He said he didn't know what Ahdi meant to do. He wondered, sometimes, if Ahdi would ever, of himself, do anything. Ahdi was always ready to dream and to scheme; he'd invoke mind and consciousness and set fatal forces, as he called them, to work. He sent the message; and the fog came that killed Alice and lots of others.
"Ahdi didn't do it, Granger knows; but Ahdi himself almost got believing that his message set forces of fate in action. Alice was fated, for she was A and it was A's turn; everybody else that died was fated, for some other reason, or else they wouldn't have died. Ahdi believed it. The messages were always Ahdi's idea; they precipitated fate, he said. He depended upon them.
"The Belgian fog immensely puffed up Ahdi and almost got Granger believing in his influence upon fate. Granger got up the hat sign idea and Ahdi approved of it. A girl paid for it. Granger only asked one thing of me; not to try to trace that girl. He said she didn't know she was doing more than paying for a sign. Ahdi thought up the meteorite. It was a week of shooting stars, remember; and Uncle Theodore was always raving about stars. Ahdi got thinking about what a perfect piece of fate it would be if a man was killed by a shooting star. The idea fascinated him. It might be induced. I gathered from Granger that Ahdi thought of trying to induce a shooting star to strike as he thought he had induced the fog. Granger then got a better idea. Kill a man with a meteor--a real meteorite--and no one could ever prove it was murder. It would be the perfect accidental death. So he got a real bit of a meteor, heated it up and shot it in. He didn't really expect to kill Uncle Theodore with it; but he was sure, from what he knew, that he'd get an effect. He did. Granger didn't say outright that he pinned the parachute; he left me to suppose some things; he only said he followed us into the west.
"So Hannah came to Ahdi in his turn. Again Granger claims he didn't know what Ahdi meant to do. Ahdi said he'd do everything else, if Granger would just write the message in the sky. He claims that the signals, which Ahdi spread, were only to tell him whether he ought to write the message again. If it wasn't seen the first time, of course it had to be repeated; and Ahdi was to let him know by ground signal, if he couldn't reach him any other way. Granger wanted to know what happened in the house; and I told him; and it got his goat some more. He'd done it; he'd killed Hannah; Ahdi hadn't had to do anything. Ahdi hadn't moved a hand; and he was washed out."
"If he'd known," whispered Melicent, "Ahdi was washed out, too. I told you how I followed him and what I said. Then he saw from the window how you got Granger. He knew you'd soon have him, too. It's plain he was always prepared with a way out of too great unpleasantness. He had no nerve. He could plan murder and incite fate and plant terror to kill for him; but he couldn't raise a hand himself. I don't think he could have killed directly himself, Miss Cornwall or anyone. Yet he terrorized and helped to kill five people--or four, if we figure the Belgian fog would have been fatal to Alice anyway. He could bear all things in his mind, but nothing with his body. He foresaw rough hands on him; imprisonment; electrocution, perhaps; and so he put himself to sleep too thoroughly.
Do you suppose, if he hadn't been caught, he'd have sent a message to Lydia, too?"
"I'd liked to have asked Granger that; but I had to stop. They'd put two hundred millions in her hands; and they could control her--or Ahdi could and pass out the money to Granger if he thought it best not to appear. We can only guess what they'd have done.
It's strange to have killed a man, Melicent; even if he murdered three or four of mine; and my father. We gave him a chance to land. We made it clear we'd only follow him if he flew, as we pointed, to a landing field. But he thought he could beat us."
"Donald, I saw it all. Suppose you struck him and you all had to leap; and your parachute--"
She shuddered and was crying, for it was over. It was all so completely over. She knew it; and she said it, clinging to him, for now he had her in his arms. "It's over. I know it's over--over--over."
"Yes, dear; Melicent, darling, everything that is wrong and awful is over; and everything that's right and wonderful is just about to begin."
Melicent sat again in the room which, in the queer, quiet epoch before she encountered the Cornwalls and their fates, she had shared with Helen Crosby. Only Helen and she were there. It was the week after the sensation of the Cornwall affairs at last had left the front pages of the papers. There would be another sensation when one impending bit of news would be out; but this would be of a different nature; and Melicent, now, was telling it to Helen very simply.
"Donald and I are marrying. We're not having a wedding; or even attendants.
We'll each just have a friend along for witness. You'll come?"
"Will I come!" exclaimed Helen, kissing her. Then, happily crying a little sometimes, Melicent told Helen about Donald.
Not a word, Helen noticed, of the money which, Helen had learned with all the rest of the world, Lydia was immediately settling upon Donald and her other nephews and nieces. Helen herself had, at last, to comment on it.
"I should think you'd at least mention twenty or thirty millions!"
"We don't know what we're going to do with it; so we're trying not to think of it.
Honestly. It is wonderful of Aunt Lydia. . . . But there is one thing we're sure we won't do. We'll never group the money again to go to any last survivor."
"And when you have children," began Helen.
Melicent colored crimson. "Yes; we've thought of that, too. We'll start an entirely new set of family initials and names."
THE END
Document Outline
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
Five Fatal Words Page 27