As a ditch drains at the opening of a sluice, leaves and twigs sucked
one by one, slow at first then rapidly, down the outward current, the
library drained of guests, silently, furtively, slow almost to the door,
swift as the need to escape the room, the others, and their own
astounding collapse under sudden stress, dragged them away. When the
last of them had disappeared, Belknap, with John’s aid, helped Bertrand
Whittaker to his room. They paused at his threshold. For the moment
there seemed nothing to say. Both perhaps felt the effects of a certain,
for them, anti-climax to the evening’s events—something rather hollow,
almost something ridiculous, in the situation. Whittaker felt let down.
Belknap ugly and impatient.
“How’s the head?” Belknap asked stiffly.
“Quite all right, thanks,” Whittaker answered with equal stiffness.
“Won’t you come in?”
“No. Not now. There’s too much in the affrighted air. Get some sleep if
you can. Though perhaps you think you’ll get plenty of that soon enough.
Well, you’ve started the ball rolling with a vengeance, haven’t you?
Satisfied? God, Whittaker, hadn’t you better cry quits? It isn’t too
late. Tell ’em it was a practical joke; and ask Crawford’s pardon on the
side. You see for yourself it isn’t going to be so daisy simple. _A_
murder! We’ll be lucky if it’s only half a dozen. There was no lovelight
in any one’s eyes this evening, except in that poor little goose of a
Joel’s. And she went upstairs looking withered. Slice this house from
garret to cellar right now and it would make as pretty a Desire Under
the Elms cross-section as you could find in a day’s journey.”
“The desire being to get me, huh?” Whittaker asked grimly.
“Exactly. If only whoever gets you would just please make a thorough job
of it. Who do you think tried it?”
“Haven’t a ghost; have you? Thought it was going to be the Colonel
somehow. But the blow didn’t quite come from his direction. Still, he
may have swung around me in the dark. It was a nasty knock, I think with
metal, but glancing. That’s what saved me.”
“Whittaker, you _are_ a cool one. Wish I could match you tonight. But
there are moments when I don’t like it. Change your mind?”
“_Never!_ No, as I said before, if you don’t like the game, get out.
I’ll find a detective to whom it _will_ be a challenge to the best work
that’s in him.”
“And _I_ will never get out. You know that; you know it only too well,
you old reprobate. Filthy as the weather looks ahead, catch me refusing
to go through it, if it’s there to go through. Well, while we linger
here the plot undoubtedly thickens. I’d best get a move-on. Good-by—for
the moment.”
“Good-by, and good-hunting,” Whittaker said as he turned away, leaning
more heavily on John’s arm. Closing his door he murmured “Ah!” on a
breath, meaning, if he had troubled to say all he meant, “Well, well,
see what we have here.”
Romany Video, in a great fluff of feathery negligee, lay face downward,
a vibrant, hysterical puff-ball, on the bed. She was a mere speck of
worried humanity troubling the white waste spaces of Whittaker’s
four-poster; but an insistent speck, like a mosquito at a screen.
Whittaker regarded her for a moment with an expression of mingled
amusement, pity, contempt, and the faintly suggestive
what-can-I-do-for-you look certain men always have for a fair damsel in
distress. Thoroughly as Whittaker knew this particular damsel, no
distress of hers would quite leave him indifferent.
But he took his time. There was no harm ever came in letting a woman
wait—or weep. He said nothing. Sitting on the edge of the bed, as though
Romany were not there, he let John help him exchange his pair of
patent-leather for a pair of pigskin slippers, remove his dinner-coat
and stiff shirt, and slip his green silk dressing-gown over his
shoulders. Romany, properly responsive to the delayed attention,
redoubled her sobbing.
“Thank you, John. That’ll do for now. No, don’t bother about my head.
It’s hardly more than a mean bruise. I’ll call you later if I want you.
Good-night.”
Whittaker, allowing John to depart, silently studied the trembling,
haired-up curls of Romany’s dishevelled head. Then, on the click of the
latch, he leaned across and touched her arm.
“Come, come, little one. What’s it all about? You’re taking it too hard.
I’m sorry it had to be Crawford to begin with—for your sake. But you’ll
get over him, if you have time, as you got over me. As you got over
Blake. How did Blake let you get over him?”
“Oh, go away, you horrid, mean thing. I can’t bear you. Don’t _talk_ to
me. Don’t you _dare_ touch me.”
“As bad as all that? Dear, dear! You’re taking him harder than you took
most of us. You like them good, is that it? Gives you something to do
making them over.”
“You bad man! How can you say such things to me? How _can_ you, after
all we’ve been to each other? You used never to do anything to hurt me.
And look at you now. What _has_ happened, Bertrand dear? It’s such a
cruel world. I can’t bear it. I tell you, I can’t. I’m going to kill
myself. I’m going to _die_, Bertrand.”
“My dear, for the first time of the hundred and one you’ve made that
threat, there’s a chance of it’s coming off,” Whittaker said, and said
the one thing in creation that, instead of aggravating them, could have
stopped Romany’s hysterics dead in their tracks. Romany was quiet;
desperately quiet. She lifted her head from the foam of maribou and
looked at Whittaker with wide, distraught eyes, and parted lips.
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“What I say,” he mocked her whisper by imitating it. “Even if you escape
tonight, Romany (for death, whose name you so often take in vain, is on
the _qui vive_ in the house tonight), you have Durian’s death to answer
for.”
Romany screamed, and throttled the scream with her hand across her
mouth.
“Bertrand! You are going—to tell—_that_? You’ve written it down as you
wrote about Neil?”
“I have.”
“Oh, no-no-no-no. Please, no. I don’t believe it.”
“Then wait and see. But hope isn’t dead yet, Freckles. (Let me see; yes,
there’s your one freckle that made me call you Freckles. Remember?) I’ll
have to find the Diary, or rewrite it,—unless, of course, I—”
“Oh, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” Romany bounced back into her
hair, her maribou, and the rumpled pillows.
“_Don’t_ say that!” he cried dramatically. And Romany caught at a straw.
She sat up again.
“You care?” she said. “You _do_ care. Oh, Bertrand, _why_ are you making
me suffer so? I don’t understand. _Darling_, is it because you’re
jealous?” She threw both arms recklessly around his neck and clung to
him with the wild strength of a drowning person. “Did he think his
little Romany had really gone away and left him? Did he think she cared
about all the other mans? Why, his poor little girl only thought the big
man had got tired of her. She did, darling. Truly, she did.”
Whittaker slowly and carefully, with all the force of his hands,
disengaged her arms, but, once disengaged, he found his own of necessity
engaged in holding her.
“Brat!” he said, on a low, half-laugh, and kissed her lightly.
“Oh,” she breathed with a relieved sigh that rose, softly, from the
bottom of her heart. “It’s so long since you called me that. I love it.
How _silly_ of us to quarrel, Bertrand. And be jealous! After all these
years. To think you could ever have been so cruel as to pretend to tell
about Durian to bring me back. Couldn’t you have found a pleasanter way,
darling?”
Whittaker regarded her obliquely through half-shut eyes.
“What about Crawford?” he asked.
She had the grace to color.
“Poor Neil,” she murmured. “But that’s for him to take care of, isn’t
it?”
“I see it is.” She felt him shiver, but misinterpreted it.
“Happy?” she asked.
“The Devil has that reputation.”
He felt her take alarm again, with a defensive stiffening. She laughed
shakily.
“Naughty boy! You’re being sarcastic.”
“Am I?”
Suddenly, Romany sprang away from him and stood trembling from head to
foot, and chattering with uncontrolled and unexpected rage.
“You are go-go-_going_ to tell.” She stuttered feverishly. “You are
going to tell on all of us. You r-really mean it. Don’t you? D-don’t
you?”
“Ah, you’ve figured it out, have you? Yes, I’m telling. How often must I
say it to get it through your pretty head?”
“You brute! You beast! You—,” like a spoilt child Romany stamped.
“You’re a hateful, cruel, wicked man. You can’t do it. Just you try. No
one will let you. You’ll be killed first. You can’t do it to me, do you
hear. I’ll kill you myself. You’ve got to leave me alone. Leave me
_alone_. What do you think I killed him for? Because he betrayed me,
didn’t I? And what are you doing to me? Betraying me, too. You look out,
Bertrand Whittaker. There’s nothing I’ll stop at if I’m roused. No, not
even murder.”
Whittaker shed Romany’s tantrum as a duck sheds water.
“Histrionics, baby,” he said. “You never can get far away from them, can
you? Fifth-rate quotations from sixth-rate melodrama. Not that I don’t
wish you meant your big threat. I do. But if you really mean to kill me,
don’t shout about it. The house is listening, if I know the house. Do it
on the quiet. Now run away home to your room, child, and think it over.
I’ll drop in later, if I may, and get the results. Pity I haven’t the
poor old diary by me and I’d mark you the passages about yourself.
They’re quite thrilling. Make you out a sort of Medici, of the
willow-wand variety. You should be honored.” Romany swayed. “Don’t
faint, my dear, _again_. You do it too often. It’s becoming a vicious
habit. The thing for you to do is to get to bed.” Whittaker worked her
gently toward the door. “Goodnight—sleep tight—wake up—”
Romany drew away from him with a shudder. Wrapping her gown tightly
about her with a pathetic little gesture of pride and courage, she flung
a parting shot from the doorway.
“And don’t think you’re the only one that can tell tales out of school,
Bertrand Whittaker. I’ll match you revelation for revelation if it comes
to the book of revelations. You’ll have a tall lot of explaining to do
to the law if I let—.”
She was in the hall, and had dropped her voice. Whittaker failed to
catch a name she gave.
“Who’s that you’ll let the world know about?” he shouted.
Romany put her dust-mop head back into the room.
“_Just you guess!_ And I hope you die of fright,” she hissed, and,
turtle-wise, withdrew the head.