Five Fatal Words (21 page)

"Fool," said Hannah, under her breath and, evidently, not referring to the lawyer.

Shortly after breakfast, Mr. Reese did arrive to be ignored, almost, by Theodore, but Lydia had something to say to him privately, and Hannah took him for a long conference in her room.

After a while, Melicent was called in.

"Mr. Reese remains disturbed that I dismissed Granger," began Miss Cornwall. "But we have got on quite as well without him as with him, have we not?"

Melicent had to agree to that.

"If you have anything to talk over with Mr. Reese, I will leave you," Hannah offered but, after she arose, she delayed at the window.

"Hats!" she said, staring at the growing sign. "They are advertising hats up here! They are putting in the word nearest the roof. It is 'hats.'' She left the room.

"I asked for this moment with you," explained Mr. Reese, as soon as the door was closed, "to learn from you without reservation how things have gone since I've seen you."

"One more of the family is gone," returned Melicent, "as of course, you know."

"But it can hardly be considered that a human agency carried off Alice Wilbur."

"Did Miss Cornwall tell you of the message Mrs. Wilbur received just before the fog?"

"Yes, she has told me all. At least, she has assured me it is all. . . . It is plain," he went on after a moment, "that we are in very deep waters. I have talked also with her sister Lydia and at weak moments I feel myself inclining to her explanation of the affairs. That is, that no one is really causing these deaths; that they are merely occurring in the resistless march of human fates and that someone, foreseeing the path, sends the warnings. But that, I say, suffices the mind only at its most indulgent moments. There is certainly plan and purpose proceeding about these people."

"Mr. Reese, why in God's name don't you go to the police?"

"Because Alice Wilbur, with sixty other old people, died in the Belgian fog? They would laugh at me. I have been privately investigating the death of Everitt Cornwall, as you know; I have employed the most skillful of the confidential detective services and have turned up nothing--absolutely nothing. I cannot satisfy myself even as to whom I ought to suspect. Can you?"

"No," confessed Melicent. "Just everybody and nobody."

Work on the sign, which increasingly annoyed Hannah, progressed. It provoked her particularly because, as the men laid on the framework the outlines of the design later to be illuminated, the letters were not legible to her. The characters were large enough and near enough but they crossed and interfered with each other after the manner of signs, seen in daytime, which are prepared to flash not a single but two or three legends at night. Moreover, it seemed to Miss Cornwall, who let the thing get on her mind, that the workmen, after rushing the first part of the work, deliberately dallied over the finishing touches which were still incomplete when dusk came. She remained sure of the lowest word only--"Hats."

Theodore had employed the day in no actual, physical expedition; his determination for daring prevailed in the form of plan, only. He had received another visit from Priscilla Loring who, from further study of her charts, seemed to have found elaboration of the stars' intentions for Theodore which she explained to him privately; but she was gone again before dark and Theodore, having worn out the excitement of his stimulated imagination, was once more depressed.

Donald, who had been out most of the day, had returned and was talking placatingly to his uncle. Melicent and Donald and Theodore were alone in the living room when, directly opposite their windows, the electric sign came "on."

It blazed in white and red lights; and despite the fact that the living room of the apartment was well illuminated, the glare from the sign shone brightly through the windows.

"What a confounded nuisance!" Theodore exclaimed, starting up. "Hannah was right for once in her life. It's a nuisance--a nuisance !"

He stood up and walked to the window. The others followed him casually and together looked out. The sign was bounded by a moving red arrow which shot around the border and outlined the legend to appear. As this flashed on, Melicent noticed that the sign contained five words.

Five words had preyed upon her mind for so many weeks that the electric sign was not the first brief collection of syllables which she had read and counted and the initials of which she had automatically arranged in her mind.

DAVIS, EVANS

and

TAYLOR,

HATS.

The sign flashed and went out; the arrow repeated its run around the border and the sign flashed again. The same words but arranged now in a straight perpendicular: DAVIS

EVANS

AND

TAYLOR,

HATS.

MELICENT stood in front of the window as rigid as stone. The cry of Theodore Cornwall, and Donald's voice came to her ear as sounds heard at a great distance. With both hands she clutched two of the leaves of the radiator, which was in front of her. She could feel blood withdrawing from her head. The electric sign went out; but instantly the red arrow reappeared and shot around the border and again, in huge white letters, except for the initials which were red, the five words flashed across the night: DAVIS, EVANS

and

TAYLOR,

HATS

Infinities of time ticked away. The others were silent; their voices had ceased.

Melicent was telling herself furiously that the whole affair of this sign was accident and her mind stubbornly replied that the sign was new, they had seen it erected to-day and that this was the first time it had been illuminated; it was directly across the street from Theodore Cornwall's windows; and Theodore was next in line to receive the fatal message of five words arranged so that their initials spelled--death.

"So that's it, you think! That's it!" said Theodore Cornwall's voice which Melicent now heard. He was not speaking to her, she realized; he was addressing Donald, as he had done a few moments before when she had heard his voice but did not know what he had said; or what Donald had said. But now she heard Donald's reply.

"Uncle, let's not get excited." Donald was struggling for calmness.

"But you're excited yourself!"

"I'm not."

"You are; and I know why. You think that's it--that it--the five words that have been killing off the family--has come to me !"

"No, uncle!"

"Then what's the matter with you, Donald?"

Melicent turned to them and as the glare from the sign blazed again in their faces, she saw that Theodore had good reason for his question, for Donald was more aghast than he. Not strange when you recalled that Donald had three times witnessed the consequences of such a message; Theodore had had the effects only told to him. Yet--if this was the fourth message--Theodore was the one now under sentence.

"Miss Waring! Melicent! What's the matter?" demanded Hannah Cornwall's voice.

They all spun about. Hannah Cornwall was standing in the doorway at the opposite end of the room; and at sight of her, Donald turned again toward the window and reached for the curtain cord; but his uncle caught his hand and stopped him.

"What do you want to do?" Theodore firmly demanded.

"Pull down the shade so she won't see."

"Leave it up," bid Theodore. "If we've seen it, why shouldn't she?"

Hannah Cornwall crossed the room; but in spite of the fact that she had fussed over the sign all day, its flashing light did not now engage her.

"Why are you two struggling?" she challenged her brother and her nephew. "Miss Waring, what is the matter here?"

Melicent swallowed and gained some muscular mastery of herself. Her first impulse was like Donald's when he moved to draw down the shade; she wanted to keep knowledge of the sign from Miss Cornwall; but it was impossible. She lifted her hand and pointed out the window.

"The sign, Miss Cornwall," she whispered. "The new electric sign; it's come on."

At last Hannah saw it. "Davis, Evans and Taylor, Hats," she read it in a whisper; and for her, to whom five-word messages had become hideous portends of death that was not afterwards delayed, there was no interval of doubt or wonder over the meaning. Yet her reaction under the circumstances was grim and surprising.

She had to say something; very probably (as Melicent later thought) she did not know what she said; she had to say something or become hysterical. At least, she held onto herself. She turned to her brother and said almost sweetly, "You were going to live to be eighty, Theodore?"

"Eh?" Theodore said. "What are you talking about?"

Hannah now did for Theodore what Melicent had done for her; she pointed to the sign across the street. "You were going to live to be eighty, Theodore. The five-word messages, about which we told you, were unimportant to you. The idea that we were all to be victims of murder was one to which you could afford to pay no attention as long as your fool horoscopes made you feel that you would be safe." She chuckled; otherwise, Melicent felt, she would have screamed. "Daniel might die, and Everitt and Alice, but as long as your horoscope comforted you, Theodore, you were safe. The message would never come to you. But now it has come--and where is your horoscope?" Again she laughed.

That laughter seemed to shake Melicent from her stupor. She suddenly came to life. "Don't, Miss Cornwall. Please don't," she implored.

Hannah laughed again and gazed out the window.

DAVIS

EVANS

AND

TAYLOR

HATS.

with the initial letter of each word in red, flashed across the sky of Manhattan. It threw an eerie light on the roof of the building upon which the sign had been constructed. Hannah began to laugh again. "It's for you, Theodore."

Melicent cried, "Don't."

Miss Cornwall ceased to laugh and shuddered almost uncontrollably; she seized Melicent's hand. "What can I do--what can anyone--anyone do--do ?"

Almost any reaction might have been expected from Theodore Cornwall. He was old. He had fainted when he had found that his horoscope was wrong. Everyone was subconsciously prepared to defend him against this new and diabolical blow, but he astonished them.

When he turned away from the window he had drawn back his shoulders and lifted his head. He was smiling. "This is what you have told me about. This is the kind of death-writing obituaries for the Cornwall family. You know"--and he sat down in a chair with almost youthful indolence--"you know, I have always been an adventurer at heart. I had tied myself down all my life and lived circumspectly. This is the first real thing that has ever happened to me. My new horoscope has told me to be bold, to be audacious. I think I am going to have some fun, some fun at last."

Melicent looked at him with wide incredulity; but when she turned her attention from Theodore to Donald, she saw that Donald, in spite of the paleness of his face, was grinning at his uncle.

"That's the old fight."

Theodore Cornwall leaped to his feet. "You don't know how much it means to me to throwaway this endless caution of mine. How I have hated the doctors and the diets and the electrical treatments. How I've hated myself. I've never had an enemy. Never experienced a danger, and now perhaps death itself is at my heels. Yesterday the very thought would have killed me. To-day it makes me almost gay."

"Theodore!" Hannah exclaimed with dismay.

He stood in front of his sister. "I'm through with it all. You, with your locks and keys and special servants. Lydia with her Hindu fakir. My new stars tell me to be daring.

I will dare--anything." He walked across to the window and shook his fist at the electric sign.

"He's mad," Hannah said.

"No, he isn't." Donald came to the side of his aunt. "He's not mad. He's waking up. I say, good for him. I say there's something of the old Cornwall spunk in him yet."

Theodore addressed the people in the room again. His voice was almost rapturous.

"We'll fight but we'll fight intelligently. In the first place, we'll find out if this sign is a coincidence. As soon as it's morning, we'll investigate it. They've been building it all day.

We'll find out who owns it and who is advertising those hats. If it's coincidence, then I'll still have the laugh on you, Hannah--"

"It isn't coincidence."

"--and if it isn't, then we'll fight. If Daniel and Everitt and Alice were murdered, I'll see their murderer in Hell myself. And always I will be bold; bold. I will fear nothing."

Hannah stood. She spoke with quiet severity. "Theodore, I believe you have lost your senses. Come, Miss Waring. We'll leave him in Donald's care. I have no wish to participate in this raving." She looked searchingly at her brother and said, "I hope that by morning you will be more self-possessed, if morning ever dawns for you."

With that closing sentence she left the room. Melicent glanced uncertainly at Donald, who nodded at her to follow, and then she, too, departed.

An hour later Melicent lay in the darkened bedroom which had been assigned to Miss Cornwall. She stared blindly into the night without either the hope or the thought of capturing sleep, although she knew that some time before dawn awoke the dull grumbling of the city she would sleep. In the Cornwall household one became able successfully to court slumber even under incredibly adverse conditions.

Theodore Cornwall had received his death sentence; and death, as she very well knew, did not delay after the delivery of the five-word message.

She tried to argue it away and to say that the sign which was still flashing outside the windows was an advertisement merely--simply a sign advertising hats; but each darkening and flashing of the sign only increased her nervous tension.

The partitions of the apartment were thin and she could hear the ceaseless confusion of small sounds made by Hannah Cornwall. She heard Miss Cornwall rise, move across the room and there was a knock on her door.

In spite of the fact that Melicent was reasonably sure that it was Miss Cornwall who had knocked, she sat up in bed and turned on the light with trembling fingers.