Drue said quietly and simply, her eyes straight and unwavering, “Yes.”
Conrad Brent turned so purple and swelled so visibly that I gave a preparatory glance at the decanter of brandy and the sofa; but nothing happened in the way of a seizure, and Drue added simply, “You see, Craig loved me.”
“That was a boyish infatuation!” said Conrad Brent, with a kind of controlled violence. “He was soon cured. Your marriage to my son is past and ended completely. I only wanted to make sure you understood that before permitting you to stay on in this house. I see you prefer not to, so you can leave at once…” He turned to the bell and had his hand outstretched when I said, “She’d better stay.”
His head jerked toward me, startled. I said, “All this is beside the point. The only thing that matters just now is whether your son is going to live or die.” I said it quite coolly and looked at the fat and frolicsome animal above the mantel in a detached fashion.
There was a little silence while he digested that. Then he turned to Drue again. “You might be needed tonight. But, understand, I’ll have no attempts to talk to my son. If you stay at all you stay on my terms.”
Well, it was clear enough; shut up or out you go. After a moment, Drue said, whispering, “I’ll stay. I’ve got to stay…”
“Very well,” said Conrad Brent. “You take the noon train tomorrow. That’s all.”
She waited an instant or two, looking at him; then she went to the door. But with her hand on the doorknob she turned to him again. Her clear gray eyes had a thoughtful, queerly measuring look. She said very quietly, “You are his father. I suppose you love him. But I could kill you for what you’ve done to me.” With which remarkably quiet and unexpected remark she walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.
Well, I must say I was a little disconcerted. I turned to Conrad Brent and he had got out a handkerchief and was touching his bluish lips with it. “Look here,” I said abruptly. “I know that girl. She’d make anybody a good wife.”
“And a charming daughter-in-law,” said Conrad Brent, “threatening to murder me.”
“She didn’t mean that; you know it. She…”
He interrupted me. “My dear Nurse. I have no doubt she would make an admirable wife for, as you aptly put it, anybody. But not”-he drew himself up and glanced up at the coat of arms and said in a different voice-“but not for my son. That’s all, Nurse.” Without giving me another chance to speak he went to the door and opened it for me, and I was obliged to precede him into the hall.
The aspect of the great, solemn hall had changed. A fire had been lighted and there was a little group of people having tea there, with chairs and tables drawn up near the fire and Beevens hovering in the background. Alexia, sitting behind a lace-draped table, was pouring from an old silver service that was polished till it looked as soft as satin.
Conrad Brent asked me to have tea with them. The fact itself astonished me so I looked at him incredulously. But it was as if the opening of the library door had been the rising of a curtain and Conrad Brent had a scene to play. He was a different man-poised, urbane, gracious in a lordly way.
Well, naturally, I refused. I’d been too long away from my patient as it was. But he insisted upon introducing me to Maud Chivery, who nodded briefly and watched me brightly, to Nicky Senour whom I had already encountered and who remembered it for he was barely civil, and to another young man, tall and blond and nice-looking who arose at once from the bench before the fireplace and bowed, and answered to the name of Peter Huber. This then was Craig’s friend and the man who had helped Nicky and the butler carry him to his room after the shooting.
Maud Chivery stirred her tea with a shriveled, brown little hand and said in a soft-as-silk voice, “I’ll be glad to stay with you tonight, Nurse. When the other nurse leaves.”
Alexia’s beautiful, pointed face turned seekingly toward her husband’s. Conrad didn’t look at her. “The other nurse will stay until morning,” he said.
Maud Chivery’s eyes glistened with interest. Alexia’s face stiffened, and she made a small quick motion as if to rise from her chair, but Conrad walked over to her and put his heavy hand on her shoulder. Alexia put one soft white hand caressingly over his own and instantly his face changed and softened. It was obvious that whatever had happened in the past Conrad Brent was almost fatuously in love with his young wife. The young wife who had been once, and not so long ago, his son’s fiancée. “She goes tomorrow,” he said.
Alexia did not relax; her eyelids drooped a little but it seemed to me that under the soft shadow of her eyelashes she shot a demanding glance toward her brother Nicky. Nicky looked into his cup for an instant and said, “I wonder what Drue wants.”
Maud Chivery made a little shushing motion with one brown claw but glanced eagerly at Conrad. “That is not a name I or Alexia wish to hear uttered in this house,” said Conrad with really astonishing command and dignity. It argued sincerity on his part and a determination to control circumstances which seemed to me remarkable in this day when there are no medieval castles nor medieval rulers and no matter how much you hate anybody you really can’t help hearing his name now and then. Nicky’s pointed, elegant face and small crimson mouth looked fleetingly a little ugly; but he lifted his cup again without replying.
Rather abruptly I said that I had to get back to my patient and Peter Huber straightened suddenly, put down his cup and said something polite to Alexia who nodded. She hadn’t said a word, yet she had made her will fully marked by her quick inquiring look at Conrad to know if Drue was to be sent away, no less than by her covert but imperative glance toward her brother which seemed to enlist his aid against Drue. Decidedly, Alexia held the reins of power in her pointed, soft, white hands. She didn’t look at Peter Huber as she nodded to his polite murmur, and he walked across the hall beside me and started up the great stairway when I did.
At the curve I glanced down. Alexia was sitting perfectly still in her great chair, her crimson suit a spot of rich, soft color, her pearls reflecting a rosy glow from the fire. Her head was bent a little thoughtfully, and there was in her face again, despite its indubitable beauty, a hint of underlying cruelty. Perhaps it lay subtly in the shape of her mouth, small yet so crimson and so eager, or in her delicately pointed chin. Nothing she could help, certainly. I told myself that and then looked at Nicky and saw exactly the same thing, a subtle, indefinable twist of his red mouth, a brooding quality in the soft repose of his face, something you couldn’t analyze and describe, and something cruel.
Maud Chivery’s dark little face twisted over her white stock to watch us go up the stairway. Then we went above the landing and could no longer see the silent group below.
Peter Huber was still with me when I turned along the corridor toward my patient’s room. Once we had passed beyond earshot of those in the hall below, he said, “Wait a minute, Miss-Nurse. I’d like to talk to you. It won’t take a moment. Here’s a chair.”
Well, I suppose it could have been called that, although it had almost certainly been culled from one of the bigger and better medieval torture chambers. A bulbous-legged cupid leered at me from a dark tapestry across the opposite wall, and Peter Huber said, “Is he going to die?”
“I hope not. I don’t think so.”
He was a nice-looking fellow, as I’ve said; very blond and very big but not so boyish as my first impression led me to believe. He was tanned as Craig Brent was tanned. There were fine lines around his large blue eyes and around his squarish mouth; his features were large and rather blunt, his blond hair curly and strong-looking. He had rather good hands, long and muscular and was dressed in very British tweeds but was not British, although there was a slight flavor of something European about him; perhaps it was his enormous politeness. Anyway, he looked at me then, earnestly and worriedly, and said, “Has he told you who shot him? I’m sure he knows.”