In its greenish glow Goring’s face looked as dead-white as a cadaver’s. “I’ll wait in the next room. Be quick about it, and be silent.”
The young man nodded, then spoke just as Goring opened the door. “Uncle Dev?”
Goring looked back at him.
“I just want you to know something. Whatever happens to me, this has been the happiest day in my life.”
Goring quickly withdrew. In his darkened bedroom he opened a drawer in the bedside stand, removed the revolver which he kept there and slid it under the blanket on his lap.
He waited. The sound of thunder was now no more than a distant cannonade.
He didn’t hear the car when it drove up and the first sound that reached his ear was a soft but impatient tap on the study door.
For perhaps a second or two he remained immobile, unbreathing, but the wild impulse of remorse which sent him hurtling toward the door came an instant too late. The man he had said was “Rashbrooke” gave a muffled cry as the paper knife drove fiercely into his heart.
Goring froze, then reacted with the calm, fatalistic precision of a sleepwalker, gently pushing the door open wider, raising the gun and firing.
He was almost sure that the young man who thought he was “Jack” never knew what happened, never knew that it was Uncle Dev who killed him.
The sensation it caused was, of course, considerable, but not so great as it would have been had Goring permitted reporters to step foot upon the grounds. His story was simple. A young man had come to the house, Mrs. Harkins confirmed that she had let him in (“he had real funny-looking eyes”) and taken him upstairs to Goring’s study. Goring stated that the caller had babbled incoherently, seemed to have confused some of the Penelope stories with real life, and when Harry Lawton had arrived unexpectedly the young man had gone berserk, seized up a paper knife from the desk and stabbed Lawton in the heart. Before he could turn on Goring the older man had been able to reach his revolver and shoot the intruder.
Goring would remember with utmost satisfaction the look on his wife’s face when she arrived home just as they were removing her lover’s body from the study. He wondered, with no particular alarm, if she would tell the police that Lawton had received a call from Goring. If she did Goring was prepared to deny it, but he didn’t really expect her to, since it would mean confessing that she had been with Lawton.
He was right. She said nothing about that call, not to the police and not to him.
Instead of aggravating his condition as it might have been expected to do, the events of that night had quite a different effect upon Goring, for days afterward his aches and pains seeming to enter upon a period of remission, raising his spirits to the point where he actually expressed a desire to return to work.
His wife stared at him in amazement. “Work? You?”
“Why not?”
“You haven’t worked in years.”
“Well, now I feel like working. I’ve got two or three ideas churning around up here,” and he gaily tapped his forehead.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said coldly. “Doctor Simpson would never approve. And you’d never stand the discomfort. That’s why you hired me in the first place, don’t forget. Every time you struck a typewriter key you winced with pain, and you know you were never any good at dictating your novels.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t have the right kind of secretary.”
He wheeled himself to the desk, picked up the unfinished manuscript of The Final Escape and with a look of infinite satisfaction calmly forced his crippled fingers to rip it into shreds.
“I’ve got a much better idea. How’s this for a title? Penelope and the Evil Bridegroom. We’ll take the little darling right up to the altar with that scoundrel and then, when things look absolutely hopeless, when there seems to be no conceivable way out of the situation — enter the stranger!”
A Wreath for Justice
by Edward Wellen
Christmas exchanges rarely are made with such dexterity as this one.
Last year’s leftover tinsel icicles did for this year’s Christmas tree. Thomas Orth’s hands hung the strips on the boughs. He watched the hands as though they belonged to someone else. Strange how you still went through the motions long after the meaning had gone. The few gift packages under the tree flaunted their false gaiety.
The doorbell rang.
An icicle of fear stabbed into his chest, freezing him through and through. Who, at this hour...? Then he hurried, dripping tinsel, to answer before the doorbell rang again and wakened Lucy. He gaped on seeing who stood there — Kenneth Mathwick, Sr. himself.
Mathwick leaned forward, pushing his imposing presence at Orth. “Quick, let me in.”
Still gaping, Orth gave way. As Mathwick stepped in and swung around to shut the door Orth saw he carried a briefcase in one gloved hand. He had brought the night chill in with him as well, and Orth shivered.
Mathwick looked past Orth. His eyes darted left and right. His voice came out a harsh whisper. “Your wife?”
“Lucy?” Orth felt stupid. After all, he had only one wife and her name was Lucy. “She’s upstairs. Asleep.”
“No one else here?”
“No.” Orth spoke mechanically, his mind trying to unwhirl.
“Ah.” He wasted a moment, drumming on his briefcase. Then he cleared his throat and put on the well-known Mathwick getting-down-to-business expression. “You know Judith Hillerin, of course?”
Of course, Orth reflected. She was the typist with the indolent look-how-I’m-put-together shape and the insolent I-dare-you-to-slap-me face.
Mathwick was waiting for him to answer. Now it was Orth’s turn to clear his throat. “She’s one of the typists, isn’t she? Why do you ask?”
For some reason the worn star on the top of the tree held Mathwick’s gaze. He spoke to Orth at last but kept his eyes on the star. “The office Christmas party — you were there this evening, weren’t you?”
Orth’s mouth slid slightly to the left. He was only a lowly slave and Mathwick Senior was Mathwick Senior, but had his presence at the party made so little impression? Mathwick’s glance had passed over him several times, together with a fixed smile, and one of those times Mathwick had even raised a paper cup to him. Now it would seem that the board room had been, for once in the year, loud and crowded enough to joggle him out of Mathwick’s sight and mind.
“I was there, but I stayed for only a drink or two. I would’ve liked to have stayed longer, but I felt I’d better leave early to be with Lucy.”
“Yes, I can see how you would feel that way, especially on this night.” Mathwick’s voice went sentimental, almost mushily so, but his eyes sharpened. “How is your wife these days? I understand she hasn’t been well for some time.”
Orth still had enough courage in him from his drink or two at the party to draw himself up and try to stare Mathwick down. This was his castle and no outsider had the right to peer behind the arras — but Mathwick wasn’t stare-downable.
“Well, the doctors haven’t been able to find anything physically wrong with her, but she does have to take medication for her nerves.”
The fire in Mathwick’s eyes could have come from his mentally rubbing his hands. “Sad. Dismal for her and hard on you. Yes, that’s what I had heard, that she’s in this drugged state much of the time.” Mathwick’s eyes probed Orth’s. “Then your wife would not be able to testify — I mean, say for sure — that you in fact left the party early and came straight home?”