An iron hand shot out of the darkness of the landing, caught her wrist in an agonizing vise. Then someone dragged her back into the room and she looked up into the raging somber eyes of Henderson Neal. She had not been frightened at first, but the sight of that face with its snarling lips and its bloodshot eyes unnerved her. In an instinctive gesture of fear she threw up her free hand which held the little case. It slipped from her grasp and some of the knives fell on the floor.
Still holding her he stooped and picked one up.
Her self-control ebbed back to her. Somehow she had never been seriously afraid of Neal. Her scorn had been too great for that. One does not fear what one scorns.
She said to him evenly, “Henderson, let me go.”
But he pulled her closer to him. “I’ll never let you go again. Either you’ll come with me, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll kill you.” But the thought obviously had just come to him.
“Pooh!” she made a face at him. A trace of her old-time slanginess returned: “What’s all the excitement?”
His heavy countenance lowered, darkened. “He actually looks black,” she thought to herself.
“You know you can’t fool me, Maggie girl. You had me believing you divorced me because I gambled, when what you wanted was to get back to that highbrow feller of yours!”
“What highbrow fellow?” She knew he was confusing Peter with Philip, but she must engage him in talk until Simpson could return.
“As though you didn’t know. The one who just left here. Are you gonna give him up, Maggie?”
“I am not.” Her cool decision drove him beside himself.
“You think I’m foolin’, don’t you? I’ll show you. I know you’re alone in the house. I’ll give you just three seconds to tell me you’ll come back to me.”
“I’ll let you kill me first.”
She saw him look at the knife, Peter’s knife, which he was still holding in his hand. A look of determination settled in his eyes.
Even then she was not frightened. People—the people one knows never do that sort of thing.
With a flash-like movement he leaned closer and brought the keen, glittering piece of steel down toward her. When she saw he was in earnest she threw her arm forward close over her breast. But the knife bit down, down into the soft flesh. Bewildered she saw the red blood spurting, gushing over her arm, her dress, a soft green dress which she had donned for Peter. Now it was turning in spots to a vivid red.
He let go of the arm, looking at her with fascinated gaze. Slowly she sank, turned her eyes toward him, saw him drop the knife and rush headlong out of the room.
So she was going to die, killed in a brawl with her divorced husband. The fires of her life were to go out, extinguished under the waters of commonness and degradation. After all, what did it matter? Her thoughts took an odd turn as she felt herself slipping, slipping into the blackness of what must be death.
“He must have loved me even more than I loved Philip. What a pity that I have to die without letting Philip know how dearly I loved him.”
XXVI
A few moments later Mr. Simpson came rushing up the front steps. He tried the door gingerly and found to his relief that it was not locked. That meant Mrs. Ellersley had not yet returned to chide him for his carelessness. Miss Maggie now was different; she would never carry on, no matter what a fellow did. It would be just as well for him to stop at the room at the head of the stairs and let her know he had returned.
The landing was still dark, but long experience had taught him to navigate the troublesome chair. Without mishap he reached the door of the sitting-room. Everything was absolutely silent, still he would just put his head inside to make sure.
He was concluding there was nobody there when his eye caught something protruding from the other side of the table which stood in the center of the room. A chair, too, had been overturned, and scattered about on the floor were several little bright shiny things. He picked one up, looked at the legend on the handle, “Chilled steel, England, Peter Bye.”
The name of the maker evidently. Queer doings here. Half afraid, wholly curious, he ventured in further, especially intrigued by that light brown object which protruded from beyond the table and which looked—though this, he knew, was imagination—like a hand. He bent over it, touched it, followed it with eyes and fingers to an arm dripping and scarlet with blood and beyond the arm a face golden and immobile. Beyond the head lay still another of those small strange objects. Only this was neither bright nor shining; it was red, a vivid red and the handle which he touched with a shaking finger was sticky.
He sprang backwards, his face ghostly under its brown skin, his eyes goggling. This was—Death. “Oh, God! Help! Murder! Police! Miss Maggie!” Down the stairs he tore, his hands twisted and fumbled at the locks. The door opened to disclose Joanna standing on the doorstep about to ring the bell.
She looked past him into the dim hall. “Do you know if Miss Ellersley is in?”
His eyes widened in horror. “For Christ’s sake, lady, keep out. Don’t go in there, she’s dead, pore girl, murdered.”
“Nonsense! Maggie murdered! What do you mean?”
Stammering and shrinking he told her of his ghastly find. “Don’t go in there, lady, don’t know nothin’ about it. I don’t mean to.”
She caught his arm. “Here, come on, you must take me to it—to her; she can’t be left like this. Be a man.” But for all her brave words her knees were shaking.
Unwillingly he led her to the quiet form in the green and red-soaked dress. Joanna dropping beside it put her hand on Maggie’s
