Wolf in Man’s Clothing

4

IT IS EASY NOW to understand Conrad Brent; his strength and his weakness; his vanity and his consequent self-deception; his procrastination; his pride and his blind and obstinate prejudices; and, above all, his reluctance to admit a mistake. But then I only sensed that there was something wrong about him; something too hard and too bold which seemed to cover an inner uncertainty.

It was an odd impression. Certainly his outward behavior had no faint hint of uncertainty or secret uneasiness. Certainly, if my impression was a true one then, there was little hope of softening or changing his hatred for Drue; if his bold and arrogant front really concealed weakness then he would cling to a decision, once he made it, merely to keep up that front. I’ve seen it happen before; there is nothing like the obsessed obstinacy of a basically weak and uncertain nature.

He stood on the hearth-rug, waiting for me to say, “yes, sir” (and, unless I was wrong, a little afraid I wouldn’t). He was not a tall man, but he was rather muscular and thick; he had a brown face, a sharply aquiline nose and a bearded and thus equivocal chin. His eyes were heavily lidded and rather bright in color. He was a little bald; he wore, besides the somewhat stringy beard, a short gray mustache with two sharply waxed points at either side.

Just above him on the breast of the mantel was a coat of arms, carved and painted in somber, rich colors; it was an animal, an obese and unidentifiable creature which may have been a unicorn, standing sportively on one leg on a bit of green. The coat of arms was not quartered, which was unusual and showed me how old the direct line must be. It might have showed me too, but I didn’t think of it then, the deliberate casting away of all the hundreds of intermingling and intervening blood streams in order to cling with absurd stubbornness and self-deception to one chosen ancestral line.

I didn’t consciously think of anything however but Drue. I said, so emphatically that my voice rang out against the dark woods and books and red leather of that study, rather more loudly than I intended, “I’m afraid Miss Cable will have to stay.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, although he couldn’t have helped hearing me.

I made it clearer but lower in tone. “You can’t send Miss Cable away. She is here as a nurse. We are both needed.”

“We can get another nurse up from New York by morning. Tell her to be ready to leave in half an hour.”

I suppose he was not often defied, so, whether his arrogance was assumed or real, obviously it worked. He just didn’t believe my own opposition. So I took a long breath and walked up nearer him. “Look here,” I said, “do you want your son to die?”

That touched him. Something flinched and moved back of his bright eyes and one hand reached out toward the tall back of a chair near him. He said, “He’s not going to die,” and looked at me as if daring me to deny it, but it had frightened him all the same.

“Twenty-four hours-thirty-six at the most will tell the tale. If things go well, there’s not much for us to do, only routine. If things go wrong, that’s different. I’d advise you to let her stay. Besides, he knows she’s here.” That told on him too; I saw it again in the flash away back in his eyes.

“I thought he was unconscious. Chivery told me he would be unconscious for some time.”

“He roused a little, said a few words and then went back to sleep.”

“Said…” he began quickly, checked himself, and then resumed in a more deliberate way. “What did he say?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a nurse. Dr. Chivery reminded me just now of my oath. Florence Nightingale, you know,” I said gently, and watched the purple come up into his cheeks and lips. Too much purple, in fact, in his lips. I couldn’t help making a brief professional note of it.

“Florence Nightingale blazes,” he said. “I’m paying you. I’m his father. What did he say?”

He glared at me and I looked back at him and said, “Sorry. Is that all?” and made a motion toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” he said abruptly when I touched the doorknob. There was a short pause. Somewhere a clock was ticking in a measured way. It was almost dark by then and heavy red curtains had been drawn over the windows and one or two table lamps had been lighted. A cannel coal fire was burning in the hearth below the queerly contemptuous coat of arms; a lump cracked open and sputtered; blue sparks shot upward and Conrad Brent said, “Did he say anything about the accident?” and lifted his light eyes to watch me.

Well, there he had me. In spite of the antagonism Conrad Brent had instantly roused in me, it was clearly my duty to tell someone in authority of the thing Craig had said. So I did.

“He said, well, as a matter of fact, he said this: ‘But that’s murder. Tell Claud.’ And then he said, ‘There’ll be murder done.’ ”

I watched Conrad Brent, and he looked back at me without the slightest change of expression and that was rather odd because he ought to have been, to say the least, a little startled. He ought to have questioned me too; but he didn’t. After a long moment he only shrugged and said, “Delirium. Obviously.”

I said nothing. And Conrad Brent added, “And he did recognize the-the woman?”

I discovered a streak of sadism in my nature and said archly, “Oh, but definitely!”

That affected him as the other hadn’t. He didn’t have a stroke, but it was touch and go for an instant. Then abruptly he crossed to the long, polished desk which stood in the window embrasure. He put his thumb hard upon a bell there and, when after another silence, Beevens opened the door, he sent for Drue.

“Tell Anna to stay with Mr. Craig,” he said. “And bring the other nurse here.”

Beevens said, “Very good, sir,” and vanished.

“I’ve got to go back to my patient…”

He interrupted. “You stay here.”

“But…”

“Anna took care of him till you got here. She can do it for another five minutes.”

He didn’t ask me to sit down, and he didn’t sit down himself. But after a moment of staring down at the desk, he turned and lifted a crystal decanter that stood, with small glasses, on a silver tray. There was brandy in the decanter; it had a rich, golden-brown gleam when the light fell on it and when he had offered me some and I shook my head, he poured some for himself, a generous amount which he drank quickly. I rather felt that he was fortifying himself against the coming interview, which bore out my curious, but thus far unsubstantiated, impression of him.

The library was a warm room, with rich panels which alternated with bookshelves that went to the high ceiling. There were several great, high-backed chairs, upholstered in needlepoint, a long, rather shabby red leather divan, and a rug that, Peter Huber told me later, had been willed to a museum and yet was put down for people to walk upon, which seemed to upset Peter but which struck me as perfectly logical, in that, after all, it was a rug. But he said it ought to have hung on the wall.

Then Drue came. Beevens muttered and closed the door behind her so she was silhouetted sharply against its dark wood, white and slim with her chin held high. Her face was white, too, and her gray eyes quite bright and dark. Conrad Brent put down the glass he still held.

“Why did you come here?” he said heavily.

Drue took a sharp breath. “I was sent here as a nurse.”

Conrad Brent frowned. “No. I’ll tell you why you came. You came because it was my son. You wanted to see him. Well, he does not want to see you. That ought to be clear by now.”

Drue’s face went, if anything, whiter. She said. “I came here to nurse him. He’s sick and he needs me…”

“Not you,” cut in Conrad Brent. “Anybody but you. I tell you he doesn’t want you.”

Drue hesitated. Then she lifted her little chin higher. “I don’t believe that,” she said.

Conrad Brent with a sharp and yet small and controlled gesture of anger lifted the decanter and set it hard and abruptly down again. He said, “Look here, Miss Cable.”

Drue interrupted and said quietly, “Mrs. Brent.”

“Mrs…”

“I did not actually resume my maiden name. I am legally Mrs. Brent.”

A small purplish flush crept up into Conrad Brent’s cheeks. “But you are not my son’s wife,” he said, biting off the words. “And I must tell you, painful though it is to me, that my son doesn’t want you. He asked me to arrange the break with you. I didn’t want to tell you that at the time. I didn’t want to hurt you needlessly; I am a kind man. And Craig wanted to spare you as much as possible. He thought it was kinder to break off his marriage to you as it was done. Gradually. And in a way that saved your pride and feelings. I’m sorry to have to say this. Nothing but your defiant and suspicious attitude would have induced me to say it. But you must understand that Craig doesn’t want you to be his wife and didn’t. He realized that his marriage was ill-considered and too hasty.”

All this time Drue was standing, outlined sharply in her crisp white uniform, against the door. Her face was almost as white as her uniform, but her eyes didn’t flinch.

Conrad Brent touched the decanter again, absently, and said, “As I say, I’m sorry. But you must have known the truth when he didn’t come back to you after he finished his training.”

Drue took a step forward at that. She said, “He did finish then?”

A queer, a completely indecipherable expression flitted across Conrad Brent’s face; it was something curiously secretive and yet shrinkingly secretive, somehow; as if he didn’t want to think of whatever it was that was in his mind. He said, however, stiffly, “Yes. He leaves soon. I don’t know his destination.”

“Why is he at home?” said Drue.

“I don’t really know that you have a right to ask,” said Conrad Brent. “However-” he lifted his shoulders and replied briefly-“he is home on leave. Now, of course, his leave will have to be extended. As I say, I don’t know where he is to be sent. He doesn’t know. He is”-again that queerly shrinking and secretive look came into his face-“he is to be a bomber pilot.”

“Bomber…” said Drue in a kind of numb and expressionless voice.

“Yes,” said Conrad Brent. There was a strange little silence in which, I thought, for the first time probably Conrad Brent shared an emotion with the girl he hated. He seemed then to realize it, for he drew himself up, gave her a hooded, hating look and said, “That is not the point. The point is you are no longer his wife. And he doesn’t want to see you.” He waited, and Drue didn’t move, and he said suddenly in a kind of burst, “Do you doubt my word?”

Drue said quietly and simply, her eyes straight and unwavering, “Yes.”

Conrad Brent turned so purple and swelled so visibly that I gave a preparatory glance at the decanter of brandy and the sofa; but nothing happened in the way of a seizure, and Drue added simply, “You see, Craig loved me.”

“That was a boyish infatuation!” said Conrad Brent, with a kind of controlled violence. “He was soon cured. Your marriage to my son is past and ended completely. I only wanted to make sure you understood that before permitting you to stay on in this house. I see you prefer not to, so you can leave at once…” He turned to the bell and had his hand outstretched when I said, “She’d better stay.”

His head jerked toward me, startled. I said, “All this is beside the point. The only thing that matters just now is whether your son is going to live or die.” I said it quite coolly and looked at the fat and frolicsome animal above the mantel in a detached fashion.

There was a little silence while he digested that. Then he turned to Drue again. “You might be needed tonight. But, understand, I’ll have no attempts to talk to my son. If you stay at all you stay on my terms.”

Well, it was clear enough; shut up or out you go. After a moment, Drue said, whispering, “I’ll stay. I’ve got to stay…”

“Very well,” said Conrad Brent. “You take the noon train tomorrow. That’s all.”

She waited an instant or two, looking at him; then she went to the door. But with her hand on the doorknob she turned to him again. Her clear gray eyes had a thoughtful, queerly measuring look. She said very quietly, “You are his father. I suppose you love him. But I could kill you for what you’ve done to me.” With which remarkably quiet and unexpected remark she walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Well, I must say I was a little disconcerted. I turned to Conrad Brent and he had got out a handkerchief and was touching his bluish lips with it. “Look here,” I said abruptly. “I know that girl. She’d make anybody a good wife.”

“And a charming daughter-in-law,” said Conrad Brent, “threatening to murder me.”

“She didn’t mean that; you know it. She…”

He interrupted me. “My dear Nurse. I have no doubt she would make an admirable wife for, as you aptly put it, anybody. But not”-he drew himself up and glanced up at the coat of arms and said in a different voice-“but not for my son. That’s all, Nurse.” Without giving me another chance to speak he went to the door and opened it for me, and I was obliged to precede him into the hall.

The aspect of the great, solemn hall had changed. A fire had been lighted and there was a little group of people having tea there, with chairs and tables drawn up near the fire and Beevens hovering in the background. Alexia, sitting behind a lace-draped table, was pouring from an old silver service that was polished till it looked as soft as satin.

Conrad Brent asked me to have tea with them. The fact itself astonished me so I looked at him incredulously. But it was as if the opening of the library door had been the rising of a curtain and Conrad Brent had a scene to play. He was a different man-poised, urbane, gracious in a lordly way.

Well, naturally, I refused. I’d been too long away from my patient as it was. But he insisted upon introducing me to Maud Chivery, who nodded briefly and watched me brightly, to Nicky Senour whom I had already encountered and who remembered it for he was barely civil, and to another young man, tall and blond and nice-looking who arose at once from the bench before the fireplace and bowed, and answered to the name of Peter Huber. This then was Craig’s friend and the man who had helped Nicky and the butler carry him to his room after the shooting.

Maud Chivery stirred her tea with a shriveled, brown little hand and said in a soft-as-silk voice, “I’ll be glad to stay with you tonight, Nurse. When the other nurse leaves.”

Alexia’s beautiful, pointed face turned seekingly toward her husband’s. Conrad didn’t look at her. “The other nurse will stay until morning,” he said.

Maud Chivery’s eyes glistened with interest. Alexia’s face stiffened, and she made a small quick motion as if to rise from her chair, but Conrad walked over to her and put his heavy hand on her shoulder. Alexia put one soft white hand caressingly over his own and instantly his face changed and softened. It was obvious that whatever had happened in the past Conrad Brent was almost fatuously in love with his young wife. The young wife who had been once, and not so long ago, his son’s fiancée. “She goes tomorrow,” he said.

Alexia did not relax; her eyelids drooped a little but it seemed to me that under the soft shadow of her eyelashes she shot a demanding glance toward her brother Nicky. Nicky looked into his cup for an instant and said, “I wonder what Drue wants.”

Maud Chivery made a little shushing motion with one brown claw but glanced eagerly at Conrad. “That is not a name I or Alexia wish to hear uttered in this house,” said Conrad with really astonishing command and dignity. It argued sincerity on his part and a determination to control circumstances which seemed to me remarkable in this day when there are no medieval castles nor medieval rulers and no matter how much you hate anybody you really can’t help hearing his name now and then. Nicky’s pointed, elegant face and small crimson mouth looked fleetingly a little ugly; but he lifted his cup again without replying.

Rather abruptly I said that I had to get back to my patient and Peter Huber straightened suddenly, put down his cup and said something polite to Alexia who nodded. She hadn’t said a word, yet she had made her will fully marked by her quick inquiring look at Conrad to know if Drue was to be sent away, no less than by her covert but imperative glance toward her brother which seemed to enlist his aid against Drue. Decidedly, Alexia held the reins of power in her pointed, soft, white hands. She didn’t look at Peter Huber as she nodded to his polite murmur, and he walked across the hall beside me and started up the great stairway when I did.

At the curve I glanced down. Alexia was sitting perfectly still in her great chair, her crimson suit a spot of rich, soft color, her pearls reflecting a rosy glow from the fire. Her head was bent a little thoughtfully, and there was in her face again, despite its indubitable beauty, a hint of underlying cruelty. Perhaps it lay subtly in the shape of her mouth, small yet so crimson and so eager, or in her delicately pointed chin. Nothing she could help, certainly. I told myself that and then looked at Nicky and saw exactly the same thing, a subtle, indefinable twist of his red mouth, a brooding quality in the soft repose of his face, something you couldn’t analyze and describe, and something cruel.

Maud Chivery’s dark little face twisted over her white stock to watch us go up the stairway. Then we went above the landing and could no longer see the silent group below.

Peter Huber was still with me when I turned along the corridor toward my patient’s room. Once we had passed beyond earshot of those in the hall below, he said, “Wait a minute, Miss-Nurse. I’d like to talk to you. It won’t take a moment. Here’s a chair.”

Well, I suppose it could have been called that, although it had almost certainly been culled from one of the bigger and better medieval torture chambers. A bulbous-legged cupid leered at me from a dark tapestry across the opposite wall, and Peter Huber said, “Is he going to die?”

“I hope not. I don’t think so.”

He was a nice-looking fellow, as I’ve said; very blond and very big but not so boyish as my first impression led me to believe. He was tanned as Craig Brent was tanned. There were fine lines around his large blue eyes and around his squarish mouth; his features were large and rather blunt, his blond hair curly and strong-looking. He had rather good hands, long and muscular and was dressed in very British tweeds but was not British, although there was a slight flavor of something European about him; perhaps it was his enormous politeness. Anyway, he looked at me then, earnestly and worriedly, and said, “Has he told you who shot him? I’m sure he knows.”