"In the dining-room, I imagine. It wouldn"t be very well bred of anyone, would it, to come out and be introduced in the middle of this very loud, very vulgar quarrel that you are making with me--"
"I"m going to see."
"No, Sargent."
"Let me pa.s.s, Rose!"
"I will not. Sargent, I will not let you make an absolute fool of yourself before my friends before you give me a chance to explain--"
"I will, I tell you! I will! _Let me go!_"
They were struggling undignifiedly in the center of the room, her firm strong hands tight over his wrists as he pawed at her, trying to wrench himself away. Mr. Piper was a gentleman no longer--nor a business man--nor a figure of nation-wide importance--he was only a small furious figure with a face as grey and distorted as a fighting ape"s who was clutching at the woman in front of him as if he would like to tear her with his hands. A red swimming had fallen over his eyes--all he knew was that the woman-person in front of him had fooled him more bitterly and commonly than anyone had been fooled since Adam--and that if he could not get loose in some way or other from the hateful strength that was holding him, he would burst into the disgusting tears of a vicious small boy who is being firmly held down and spanked by an older girl. Grammar, manners and sense had gone from him as completely as if he had never possessed them.
"Lemme go! oh d.a.m.n you, d.a.m.n you--you _woman_--you _devil--lemme_ go!"
"Be _quiet,_ Sargent! Oh shut up, you _fool, shut up!"_
A noise came from the kitchen--a noise like the sound of a man falling over boxes. Mr. Piper struggled furiously--Paris was crawling out of the window--Paris, the sleek, sly chamberer, the gay hateful cuckoo of his private nest was getting away! Mrs. Severance turned her head toward the noise a second. Mr. Piper fought like a crippled wrestler.
"Grr-ah! Ah, would you, would you?"
He had wrenched one hand free for an instant--it went to his pocket and came out of it with something that shone and was hard like a new metal toy.
_"Now_ will you lemme go?" But Mrs. Severance tried to grab for the hand with the revolver in it instead, and succeeded only in striking the barrel a little aside. There was a noise that sounded like a cannon-cracker bursting in Mr. Piper"s face--it was so near--and then he was standing up, shaking all over, but free and a man ready to explain a number of very painful things to Paris as soon as he caught him. He took one step toward the dining-room, sheer rage tugging at his body as high wind tugs at a bough. Now that woman was out of the way----
And then he saw that she was out of the way indeed. She could not have fallen without his hearing her fall--how could she?--but she was lying on the floor in a crumple of clothes and one of her arms was thrown queerly out from her side as if it did not belong to her body any longer. He stood looking at her for what seemed one long endless wave of uncounted time and that firecracker noise he had heard kept echoing and echoing through his head like the sound of loud steps along a long and empty corridor. Then he suddenly dropped the pistol and knelt clumsily beside her.
"Rose! Rose!" he started calling huskily, his hands feeling with frantic awkwardness for her pulse and her heart, as Oliver Crowe ran into the room through the curtains.
x.x.xIX
Oliver thought that he had never been quite so sure of anything as he was that he must be insane. He was insane. Very shortly some heavy person in uniform would walk into the tidy kitchen where he and Ted were crouching like moving-picture husbands and remark with a kind smile that the Ahkoond of Whilom was giving a tea-party in the Mountains of the Moon that afternoon and that unless Oliver (or, as he was probable better known) St. Oliver, came back at once in the nice private car with the wire netting over its windows, everybody from G.o.d the Father Almighty to Carrie Chapman Catt would be highly displeased. For a moment Oliver thought of lunatic asylums almost lovingly--they had such fine high walls and smooth green lawns and you were so perfectly safe there from anything ever happening that was real. Then he jumped--that must be Mrs. Severance opening the door.
"What are we going to _do_?" he said to Ted in a fierce whisper.
Ted looked at him stupidly. "Do? When I don"t know whether I"m on my feet or my head?" he said. His drugged pa.s.siveness showed Oliver with desolating clarity that anything that could be done would have to be done by himself. He crept over toward the window with a wild wish that black magic were included in a Yale curriculum--the only really sensible thing he could think of doing would be for both of them to vanish through the wall.
"Look! Fire-escape!"
"What?"
"_Fire-escape_!"
"All right. You take it."
Oliver had been sliding the window up all the while, cursing softly and horribly at each d.a.m.natory creak. Yes--there it was--and people thought fire-escapes ugly. Personally, Oliver had seldom seen anything in his life which combined concrete utility with abstract beauty so ideally as that little flight of iron steps leading down the entry outside the window into blackness.
"You first, Ted."
"Can"t." The word seemed to come despairingly out of the bottom of his stomach.
"Came here. Own accord. Got to see it through. Take my medicine."
"You fool, she doesn"t want you here! Think of Elinor!" For a moment Oliver thought Ted was going to blaze into more blind rage. Then he checked himself.
"I am. But listen to that."
The voices that came to them from the living-room were certainly both high and excited--and the second that Oliver heard one of them he knew that all his most preposterous suppositions on the drive down from Southampton had come preposterously and rather ghastly true.
"Well, _listen_ to it! Do you know who the man is now? And will you get out on the fire-escape, you _fool_?"
Ted listened intently for the s.p.a.ce of a dozen seconds. Then "Oh my G.o.d!" he said and his head went into his hands. Oliver crept over to him.
"Ted, listen--oh listen, d.a.m.n you! What"s the use of acting the chivalrous fool, _now_? Don"t you see? Don"t you understand? Don"t you get it that if you leave she can explain it some way or other--that all you"re doing by staying is ruining yourself and Elinor for a point of honor that hasn"t any honor _to_ it?"
"Oh sure. Sure. But listen to him--why great G.o.d, Ollie, if he has a gun he might kill her--probably will--Don"t you see it"s just because I hate the whole business now--and her--and myself--th"at I"ve got to stick it out? You go, Ollie, it"s none of your business--"
"You go. You blessed idiot, there"s no use of both of us smashing. If anybody"s got to stay--I can bluff it out a good deal better than you can--trust me--"
"Oh rats. Not that it isn"t very decent of you, Ollie, it is--and you"d do it--but I wouldn"t even be a _person_ to let you--"
They were both on their feet, talking in jerks, ears strained for every sound from that other room.
"It"s _perfectly_ simple--n.o.body"s going to pull any gunplay--good Lord, imagine poor old Mr. Piper--" said Oliver uncertainly, and then as noises came to them that meant more than just talking, "_Get down that fire-escape_!"
"I can"t. Let go of me, Ollie. I mustn"t Listen--something"s up--something bad! Get out of the way there, Ollie, I"ve got to go in!
It _isn"t_ your funeral!"
"Well, it isn"t going to be yours!" said Oliver through shut teeth--Ted"s last remark had, somehow been a little too irritating. He thought savagely that there was only one way of dealing with completely honorable fools--Ted shouldn"t, by the Lord!---Oliver had gone to just a little too much trouble in the last dozen hours to build Ted a happy home to let any of Ted"s personal wishes in the matter interrupt him now. He stepped back with a gesture of defeat but his feet gripped at the floor like a boxer"s and his eyes fixed burningly on the point of Ted"s jaw. Wait a split-second--he wasn"t near enough--now--_there_!
His fist landed exactly where he had meant it to and for an instant he felt as if he had broken all the bones in his hand. Ted was back against the wall, his mouth dropping open, his whole face frozen like a face caught in a snapshot unawares to a sudden glare of immense and ludicrous astonishment. Then he began to give at the knees like a man who has been smitten with pie in a custard-comedy and Oliver recovered from his surprise at both of them sufficiently to step in and catch him as he slumped, face forward.
He laid him carefully down on the floor, trying feverishly to remember how long a knockout lasted. Not nearly long enough, anyway. Ropes. A gag. His eyes roved frantically about the kitchen. _Towels_!
He was filling Ted"s mouth with clean dish-rag and thinking dully that it was just like handling a man in the last stages of alcohol--the body had the same limp refractory heaviness all over--when he heard something that sounded like the bursting of a large blown-up paper bag from the other room. He accepted the fact with neither surprise nor curiosity.
Mr. Piper had shot Mrs. Severance. Or Mrs. Severance had shot Mr. Piper.
That was all.
As soon as he had safely disposed of Ted--for an eery moment he had actually considered stowing him away in a drawer of the kitchen-cabinet--it might be well to go in and investigate the murder.
And then either Mrs. Severance or Mr. Piper--whichever it was of the two that remained alive--might very well shoot him unless he or she had shot himself or herself first. It seemed to Oliver that the latter event would save everyone a great deal of trouble.
He did not relish the idea of being left alone in a perfectly strange apartment with two corpses and one gagged, bound and unconscious best friend--but he liked the picture of himself trying to make explanations to either his hostess or Mr. Piper when, in either case, the other party to the argument would be in possession of a loaded revolver, still less. He hoped that if Mrs. Severance were the survivor she had had a sufficiently Western upbringing at least to know how to shoot. He had no particular wish to die--but anything was better than being mangled--and a reminiscence of Hedda Gabler"s poet"s technique with firearms caused his stomach to contract quite painfully as he tightened the knots around Ted"s ankles. Ted was the devil and all to get out on the fire-escape--and then you had to tie him so that he wouldn"t roll off.
He crawled back through the window, dusted his trousers, and settled his necktie as carefully as if he were going to be married. Married. And he had hoped, he thought rather pitiably, that even though Nancy had so firmly decided to blight him forever she might have a few pleasant memories of their engagement at least. Instead--well, he could see the headlines now. "Big Financier, Youth and Mystery Woman Die in Triple Slaying." "_Dead_--Oliver Crowe, Yale 1917, of Melgrove, L. I."