Part 37 (1/2)

The cover was drawn up to the injured woman's chin, where it was folded neatly back. Her face was bloodless, and her fair hair had been gathered up in a s.h.a.ggy knot. She was breathing slowly, but regularly, and her expression was relaxed--more restful than I had ever seen it. As I stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at her, I knew that as surely as death was coming, it would be welcome.

Edith had been calm, before, but when she saw me she lost her self-control. She put her head on my shoulder, and sobbed out the shock and the horror of the thing. As for Fred, his imaginative temperament made him particularly sensitive to suffering in others. As he sat there beside the bed I knew by his face that he was repeating and repenting every unkind word he had said about Ellen Butler.

She was conscious; we realized that after a time. Once she asked for water, without opening her eyes, and Fred slipped a bit of ice between her white lips. Later in the night she looked up for an instant, at me.

”He--struck my--hand,” she said with difficulty, and closed her eyes again.

During the long night hours I told the story, as I knew it, in an undertone, and there was a new kindliness in Fred's face as he looked at her.

She was still living by morning, and was rallying a little from the shock. I got Fred to take Edith home, and I took her place by the bed.

Some one brought me coffee about eight, and at nine o'clock I was asked to leave the room, while four surgeons held a consultation there. The decision to operate was made shortly after.

”There is only a chance,” a gray-haired surgeon told me in brisk, short-clipped words. ”The bullet went down, and has penetrated the abdomen. Sometimes, taken early enough, we can repair the damage, to a certain extent, and nature does the rest. The family is willing, I suppose?”

I knew of no family but Edith, and over the telephone she said, with something of her natural tone, to do what the surgeons considered best.

I hoped to get some sort of statement before the injured woman was taken to the operating-room, but she lay in a stupor, and I had to give up the idea. It was two days before I got her deposition, and in that time I had learned many things.

On Monday I took Margery to Bellwood. She had received the news about Mrs. Butler more calmly than I had expected.

”I do not think she was quite sane, poor woman,” she said with a shudder. ”She had had a great deal of trouble. But how strange--a murder and an attempt at murder--at that little club in a week!”

She did not connect the two, and I let the thing rest at that. Once, on the train, she turned to me suddenly, after she had been plunged in thought for several minutes.

”Don't you think,” she asked, ”that she had a sort of homicidal mania, and that she tried to kill me with chloroform?”

”I hardly think so,” I returned evasively. ”I am inclined to think some one actually got in over the porch roof.”

”I am afraid,” she said, pressing her gloved hands tight together.

”Wherever I go, something happens that I can not understand. I never wilfully hurt any one, and yet--these terrible things follow me. I am afraid--to go back to Bellwood, with Aunt Jane still gone, and you--in the city.”

”A lot of help I have been to you,” I retorted bitterly. ”Can you think of a single instance where I have been able to save you trouble or anxiety? Why, I allowed you to be chloroformed within an inch of eternity, before I found you.”

”But you did find me,” she cheered me. ”And just to know that you are doing all you can--”

”My poor best,” I supplemented.

”It is very comforting to have a friend one can rely on,” she finished, and the little bit of kindness went to my head. If she had not got a cinder in her eye at that psychological moment, I'm afraid I would figuratively have trampled Wardrop underfoot, right there. As it was, I got the cinder, after a great deal of looking into one beautiful eye--which is not as satisfactory by half as looking into two--and then we were at Bellwood.

We found Miss Let.i.tia in the lower hall, and Heppie on her knees with a hatchet. Between them sat a packing box, and they were having a spirited discussion as to how it should be opened.

”Here, give it to me,” Miss Let.i.tia demanded, as we stopped in the doorway. ”You've got stove lengths there for two days if you don't chop 'em up into splinters.”

With the hatchet poised in mid air she saw us, but she let it descend with considerable accuracy nevertheless, and our greeting was made between thumps.

”Come in”--thump--”like as not it's a mistake”--bang--”but the expressage was prepaid. If it's mineral water--” crash. Something broke inside.

”If it's mineral water,” I said, ”you'd better let me open it. Mineral water is meant for internal use, and not for hall carpets.” I got the hatchet from her gradually. ”I knew a case once where a bottle of hair tonic was spilled on a rag carpet, and in a year they had it dyed with spots over it and called it a tiger skin.”