“Still, I believe you ought to carry a gun, in case he gets nasty.”
“I will, if you like,” he responded; “but I won't use it, no matter what happens.”
I left the office, vaguely disquieted with the thought of Jim going out to the club to face a man as dangerous and desperate as Frank Woods. When a fellow of his standing sees the penitentiary looming up in his foreground he's capable of anything. Helen, herself, in the crazed condition I had seen her the other night, was an added element of danger. I didn't like the looks of the situation any way I turned.
I climbed into my car and drove slowly through the wet slippery streets. The windshield was so covered with rain-drops that I lowered it to see the better, and the autumn rain, beating into my face, soon swept away my gloomy forebodings. After all, no man was going to stick his neck into the hangman's noose, no matter how eager he was for revenge. This was the twentieth century, in which no man could deliberately flout the law. Frank Woods would never have invited Jim to a “rendezvous” so public as the country-club, if he planned mischief. When he found out how much Jim knew, realizing the game was up, he would leave town quietly. Helen certainly would shake Woods when she learned of his dishonesty and trickery. Surely, no woman with Helen's pride could learn how she had been duped without hating the man who duped her.
I stopped at the University Union and found the card room well filled with bridge players. The rainy afternoon had driven the golfers to cards, and as one of the men, Terry O'Connel, was on the point of leaving, I took his place. I played till seven and then started home to dinner. The rain had stopped and a fresh chilly wind was rippling the pools in the streets and rapidly drying the sidewalks. The prospect of a cold blustery evening made me look forward with pleasure to the warm comfort of my study, and a good book.
I had just finished a solitary dinner—mother being confined to her room—and had settled down in dressing gown and slippers before my cheerful fire, when the telephone rang. I put down my book and tried to think of some excuse for staying home, in case it was my bridge-playing friends of the afternoon wanting me to come back to the club. A strange voice called from the other end of the wire.
“Mr. Thompson?”
“Yes.”
“There has been an accident to your brother-in-law's car.”
“What?—Where?—Who is this talking?” I shouted breathlessly.
“This is Captain Wadsworth of the North District Police Station speaking. Your brother-in-law had a very bad accident with his car at the second bridge on the Blandesville Road. Both Mr. and Mrs. Felderson were pretty badly injured.”
“Where are they now?” I gasped, fear clutching at my throat.
“They have been taken to St. Mary's Hospital.”
I slammed down the receiver and tore into my clothes. I ran out to the car and drove through the dark wet streets regardless of speed laws. From out the gray gloom, the heavy bulk and lighted windows of St. Mary's loomed just ahead. I ran up the steps and went at once to the office. Three nurses were standing there talking.
“Can you tell me where they have taken Mr. and Mrs. Felderson?”
“Were they the people in the automobile accident?”
I nodded my head.
One of the nurses led me to a large room on the second floor. As we neared the door a young interne, so the nurse told me, came out. He was thoughtfully polishing his glasses.
“I am Warren Thompson, Mr. Felderson's brother-in-law,” I explained. “Can you tell me how badly Mr. and Mrs. Felderson were hurt?”
He put his glasses back on his nose and looked at me sympathetically.
“Mr. Felderson is dead, and Mrs. Felderson is dying,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE. ACCIDENT OR MURDER
Have you ever had the whole world stop for you? Well, that's what happened when that young interne told me that Jim was dead. I must have been half mad for a few moments, at least they said I acted that way.
Sometimes, tragic news deadens the senses, like the brief numbness that follows the sudden cutting off of a limb, the pain not manifesting itself until some time afterward. But with me, the fact of Jim's death clawed and tore at the very foundation of my brain. It stamped itself into my sensibilities with such crushing force that I writhed under the burden of its bitter actuality. I felt as though I, myself, had died and my spirit, snatched from the brilliant, airy sunlight of life, had been plunged into the hammering emptiness of hell. “Jim is dead—big, happy, kind-hearted Jim is dead” ached through my brain.
They gave me something to drink—ammonia, I think—and my whirling head began to clear.
“Can I see Mrs. Felderson?” I asked the interne. It was he who had given me the ammonia.
“I'm afraid not,” he replied. “She is being prepared for the operating table.”
“There is a chance, then, of her being saved?” I clutched at his arm.
He slowly shook his head. “One chance in a thousand only, I'm afraid. There was severe concussion of the brain and a slight displacement of one of the cranial vertebra. Luckily, Doctor Forbes is here, and if any one can save her, he can.” He got up from his seat beside me. “Now, Mr. Thompson, I advise you to go home and get a good night's rest. You can do nothing here, and the next few days are bound to be a great strain.”
“You will telephone me at once the result of the operation?” I asked quickly.
“I wouldn't count too much on the operation,” he said kindly, “but I will let you know.”
He turned and walked back toward Helen's room. Just then the door was opened and there appeared a sort of elongated baby-cab, without a top. On this wheeling table was a still white bundle, from which a stifled moan escaped now and then. Shaken with terror and nausea, I ran for the stairs and did not stop until I got into my car and was racing away.
As I drove, my brain cleared and I remembered that there were others to whom the tragedy was almost as vital as to myself and who ought to be informed. I stopped at a corner drug store and called up Mary. Mother should not be told until a physician could assure me she was strong enough to stand the shock.
Mary was wonderfully sympathetic and tender, not voluble the way some women would have been. She asked me if I had been to the scene of the accident, and when I told her I was just going, she asked me if I wanted her with me. As it was after ten o'clock and the rain had begun again, I told her “No,” and added that I'd come to see her in the morning.
When I left the telephone-booth the drug clerk stared at me inquisitively.