DIANA PULLS A LEVER
Dearborn put his arm about her waist and dragged her from the room
into the saloon. When he released her, her knees gave way under her
and she dropped to the floor.
“Everything must be seemly,” said Dr. Judd gravely. “We cannot
countenance a vulgar scene. Do I speak your mind, brother?”
“Exactly, my dear,” answered David Judd.
Diana stared up at him from the floor, resting her shaking body upon
her arms.
“What are you going to do with him?” she asked wildly.
Again the brothers looked at one another.
“You tell her, doctor,” said David gently.
Dr. Judd shook his head.
“I think you should tell her, my dear David,” he answered. “You are so
very delicate in these matters, bless you--and remember,” he added,
“that she is your wife.”
David had seated himself and was leaning over the arm of the chair,
his immobile face fixed upon Diana’s.
“When I have finished with him,” he said, “I shall drown him.”
She started up, her hand to her mouth.
“My God!” she breathed.
The dreadful truth came upon the girl with a rush. These men were
madmen! Madmen who preserved all the outward appearance of sanity, who
day by day and for years had conducted a business with sane men and
never once betrayed the kink in their unwholesome minds. She shrank
back from them, farther and farther back, until she was against the
panelling of the opposite wall. They were her father’s murderers! She
thought she was going to faint, but dug her nails into her palms in a
tremendous effort to keep her senses. Mad, and the world rubbed
shoulders with them and never suspected!
“Shall I read?” asked David quietly.
“Yes, yes, read,” she said eagerly.
They were to kill Larry when he had finished reading!
That was the thought which obsessed her as she turned her drawn face
to the man. The vanity of this monomaniac was flattered, and he
betrayed his agitation in his stumbling speech as he read the first
two pages of his manuscript.
Then his voice grew calmer, and the girl understood in a wondering way
that he was imparting into these dead and lifeless words a beauty
which only his mind could see, but which, in some extraordinary way,
he was conveying also to her.
Dr. Judd had slipped from his chair to the big bearskin rug before the
fire and sat with his legs crossed, his hands clasped before him, his
large eager face turned to his brother. And here was another curious
circumstance which the girl noted numbly. Those lines which seemed
brilliant to David were brilliant also to the other, and when he
paused self-consciously, as if for applause, it was always the doctor
who anticipated his desire.
“Wonderful, wonderful! Is he not a genius, Miss Stuart?” asked
Stephen.
She glanced quickly at the other, expecting to find him embarrassed,
but he sat bolt upright, a complacent smile upon his heavy face, a
benevolence in his eyes. And they were planning murder! They had
murdered many men in this terrible house, she thought, and wondered.
Had they sat here whilst their victims fought their last fight in that
horrible dungeon, the one reading and the other listening to these
trite sentences, these age-worn situations which both believed were
the work of a supreme genius?
“This is not my best work,” said David, as though reading her
thoughts. “You like it, of course?”
“Yes,” said the girl in a low voice. “Go on, please.”
She hoped to keep them occupied throughout the whole of the night. She
knew that the police would be searching for Larry, and perhaps one of
them knew this house in Chelsea. But those hopes were to be shattered,
and her heart gave a wild leap as she saw David close the manuscript
book and put it tenderly on the table beside him.
“Brother,” he said, “I think----?”
The doctor nodded.
“And it would be a gracious thing, and a picturesque beginning for all
the happiness which lies ahead of us, if this fair hand----” He took
the unresisting hand of Diana in his, and again he did not complete
his sentence.
He took his keys from his pocket, the keys that Flash Fred had so
carefully duplicated, and Larry had duplicated again, and walked to
the door through which the girl had entered the room. He smiled to
himself as he inserted the key and the door swung open.
“Will you come this way, dear girl?” he asked. She hesitated, then,
summoning her courage, followed him down a flight of steps.
Again there was a door at the end. A little room filled with machinery
she saw, when he put on the light. He walked to a switch.
“You shall have the honour of releasing our friend--we bear him no
malice--Mr. Holt.”
“Release him?” she asked huskily. “Do you mean that?”
She hesitated, her hand upon the black lever in the wall.
“Why do you not open the door and let him out?” she asked
suspiciously.
“That will open the door and release him. Believe me, my dear, I would
not in this hour deceive you.”
It was the doctor who spoke in his softest tone, and she hesitated no
longer. Her brain was in a whirl. She could not analyze either their
motives or their sincerity, nor could she appreciate the fact that to
these men deception was a habit of thought. She swung the lever back
and it came more easily than she had expected. Then she looked at the
door.
“Let us go and meet him,” said the doctor, and put his arm round her
shoulders.
She shivered, but did not attempt to escape, and so he led her up the
stairs and back into the _salon_, closing and locking the door behind
him.
Then, before she could guess or anticipate his intentions, the arm
about her shoulders had become a grip as firm as a vise, and she found
herself pressed closely to the big man.
“My wife, I think, brother,” he said.
“Undoubtedly your wife,” said the doctor; “for the world is yours to
pick and take from, my dear.”
“My wife,” repeated Dearborn without emotion, and brought his lips to
hers.
She was frozen with terror, incapable of movement. Why did not Larry
come? Then, as suddenly as he had seized her, the doctor released his
hold and took her cold hand in his.
“Come back to the fire, wife,” he said. “I will finish the third act
of this great work of mine, and by that time Mr. Holt will be dead.”