I charged her with growing old, to which she replied with a shrug. I upbraided her as a cynic, and she smiled inscrutably. But the manner of her life was not changed. In a way I envied her. It was almost like looking down on the world and watching tolerantly its mad scramble for the rainbow’s end. The days I snatched at the ‘Rosary’, particularly in the summer, when Madelyn’s garden looked like nothing so much as a Turner picture, left me with almost a repulsion for the grind of Park Row. But a workaday newspaper woman cannot indulge the dreams of a genius whom fortune has blessed. Perhaps this was why Madelyn’s invitations came with a frequency and a subtleness that could not be resisted. Somehow they always reached me when I was in just the right receptive mood.
It was late on a Thursday afternoon of June, the climax of a racking five days for me under the blistering Broadway sun, that Madelyn’s motor caught me at the Bugle office, and Madelyn insisted on bundling me into the tonneau without even a suitcase.
‘We’ll reach the Rosary in time for a fried chicken supper,’ she promised. ‘What you need is four or five days’ rest where you can’t smell the asphalt.’
‘You fairy godmother!’ I breathed as I snuggled down on the cushions.
Neither of us knew that already the crimson trail of crime was twisting toward us – that within twelve hours we were to be pitchforked from a quiet weekend’s rest into the vortex of tragedy.
2
We had breakfasted late and leisurely. When at length we had finished, Madelyn had insisted on having her phonograph brought to the rose-garden, and we were listening to Sturveysant’s matchless rendering of ‘The Jewel Song’ – one of the three records for which Miss Mack had sent the harpist her check for two hundred dollars the day before.
I had taken the occasion to read her a lazy lesson on extravagance. The beggar had probably done the work in less than two hours!
As the plaintive notes quivered to a pause, Susan, Madelyn’s housekeeper, crossed the garden, and laid a little stack of letters and the morning papers on a rustic table by our bench. Madelyn turned to her correspondence with a shrug.
‘From the divine to the prosaic!’
Susan sniffed with the freedom of seven years of service.
‘I heard one of them fiddling chaps at Hammerstein’s last week who could beat that music with his eyes closed!’
Madelyn stared at her sorrowfully.
‘At your age – Hammerstein’s!’
Susan tossed her prim rows of curls, glanced contemptuously at the phonograph by way of retaliation, and made a dignified retreat. In the doorway she turned.
‘Oh, Miss Madelyn, I am baking one of your old-fashioned strawberry shortcakes for lunch!’
‘Really?’ Madelyn raised a pair of sparkling eyes. ‘Susan, you’re a dear!’
A contented smile wreathed Susan’s face even to the tips of her precise curls. Madelyn’s gaze crossed to me.
‘What are you chuckling over, Nora?’
‘From a psychological standpoint, the pair of you have given me two interesting studies,’ I laughed. ‘A single sentence compensates Susan for a week of your glumness!’
Madelyn extended a hand toward her mail.
‘And what is the other feature that appeals to your dissecting mind?’
‘Fancy a world-known detective rising to the point of enthusiasm at the mention of strawberry shortcake!’
‘Why not? Even a detective has to be human once in a while!’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Another point for my memoirs, Miss Noraker!’
As her gaze fell to the half-opened letter in her hand, my eyes travelled across the garden to the outlines of the chalet, and I breathed a sigh of utter content. Broadway and Park Row seemed very, very far away. In a momentary swerving of my gaze, I saw that a line as clear cut as a pencil-stroke had traced itself across Miss Mack’s forehead.
The suggestion of lounging indifference in her attitude had vanished like a wind-blown veil. Her glance met mine suddenly. The twinkle I had last glimpsed in her eyes had disappeared. Silently she pushed a square sheet of close, cramped writing across the table to me.
‘My Dear Madam:
‘When you read this, it is quite possible that it will be a letter from a dead man.
‘I have been told by no less an authority than my friend, Cosmo Hamilton, that you are a remarkable woman. While I will say at the outset that I have little faith in the analytical powers of the feminine brain, I am prepared to accept Hamilton’s judgement.
‘I cannot, of course, discuss the details of my problem in correspondence.
‘As a spur to quick action, I may say, however, that, during the past five months, my life has been attempted no fewer than eight different times, and I am convinced that the ninth attempt, if made, will be successful. The curious part of it lies in the fact that I am absolutely unable to guess the reason for the persistent vendetta. So far as I know, there is no person in the world who should desire my removal. And yet I have been shot at from ambush on four occasions, thugs have rushed me once, a speeding automobile has grazed me twice, and this evening I found a cunning little dose of cyanide of potassium in my favourite cherry pie!
‘All of this, too, in the shadow of a New Jersey skunk farm! It is high time, I fancy, that I secure expert advice. Should the progress of the mysterious vendetta, by any chance, render me unable to receive you personally, my niece, Miss Muriel Jansen,
