"You want to live, don't you? You're not depressed? Not brooding? Not low? You feel well? You're young and looking forward? You've got something to live for?" Francis barked questions at her harshly, angrily. "You don't want to die?"


"Of course I don't want to die! I don't know what you're talking about!" She was so angry she stood up without knowing she had done so. With her head thrown back, her chin up, eyes bright, her breath drawn with indignation, her lovely figure taut and poised, she was most vividly alive.


"Now, Mrs. Howard—" Gahagen began soothingly.


Mathilda flashed around to face him. She would have said she was not Mrs. Howard, but Grandy was around his desk and beside her suddenly, and his hands on her shoulders were quieting and warning her. "There, duckling, there. Francis worries. Naturally. Naturally. You mustn't be angry." He turned to Gahagen. "I think he's made a point," he said. "We could not possibly say there was any mood at all. I can't condemn—" Grandy's voice broke a little. "I dare not damn Althea with a piece of imagined nonsense which may have been my own mood after all. And if we can't say for sure, Tom, ought we not to say it was an accident?"


"That—er—note—" began the detective.


"Such a strange little note," said Grandy. "So vague. So meaningless. I fancy she's written such a note to me or Oliver many a time. And as long as we do not know her reasons or even whether she had any, need we mention any note? To—to people? Frankly, Tom"—Grandy compressed his lips—"I don't want to hear them speculating. I don't want to hear their guesses. I don't want to know they're wondering why Althea wanted to die. For myself, I would rather believe Althea left us accidentally. I do earnestly believe that she loved and trusted us enough to wish to stay."


Francis put both hands over his face.


Tyl thought, Francis is more upset than Oliver, even. She thought, Poor Althea, how could she make a mistake and die? She thought. Oh, my poor Grandy! Pity and grief wheeled around, tumbled each other in her consciousness and yet hardly roused her. They were pale images of coming emotions, only their mental shadows.


But Francis' hands were hiding a black and deadly anger, full grown.


Chapter Eighteen


All afternoon people came. Tyl was still encased in an aching paralysis that hadn't yet sharpened to pain. It didn't occur to her not to remain in the long room, not to stay there and bear it She was there, and people came—Grandy's friends—and she stayed and watched and listened numbly.


Grandy was in his big chair. No tears, no sighs, no break in the rich gentleness of his voice. He made kind little inquiries of his friends about their daily affairs. Ever so gently, he kept his grief private. The assumption was that it lay too deep for tears. Tyl saw more than one turn away from him with a convulsed face. It was so beautiful a performance, such a touching thing.


Grandy's friends. Personalities, all of them. They would go to him and receive his gentle greeting, his sweet questions. Then they would go to Oliver, who was in the room, although he seemed not to know where he was exactly, and only stammered “Oh, hello,"

and "Thanks" and "Yes" or "No," stupidly. Then they would come to Tyl and Francis, who was there beside her, and they would congratulate her, weakly, on being alive. They muted their joy in her return in deference to the death in the house. It was as if they were

all saying. Too bad. He's lost his beauty, though of course he's got this one back. Too bad."


Althea would be a legend. The lovely girl with the silver eyes who died so young. She'll never grow old, Tyl thought, but stay young and lively in their memories. They will forgive her for everything. Well, she thought, I forgive her.


Francis was introduced as Mathilda's husband. It didn't seem to matter. It was too hard to explain now. Too involved and fantastic. Let it go.


Francis was taking a good deal on himself. It was he who, when the emotional pressure got too high, knew how to break the fever. When Schmedlinova made a gliding run all the way down to Grandy, wailing like a Russian banshee, it was Francis who made

a cynical aside and steadied Mathilda's jumping heart. It was Francis who sat at her elbow to say the right thing when she couldn't think of what to say at all. She found her eyes meeting his over people's heads. They seemed to have suddenly acquired a full code of signals that went easily between them. It was he who rescued Oliver from the poet who kept quoting, when Mathilda asked him to with her eyebrow. He took slobbering old Mrs. Campbell away before Mathilda screamed. It was his shoulder she found behind her when a sudden wave of fatigue sent her reeling backward. It was Francis who told her quite rudely, at six o'clock, to go upstairs and lie down. It was Francis who brought her a tray, who pulled the comforter over her feet, who dimmed the light. Lying on her bed, weary and numb, she supposed, with dull surprise, that Francis had been acting very like a husband.


When Jane got off the train at seven thirty, Gahagens men were there to meet her. They took her to his office without telling her why. It was obvious that she hadn't known what had happened to Althea. She nearly fainted when they told her. In fact, Gahagen was

alarmed and called the doctor. The girl was badly shocked. It was no fake, either. Gahagen was sorry that his duty had led him to distress her. After all, the poor little kid didn't know anything, had nothing to tell them, sat there twisting her hands, looked dazed and unhappy. Gahagen sent a man to run her up to Grandy's house.


Francis had taken so much on himself that it was only natural for him to meet her at the door and put his arm around her.


What they exchanged under their breaths was not much, because Grandy's voice said, "Is that Jane?" and people leaned around the arch to say that Grandy was asking for her. It was only natural that Francis should keep his arm around her and lead her to Grandy's

throne.


It was a lovely scene. The yellow-haired child in the powder-blue suit with the little white collar kneeling there. Dear old Grandy bent over her so tenderly. And that tall, good-looking Howard man, standing there with Jane's little blue cap in his hand, that he'd picked up when it fell. The long room was quiet.


"I know," Grandy said. "I know, child. I know." His voice was soft and sympathetic, and it didn't change as it went on to ask, "What were you doing in the garden last night with Francis?"


Jane cut a sob or two. Francis, standing by, looked perfectly blank. He felt himself to be within the range of Grandy's eyes, although those eyes were kept on Jane. He struggled for blankness.


Jane took down the handkerchief, revealed her tousled face, all lumpy with weeping. "Oh, Mr. Grandison, I didn't know you knew. I'm sorry."


"Sorry about what, dear?" They were speaking low. The people in the room couldn't hear what they were saying. It all went for part of the tender little scene.


"He only had an hour," wept Jane. "It wasn't anybody's fault. I told him he shouldn't have come and tried to see me, but, seeing that he had, I couldn't just tell him to go away. So I thought it wouldn't really. . . disturb you.”


Grandy said, "You re telling me it wasn't Francis?"


"Oh, no," said Jane. "Of course it wasn't. It was a—a boy I know. I'll never do it again, sir. I'm so sorry."


Grandy said, "But, my dear, I was not complaining. I was curious, y'know. Next time bring him indoors, child. We are not ogres."


Jane began to cry again, as if such kindness were too much to bear.


Francis said, "What's this about? Something to do with me?"


"Tyl thought she . . . saw you," Grandy said, with a curious little break of hesitation and doubt. His eyes turned. Not his head.


"Tyl did?" said Francis. He kept his face blank, turned his eyes, not his head. Too bad. Tough on Mathilda, but the kid would have to put up with this. It looked as if Jane had really fooled him. But at any rate, Tyl's evidence on what she knew or saw was tending

to seem more and more unreliable.


Jane was getting to her feet. Francis took her arm. He said kindly, with just a trace of absent-mindedness, "Hadn't you better come along upstairs and wash your face or something?"


In her room they faced each other. "Well?"


She said, "I got it."


"What we thought?"


"Yes." She told him rapidly and rather mechanically. "I listened to it myself. Told them a wild story about a bet. I got a girl there to listen with me, as a witness. Got it cold, and it's what we want. The Phantom Chef said 'Burn tenderly' only once in that record, and he

said it at ten thirty-five."


"Fifteen minutes." Francis struck his palm with his other fist.


"Yes" said Jane. There was no triumph.


"And Rosaleen hanging since the fuse blew at ten-twenty. That's proof."


"Yes," said Jane.


"Proof!" Francis was bitter and old again. "Jane, he's the devil. How can we fight the devil? That tongue of his, the power of it! He molds the thoughts in people's heads with his tongue, Jane. Their brains melt. He makes them think what he wants them to think.

They're all his puppets. And he's the great director. Look at him now. He's killed twice, committed two murders, and everybody is down there weeping for him."


"Did he . . . kill Althea too?"


"Of course he killed Althea!" swore Francis.


"I couldn't tell Gahagen tins alone, but now—"


"Oh, yes, we will now take our nice neat proof to the police," said Francis. "What proof?"


"The time, the radio, the record—all of it. . . . Fran, what's the matter?"


"I can swear Althea told me what she heard on the radio and when she heard it. But you realize . . . Althea isn't here any more."


"You mean we can't—oh, Fran—can't prove it?"


"If I had another witness—"


"Lie then," said Jane fiercely. "IH say I heard her tell you."


"When?"


"Any time you say*


"You were in the house with them."


"Then you'll have to say she told you some other time."


"When?"


"Oh, I don't know."


"Not you, Jane. Not you, anyhow. It's too dangerous. Maybe you fooled them. All the more reason to keep you out of it now."


"But I'm not out. Why is it any more dangerous?"


"For God's sake, anything's dangerous, anything near him! It's dangerous for us to stand here and talk. It's dangerous to look sidewise at him. I stuck my neck out this morning. Maybe he'll chop my head off before dawn."


"Fran!"


"Why not? He must be on the track of why I'm hanging around here. He must know by now. He's too smart not to see my motive sticking out like a sore thumb. Oh, he's caught on. I hope he hasn't caught on to you. He's quick too. No sooner did he realize that the

police knew a fuse had blown . . . Althea's snuffed out. Quick. Neat. No fuss, no bother. Althea was quietly assisted to her grave, all right. And no nasty little loose ends this time, either."


"But you think—you're sure he did it?"


"He did it." Francis dropped his hands. His voice was sick. "But I can't prove it. There's no proof at all. And if he knows now what I'm after, I expect he'll arrange to deal with me."


"You're different," said Jane sharply. "You're no girl."


"True," said Francis. "True. Just the same, if anything does go wrong—"


"Oh, Fran!" Jane shivered.


"Remember Grandy's back-door caller?"


"Do you mean Press, the garbage man?"


“Yes.”


"Why?"


"Because," said Francis thoughtfully, "he comes to the back door. And I'm young and strong."


"I'll remember," said Jane. "But what are you going to do?"


"See here. No matter what happens, don't let anything make you admit you're ... on my side. Mind that, Jane. Promise. Never mind, I've got a better idea. You go home. Resign, Nobody would blame you."


"But what are you going to do?"


“I'll try a bluff."


"What do you mean?"


"I'll insist I've got a witness to what Althea told me. I'll spread out the whole case against him. Pretend it's complete. Maybe I can bluff him. I've got to try. If I could only catch him off guard. Let him make one slip of that tongue! Don't you see, Jane, it could add

just enough— You be in there and we—" He broke off.


"I'm not going home," said Jane. "You see, you need me."


"But how am I going to protect you? How can I protect Mathilda?"


"Mathilda?"


He was impatient. Couldn't she see Mathilda was in the most dreadful danger? Couldn't she realize, as he did so clearly, that some one of these days that proud head, those long lovely legs, the exciting green eyes, the whole lovely, bewildered girl, could die? If the old man took a notion—


"Yes, damn it, of courser he cried. "Look, he's got to get rid of her someday. How am I going to be sure she's safe? She thinks the world of him. She'd do anything he asked, any time. Won't stop to think, because she's clinging to him now. Because she's got to believe in something! And, dear God, how can she believe in me? It's driving me"—he calmed down—"a bit wild," he confessed.


"But he wouldn't dare!"


"Jane, he's more dangerous than you know. He's what Rosaleen said. Perfectly selfish. There's nothing to make him hesitate."


"Can't we go to the police now?"


"Yes, try it. Maybe Gahagen will listen. I wish we had the cold proof. Jane, Grandy'll talk himself out of what we've got. My word's going to be less than enough, after the lies I've told. I don't see how Gahagen can listen."


Jane looked at his face and nearly wept


"Unless— After all, he's guilty," said Francis. "And he's got guilt in his mind and a mixture of lies and truth to remember. He could slip. Its the only thing I can see to try. Attack. With all I've got. Bluff him down. So," he said rather softly, “I'll try . . . one more

legal way."


"What do you mean?"


"Maybe you'll have to go outside the law to get the devil."


"Fran!"


"Sh-h."


Grandy was coming up the stairs. They slipped Jane's door tightly shut and stood without breathing.


If he was coming in here— If he were to find them whispering together—


Luther Grandison was near a violent death just then, as he walked placidly past the door where it was waiting and went into Mathilda's room instead.


Chapter Nineteen


Nor did he know that Francis went like a cat out Jane's window to the kitchen-porch roof and that he clung, tooth and nail, in the angle the house made there outside Mathilda's window or that he watched, one foot on the sill, cheek on the house wall, fingers wound in a vine. Grandy didn't know. Francis couldn't hear. Through the glass he tried to read across the dim room those thin, mobile lips through which the voice was pouring.


"Resting, darling?"


"I'm awake."


"Poor Tyl. Poor sweet Tyl."


"Oh, Grandy."


"Hush, don't cry." Grandy sat down, heavy and sad. "You're all right, Tyl?"


His anxiety pricked her like the tip of a knife he was trying out. "Of course " she said.


"Because it frightens me. I'm afraid."


"Don't be afraid, Grandy. I'm all right." She sat up. "You're thinking of what Francis said this morning?"


"I can't help thinking. There's that old, old, ancient rule of three. It frightens me."


Tyl's pulse began to pound in her throat


"Make me a promise, sweetheart," Grandy said.


"Of course."


"Promise you'll come straight to me if you feel—if you have any feelings at all that you can't cope with or bear. Promise, Tyl?"


"Yes, Grandy."


"There's a pressure in my house. You can't see it, of course. You can't hear it. Five senses don't betray it to you, but you feel it all the same. I was afraid of it before. It's death, I think. Not our familiar death that comes on schedule for the old or the sick. This is Death, the fascinator. The Death that's like a dark lover. Don't you see, duck? If it got Althea, it was because it got her unaware. She didn't know. She hadn't been warned. There's an attraction, a dreadful pull. Have you never stood on the edge of a steep drop, Tyl, and felt the urge to go over?"


"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, Grandy."


"It's similar, similar. Pressure. Pull. What difference? Something wants you to go over and be done with everything. Francis was so right, duckling, to be afraid."


Tyl tightened her hands on the coverlet. She had been lying on top of the bed, still dressed. Now she sat up, tense, not resting her back against the headboard. The light was dim. Grandy's face was in darkness. His voice was vibrant. She could feel the vibrations

in her breast.


"You mustn't worry about me," she said as stoutly as she could. "Please, Grandy. I do love you so. And I'm all right."


"Bless you."


"Grandy," she whispered, "if you're frightened, it scares me more than anything. Don't talk any more. Not about that."


She reached across. She thought he glanced at her, although she couldn't be sure, since his head didn't move in the dusk. Her fingers found the chain and she pulled on her light near the bed. "Let's talk about something else." She sent her voice high and gay. "Please,

Grandy. Darling, I brought you a present and you haven't even seen it. I nearly forgot"


It took all the strength she had to be so gay. It took all the courage she could find to try to change the mood for him, as he had so often done for her.


"A present?" he said. His effort was obvious. But he understood and he would play. He would try to be cheerful. "A present for me!"


She slid off the bed and ran to her dresser. The bag of Dutch chocolates was in the drawer. Grandy took it in his hands. He bowed his head. For a dreadful moment she thought he was going to weep. But he did not He opened the bag gleefully. He took a

handful out and tossed them gaily on the bed. For her, he said. Their secret. Their childish secret hoard of goodies. He made a show of it It should have been such fun.


But all the time she could hear the tears unshed behind his laughter, and when, at last, he kissed her gently on the cheek, and when he went away, clutching the bag of chocolates to his heart, Tyl threw herself on the bed and burst into tearing sobs.


Dear, dearest Grandy, he'd tried so hard, but it was enough to break your heart to see how hard he had to try.


Chapter Twenty


Her ears muffled by the sounds of her own weeping, it was a while before she heard the staccato tapping on the glass. Mathilda sat up, face wet, eyes red, hair tousled, frozen in the very image of distress, all rumpled by it. She saw him clinging there outside her window.


She knew who it was, and in a curious mood of suspended emotion she got off the bed and went calmly to open the window. Francis scrambled in. He gave her a quick look, enigmatic, and went immediately to lock the door to the hall. Tyl opened her mouth to protest. He hushed her.


"What was Grandy saying?"


She looked dumbly at him, the tears drying on her checks. For the moment, she couldn't remember what it was Grandy had been saying. Francis' face was serious, but his eyes hadn't that dark, reproachful, tortured look. On the contrary, they looked down at her with a warm light behind them, something simpler and more friendly than love.


He said, "I do wish you could trust me, Mathilda. I wish you could trust me a little bit, anyhow. I don't know what I'm going to do about you."


"You needn't do anything about me, thank you!" she said fiercely.


His hand on her arm invited her to sit down on the bed. He pulled the dressing-table bench over. They sat there, knee to knee. It seemed absurd, yet Mathilda had a feeling, half memory, that she owed him some courtesy. She sat where he had put her, and

prepared to listen.


"You haven't believed very much of what I've told you," he asked her gently, "have you, Mathilda?"


"No."


"There's one thing maybe you could believe, if you'd try. I don't want anything bad to happen to you."


"Why does everybody think something bad might h-happen?" Her voice shook. "I'm all right."


He took her hands suddenly and eagerly. "What did he say? He was talking to you about something happening, was he?" She didn't answer. Francis released her hands, although she hadn't tried to pull away. "I wish you could believe me. This is the damnedest mess. I know. You've got good reasons not to trust me an inch. And yet—Mathilda, listen. I never did think there was any danger that you'd kill yourself. Can you believe that? I was only trying to fix it so nothing would happen to you."


She shook her head, couldn't understand.


He went on desperately, "Now I'm going to do one thing more . . . might help. I want to ask you—I want to beg you to make it a little easier."


"What do you think might happen to me?" she insisted. Her green eyes challenged.


His dark eyes wavered. Then they came back boldly. "You might as well know that much. I don't want you to be murdered."


"To be what?"


"Murdered, as Rosaleen was. Althea too." His voice was very low. Mathilda drew away, leaned back, away from him, watching his face. He was watching hers. It was a strange duel between them.


"Why do you think they were murdered?" she said at last. "Are you a detective or what?" She was thinking, This explains— And yet nothing was quite clear.


“I'm no detective," Francis said. Tm just a blundering ass, tangled up in a mess here. And one girl died who might have lived if I'd stayed out of it. I don't want you to be another."


"You have been lying," said Mathilda. She sat up straighter. "You admit it now, don't you? All of that stuff in New York, all those people—you lied. You fixed it."


He didn't answer. He kept watching her face.


"If you admit that," she said, "then I just might believe what you say now."


Evading, he said, "Did you tell Grandy about it?"


"Certainly."


"About my lies?"


"Certainly."


"Did he believe you?"


"Of course he did!" She would have risen in her rage and gone away, but he caught at her hand.


"Don't be angry. I asked a question. I just wanted the answer."


"Grandy knows I wouldn't— He knows it couldn't be true that I— He knows—" she sputtered.


"Then why can't you tell me so, without getting so mad about it?"


"You won't admit you're lying!" she cried. "And I know you're lying. Why won't you?"


"Is Grandy quite sure I was lying?"


Mathilda covered her face with both hands. "Please, go away. Get out of my room. What do you want, anyway?"


He said grimly, "I want to fix it so you'll live, baby. I've got here a will you made."


"A will?"


"Will. Last will and testament. I expect it's one of those things you've forgotten. It was made in the three lost days." Francis' voice and manner had changed. He was casual, glib. "Oh, it's legal, all right. The whole thing is in your handwriting. Perfectly good last will and testament. At least plenty good enough to raise an awful stink if you should die."


“If I should—"


"My object is . . . that you don't die. I believe that if I show this little paper in certain places, it will tend to lengthen your life." He looked at her insolently. No, not insolently, but with a reckless look, a gambling look.


She said, "Oh. Now I understand."


"You do?"


"It was the money." She laughed in his face. It pleased her to see his face sobering, losing some of that wild light. "Why I should have been confused by the lie you told about your wealth— What's one more lie to you? You thought I was dead. You thought I'd never

come back! You worked out this whole scheme to chisel in."


"Muscle," he corrected. "Muscle in."


"You saw a chance to get your hands on the Frazier fortune! You re so good at forgeries. You really do lie very well."


Francis looked down at her white angry face. "I really don't know whether I can keep you from being murdered," he said with a curious, detached effect. "I'll try."


Mathilda sprang up. Tm just beginning to wonder," she blazed, "if your scheme doesn't include my murder!"


They were eye to eye now in anger.


"In about a minute," said Francis, Tm going to spank. I tell you you're in danger of your life. I know it. It makes no least difference to me what kind of liar you choose to call me. I'm some kinds of liar, but this kind I'm not. For some strange reason, I don't want you to die."


"Because you love me," sneered Mathilda.


"Unh-uh." It was a negative. It slipped out. It was an admission. She ought to seize upon it triumphantly. But she didn't. "Lets not worry about who loves whom," he went on gently, and he was smiling. "Let's forget that and go back and start over. Do you think you could listen to an idea?"


"What idea?"


"Sh-h, sh-h."


"What idea?" she repeated more quietly.


"I'll show this will to-show this around. Nobody then is going to murder you for your money except me. Right?"


"Right," she said.


"Now we'll protect you from me. Make another will, Mathilda, and hide it. Hide it from me, but tell a stranger where you hide it. The only thing is—promise don't tell—"


"Don't tell whom?"


"Don't tell anyone you know."


Mathilda drew her breath as slowly as she could. She shook herself down to calmness. "You are trying to make me afraid that someone wants to kill me. Why don't you tell me straight out who that person is?"


"Because," said Francis, "there are two Mathildas. One of them could not ever believe me. The other one knows already."


The silence closed in. Suddenly she found herself in Francis' arms. Her impulse was to let go, give up to the warmth there, put her face against him and let the tears through. But she struggled.


"Sorry," he said. He set her back on her own equilibrium. "I know what you're going through. Something about the way you take it breaks my heart." He spoke lightly. His eyes had that warm light. His eyebrows flew up with his smile. He half turned, as if to let her pull herself together. "Lookit! Chocolates!"


She watched him pick up a brightly wrapped candy, peel off the wrapper. She made herself remember that he was a liar. She said, 'Your forgeries are so very clever, perhaps I'd better make a genuine will."


She went to her little gray desk, pulled out paper and pen. "To all whom it may concern," she wrote angrily, decisively. She put down the date in big firm figures and underlined it. "This is my will and it supersedes all others, including the one forged by a man who calls himself my husband. I am twenty-two years old, unmarried, perfectly sane. I don't know legal language, but I intend to make my meaning so clear—"


Standing behind her, Francis munched chocolates.


She wrote down that everything she had must belong to her beloved guardian, Luther Grandison. She finished it. She signed it.


Francis nodded. "Good," he said.


She looked up into his eyes. They didn't seem anything but clear and friendly. "If you'll just hide it," he said. "Please, Tyl. And tell a stranger. But only a stranger. What harm can that do? Call it a whim. Call it anything. Give me that little bit of trust or take it for

a little bit of advice that cant hurt you."


She thought she could feel the warmth of his presence close above her. The moment crystallized, as some moments will, and for just that while she was aware of the whole setting—herself at the desk with the light falling on her hands, the paper under them, white against the rosy blotter, the green pen lying there. All the background was in her mind, as if she could see it too. The gray walls around them, the furniture, the bed with its yellow spread, its soft pale yellow silken quilt, the hollow in the pillow where her head had been.


And she heard the silence of the house beyond the rooms walls. She was aware of the deserted gardens outside, below, and of the globe of the world turning through the dark toward dawn.


And in the core of the moment was the warmth of his presence, where he stood just behind her, looking down over her shoulder easily, not touching her and yet surrounding her as if there were a shield at her back.


She said, "All right. Ill hide it."


Where had her wrath gone? Where was the stubborn conflict and clash of wills? Mathilda tilted her head, looked up and back. She smiled.


He bent and kissed her warmly, heartily, like a brother, like a friend. An endearing kiss, it asked for nothing. It congratulated her.


Then he put a handful of chocolates in his pocket. "These are good," he said. "Good night" For the second, he hesitated, as if he wondered what to call her. Dear, or what? He touched her shoulder. 'Thanks, pal," he said.


Then he put one long leg out the window absurdly, as if he were getting into a pair of trousers. His face grinned at her a last moment over the sill. She heard faint scrambling noises. He was gone.


She put the window down, stepped quickly back and away from it. She didn't want him to see her watching, if he should look back. Because, of course, she wasn't watching.


She had the new will in her hand. She folded it small. She looked about for a place. A little hanging shelf near the bed had some books in it. She took one down, a thin book of poetry-Lucile-in a cardboard case. She put her piece of paper inside, between the book and its case. It wasn't a very good hiding place, but it would do.


Mathilda undressed, got into bed. She told herself that when the light was out she would lie and think things through. She would start at the beginning and be clear about everything. She would try to organize the facts, make some sense out of what had been

happening. She would try to understand with her brain, instead of reeling about in the confusion with a straining heart Instead of drifting in and out of people's arms. She thought, What a way to behave. She must—must be clear.


But once the light was off and she lay snug under the yellow comforter, Mathilda fell immediately asleep.


In the morning, she was surprised to find that the door of her room had been locked all night. It wasn't her habit to lock her door. It made her a little ashamed to think she'd forgotten. Because, of course, it was Francis who had locked it, and she'd simply forgotten.


Chapter Twenty-one


Grandy pushed the button; the gadget operated. Francis opened the study door from the living room and came in. He crossed easily to the visitor s chair and sat down. Jane, at her little desk in the corner, kept the rhythm of her typing steady, but the sense of the line she had been typing dissolved into a jumble of meaningless letters, as if she'd suddenly begun to type in code.


Grandy had a cigarette in his holder. He pushed papers fretfully away and leaned on his folded hands. He inquired after Francis' health this morning.


Francis said, “I want to talk to you."


"By all means," said Grandy with some curiosity. . . . "Jane—


"I'd like Jane to stay, if you don't mind."


"I don't mind." Grandy took the holder out of his mouth and fingered it delicately. He waited.


"Because," said Francis, "I'd like a disinterested person to hear what I am going to say."


"Would you like Jane to take notes?" said Grandy charmingly, obligingly. "She does shorthand very well."


Francis was not diverted. "I came to tell you that you are no longer unsuspected," he said quietly. "And murder's too much, you know, to excuse, even in one who has been so kind."


Grandy's interested expression remained unchanged, unless he looked even more interested. "Please do go on," he said in enchanted tones, as if this were the very thing he had needed to stimulate and excite him.


"When Rosaleen Wright hanged herself that winter morning," said Francis coolly, "she knocked over a lamp, uprooted some wires and blew a fuse."


So Tom Gahagen was telling me," said Grandy amiably. One would think they approached a puzzle together.


"Your clock on the mantel just beyond that wall was stopped. The time was twenty minutes after ten."


Grandy shifted in his chair. "Yes, yes. All this we know. What's the significance?"


"Althea was in the kitchen that morning?"


"Yes. Certainly. Althea was in the kitchen."


"So were you, Mr. Grandison."


"So was I," he agreed benignly.


"You entered the kitchen," said Francis slowly, "by that door, from this room, at ten thirty-five."


"Whatever makes you think so?"


"You see what it means if that is true?"


Grandy's mouth flattened, expressing distaste. "Something very nasty," he said. "Very nasty." He cocked his head. "Do you follow him, Jane?"


Jane felt a trickle of perspiration down her back. "I don't—no, I don't, sir," she faltered. Her eyes were round as saucers and she looked frightened.


"Really a horrible idea," said Grandy thoughtfully. "That she hanged herself before my eyes, eh? While I watched?"


Francis shrugged.


"Oh, I see!” cried Grandy. "Dear me, I hanged her!"


"The odd part of it is," said Francis, "that you did, and I can prove it."


"That would be very odd indeed," said Grandy. "How?"


"Oh, not the icebox light." Francis tossed this at him. But Grandy's head did not tremble from its bright, interested pose. "Althea told me and one other person, who will remember what was said and so testify." Francis hesitated. "You see you killed Althea

a trifle too late."


"So," said Grandy rather more heavily, "Althea too? My lovely girl, the one I've lost."


Jane let out a childish whimper. Grandy looked across at her. “My dear," he said tenderly, "can you bear to hear the rest of this? I'd like you to. Try not to feel. Just listen to the words."


Jane bent her head.


"Now," said Grandy, turning to Francis, his eyes glinting, "proceed, Mr. Howard."


Francis thought, Jane's fooled him. He's acting for Jane. He marshaled his attack.


"Althea turned the radio up, if you remember-or even if you don't"—Francis caught and controlled his temper—"at precisely the moment you entered the kitchen and closed that door. She was struck by a phrase said over the air. She remembered it clearly. That program was recorded at the time, Mr. Grandison. It gives away the exact minute. The minute you left this room. And that minute was ten thirty-five. Not earlier."


Grandy said, "My dear boy." He said it gently, with pity. "When did Althea tell you this?"


"The evening—the night she died."


"What a day and a night you've had since." Grandy spoke softly. "That is, if she really did—or even if you, for any reason, believe this story."


Francis found his throat unmanageable. The evil old bird was so full of pity. He was turning it, pretending to be seeing a point of view. He was not worried, not even looking worried. He was not reacting according to plan. The scene wasn't going right. A guilty

man, accused, had no business to look so sorry for his accuser, so successfully sorry.


Grandy said, as if to be fair, "After all, you are nearly a stranger here. But even so, dear boy, what reason do you imagine I would have had for such a deed as that?" Then, almost gaily, "Come, Mr. Howard, I must have a motive."


"My wife's money," said Francis, "was and is your motive."


"Eh?"


“You played around with it. Rosaleen Wright found out."


"Oh, dear. Oh, dear." Grandy took off his pince-nez and rubbed his eyes. "Yes?" he said. The black eyes were brimming with mirthful tears. "But Mathilda isn't your wife at all, Mr. Howard. You see, we know that."


Francis heard Jane's gasp. Oh, good girl, Jane. He said aloud, coldly, "Would you be willing to let me or anyone examine the records of the Frazier fortune?"


"Certainly," said Grandy. "This does seem so silly. As for Althea's story, what occurs to me, Mr. Howard, is the thought that Althea told no story. I think you invented it."


"Two of us invented it?"


"That's not impossible," said Grandy smoothly. "Who is your—er—corroborator?"


"In view of my opinion of you," said Francis evenly, "I don't believe I care to say."


Grandy leaned back. "You don't mean it," he challenged. "You're not serious."


“I'm serious.”


"Isn't it too bad," said Grandy in a moment, "that Althea isn't here to help us? Oh, I see! I see! That's why I'm supposed to have done her in? Well, really, that's not unsound. That's good thriller-level reasoning, Mr. Howard."


Francis bit on his cheek. "Also," he said, struggling to stay calm and seem confident, "there is Rosaleen's false suicide note. Cribbed out of an old book. What did you do? Ask her to copy it one day?"


Grandy's face fell. "Poor Rosaleen. Poor child " he crooned. "I didn't like to point out what she'd done. Poor sick little mind! Did we delve too much, I wonder, into old crimes and ancient madness?"


"Sick mind, my eye!" Francis shot up out of his chair. "And Althea was sick, too, wasn't she? Although nobody saw any signs of it but you. What will Mathilda be when her time comes? Or anybody else you decide to get rid of? Let me show you something now." He slammed the paper down on the desk, keeping his palm on it. “That's Mathilda's will. And I warn you, see to it that Mathilda doesn't diet Because, if she does, I don't think you'll care to have me and my lawyers going into financial history."


Grandy's eyes flickered. Francis held his breath, but the old man's hand was steady. He touched the paper. He read it. He took off his pince-nez and looked up.


"A forgery," he said softly. Brown eyes met black. Jane in her corner trembled.


"Do I see it all now?" mused Grandy, cocking his head. "Did you think she was lost at sea? Did you think you'd cut a piece of money with your fantastic story? I can understand so far, yes, indeed. But what are you up to now? Ah! Am I to pay you for suppressing your little ideas?"


Francis could have wrung his skinny neck. Might have done so, indeed, if Jane hadn't cried out.


"There now, you've frightened Jane," said Grandy in pouting reproach. There was no breaking there, no self-betrayal, no guilty squirm, no fear in this man. He was untouched, bland, confident, and the voice was sirup-smooth. Francis knew himself to be too angry to think, to have been outdone in self-control, and out-bluffed.


He turned and said stiffly to Jane, Tm sorry if I frightened you." He said to Grandy, as quietly as he could, “I'll take my little ideas to Gahagen, then."


"Dear boy," said Grandy warmly, "if you believe all that nonsense, you most certainly should go to Gahagen or someone. Besides," he added ruefully, "although for my part, I only wish I could help you—I'm afraid you do need help rather badly—still, I did rather promise Tyl to kick you out the door."


Francis said, "Don't bother, Mr. Grandison." He left the room.


When he had gone, Jane thought, For my life, for my life. She twisted her hands, filled her china-blue eyes with horror. "Oh, Mr. Grandison, wasn't he awful?"


"Poor chap," said Grandy. "The fellow s a fraud, of course. My poor Tyl—"


"Oh, Mr. Grandison!" cried Jane, for her life. "Nobody's going to believe anything he says! He was just trying to make trouble!"


"And well he may make trouble," said Grandy. He put his hands to his forehead wearily. "Run, fetch me some coffee, my dear. That's a good girl. Yes, do."


"Oh, Mr. Grandison!" quavered Jane, still acting for her life. "I can't tell you how sorry I feel that you have to be bothered—"


She got out the door and stood trying to control a fit of nervous shaking.


Grandy drew over his desk phone, gave a number. "Press? . . . Ah, my dear fellow, there is something I'd like you to do for me. . . . Yes, I thought you would." Then his voice cracked like a whip, 'This must be quick. Do you understand?"


"Whatever you say," said the man on the other end hopelessly.


Chapter Twenty-two


When Mathilda got down to the kitchen for her breakfast, there was only Oliver. He was sitting over a saucer full of cigarette butts.


"Where's everybody?" she asked.


"In with Grandy."


"Oh." Mathilda got herself coffee from the stove. She hoped it was good and strong. She had awakened in a cold sweat. She wondered if she was coming down with something. She felt numb and confused and as if a lowering cloud hung over the world, something

black and terrifying, ominous, threatening, as if there was worse to come. Perhaps it was only that Althea was dead.


Oliver was lighting another cigarette. He glanced at her nervously as she sat down. "The funeral is this afternoon," he blurted out. "They've released the body. Grandy says get it over with."


Mathilda shivered. What could she say? Nothing to say. It was simply stupid to open your mouth and say, "I'm sorry." Oliver put out his cigarette and lit another. He didn't seem to know he was doing so.


“This accident stuff is all right for publication,” he blurted, "but it wasn't any accident."


"What do you mean, Oliver?" Tyl put out her hand and touched his. She did feel sorry for him. There must be a way to let him know it.


"Because she must have eaten them! Eaten them!"


"Eaten what?"


Those pills. By the handful."


"The sleeping dope?"


"Yes, because, listen, Tyl, Doctor Madison knows damn well how she used to love to take a lot of junk. He fixed her up with some extra-mild ones. He told me so, when I worried about it. He knew she'd take too many, too often. He said the effect was mostly psy-

chological, anyhow. Tyl, for her to die, she must have eaten a whole bottle. So she must have wanted to die. Don't you see?"


"I can't believe—"


"You'd better believe it."


"Oliver, you didn't have any stronger pills in there, did you?'


"Never touch the junk. No. Nothing."


Mathilda shook her head. She could feel the cloud, that heavy depressing, shadowing bulk that seemed to exist in the back of he consciousness, ready to come down and swallow her up in despair She was afraid. She drank more coffee hastily.


"I can't stop going over that fight we had." Oliver stared at he with reddened eyes. "I can't stop."


"You mustn't do that," said Tyl. She, herself, felt that this was an unsupported statement. If he had asked why not, she couldn't have answered.


"I know," he said. "I know, but I can't stop. 'Burn tenderly.' What does that mean to you?"


"What does what mean?"


"'Burn tenderly.'"


"I don't know. I never heard such a thing."


"Wouldn't you guess it was love stuff? Wouldn't you think it came out of some lousy poem? Or some fancy speech in the movies? 'My heart burns tenderly."*


"Maybe" she said.


"Yeah."


"What's the matter? Why are you worrying about that?"


Oliver put his head down, and for once his forelock fell over his eyes without the self-conscious boyishness with which he had been known to let it fall. "Althea wouldn't talk that night. Night before last. Not at first. She just wouldn't talk to me at all. But then she

laughed and said that out loud. I don't think she meant to, but she said, 'Burn tenderly.' Tyl, I thought she and Francis must have been talking that way—you know, love stuff. Reading each other poems or something. I was mad. I told her what I thought. I said that proved it. She tried to tell me it was something some cook had said on the radio."


"Cook?"


"Yeah. Do you believe it?"


"I don't. . . know."


"I asked her how she'd happened to remember some dumb thing a cook said on the radio, especially at a time like that. She had a story. She said it was because she turned the radio up in the middle of a program. She'd turned it down on account of Grandy coming in, and then she turned it up, and the guy said those two words just out of a clear silence. It sounded funny. She said she'd been telling Francis about it"


“Telling Francis?"


"Do you believe that?"


“It sounds crazy."


"That's what I thought."


"Why should she be telling Francis what some cook said on the radio?"


"Yeah, that's what I wondered. I think-I still think- Oh, I don't know what I think. Suppose she did carry on with him. Tyl, I'm sorry." His eyes looked desperate. He was lost in this anguish of new honesty.


"That's all right," she said weakly. "Oliver, don't keep beating yourself. She couldn't have been enough involved with Francis to kill herself. Anyhow, Althea wouldn't have killed herself for any such kind of thing. Do you know what I mean?"


Oliver nodded. He seemed to relax a little. "I know," he said. “She was . . . flirtatious, I guess you'd say. She liked to get men interested. That was what interested her. And it would have gone on all our lives.”


"I expect it would," said Tyl sadly. It was true. Althea would never want what she had, but would always have watched with her silver eyes for her chance to step in and take what somebody else wanted. It was the act of taking away, the use of her power, that she had savored. Poor, restless, envious, uneasy Althea. Could she have seen herself and, with sudden clarity, known she must never grow old?


"Such a mess," groaned Oliver. "Everything gone wrong. From the minute we married. You got lost. Rosaleen did that . . . thing. Then Francis came, and she— He's very attractive."


"Yes," said Tyl.


"Now, this. I'm talking too much. I'm taking my troubles out on you. Tyl, you're swell. Sometimes I think I played a pretty dirty trick on you too. If I did, I hope you've forgiven me."


"Yes," she said with a shrinking feeling. "Don't talk about it."


"You know, Tyl, your money's a bad thing."


"I know," she whispered.


"I mean"—his eyes begged her to understand—"it works out a way you probably don't realize. Althea was so beautiful, and there was your money, and I kept thinking, 'Am I fooling myself? Is it the money I care for?'"


“I suppose you would," she said painfully.


"It's easy to fool yourself. I've been fooling myself all my life. I don't know how to stop, either "


"Oliver, don't."


"So when Grandy said Althea would never have anything but love to make her happy—"


"Grandy?"


"You see, I didn't notice what was going on. I guess I just couldn't believe that Althea would—well, get interested in me that way. And of course, I didn't know the way you felt, either."


"The way I felt? What way, Oliver?"


"Oh, I mean the way it was. I'm the old-timer around here. You could be sure of me. I mean, you had to be so careful some ordinary fortune hunter didn't try to play up to you. Grandy told me you had a dread of that."


Mathilda hung on to the edge of the table. The cloud was coming down. It was going to get her. She felt sick with fear.


"He cleared that up," Oliver said. "He explained how your love for me was a gentle, friendly feeling, because you felt sure of me on that score. Not real love."


She thought she'd faint. She fought against it.


Tyl-"


She managed to murmur something. "Everything's been awful this morning. I didn't sleep well." But I did, she thought. I slept too hard and too long.


"It's been awful. I know." Oliver brooded. "Dear old Grandy, of course, wanted us all to be happy. He was right, wasn't he, about you? I asked you right out that day-you made a wisecrack. I thought—I mean—"


"Don't stammer," she said sharply. "Grandy's always right. He knows me better than I know myself, almost."


She thought, But I mustn't ever tell Grandy how wrong he was or what he did to me. It would break his heart if he knew. Besides, it's all over now, and it doesn't matter. He must have known it wouldn't last. Oh, Grandy must have known. And if I hadn't been so proud

and wanted to run away and hide everything, he'd have drawn out the sting long ago. I teas a fool. I should have trusted him. She beat back her depression. She beat back fear.


Then she remembered the strange talk last night with Francis, about the will. The taste of fear rose in her throat. She thought, What's the matter with me?


She left Oliver and went toward the living room.


"Don't look like that!' Tyl cried. "Don't!" Jane was in there, crouching against the wall by the study door, like an animal stiff with fear. Tyl's hands went up to her eyes. She thought, No, I can't stand it.


“I'm awfully sorry," Jane said, straightening. "I don't know what's he matter with me."


“I'm sorry too," said Mathilda. "I don't know why I . . . screamed it you. I guess it's just nerves." She smiled faintly.


“I guess it's just nerves," Jane agreed. She smiled faintly back.


Tyl thought, watching Jane walk away, I need another girl to talk to. It didn't strike her that this was the first time Grandy hadn't seemed better than another girl to talk to.


Chapter Twenty-three


There was the funeral to face that afternoon. They made themselves sandwiches for lunch and snatched them in the kitchen, it was a queer, unsettled kind of meal, as if they were all just marking time, waiting time out until it should go by and bury Althea and release them to normal processes of grief and adjustment.


Francis wasn't there. The odd thing was that no one mentioned him. Grandy said nothing. Oliver was bound up in his inner struggle and seemed not to notice. It was not Jane's place, perhaps, to say anything about a missing guest But Mathilda kept expecting him or at least expecting someone to say a word that would explain where he was, where he had gone, for how long. She did not ask any questions herself.


When they set out in the chauffeured car lent by a friend, then were the four of them—Grandy, Oliver, Jane and Mathilda. The four of them got in and settled themselves as if no one were missing. Francis wasn't there.


Mathilda thought perhaps he would meet them at the chapel. He would be among the others and he would come back with them when it was all over. Nobody asked any questions. It was a little strange that Grandy seemed not to have noticed at all. Mathilda's

so-called husband was not where he ought to have been, even if he were only pretending. Not there, not by her side. Not there, as he had been yesterday. People would wonder.


Jane was quiet as a mouse. Jane didn't ask. Oliver didn't ask. Mathilda, herself, although the question was beginning to beat hard in her mind, didn't venture to ask. It would have been queer if she were the one to ask. She thought if she waited surely his absence would be explained. If she just waited.


The little chapel downtown in the small city was thronged with friends, the whole picturesque lot of them. Tyl sat beside Grandy and modeled herself after him in frozen calm. Be a lady. Never betray an emotion.


The ceremony was only an ordeal. She thought, if only Francis had come. If only he were on her other side, where he ought to be. But that wasn't true. He had no place—no real place and no real obligation. He only pretended. Oh, but why wasn't he there, pretending, now? She counted the scallops in the frieze. This was not the time to feel what you really felt about Althea, or remember her as she was, or try to understand her life and her death. Don't cry. Count the folds in the curtains. One, two, three, four.


When it was over, some few friends came back with them and there was tea, Francis wasn't there.


When people had thinned out, drifted off, finally gone, Oliver at last asked the question, "Say, where is Francis? Where's he been? He wasn't there at the chapel, was he?" Oliver's face turned to Mathilda for the answer.


Like throwing a ball, Mathilda thought. Don't they know!


"When he left us this morning, I believe he said he was going downtown." Grandy was mildly speculative. "Didn't he, Jane?"


Jane said, "Yes," faintly. "Yes, he did, Mr. Grandison."


"That is strange. . . . Tyl, do you know where Francis is?"


The ball had come back to her. "I don't know where he is" she said stiffly. “I don't know a thing about him. I never did. It's about time all of you knew lie isn't my husband."


Jane knew already that Francis was a fraud. That could be seen in the steadiness of her eyes and heard in the murmur she made, which was only polite.


But Oliver was shocked right out of his chair. Mathilda had to tell him the details, and he wanted to hash them over and exclaim and wonder and go around and around over the puzzle of Francis. At the same time, she thought she could see a kind of inner gleam, a repressed sparkle in his eyes when he looked at her. Tyl felt herself getting angry. She answered him in a series of grudging short phrases. She didn't want Oliver's gossipy rehash. She didn't want to hear Oliver's ideas of why people behaved as they did. She didn't want to hear Oliver wondering what made Francis tick. She felt he wouldn't know.


She was sick and ashamed of the emotional background to Francis' story. She couldn't tell them that, of course. How she'd been in such a weeping, wailing, brokenhearted, upset state over Oliver. But without that part the whole story sounded trivial and cold. Here was a man who claimed she had married him. Why had she? Presumably because she had wanted to. And then she forgot. No background of emotional distress to explain how it all might have happened. Her upset and her silly baby thoughts of revenge. Ridiculously, she found herself defending Francis. Of course, it was a lie, but it had been a good lie.


"You don't understand," she cried.


"My God, do you?" cried Oliver, and she was too angry to answer.


Jane said perhaps he'd run away. She said it looking at Grandy as if they two had secrets about Francis.


Mathilda said in anger, Tm going to bed." How had she got herself into such a temper?


Halfway up the stairs, a ring at the front door stopped her and sent her heart leaping. It was only someone to see Grandy. Might as well go up. But that voice? She stopped and looked down again. All she could see was the top of the man's red head. Francis had dark hair, not quite black. Francis hadn't come back at all; hadn't been seen all day.


Chapter Twenty-four


The cellar was dry. That, at least, was a blessing. He was alive and uninjured. More blessings to count. How long he would be able to count these or to count at all was very doubtful. Francis expected the worst. He expected that an attempt would be made to kill him. He expected it to succeed. He did not know how he could counter such an attempt, bound and tied as he was with strong harsh ropes, gagged as he was with old rags, trussed up like a chicken for the roasting, ridiculously helpless.


It was fantastic to be so helpless. Francis thought of the movies he had seen, of the many, many scenes in which a hero had been marched at the point of a hidden gun out of the cheerful streets to some lonely lair and been tied up. He thought that if he escaped to

see another such movie, he would understand, he would sympathize, he would be more anxious. He would not wonder why the fellow went so quietly, nor would he be quite so confident that somehow, with his teeth, or his clever fingers, or by rolling about, the hero would get loose in time.


Francis couldn't see any way to get loose. The ropes were tight and firm. He could barely move his hands. His working fingers grasped at nothing but air or, if he rolled slightly, the bare cement floor of the cellar. The gag was tight too. No use rubbing his cheek

against the rough cement. It only scratched and tore his skin. The gag wouldn't move. It was anchored tight. It was all he could do not to choke.


His ankles were bound together. He could not get up, would have had no balance, anyway. And there was nowhere to roll, no advantage to it. This part of the cellar was perfectly empty. The floor, the rough whitewashed walls, a little window high up, one

naked light bulb, the wooden door to another room. Nothing else at all.


He had lost track of time. It was night. The little window admitted no daylight any more, although, for a while after he had been brought here, there had been some light, blocked by green bushes, coming dimly through the leaves and the dirt on the glass. Now there was only a black oblong, although some light must come from somewhere—enough to distinguish the white walls from the black window. Just enough for that.


Night would pass. Sooner or later, there would be that dim daylight. It was all he could look forward to, unless the woman should come down with food again. He didn't like to think of that woman, Mrs. Press, he supposed she was. Tall, very thin, emaciated, no more shape than a stick, and no more color. She was a caricature of a woman. A long-jawed face and hair tight back in a bun, all drab, pale gray tones. She looked like a slave, a drudge, one who had been kicked and beaten. She appeared to be perfectly obedient. But what he feared was that she was not obedient, because the eyes in that long, ugly face were neither sad nor dulled. The eyes were full of enthusiasm. He suspected that Mrs. Press would be, if not obedient, rather terrible. He hoped Mr. Press or somebody would be able to keep her in line.


Hope? Well, it sprang eternal, thought Francis. The ache in his arm, where the old wound was, beat with his heart. He began to wonder why he was still alive. He thought he could guess.


At midnight, although Francis didn't know it was only that, he heard them coming down the cellar stairs. Somewhere beyond the wooden door the stairs came down and there was a furnace and such other cellar furniture. Out there he heard their feet and heard their voices. Heard Press say, in his dull voice, "No trouble."


And he heard the rich warm voice of Luther Grandison, the famous voice, so full of sentiment, so beloved on the radio, heard it saying, "Good work, my dear fellow. You were very prompt, and I do appreciate it. Now, let us see."


The wooden door was unbarred from outside. It was opened. Someone turned on the light, and the unshaded bulb blinded him for a moment.


Francis thought, He'll have to kill me now. He intends to kill me. if he wouldn't let me see him. He wouldn't come openly.


Grandy took off his pince-nez delicately. "Ah, yes," he said. "Can you remove that—er—impediment to his speech? I want to talk, You can control him, can't you?"


"Guess so," said Press. He moved indifferently to the business of ungagging his prisoner. He was a strong man, as Francis had discovered before—physically strong. He seemed to have no feeling about what had happened or might happen. Obviously, he carried out orders.


But there was a lean gray shadow behind him, a shadow with gleaming eyes. That woman. Francis knew himself to be afraid.


Press was loosening the gag. As it came off, Francis did choke. He coughed, retched, got control of his breath at last. He said nothing. What was the use, unless he shouted for help, and what wad the use of shouting?


Grandy squatted down rather stiffly. After all, he was not young. His fingers fumbled about Francis' body. He was searching for something. He found it and stood again. He had the will in his hands—the will that was supposed to have been written out by Mathilda.


"I think we will just dispose of this," he said distastefully, and lit a match and burned it, holding the paper until the last possible moment, with perfectly steady fingers. Then he dropped the charred ash and stamped on it. The smell of burned paper seemed to fill the place.


Francis thought what a fool he had been. We are so vulnerable to plain, unadorned violence. We tend to think our enemies will play by the rules. We can't conceive of the rules being wiped out. We don't really, except on the battlefield, believe in the existence of ruthless, violent people. We believe them when we see them. He ought to have known better.


He said aloud, "There is a copy."


But Grandy smiled. It was said too late. A copy of a holograph will? Absurd, anyway.


Grandy said, "Now, please. Ill have the name of the person who heard Althea's evidence,"


Francis made his mouth say pleasantly, "You will?"


"Oh, yes, I think so," said Grandy, in high spirits. The thin shadow that was Mrs. Press came a little closer. She had something long and sharp in her hand. It was metal. It caught light, Not a knife. An ice pick. Francis began to laugh painfully. It was nearly a giggle. Everything that was happening to him seemed so absurd. Such old stuff. And so effective. It was comical how effective it was, the threat of torture.


Press was leaning indifferently against the wall. Mrs. Press said, "Shall I?"


Grandy was watching Francis with cold speculation. "Well see," he said.


"It won't be necessary," said Francis. "I'm no hero."


"Very sensible. Go on."


"There was no one," said Francis with perfect truth. "She told me about it down in the guest house that night. We were alone there"


"No second person?" said Grandy softly.


"No one at all."


Grandy lifted an eyebrow. "Mrs. Press," he said.


"No!" cried Francis, outraged. "Don't! I'm telling you the truth! There really isn't— I can't give you a name when there isn't any name."


"Just let us see," said Grandy, nodding. "Life follows bad literature so often, you know. Perhaps he is being a hero. I dare say he wishes to protect that witness."


"There wasn't any witness "


The woman got down on her knees. She put the point of the thing under his thumbnail.


"Who was it?"


"Nobody."


"Who was it?"


"Nobody. I was bluffing."


"What is your name?"


"Francis Howard."


"Not in the mood for the truth yet, Mrs. Press. Continue."


Francis ground his teeth. He mustn't tell his name, because of Jane. Because his name was Jane's name, too, and Grandy must not know. Jane would have the sense to leave his house now. Get out of that house. Jane was so much smarter than she looked. But Mathilda? What could he do for Mathilda? The pain was wicked.


"Sorry!" he gasped. "This is pretty futile! There wasn't anyone! Shall I invent a person?"


Grandy said, "Just one moment, Mrs. Press. . . . Now listen to me. I know your name is not Howard. I understand, now, the trick you played with that marriage license. I realize that you scoured the city and all suburban communities for a bona-fide license issued

that day with the name Frazier on it. Finding one for a Mary Frazier was a great stroke of luck. Although you searched for it. You earned it. Of course, it follows that you simply assumed the other name on the license. You had to. I think your first name actually is Francis, all right. Not John. And your surname is not Howard.


"Let me make it plain that I know this because it has been independently checked. A newspaperman actually found the original bride and groom, and interviewed them. He came to me, quite puzzled. Just this evening. I appeared to be puzzled, too, and begged for time, but I was enlightened, you see? Now that you understand how much I know and guess, proceed, Mr. Howard."


Francis thought of his past life. He said, "My name is Shields." I wasn't. He hoped it would pass.


Grandy said, "Thank you. Now, about that witness."


"No witness," said Francis dully. "You can do this forever. I can't stop you." He closed his eyes and waited for the pain. He thought how futile torture really was. There was nothing certain about the results you got, after all. Innocent people would swear to guilt to escape it, as readily as guilty people would give up the truth. There is nothing solid in fear. Nothing a torturer can rely on. Bad evidence, in fact. It ought to be suspect. It almost could not be true. "Can't rely on it," he muttered.


He heard Mrs. Press breathing.


"That will do," said Grandy severely.


Francis felt the moisture form drops on his forehead and begin to roll away.


"I doubt if it matters," said Grandy thoughtfully. "You may have been bluffing. I think we've had enough of this sort of thing." He spoke as if it had all been in rather bad taste.


Mrs. Press said, "A couple of times more—"


"No more," said Grandy.


She obeyed.


Francis opened his eyes and looked curiously at Grandy. "Next?" he inquired.


"My dear boy," said Grandy, as if to say, "Really, need you ask?"


"Am I going to commit suicide? I warn you. I don't think that's altogether a good idea."


“Oh, I agree," said Grandy pleasantly. "It isn't a good idea at all. Jane gave me a thought, you know."


Francis absorbed the shock of her name, prayed it hadn't been noticed.


"Jane suggested to me this evening that perhaps, after your little failure this morning, you had given up your schemes. She wondered if you hadn't simply run away."


Francis tried to look flabbergasted. He thought, Jane's all right. He's not onto her yet. He tried to let his battered mouth form a sneer. "That's stupid," he said.


"Not at all," said Grandy brightly. "I think it's perfectly logical.


You see, first the scheme to get Mathilda's fortune was spoiled by the fact that Mathilda wasn't dead. The little will, all that careful preparation, wasted. Well, Althea's suicide, so soon after another death of the same kind in my house—of course, it suggested foul play. You would begin to wonder how you could turn that to account. Althea is dead. She can't deny whatever you choose to say she said." Grandy interrupted himself, so abruptly did he change the smooth spinning of a story into accusation. "You found that picture in the paper—the photograph of the clock?"


"Yes," said Francis.


"You pointed it out to Gahagen?"


"Yes."


"Well," said Grandy. "Well, well. Then, even before Althea died, you were scheming. Ah-ha! Perhaps you killed Althea."


Francis said, "I don't have the advantages of two bathrooms."


Grandy said, "Perhaps you put more powerful pills— Dear me, what an alliteration!"


"Planted them?" said Francis helpfully.


"Yes, indeed. You see, it's going to be quite an interesting story."


"I can see that it will be," conceded Francis.


"You have already disappeared. It did look so queer that you weren't at the funeral. It only remains—"


"To dispose of me?"


"Exactly."


Press spoke for the first time. "Look," he said. "Not here."


Francis wanted to whoop with laughter. Was the fellow aroused at last, thinking of his cellar floor?


"Oh, dear me, no. Certainly not here," Grandy reassured him. “My dear fellow, I shouldn't think of it"


"Whatever you say," said Press. He had a bitter, harsh voice. His eyes were without hope and yet smoldering. Francis thought, He might help me. He's being compelled None of this is his idea.


But Press said, "I suppose I've got to do it for you. Only not here," and the flat resignation in his voice was not encouraging.


The woman made a movement. It was as clear as if she'd said it aloud. As if she'd said, "Let me. HI enjoy it."


"Ah, well, in the eyes of the law we shall be equally responsible," said Grandy cheerfully. "And that, my dear Press, will be pleasant for you. We shall both be of the unsuspected, eh?" he chuckled. Press simply waited. "Is he perfectly secure here?" asked Grandy. They nodded. "Then I don't think we'll be in any hurry. I must get back. We must think it over, you know. Doubtless, something ingenious will occur to one of us." He turned to leave. His eyes went mockingly to Francis. "You don't ask for your bride?"


Press was putting the gag back into Francis' mouth. It obscured any expression there might have been on Francis' face and prevented him from making an answer.


"I'll take care of Mathilda," said Grandy smoothly, "when the time comes. Let me see—" He had no feeling, no sorrow. The soft regret that purred in his voice was only a habit, a trick in his throat. "You disappear. There will be Jane's story of what you said in my study. Then, of course, Mathilda's story of what you tried to do to her. The marriage hoax. She must tell that to everyone. She will tell it with great indignation. She will tell it so well. Oh, the wickedness of it! What a wicked, wicked fellow you are," crooned Grandy.

"But you did not prevail. You were defeated. You ran away." Grandy nodded. "The girls will support me."


Then the wooden door opened, closed. The light went out. Feet traveled toward the steps. Francis listened, hoping it was three pairs of feet. He didn't like the woman.


Yes, he thought, the girls. Mathilda. What Mathilda would tell the police would be only the truth, all the truth she knew. And if Jane tried to tell the truth behind the truth, it would never prevail. Jane tried to tell the truth behind the truth, it would never prevail.

Who was Jane to pull down Luther Grandison? She couldn't fight alone. There was no one to help her now.


Mathilda would help destroy herself. She didn't know any better. He understood. She couldn't believe. It was too much to ask of her. Grandy had her in his web, had always had her, and he would keep her and do what he wanted to do, whatever it might be. Spider and fly. Poor courageous little fly. She had courage. She could fight. On the wrong side, but still one could admire. Eyes closed in the dark, he could see her face.


He said under his breath, "Rosaleen, I tried. Listen, little one, I know what he did to you. I tried to punish him"


It seemed to him that Rosaleen forgave him, because he couldn't see her face. It seemed to him that, graciously, her little ghost moved on. He might himself be with her soon, wherever she was. He hoped Grandy's ingenious way would be quick, at least. His hand throbbed and throbbed. The pain was monstrous. It loomed so large in the silent dark.


And leave Mathilda to the mercy of Grandy who had no mercy. Francis thought what he would do if he were loose. And then tried not to think of such matters. Because he couldn't see any way to get loose. The ropes were still tight and firm. He couldn't move

his wrists to speak of. The wounded arm was very weak. The muscles weren't responding. His ankles were numb. Trying to move would rub his skin off, accomplish nothing. The gag was in as firmly as before. He couldn't make a sound. The pounding of his heels on the cement was only a dull thud, could never be heard by the world, if there still was a world up there beyond that black oblong in the wall. Still night. No dawn.


The whole situation was perfectly ridiculous. But ropes are ropes. They held. There was no miracle. Nothing happened during the night to loosen those bonds. When the light began to seep through the green leaves at last and touch the dirty glass, Francis was lying

exactly as he had been lying, exactly as helpless, hopeless and lost.


Oh, there was a tiny flicker of hope left, but really it was not sensible. The people going about their business up there in the world would have no suspicion. His helplessness and his plight would be unsuspected. So what he'd tried to do would be of no avail. The best he could do at the time, but it hadn't been good enough. No, no hope. Put it out. And pray for Mathilda. Pray for her.


Chapter Twenty-five


On Friday morning, Grandy s house had fallen into a normal rhythm. Life was going on. It was the reflection of Grandy's own mood, of course. His house and the people in it were susceptible to his moods and always reflected them. And Grandy had taken an interest in breakfast that morning. Grandy had parceled out the household chores in his usual gay fashion. Even Oliver had reached a state of calm and had gone off on errands.


Jane, looking about twelve years old in blue-and-white-checked gingham, was swabbing the floor of Grandy's glittering bathroom. Mathilda herself, in a black skirt and a peasant blouse, was changing linen on the beds. Mirrors reflected them many times.


Mathilda had a prevision of how life, going on, would fill in and smooth over the place where Althea had been. How it would always fill in the empty places, flowing, smoothing, covering. Grandy house was just the same. Although Althea was gone, Tyl had com back. Rosaleen was gone, but here was Jane. There would always be one girl or another reflected in the mirrors, changing the beds, mopping the floor. The changing of the beds would outlive them all. The little duties, the household chores, were immortal.


The enigma of Francis was gone too. Because everything was clear now about Francis. Grandy had said so. Grandy had explained his theories at the breakfast table. Jane had agreed. Oliver had agreed. Mathilda had . . . agreed.


She had a little headache this morning. She hadn't slept. She'd been listening in the night. Shed been waiting, in aimless tension, not knowing what she waited for. Briskly tucking in the sheets, Tyl realized that she still had the sensation of expectancy, of waiting for something, an anxiety that wouldn't rest, as if life could not take up, here and now, and go on, and fill in and cover over, with the inexorable wash of time. Although the whole house argued I against her and she argued against herself.


Francis was gone. The enigma was explained as well as it ever would be explained. There would be no more to it. The tides of time would wash in every morning and blot and obliterate and smudge and wear down and blur. This day or two, so full of Francis, would recede, would decline in importance, would fade and blur and blend in with all other days of her life. It would be an incident, a queer happening. Once upon a time. Grandy would no doubt make one of his stories out of it. There might even be supernatural overtones before he got through. Mathilda shivered.


Jane wrung out the mop and stood it up in her pail. "I'll help with that," she said, smiling.


How pretty she is, Tyl thought. I wish I could be just sweet and willing, like Jane.


They took hold of opposite ends of a blanket. Something was communicated through the length of woolen fabric. Tyl was aware suddenly that Jane was not as she appeared, neither sweet nor willing, not placid at all. Jane was strung up tight. Together, they spread the blanket, tucked it in, folded the sheet back over it, drew up and smoothed the spread.


Tyl said, "Where did he go, Jane?"


Jane said, "He went to the police.''


Mathilda sat down on the edge of the freshly made bed. She looked into Jane's eyes and saw the real girl, saw the hidden fear and sensed the hidden strength.


"Why?" she demanded.


Jane said, "He had things to tell them. If he had got to them, we'd know it. He didn't get there."


Mathilda blinked and groped back. "But you said he'd run away. You said— Grandy said—"


Jane said carefully, "He may have run away. He probably did." She was remote and closed off suddenly. Mathilda didn't want her to be closed off. She wanted to talk. She wanted to know. She wanted the real Jane.


"But you don't believe it," she whispered, "do you?"


"Do you?”


Something that seemed entirely outside of herself shook Mathilda's head for her, shook it in the negative sign. No, she thought, and she hadn't believed it at breakfast, either.


Jane leaned against the bed, bent a little closer. "Can I talk to you and be sure you won't. . . repeat it?"


Mathilda said, "Please."


Jane's doll face didn't belong to a doll any more. He was in danger. He really was. He was getting too close. How am I going to make you understand?"


"I wish you could," wailed Mathilda. "Because I don't understand anything at all. What danger? What do you think happened to him?"


"I don't know," said Jane, "but something's got to be done. She sat down on the other edge of the bed with her back to Mathilda and covered her face with her hands. "What have I been waiting for?" she said in tones of surprise.


"You're in love with him, aren't you?"


Jane shook her head. Her face was still hidden.


Mathilda said, "But I saw you. Out the window. There's something—"


"What difference does that make?" said Jane fiercely. "Never mind what Francis is to me. Or anybody. Or what he was to Rosaleen. You don't know, and you'll never know, and he's nothing at all to you. Just nothing. But if he's dead now, it'll be because you were so dumb."


"I?"


"I didn't mean that." Jane gulped, turned her face and tried to smile. "I'm worried just about sick."


"Why was I dumb? What do you mean?" Mathilda reached out to shake her.


"I mean he needed your help."


"Then why didn't he ask me or tell me? . . . Help for what?"


"He did. He tried. But you can't see things the way they are. Francis didn't blame you."


"What don't I see?"


"Listen," Jane said, "I was in New York the other day, tracking down something that absolutely proves—"


"Proves what?"


Jane said, "No, I can't tell you."


"Why not?"


"You— Nobody could tell you."


"What's the matter with me, that I can't be told? I'm listening, Jane. Please tell me."


Jane was watching her, searching her face, trying to read it.


Tyl said desperately, "You've got to tell me. I've got to understand, can't you see that? Jane, if you know what this is all about, please—" But Jane seemed to be withdrawing again. "What did you find in New York?" Mathilda begged. "What was it?"


"A record."


"A record?"


"The record they took of a radio program."


"Oh?"


"Yes, I timed it"


"Timed it?"


"It was a question of time. The time was ten thirty-five.”


"What time?"


“'Burn tenderly.' "


Mathilda said angrily and bluntly, "I don't understand a word you're saying. You're trying to confuse me. Start at the beginning, why don't you? What are you? Who is Francis?"


"I'm a secretary," said Jane. She shrugged.


"But what are you trying to do? You're in a plot, aren't you? Some kind of plot against—"


Jane lifted her chin.


Mathilda said, faltering, "It's against Grandy, isn't it?"


Jane said, "Do you know that if you repeat any of this conversation, my life won't be worth a nickel? It's worth about ten cents, as it is.


"Oh, nonsense!"


"Is it nonsense?" said Jane. "Where's Fran, then? Why didn't he get to the police station where he was going? What stopped him? Where is he now? Why doesn't he tell us, send some word? Telephone?"


"Because he—because the plot wouldn't work," answered Mathilda weakly.


Jane said bitterly, "You never had a thought in your life. Your mind's been formed for you. You're all wrong about everyone. You don't see straight. It's not your fault. I guess it's your misfortune. You couldn't see Oliver and Althea dancing like puppets on the ends of their strings, could you? You thought they acted for themselves. They didn't any more than you do. Nobody does in this house. Oh, Francis understood. You mustn't think he didn't understand. But he told you there was danger, didn't he?"


"He—"


"And there was danger, and there is danger. He was worried sick about you. You're so blind. And he knew what the danger was." Mathilda was trembling. She was angry and scared. But Jane went on as if to herself, "There's one thing for me to do. There's that man. and I know his name and where he works. And Francis wasn't any helpless girl, you see? So there would have to be a man. That's what he meant." Jane's blue eyes took in Mathilda with a strange, absent look. "You'll spill these beans, of course. My fault. I ought to have known better. Fran warned me. But you looked for a minute as if you'd . . . hear me. But you can't hear me. It isn't your fault."


Suddenly, Jane's voice quickened. "I am glad we talked. I was frozen up, too scared to move, just stuck, just letting things happen. Lord, you can't afford to wait! I guess it's worth any extra danger to get unstuck." Jane's face flamed with resolution. "I'd better get

going" She came around the bed. She said, looking down, "Maybe it will work out all right for you sometime. I hope it will." She added gently, "Francis hoped it would, you know."


Jane went out of the room and down the hall to her own.


Chapter Twenty-six


Mathilda fled into the gray room. That which she had been trying not to think about had been spoken out—too plain for her to dodge it any more. She knew now the ridiculous reason, the preposterous—why, the utterly mad reason—for all Francis' lies. First, Francis was mixed up somehow with Rosaleen Wright.


All of a sudden she knew how. Rosaleen had never been one to talk about herself or to confide romantic details. Yet Mathilda had always known that somewhere in the back of Rosaleen's life there was a man she planned to marry someday. Tyl sat down to brood, to think back. She could remember only an impression. This man was an old playmate. A childhood friend, a relative, even—some kind of cousin. It was no flaming romance, but one of those comfortable things. She could remember no name.


Francis? Well, then, Francis thought Rosaleen hadn't killed herself. That was the whole thing. And Jane was in it, too, somehow or other. Certainly, Jane was in love with him. Of course she was. It was perfectly obvious that they were partners. Was Jane a kind of

second-string sweetheart?


"Never mind," Jane had said. "He's nothing to you." Nothing to me, thought Mathilda, and what am I to him? Someone to be used in his schemes? She felt herself in a little glow of anger. Schemes against Grandy. Of all people in the world, dear, kind, lovable

Grandy, who wouldn't hurt a fly, wouldn't even hurt your feelings if he could help it.


Surely she knew him best. All Grandy's ways, the splendid difference of the way he lived. An amateur of living, he called himself. Lover of life. Oh, he had taught them so much. He'd sent them to carefully chosen schools, but their real education had been in the summers with Grandy. And the world would be stale without him to teach them where its flavor lay.


Why, they wanted to make him out a monster. They wanted to say he was wicked, scheming, unfeeling. Grandy? Grandy, who didn't care about money or any of the stupid material things, who loved, above all, beauty and good food and good talk and ideas. Who believed in the love of these things.


The thought came like a stray. Grandy s fabulous bathroom had cost quite a penny. The love of some kinds of beauty was rather expensive. No, she wrenched at her thoughts. She was off the track. Love. Human love. Grandy believed in love. But he didn't know it

when he saw it, said some cynical thing inside her head. He thought Oliver meant security to her. She rubbed her aching forehead.


Someone knocked softly at her door.


"Come in."


Tyl, darling." And there he was.


Mathilda looked up, startled. There he stood, Grandy himself, his white hair ruffled, as it almost always was, his rather large feet turned out just a little, like the frog footman. His fat little tummy on his thin frame, his big-knuckled hands, his beak of a nose and his sharp black eyes watching her.


She saw him briefly, just in a flash, quite unadorned by her affection. She saw the man standing in her door. She knew he was alert and watchful, and she knew she was not sure, at that moment, of his love. Because she thought of a spider.


"Are you just sitting there?" he asked wonderingly. "Anything troubling?"


Mathilda swallowed. "Headache," she said.


"Ah, too bad." His sympathy was rich and easy for that voice of his. Her heart began to pound. She heard the voice for the first time as a musical instrument played by a mind.


"I won't bother you, sweet. Lie down, eh? There's just the one thing. Yesterday, Francis—"


"Yes?" Her voice shook more than she'd intended.


"Francis showed me a document" he said a little wearily and sadly, "that purported to be your will."


"I know," she said. Her shoulder ached where she pressed it into the back of the chair.


"You know, dear?"


"I mean, he showed it to me, Grandy," she said a bit impatiently, She turned all the way around in the chair and pulled her knees up the other way.


"Another forgery," he sighed.


"Yes."


The black eyes were watching. They were noting her downcast eyes, the nervous interlacing of her fingers. They weren't missing anything. She felt like a bug on a pin. She wanted to squirm and hide, to get away. She bent her head and began to cry.


"Darling." He was very near.


Suddenly, she knew the safest place was nearer still. She wept against his shoulder. She could hide her face there.


"What is the trouble?"


She said, "Grandy, I don't know. The whole thing's so confusing."


He held her off a little, trying to see her eyes. But she kept them hidden.


"I thought you were confused last evening, sweetheart. Tyl, what are you trying to tell me?"


"The trouble is," she wailed, "I do—I did—somehow or other remember that minister, Grandy! It's as if I'd seen him before, in a fog or something!”


"Why didn't you tell me?" he said in a moment. "Poor child. And it's been bothering you all the while? You are shaken. That's it, isn't it? Now, you mustn't worry. You really must not."


She felt, in spite of his words, that he was vague. Could he be doubting her, after all? She got hold of her handkerchief and drew away, drying her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "It really doesn't mean anything. I really do know that none of what he said was true."


"Of course, you do," Grandy agreed. But his eyes filmed over somehow, and Mathilda had a wild, fantastic, fleeting impression that he was wondering what to do with this self-doubt of hers; not wondering how to dispel it, but how to use it some way.


"Duck, you do not remember writing out any such document as that will, do you?"


"Oh, no," she said. "Oh, no, I never did." He was standing there, looking a bit hurt. She thought she understood. She said, "Oh, Grandy, I'11 make another one. I—"


She caught the tiny folding down of flesh at the corner of his eye, the merest trifle of satisfaction.


He said petulantly, "Tyl, you know I want to hear nothing about your money."


"I know," she breathed. But she did not know. She was not sure. The fear was in her veins again, running in a swift thrill from a sinking heart. She did not finish the sentence that had been interrupted. She did not go on to say, "I already have made another will, silly, so we needn't worry about the finest forgery in the world." She didn't say it.


Grandy moved across the room. For one awful second, she thought she had spoken and told him, and then forgotten her own words. She thought her memory had skipped a beat or at least that he'd read her mind. Because he crossed to the little bookshelf and took a book down.


"What a disgraceful collection," he murmured. "My dear, such unfit stuff in this room. I must find you something better."


She was beside him swiftly. "Oh, no. I love Lucile," she said, taking it gently out of his hands. "It's so stuffy and there's a Mathilda in it. And it puts me to sleep."


He chuckled.


"Oh, Grandy," she said. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him how foolish she'd been, to confess and get it off her soul and be free, where she stood, with no disloyal fear on her conscience. She suffered a complete reaction. The pendulum had swung. Afraid of

Grandy! Absurdity of all time! Impossible!


"Now you will tell me the real trouble," he purred, surprising her.


"It's Francis," she murmured.


She hadn't meant to turn her head away or to say that name. She held Lucile in her hands still.


"If anything has happened," she murmured again, "we'd feel so cheap."


"Darling, you are absolutely right!" cried Grandy. "Of course you are! We must take steps, eh?"


"Yes," she said in utter relief.


"Of course we must," said Grandy. "That's only decent, isn't it? For all his sins, Francis was a guest in this house. Yes, I think we must be sure he is not lying in a ditch somewhere. That's what you mean?"


"Oh, Grandy, darling," said Tyl, "you do understand everything!"


Jane's door closed with a little click. They saw Jane in the hall with her blue jacket on over the gingham dress and the little blue cap on her head. She looked quaint and young.


"May I go out for a little while, Mr. Grandison?" she said humbly. Please, if you don't need me?"


"My dear, of course,'' he beamed. "Unless it is something I can do for you. I'll be downtown a little later."


"No, I don't think you can, sir " said Jane primly.


"Take the time you need, my dear," said Grandy kindly. "Oh—er—this business about Francis. Tyl thinks we must ask the police to search for him." Jane's face didn't change much. "In case, you know," said Grandy, "he is hurt or dead."


Jane said woodenly, "Of course."


Then she smiled her pretty smile. Her pretty lips formed their pretty thanks. Her feet tripped off. They heard her going down the stairs, not too fast.


But Mathilda knew she flew as one who from the fiend doth fly. She, herself, stood in a backwash of fear. Jane's fear.


Grandy went off to telephone. Mathilda felt disloyal. She felt guilty and soiled. She ought to have told Grandy about Jane. She fidgeted. She went downstairs. Grandy was in the study. The mailman was at the door. She went and opened the door and said, "Good

morning" He put a sheaf of letters in her hands.


She said, "Will you do something for me, Mr. Myer? If anything should happen to me, will you look in a book of poetry called Lucile? It's on a shelf in my bedroom."


His mouth dropped open.


"And don't mention what I've said to anyone," she warned, and smiled and closed the door. He stood on the step outside for some time, but at last he went away.


She pulled at her fingers with nervous anxiety. Now she felt disloyal. And guilty. And soiled. But why? What was it now? She mustn't trust Francis. He'd said so himself. She shook her head angrily. She was only doing what he had suggested because she didn't

trust him.


Besides, he isn't here, she thought, and she sat down and covered her eyes.


Chapter Twenty-seven


The police were going to check hospitals and all that, and send out a missing-person alarm, Grandy had told her comfortably. It meant that there would be an eye out for Francis for miles around. They would find him, he'd said confidently. Grandy had gone off in his ramshackle car, wearing his old brown hat jauntily.


But Mathilda, waiting alone in the long room downstairs, was not satisfied and far from confident. She wished Jane would come back, or that she knew where Jane was, so that she could go there. There were so many questions Jane could answer. Oliver was in the

house, and Mathilda wished he'd go away. He was upstairs and any minute he would probably appear and perhaps he'd want to hash things over. She wished he wouldn't. She wished she weren't alone, but she wished it weren't Oliver who would probably come to keep her company. She wished—wished— She didn't know exactly what it was she wished or what she was waiting for. Vaguely, she was waiting for some word, some news. Did she expect them to find Francis in a hospital? Did she expect them to find him at all? What if they did?


She tried to think, tried to clarify. There were two opinions about the disappearance of Francis. One, that he had run away deliberately, having failed to do whatever he had been attempting to do here. Two, that he had been prevented by violence from getting to the police by someone who didn't want him to get to the police. And, of course, there was a third possibility, which took in all the normal suppositions, that he had been taken ill, he had been in an accident.


She realized that it was the normal land of disappearance that the police would be able to check, and would be attempting to check now—sudden illness, accident, sudden death. They would also be covering the possibility that he had gone away voluntarily, in which case he wouldn't be hurt at all, but they would find him someday. Through their teletype system, his description, persistent vigilance.


But the possibility they would not cover, and, moreover, had no machinery for covering, was that he had met with malicious violence. For if he had been hidden away, they were not searching in the right kind of place or looking deep enough or close enough, she

thought.


She was huddled in the corner of a sofa, as if the room were cold. If only Jane would come back. If only Oliver would come downstairs and not talk, but do something. If only the police would send somebody and start here. If only she could tell someone these

thoughts, so that something would be done. She didn't think Grandy had made it clear. Grandy didn't suspect violence.


She began to shiver uncontrollably. She thought, I'm freezing, Jane's words came back to her, "Frozen up, just stuck, just letting things happen."


Mathilda uncurled herself and sat up. This was paralysis. She rejected it. She would not wait.


A little later, she was walking down Grandy s drive. The bus for downtown passed within two blocks of Grandy s house. This was one of the city conveniences of which he boasted. The nearest bus stop was obvious. Tyl had no choice to make. She knew this was

the way Francis must have come yesterday morning.


She wore her short fur jacket and a little black hat. There was a strong spring breeze blowing her black skirt around her pretty legs. She stood there at the bus stop with her eager, forward-leaning look, and she had no trouble with the bus drivers. They were all

glad to lean out as she hailed them, and listen to what she had to say. "Can you remember Thursday morning—yesterday morning? Can you remember if a tall man with dark hair and dark eyes, a youngish man, got on your bus that morning?"


"What time, about, miss?"


“I'm not sure. About ten, I think."


"Lots of people get on and off, miss."


"Oh, I know, but try to remember. He would be wearing a gray coat, I think."


"Not much to go on, miss. Lots of men—"


"Yes, yes, but try! It was at this stop. I'm sure of that. And yesterday morning. Just yesterday. His eyes were dark. His eyebrows—But I guess he wouldn't have been smiling."


"Sorry, miss. Don't think I can help you."


"How many drivers are there on this route?"


“Six, miss.


"Thank you."


She tried again with the next driver and the next. The fourth man sucked his lip and said, "What do you want to know for?"


"Oh, because he was going somewhere, and he never got there, and I've been wondering."


The driver said, "Maybe I got your man. A fellow that changed his mind."


"He . . . did?"


"Yeah, yesterday morning. Tall, you say?"


"Tall, dark."


"I wouldn't wanta say he was dark. I wouldn't have noticed. But there was a tall fellow in a gray coat waiting here, only he didn't get on."


"He didn't?"


"No. Just as I was pulling up, a fellow comes up behind him—friend of his, I guess. So he turns around and goes off with the other guy. Gets in his car, see? The other guy notices him and picks him up. Happens all the time. People getting a lift. That help you any?"


"He went off with a friend?" said Mathilda incredulously.


The bus driver thought she was a stunner. "Listen, miss, I only said he was a friend. How do I know? All I know is, this guy didn't get on my bus. He was waiting for the bus, see, but he don't get on, on account of this other guy?"


"Did you notice the other guy?"


"Gosh." The driver pushed at his cap. The passengers were shuffling in their seats. He couldn't chat any longer. "I dunno. Nothing special I can remember. But they got in this D.P.W. car."


"What's that?"


The door began to wheeze shut. "D.P.W.! Department of Public Works I" he shouted at her. The bus moved off.


D.P.W. D.P.W. Mathilda stood on the empty corner and looked around her. Houses here were set in fat lawns, far apart, well back from the street. Nobody was about or would have been.


Wait, there was someone across the street. A gardener doing some spring paining. She ran across. She fetched up the outer side of the hedge and the man stopped his work.


"Please, were you working here yesterday?"


"Nah."


"Oh," she said, disappointed. She turned away.


"Whatsa matter, lady?"


"I only wondered if you'd seen a certain car," she said. "But if you weren't here—"


"I was over at Number Sixty-eight," he said, and spat.


"Where?"


"Over there." His thumb showed her the neighboring lawn. I work there Thursdays. Here Fridays."


"Oh, then maybe you did see it! There was a car with D.P.W. On it. Yesterday morning."


"Yeah," he said, and spat again.


"You saw it!"


"Sure I saw it."


"Did two men get in?"


"Yeah." There was something curious and yet reserved in his glance, as if he could tell her something if she had the wit to ask, but would not offer it.


"One of the men was waiting for the bus?"


"I couldn't say about that."


"It doesn't matter. I want to know where—which way did the car go?"


He pointed.


That way?"


"Yeah"


"Did it go straight on? Did it turn?" She thought, I'll never be able to do this. This is hopeless.


"Turned left on Dabney Street," he told her surprisingly.


"Oh! Oh, thank you!" She started to run, stopped, looked back. "Was there anything—anything more you noticed?"


A curtain dropped in his interested eyes. "Nah, I didn't notice anything," he said.


But she thought. He did. There teas something about it, something queer.


She thanked him again and walked briskly in the direction of the Dabney Street corner. Now what to do? Now, ought she to call the police? Tell them about that car? Surely they could trace all cars so marked. Those cars must belong to the city. She ran back again.


The gardener hadn't begun to clip yet. He was just standing there, looking after her.


"One thing more," she gasped. "It was a car from this town? I mean it was the D.P.W. here?"


"Sure," he said. "That's right." He pulled his disreputable hat down and began to work his clippers very fast, moving around am shrub with the deepest concentration on his task.


Mathilda started down the street again. At Dabney Street, she turned left, as had the car with Francis in it. That is, the car she thought Francis had been in. It seemed probable that he'd been in it. At least, it was possible. She walked a few paces, out of the gardener's sight at least. And then, at a loss, she stood still.


The pavement told her nothing. How could it? The houses here were a little less aloof, a little more chummy with the street, but still— A car passed yesterday morning. What remains to tell you that it has passed or where it went, which corners, after this, it turned, which way?


She felt very small and helpless. There was no use walking along Dabney Street. No use, she thought.


There was a little boy in leggings and jacket sitting on his three-wheeled bike, watching her. He was part way up the walk of the first house around the corner. He was about three years old.


Mathilda started toward him. She would ask. She thought. No, how silly! It's just a baby! She stood irresolutely at the opening between hedges, the end of the walk where he was.


The door of the house beyond him opened suddenly and his mother appeared, rather suspiciously, as if she thought this strange young woman might have designs on her child. She hurried down the walk, wearing only her house dress, moving fast in the chilly

spring air.


“Gigi . . .”


Gigi kept on looking at Tyl.


"Let me see your hands." He surrendered his dirty little paws. The woman began to put her fingers into the tiny pockets of his snowsuit. She looked over her shoulder at Tyl. "Was there anything you wanted?" she inquired with a polite grimace.


"I . . ." Tyl gulped. "I did want to find out something," she said, but I don't know quite how to go about it. I was going to ask your little boy, but Tm afraid he's too little to remember."


"Remember what?"


"Just. . . whether a certain car went by yesterday morning."


"He wouldn't know," said the mother sternly.


“No, I guess he wouldn't," said Tyl. She turned away.


"You come right in and let me wash those hands," she heard the woman saying. "Where in the world ... ! You didn't get into any more chocolate, did you?"


"Uhuh," said Gigi.


"You didn't pick anything up and put it in your mouth today?"


"Uhuh."


"You remember what Mommy told you? Did you?"


"Umum."


"He doesn't know," said the woman apologetically to Tyl, who still stood uncertainly on the sidewalk. "Lord, hell pick up any old thing and it's so dangerous. Gigi, I told you to throw that paper away.


The woman pulled something out of the little pocket and threw on the ground.


Gigi bawled protest.


"You cannot have it! You mustn't keep dirty old things other people have thrown away. How many times . . . ?"


But Mathilda was at her elbow now, breathless, demanding. "When did he find the chocolate? Was it yesterday?"


"Yes, it was," the woman said in surprise.


"Oh, thank you!" cried Mathilda. "Thank you so much! That's just what I wanted to know!"


She swooped down and picked up the bit of bright metallic paper, gaudy enough to attract a child, bright enough to see in the grass. She flattened it out with eager fingers. There was the Dutch name hidden in the pattern. It was a wrapper from one of Grandy's

chocolates!


Francis, in her room that night, had taken a handful. He'd put them in his pocket. No one on earth but Francis or Grandy could have dropped one of those candies. And there was a car that had turned on Dabney Street, that had picked up a man who had waited for a bus.


Francis! It was a trail! It was going to be a paper chase! Oh. clever Francis!


"Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!" Tyl flew back down the path. The woman stood in belated curiosity.


But Tyl went off down Dabney Street with the paper in her pocket and her fingers tight on it. Oh, clever Francis! But this showed he hadn't got into that car because he wanted to. Or why drop clues?


Chapter Twenty-eight


Perhaps he bad taken it out to eat it Perhaps he had dropped it by accident. Perhaps somebody else, after all, had Dutch chocolates. But no, no, no. At least, she thought, I've got to go on down Dabney Street and keep looking.


She kept her eyes along the curb, remembering that Francis would have been the passenger, would have been sitting on this side. Still, it was yesterday. Other children on the street might have found other candies, and how would she know? She thought of

Hansel and Gretel, of the birds that ate the crumbs and spoiled the trail home.


She came to the next corner and stopped to think it out. A car turning a corner keeps to the right. Francis sat on the right. She went around the corner to the right, searching the inside curb. Nothing. Then she thought that if the car turned left, he would be on the outside. The middle of the intersection was no good. She crossed over and searched along the curb near which Francis would have been carried had the car turned left. Nothing.


Now what to do? She saw the search branching out hopelessly. Now she had a choice of three, and each corner she would reach on each of three routes would have, in turn, a choice of three. The thing multiplied violently. It was impossible.


She went along Dabney Street, walking on down on the right side, watching the curb. He had dropped a clue, hadn't he, after they'd turned a corner? He wouldn't drop a clue at every cross street. So, at every intersection she searched, after the turns. Six blocks along, she saw a bit of burnished purple. Intact. Candy and all. Another one! The car had turned right on Enderby Street. Oh, clever Francis! Oh, clever Mathilda! She walked along jauntily, happy and pleased and excited. She knew where to look now, for sure.


She found a green wrapper twisted up, empty, on the brink of a sewer. Her lip began to bleed where she'd bitten it, thinking how near that clue had been to being lost. Head down, she plodded on. She spotted a blue one from all the way across the road. She thought, My eyes are good. They'll last as long as the candies do. She wondered how many there could have been in that handful. And how many more corners—


She plodded on. Ten blocks on the same street. She stopped, then, and went back in a panic. She'd missed it. Or it was gone. She came along the same ten blocks again, almost despairing. Nothing.


On the eleventh corner there was a purple one shining under a hedge. To the left, then. Yes, Francis. Eyes aching, she went on. The trail had led her into a meaner part of town, a poorer part, at least, A part where she'd never been. Not on foot. Not alone. Surely the

afternoon must be wearing along. This street seemed to have uneasy shadows. The trail had been so long. She looked at her watch. No, it was not even two o'clock.


She stopped in her tracks. Her eye just caught it. She would have been by in another second. Inside the driveway, inside the straggly border of barberry bushes, there was a little heap of five or six candies all together. Bright and gay, like Christmas, they sparkled

on the dull grass. Inside the drive. Inside the property line.


The house was a dirty white, an old frame house, respectable enough, closed looking. No sign of children here, no flowers, no outdoor life at all. A bleak porch, a tall door with old-fashioned hardware.


She made herself walk by, hiding as well as she could her sudden stop by pretending to search in her purse, as if she'd thought of something. She walked two doors beyond. Shrubs, just leafing out, hid her now. She stopped again. That was the house! In there. The thing to do was to call the police, of course. But would they come? Would they believe her? Would they be quick enough? Would they go into the house? Could she convince them there was enough to warrant going in?


She thought, If I could only get closer.


She dared not go to the door and ring and make an excuse. If Francis was in there, he would not, in any case, be sitting in the front parlor to be seen by a caller. He would not answer the door, either. That wouldn't be any good.


She turned slowly back and went, instead, up the walk to the neighbor house. There was a deep shrub border between the plots. She had an idea.


The lady of the house was at home.


"I beg your pardon," Tyl said with all the charm she could muster. " I want to ask you a strange kind of favor. You see, the other day my little boy and I were coming by, and he lost his ball. His favorite ball."


"Isn't that a shame," said the woman. She had a long flat jaw, and she pulled it far down, as if she were making a face. She meant well, Mathilda realized.


"Yes, it was too bad," she continued, "and I was just going by again, and I thought perhaps you'd let me look in among your shrubs there. I'll be very careful. I won't injure them; really I won't."


"Well, I guess you won't," the woman said rather grudgingly.


"Then you don't mind if I poke around in there a little? If I could find it, he'd be so happy. He's three," she babbled. "His name is Gigi. That's what I call him. I would be so grateful to you."


"Go ahead," said the woman harshly, as if she washed her hands of the whole thing.


"Oh, thank you."


"Don't mention it"


The door drew shut slowly. Tyl thought, She'll go to a window. She's watching, remember.


Slowly, she went across the narrow strip of lawn and peered on the ground along the edge of the border of mock orange and straggly overgrown lilac and shabby privet. She bent her head to appear to look at the ground, but her eyes were directed higher.


She looked up under her brows to inspect the shabby white frame house, so near, actually, in distance, although the fact of the shrubbery border set it apart from where she stood. There was only a driveway and then a narrow strip of ground with rhododendrons,

and then the white house wall, the stone foundation.


Shades were drawn in the stingy bay of the front room on this side. The next window was high—on the stairs, probably. Two windows farther back would be the kitchen, and that would be dangerous.


She stepped within the shrub border, moving slowly, stirring leaves and sticks with her foot, but watching next door. She was disappointed. There really was no way to see in from this side. The bay was high and the shades were drawn close. She wouldn't dare

to try to see into the kitchen, and besides, it was too high. The stair window would be no good at all without a ladder. In the stonework, however, below, there was a little window, down back of the rhododendrons.


She thought, So my little boy's ball might have gone into the rhododendrons. Mightn't it? Do I dare? She thought, I must. They won't see me. Nobody sits on the stairs. The kitchens too far back.


She went stooping through the shrubs, crossed the invisible boundary line between the lots, moved quietly across the hard-surfaced driveway, kept her head down, kept her movements tentative, groping, wandering, but edging herself to that cellar window.


Francis was lying on his right side now. When Mrs. Press had brought him food, he had wiggled around. She had crouched over him, feeding him carelessly, not caring much whether he got the food in his mouth or on his vest. His mouth was stiff and sore. It was agony to try to eat, but he did try. He didn't speak to the woman. She didn't speak either. He felt about her as he might have felt about a sleeping dog. He didn't want to awaken her to being aware of him. He wanted her to feed him carelessly, as if it were only another chore. He didn't want that look back in her eye. So she had put the gag back in efficiently and gone away, and now he was lying on his right side, which was a change.


Press himself had not been down. If only Press could be reached. What if he knew that Grandy, too, was a murderer already? For Press was a murderer already and Grandy knew it. That much was clear to Francis now. Press was one of the unsuspected, perhaps the one the old man had in his mind that day on the radio. That was why he had to do what Grandy said.


But what if Press knew they were even? Would he obey then? If only Press could be told. But how, even if the man did come, could Francis explain all this, lying, as he was, speechless and gagged? The light was flickering.


What light? Daylight. That was the only light at all. Murky daylight from the dirty little window, and it flickered. He rolled his eyes. He saw a hand on the glass. Someone was crouching down outside the window, trying to see in. He lifted both heels from the

cement floor and dropped them with a thud. He did it again. Again. The fingers curled. They tapped twice. He made the thud with his heels twice. He nearly choked, forgetting to breathe.


The fingers went away and came back. They expressed emotion, somehow. Whoever it was knew now. He could make out the shadows of arm movements. Fur. A woman.


The little window was nailed tightly shut.


Outside, Mathilda crouched behind the rhododendrons. She couldn't see clearly at all, only the barest glimpse of a bare floor where a little light fell. The window was too dirty. The place inside too dark.


But she had heard. She had signaled. She had been answered. The little window was locked tightly, nailed shut. She took off her shoe and struck the glass with the heel. It tinkled on the floor inside, so faint a sound she was sure it couldn't have been heard. She put her mouth up close to the opening, "Francis?"


Francis strained at the gag. His throat hurt with the need to answer. He tapped with his heels. It was all he could do.


"Francis? Can you hear?"


Tap again. Raise your ankles and let the heels fall.


"Can't you talk?"


Tap again. Tap twice.


"Tap twice for 'no,'" she whispered. "Once for yes.'"


He didn't tap at all.


"Can't you talk?"


He tapped twice for "no."


"But you're Francis?"


He tapped once for "yes."


"Thank God!" she said. "Are you hurt?"


"No."


"What shall I do?"


No taps. How could he answer?


"Can I get in?"


"No."


"I'd better go for help?"


"Yes."


"Are you in danger?"


"Yes." Oh, Mathilda, so are you. Go away, quickly. All he could do was tap once for "yes."


"I'll get help. I'll get the police."


"Yes!"


Tyl, he wanted to cry, don't get Grandy. Of all people, keep away from him. Don't even tell him you've found me. Tyl, if you really do thank God, then hurry. Go to the police, the public authorities, to someone safe. Go away now, before that woman sees you. Go

silently. Don't run yourself slam bang into danger. Don't run. Oh, Tyl be careful. Take care of yourself.


“I'll hurry," she said. He had an illusion that she'd heard him thinking. He raised his heels, tapped "yes."


"Don't worry," she said.


He couldn't answer that one. Worry! God, would he worry. Oh, clever Tyl. She'd followed the trail. She d found it. But he couldn't talk, he couldn't warn her, he couldn't say— If only she would go now, silently, quickly, straight to the public authorities. If only he

could have told her so.


There was hope now—too much hope. It was terrifying. Hope and fear. He was afraid for her. He almost wished she hadn't found him. He rolled his head on the floor painfully. He groaned beneath the gag. He almost wished for the peace of hopelessness.


Chapter Twenty-nine


Mathilda went back through the shrubbery border. She stooped once, remembering, and pretended to pick up something, in case the woman next door should still be at a window somewhere.


Then she let herself move faster, went out onto the lawn and the street. She walked a little way. Then she began to run, gasping, heart pounding. Only get far enough away and then find a telephone. She was a little deaf and blind with excitement and haste. She didn't see or hear the rattling old car until it honked a surprised little squawk at her and pulled up at the curb. "Tyl! Tyl!" Her body didn't want to stop running. She had to will the brakes on.


"Tyl, what is the matter? Darling!"


And there was Grandy, tumbling out of his car, fumbling at his pince-nez to keep them on. Dear Grandy! He would know what to do! She'd forgotten everything but that she was in haste and Francis must be saved, and here was Grandy, to whom she had told all her troubles all her remembered life.


She threw herself upon him. Wept with relief. "Grandy, I found Francis! I found him! Something awful has happened!"


"Hush," he said. "Hush, Tyl. Now tell me quietly."


"Oh, Grandy, help me find a policeman! Somebody to get him out! Because he's in there! He's in there!"


"In where?"


"In that cellar! He's tied up! He can't talk! Oh Grandy, quick, let's get somebody!"


He held her, supporting her. "You say you've found Francis? Are you quite sure?"


"Of course, I'm sure! It is! Oh, Grandy, be quick!"


"But where, dear?"


"That house back there. The white one. Can you see? The first white one, with the reddish bush. That's where he is. In the cellar. I saw through the window. What shall we do?"


"Get the police," said Grandy promptly. "Tyl, darling, how did you— Look here. Are you sure?"


"I'm positive!"


But did anyone see you?"


"I don't know. So hurry!"


"But how could you tell it was—"


"I broke the glass."


"Tyl, darling."


"Oh, hurry!" she sobbed. "Because he's in danger!"


He said, "Yes. This is bad business, isn't it?" Now he was matter-of-fact, no longer surprised. He sounded cool and brisk and capable. "Tyl, do you think you could take the car and go find a telephone? There's a drugstore a block down, or two blocks down—

somewhere down there. You go call the police. Call headquarters. Ask for Gahagen himself. Can you manage?"


"Yes, I can," she said.


"While I go back and keep an eye on that house."


"Oh, yes!" she agreed gladly. "Oh, Grandy, that's right! Oh, yes, do! You stay and watch. Watch out for Francis."


"That's what I'll do," he said gently. "Go to the drugstore, duckling. Call from a booth. We can't have this all over town."


"Give me a nickel," she said resolutely.


He gave her a nickel. Watching her, he knew she would obey the suggestions. She would go to the drugstore. She would ask for Gahagen. It would all take time.


Mrs. Press opened the back door suspiciously. Then she let the door go wide, recognizing him.


"What have you got to put him in?" said Grandy briskly, without introduction.


"There's a trunk," she said.


"Get it."


“It's upstairs.”


"Drag it down."


Recognizing emergency, she went without saying anything more, Grandy called a number on the telephone.


"Press?"—crisply. "Can you send a truck here in the next five minutes? Trouble. Police. Tell them to pick up a trunk." Sharply: “If you can't do it in five minutes, there's no use." Coldly: "You realize what will happen if you don't, this being your house?" Calmly:

“Yes, I hoped you would. Tell them it's full of germs. Yes, germs. Typhoid. Anything."


Grandy hung up the phone. There was a loud bumping and crashing. He went into the stair hall and helped Mrs. Press with the big old empty turtleback trunk.


The two of them went down for Francis. Even with his limbs bound, even gagged and stiff and sore as he was, they had no easy time. Francis was sick at heart. This hurry, this wild anxiety of haste, could only mean that Tyl had made contact somewhere, somehow,

and Grandy had found it out. So it was to be no good? No soap? Not even now, after she'd found him and thanked God? He would not see her face again, to thank her or to explain or just to see her face again?


He was damned if he wouldn't! The woman had great strength, and Grandy was not so weak an old man as he, perhaps, looked. They were desperate and in a hurry. They got him up the cellar steps, although all the way he bucked like a bronco. The scene in the hall was dreadful in its grim wordlessness. It was a voiceless battle of desperations. The yawning trunk was like a tomb, and the living man, in all his helplessness, refused to go.


But he fell. He fell out of their weakening grasp, and he had no arms. He struck his head. They folded him over, jammed him in, stuffed him down.


The woman, panting, said, "Better do it!"


Grandy screeched, "No time! No time!"


They shut the lid down. Grandy took the key and turned it in the lock. Together, they dragged again, tipped the bulky object over the front doorsill. Mrs. Press closed the door.


"With a knife," she gasped, "it wouldn't have taken long!"


Grandy said, "Blood?" He sneered at her stupidity. Then he warned her, "You don't know anything, when you're asked." He looked no more than a trifle worried now, a bit flustered. His frenzy was gone.


"I don't know anything," she said contemptuously. She watched him go back toward the kitchen. She heard the soft closing of the kitchen door.


The police car came wailing down the street to where Tyl stood, hopping with anxiety, on the drugstore corner. It barely stopped. It snatched her up. She showed them the way and told them as much as she could in the few brief noisy minutes it took them to swoop on, five blocks—the drugstore had been farther away than Grandy had said—down the street.


When the big, clumsy gray garbage truck came rumbling along, going in the opposite direction, the men on top, in their dusty boots and aprons and heavy gloves, looked wonderingly down. They leaned against the big trunk balanced there, the last of their load.


Chief Blake, who was driving himself, dodged by with a skillful twist and a brief snarl of his siren.


Chapter Thirty


The car came to a skidding stop. One uniformed man went in a jogging run down the drive to the back of the house. Chief Blake and the other went up on the front porch. Tyl slid off Gahagen's lap, where she scarcely knew she'd been sitting, hit the ground with both feet. Grandy was nowhere to be seen.


"Got the right house?"


"Oh, yes! Yes!" She looked for him on all sides.


Then Grandy rose up out of the shrub border there by the driveway. He had old leaves in his hair. A smudge of earth streaked across his cheek. He came toward them. He was beaming.


"Lurking Luther never took his eye off!" His thin lips smiled out the silly words. "It is there as it was there!" He made a flat triumphant sweep with his palm. "Not a soul stirred. Not a soul saw me. I lay low, by gum, I did! What an afternoon, at my age! I had no idea how fascinating it is to put ones ear literally to the ground. Oh, cowboys! Oh, Indians!"


Gahagen grinned. "Your little girls upset."


"But the marines are landing" said Grandy, "eh? Now, how do you do this, Tom? Tins is most fascinating. Beard em, don't you? Do we break down the door? I'd like to see that. I never believe it in the movies."


Mathilda's heart ached. She felt tired out, all of a sudden. Grandy could set a mood; he always did. But this mood struck her wrong. It jangled. It hurt.


"We try ringing the front doorbell first," said Gahagen. "Come on.


Chief Blake said, "How d'ya do, Mr. Grandison? What goes on here?"


"That's what we wonder," said Grandy, "and we do wonder, don't we?"


The chief was a big solid fellow, the type to be slow and sure—especially sure. "We'll find out," he promised.


A thin woman opened the door and stood looking hostilely at them. "Well?" Thin and drab and sour, she wasn't afraid of them or even particularly interested. "Well?" she snapped.


"We want to look in your cellar," said Blake, in all his huge simplicity.


"What for?"


"This young lady saw a man tied up down there."


The woman's eyes were not so drab as the rest of her. They examined Tyl with contempt and curiosity. "There's nobody in the cellar," she said. "I don't know what you're talking about.”


"But there is!" began Tyl.


Grandy's hand warned her to keep calm, reminded her that they were among the officers of the law and all would proceed in due order.


"Well take a look, if you don't mind," said Blake, and one felt that it would come to pass as he had said.


The woman surrendered to that certainty. "I guess I can't stop you" she said ungraciously.


The other uniformed man stood on guard where he was, there at the front door. The rest of them followed the woman into the house, down the dingy brown hall, past the doors to the sitting room, past a dining-room door. The cellar steps went down opposite here.


The woman opened the door and snapped on a light for them as if she said, "You fools!"


Tyl went down too.


There was a little furnace room, cluttered with old boxes, not neat. It smelled of stale wine and coal gas. Tyl looked up and saw the woman, standing above them with her hot, angry eyes fixed on Chief Blake's burly back.


There were two doors out of here, one to a laundry. Gahagen opened that and peered in, closed it again. They all turned to the second door. It was not locked. It led to a perfectly empty room.


"Any more rooms down here?" the chief said. His voice boomed.


"The cellar don't go under the hull house!" the woman called shrilly. "There's nobody down there! I told you!"


Mathilda stood in the empty little room and looked around at the stone walls. It was gloomy. Someone found the light. She blinked as the bare bulb sprang into glowing life.


"Where would the place be?" Chief Blake looked down at her. "Which side of the house, Miss Frazier, eh?"


"Mrs. Howard," said Grandy softly.


She felt her heart sink down—that sick, falling feeling. The taste of fear rose in her throat. Why did Grandy put that in? The fiction of her marriage? Why did he want them to think— She couldn't understand.


She moistened her lips. "It was right here," she said. Her voice was too thin. It piped up like a child's voice. "Here," she repeated, “because, don't you see, that's the window I broke?"


They all looked up. Sure enough. The window was broken.


"Now—uh—you say you saw him?" Chief Blake shifted around to face her—grill her, she thought.


"I couldn't see very well," she admitted, "but it was Francis, because he answered me."


"You talked to him, eh?"


“He couldn't talk, but—"


“But you say he answered. What do you mean by that, Miss—er—”


"He did. You see, he could make a kind of thudding noise somehow. Like a heavy tap on the floor. So-" She swallowed. It didn't even sound plausible to her. It sounded ridiculous, and yet it was true.


"Its true!" she cried aloud. "He did answer me! He pounded once for 'yes' and twice for no.' I asked if it was Francis!"


"Pounded, eh?" Chief Blake seemed to take what she said perfectly literally, and he looked about him.


Tom Gahagen said, "Maybe you weren't as smart as you thought you were, Luther. Could be, you were seen. Better search the whole place. . . . What d'ya say, Blake?"


"If the young lady's so sure—"


"I'm absolutely sure!" Mathilda told them desperately.


So the house was searched. She went along. She had to see it for herself. The cellar. They thumped the stone walls. They shifted the low pile of coal with a long shovel. Then the kitchen, cupboards, pantry. The dining room. She saw Gahagen lift the long tablecloth

and look under. It struck her as absurd, as if a man like Francis were a child, hiding from them. They searched the sitting room. Not there. They looked thoroughly into the clothes closet in the hall.


The woman of the house stood by, against walls. She followed along and stood contemptuously back and watched. She was arrogant and sulky and sure.


"There's nobody here," she kept saying.


They went upstairs. Three bedrooms, more closets, a bath—a cubbyhole off the hall. No living thing. No dead thing, either. No person at all. They asked about the attic. There was a ladder to let down, and they let it down and a man went up. He came back sneezing.


"Nobody up there," he said.


And that was all there was to the house.


Chief Blake looked sidewise at Tyl's white face. "Try the garage."


The garage was cold and vacant. Just a tin shack. Nobody, nothing in it.


The men poked about the little back yard, lifted the slanting cellar doors with sudden energy and let them down again, slowly. There was nobody in the house or on the grounds except the woman, who stood on the porch now to watch in contemptuous

silence.


"Well," said Gahagen. He let his shoulders fall helplessly. He looked at Mathilda. They all did.


"But I know he was here!" she said.


"He's not here now, miss," said one of the men.


"But he was. . . . Grandy!" she wailed for help.


"How long before you met Luther and sent him back to stand watch?" asked Gahagen sharply.


"Not long," she faltered. "A m-minute."


They shook their heads. They shrugged.


She wanted to scream.


"If you're through, I'd be obliged if you'd leave," the woman said, from the porch, her voice thin and dry with her contempt.


Tyl turned to her. "What happened?" she cried. "You know! . . . Mr, Gahagen, don't you see she must know? Why don't you make her tell?"


"Why, you—" The woman's eyes blazed. "Call me a liar?"


"Hush, hush," said Grandy. . . . "Tyl, darling, its possible you were mistaken."


She moistened her lips. "No."


The woman said, "Now you seen what you seen, you better all get out of here." She went indoors contemptuously.


Grandy looked at Gahagen. "Perhaps Mathildas overwrought—" His voice was gentle and sad.


"I'm not!" cried Tyl, knowing that the squeal of desperation in her tone denied her words. "I'm not." She tried to make it sound firm and sane.


"Oh, my dear"—in pity.


"Francis was here!”


"Hush."


Tyl thought, I won't scream. I wont cry. She said, "How could I have been mistaken? I told you about the candy."


"Candy? What candy was that, Miss Frazier—Mrs.—" Chief Blake would listen.


"Candy!" she cried. "That's how I trailed him! He dropped pieces of candy, like a paper chase. . . . They were some of your Dutch chocolates, Grandy. That's how I found the house. Did you think I went looking in every cellar window? Come out here to the front.

I'll show you." Her voice rang with new confidence.


But on the dull grass, just emerging from its winter brown, there was no glittering little heap of candies now. There was nothing there. Nothing on the grass anywhere.


They stood and looked at the ground. Gahagen scraped with his sole, made a mark.


Grandy said softly, "Come home, Tyl."


"No."


"He isn't here, dear. You saw that."


"But he was!" she wailed. "Because I know he was! Grandy, you believe me, don't you?w


"There, there. Hush."


"This is the little girl that was on the ship?" Chief Blake was asking delicately.


She knew Grandy was nodding. She knew glances flew, now, above her head.


"She's been under a strain," Grandy said in his soothing way. His voice stroked and patted at the situation, stretching it here, pushing at lumps. He was going to cover over this indecency of the impossible. Everything would seem reasonable and able to be believed, after he had stroked the facts with his voice a while. "Dreadful strain," he was murmuring. "First that, and then Althea's death. Her own sister couldn't have been closer. And now, you see, her husband has gone off without leaving any word. It's no wonder. Poor child."


They were murmuring too. She could hear the hum of their consent and understanding.


"Its all been terribly confusing," Grandy said. "I can't even tell you all of it. But she really— It's no wonder if her senses begin to play her tricks. I think if you'd been through . . . stresses and the bewildering circumstances—" His voice murmured off, died in word-

less sympathy.


Tyl felt frozen and trapped.


Her senses. Here it was again. She did not know what she knew she knew. Here was Grandy saying so! What Francis had said! She did not know what had happened. What she thought she saw, couldn't be trusted. What she thought she remembered, no one else

remembered, and even inanimate things shifted and changed behind her back. Because her senses played her tricks? Did they, in fact? She didn't know, herself, at the moment. She wasn't sure any more.


Gahagen said cheerfully, "No harm done."


Blake said kindly, "Just as well to make sure. Say, that's all right."


"Never mind, little girl. We understand," their voices said.


She stood still in utter terror. What it meant, her mind didn't know. But her body was sick with fear.


A taxicab pulled up abruptly. A girl got out. The girl was Jane. She came to them quickly. She was decisive and demanding.


"What is it?" said Jane. "What are all of you doing here?"


Chapter Thirty-one


The group shifted to let Jane in. There was a reluctance to say what they were doing here. No one volunteered.


"Ah, Jane, dear child," said Grandy. . . . "Gentlemen, this is my little secretary, from the house. . . . Look, dear, let us take Mathilda home in your cab."


"But wait a minute—"


"I thought Francis was in there," Mathilda said wearily. "I thought I'd found him."


The blond girl's eyes didn't flinch from hers. "That's strange," she said. "Because this is where Press lives."


"Press?" Grandy said it


"Yeah, the name here is Press, all right," said Chief Blake.


"You mean Ernie Press?"


"Yeah."


"Why, I am acquainted with him," said Grandy. "Of course. Do you mean to tell me—"


Jane said crisply, "I'd like to know what this is about, please."


There was a shocked little silence, the result of her rudeness. Then Gahagen began to tell her.


Mathilda felt strength seeping back into her spine. Jane was no baby doll or child, either. Jane had force. Jane made sense. She listened eagerly. It was a different kind of sense from Grandy's, but sense. Something clear.


Tyl said, "Yes, and I did communicate, Jane. He did answer me."


"Let me tell you something," said Jane in her clear and surprisingly bold voice. "Francis warned me that if anything ever happened to him, I should look up this man named Press."


This was odd. Tyl felt the balance shift. She could tell that they were checked, turned back, made to think again.


"He works for the city," went on Jane. "The D.P.W."


"D.P.W.!" cried Mathilda. "Of course! Yes, yes! Francis got into his car. His car, Jane! It had D.P.W. on it. Ask the gardener."


Grandy bent forward, as if he drew a line across Tyl's eagerness to cancel it. "But of course Press works for the city," he purred. "Of course he does, child."


Jane paid him no heed. She went on, "I've been watching Mr. Press. He's been at his office down in the city yard. A little while ago he left suddenly. And very fast. He drove to the corner of Mercer Lane. That's about four blocks up and over." Jane pointed. "I

followed him there."


"My dear Jane!" murmured Grandy with astonishment, and still she paid him no heed. Jane was a doll without any strings. Mathilda stood straighten


"He spoke to the driver of a garbage truck," said Jane.


They all looked blank.


"The truck started up right away. It turned off. I followed Press again, until I found out he was only going back to his office. Then I thought I'd see what that truck did. Did it come here?"


"Eh?" said Grandy. He looked thunderstruck.


"Did it?" said Jane. "Because it turned this way." Her blue eyes were stern and clear. One would have to answer.


"Oh, me!" said Grandy. "I didn't see any garbage truck."


"Mr. Grandison was watching the house," Blake explained with his monumental patience, "the entire time, or practically so, between when Miss—er—the young lady says she saw—"


"Oh, he was!" said Jane with peculiar emphasis.


Tyl's pulse was racing. She thought she saw how everything could be reconciled. "No, no. Maybe he didn't see it!" she cried. "But it could have come along just the same. He might not have seen it. People don't. It's like a waiter. You don't see his face."


"Like the postman!" said Grandy quickly, almost as if he clutched at a straw. "Oh, my dear, can I be guilty of that stupidity? Chesterton's Invisible Man! You remember, Tom. You've read those things. The invisible people who come and go in the street and are not seen because you are so used to them. Now, I couldn't say —I really couldn't say whether I saw a garbage truck—"


"Suppose the dame in the house saw you, Luther," Gahagen offered. "She tips off her husband."


"Yes," said Grandy. He drawled out some doubt. "Ye-es."


"He sends a truck around."


"But, Tom—"


"Listen. He's the guy who knows exactly where those trucks are. all day, every day. They got a map and schedules. You'd be surprised. Say a lady loses her ring or a piece of good silver in the trash. Happens often. Why, he can stop the truck before they dump."


"Dump?" said Jane, her hand on her throat. "Dump?"


"Yeah, they dump down at the incinerator."


"Is that a fact?" said Grandy. "They do know, then, exactly where each truck—"


"Sure, it's a fact."


"Yeah, but what's the idea here?" said Blake. He slowed them down. He fixed on Jane. "You're saying, miss, that this man Press sends around a garbage truck to pick up a man?"


Jane swayed on her feet. "He sent a truck somewhere."


"And the man's gone," said Mathilda in a clear, bold voice. She stood by Jane. "He was helpless. He couldn't speak. He couldn't yell. He could have been carted away." Jane's shoulder leaned on hers. The girls were side by side. It was a lining up of forces.


"Now look here," said Grandy reasonably. Everyone turned to him. "I do understand that Press is in a position to—let us say—summon a garbage truck. I know that. I concede as much. In fact, I remember now that he had spoken of the system with which they run their noisome affairs. It's truly remarkable—truly—the things that go on in the background of our lives and we reck not of; we are unaware—"


Jane said, "What are you going to do?"


She said it to the others. Grandy went on smoothly, as if she had not done the unforgivable again and interrupted him, "I do not understand what it is you—er—imagine, Jane, my dear. How can a man's body be taken away on a garbage truck? You aren't saying that the men on the truck are all in cahoots? Now come. What had Francis done, ever, to the Department of Public Works?"


Jane said, 'The incinerator." She lost all color. "The fires are so very hot!" Her face was dead white.


Tyl said, "They wouldn't— No! Where is the incinerator? . . . Jane, come on!"


"Wait."


"No."


"Girls, girls, you can't—"


Tyl cried out, "Somebody's got to—" Jane's hand was on her arm, gripping tightly. They were allied. They ran toward the taxi. Gahagen leaped after them.


Chief Blake said, hastily for him, apologetically, "Maybe we better run down there."


Chapter Thirty-two


The taxi driver was delighted to be on official business and go as fast as he could go. Jane and Tyl and Gahagen rocked in the seat, bracing themselves. Jane's hand and Tyl's were welded together. There was no use trying to talk. Now and then, Jane made a little moaning sound. She didn't seem to know she was making a sound at all.


Tyl thought, She must be in love. Her own heart kept sinking all the time, over and over again. It would seem to swell and then fall, and the fear would come in waves. She thought, Naturally, I don't want him to he hurt. I wouldn't want anyone to be hurt so terribly. They rocked around the last corner and raced down a little hill to where the road led over a weighing platform and into the vast wasted-looking spaces around the city incinerator.


Jane said in Tyl's ear, "How was it that Grandy was supposed to be watching?"


Tyl said, "Because when I met him—"


"You told Grandy!"


"Of course. I—"


Jane's hand began to twist and pull. She was taking it away. She drew herself away. Tyl had the feeling that she'd been rejected. She was not included any more. The rest of this she would have to go through alone.


The taxi whizzed across the weighing platform. A man there shouted with surprise, came racing after them. They went up the ramp. The brakes screamed. They had come through the great doors and to a stop within the building. They were in a vast room—not really a room at all. The inside of this brick building was all hollow. It was nothing but a great space, enclosed by the high walls, roofed over and crossed with girders high above them, and with high windows, tilted like factory windows, some of them open, many feet up in the walls. This great space, on three sides, was empty. Echoing. Clean. But in the faintly dusty air there hung a sourish, repulsive odor.


On the fourth side were the pits. Here was where the trucks came to dump the burnable stuff. Here was where they backed up to a wooden curb and shucked off their loads. The refuse fell into huge pits built into the floor. And beyond the pits, on the other side, a

great partition went up to within perhaps twenty feet of the high roof. It crossed the whole side of the building like a high parapet, with the pits like a moat in front of it.


Above it ran a kind of track from which hung a big steel-jawed bucket that was working steadily, with sullen rumblings of sound. It came down, descended into the pit, nibbled and bit at the stuff in the pits and then went up, drooling, carrying its enormous mouthful over the partition, over the wall, to some mysterious fate beyond.


Tyl looked up. Like a demon tender of the fires of hell, a head, a face with a snout, was looking down with great flat eyes, inhuman and horrible.


The human man from the weighing platform came running up behind them. They heard the howling of the siren on the police car. Grandy and Blake and the rest.


Gahagen said, "Which trucks dumped here the last half hour?" He didn't know how to put the question.


The man said, "All the trucks been in and dumped for the last time. All through."


"All of them?"


"Yeah. They get through around now. They all been in. What's wrong?"


"We don't know," Gahagen said.


Grandy and the rest came puffing up. The man who worked here was surrounded suddenly by all these visitors.


Jane, looking sick, had edged toward the pits and was looking down over the rim. Her voice pierced the dusty, rumbling emptiness of the great bare place as if it cut through a fog. "There's a trunk down there!"


“Trunk?"


"What trunk?"


"Where?"


The line of men advanced cautiously, peered over, each with one foot out, one back, with identical bendings of necks, like a line of the chorus.


"Yeah."


"Trunk, all right."


"Well?"


The employee said, "Yeah, I asked about that. Said it was full of stuff hadn't been fumigated. Typhoid. People warned them.”


"When did that come in?"


"Last truck. Number Five."


Above the voices went the rumbling of the crane. Jane looked up in horror. "Stop that thing! You've got to stop it!"


"Wait a minute," said the man who worked there. "Now, listen. What's the idea? What goes on here?"


Chief Blake said, pursuing orderly thought, "Any way of finding out where they picked up that trunk?"


"Sure. Call up the yards. Get hold of the men."


“There isn't time!" cried Jane. She ducked under Chief Blake's elbow and bobbed up in front of him. "You've got to stop that thing! Stop it right now! What are you waiting for?" Her fists beat on his big blue chest "Don't you see, if he's down there—" She was losing

control.


Grandy was peering into the pit distastefully. His face was pained. The big bucket went down again, gnawed at the nauseous heap, nuzzled at it, then slowly it rose toward the top of the wall.


"Listen, they gotta clean up the pits before they can quit," the man said stubbornly. "They don't stop just for anybody's fun, you know. The men down there firing, they wanna get through."


The fires, then, must be somewhere below, somewhere below the floor where they were, and beyond that wall, at the top of which still stood the man in the gas mask. His big glassined eyes were turned down and toward them.


Fire. Very hot fire. Very hot indeed, to burn what was down there in those pits, what went slowly up in the big steel bucket, hunk by hunk, mouthful after steady mouthful.


"What a place!" said Grandy. "What a scene! What a place!" His nostrils trembled. He peered over. His hand was on Mathilda's shoulder. She shrank away from the rim, and yet something drew her irresistibly. To lean closer. To look down. She could see the top of the trunk. It was a big, old-fashioned turtleback, a big box with a humped cover. It was half buried in the debris, tilted, top upward. She tried to imagine Francis, down there in the pit, bound and imprisoned, shut in a dark box, waiting to be destroyed. She knew that was what Jane thought and imagined. But it couldn't be. It couldn't be real. Such a tiling could not happen, could not be happening.


The big, empty, smelly place, the rumbling crane feeding the hidden fires, the efficiency of destruction that was going on here—the whole thing made her want to close her senses against it, not to believe, not to watch; to turn and go; to run away and go to a clean sweet place and bathe and forget.


Jane was sobbing, "Oh, please, please, listen to me! You can't take the chance! You've got to be sure!"


Grandy swayed a little. "Jane," he said, "you think he's down there!" The thought seemed to make him ill. Tyl felt him going.


She screamed. Somebody grabbed at her and held her back. She screamed again and again. The demon on the wall threw up his hands and disappeared. Men milled around her and shouted. The fumbling faltered and stopped. The bucket hung half raised, and

from its iron lips the gobs of garbage fell.


Down in the pit was Grandy. He lay on his back in the ruck, his thin arms and legs spread out, his face up. Was he dead? Had he fainted? She would have gone on screaming, but the man who was holding her put his hand roughly over her mouth to stop the noise.


Jane had crouched down, was almost kneeling, right at the edge. Her eyes had a glitter. She was watching hard. Gahagen was shouting hard. Somebody came running with a rope. Gahagen was making as if to loop it around his own waist.


But Grandy wasn't dead or even unconscious. As they watched in the new silence, he struggled up. He got part way out of the ruck. Then, on his knees, he began to move, slowly, with difficulty, crawling across the pit, wallowing in the refuse because he had to, to move at all.


They heard him say, "Wait. Not yet." He was wallowing toward the trunk. He was curiously like someone swimming. He reached the trunk and hung to it a moment as if he might otherwise sink and disappear. They saw him strain to lift the lid, lift it a trifle. Saw

his white head bend to bring his eyes to a position to see within. They saw him let the lid fall, fumble a moment more as if to look again. Then he raised his arm.


They heard his voice come out of the pit, drawn out like a signal cry, humming and droning in the echoing silence, "Let . . . the ro-ope . . . do-own!"


The rope went down with a loop at the end of it. Gahagen lay on the floor, looking over, calling encouragement and instruction.


Jane was a frozen bundle huddled at the brink. Her hand was flat on the dirty floor. Tyl thought, How can she bear to get her hand so dirty?


Somebody called out from the big entrance way, and Oliver came running across the floor. He wound up, panting, "Cop told me! Where's Grandy? Tyl, what happened?"


Tyl thought, No time for gossip.


"He fell."


Oliver's eyes bulged with horror.


Grandy was dangling now. They were pulling him out. He was rising from the pit on the end of the rope. They hauled him over the edge and he crumpled into a heap on the floor. His lids went down wearily.


“Fainted."


"No wonder."


"Oh, by the way, gentlemen," said Grandy's velvet voice calmly, "there's nothing in the trunk but some pieces of plaster, I think, and some old rags."


"My God, Luther, you're game!" cried Gahagen. "Good man!"


"After all," said Grandy wryly, “I was in the neighborhood." He turned his head, eyes closed, a tired old man.


Somebody laughed. Somebody swore. Somebody must have given a signal then, because the rumbling whispered out of silence, began and grew.


Oliver was kneeling at Grandy s side. He was the image of devotion. "Get a doctor," he demanded. "Get an ambulance."


"Nonsense, my dear boy," said Grandy, but his lids were trembling. He looked very sick. He was filthy and contaminated—fastidious Grandy! An old man, after all. He lay on the dirty floor.


"This'll be the end of him!" cried Oliver in despair. "Call a doctor, one of you! Hurry, can't you see! Tyl, snap out of it"


Tyl stood looking on. She had not fallen on her knees. She felt unable to bend or to move at all. She contemplated the image of devotion. She saw the puppet working to swing attention and concern. She saw Grandy lying filthy on the floor and the people all

beginning to swing, to center him.


The scene had nothing to do with her. She was alone, outside the circle and alone, suspended, lost. A puppet without strings would be as limp and lost. The bucket descended, to fall again at its work. She noticed that it had a weakness. She felt it was curiously repulsive that the great wicked tiling with its greedy mouth was so weak

at the neck. It had no neck, only cables. It fell weakly, and then it would nibble and chew and scrabble about, and gape and close and rise sternly, with the cable taut, to carry its load over the wall. Mathilda's eyes followed it.


Jane wasn't in the circle, either. That circle around Grandy, where invisible bands drew like elastic, where he was pulling them with the magnet of himself, and they were responding like iron filings.


Jane screamed. Jane got up from the crouching position and fastened on Blake s arm. "No, stop it! Don't let it start! You've got to look!"


"Look where, Miss?"


“In the trunk! In the trunk!"


"Mr. Grandison looked." The big arm rejected her.


"No, no, not Mr. Grandison! You can't trust him!"


"What do you mean, you can't trust—"


Oliver got up. "What the devil's the matter with you, Jane?" he asked severely.


"Francis is in that trunk! In a minute that thing is going to take it! Where does it take things? Where does it go?"


"The chutes. To the fires," somebody said.


"No!" Jane was nearly hysterical. "I tell you, you can't take his word! Any one mans word! You've got to stop that thing! Open the trunk! Let me see! Let me see inside!"


"Now, just a minute, miss. After all—"


"It's your duty!" she cried. Tears ran down her face. She was frantic.


Oliver said, "Slap her, somebody. Slap her in the face." His voice got shrill. "We've got to get Grandy out of here! He's a mess! Tyl!"


"Seems to me we've done our duty," Blake was answering. "Mr. Grandison saw what was inside the trunk. Now, miss—er—you don't know the trunk came from Press's house, do you? It could have come from anywhere in town. It's full of typhoid germs."


Tyl thought dully, Grandy'll catch typhoid. She was watching the bucket, on its way up now. It seemed to be working a little faster. The men who tended the fires wanted to get through and get home.


Jane said, “I know I can't make you believe he's lying. But he could be mistaken. You can't afford to take even that chance. Suppose he's mistaken? It's a man's life! Mathilda knows he was there in that house."


Tyl stirred. "Yes," she said dully. She thought, If I can trust my own senses.


The bucket was dropping down. Its cables were slack. It fell with that disgusting weakness at the neck. It fell, it nibbled, it crept quite near. Quite near the old turtleback trunk that lay half buried. The buckets jaws were big enough to take it up—just about big

enough. Perhaps next time.


". . . nobody in the cellar."


". . . girl musta made a mistake."


Blake said impatiently, "Now, look, miss. If I thought there was any danger—"


"I don't care what you think! I know there's danger!"


Oliver said, "What's this about, anyhow? I wish somebody would—"


Jane said, "Don't take the time to tell him."


Maddeningly, Blake began, "This young lady—"


"Stop that thing, I tell you!" Jane's voice was ugly with her terror. "Stop it!" She tore her throat with the cry.


Gahagen said, "Aren't you a little bit hysterical?"


Oliver said, "For God's sake, with Grandy maybe dying—"


Grandy was just lying there, pale and wan, filthy, done in, so weary and ill and pathetic.


Jane s eyes turned in her head to catch sight of the bucket going up. Not yet had it got the trunk into its jaws.


Mathilda was alone. She knew they were all gathered around Grandy, who lay so dramatically exhausted at their feet. She could hear voices talking, talking, and Jane arguing, reasoning, pleading. And the bucket was coming down again.


She heard Jane cry, "Somebody help me! . . . Mathilda, help me!”


One would have to answer such a cry.


But Grandy stirred, and she heard his voice, "Where's Tyl?" It carried through every other noise, that beloved voice, so rich and tender. "Where's my duckling?" he said. He called her to him. "Is she all right?" That was his anxious love. "Tyl, darling."


Mathilda's head turned. His hand was out, waiting for hers to slide within it. Appealing to her. Confident of her. His darling. Yes, of course, she was his darling.


She saw something on the floor. It was as if there was an explosion inside her head.


She gasped, put out her hand. "Oh, please . . . please." The words rose out of her throat to join Jane's. Then she thought, Talk, words. Words wont do it. What's the use of talking? For Jane had been talking; Jane was still begging them, weeping, pleading. But Grandy, lying on the floor with his eyes shut, was too strong.


Mathilda's body was taut now, and it felt strong and alive. Leaning a little forward, she said, quietly, aloud, "If Francis is down there, it's got to stop."


She flung up her arms. For a second she was poised in the air, a Winged Victory indeed. Then she had done it. She was falling, falling. She struck the soft, rotten, evil heap. She had leaped. She was down in the pit.


Above, men were shouting again.


Oh, yes, now the bucket would not come down. Mathilda smiled. She'd stopped it. She'd stopped it quickly the only way. In a moment or two, she struggled up and began to wade, as Grandy had done. She toiled and struggled. It was nightmarish, that journey through the evil muck. Her hand reached the trunk, touched its hard surfaces. Both hands now were at the lock.


From above, they saw what she was trying to do, and they saw her fail. They heard her when she called to them. Heard her cry when she said, "I can't! The trunk's locked! It's locked!"


"Locked?"


Gahagen looked at Blake, and he looked down where Grandy lay, rolled on his side now, peering over. Grandy's big, thick-knuckled hand on the curb, the rim of the pit, tightened, loosened.


Down in the pit, where the fumes rose and overpowered her, Mathilda fainted.


Chapter Thirty-three


Mathilda was bathed, scrubbed, scented and immaculate. She lay on the couch by the fire, wearing a coral-colored frock. Her legs were lovely in her best sheer prewar stockings. Her feet were comfortable in gold kid mules. Her hair had been washed and

brushed until it shone. It was tied back with a coral ribbon. She looked very young and a little pale.


Jane was sitting on the little low-backed chair, the skirt of her brown dirndl spread around her. A bracelet slid on her arm where she propped up her chin. Oliver was back a little, with his face in shadow.


These three were silent, listening to what Tom Gahagen and Francis were saying, trying not to think about what had happened to Grandy. Grandy was dead.


It was not yet certain whether or not from natural causes, whether his arrogant spirit had arrogantly fled from the prospect of disgrace by some hocus-pocus of his own will and device, perhaps by poison, or whether an old mans heart had been unable to stand the various excitements and had literally broken.


Anyhow, he was dead. There would be no legal aftermath. No long-drawn-out, sensational trial. It was all over really. Except the chase after Press and his wife. They would be caught and explode into headlines. Yes, it was all over but the headlines. And they, too, would pass.


Francis was not only alive and well, but looking extremely handsome in a soft blue country-style shirt without any tie. Shaved. Shampooed. His hair looked crisp and still damp.


They were, perhaps, the cleanest group of people gathered anywhere at that given moment. Mathilda had the thought. But she didn't smile. Her whole heart ached. Pale and quiet, she lay, and although she listened, something inside kept weeping, not for the shell of Grandy, who lay somewhere in the town, but for the Grandy who had never lived at all, for the Grandy that never was, the one she'd loved.


With the one she'd loved went everything she'd known. All gone. She could not yet be sure what anyone was, what anything was like. She'd seen the world through Grandy's eyes. That world was gone. Even his chair they'd pushed away. The long room was his no more. It was a strange room in a strange house where she'd always been a stranger.


Gahagen said, "He never made as much money in the theater as people thought. You see what he did? The head of the firm that handled the estate for Frazier, he died. So Grandy got into disagreement with the juniors and took the business away. So there was nearly two years when the fortune was fluid, and Grandy was handling things himself, buying, selling, changing things around.


While he had everything confused, he must have managed to transfer a pretty big hunk of the stuff into his own name. Then he gave the business to a new firm. How would they know she'd been robbed? But I can't figure out how you ever got on the track of such a thing from the outside."


"Jane had a letter," said Francis. His dark eyes were somber and troubled. "It was little Rosaleen Wright who got on to it." Mathilda's heart ached.


"I don't suppose we'll ever know exactly how," said Francis in that sad, patient way. "But she was here when Mathilda turned twenty-one and made her will. Maybe then—"


Mathilda said, "They did work on it a long time, the lawyer and Rosaleen. He wouldn't."


"Grandy wouldn't?" Somebody said the name she couldn't say.


"He said financial matters were too dull. He said it was a paper world." She turned her face to the inside of the couch.


"Maybe Rosaleen wondered why the records didn't go all the way back to your father's death," said Gahagen.


"She wouldn't have been fooled," said Jane suddenly. "There was something terribly honest about Rosaleen."


"You knew her well?" said Gahagen sympathetically.


"She was my cousin," Jane said. "We all grew up next door to each other."


"You never did think she killed herself?"


"No," said Jane. "And now I can imagine how he did it. I can imagine how he'd have asked her to write out that suicide note. He'd have made it seem plausible. He'd have—"


Mathilda closed her eyes.


Jane's voice was a knife.


"—maybe said to her, I'm experimenting, dear child.' There'd be that hook up in the ceiling. He'd have said he was trying to understand one of his old crimes. He could have got everything ready right under her eyes, because he'd have been talking, the way he

talked, all the time."


Mathilda shuddered. The spell was broken. She could see now that he'd been a spellbinder. She could feel a shadow of the spell.


Oliver said, with a whine in his voice, "I wish you people had come to me. I could have helped you. Althea did tell me about that Burn tenderly' business. I was your missing witness, if you'd only known. I didn't know that you needed a witness. We just didn't get

together."


Francis said gently, "None of you could be expected to see our point of view." He didn't say it reproachfully, but as if the fact had been troublesome, but not misunderstood.


Oliver said weakly, "I suppose that's so."


Gahagen turned curiously to Mathilda. "But you finally did see their point of view. Miss Tyl. What made you so sure, all of a sudden?"


She felt blank and dull, couldn't remember.


"Up to that point, you were pretty near ready to think you'd been seeing tilings, weren't you? I don't understand how you came to be sure enough to take a jump like that."


Mathilda said, slowly, "I don't know. Yes, I do, but I don't know how to explain it exactly."


"Don't try," said Francis quickly.


"Oh, yes," she said, "I'll try." She went on, groping. "You see, there were a lot of pieces. I'd heard all about the fuse blowing. Oliver gave me another piece. He told me how Althea had heard a man on the radio. Then Jane gave me another piece when she said

she'd been checking up, and the man had said 'Burn tenderly' so late that morning. You see, I had all the pieces. Hey went together, just all of a sudden."


They sighed.


"But that wasn't all" Tyl said more vigorously. She felt better for being able to explain. "There was another handful of pieces. You see, I knew Francis had been down in the cellar." She was half sitting up now, her face was vivid. "And I was sure it was Francis, on account of the candy. Who else could have left that for me to see?"


"Who else but you could have seen it?" said Francis huskily.


"Well"—she shot him a green glance—"then Jane had her story about the man Mr. Press and the truck. I just suddenly saw that if Grandy wasn't"—she'd said the name—"wasn't a true link, if he was unreliable, then the impossibilities all cleared up. I just suddenly put the thing together and I saw that Francis had been there. He had gone; he must have gone somewhere, and Jane was on the track of how he could have gone. And then," she said, "I happened to look at Grandy, and I saw that piece of Dutch chocolate spilling out of his trousers pocket."


'The candy?"


"Yes." A little shiver ran down her slim body. "I didn't stop to think he might have had one of his own chocolates in his pocket. I just remembered that I'd seen them on the ground by that house, and that they'd disappeared. Who picked them up? If I wasn't

crazy— Who knew enough to pick them up? Who knew what they meant? Only me and Francis . . . and Grandy.


"So you see," she added quietly, "I understood that he wasn't reliable. I think I just . . . saw him."


"He was—" Gahagen shook his head. He had no adjective for what Grandy had been. "Then, when he unlocked that trunk under our noses to pretend to look inside! And he locked it again too. He didn't dare risk the thing falling open when the bucket picked it up. Of course, that finished him."


"You were quick to see that," Jane praised him.


Francis said, "I must say I'm glad I was out like a light most of that time. I'm just as pleased I didn't know about that bucket or where I was."


Jane said simply, “I nearly went crazy."


Mathilda, looking at the pulse in Francis' throat, thought. So did I.


"Well, that finished him," said Francis abruptly. "He might have pleaded bad eyesight. He just might have been able to pretend he couldn't distinguish me from a bunch of old rags in the bad light, eh? He'd have talked, and who's to say he might not have wriggled out of it, when and if you'd found my bones? But with that key in his pocket!"


"He fell in on purpose, to keep us from looking inside that trunk," said Gahagen. "It was a brilliant idea. Mr. Howard, here, might have been pretty well destroyed. We might not even have stopped the works to look again. I don't know. Can't say. Looking back, it seems impossible that we believed him at all. But, of course, we did believe him at the time."


Gahagen got up to go. Perhaps his tongue slipped. When he said “Good night," he called Mathilda "Mrs. Howard."


When he had gone, Francis moved restlessly about, poked at the fire.


Oliver came out of the shadows and took a nearer chair. "Doesn't he know you two aren't married?" he asked with bright interest.


Francis stood still, with the poker in his hand swinging like a pendulum. "I guess you realize now that Grandy deliberately rearranged your wedding," he said bluntly.


Whose wedding? What was he talking about? Tyl looked up. Met his eye. "Mine!" she gasped.


Oliver said, "Ours, dear."


Tyl let her head fall back again. She didn't know how revealing her face was. How its serenity and the simple curiosity with which she asked her question told them so much. "But why didn't he want Oliver and me to marry?" she wondered almost placidly.


"He didn't want you to marry, ever," said Francis angrily, "on account of the money. Didn't he teach you to think you'd never be loved except for the money? Didn't he make you believe you weren't personally very attractive? Didn't he play up Althea against you? Weren't you always the Ugly Duckling? And not a damn word of it true." He put the poker into its place with a banging of metal on metal. Mathilda felt surprised.


Oliver said uneasily, "He certainly tried—"


"Of course he was a pretty persuasive old bird," said Francis much more mildly.


Oliver's face was red. Of course, thought Mathilda. Oliver had let Grandy persuade him. He hadn't seen Mathilda or Althea either with his own eyes, but through Grandy's eyes. And now Oliver was ashamed. So now he was preparing to laugh it off. Oliver was about

to be nonchalant. How well she knew all the silly expressions on his silly face.


"Mathilda doesn't care for me," said Oliver gaily. "Maybe I'll marry Jane."


“I don't think so," said Jane promptly. "My husband wouldn't like it."


Francis laughed and got up and put his arms around Jane. He put his chin down on her hair. "You're wonderful," he said. "Little old Jane." He kissed her. "Go to bed now. I want to talk to Mathilda."


When Jane had gone and Oliver had, rather awkwardly, gone, too, and they were alone, Francis' eyes were filled again with trouble. But Mathilda's green eyes were wide open now. The long room was a real room, after all Those people were real. She could

see.


She said, "I thought you were engaged to Rosaleen?"


“I was.”


"But . . . you're married to Jane!"


He gasped. "I'm not married to Jane. Her husband happens to be in Hawaii at the moment. That's Buddy." He began to laugh. "It's ridiculous, but she's my little old Aunt Jane. My father's youngest sister, bringing up the rear of the family. Hasn't anyone told you? I'm Francis Moynihan."


"Oh." Mathilda played with her belt. She said, "I haven't seen things or people the way they are. It's hard to begin to see."


He said, "I know." He said, "But you'll be all right." He said, "You need to . . . look around now. Now that he's gone."


She turned her face away. Her heart—something—ached terribly.


He said, "I realize how you see me. I don't know how to explain to you or apologize. I dreamed up this thing before I knew you. In fact, I thought you were dead."


She murmured that she wasn't.


"I know," he said. He got up again and ran his fingers through his hair. He didn't seem to know how to go on.


She lifted her head. "But who is that Doctor White?"


He corrected her gently, "Doctor Wright. Rosaleen's father."


"Oh. Oh, then that's why— He walks like Rosaleen."


"Does he? Yes, I guess he does."


Francis looked unhappily into the fire. "What can I do now about this marriage business?" he blurted. "You see, I haven't told. Gahagen doesn't know. The papers will say I stumbled on something suspicious after I got here. I didn't want you dragged through all that—at least until I asked you what you wanted."


She said nothing. She thought, Is it up to me?


"Tyl, what can I do now to fix things? Would you like to get a— fake divorce? That might be better for you. Better than to confess all this ridiculous masquerade. What do you think?"


"Can we get a divorce if we're not really married?" she asked thoughtfully.


"Maybe we can fake something."


"Let's not fake any more," she murmured. "Do you think Doctor Wright would just quietly marry us—really, I mean?"


"Tyl—" He half crossed the rug to her, but he stopped.


Her green eyes were wide open and cool. "Then, you see, the divorce could follow."


"I see." He went back to poke at the fire. He ran his fingers through his hair. He took a turn on the hearth rug. Then he looked at her and his brows flew up. "It's a risk," he warned.


"Risk?" she repeated.


"Terrible risk."


She got up on her elbow and looked across at him with a curious intentness, as if she were, indeed, seeing him for the first time. "I don't think so," she said slowly.


He came quickly to her and sat on the edge of her couch. He took her hands. "We'll do that, if it's what you think will be— Actually, it might be the sensible way. There's no risk, Mathilda."


"You don't mind?" she murmured.


He said with a twist of his mouth, "Why, I guess the rest of my life is yours. There's no one else I owe it to."


She shook her head, not satisfied.


His eyes lit, but he hid the light "Well do that, Tyl," he murmured. "Then . . . we'll see."

She nodded. He put his face down on her hands.


The End

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