Five Fatal Words (20 page)

"Yet I can't," said Melicent, "think of the killings in connection with her."

"Do you suppose," said Donald, "she has no friends? What a stake for them to work for! Two hundred millions largely at Mistress Loring's mercy, if Uncle Theodore is the one who inherits."

"But if we go by the order D-E-A-T," objected Melicent, "he is the next one to die."

"I know it; but will they go on in that sequence? Mightn't it be a sequence which someone started and clung to for a while and then would suddenly abandon? For instance suppose it is somebody interested in seeing the money come to Uncle Theodore that decided to hurry the hand of fate; suppose he noticed that five of the family name spelled

'death.' That might have suggested to him an order for killing the first three and it might also have suggested to him the idea of the five-word messages which he sent for a warning--or for whatever purpose they were sent--but it would not oblige him to kill Uncle Theodore next. He could skip Theodore and end either of the others more easily because they would be expecting T to be next."

"I see. You mean the person who planned it all might be counting now that your Aunt Hannah and especially your Aunt Lydia are off guard because, following the sequence, Theodore would be fourth."

Donald nodded. "Exactly; I don't say it's so but it is a possibility; and somebody has to consider every possibility. Uncle Theodore wasn't around when any of my family died nor was Priscilla Loring; but someone, who could profit from her power over Uncle Theodore, might have been. Ahdi Vado was not around-but someone else connected with Aunt Lydia might have been. Aunt Hannah was in the house when Uncle Everitt died; and Aunt Hannah went suddenly and for no sufficient reason to Brussels the night the death mist came down the Dornrey River. Why did she do that? What made her go?

"She wasn't in Dutch Guiana when my father died; of course she might have sent somebody there to do what is done. However; we've no evidence of that; only that my father was poisoned. I was there. So take me, Melicent. How about me? Have you ever counted up the things against me?"

She returned his level gaze with one equally straightforward. She hoped that he would not hesitate after that question but he was waiting for her answer.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I've counted them up."

He nodded his head. "Good girl. They make quite a damning array, don't they?

First, I alone of my family was present when my father died. I arrived mysteriously in Connecticut just after Uncle Everitt's electrocution. I was nearby at the time and no one was with me. You saw me that night in the burning room where you were looking at the prints in the dust. I went with Aunt Hannah to Brussels on the night of the mist and so I escaped it. In other words, of all the people connected with the progressive assassination of the Cornwalls, I alone have been in the--vicinity just before each death. So that has impressed you also?"

"Yes," admitted Melicent.

"It has certainly impressed me, Melicent."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, it is certainly hard to explain."

"Can you explain it?"

He looked at her with the same level gaze. "No."

"Of course your father's death," said Melicent now, "you'd not have to explain. No one could accuse you of that. You had every possible motive in wanting him to live."

"Thank you for so much; but anyone could accuse me of the other murders. May I ask what would be my motive since, with my father dead, I could no longer inherit? Have you thought that out, too?"

Melicent still looked straight into his eyes and she did not speak accusingly but rather with abstract speculation. "Yes; I've thought that out, too. Your father had died--from a natural cause. He was one of the youngest and he had been in the best health; you had had every hope and expectation that he would be the longest to live. But now he was dead and you had lost, by his death, your chance at the fortune.

"You were down there in that hot country alone and your mind began to move. Call your father's death a murder, your mind might say; turn suspicion from yourself in advance by accusing someone unknown of murdering your father-and then kill all the rest."

"But why--to what purpose for myself?"

"So as finally to break the will and come into your share of the fortune for yourself. As long as any of the brothers and sisters live, the will could hardly be broken; it is plain and explicit; the money goes from one to another in the family as long as any of the brothers and sisters live; but when the last one dies, a new will is made; and that, you figured, might be broken--especially if the most eccentric of your uncles and aunts was the last to live. The courts again and again have broken wills leaving huge fortunes to crazy projects and bestowed the money on living relatives. You have only cousins and could claim at least a fourth; and fifty millions would be a worth while stake--even for you."

"Thank you again," acknowledged Donald coolly. "Then by that reasoning, you must logically include Lester and his sister among the suspects, too."

"Logically," nodded Melicent, "I do."

"But--illogically?"

The coolness was gone from him; the challenge of warmth was in his eyes again, in the curve of his lips and inwardly she melted before him.

"Illogically," murmured Melicent, "you're--you."

"Louder; I didn't hear it."

"I can't say it again."

"If it's anything you can't say again, you must!"

He had come close to her, so that now he could have heard; but he did not rudely seize her. He never did. Would he ever? Did she want him to? Did he feel that she was preventing him? What did she want of him? What had he become to her? She flushed with confusion; and now the opening of a door aided her.

They had almost forgotten, both of them, that Theodore Cornwall had retired temporarily only to have his new horoscope cast by Priscilla Loring. The sound of the latch reminded them of that fact and of the overwhelming importance he attached to the horoscope.

Donald and Melicent swung away from each other and to him.

Theodore Cornwall looked ten years older than he had when he had gone into the room with Priscilla Loring. The leathery texture of the skin of senescence had replaced his healthy sveldtness. His face was blotchy and his mouth was drawn back mechanically so that his teeth were visible through it. He wore a species of grin. Nothing could have told more accurately the effect of his new horoscope upon him. And yet the grin itself had been caused by the faint hope given him by the prophetess.

He sat down in a chair and put his hands on its arms. Miss Loring swept into the room behind him and also took a chair. Donald, in spite of the appearance of his uncle, attempted to be casual. "Well, what did the stars say?"

The head of the old man turned mechanically toward his nephew. "There's still a chance left for me, Donald."

"Of course there is, uncle. There's always a chance. You shouldn't get so worked up."

Miss Loring laughed without mirth and said in the voice of a sibyl, "You were quite right, young man. It would be futility itself to pit one's emotions against destiny."

Donald looked at her with scorn. "I don't know about that, either. Speaking as an old pitter of emotions against destiny--"

"I'd prefer a less flippant attitude, Donald," Theodore Cornwall said slowly. "I've had a great shock. Miss Loring has just read my horoscope. For forty years I've thought that if I lived sensibly my life would be long and secure. Now, because of the idiotic sentimentality of my mother, I find I have been betrayed. I have been buoyed up by false hope."

"Well," Donald replied, "what do the stars say?"

Priscilla Loring answered for her client. "The stars which govern the life of man, when consulted on the basis of the true birth of your uncle are indefinite on the subject of his exact end. They tell him, however, what is the best course for him now to pursue.

They tell him that instead of pursuing a cautious course throughout his life he should, in order to be happy and to live long, pursue a bold course. He should take the conduct of himself into his own hands. He should do and dare. The false prophecy indicated that he should have been a recluse, as he has been all these years. The true prophecy shows that he should have lived the life of daring. He should have gone alone into strange corners of the world. He should have traveled. He should have dared all. He should have held his life at a small premium, and staked it gayly. The stars say that by such a course he would have been better protected against the black hand of doom than by all--this--" She waved at the hospital-like living room in which they sat.

A sound almost like a groan escaped Theodore Cornwall. "When I think what I have missed locked up here for three decades in silence and austere solitude; when I could have spent my time forcing my way across ice-bound frontiers, or seeking romance in some locked city high in the Himalayas; when I think of the sacrifice I have made to be calm, to be patient, to be cautious. I could have explored the Poles, flown the seas and won acclaim throughout the world."

Donald interrupted him. "You should never have had your horoscope read in the first place."

Theodore Cornwall did not take the trouble to reply to that. "All my life I have been a coward to discover, at the end, that I can save myself now only by being what I have never been--bold and daring. And will that save me?" he appealed to Priscilla Loring. "Can you promise that will save me?"

"The stars," she replied, "promise nothing. You know that well," she rebuked him almost as a child. "They only indicate tendencies. The bold course will have a tendency to save you," she repeated patiently. "The bold course." She looked about at the others, bowed, said her good-nights and departed.

Theodore, however, followed her to the door for some last few words of comfort and again Donald and Melicent were alone.

"Well, what do you make of that horoscope?" demanded Donald, frankly puzzled.

"It surprised me," admitted Melicent.

"And me. It hardly fits into a theory that she is bent upon his survival--at least until the rest of the family is finished. What I expected was more and more precautions; instead, we get the bolder course."

Theodore returned to them, made a few formal remarks which betrayed that his attention was far away and immediately went to his room.

It was after nine o'clock and Melicent knew that, if she did not retire presently, Miss Cornwall would send for her. She had already discovered that the arrangements in Theodore Cornwall's abode were similar to those which Hannah Cornwall had elsewhere. Her room adjoined the room of Hannah and they had already made arrangements for their habitual exchange.

"Can Uncle Theodore suddenly change himself now?" Donald projected aloud. "If he does, how will he go about it and what will happen? I tell you, I can't make that woman out, unless she's sincere; I mean, unless she's sold on her looney horoscopes herself and this is what she thought the stars said to her; and so she passed it on to him. But how does a person like Uncle Theodore suddenly make himself reckless and bold?"

Melicent held out her hand which Donald grasped and suddenly carried to his lips: "Good night. Thank you for your instant of illogicability. I'll never forget it!"

Melicent awoke in the morning to the sound of hammering so close that it was distinct above the city noises. It came through the window and, when she looked out, she saw that it originated upon the opposite roof, where a number of men were hastily erecting the skeleton of a wood and metal structure.

Miss Cornwall opened the door from the room which was, theoretically, Melicent's. She was dressed and evidently had been up some time for she complained. "Those men began that nearly an hour ago; what do you suppose they're doing?"

"Putting up an electrical sign," suggested Melicent.

"What good would an electrical sign be upon that roof? It would be invisible from the street."

"But there are hundreds of thousands of people who live above the streets in the high buildings."

"I don't like it," declared Hannah, nervously. "It is directly opposite Theodore's windows. I don't like it. They came long before ordinary working time and are hurrying so."

Her tone was so vigorous that it was plain that she felt far more than a mere annoyance. "It can't actually harm anyone, Miss Cornwall," Melicent said, mildly, and she exchanged into the other room where she dressed, leaving Miss Cornwall to watch the progress of the sign.

Breakfast was attended by Lydia and Ahdi Vado, Hannah, Donald and Melicent and Theodore who distinguished the meal by discussing grandly various plans of procedure for himself personally. He had swung, in imagination, to extreme enterprise which Hannah did not compliment with any comment at all.

She had learned how her purpose to shock Theodore into approved precaution for himself had been turned to the very opposite by the new horoscope and she was more moody and silent than ever as Theodore, hypnotized by the grandeur of his dreams of boldness, had become almost gay.

"What in the world can be the object of the sign they're putting up opposite your windows, Theodore?" she complained of it again.

"Seems to be an advertisement," replied Theodore complacently. "No place for it; but soon enough they'll find it out."

"What would anyone advertise there?"

"We'll soon enough see. And now, if I went to China--" He was off again in the expeditions of his mind.

"China," observed Ahdi Vado, "dwells in the depths of contemplation, indifferent to the ephemerial ripples on the surface of human affairs--such as prosperity, business triumph, even wars. Her essential composure is too profound to be disturbed by--"

Hannah interrupted with intentional rudeness. "Lydia, you are not encouraging Theodore in this new madness for adventure?"

"No," denied Lydia. "Of course not."

"Mr. Reese is calling this morning," announced Hannah.

"I never liked that lawyer," rejoined Theodore. "No one should know so much as he does of our affairs. He has made himself altogether too--necessary. I dislike and distrust him."