Danger in the Dark (2 page)

Dennis would be waiting. Had been waiting, probably, for some time.

She listened and tried to look about her. But the snow struck against her face and made a moving, obscuring veil, and she could see nothing beyond it.

Well, she knew the path to the springhouse.

She went on down the steps, conscious of the coldness of the snow through those thin gold slippers. But the snow wasn’t heavy on the drive; it had been cleaned late that evening. Where was the path? Gradually black firs and shrubs began to show themselves dimly. She still heard no sound, and the driveway was fairly open.

She found the path, a shadowy break in that veil of snow-laden firs, and turned upward into it. It was steep in places, and the snow was heavier there, and she slipped a time or two; again she thought vaguely of her yellow velvet train. It was a Jacques gown, one of her trousseau, and the snow would stain it forever; she wondered if, when all of that terrifically complete trousseau was worn out, used up, gone and out of her sight, the pain in her heart would be gone, too.

Well, that was hysterical.

And it was no good letting herself go, when she still had to tell Dennis. Tell him that those mad moments in his arms, there in the hot little library, were truly mad. Tell him it was too late. Tell him that, after all, there was no escape.

Tell him that, in only a few hours now, she was to be Ben Brewer’s wife.

Snow clung to her eyelashes and mingled with tears, but she was not crying. She wished Dennis had not come home; she wished the events of those six crowded hours had never taken place. Her heart was sore already with the memory of them.

It had been difficult enough before he came back. And she hadn’t known until that short, ugly interview with Ben after dinner how she hated the man whose wife she was so soon to be.

She caught herself again as she slipped, catching hold of a branch of some shrub, which shook little showers of snow on her cold bare hands. Around this turn—

She stopped abruptly, panting a little, to listen. It had sounded very like a movement—a footstep, or someone brushing against shrubs somewhere near her. Dennis?

But there was no further sound, and the darkness in the little path was deep.

It was confusing, too—it and the snow against her face—and she reached the springhouse before she expected to. It loomed only a little darker than the surrounding gloom, only half visible through the obscuring, bewildering veils of snow.

Contrary to her expectations Dennis was not waiting for her. And after she’d waited a moment or two and her breathing, quickened by that climb along the twisting, difficult path, quieted and with it her pulses, she thought of entering the springhouse. It would afford shelter from the snow, and she was very cold.

She heard no movement at all now anywhere about her in that confusing darkness. If Dennis had been on the path or anywhere near, she was sure she would have heard.

She turned toward the door of the springhouse—fumbling a little for it, finding suddenly the latch.

She was faintly surprised to find the door was slightly ajar. She pushed it farther open; it was damp and cold and musty inside and very dark. But it would be dry. She entered.

Built before the days of electricity, and in the days when there had been great faith in the physical benefits derived from artesian wells and sun rays falling through stained glass, the place had never been wired for lights. But she knew every inch of it and had, upon entering, no sense of un-familiarity.

Except that it began to seem, as she waited, listening for Dennis, very dark. And very still.

But why not? Besides, a heavy night fall of snow has its own peculiar silence—a silence that holds secret motion. Dennis should come soon.

She was very cold, and her slippers were damp with snow.

No sense in getting pneumonia, plus a broken heart. A broken heart—odd how apt some of those silly phrases were. It was exactly the way it felt—as if something very deep and vital had been shattered—and the shattering of it hurt. Terribly.

Someone was in the springhouse.

The thought leaped suddenly and unexpectedly into her mind and was oddly sharp and clear, as if someone had spoken it.

Someone—but there was no one. It was completely dark—utterly still. If anyone in that small dark space had so much as breathed, she would have heard it. No one was there.

No one was there. It was cold and dark and empty and—and, queerly, there was a rose.

She rejected the thought at once and with it the small fragrance that seemed to creep out of the darkness around her.

Her thoughts shifted back again to the dinner just past. The bridal dinner. Herself in the handsome yellow gown, sitting beside Ben, conscious of his heavy presence, his possessive look, and once his hand on her own beneath the lace cloth. Of the candles, wavering so that the whole overheated room, the long table, the flash of silver and crystal, the faces began to seem unreal and nightmarish. So that only Dennis’ brown, lean face watching her from the end of the table, over that lake of crimson roses, with the candles wavering between, was real.

Those roses—it was as if one were there, too, in the chill, unfathomable darkness surrounding her so closely.

Following her—accusing her. That was fanciful, too; hysterical. She must be cool and very convincing. She must make Dennis understand.

But there was certainly someone in the springhouse.

Again the sharp, queer conviction thrust its way into her thoughts. Made itself keen and predominant, so that, quite suddenly, she was uneasy and listening. It was as if the tangible, instinctive knowledge of a presence near her persisted so strongly that at last it forced her to recognize it. She moved uneasily, trying to search the darkness around her. She said a little unevenly, “Is—is anyone here?”

No one answered, of course. There could be no one there.

But somewhere in the darkness there was certainly a rose.

Well, there was nothing about a rose to frighten anyone. Nothing wrong in that still, familiar little springhouse.

But it wasn’t familiar. Not any more. And there was something, somewhere that was wrong.

It was strange and dark and—she was fumbling into the blackness for the open door when she heard Dennis on the path.

Heard him, and immediately he came, a dark, tall figure in the gloom, carrying something—oh, his bag, of course; his face above her became a white, faintly discernible oval, and he cried, “Daphne!” and entered the springhouse, pushing the door wide.

“Dennis—I—”.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s—someone here, Dennis.”

“Someone—Nonsense, Daphne.”

But he had a flashlight, and suddenly there was a diffuse circle of light which glimmered against an opposite window and darted to the floor.

Darted to the floor and jerked, and Dennis said, “God!”

Daphne didn’t scream. She didn’t move or speak. She knew though that Dennis was kneeling beside the black huddle on the floor, and his body shielded her for a moment from that sight.

Then he was standing again. And Daphne still didn’t move or speak.

She knew that Dennis had turned to her, she knew he was about to say something. But he didn’t say it, because all at once there were sounds outside and someone else at the door, and it was Rowley. Rowley who blinked in the sudden light, looked at them, looked at the floor, started to say something which sounded like “What are you—” and then just mumbled and stopped, as if hands had clutched his throat.

Then he, too, was down beside that huddle, looking grotesquely thin and tall in the evening clothes he still wore. He said in a strangled way, “It’s Ben,” and rose.

“It—it’s Ben,” he said again into that immense silence. “He’s—dead, isn’t he?”

No one replied. They stood there, looking at the thing at their feet.

T
HE FLASHLIGHT IN DENNIS’
hand made a bright fan of light which touched the tips of Daphne’s wet gold slippers and centered on the crumpled, gleaming white patch which was shirt front. In the shadow above the fan of light each could see the others’ faces, white and strange. Rowley had left the door open a few inches, so there was a slit of blackness behind him through which cold and snow sifted. Daphne was trembling violently. Dennis shot a swift glance at her over the flashlight and said: “Shut the door, Rowley.”

Still without taking his eyes from the thing at their feet, Rowley put out his hand and closed the door. Then he knelt again beside the sodden hump of blackness. In the middle of that white, shining shirt front was a spreading red patch. Neither Daphne nor Dennis moved or seemed to breathe as Rowley’s thin hands hovered above it, somehow avoiding the wet redness while he searched for a heartbeat. Rowley wore no topcoat and no hat, and his black hair was like a tight satin cap outlining his narrow head; his sallow, sharply aquiline face was pasty white. He groped along a thick out-flung arm, pushed up the white edge of a cuff and hunted on that strong wrist for a pulse.

Dennis suddenly shifted the flashlight so it centered now upon the face of the thing at their feet. Its eyes were half open. At the edge of the light lay a large, red rosebud, a little withered now, with its petals showing a purple tinge. A rose from the bridal dinner.

Daphne felt herself swaying. Dennis noted it and said sharply, “There’s a chair over there.” But she couldn’t move and, indeed, did not hear it, for Rowley was rising. He dusted his knees and looked at Dennis. “Well, there’s nothing we can do for him.”

“A—doctor—” Daphne thought she was speaking aloud, but the words came out in a stifled whisper.

“No use,” said Rowley. “He’s dead. Why did you kill him, Dennis?”

Dennis started to speak and stopped, with a suddenly rigid look about his mouth. He did not look at Rowley but still, fixedly, at the dead man. His brown face was less brown in that light, his eyes dark and shining. He still wore evening clothes, too, but he had on a topcoat and had had a hat. It was somewhere in the shadows behind him. It and—
and the bag.
Rowley would see the bag, thought Daphne, only half aware of the thought. He would inquire about it—or make his own conclusion. But it didn’t matter now. It didn’t matter because Ben Brewer was dead.

It was only then that she comprehended the thing Rowley had said. Ben Brewer was dead—and Rowley had said, “Why did you kill him, Dennis?”

But Ben couldn’t be dead. Not in that short time—not anyone so strong. Not anyone with so furious and powerful a hold on life and on things. And on people. Not Ben. She must have made some sound, for Dennis said, “Take the flash, Rowley” and handed it to him and put his arm around Daphne.

“You’d better sit down over here. Don’t look at it. We’ll get you back into the house in a moment.”

She let Dennis put her in a chair and wrap his coat around her, tucking it under her slippered feet to keep them from the cold dampness of the cement floor.

“Now don’t look at him. Don’t think.” He put his hand under her chin and turned her face up so he could look compellingly into her eyes.

“We’ll fix things somehow. Don’t—don’t go to pieces, darling.”

“Dennis!”

He bent over her, taking her wholly into his arms and putting his cheek against hers.

“Daphne, Daphne, trust me.”

“She’s all right,” said Rowley. “She’s got more guts than either of us. Why did you kill him, Dennis?”

“He didn’t!” cried Daphne. “He didn’t! He was—here. Ben—like that.” The first moment of shocked stillness that was like a dreadful kind of paralysis had passed, and she was beginning to feel again. She made herself look at the well—at the colored glass, dim and gray now, in the window that faced her. They’d had stories about every window in the little springhouse when they were children. She and Dennis and Rowley. And the springhouse itself had assumed many roles. Swiss Family Robinson’s home in the trees. A beleaguered castle—herself alternately the maiden in distress and the army to be ordered about by the two generals. There, just before her, was the concrete shelf around the spring, and the corner against which Dennis had fallen the day he and Rowley had climbed to the little ledge that ran around the conelike roof of the tiny house. The scar was still there probably, hidden by his dark hair. And now they were there again—she and Dennis and Rowley. Only this time it was no game.

She forced herself to stop trembling; Dennis’ coat over her own fur coat was warm, and she could hold herself steadier. But she wouldn’t look at Ben—Ben Brewer. It couldn’t be Ben Brewer—she was going to marry him the next day—that day, for it was after midnight. It couldn’t be Ben Brewer.

“I didn’t kill Ben,” Dennis was saying coolly. He fumbled in his pocket and took out cigarettes. “Cigarette? Daphne?”

Rowley had matches. He wasn’t as calm as he’d pretended, for his hand was unsteady when he held a light for Daphne.

It gave them a moment of recovery.

Rowley said through smoke, “I suppose we could cover him—but there’s nothing here. Yes, he’s dead all right. Not a chance to do anything for him. If you didn’t kill him, Dennis, who—”

He was going to believe Dennis, then. Rowley was sometimes curiously like his mother in disposition, though so unlike her in looks, slow to perceive and convince, tenacious about inquiries.

“I don’t know who killed him,” said Dennis. “We found him like this.” He was quicker than Rowley always; and Daphne could tell by a kind of certainty in his voice that he had made up his mind about something. If he had hesitated before, it had been due to perplexity or to the shock of the thing.

“God!” said Rowley suddenly. “He looks awful. I can’t—old Ben—” He took a long breath of smoke, exhaled slowly and said again in a collected way, “We’ve got to do something about it. We—What do you mean, you found him like this?”

“Just that. Daphne and I found him here. Like that. Just before you came. We hadn’t had time to call anyone—had just realized that he was dead when we heard your steps on the path and—”

She looked away from the window and at Rowley, and she saw the question coming.

“How did you happen to be here?”