She whispered in Ned Beaumont's ear, savagely: 'Throw something at him.'
Ned Beaumont chuckled.
She picked up the whisky-bottle and said: 'Where's your glass?'
While she was filling their glasses Mathews went upstairs.
She gave Ned Beaumont his glass and touched it with her own. Her eyes were wild in the red glow. A lock of dark hair had come loose and was down across her brow. She breathed through her mouth, panting softly. 'To us!' she said.
They drank. She let her empty glass fall and came into his arms. Her mouth was to his when she shuddered. The fallen glass broke noisily on the wooden floor. Ned Beaumont's eyes were narrow, crafty. Hers were shut tight.
They had not moved when the stairs creaked. Ned Beaumont did not move then. She tightened her thin arms around him. He could not see the stairs. Both of them were breathing heavily now.
Then the stairs creaked again and, shortly afterwards, they drew their heads apart, though they kept their arms about one another. Ned Beaumont looked at the stairs. Nobody was there.
Eloise Mathews slid her hand up the back of his head, running her fingers through his hair, digging her nails into his scalp. Her eyes were not now altogether closed. They were laughing dark slits. 'Life's like that,' she said in a small bitter mocking voice, leaning back on the bench, drawing him with her, drawing his mouth to hers.
They were in that position when they heard the shot.
Ned Beaumont was out of her arms and on his feet immediately. 'His room?' he asked sharply.
She blinked at him in dumb terror.
'His room?' he repeated.
She moved a feeble hand. 'In front,' she said thickly.
He ran to the stairs and went up in long leaps. At the head of the stairs he came face to face with the apish Jeff, dressed except for his shoes, blinking sleep out of his swollen eyes. Jeff put a hand to his hip, put the other hand out to stop Ned Beaumont, and growled: 'Now what's all this?'
Ned avoided the outstretched hand, slid past it, and drove his left fist into the apish muzzle. Jeff staggered back snarling. Ned Beaumont sprang past him and ran towards the front of the building. O'Rory came out of another room and ran behind him.
From downstairs came Mrs. Mathews's scream.
Ned Beaumont flung a door open and stopped. Mathews lay on his back on the bedroom-floor under a lamp. His mouth was open and a little blood had trickled from it. One of his arms was thrown out across the floor. The other lay on his chest. Over against the wall, where the outstretched arm seemed to be pointing at it, was a dark revolver. On a table by the window was a bottle of ink—its stopper upside down beside it—a pen, and a sheet of paper. A chair stood close to the table, facing it.
Shad O'Rory pushed past Ned Beaumont and knelt beside the man on the floor. While he was there Ned Beaumont, behind him, swiftly glanced at the paper on the table, then thrust it into his pocket.
Jeff came in, followed by Rusty, naked.
O'Rory stood up and spread his hands apart in a little gesture of finality. 'Shot himself through the roof of the mouth,' he said. 'Finis.'
Ned Beaumont turned and went out of the room. In the hall he met Opal Madvig.
'What, Ned?' she asked in a frightened voice.
'Mathews has shot himself. I'll go down and stay with her till you get some clothes on. Don't go in there. There's nothing to see.' He went downstairs.
Eloise Mathews was a dim shape lying on the floor beside the bench.
He took two quick steps towards her, halted, and looked around the room with shrewd cold eyes. Then he walked over to the woman, went down on a knee beside her, and felt her pulse. He looked at her as closely as he could in the dull light of the dying fire. She gave no sign of consciousness. He pulled the paper he had taken from her husband's table out of his pocket and moved on his knees to the fireplace, where, in the red embers' glow, he read:
I, Howard Keith Mathews, being of sound mind and memory, declare this to be my last will and testament:
I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, Eloise Braden Mathews, her heirs and assigns, all my real and personal property, of whatever nature or kind.
I hereby appoint the State Central Trust Company the sole executor of this will.
In witness whereof I have hereunto subscribed my name this .
Ned Beaumont, smiling grimly, stopped reading and tore the will three times across. He stood up, reached over the fire-screen, and dropped the torn pieces of paper into the glowing embers. The fragments blazed brightly a moment and were gone. With the wrought-iron shovel that stood beside the fire he mashed the paper-ash into the wood-coals.
Then he returned to Mrs. Mathews's side, poured a little whisky into the glass he had drunk from, raised her head, and forced some of the liquor between her lips. She was partly awake, coughing, when Opal Madvig came downstairs.
Shad O'Rory came down the stairs. Jeff and Rusty were behind him. All of them were dressed. Ned Beaumont was standing by the door, in raincoat and hat.
'Where are you going, Ned?' Shad asked.
'To find a phone.'
O'Rory nodded. 'That's a good enough idea,' he said, 'but there's something I want to ask you about.' He came the rest of the way down the stairs, his followers close behind him.
Ned Beaumont said: 'Yes?' He took his hand out of his pocket. The hand was visible to O'Rory and the men behind him, but Ned Beaumont's body concealed it from the bench where Opal sat with arms around Eloise Mathews. A square pistol was in the hand. 'Just so there won't be any foolishness. I'm in a hurry.'
O'Rory did not seem to see the pistol, though he came no nearer. He said, reflectively: 'I was thinking that with an open ink-bottle and a pen on the table and a chair up to it it's kind of funny we didn't find any writing up there.'
Ned Beaumont smiled in mock astonishment. 'What, no writing?' He took a step backwards, towards the door. 'That's a funny one, all right. I'll discuss it with you for hours when I come back from phoning.'
'Now would be better,' O'Rory said.
'Sorry.' Ned Beaumont backed swiftly to the door, felt behind him for the knob, found it, and had the door open. 'I won't be gone long.' He jumped out and slammed the door.
The rain had stopped. He left the path and ran through tall grass around the other side of the house. From the house came the sound of another door slamming in the rear. The river was audible not far to Ned Beaumont's left. He worked his way through underbrush towards it.
A high-pitched sharp whistle, not loud, sounded somewhere behind him. He floundered through an area of soft mud to a clump of trees and turned away from the river among them. The whistle came again, on his right. Beyond the trees were shoulder-high bushes. He went among them, bending forward from the waist for concealment, though the night's blackness was all but complete.
His way was uphill, up a hill frequently slippery, always uneven, through brush that tore his face and hands, caught his clothing. Three times he fell. He stumbled many times. The whistle did not come again. He did not find the Buick. He did not find the road along which he had come.
He dragged his feet now and stumbled where there were no obstructions and when presently he had topped the hill and was going down its other slope he began to fall more often. At the bottom of the hill he found a road and turned to the right on it. Its clay stuck to his feet in increasing bulk so that he had to stop time after time to scrape it off. He used his pistol to scrape it off.
When he heard a dog bark behind him he stopped and turned drunkenly to look back. Chose to the road, fifty feet behind him, was the vague outline of a house he had passed. He retraced his steps and came to a tall gate. The dog—a shapeless monster in the night—hurled itself at the other side of the gate and barked
