The House of Intrigue/Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT was the ring that had made me think of Wendy Washburn. I remembered that he had been generous, once before, when he might have been merely just. He had helped me once when I needed help, when to all intents and purposes I was in the wrong. If I was wrong in this bigger movement, then it was up to my Hero-Man to say so, but I intended to snatch at my chance, while that chance was still before me. I knew there were risks, but I had no time to think about them. I merely remembered that it was useless to think of using my own name. And Wendy Washburn's was the only one that came to me, in that moment of emergency. I rather relished the thought, in fact, of calmly willing a quarter of a million to a man I'd only talked to once in my life.
What he would do with that quarter of a million, I did not even attempt to answer. I was given no time to meditate over such things for the drama about that four-poster was too quick-moving to remain long neglected.
Yet I saw, once I had dropped my bomb in their midst, a change come over that little company of conspirators. I saw the silent debate resumed between those wary and guarded figures. But it was resumed with a difference. It seemed to be apprehension which I now saw on their faces. In the case of the two old uncles, for a moment or two, I even imagined I could read fear there. With Doctor Klinger it was perplexity touched with some frowning suspicion which I could not fathom. With the customarily calm-eyed Miss Ledwidge it was open and involuntary bewilderment and I was foolish enough, at the time, to think that I had overpowered them with my audacity. But there were certain things which I was destined not to find out until later.
"And you insist on this change?" the yellow-faced old lawyer was asking me, at a grim nod of the head from Ezra Bartlett. I imagined, of course, that the old scoundrel had surrendered.
"Yes," I whispered back, as he looked apprehensively over his shoulder, for the scattered group at the far end of the room were betraying renewed signs of restiveness.
Doctor Klinger and the nurse, at a sign from Ezra Bartlett, carried a small table to the bedside. The old lawyer seated himself before this table. Then he gazed at the hangings of my four-poster with an anxious and troubled eye.
"Will—er—will this be overtaxing the strength of our patient?" he solemnly asked, with his head on one side, and a smile of pained sorrow on his wizened old face.
"Don't worry about me," I whispered back to him, "or you'll see your last chance slip away from you!"
He winced at that, and looked apprehensively toward the group at the end of the room.
"Oh, yes; our last chance—our last chance!" he solemnly repeated, as he placed the document on the table, smoothed It out and began laboriously penning the new lines along the top of the second page. These pages, I noticed, were tied together with red tape, held in place by the seals. You could have heard a pin drop In that room, during the next minute or two. Then the fountain-pen began to scratch.
"Will you read what you've written?" I whispered, when the pen-scratching came to an end.
"I give and bequeath to Wendy Gruger Washburn, of the City of New York, State of New York, Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars, to be paid in cash out of my estate prior to all other claims."
Something about his manner of reading those words made me distrust him, notwithstanding the fact that on this occasion Enoch Bartlett gave vent to his feelings in a groan that was both soul-stirring and prolonged.
"Will you be so good as to let me see that amendment?" I whispered, looking him straight in the face.
Instead of looking back at me, his watery eye sought out the eye of Ezra Bartlett. The old weasel's face became even more malignant than before. I saw him make a sudden sign to Doctor Klinger. I had no way of knowing what that sign meant. But I reached down under my crested sheet and took firmly hold of the Sheffield-plate candlestick there reposing. It's the way a gun-man, I suppose, reaches for his automatic, when he sees danger around the next turn. And, I decided, one might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
Whatever movement Doctor Klinger may have intended to carry out was interrupted, however, by the sound of a quick and angry voice outside the bedroom door. This was followed by other sounds, unmistakably those of physical combat. Somebody, I promptly realized, was trying to enter that room, was determined to enter that room. And somebody else seemed equally determined to prevent that entrance.
But the combat must have been a brief one, for a moment later the door was flung open, followed by the undignified catapulting into the room of the butler in the crimson-rambler apparel. The cause of that unceremonious entrance followed close behind. I could make out the burly shoulders of a very irate young man in a check tweed suit which fitted him as though he had been melted and poured into it. I could also see, even in that uncertain light, that he wore a necktie as bright in hue as the crimson-rambler knickerbockers which he had so recently outraged. But before I could preen about for a better view of him he strode in across the room and elbowed both Ezra Bartlett and Theobald Scripps from their places beside that four-poster.
"Where's Claire?" he peremptorily and somewhat breathlessly demanded.
It was plain that he was a stranger to them all. But he was no stranger to me, from the moment I first heard that rich brogue. I knew it was Pinky McClone speaking. And the mystery of Pinky McClone's presence in that house brought me sitting straight up between my crested sheets.
"Where's Claire?" he repeated, in a voice which was clearly a Celtic challenge to any one who cared openly to deny him that information.
"Who are you?" piped out old Enoch Bartlett, in a voice shrill with resentment.
Pinky squared about on him. And I must admit that he looked magnificent, that youthful ex-river pirate with the fire of Irish anger in his sky-blue eye. But it was Doctor Klinger who next advanced to the charge.
"What do you want here?" inquired the man of medicine as he rounded the bed.
"I want the woman I'm going to marry," stentoriously announced Pinky McClone, "the woman you're all trying to keep away from me!"
The three old men by this time were trying to edge in between Pinky and me. But with one sweep of his life-guard arm he sent that frail-legged trio scattering. Then he flung back the curtains that screened me from the vulgar world.
I blinked at him, with my face twisted up, for it might be painful, I remembered, to have Pinky recognize me.
Thanks to the uncertain light and my tombstone make-up he showed no promise of any such intelligence. Disgust, in fact, was about all I could see on his weather bronzed face.
"This isn't my Claire!" he announced, with a heavy frown of perplexity.
"Of course it isn't your Claire!" old Enoch Bartlett piped out, as he kept dancing excitedly about close behind the massive intruder. On Miss Ledwidge's face, as she stared at this intruder, I saw genuine alarm. She edged away, slow step by step, until she rounded the bed. Then she slipped quietly out through the inner door.
"Who let this madman in here?" Ezra Bartlett shrilly and angrily demanded. "Where are those fools of servants? Why doesn't somebody get a policeman?"
But Pinky McClone was in no way disturbed by these thin-noted challenges. He strode across the room, stopped at the still open door and swung about.
"Don't think you can get away with it, you purse-proud bunch of snobs," he bellowed out. "You may keep me away from her to-day, but you won't be doing it to-morrow. And mark my words on that!"
And having delivered himself of that enigmatic message, he turned about and walked majestically out through the door, slamming it after him.
This inflammatory interruption, apparently, was too much for the sheep who had been kept herded so long at the far end of the room. As they surged excitedly forward Doctor Klinger forced me bodily and none too gently down between my coverings.
"This can't possibly go on," he said over his shoulder, as he held me there. "I can't allow it. It may prove fatal, at any moment. It's—it's overtaxing the poor girl's strength!"
He stooped close over me, with a good grip on my arm, for he seemed to be uncertain as to just what my next movement might be. He even screened me from those peering eyes by stooping still lower, making a pretense of listening to my heart. As he did so I quietly tickled a flap of his dewy chin with the lacy edge of my pillow-slip. And for this he tightened his grip on my arm until I squirmed. I was, in fact, just getting ready to use my lungs. And he must have anticipated that action on my part, for the next moment he shut off my gathering hoot by placing one of his big hands squarely over my mouth. And with his other hand he still held me like a vise. And that was more than I intended to endure. At that, in fact, I simply blew up.
"Ah, convulsions!" he said in a muffled voice, as I began to struggle with all my strength. "Convulsions again! This is grave, very grave!"
There was an uneasy stir about the room, but I paid small attention to that, for 1 had more serious things to think of.
I began to have a convulsion of the real sort, just about that time, for my big doctor had taken a hypodermic from his pocket and was doing his best to get the business-end of it somewhere into the fleshy part of my shoulder. And I didn't intend to stand for any needle-pumping. I began to fight in earnest then, to fight like a wild-cat.
"This looks bad, very bad!" I could hear him say in a somewhat strangled voice, for it was taking about all his strength to hold me down and at the same time keep one fat hand over my mouth. And while he was doing this, since he insisted on thrusting that gross thumb of his against my mouth, I closed my teeth on it. And I didn't make it a half-hearted bite, either. It at least showed him that I was in fighting form. For I could hear him suddenly gasp to the others close behind him.
"For God's sake get these people away! Get 'em out of here before something happens!"
I could hear Ezra Bartlett's thin-voiced commands to clear the room.
There was a scuffling of feet and a movement toward the door. But I scarcely knew when that motley throng had been herded out, for about that time I was having troubles of my own. Both Ezra and Enoch Bartlett had come to Doctor Klinger's help and were doing their best to hold me down. They weren't, however, having things all their own way. I'd broken the point off the hypodermic needle, and as these two old derelicts pawed and wheezed about me I managed to butt Ezra in the midriff. This bowled him over against the writing-table and sent both full length on the floor.
Then I started to show Brother Enoch and that fat-faced doctor just what I could do in the ju-jutsu line. Once I'd squirmed out of their clutch, I knew I could make things interesting with that Sheffield-plate candlestick of mine.
Things were made interesting, however, by quite another event. It was the hurried and unexpected appearance of Miss Ledwidge on the scene. She ran into the room with her eyes wide and her breath coming in stifled little jerks.
"What Is it this time?" piped old Ezra, once more on his feet.
"The body's gone!" she gasped, as she sank weakly into a chair.
Doctor Klinger turned slowly about. His hand was still on my arm, but the tension of his fingers relaxed, and his lower jaw fell away, as you may have seen the jaw of a dead man fall.
"Gone?" he echoed, staring at the white-faced nurse.
"The body's gone!" she repeated, with a hopeless little moan that might have meant anything.
"It's gone?" tremulously queried the old weasel, slowly retreating toward the overturned table. "Gone where?"
"Gone from where I carried it! Gone from this house," was the somewhat startling answer.
The three men, the big fat one and the two shriveled up little ones, stood regarding one another in a sort of awed and heavy silence. Then, still without speaking, they turned and followed the uniformed woman out through the door, stunned, apparently, by being asked to believe the unbelievable.