Читать книгу A Variety of Weapons - Rufus King - Страница 9

CHAPTER VII

Marlow’s bedroom was completely ducal. The bed, a massive piece still handsomely sound since it had served its purpose for Napoleon during the Empire, was lost in the room’s proportions, and Marlow was comparatively lost in the bed. A uniformed nurse built on stolidly efficient lines stood on guard as Ann, still impelled by Estelle, came to rest at the bedside.

Marlow’s face was drawn and pale, but his eyes were open, and their expression held the same kindliness which had been in them during his greeting of Ann last night. Both hands were resting on the coverlet, and their fingers seemed almost transparent in their thinness.

Estelle said with hospital cheeriness, “Justin dear, you startled us. You look splendid. Where is Dr. Johnson?” Marlow’s voice was quite clear but weak.

“He is coming.” He smiled at Ann. “Crises are usually attended by a touch of the ludicrous, Miss Ledrick. In this instance, a bath. Dr. Johnson will arrive dripping.”

“I wouldn’t talk too much, Mr. Marlow,” the nurse said.

“Forgive me—Miss Ledrick, Miss Ashton. Miss Ashton is the Florence Nightingale of our community. As for the talking, I must do so while I can. Estelle, will you sit with Miss Ashton in the living room, please? I have something to discuss with Miss Ledrick.”

“I shouldn’t leave you, Mr. Marlow.”

“You shouldn’t upset me, Miss Ashton. Go, please—or you won’t be responsible for the consequences.”

Miss Ashton turned professionally anxious eyes on Estelle.

“You know how it is when he’s like this.”

“I do,” Estelle said. Her eyes locked with Marlow’s. “Are you certain this is wise, Justin?”

“No, I am not. Unfortunately it is imperative.”

“Then come, Miss Ashton.”

A flash and a deep roll of thunder shattered against tall windows as Miss Ashton followed Estelle from the room.

“You are thinking,” Marlow said to Ann as the roar died away, “that this is most extraordinary, Miss Ledrick. It is.”

“Naturally, Mr. Marlow.”

“I am weak and find words increasingly difficult. Sit here, will you? Sit close to me.”

Thin and translucent fingers patted the coverlet of the bed, and a strong revulsion of nervous fright gripped Ann. It was compounded of Bill’s utterly horrible digest over the telephone, of the storm, and, oddly enough, of a montage-like mental picture of Ludwig Appleby and the Charings of Boston.

The revulsion passed rapidly, and Ann felt in its wake a recurrent liking and sympathy for this sick and, yes, dying old gentleman whose smile was begging her to understand some problem which obviously was presenting difficulties of the strongest nature toward being explained.

She sat on the bed. The exposed film pack was still in her hand. Marlow noticed it and looked at it for a moment reflectively.

“You were at work, Miss Ledrick?”

“Yes. Just one set of exposures.”

“You like this work?”

“Very much.”

His hand reached out, whether toward hers or to the film pack Ann did not know, but her reaction at the touch of his fingers was involuntarily to draw her own hand away, leaving the pack on the bedcover. Marlow’s fingers closed over the pack, and he lifted it and examined it.

“Are you satisfied that photography offers you a career, Miss Ledrick?”

“There is nothing else that does, Mr. Marlow.”

Again the thunder pealed, and Ann wondered while reverberations rolled and died away toward what point Marlow was with such difficulty driving. She felt it to be more than the accepted eccentricities of the old and sick and rich, some purpose that involved her precisely.

She noted that Marlow almost fondled the film pack for a moment and then kept it pressed in his hand, and the hand resting quietly on his chest. The impression was clear that he regarded the pack not as an object in itself, but rather as something that belonged to her and that holding it brought him a sense of comfort and of pleasure.

He said in the dead silence that followed the clap, “There is no time. I must come directly to the point, Miss Ledrick. You were brought here to Black Tor for a purpose. One utterly divorced from your photography or the portraiture of Estelle’s ocelots. They were the device I employed for getting you to come. No—do not be alarmed. What I have done has been because I believed it to be the best. For you. I did so only after nights of torture and of doubt and the fear that my physical condition might worsen suddenly to a dangerous point. You shall be my judge.”

Marlow’s voice broke queerly with the effect of an engine suddenly bereft of power. He said, “I had a son.”

“Yes. I know, Mr. Marlow.”

“You are familiar with my tragedy?”

“I know what I suppose people in general know.” Marlow’s fingers tightened convulsively about the film pack, and he pressed it more closely against his chest, as though to conquer some inner pain.

“Then you know nothing, Miss Ledrick.” His voice was very weak. “Nothing that specifically concerns you. I—some water, if you please—this brief distress—”

Ann stood up swiftly. He was dying. His eyes had closed. His lips were betrayed into a gentle flutter. In panic she ran into the living room.

She said to the nurse, “Miss Ashton, go to him. I am afraid Mr. Marlow is dying.”

Estelle started to follow Miss Ashton into the bedroom, but some compulsion caused her to stop beside Ann and look searchingly into Ann’s eyes.

“Did Justin tell you, dear?”

“He started to tell me something, and then his voice died away.”

“Tell me—tell me what he said.”

There had been time enough by now for Ann to appreciate exactly what it was that Marlow had said, in especial concerning the pictures of the ocelots having been a device to get her up to Black Tor. She felt the normal anger of anyone when placed in the position of a dupe. Her sympathy and liking for Marlow dissipated, and with it ebbed her similar regard for his cousin Estelle.

Oddly enough, the more this former tide receded, the more strongly flowed a need for Bill. To see him, to talk with him, to go back to the rut of a placid normality.

Bill’s telephoned commentary with its theme of charnel houses and madness lost its flip detachment and grew personal to herself. Some basis to it must and did exist and she, through dupery, was being woven into its pattern along with the devastating Alice, two swains, two unfortunate bathers, and an electrocuted son. Ann did not want to be included at all. She wanted only to pack at once and go.

Estelle observed her intently while Ann thought this.

“Justin did say something, dear. He said something which has distressed you. I know. I can read it in your face.”

“Yes, Miss Marlow, he did. He admitted that taking the ocelots was nothing more than a device to get me up here. Why?”

“Oh, that—”

Estelle paused as the hall door swung open and a stout, harassed-looking gray-haired man nodded curtly to them and hurried into the bedroom.

“That is Dr. Johnson,” Estelle said. His arrival brought her an emotional letdown, and she sank into a chair. “It has been a strain. I know how selfish that sounds. I can’t help it. My life has been a taut wire for months. It has been especially terrible because there is nothing anyone can do. Each day, each tomorrow could have been the end.”

Estelle closed her eyes and pressed dimpled fingers against her temples.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Miss Marlow.”

“Please—that contraption over there is a cellaret. Just lift the lid, dear, and it all comes apart. I’d like some bourbon, straight.”

Ann opened the cellaret and got the drink. She handed it to Estelle.

“I must insist on leaving here, Miss Marlow. I shall go as soon as it can be arranged.”

Estelle drank the bourbon. Her eyes became velvet pansies clouded over with tears.

“Ann, it is hard for me to believe that that is all that Justin said.”

“He did add that this trickery was all for my own good. Is he sane?”

“Perfectly. Justin is one of the sanest and most brokenhearted men on earth. As for why he wanted you up here, I haven’t the right to tell you. Only he can do that.”

Then Dr. Johnson was back with them and saying to Estelle, “Not yet. I remain astonished at his stamina. Miss Ledrick?”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Mr. Marlow asked me to say that he would resume his talk with you later. I believe he will be strong enough to do so toward five this afternoon.”

“I will have returned to New York by then, Doctor.”

“Oh? I gathered that you were staying for a while. Well, I shall drop in later, Miss Marlow. Good-by, Miss Ledrick.”

“Good-by, Doctor.”

Dr. Johnson opened the door, and Ann saw, standing in the hallway, the heavy figure of Ludwig Appleby. Appleby waited until the doctor had passed and then came in.

He said to Estelle, “How is he?”

“Better, Ludwig. But you know.”

“Yes, I know. And good morning, Miss Ledrick.”

“Good morning, Mr. Appleby.”

His prominent dark eyes were lively with speculation. “Washburn tells me that Justin sent for you to come to him as well as for Estelle.”

“Yes.”

“You know, I find that very interesting.”

“I found it so too, Mr. Appleby. I am returning to New York this morning.”

“Are you?” Appleby waited until a crash of thunder had subsided. Then he said, “How?”

“That’s it, my dear,” Estelle said equably. “Of course if you insist we’ll arrange for a plane to take you at the earliest possible moment.” Her eyes turned vaguely toward rain-sheeted windows. “These storms are tiresome things, Ann. They last so long.”