CHAPTER XVIIITHE DEATH CLUTCH
Miriamdid not stay long in her bedroom after leaving Guy Trenholm in the hall of Abbott’s Lodge talking to Corbin. She had thought at first of lying down for a little while, but she was too restless. A walk would quiet her nerves, and, if Mrs. Nash had a good night, she might have an opportunity of relaxing and thereby gain some rest before morning.
It took Miriam only a few minutes to put on her coat and hat again and, not bothering to take gloves, she went down the staircase. Mrs. Nash’s door was closed as she passed it and she wondered if Guy Trenholm was still with her patient. She would have given much to have been present at the interview. Her thoughts veered back to Trenholm. She must see him before he left. There was something she must tell him, an idea which had come to her. Should she stay in? Miriam wavered. If she waited it would be too late to go out. Ah, she had it! Martha would give Trenholm a message for her.
Knowing that Martha usually sat in a windownook just between the pantry and the dining room, Miriam went in that direction but paused near the dining room table at sight of Betty Carter standing in the doorway leading to the sunparlor. She doubted if Betty had heard her approach, for the young girl’s attention was riveted on Alan Mason, who lay asleep in one of the long wicker lounging chairs standing directly at the entrance to the dining room.
Alan’s comely features were free of the haggard lines which had aged him in the past few days, and his graceful pose in the abandon of sleep resembled that of a tired boy after a day of play. Evidently his dreams were happy, for a smile trembled on his lips and he murmured softly, “Betty!”
Betty Carter’s eyes were dimmed with tears and Miriam, glancing at her, read the carefully guarded secret of her heart. Alan Mason, and not his dead cousin, was the man she loved. With a swift, graceful movement Betty stooped down and kissed him on the forehead with a touch so delicate that it did not awaken the sleeping man. Then, with a gesture of utter despair, she dropped on her knees in front of a chair and buried her face in her arms.
Miriam stole softly away, her desire to see Martha forgotten in the scene she had inadvertently witnessed. It had all happened in a second of time.There had been no opportunity for her to withdraw, but Miriam felt self-reproached. Walking rapidly, head down, hands in pockets, she took no note of her direction, save that she was on a footpath leading away from Abbott’s Lodge, and she honestly tried to banish Betty and Alan from her thoughts. But one idea persisted and would not down. If Betty loved Alan, why had she married Paul on Monday night?
A high wind had sprung up and Miriam had forgotten to use hatpins. The next second she was bareheaded. Her hat, a chic affair of the mushroom variety, sailed gracefully ahead of her around a curve and then another and stronger gust of wind carried it into a field on her left. With a disgusted ejaculation over her stupidity in omitting the pins, Miriam followed her hat as best she could. She had just retrieved it and slapped it vigorously on her head, regardless of the angle, when she espied a couple of cows in the corner of the field. Miriam stopped not on the order of her going and when she halted she had reached the edge of a wood. Having a good bump of locality, she recognized, after a careful glance around, the wood as the one she and Trenholm had walked through when returning from Hills Bridge.
It was growing dark and Miriam faced in thedirection she judged Abbott’s Lodge to be and hurried along the path. In making the next turn she paused abruptly. To her left lay the graveyard which she had remarked upon to Trenholm. Its air of desolation was emphasized by the fading light, and Miriam did not plan to linger as she had done when Trenholm was with her. But her intention to hurry past the old Mason burying plot was checked at sight of a man kneeling by a grave and digging in it with a trowel. Miriam stopped short as the man looked up. The recognition was mutual.
Corbin rose stiffly to his knees and, bending over, brushed off some dirt and dry leaves which clung to his trousers.
“How come ye here, Miss?” he demanded suspiciously.
Miriam’s first impulse was to decline to answer, but Corbin had stepped back from the grave and stood almost directly in front of her, blocking the footpath.
“I am out for a walk,” she replied, “and by chance came this way.”
“It’s lonesome like, for a lady.” Corbin hitched himself a trifle closer, a beam of admiration in his watery eyes, which Miriam found more objectionable than a glare of rage.
“What areyoudoing here, Corbin?” she asked,coolly taking the situation into her hands. “What interests you in these old graves?”
Corbin shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “Getting some ivy,” he explained. “I wanted to plant some around the garage.”
“So you rob a grave—”
Corbin’s complexion turned an even more unhealthy color.
“Oh, the old suicide won’t miss it,” he said coarsely, and hastily changed the subject. “Funny, weren’t it, that Mr. Paul should ha’ left in his will this here graveyard to Mr. Alan, ’cause it belonged to his ancestors, and never given him nothin’ else, ’cept five hundred dollars.”
Miriam was not following closely Corbin’s jumbled accounts of the provisions of Paul’s will, which Mr. Corcoran had explained to Martha and to him at the close of the reading of the will.
“Who lies in this suicide’s grave?” she asked suddenly, and the question took Corbin by surprise.
“Mr. Alan’s grandfather.”
“And his name?” with a persistence which surprised herself as well as Corbin.
“’Cordin’ to the headstone his name was Mason, too.” Talking to an extremely pretty woman was a novel sensation and Corbin was commencing to enjoy himself. “There’s a saying in these parts that hestole some money when he was ’zecutor to a friend’s will and killed heself when found out. The niggers buried him, as you see. Mr. Alan ain’t got much call to be proud of his gran’-dad.”
“But I don’t think he will approve of your digging into his grave,” Miriam stated quietly, “for ivy.”
Corbin’s lips curled back viciously over his yellow teeth. “He ain’t goin’ to hear of it,” his voice grew low and menacing. “Not from you, anyway.”
“Why not?”
He came a step nearer and his breath was unpleasantly close. “I gave the bloodstained sheet to Sheriff Trenholm,” he whispered.
Miriam stared at him, open-eyed. “The bloodstained sheet!” she echoed. “What are you talking about?”
“The sheet off Mr. Paul’s bed after he was murdered,” with a slow, knowing wink, which sent the hot blood to her cheeks. Her color ebbed as quickly as it had come, leaving her deadly pale. “The sheriff was mighty curious to know if I had shown you where to get clean linen for the bed when you fust come. Don’t worry,” observing her expression and misinterpreting it. “I didn’t give him no direct answer.”
“What!” Corbin drew back at the force of herexclamation. “Why didn’t you tell himat oncethat you showed me the linen closet?”
He leered at her. “There wasn’t any call for me to give you away—then”—he supplemented.
Miriam missed the last word. Her eyes were blazing with indignation.
“And so you let Mr. Trenholm infer—”
“What he pleased—yes, Miss!”
Miriam’s small hands were clenched. “You contemptible cur!” she cried, and would have added more but wrath choked her utterance.
“Here, Miss, don’t you be so handy with misnamin’ me,” protested Corbin. “I’ve got feelin’s like other fellows and I done ye a good turn.”
“By concealing the truth!” scornfully. “You are not only a knave, Corbin, but a fool!”
“Am I?” Corbin’s slow smile sent a shiver down her back in spite of her hot anger. “Come, Miss, there ain’t no use o’ you an’ me fussin’. I’ll stand yer friend, if ye’ll just give me a little snow”—he came nearer and brushed her shoulder with his hand—“just a little snow.”
Miriam stared at Corbin. Was the man demented? Her eyes left his face and fell on his hand as he stood stroking her coat. It was a remarkably small hand for a man, well-shaped, the long, creeping fingers stained with soil from the grave. The sealring on his third finger caught on a button as she sprang back.
“Don’t touch me!”
Corbin paid not the slightest attention to her command. His eyes aflame with desire, he stepped after Miriam and caught her hand, fawning upon her—
“You’re a nurse, Miss,” he whined. “Gimme a deck to-night.” He saw her expression of dawning comprehension and clung to her hand more tightly than before.
Miriam wrenched her hand free. At last she understood—Corbin was a cocaine addict. For the first time she felt a twinge of fear as her glance swept the lonely countryside. Of all the demoralizing drugs, cocaine was the worst—whisky raised to its nth power was pap compared to it.
“I have none, Corbin,” she said, hiding her abhorrence of the man under a brusque manner. “We nurses are no longer permitted to keep a supply of narcotics on hand.”
“Doctor Roberts will let ye have a shot,” eagerly. “Ye need never tell him it’s for me.”
“Go to him yourself.”
Corbin stared at her for a long moment, his bloodshot eyes taking in her beauty appraisingly. The collar of her coat had turned back and he caught a glimpse of a gold chain. Martha had told him ofrubies which she had seen around the nurse’s neck.
“I’ll take care o’ Roberts,” he said thickly. “But me an’ you are goin’ to come to an understandin’ right now. Hand over that gold chain. Ye won’t!—then, by God—”
Miriam had read the look in his eyes in time to spring aside and avoid his clutching fingers. Far more agile than her adversary, she eluded his attempt to trip her and, fear lending wings to her feet, she raced madly toward Abbott’s Lodge.
Corbin’s heart hammered and thumped as he strove to overtake her. He was in no physical trim and, as Miriam left the footpath and took to the fields, he sank down by the roadside, panting from his exertions. As he rested his brain cleared and he cursed aloud as he realized the folly of his act. In his mad craving for cocaine he had betrayed his precious secret to Miriam. And she would tell. Corbin ground his teeth in rage, then his face cleared. Only Miriam knew—so far. When he got up and limped toward Abbott’s Lodge, his lips wrinkled in a low and vicious smile.
Finally convinced that she had outdistanced Corbin, Miriam dropped back to a walk. Considerably shaken by the fright he had given her, it took her some little time to stop looking over her shoulder to see if the caretaker was still following her. Thenher thoughts switched around to Guy Trenholm and the bloodstained sheet, and her recent terror was forgotten. Had Corbin, by his evasive answers to the sheriff’s question about the sheet, made Trenholm believe that she was implicated in Paul Abbott’s murder? She recalled vividly his persistent questions at his bungalow that afternoon as to whether or not she had recognized Paul as the American soldier to whom her uncle had intrusted the Paltoff diamond.
Could it be that Trenholm suspected her of having recognized Paul and seized the opportunity of being alone with her patient to kill him and recover the Paltoff diamond?
The thought was torment! Miriam brushed her hair back from her forehead. She was suddenly blinded by tears, and paused in uncertainty, unable to go on. In that moment she realized what Guy Trenholm had grown to be to her. Love—had she given her love to a man unasked—unsought? Her face flamed scarlet. Had romance come into her life only to be bitter-sweet? She bowed her head in her hands and the old, familiar prayer, which had sustained her through the horrors of war and Russian revolution, again passed her lips: “God, give me strength!”
When Miriam approached the entrance of Abbott’sLodge she was once more calm and collected. As she stepped inside the house she was met by Martha.
“You are wanted upstairs in Mr. Paul’s old bedroom,” the housekeeper stated. “They are waitin’ for ye,” and giving Miriam no chance to find out who “they” were, she retreated to her kitchen, in time to meet her husband slinking in the back door.
Considerably mystified by the message, Miriam went first to her bedroom, tossed off her hat and coat, and then paused long enough to arrange her hair deftly, which had escaped from her hair net when her hat blew off. Miriam had not been in Paul’s old bedroom since her interview with Trenholm the night after the murder. The door had always been closed and, never having tried to enter it, she was not aware that, by the sheriff’s orders, it had been kept locked. However, she found it not only unlocked, but wide open when she reached there, and, without knocking, she stepped inside the room.
Seated near the table were Betty Carter and Guy Trenholm, and, by their attitude, she judged that they were awaiting her in growing impatience. Miriam’s heart beat a trifle faster as she met Trenholm’s straight gaze, but her manner was entirely natural and composed.
“You sent for me?” she asked, addressing him rather than Betty.
It was Betty who answered as Trenholm rose and placed a chair for Miriam and, from a motive which Miriam failed to guess and Trenholm himself to analyze, stood by her side, his eyes watching every play of emotion in Betty’s beautiful face.
“I sent for you, Miss Ward,” Betty stated, “and for Sheriff Trenholm, because I wished to see him in your presence,” she faltered and grew paler. “It was before him that I flatly contradicted your statement that I was here in this room with Paul on Monday night. I wish to withdraw that denial.”
The room swam around Miriam. It was the last sentence she expected from Betty. She had exonerated her and before Guy Trenholm. He would know that she had not lied. She stole a look at him. Trenholm’s attention was entirely centered on Betty and his expression was difficult to decipher.
“Your motive for denying your presence here, Miss Carter?” he asked, and she winced at his tone and the formality of his address. Her woman’s intuition told her that she could not sway him by feminine wiles as in the old days in Paris. He had developed from a shy country boy into a man, stern perhaps, but just, resourceful and strong. “What was your motive?” he asked again, with more emphasis, as she kept silent.
“The danger of being arrested for Paul’s murder,”she said, and this time it was Trenholm’s turn to feel astonishment, mingled with a reluctant admiration. Betty, with characteristic courage, was taking the ground from under his feet.
“And your reason for such a fear?” he questioned swiftly.
“My marriage to Paul under such peculiar circumstances and my immediate departure, which occurred,” she added, addressing Miriam, whom surprise had kept silent, “judging from your testimony, just before Paul was killed.”
“Your departure justbeforehe was killed is the very point which clears you of all suspicion,” declared Trenholm dryly, and Betty changed color. “Come, Miss Carter, what has Paul’s will to do with your sudden admission of your marriage to him?”
“Mr. Trenholm!”
“Please—no heroics!” holding up an authoritative hand. “Let us have the truth at last, Miss Carter.”
Betty’s eyes blazed at him wrathfully. “It is your privilege to insult a woman, I presume—one of your prequisites as sheriff of the County.”
Trenholm smiled. “Put it that way, if you wish,” he said, in entire good nature. “By the terms of Paul’s will you inherit nothing if you marry after his death; but, as his widow, the law allows you onethird of his estate, irrespective of any will,” he paused—“or any marriage thereafter.”
Betty rose and dropped him a curtsy, and Miriam, watching her with a critic’s eye, saw no tremor in hands or lips and no evasive glance. “You make me out a very clever woman,” Betty said. “I thank you.”
Trenholm bowed. “There is only one flaw in your reasoning,” he said. “You did not marry Paul Abbott.”
Betty stared at him, astounded. “Are you mad!” she gasped. “Why, Miss Ward witnessed the marriage!”
“I beg pardon, but I was not in the room,” interrupted Miriam. “Doctor Nash sent me to get a lamp and I returned just as he completed the marriage ceremony.”
Betty surveyed them both scornfully. “What is this—collusion?” she demanded.
“No, just statements of facts,” retorted Trenholm. “When Miss Ward returned to this room after seeing you depart, she went over to the bed and found, not Paul, but a stranger lying there.”
Betty sank back in her chair. Her face was ghastly. There was no make-believe in her emotion and her half-fainting condition was genuine. With a word of explanation, Miriam bolted out of theroom, to return a second later with smelling salts. Betty accepted them with a broken word of thanks.
“I don’t understand,” she began, glancing piteously from one to the other. “You found a strange man in Paul’s bed just after I left?”
“Yes,” replied Miriam, quietly. “It was a great shock and I fainted, and in that condition was chloroformed. When I revived I found Mr. Abbott lying dead in that bed.”
As in a daze, Betty raised her hands and pressed them to her throbbing temples.
“You mean that some man got in this room while Miss Ward was in the hall with the lighted lamp, showing Uncle Alexander and me the way downstairs, threw Paul out of bed, and took his place?” she asked. “And being detected by Miss Ward, chloroformed her, and then murdered Paul?”
“You have described the scene very admirably,” stated Trenholm, slowly, “except in one particular. The man assumed Paul’s place in the bed when Miss Ward went downstairs to the door to admit you and Doctor Nash.”
“Impossible!” Betty’s eyes were half starting from her head. “Why, I stood near the bed—”
“Exactly where?” broke in Trenholm. “Show me.”
Betty rose and walked over to the bed and pausedby it. “When I came, I stopped here,” she explained. “I did not move, did I, Miss Ward?” glancing appealingly at Miriam.
“No,” quickly.
“And how were the curtains of the four-poster draped?” asked Trenholm.
Miriam quickly arranged them to the best of her recollection.
“Then, Miss Carter, you did not have a good view of the man in the bed?”
“But itwasPaul,” she protested. “I knew his voice.”
“Voices can be imitated,” Trenholm spoke slowly. “And a poor imitation would have passed muster in your state of excitement. You were expecting to find Paul there—and you were not critical.”
“But I tell you I saw his face.”
“How much of it?”
“His dark hair, his general contour—oh, pshaw, his beard—”
“Did you see his eyes?” asked Trenholm. “Did you lean over and kiss him?”
Betty flushed crimson, from throat to brow. “He kept his eyes closed—sick men do that”—with a defiant glance at Miriam as if challenging her to contradict her statement. “I, eh, I didn’t kiss Paulbecause—because—” her voice died away and rose again. “He was ill and—eh—”
“And you loved another man!” Trenholm’s tone cut like a whiplash, and she swayed upon her feet. “Come, confess that you consented to marry Paul because he promised you the Paltoff diamond.”
Three times Betty strove to speak. “You are the devil incarnate!” she gasped. “I tell you I married Paul!“ Her clenched fist struck the bedstead a sharp blow. “See, look here,” and from around her neck she dragged off a gold chain which she had worn concealed underneath her gown. From it was suspended a heavy gold ring.
“You knew Paul intimately, Guy Trenholm. Do you recognize this ring?”
He took it from her hand and Miriam moved closer to his side and examined it intently. It bore only a large and beautifully carved “M” upon it. Trenholm dropped it in Miriam’s hand and she was astonished at the ring’s weight and its massive size.
“You know the ring’s history, but Miss Ward does not,” went on Betty, as Trenholm kept silent. “This ring was Paul’s fetish—he was intensely superstitious. He declared that it would never leave his possession until he placed it on my finger.” She drew in her breath. “Paul made that statement in your presence, Guy Trenholm, and in mine, and heplaced that ring on my finger during the marriage service on Monday night.”
From his leather wallet Trenholm drew a number of photographs and selected one.
“This photograph,” he said, holding it so that both girls could see it, “was taken of Paul as he lay on the undertaker’s couch in the room down the hall, and just before he was placed in the casket. You will see that he is still wearing his seal ring—in fact, his finger was so firmly bent to hold it upon his hand that we would have had to break the bone to take it off. His ring, Miss Carter, is buried with him.”
Betty stared dumbly at him. Suddenly her strength deserted her, and before Miriam could catch her she fell in a crumpled heap at their feet.