Five Fatal Words (8 page)

"Who is it?" Miss Cornwall whispered.

"Me--Miss Waring. I smell smoke. There's a fire somewhere."

"Wait." The chain was unlocked. The door swung back. Miss Cornwall stood in the murky light. She was dressed exactly as Melicent had been and in her hand was a revolver. Melicent's mind cataloged both the chain on the door and the gun as further precautions taken by the old lady. For the moment she ignored them. "Smoke," she repeated. "Wood smoke, I think. It came through my windows."

Miss Cornwall made no explanations or apologies. She stepped into the other room. She sniffed. The alarm on her face increased. Melicent realized that in spite of her fear she was endeavoring to think and presently she put her thoughts in fragmentary words. "There's a fire somewhere, all right. You put on a bathrobe, lock me in my room here, and go out from your room. Find out what's burning and come back and tell me."

Hastily Melicent obeyed. She guessed why Miss Cornwall would not go out to look for the source of the smoke--the smoke might be a trick to get her into the hall.

"Maybe I'd better take your revolver."

In the old lady's eyes was an expression that showed she knew why Melicent wished to take that precaution. She considered for a fraction of a second. "There's another one in the bureau drawer yonder. Take that."

Melicent put on a bathrobe, procured the other gun, shut the door between her room and Miss Cornwall's, and then stepped into the dim hall. The smell of smoke was a little stronger. Melicent went at once to its source, although afterward she was never sure how she knew where to go. Over the carpet, almost running, she made her way to the door of the room in which Everitt Cornwall had died. At the door she hesitated and shuddered. She held the gun in her right hand and turned the knob with her left. The smoke inside was not as thick as she had expected. She trembled as she stepped across the threshold. There was no need for further doubt. From the bathroom came a furious crackling. Melicent rushed across the room, threw open the bathroom door for a second, and then closed it. The inside of that room was in flames. The windows were wide open and smoke poured from them. In the interval in which the door had been open heat had beat against her.

She ran from the bathroom. She had not cried out an alarm and still she did not.

The fire seemed localized and was not spreading rapidly; and if, as Miss Cornwall thought, the fire had been set, an alarm and confusion would be what they who set the fire undoubtedly wanted.

In the hall, Melicent stopped and spun about with a sudden, eerie feeling that, aside from the fire, things were not as they had been. Then she realized what had stopped her. The room next to the burning bathroom was one which had been locked and long unused. Melicent remembered that subconsciously. Now, however, the door stood open.

Inside was the dancing light of flame.

Melicent looked into that room. Flame was licking along the wall from the corner.

The smoke it made poured through open windows. She had an impression of dust and disuse, of cobwebs and time-stained slip covers on bulgy furniture. But in the lurid light, she saw two things. The dust on the floor at the wall next to the bathroom was tracked by feet and marked as if some one had knelt there; and on the wall itself was a great, jagged hole in the plaster. The hole was white and new and the material knocked down when the hole was made lay scattered on the floor. Even while she looked, the flames began to lick the edge of the orifice.

The hole, which did not go completely through the wall--for she was sure there was no hole on the opposite side in the bathroom--was about at the height of the top of the bath tub and directly opposite the position of the tub on the other side of the wall.

How Everitt Cornwall could have been killed through this hole which did not itself pierce the wall, she could not think. That was no instant for thought; but that it had something to do with his death, she was suddenly sure. He had been killed ! Murdered!

The five words of a meaningless message which had spelled death was no chance.

Again it had come as a warning just before--murder! For murder had been here! How?

She would never know if she fled the flames now; no one would ever know; for the flames would destroy everything. That was the meaning of the flames; that was the purpose of the fire--to make away with telltale traces.

Was there more here to see; in that corner of the room where the smoke clouded and the flame lent no light; what was there? She ought to see; before everything was forever obliterated she ought to see.

She crept toward the corner; and terror suddenly seized her. Some one was behind her; a man quietly had come into the room.

MELICENT whirled and faced him: the flare of the flames gave light to see his figure but the smoke veiled his features. He was big and powerful; he had a pistol in one hand.

She had the pistol which Miss Cornwall had given her and she held it raised and pointed at him. Suppose he fired--the thought flew through her mind--she could pull the trigger and shoot him, too, before she fell, before his bullet could complete its effect by death.

Her heart was hammering, but she held her hand steady.

"Hello!" she heard. "Hello, how did you get here?"

It was Donald Cornwall's voice; his hand was down and hers with the pistol dropped at her side.

"How did you?"

"Smelt the smoke," said Donald Cornwall. "How long you been here?"

"Just now."

"Why were you staying in here?"

Why had she been staying in a burning room without raising an alarm? A natural enough question. From no one yet had there been an outcry; if she had made none, neither had he, and she knew that his reasons must resemble her own. Before calling about them clamor and confusion he meant to investigate this strange fire.

"Did you see anyone else?" he asked her, stepping close to her. He had a dressing gown over his pajamas, and he stared at her in the flare of the flame.

"Nobody," she said.

"Hear anything?"

"No, but there's a hole in the wall--there!"

"Where?"

"There!"

There where the flames burned yellow and red. He could not see it; she could not see it herself, now, but she knew it was there. "It went through the plaster, right there!

Opposite the bath tub on the other side."

"What was it?"

"Just a hole."

"What else did you see?"

"Nothing."

They were breathing smoke and were half-blinded by it, and it was useless to remain. He caught her wrist and drew her out of the room. Still neither of them shouted an alarm. Something more than flames stirred in the old house that night, something more to be feared than fire.

"Where's my aunt?"

"In her room. She smelt the smoke. She locked the door after me."

"You better get her out. I'll rouse the others."

"All right."

The pressure on her wrist went tighter. Then he let her go and strode down the hall. Melicent rapped on Miss Cornwall's door.

"Who is it?" came the challenge.

"Melicent Waring."

"Anyone with you now?"

"No one!'

Miss Cornwall opened the door; Melicent squeezed in, and the door was instantly secured behind her.

"Who was that with you?"

"Your nephew."

"You woke him up?"

"No; he found me--in the room beyond your brother's bathroom."

"Why were you there?"

"That's where the fire is--and in the bathroom."

"Where my brother died?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. How bad's the fire?"

"I came back to help you out of the house."

"What's Donald doing?"

"He's getting the servants up."

Miss Cornwall somewhat regained composure and concealed her revolver in her nightdress. "I've called the fire department in Williamsborough. It is a volunteer department, so it may take some time, but then a fire spreads slowly at first. There are fire extinguishers in the linen closet and in the pantries downstairs, tell Donald."

"You want me to leave you?"

"I will know when I should abandon the house."

Nothing at the moment could be gained by telling Miss Cornwall of the strange hole in the wall which the flames had hid; it would only increase her fright which was so great that fear of the fire for itself seemed scarcely to disturb her at all.

Melicent went out and in the hall met Donald Cornwall leading Hardy and some of the other servants with fire extinguishers and pails. They stood in the hall and slung water and squirted chemicals at the burning walls. Granger ran up with more extinguishers which he had brought from the garage, but they were of no use. They smothered the surface flame but the fire was inside the walls and also broke out below.

Smoke came up the stairs.

"This house," said Donald Cornwall, "is going to go. Maybe we've got five minutes."

Melicent was admitted again to Miss Cornwall's room. She found her employer filling a huge suitcase which was in the middle of the floor. Miss Cornwall was dressed and there was a tin box at her feet. She looked up momentarily. "I have expected something like this for years and thank God some one woke up when it happened. Get your things together, Miss Waring."

Melicent opened the door to her room but she was unable to enter--smoke puffed out at her. She slammed the door.

She realized that she was still dressed in Miss Cornwall's night clothes, although she had discarded the cap. Miss Cornwall stopped packing and thought for a moment.

"I'll lend you something." She rummaged in one of the closets and held out to Melicent a long, black skirt and sweater.

"That plaster is hot," observed Miss Cornwall. "The fire got into your room between the walls." She stooped for an instant to close the huge suitcase. "Help me with this and we will leave."

Melicent pulled on the clothes and she helped tug the big suitcase to the door which Miss Cornwall unlocked. Donald Cornwall and Granger were still fighting the fire but the servants had disappeared. Donald seized his aunt's arm but she refused to escape until he picked up her tin box; then he hurried her down the stairs.

Granger grabbed the big suitcase, and Melicent, holding her breath, ran down before him and they gained the outside air together. Somewhere in the house was the sound of falling timbers and the gray dawn was illuminated by a flickering yellow light.

From the lawn it was easy to see that the house was doomed--the flames, eating up between the walls, reached the roof and blazed through and the wind blew drafts which sucked the fire through the vitals of the old mansion. Donald Cornwall and Granger had run back into the house but the servants stayed outside and gathered in a staring, whispering half-circle behind their employer.

The flaming roof threw a garish glow and Miss Cornwall made a brief survey of her house in the light from its own destruction. Then she turned her back to it and called Hardy to order him to check up on the servants. Everyone was out and Donald and Granger at last reappeared, stumbling through the great front door. They lay down on the grass, gasping for air.

Melicent bent over them. They were all right, they said. They just needed breath.

Melicent returned to Miss Cornwall, who had faced about again to the fire. She sat on her suitcase and hugged her knees. She trembled but one could not be sure whether it was from fear or from the frigidity of the early morning.

Melicent could not be sure why she herself was shaking. The ground under her feet and the air were cold. The flames gave a little heat as they added to the slowly increasing light of day. A siren heralded the approach of the fire apparatus, but it was obvious that the firemen were not in time to save the house. However, they ran their hose and pumped their streams of water on the blaze which now leaped from all the length of the roof and spread a crimson glare to the sky.

A floor fell, scattering flaming embers, the brick walls became sides of a furious furnace so hot that Miss Cornwall and her tin box and huge suitcase were moved farther away. What had been an early morning breeze became a wind. Shrubbery on the lawn and the tops of trees caught fire. The men who had come from the village had to satisfy themselves with a triumph over these fires and with drenching the garage so no ember could set it ablaze. However, Granger drove out the Rolls-Royce and two other cars.

He had helped the firemen for a while and so had Hardy and Donald Cornwall, and now, with the shrubbery wet down, there was nothing for anyone to do but watch.

Donald Cornwall went to the fire engine and found two blankets and laid one about his aunt. With the other he approached Melicent.

"It's all I can rustle for you. Are you all right?"

"Perfectly."

"Shaking a bit," he observed.

"Am I? I'm not cold."

His face was grimy and the grime almost camouflaged a grin that held more praise than humor. "Don't dream that I grudge you a shiver or two. Do you know, I thought you were never coming out. Did you save anything of your own?"

"Do I look as if I did? returned Melicent, quieted now of her quivering. 

"Too bad. I guess my aunt and the insurance company will make amends for that."

It was the first moment in which Melicent had thought of the fate of her personal belongings. The fervor with which Miss Cornwall had packed the big suitcase and clung to the tin box had so impressed Melicent that she had forgotten her own in helping save the old lady's personal belongings. What were her dresses and hats and underthings compared to the putative contents of that tin box?

Abruptly she recollected that over the nightdress belonging to Miss Cornwall she was wearing a borrowed sweater and skirt, and that everything she had possessed--except the bedroom slippers on her feet--had been consumed in the crackling, thundering caldron before them.

Miss Cornwall approached her. "Granger has the car ready. I think we had better go to town. There is quite a nice little hotel there. I am sorry about all this."

Melicent looked at the face of Hannah Cornwall, ruddy in the crimson glare. She wondered if Miss Cornwall was sorry. There was no tone of regret in the voice that said the words and perhaps they carried a trace of relief. Now that gloomy old Blackcroft had been consumed before her eyes, now that it had been blotted from the earth, was the old lady finding herself almost glad that it was gone?