Danger in the Dark
Read Danger in the Dark Online
Authors: Mignon G. Eberhart
Mignon G. Eberhart
A MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM BOOK
Chapter 1
T
HE DAY BEFORE THE
wedding Dennis Haviland returned.
No one expected him. The letter, written in Amelia’s spidery handwriting, in which she made brief and rather bitter mention of the wedding, was gathering dust in an unclaimed-letters file in the Buenos Aires post office. He knew nothing of the wedding until he landed in New York, bought a Chicago
Tribune
and looked at it—hungrily, after his year’s absence, and hunting for familiar names.
He found them in plenty.
But it was the picture he saw first.
It looked out of the page straight at him. Daphne in a fashionably simple tailored suit, with a hat below which her eyes were level and remote. She wore gloves, so he couldn’t see the huge sapphire on her left hand, and a sable skin crossed softly under her uplifted chin. And she didn’t look at all like Daphne.
He stopped abruptly, letting people jostle past him.
No, it wasn’t like Daphne. Of course, it was a posed photograph, made for that purpose. And she looked very handsome, very poised, and a little unfriendly. There was no hint of gaiety in her eyes, no faint tremor of a smile about her closed lips. Her chin was lifted a little, the fine bones of her face a bit more clearly defined than he remembered. Fine bones, he thought absently; family, though she isn’t really a Haviland. Good God, how like Amelia that sounded! And it was queer how a man could think in two layers; one on the top of his mind, superficial and articulate—one deep down and wordless.
It was her mouth that looked natural and like Daphne, and that was all. It was so—so resolute. That was it. He could remember her in her childhood, holding her mouth just in that unsmiling, resolute line when she was determined to undertake some feat of derring-do which the boys—himself and Rowley—had themselves accomplished, boastfully and with swaggers. She was younger than they, and they teased her and ordered her about, but they were proud of her, too.
A baggage truck trundled by; a porter shouted, and somebody jostled his elbow, said, “What the hell, did you rent this space?” and Dennis looked up, lifted his slender, peaked black eyebrows and moved good-naturedly to one side and returned to the paper.
It was then that he read the paragraph below the picture.
It was a brief paragraph. It said that Daphne Haviland was being married the next day. At Miss Amelia Haviland’s place in St Germain. The immediate family and a few of their closest friends would be present. Rowley Shore was to be best man. The immediate family were Mrs Archie Shore, her son, Rowley Haviland Shore and Miss Amelia Haviland; John Haviland would give his daughter in marriage. And she was to be married to Benjamin Brewer.
That was as far as Dennis read.
There were some additional notes. A Bermuda honeymoon, an apartment at a good address; a reference to the late Rowley Haviland, the bride’s grandfather, and to the fact that Benjamin Brewer was president of the Haviland Bridge Company; a mention of schools, clubs, the Haviland name—all of it words that were like threads making a background. Dennis, however, saw nothing of it, for he was hailing his porter.
He took the eleven-o’clock plane for Chicago.
Later, when the weather was important, he remembered that trip above and through opaque gray-white clouds, the glimpses of snow-covered hills and ribbons of black that were paved roads; the lights of Gary twinkling through the curtain of falling snow, and the red blast furnaces. Somewhere below there were the Haviland furnaces. The Haviland plant where steel was made for Haviland girders and Haviland rails and sent out over the world.
He thought of it briefly: the Haviland Bridge Company. Once a small business: owned and controlled by one man. Now a great steel-fabricating company whose products went all over the world. In Shanghai, in Rio, in Cape Town, he had seen that well-known, poignantly familiar mark: “The Haviland Bridge Company.” They had built, long ago, only bridges; small jobs with old Rowley Haviland himself acting as construction superintendent. He wasn’t old then, and he was a great engineer and a great opportunist. The small jobs leaped to big jobs. It was a period of expansion and building, and the Haviland Bridge Company grew overnight. And in 1914 it became actually the Haviland Steel Company, although it was incorporated as the Haviland Bridge Company and the name was never changed. Steel was needed: steel was needed perhaps more than anything else in a war-mad world. So Rowley Haviland made his own steel: made it and sold it: undertook and delivered huge contracts. By the time the war was over he had established a great steel-fabricating company and had founded a private fortune for himself and his family.
Had, in fact, not only accumulated a private fortune but had provided—thoughtfully, after long and anxious consideration—for its preservation. His entire fortune was invested in the bridge company, and he willed all that stock, justly and fairly, to his children, with the exception of various small cash bequests. And he provided, as fully as he was able to do, for the future and safety of the company.
Or, at any rate, felt he had done so.
A phrase from the famous will floated into Dennis’ memory: “… with the knowledge that in case of future …”
Need,
was it, that came next?
Economic pressure?
The exact wording of it escaped him, but the intent was clear enough. In case of future need the Haviland Bridge Company (and thus the Haviland fortune) was amply provided for and safeguarded. Well founded. Well provisioned.
The self-satisfaction, the more than tinge of complacence about it, was justified.
It was a great, far-reaching business.
But it seemed to Dennis just then as unreal, as remote as that changing red glow of furnaces had been. For Daphne’s picture came before him again, and he could think of nothing else.
The plane circled into the wind and dropped downward into lights which streamed sharply into the early December twilight. Later, too, he remembered the cold, wet air on his face as he stepped from the plane. But at the time he kept thinking of the look about Daphne’s mouth.
A lot would depend, of course, upon Daphne. But he could tell when he saw her. He was sure of that.
He reached St Germain an hour later, and since there was no one to meet him, walked through the snow in the chill, purple twilight, with thickets of firs and shrubs black and still along the road. He knew every foot of the way. Away below as he turned was the river; frozen over and white with the new snow. How often they’d skated there; Daphne with her cheeks as red as her cap and her eyes like stars. And Rowley and he. Here was the corner of the high limestone wall.
Yes, a lot would depend upon Daphne.
He turned into the winding drive. As the lights from the low, sprawled bulk that was the house began to glimmer through the bare trees, he had his first qualm. After all, it took something to face down the combined resistance of the Havilands.
He paused, staring through the heavy dusk at those lights. In the pause a light car suddenly turned from the public road into the drive, and as its bright lights fell upon him he moved out of its path. It chugged briskly past him; it was the station truck, laden with his own luggage and with a multitude of packages and boxes which loomed up dimly above him. Packages and boxes that had to do with the wedding, he supposed.
Daphne’s wedding.
It would take some thinking over, this thing he was going to do. But he was going to do it. There was no other possible way.
He turned aside from the drive and plunged upward on a little path through shrubs that raked and stung his face. He looked at that moment remarkably like ruthless old Rowley Haviland—nose and chin jutting out and eyes that seemed to withdraw and consider, under the sweep of those black eyebrows. At the end of the path was the little old springhouse, hideous in the daytime for its fancy peaked roof and its encircling windows of many-colored glass, in the twilight a black shape that again, and in the top of his mind, aroused memories of childhood.
It was unlocked; it was cold and dark and musty inside, but there was a bench and a place to sit. He lit a match or two, discovered an old steamer chair and sat down and lighted a cigarette.
It would take some thinking.
Calm and deliberate thinking, as he hadn’t been able to do in the plane. He must make no mistakes; it must be swift and certain and well planned, not impulsive,
He turned his coat collar up and pulled his hat lower, and in the little recurrent glow from his cigarette his brown face looked lean and grim.
The cigarette spent itself in ashes and a small charred end, and he lighted another. But he made the greatest mistake when, because it pressed against the chair and thus rather sharply into his ribs, he took a small, cold steel thing from his pocket and sat there turning it absently in his hands, watching the reflections of the tiny red circle which was his cigarette.
Almost exactly six hours later, Daphne Haviland let herself quietly out the front door of the dark and silent house and paused for an instant on the step. It was very dark and snowing again and very still. It was cold, too, and she pulled the collar of the fur coat she’d hastily flung around her up about her ears, and the coat itself tighter around her body. She thought vaguely that she ought to have changed; she hadn’t realized it was snowing again or that it was so cold. She hadn’t, in fact, thought of anything but the thing she had to do. Gold kid slippers and the thinnest of hose and a yellow velvet train. How still it was, she thought suddenly. How very black except for the faintly luminous look of the snow nearest her.