Mignon Eberhart - Wolf in Man’s Clothing

There was no sound of Alexia anywhere and no figure moved against the faint gray light from the front windows. But I didn’t know either where Drue was, so there was nothing for it but to try the bedrooms. So I advanced very cautiously across the hall and Drue was in the first bedroom I entered.

I didn’t see her at first; she had heard or sensed my approach and had shrunk back behind the door. As I turned she caught a glimpse of me. “ Sarah… ”

Then I saw her and caught her. “Sh-sh,” I reached out and closed the door softly. Her face was a white oval in the dusk; her hands gripped my arms as if she would never let me go. “ Sarah… ” she whispered.

“Be still. Alexia’s here. Nicky was here, but I think he’s gone. Drue, are you all right? Did they hurt…?”

“No, no. Only I couldn’t telephone! I couldn’t do anything. She wouldn’t let me…”

“She…”

“Anna. She’s gone down now to fix us something to eat. I was listening, thinking I could reach the telephone when somebody came. A few minutes ago. I thought I heard Nicky’s voice.”

“You did.” I was sure she was all right; and the certainty, the relief, actually surged along my nerves and muscles like an intoxication; I felt superhuman, able to do anything-only just at the moment I couldn’t think of exactly what. Except get Drue out of there. And the notes about digitalis into the hands of the police. And Anna’s words and Alexia’s into their ears!

How, was a different matter. I wasn’t really afraid of Alexia; not with Drue, to say nothing of the revolver, to back me up. Neither Drue nor myself was exactly frail and, moreover, as nurses we’d had a certain amount of training, so to speak, in self-defense. Even if Alexia had the knife, as she did, there’s a way of grasping the arms and twisting them backward; at the worst there’d be only a moment of struggle.

Yes, I thought we could together manage Alexia and without recourse to the revolver, unless it became necessary. It gave me great moral support, but I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength of mind actually to point it at Alexia and shoot-unless, of course, circumstances seemed to require it.

Drue was still clinging to me. “Craig…” she whispered. “Is he…?”

“Nearly crazy,” I said, listening for Alexia and trying to think and failing. “He-listen, Drue, when you left the Brent house (I mean when you were married to Craig and he was in Washington) did Nicky go with you?”

“Why-why, yes. He drove me to the station. Then he took the same train to New York; he said he had some business in town. Why?”

So that settled that, I thought rather grimly. All that I could hope was that both Drue and Craig would in the future try to develop a modicum, a bare modicum, of reason. Still the cards, as my poker-playing patient used to say, had been stacked against them; it really was true and I had to make allowances for it. I said wearily, “Tell Craig that.”

“Tell Craig! But Nicky-that was nothing!”

“Sh-sh,” I said quickly, certain I heard some motion outside and not intending to let Alexia catch me unprepared. Drue saw me advance the revolver steadily toward the door and froze, too, to listen.

But the door did not open and there was no further sound. After a moment I said, whispering, “Anna went for the police. At least, I sent her to get them. But I’m not sure she’ll make it.”

“ Anna !” Drue shuddered. I said, “She made you come here. What did she tell you?”

“She said she knew something. Last night she came to me…”

“I know. The guard told us enough so we thought that must have happened.”

“She was crazy with fear and with self-reproach. Really, Sarah, she was afraid of everything. She was nearly out of her mind. I tried to get her to talk and she-oh, in the end she promised to tell me what she knew if I’d help her get away from the house. She was afraid to talk there, in the house. Terrified. As if something might jump out of the walls. I couldn’t do anything with her. She was hysterical. But she kept saying she knew something.”

“So you came here?”

“In the night. I was going to find out the thing she knew, Sarah. She said this house was empty and no one would look for us here. I wasn’t afraid, not at first. I gave her some sedative to put in some coffee for the boy on guard…”

“I know that, too.”

“And she brought me some of her own shoes to wear. I was afraid of waking the trooper so I took my slippers off so as to creep past him, and along the hall, and forgot to carry some shoes with me to put on once we were outside. Anna was waiting for me and she went back and got a pair of her own. You see, she was kind. I wasn’t afraid of her. But then when we got here she wouldn’t talk. All day I’ve been trying to persuade her. But she’s still half-crazy with fear. Finally, when I said if she wouldn’t tell me whatever it was she had promised to tell me, I was going back to the Brent house, she stopped me. Obviously, she was afraid to talk, and afraid that I would tell that she knew something. She wouldn’t say who she was afraid of, or why. She’s in a completely hysterical state; I don’t think she knows what she’s doing. She got a knife from the kitchen. She wouldn’t have hurt me with it, but she threatened and looked so-so determined…”

I thought of the knife in the hall. Then that was why it was there, near the door and the telephone, so Anna could snatch it up and prevent Drue’s leaving. And I thought, too, of that long, horrible day, with a knife in the hands of a woman who was berserk with fear.

“I don’t think she would really have hurt me,” whispered Drue again in a voice that denied her words. “But she threatened everything. Even suicide. I hoped that eventually we’d be found. Or that I could get away…”

I interrupted again, catching Drue’s wrist for silence. We both listened, and I was sure that a door closed softly downstairs. The front door? Then perhaps Alexia was gone.

For a long moment there was no sound at all; gradually I became convinced that she’d gone and that, except for Drue and me, the house was empty again. In any case we had to get away. Hurriedly I whispered to Drue, “Where’s your cape?”

“Over there. On the chair. Are we going?”

“Get it. We’d better try the back stairs and go out through the kitchen and back door. It’s safer. I think Alexia’s gone; if she’s not, we can manage her.”

“Alexia!”

“She’s wearing clothes like Nicky’s; they’re so much alike. We can’t talk now! I’ll explain later.”

She swept up her cape and put it around her shoulders.

“Now then,” I said, my hand on the doorknob.

I took a long breath and opened the door quietly. Nothing happened. After a moment, my revolver well in advance, I poked my head out into the hall. It was darker, but still I could have seen a moving figure. When I was sure it was empty, I motioned to Drue to follow me. We tiptoed toward the back stairs and still no one made any sound at all anywhere, except for the tiny whisper of our clothing.

It was sensible and safer for us simply to leave and let the police wrestle with all the problems my visit to the cottage had stirred up. The police-it was just then that I realized that I didn’t have the piece of paper with those betraying, perhaps convicting notes about digitalis written upon it. I hadn’t even thought of it since I’d seen Alexia standing there in the doorway of the study with the knife in her hand.

I had to have it. Everything, even to Drue’s life, might depend upon that scrap of paper. It was, I felt sure and Craig had agreed, the reason for Dr. Chivery’s murder; he had told Craig of it, guardedly. But someone else had known it, too; had remembered it perhaps, and the fatal carelessness of the instant when it had been left, forgotten in that book. And somehow had discovered that Claud had found it, as he naturally would do if he had doubts about Conrad’s death and turned to his books in order to refresh his memory about digitalis and its effects. I didn’t know how Claud had given away his secret, but obviously he had done so. And what really did I know and what could I prove without those notes? How could Drue be cleared without them?