The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “Let’s try this one by the cupboard first. I’ll just hold it steady, and you can do the actual lifting.”

  Sheridan, his eyes intent on the pale lips that could not quite control their tremor, moved quietly to the end nearest the hearth, swinging the seat over the required eight inches with competent ease.… Light, fortunately—and that small, huddled burden in the corner of the one opposite would add little enough to its weight.… But his eyes, unswerving from her strained face, did not relax their vigilance.

  “It will leave signs of where it has stood, I am afraid. We’ll have to do something about that.”

  “No, no. It won’t leave any signs. We shift them about a good deal, especially when we use the fire—so we had those little rubber cup things put on.… Now the other one, K?”

  “Tess, let me do that other one. You will see, it will be quite simple.”

  “K, please—I’ll turn my head away. It won’t take a second, and I couldn’t bear it if—I couldn’t bear it if anything happened.”

  She was already at the far end of the love seat in the corner of which curled, small and glittering, all that was left of Fay Stuart—and Sheridan, with a final glance at the white curve of Tess’s sharply averted face and a despairing shrug of his shoulders, swung into position at the opposite end. A quick lift, a short step to the side—there was the sound of something sliding, a small, muffled crash, and he saw her stagger and fling her hands up to her face, trying to hide even from him the desperate terror that transfixed it.

  He was beside her quicker than thought, his arms about her—his useless arms, that could not shelter her from this nightmare, that dared not hold her close and fast.

  “Tess, it was only the little bag—do not tremble so—it was only the little bag. I left it too near the edge, and so it slipped, and all her things fell out—it was that that you heard. Look, they are here on the floor.”

  But she did not look; she could only cling to him as though she were drowning, the pale, bright head buried against his shoulder, tremor after tremor shaking her from head to foot. When she finally spoke, he did not know her voice, drained as it was of everything save horror.

  “I thought—I thought I saw her move.”

  “She did not move, I swear. She is exactly, absolutely as we found her. Tess, you must not tremble so. You will make yourself ill; God forgive me, I think that you are ill already. One moment only, and I will get you something to drink—a little brandy—”

  “I won’t touch it. I couldn’t swallow it—it chokes me even when you talk about it. If Fay—if Fay hadn’t—if she hadn’t—” He could hear the clicking of her teeth, fighting to get the words out, but after a moment it ceased; she raised her head, pushed him gently from her, and said in a voice that was again her own, though so low that he had to bend his head to catch it:

  “I’ve made a fool of myself again, haven’t I, darling? I don’t blame you for wanting to get rid of me, but I’m afraid you can’t just yet. Are those the things out of her bag? Wait, and I’ll help you pick them up.”

  But Sheridan, standing like a barrier between her and the scattered contents of the little glittering bag, spoke in a voice so’ inflexible in its determination that this time she lifted startled eyes to him.

  “Do not touch them. Tess, if you do not leave this room—if you do not get somewhere out of this atmosphere of death and terror that is eating into your heart—I swear to you that I will walk straight out of that door, and I will not come back. I have been already tonight ten kinds of a lunatic, but I am not the particular kind that will stand quietly by and let you kill yourself with fear. If you do not think that it is safe to go downstairs, and if you still wish me to clear up certain things tonight, we can try one of these other rooms. Where does this door lead?”

  She murmured, with a tremulous smile:

  “You’re being so angry because you’re trying to take care of me, aren’t you? I think I rather like being taken care of. That door leads to Fay’s room.”

  “Would you prefer your own?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. Hers is more comfortable, I think, and it’s probably in better order. Wait, I’ll turn on the light.”

  She went by him on feet so light and sure that he wondered why he had ever thought that she had been going to die of terror, there in the circle of his arms.… He heard the click of a switch and followed the light feet slowly.

  Inside the room that had been Fay’s, all starry blue and crystal, the little silver-lacquer bed, swan-shaped and immaculate, stood waiting patiently, snowy pillows piled high, snowy coverlets turned back with exquisite precision. On the mirrored table beside it a lamp burned, frosty and serene. There were mirrors everywhere—over the great glittering dressing table that was a mirror in itself, over the mantel of carved crystal, between the tall windows with their silvery curtains.

  Even the doors were mirrored, the crystal panels painted in garlands of blue and mauve and silver flowers that could have bloomed only in dreams. K, staring at the shining shelves with their burden of crystal trees and carved figures, jade and amethyst and tourmaline from far-away lands, felt suddenly chilled as that other, smaller Kay, wandering desolate through the Snow Queen’s palace. Of all the rooms that he had ever been in, this seemed to him the emptiest and the loneliest; not a picture, not a flower, not a book.

  It wasn’t a room, of course; a room is a place where someone lives, and this was only a gallery of empty picture frames that would hang now forever empty. The only sign that a human being had passed through it before was the dash of coral made by a lipstick as it lay mirrored in the silver lake of the dressing table—and someone had forgotten to replace the stopper of one of the flasks shaped like a spray of lilies that stood beside it. It was the fragrance from the open flask that haunted the room—the ghost of flowers long since dead—cool, disturbing, and remote.

  Even the intricate arrangement in the fireplace of the miniature white birch logs, delicate as lace, held no promise of warmth, and the silver brocaded pattern on the two deep chairs that flanked the fireplace shimmered like snow crystals.… The clock on the mantel ran carelessly up and down its little chime of silver bells four times; with an effort that astounded him, he lifted tired eyes to the quiet girl leaning against the mantel.

  “Four o’clock,” he said gently. “So late—too late, my poor Tess. You will sit here?”

  Still silent, she took the chair on which his hand rested, leaning back with a long shudder of utter weariness. For a moment, looking down at the lashes that rested on her cheeks like dark shadows of fatigue, he thought that she had slipped from him with the ease of an exhausted child into the blessed release of dreams—but a second later the lashes lifted, and as he saw the nails cutting deep into her palms, he realized that no more than the sword relaxed in its sheath could this pale child relax while life burned in her.

  “Now, why didn’t I think of that myself?” she murmured, her mouth twisted to rueful mirth. “I’ve been wondering for ages what it was I wanted so desperately to do. Just to sit down—just to put my head back and close my eyes and take one long, long breath down to my heart—why didn’t you tell me before, K? And there’s another chair, by the way. Why not try it?”

  He answered, gravely compassionate:

  “Tess, before I take that other chair, think once again, will you not? If I stay now there are many things that I should ask you; things, I think, that it might hurt to answer, and it seems to me that in all truth you are too tired to be hurt any more. Shall I not go now, so that tonight you can rest? In the morning, if you need me, I give you my word that I will return at once.”

  She said, not stirring:

  “No, don’t go, please. Stay. In the morning, with all those people that you say will come, how could I see you? I’m sorry that I was such a coward, but I’m not afraid of being hurt. You can ask your questions.”

  But he did not want to ask them. Renegade to all that those drilled and disciplined years ha
d taught him on the score of the vital importance of the Case and the profound unimportance of the Individual, he wanted only to protect her—only to be sure that she should find some brief space of peace in the short time that remained between night and dawn.

  “But I, you see,” he said slowly, “I am afraid of hurting you. You should have chosen a braver man to help you. Look—will this not do? I will fix for you now a sedative—a bromide—in the corner of the black bag there is a most admirable one that will give you, I can promise, several hours of good sleep. Tess, rest now, I beg of you, so that tomorrow will not be too hard to bear.”

  She murmured, almost absently, her eyes on the crystal globe in which, the silver bells of Fay’s clock hung prisoned:

  “I don’t think that I feel like resting just now, thanks. And I don’t think that I feel much like taking a—sedative, either.”

  Standing motionless, he heard once more the far-off echo of her voice saying, “Yes—hyoscine. That’s a sedative, isn’t it?” and knew only too well why that word no longer spelt peace for her, but torment. Twice-damned fool to have forced her to remember! … He took his hand away sharply, turning from her a face so dark with the bitterness of defeat that she laid one hand on his arm, summoning again the smile that broke his heart.

  “K, please, I hate to be tiresome and melodramatic again, but I do want rather badly to have you stay. I’d try to sleep, but I’m afraid to. That sounds stupid, I know. But it’s just that I’d rather have real things—even the most terrible ones—ahead of me, instead of the things that I might dream about. The only things that I’m really afraid of are dreams. Don’t go away, K—don’t let me dream. Pretty soon there’ll be light in the sky, and then I won’t mind so much. But don’t go now—don’t go now.”

  Useless to tell himself that it was only the skilled investigator, the coolly detached scientist, that she was urging to stay by her in her need—not the lost playmate of a childhood distant a hundred years—not, surely, the infatuated young fool, lost up to his heart in the dreams that she dreaded.

  Not lost so deep, however, that he could not turn as though for rest to the chair that she indicated; not lost so deep that he could not turn to her once more a face all courteous and controlled attention.

  “You are wiser than I, as I have suspected more than once,” he told her. “Four o’clock—as you say, that is not a good hour to be awake—and alone. You have won; you shall have your questions.… Why did you say to me, Tess, that Fay had fifty men who would wish her dead? Were you trying to tell me by that that she was no more, no less, than a common blackmailer?”

  “Oh, much more,” she said, “and much less. Blackmailing seems to me far too pretty a name for it. You risk something when you go in for blackmail, don’t you? But Fay never risked anything at all. Did you ever hear of a columnist called X?”

  “I am afraid that I’ve never even heard of a columnist. Should I have?”

  “You haven’t been long in America, have you, darling? And you make Vienna sound more enchanting than ever! Some columnists are simply privileged blackmailers. X is one of them; the most famous—and the most infamous. I suppose that he’s done as much harm as anyone in these United States. His column runs in hundreds of papers every day.”

  “And Fay?”

  “Oh, Fay’s one of the most talented of his spies.”

  “I see.” Something in the brave, light scorn of the face that she turned so defiantly to his touched him more than any shamefaced evasion. Well, if she could face these ugly truths with such unflinching valor, so could he. “And this X—does no one know who he is?”

  “I very much doubt it. I don’t believe that if anyone did know, X would be in a condition to conduct his column tomorrow.”

  “As bad as all that, is it?”

  He smiled grimly at the fierce, fastidious contempt in the low voice.

  “Oh, a good deal worse than all that.”

  “But why Fay, in the name of all that is decent and indecent? Why should Fay have supplied this jackal with his daily ration of carrion?”

  She said in a singularly lifeless voice, her eyes intent on the patterns of her linked fingers:

  “She needed the money.”

  “The money? But, Tess, your father is many times a millionaire, surely. How is it possible that she could have needed money?”

  “It does seem a little ridiculous, doesn’t it? But she hadn’t a cent. Dad cut off her allowance over a year ago when he found out that she was spending it principally on stuff to drink, and gambling; and since then she’d had nothing but charge accounts for her clothes. Not even a cent for a taxi.”

  “Gambling, you say? Was that, then, this other thing that you told me was worse than the drinking?”

  “No. No, that wasn’t gambling. I don’t think that gambling’s particularly revolting, do you? I should think that it might be rather fascinating, though I’ve never tried it long enough to make sure. But I can remember hearing the little Swedish governess saying to a new maid, while they were fixing up the nursery fire one night, that my mother would gamble the diamonds off her neck and the clothes off her body on anything from a race horse to a roulette wheel. It sounded rather lovely and reckless to me then—it does now. But Dad thinks that it’s worse than arson or bigamy. He nearly lost his mind when he found out that Fay was starting to do it. She came home drunk one night from the races in Baltimore, with the card still in her hand—and he swore that he’d cut the poison out of her veins if it killed them both. And he started out by cutting off her allowance.”

  “And did that work?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said gently. “I think that you could say it worked. She didn’t have any money, and I honestly think that she believed that Dad would kill her if he ever found her drunk again. So she started out to find a substitute for her allowance—and she found it in sending especially selected bits of offal to X’s column. And then she had to find a substitute for drink—something quiet and safe, that Dad wouldn’t know about—something that would make her feel straight up on the crest of the wave and still let her walk straight, and talk straight, and not run the risk of stumbling outside of Dad’s door, when he’d locked up the elevator so that she had to walk up three flights of stairs at four o’clock in the morning.… She found that, too.”

  “You mean drugs, Tess?”

  “What did you think I meant?” she asked, her voice a dead level. “Yes, drugs. Morphine, cocaine, heroin—anything she could put her hands on. She’d been trying out the lot of them for about two months when I came back from New York unexpectedly two weeks ago and caught her experimenting with a hypodermic. You were wondering about why I got the hyoscine, K. That’s why.”

  “Yes. Why else should you possibly have had it? I am not proud of my record for intelligence tonight, believe me! You were trying to break her of the drug habit by its use?”

  “She was trying to break herself of the habit. By the time I found her out she was scared to her bones and simply frantic with nerves—and she didn’t know how to stop.”

  “But, Tess, how long had she been doing this?”

  “Oh, not very long—not more than a month or so, I think. She started in at some slumming party that she and some of her delightful friends got up, and at first she was simply enchanted with the whole performance. I don’t think that any of them realized how far it was going—but it seems that Fay was abnormally susceptible.” After a moment of silence, she said bitterly, “She was abnormally susceptible to anything that was bad for her.”

  “So then you got the hyoscine, Tess—and she proved again abnormally susceptible?”

  “Yes. I only gave her a hundredth of a grain the first night, but she was really hysterical, and it sent her temperature up two or three degrees and made her heart bang dreadfully. We were both pretty badly frightened, and I put it away in my medicine cabinet and told her I wouldn’t let her try it again until I’d managed to get some medical advice. And last week she started in drinking a
gain.”

  “It is true that some people are affected that way exactly, though it is not usual. But you, Tess, how in heaven’s name did you know of the hyoscine treatment?”

  Had he imagined that there was a swift flicker of lashes over the clear candor of her eyes? Her voice followed so promptly on it that it was impossible to tell.

  “Oh, there’s been quite a lot about it in the papers here. Someone from a foundation in New York got a prize for work that he’d done on it as a sedative in treating the drug habit.”

  “And you had no difficulty in obtaining it?”

  “Very little.”

  “Extraordinary country! You mean that you can get it without a prescription?”

  “I don’t know. I should think that it might be complicated. At any rate, I didn’t need a prescription.”

  “I see. You did not get it at a drugstore.”

  “No. I didn’t get it at a drugstore. And I can’t tell you where I did get it, so it’s no use asking me. I gave my word of honor not to.”

  “You realize, of course, that it might be an exceedingly important clue?”

  “Might it?” she asked wearily. “I don’t think so, honestly. But even if it were I’m afraid that it wouldn’t make any difference. I have a fairly liberal code of ethics, but I don’t break my word of honor.”

  The clock on the mantel rang a silvery warning, and he glanced up at it mechanically.

  “No. I can see that, too. Well then, Tess, that is that, is it not? I have learned quite enough tonight to keep me very busy indeed tomorrow. And if you will permit me once more to give one good look about that room, I believe that I will have found out all that can be discovered at present, and I can even show you a small light in the sky to befriend you after I have gone. You will wait in here, naturally. I have your permission?”

  She rose, already on her feet before he had moved.

  “Of course I’m coming, too—there’s something I want to make sure of. Didn’t you say that it was awfully important to find out what the hyoscine was put into?”