Five Fatal Words (34 page)

He twisted and turned; he dropped over on the side, but they did not let him go.

What flying! Oh, what flying! Granger got clear; he righted himself and tried to rise, but Frisby was about and at him so swiftly that the blue plane pointed up too steeply. It seemed to try to go into a loop, but it failed. It fell back on its tail and, lacking altitude, did not right itself, but plunged and crashed into the river not two miles from where Miss Cornwall that morning had fallen.

The gray-barred plane circled over; a boat was steaming up the river. The gray-barred plane flew low beside it and the boat whistled acknowledgment to its signals. The boat headed for the wreck in the river and the gray-barred plane flew away. Melicent dropped into a chair and hid her face in her hands.

After a time, Sibley came for her. "The Baroness Strang asks for you," Sibley said solemnly.

Melicent roused and accompanied him to Lydia's apartment. Lydia, too, had aroused; for the first time, Melicent saw her walking without aid.

"Something has happened to Ahdi!" Lydia grieved and complained. "I was resting here; and he was at the window. He stood there a long time perfectly still and silently as he often does, just looking out at the river. Then he went to his room and would not answer when I called. I can't rouse him! I tell you I can't rouse him!"

Donald returned to Alcazar about three hours later. Many, many people had come in the time between. Police; newspaper men; coroners; Mr. Reese; more police and reporters; physicians. Melicent lost track of them all. They claimed Donald when he came but she had seen him, had a word with him, if not alone, and she knew that he was safe.

It had been Granger in the blue plane, she was told; he had been picked up living but had died two hours later in a hospital.

At last Donald came to her room and they excluded all others.

"He lived long enough to clear up a lot of things, " Donald said to her. He sat on the couch and she sat facing him, her hands clasped by his; and as he told her, his clasp tightened and relaxed and tightened again. "He scarcely spoke to anyone till I came in the room at the hospital. There was nothing the doctors could do for him; he knew it. He didn't seem sore at me, but he set to cussing Ahdi Vado as soon as he saw me. He figured Ahdi must have double-crossed him. I told him that wasn't so; but he'd started talking and wanted to go on. He seemed to want to clear himself of the Belgian fog. That was too much for him; I mean it was too much for him to have us believe he'd had a part in poisoning the fog and killing all those people. The fog wasn't poisoned by anybody. It just happened.

"Here's the way it all was. Granger, as Reese told us, used to work in Reese's office. For years he cut coupons for the various members of my family, collected rents, made deposits and in general saw to increase of the family estate. It got his goat. He knew all the details of the will and how two hundred millions would all pile up in the possession of the last survivor, instead of being spread over six. He flunked his bar examinations and decided not to try for the law any more but to try for our money.

"At that time, there was a Hindu also reading law in another law office in the same building."

"Ahdi Vado?" said Melicent.

"Exactly. He was supporting himself by the usual Yogi stunts with rich ladies and lecturing on the mystic. Granger told him about the Cornwall estate; and the thing got on Ahdi's mind, but in a sort of a different way. Granger said that years ago Ahdi, who was always seeing significance in things, saw that five of our family names spelled death and he believed it meant the family would die in that order, leaving Lydia. The L for Lydia, he said, meant 'left,' so she finally would get all the money.

"Granger wanted to talk, but he had to skip a good deal, of course. And I had to fill in some. For the reason I've given, or for some other, Ahdi and Granger went to Egypt and got a job with Lydia, Granger going under an assumed name so he wouldn't be associated with the man who'd been in Mr. Reese's office.

"After a while, Granger left Lydia's employ--he was a chauffeur--but Ahdi stayed.

Granger didn't tell me outright that he killed my father, but he did say he left Egypt to go to South America; and that Ahdi and he were already working together.

"Granger did all the spider business with Uncle Everett. He seemed rather proud of that. He said he paid an honest-looking stranger on the streets of New York to telegraph the message that Uncle Everett received when you all, and Granger, were in the house. Granger brought along the copper spider from a little curio shop; and he found an ice pick and a length of light cord at the house. That was all he needed; and he did it.

"That brings us to Belgium. Ahdi sent the message to Alice and now it was Ahdi's turn to do for one of the family. Granger said he couldn't kill a woman; besides, he didn't dare stay and be recognized by Lydia; so he got himself dismissed."

"Oh," said Melicent. "He made that scene with me so your aunt would discharge him; it was so he'd seem to have been sent away."

"I guess," Donald replied, "he figured he'd get fired for the most pleasant possible reason. Anyway, he cleared the ground for Ahdi Vado, though he hovered on the outside.

He said he didn't know what Ahdi meant to do. He wondered, sometimes, if Ahdi would ever, of himself, do anything. Ahdi was always ready to dream and to scheme; he'd invoke mind and consciousness and set fatal forces, as he called them, to work. He sent the message; and the fog came that killed Alice and lots of others.

"Ahdi didn't do it, Granger knows; but Ahdi himself almost got believing that his message set forces of fate in action. Alice was fated, for she was A and it was A's turn; everybody else that died was fated, for some other reason, or else they wouldn't have died. Ahdi believed it. The messages were always Ahdi's idea; they precipitated fate, he said. He depended upon them.

"The Belgian fog immensely puffed up Ahdi and almost got Granger believing in his influence upon fate. Granger got up the hat sign idea and Ahdi approved of it. A girl paid for it. Granger only asked one thing of me; not to try to trace that girl. He said she didn't know she was doing more than paying for a sign. Ahdi thought up the meteorite. It was a week of shooting stars, remember; and Uncle Theodore was always raving about stars. Ahdi got thinking about what a perfect piece of fate it would be if a man was killed by a shooting star. The idea fascinated him. It might be induced. I gathered from Granger that Ahdi thought of trying to induce a shooting star to strike as he thought he had induced the fog. Granger then got a better idea. Kill a man with a meteor--a real meteorite--and no one could ever prove it was murder. It would be the perfect accidental death. So he got a real bit of a meteor, heated it up and shot it in. He didn't really expect to kill Uncle Theodore with it; but he was sure, from what he knew, that he'd get an effect. He did. Granger didn't say outright that he pinned the parachute; he left me to suppose some things; he only said he followed us into the west.

"So Hannah came to Ahdi in his turn. Again Granger claims he didn't know what Ahdi meant to do. Ahdi said he'd do everything else, if Granger would just write the message in the sky. He claims that the signals, which Ahdi spread, were only to tell him whether he ought to write the message again. If it wasn't seen the first time, of course it had to be repeated; and Ahdi was to let him know by ground signal, if he couldn't reach him any other way. Granger wanted to know what happened in the house; and I told him; and it got his goat some more. He'd done it; he'd killed Hannah; Ahdi hadn't had to do anything. Ahdi hadn't moved a hand; and he was washed out."

"If he'd known," whispered Melicent, "Ahdi was washed out, too. I told you how I followed him and what I said. Then he saw from the window how you got Granger. He knew you'd soon have him, too. It's plain he was always prepared with a way out of too great unpleasantness. He had no nerve. He could plan murder and incite fate and plant terror to kill for him; but he couldn't raise a hand himself. I don't think he could have killed directly himself, Miss Cornwall or anyone. Yet he terrorized and helped to kill five people--or four, if we figure the Belgian fog would have been fatal to Alice anyway. He could bear all things in his mind, but nothing with his body. He foresaw rough hands on him; imprisonment; electrocution, perhaps; and so he put himself to sleep too thoroughly. Do you suppose, if he hadn't been caught, he'd have sent a message to Lydia, too?"

"I'd liked to have asked Granger that; but I had to stop. They'd put two hundred millions in her hands; and they could control her--or Ahdi could and pass out the money to Granger if he thought it best not to appear. We can only guess what they'd have done. It's strange to have killed a man, Melicent; even if he murdered three or four of mine; and my father. We gave him a chance to land. We made it clear we'd only follow him if he flew, as we pointed, to a landing field. But he thought he could beat us."

"Donald, I saw it all. Suppose you struck him and you all had to leap; and your parachute--"

She shuddered and was crying, for it was over. It was all so completely over. She knew it; and she said it, clinging to him, for now he had her in his arms. "It's over. I know it's over--over--over."

"Yes, dear; Melicent, darling, everything that is wrong and awful is over; and everything that's right and wonderful is just about to begin."

Melicent sat again in the room which, in the queer, quiet epoch before she encountered the Cornwalls and their fates, she had shared with Helen Crosby. Only Helen and she were there. It was the week after the sensation of the Cornwall affairs at last had left the front pages of the papers. There would be another sensation when one impending bit of news would be out; but this would be of a different nature; and Melicent, now, was telling it to Helen very simply.

"Donald and I are marrying. We're not having a wedding; or even attendants. We'll each just have a friend along for witness. You'll come?"

"Will I come!" exclaimed Helen, kissing her. Then, happily crying a little sometimes, Melicent told Helen about Donald.

Not a word, Helen noticed, of the money which, Helen had learned with all the rest of the world, Lydia was immediately settling upon Donald and her other nephews and nieces. Helen herself had, at last, to comment on it.

"I should think you'd at least mention twenty or thirty millions!"

"We don't know what we're going to do with it; so we're trying not to think of it.

Honestly. It is wonderful of Aunt Lydia. . . . But there is one thing we're sure we won't do. We'll never group the money again to go to any last survivor."

"And when you have children," began Helen.

Melicent colored crimson. "Yes; we've thought of that, too. We'll start an entirely new set of family initials and names."

THE END