“But see here, Miss Keate, I—it is important that I see her.” He spoke rather defiantly as if he dared me to ask why. “Will you carry a note to her, then?”
Well, I was willing to carry a note to Maida, so I shivered under the folds of the flapping slicker while he stood with his back to the rain and wind, scribbling hastily on a bit of yellowish paper he pulled from his pocket. He held the paper close to him to protect it from the rain but I noted that it was an unused Western Union telegraph blank.
“There, and thank you, Miss Keate.” He handed me the folded scrap of paper and I slipped it into my pocket.
But at the end of the bridge I turned.
“Why, Mr. Gainsay,” I exclaimed. “I had forgotten. You were to leave this morning!”
His face had lost the youthful look with which he had begged me to take the note to Maida, and had become lined again, and his narrowed eyes were unfathomable under that shadowy hat brim.
“I shall not go for a few days,” he said after a barely perceptible pause. “I can scarcely leave at such a time. Louis was a friend. They have no relatives here. Corole needs someone.”
His disjointed explanation did not please me. I restrained a rather obvious remark as to chaperonage; after all, Huldah was a militant and vigorous enough chaperon to suit the most meticulous Mrs. Grundy.
I daresay, however, that my disapproval was apparent in my expression, for Jim Gainsay added hastily:
“My boat doesn’t sail till next week.”
“Your boat?”
“I’m to sail on the Tuscania.”
“Oh,” I said flatly, and there being nothing further I took my way on around the hill.
The Letheny cottage looked cold and grim as I approached it. Puddles stood along the turf path; the flowers were beaten down by the wind and leaves had blown all over the porch. Huldah answered the bell, her eyes red and swollen and the cap that Corole had forced her to adopt hanging dejectedly over one ear.
“Miss Keate!” she cried. “And so wet!” She took my slicker, holding it so it could not drip on the rug. “Oh, Miss Keate! Such a t’ing! Such a t’ing!” It is only when Huldah is tremendously moved that she forgets her digraphs.
“Yes, it is dreadful, Huldah,” I said. “How is Miss Corole?”
Huldah shrugged her heavy shoulders oddly.
“There she is, in the study.” She motioned toward the door without answering my question and then followed me, her china-blue eyes curious and round like a rabbit’s between their pink rims.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Corole with not very flattering indifference. “For Heaven’s sake, Huldah, take that wet coat to the kitchen. And close the door behind you,” she added viciously. “I suppose you came to offer sympathy,” she went on, moving a pillow to a more comfortable position under her arm. She was half-lying, half-sitting on the big davenport. A fire had been built in the fireplace but had burned down to a few sullen ashes with a red gleam here and there. There was no light in the room beyond the gray, rainy dusk from the windows.
Corole’s hair was disarranged a little from its usual flat gold waves, and her eyes had great dark circles under them, and her face in the ghostly gray light was sallow and drawn. But she was gowned in a coppery-green silk thing that clung smoothly to her rather luxuriant curves. A heavily embroidered Chinese scarf, whose usual place, I recalled, was on the long table near her, had been flung over her feet and somehow, I presume because she glanced obliquely at it and reached surreptitiously to rearrange it, I got the impression that she had hastily flung it over her feet as I came into the room.
“Yes,” I replied gravely. “I am very sorry that this thing has happened.”
“Oh, of course, it is terrible,” she agreed quickly. “The whole thing is simply unspeakable.”
There was little for us to say; I offered the usual remarks; Corole told me that Dr. Letheny’s body would be sent to New Orleans for burial with others of the family and thanked me perfunctorily for my offers of assistance.
“Jim Gainsay is staying on for a few days,” she said. “Nice of him but I really don’t see what he can do.” There was a faint ring of resentment in her voice that surprised me. Corole was not a woman to resent masculine company.
“I suppose Huldah is making you comfortable?” I said for lack of something better.
“Oh, yes,” replied Corole discontentedly. “She does as well as usual. She was awfully upset about all this. Jumps every time I speak to her.”
“Would you like someone to come and stay with you for a few days?”
“No,” said Corole sharply. “No. Why should I?”
“Oh—in case of anything—er—happening. I should think you would be a little nervous.” My explanation sounded somewhat lame and I recalled that Corole actually had no idea of the things we had gone through last night. … A swift recollection of that shallow, locked closet in Room 18 came to me and I arose suddenly, moved to another chair, and tried to think of something else.
“… not that Huldah would be any good if something did happen,” Corole was saying. “She would simply pull the covers over her head and shriek. But there’s Jim.” She added the last name grudgingly as if to say, “such as he is,” and lapsed into silence.
“I must get back to the hospital,” I said presently, not seeing that my presence was vital to Corole.
“I don’t suppose they have any idea as to what happened to the radium,” she observed casually as I arose.
“No. I don’t know what to think.”
“It would seem natural to believe that whoever killed Mr. Jackson and—er—Louis—did so in order to get the radium.”
“So it would seem,” I agreed. “For my part, I have not had time to speculate on possibilities. It is—too shocking.”
“Don’t you think that
