Deadly Nightshade (16 page)

“Oh, does it?” Breck smiled. “Tell them about her mania, old dear.”

“Well—it developed into religious mania, and she got the idea that she was to save Lawrence's soul. She thought it could only be done by a sacrifice.”

“What kind of a sacrifice?” demanded Mitchell, suspiciously.

“Tommy's death.” Miss Strangways spoke in a low voice.

“For heaven's sake! And you were going to let her see him? You must be crazy, yourself!” scolded Mitchell.

“Miss Strangways is not crazy,” said Gamadge. “She is behaving very well. In the first place, Miss Walworth has been pronounced cured by reputable physicians.”

“They're supposed to be tops,” admitted Breck, grudgingly.

“Supposed to be tops. In the second place, Miss Strangways is very sorry for her, recognizing her as a fellow victim and a martyr. In the third place, the poor lady was out of her head when she made the threats and tried to cause trouble. In the fourth place, Mr. Breck was to be present at the interview; or why should he have come running?”

“Well.” Mitchell reflected. “With all of us here, I guess it's safe enough for her to see the boy. If he recognizes her as the lady in the car, he might close the case here and now. We could go after evidence—”

Miss Strangways interrupted him wildly. “I can't do it. I thought I could, but I can't. They say she's cured, but she may not be; she wrote me that she'd had a sign.”

Gamadge made a wry face, and shook his head. “I think you're right not to risk it, Miss Strangways; she might give your boy a bad scare. If she thinks she's had a sign, she may make some kind of occult demonstration that would frighten a philosopher; Tommy's far too young to be dubbed Knight Companion of the Rosy Cross, or something. You'd better cart him off home, Breck. We'll stand by.”

Breck walked down to the sandy spot where the chubby boy was piling up shells, and swung him to a shoulder. From that eminence he stared at the strangers out of slate-blue eyes like his mother's, until he and his protector were out of sight. Mitchell watched them go with a frown.

“I think we're making a mistake,” he said, and repeated it: “I think we're making a mistake. Of course you never know, with children that age; they'll say anything.”

“Poor Mitchell had a terrible lesson this morning in the vagaries of infant witnesses,” said Gamadge, smiling. “He's thinking of Miss Irma Bartram. Tommy might very well recognize the lady in the car; but afterwards he might recognize half a dozen other ladies in cars, and by that time his nerves would be shot. No, Mitchell; if you don't mind, we'll leave him out of it.”

“I can't see any harm in just letting him take a look at her.”

“We'll take a look at her first.”

“He's nervous now, when you keep asking him questions,” said Miss Strangways. “If you go on, he cries.”

“Of course he does.”

“But she may be a danger to the community. We ought to try to find out any way we can,” insisted Mitchell.

“We'll find out, somehow. The child's word isn't worth a cent to you, Mitchell; you can't use it, and it might do Miss Evelyn Walworth a grave injustice. No; if Miss Walworth has had a sign, I refuse to introduce her to the party concerned. If you insist, I withdraw from the case.” He favored Mitchell with a flinty stare.

Miss Strangways looked at him as Andromeda might have looked at Perseus, and Mitchell remarked mildly: “Don't get so mad.”

“You haven't seen me mad yet.”

Mitchell said: “The boy's word is all the evidence we have.”

“Perhaps Miss Walworth will provide us with more. Here she is now, unless I'm greatly mistaken.”

A small car approached from the west, its slightly drunken progress, heralded by the strains of
Bess, You Is My Woman, Now
, played on an excellent radio, and sung in a bleating tenor voice. A metal rod, stiffly rising in front of the coupé, glittered in the sunlight.

“She loves radio,” murmured Miss Strangways.

George Gershwin's complicated melody ceased as the car drew abreast of them. The elderly lady who had been so early on the road that morning, peered from a window. She then opened the door, alighted, cleared her long black skirt from the step, and came up to them, beaming. Her black cloth-topped shoes tripped daintily through the dust.

Gamadge removed his hat, and Mitchell removed his. Miss Walworth threw back her chiffon veil with a black-gloved hand, and advanced upon Millie Strangways, who allowed herself to be embraced and kissed.

“Dear, dear Mildred! After these many years! And how well you look!” Miss Walworth released her cousin-by-marriage, and stepped back to get a better view of her. “This was indeed worth waiting for. I don't see our little Tommy.”

“He's having his nap, Cousin Evelyn.”

“Quite recovered, I hope? You can imagine my feelings, when I saw about his accident in the papers. Please forgive these funereal garments; very hastily assembled, I am afraid! I went to the Bartram funeral, this morning. So sad; but we won't talk of sad things now; this occasion is a joyful one.” Miss Walworth turned, smiled at Mitchell, and went happily on: “This is Mr. Mitchell; oh, no indeed! I require no introduction to Mr. Mitchell, Mildred, I assure you. We are fellow guests at the Pegram House, and as he is a local celebrity, he has been pointed out to me any number of times. But perhaps,” and she surveyed Gamadge archly, her head on one side, “perhaps Mr. Mitchell will be surprised to learn that I need no introduction to Mr. Henry Gamadge.”

“That so, ma'am?” Mitchell was indeed surprised, and showed it.

“That is so, and I will tell you why. You remember meeting me on the road, early this morning? I had been calling on my friends the gypsies. I greatly value the few relics of romance left to us.”

Gamadge unobtrusively winced.

“And I love to have my fortune told; one needn't actually believe in a thing to enjoy it, need one? As for the hour, all hours are opportune to me. Why should four A.M. seem less respectable to some people, than four P.M.? It is often more beautiful.”

“A question that applies to other things besides the hours of the day and night,” suggested Gamadge, gravely.

Miss Walworth tittered. “Delightful wit,” she said. “I quite expected it. You see, I recognized Mr. Mitchell this morning, and I wondered who his distinguished-looking friend from New York might be; you had obviously just come in on the through train, Mr. Gamadge.”

“Cleverly deduced.”

“We know who would have declared it elementary! But I immediately undertook a piece of detection that I flatter myself was worthy of you, and of Mr. Mitchell also. I turned my car, and I followed you at a discreet distance until you turned into the drive at Burnsides.”

“No!”

“I did; but of course I didn't pursue you to the very door. I stopped there on my way up here this afternoon, and quite openly got your name from Mrs. Burnside. I was quite delighted, Mr. Gamadge, to find that I knew all about you.”

“I can hardly believe it, Miss Walworth.”

“But I did, though! Your little volume—
Technique of a Book Forger
—it was in the library of my nursing home. I have been ill, Mr. Gamadge.”

“I'm very sorry to hear it.”

“But I am quite well again, now. So interesting to meet you; we are fellow authors.”

“Are we, really?”

“I put out a little book of poems, when I was young.
Rainbows
. You wouldn't have come across it.”

“Excellent title.”

“But I never ventured again.”

“We all have at least one book in us, Miss Walworth.”

“But sad, don't you think so, when there is only one? However; this is the sort of thing that makes summer so pleasant; one meets people one wouldn't otherwise meet at all. Life is very quiet at Robson's, though. Such a dear little resort, so simple and unpretentious. And I have my own suite at The Bayberries—an outside staircase. I must have complete freedom, wherever I am. I suppose it is the result of having been so shut away from the world in my nursing home. A mild claustrophobia,” said Miss Walworth, laughing.

“How did you find out that Miss Strangways and Tommy were so near you, ma'am?” asked Mitchell, who had been watching Miss Evelyn Walworth, and listening to her, in baffled wonder.

“Oh, I found out where they were two summers ago, and planted myself near
them
!” Miss Walworth rolled her eyes in his direction. “It was quite easy to trace them, you know. When I left my nursing home, my first thought was for Mildred. I went to an agency, and I engaged a man; a very civil man. He found Mildred and Tommy without any trouble at all. To my horror, I discovered that she was in what amounted to domestic service.”

“But you waited two years, almost, before you did anything about it.”

“Well, yes; I must explain.” Miss Walworth's face became serious. “You must understand that before I was so ill, I had been misled; tragically misled; and I had behaved very badly. During my retreat from the world—a rest cure of the soul, Mr. Mitchell—I had a really wonderful experience. A revelation.”

There was a silence, broken by Mitchell's voice. He asked, in an expressionless tone: “What sort of a revelation, ma'am?”

“Incommunicable, Mr. Mitchell,” said Miss Walworth, brightly. “However, my one idea, as a result of it, was to make up to Mildred for my previous attitude and behavior. So I came to Robson's, and for two summers I have waited for a sign. It came, at last.”

There was another pause, and again Mitchell broke it:

“What sort of a sign?”

“Why, dear little Tommy's accident, of course. I knew that the time had come to withdraw Mildred and Tommy from these most unsuitable surroundings, and to offer her a competence and a home. Mildred, my dear child; you know that I live alone in that big Boston house, and that I have plenty of money. I have fitted up the top floor into a charming self-contained flat, with all the modern conveniences. You and Tommy will be completely independent, and you will have service from my own staff. There is a large north studio. I shall make you an adequate allowance until you are earning an income of your own, and wish me to discontinue it. Now and then you may feel like coming down and sitting with me beside my radio; that is all I shall ask of you, and it will be quite sufficient. The obligation will be mine. Now, don't attempt to make up your mind yet; you can reach me until Monday at the Pegram House—where the cooking, I assure you, is frightful—and after that at the old address. You know it well.”

“Cousin Evelyn—”

“Not a word until you have thought it over! Goodbye for the present, my dear child. You are young still; too young to need a revelation. You can forgive and forget without that.”

She embraced Miss Strangways, bowed ceremoniously to Mitchell and to Gamadge, and climbed into her coupé. It disappeared around the corner of the road, accompanied by a stentorian announcement that we must expect a change in the weather late tomorrow afternoon: southeast winds, and rain.

The three looked at one another in silence. Mitchell finally asked: “Is she completely crazy, or just flighty, or as sly as they come?”

“She did sound so kind, at the last. But oh,” said Miss Strangways, “that awful house! Dark, and dreary, and old.”

“Where two ruthless murders were committed by your husband,” thought Gamadge, “and where the survivor of them may be slowly going mad.” He said aloud: “The top floor sounds cheerful, but I hope you won't accept her invitation until you've taken advice.”

“I won't. Only—” Her eyes strayed from the blue and dancing ocean to the line of rocks; and thence, across the road, to the dark woods. “It's queer—
she
doesn't frighten me so much; but I want to get away from this place.”

Mitchell considered this, frowning. “Could young Breck stake you for a while?”

“He says he can; he's been wanting to for ever so long, but I wouldn't let him.”

“Let him now. Look at it as a business proposition, borrow the money, and take the kid away from here. If the Ormistons complain, or try to make any trouble for you, I'll settle them; your boy has been in jeopardy of his life. He isn't legally adopted, is he?”

“No. They wouldn't make trouble; they've been awfully kind. I don't know what I should have done if it weren't for the Ormistons.”

“That's all very well, but you can't do their work and look after the boy, too; and Breck can't, either. I say, take him and get out.”

“David Breck wanted to give me a one-man show in New York, this fall. I ought to get my pictures ready for it. Aren't the Ormistons leaving on Monday?”

“You cut loose from the Ormistons. Tell 'em the whole business has been such a shock to you, you want to look after the boy yourself from now on. Ormiston is a regular sieve; if he knows where you are, he'll let it out to somebody. I'd rather nobody but Breck had your address for some time to come. Where would you go?”

“There's a very nice woman who'd share her apartment with me, and take care of Tommy when I had to be out. I'll give you her number; she's near Gramercy Park.”

Gamadge asked: “May we drive you back to Harper's Rocks?”

“No, thanks, I see Dave coming.”

“When will you pack up and leave?” persisted Mitchell.

“Tomorrow afternoon?”

“That's right. You'll drive your car, I suppose.”

“Yes. It seems hard on Mrs. Ormiston—”

“Forget that. Write your New York address down here.”

She scrawled it on a leaf of his notebook, and then stood watching them, her paintbox under her arm, while they drove westward, straight into the glare of the declining sun.

“The Finest Child in Maine”