hands.

  After a time, Sibley came for her. "The Baroness Strang asks for you," Sibley said solemnly.

  Melicent roused and accompanied him to Lydia's apartment. Lydia, too, had aroused; for the first time, Melicent saw her walking without aid.

  "Something has happened to Ahdi!" Lydia grieved and complained. "I was resting here; and he was at the window. He stood there a long time perfectly still and silently as he often does, just looking out at the river. Then he went to his room and would not answer when I called. I can't rouse him! I tell you I can't rouse him!"

  Donald returned to Alcazar about three hours later. Many, many people had come in the time between. Police; newspaper men; coroners; Mr. Reese; more police and reporters; physicians. Melicent lost track of them all. They claimed Donald when he came but she had seen him, had a word with him, if not alone, and she knew that he was safe.

  It had been Granger in the blue plane, she was told; he had been picked up living but had died two hours later in a hospital.

  At last Donald came to her room and they excluded all others.

  "He lived long enough to clear up a lot of things, " Donald said to her. He sat on the couch and she sat facing him, her hands clasped by his; and as he told her, his clasp tightened and relaxed and tightened again. "He scarcely spoke to anyone till I came in the room at the hospital. There was nothing the doctors could do for him; he knew it. He didn't seem sore at me, but he set to cussing Ahdi Vado as soon as he saw me. He figured Ahdi must have double-crossed him. I told him that wasn't so; but he'd started talking and wanted to go on. He seemed to want to clear himself of the Belgian fog. That was too much for him; I mean it was too much for him to have us believe he'd had a part in poisoning the fog and killing all those people. The fog wasn't poisoned by anybody. It just happened.

  "Here's the way it all was. Granger, as Reese told us, used to work in Reese's office. For years he cut coupons for the various members of my family, collected rents, made deposits and in general saw to increase of the family estate. It got his goat. He knew all the details of the will and how two hundred millions would all pile up in the possession of the last survivor, instead of being spread over six. He flunked his bar examinations and decided not to try for the law any more but to try
for our money.

  "At that time, there was a Hindu also reading law in another law office in the same building."

  "Ahdi Vado?" said Melicent.

  "Exactly. He was supporting himself by the usual Yogi stunts with rich ladies and lecturing on the mystic. Granger told him about the Cornwall estate; and the thing got on Ahdi's mind, but in a sort of a different way. Granger said that years ago Ahdi, who was always seeing significance in things, saw that five of our family names spelled death and he believed it meant the family would die in that order, leaving Lydia. The L for Lydia, he said, meant 'left,' so she finally would get all the money.

  "Granger wanted to talk, but he had to skip a good deal, of course. And I had to fill in some. For the reason I've given, or for some other, Ahdi and Granger went to Egypt and got a job with Lydia, Granger going under an assumed name so he wouldn't be associated with the man who'd been in Mr. Reese's office.

  "After a while, Granger left Lydia's employ--he was a chauffeur--but Ahdi stayed.

  Granger didn't tell me outright that he killed my father, but he did say he left Egypt to go to South America; and that Ahdi and he were already working together.

  "Granger did all the spider business with Uncle Everett. He seemed rather proud of that. He said he paid an honest-looking stranger on the streets of New York to telegraph the message that Uncle Everett received when you all, and Granger, were in the house. Granger brought along the copper spider from a little curio shop; and he found an ice pick and a length of light cord at the house. That was all he needed; and he did it.

  "That brings us to Belgium. Ahdi sent the message to Alice and now it was Ahdi's turn to do for one of the family. Granger said he couldn't kill a woman; besides, he didn't dare stay and be recognized by Lydia; so he got himself dismissed."

  "Oh," said Melicent. "He made that scene with me so your aunt would discharge him; it was so he'd seem to have been sent away."

  "I guess," Donald replied, "he figured he'd get fired for the most pleasant possible reason. Anyway, he cleared the ground for Ahdi Vado, though he hovered on the outside.