Тэлмидж Пауэлл: The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

Suddenly too excited to breathe, Marley paced his room, beating his fists together.

The scenario... It had to be the best Marley had ever dreamed up.

Parts of it posed no problems. His assiduous research had yielded many threads for the weaving of a mask that would identify him as Guthrie Linyard, for whom the candle burned nightly. He knew that Guthrie had enjoyed sailing. A long-forgotten society page editor had noted the color of the gown worn by Atha Vanderling the night she and Linyard had topped the list of society names at a big benefit. The same editor had covered bridal showers given for Atha by Clarice Snowden and Margaret Fogg. The Leyer orchestra had played at the engagement party.

Names of long-ago friends, schools she’d attended, a minor auto accident involving her father, a charity drive headed by her mother... so many details concerning Atha and her family from the time of her childhood... Marley had them etched carefully in his mind. And once he was over the first hurdle — effecting entry — he would pump the old woman with the cunning and shrewd indirection of a gypsy fortune teller.

Intervention from outside? No sweat. She was a recluse, and he would dissolve into her life style. Fire the current chauffeur-handyman, hire a stranger. As Guthrie, he and Atha would share reunion, their great secret passion of togetherness, with no one. The prospect would please her right down to her toenails.

It was less attractive to Marley, the thought of togetherness with a crazy old harridan. But it had its redeeming facets. He could hire a maid, a cute, sexy, greedy young thing. And a cook — and dine on surf and turf any evening he desired. And once he was inside, he was quite certain, he would be wholly capable of reaping his harvest. There would surely be a situation involving her with lawyers, trustees and other such deadbeats. But never mind. He didn’t aspire to all of the Vanderling millions. Amounts that he could arrange to take over, and hence put him in a position of control, would be quite adequate.

The big problem was getting into 341 Vanderling. How does a fellow explain away a jilting at the altar that occurred thirty years ago? Throw himself on her compassion and mercy? Work on the obsessions and superstitions she held in her pixilated state? Tell her he’d seen the candle in his dreams?

No, no, no... Compassion, mercy, hallucination... Tools to use. But would they get him in the door?

He flung himself to a sitting position on the edge of his lumpy bed, hands clenched between his knees, his wiry body rocking under the intensity of his thoughts.

Why had he, as Guthrie Linyard, deserted her at the altar thirty years ago?

Cool it now. Get the ducks all in a row. In the first place, everything told to her thirty years ago was a lie. He had not cut out because her father had threatened to disinherit her while offering him fifty thousand dollars.

He had stranded her at the altar because...

Hmmmm. A simple explanation, that’s all that was needed. A simple, sympathetic explanation.

Getting rid of the onus of a fifty thou bribe shouldn’t be too difficult. Just say that her father had made the threat and the offer, and he’d laughed in her father’s face. She could have been a pauper like the little match girl, for all he cared about her money.

So it’s thirty years ago and she’s standing in her white satin, a bridal bouquet in her trembling hands while a church full of people begins rustling, looking for the groom.

Trouble is, her father has resorted to a last desperate measure — and two big yeggs have walked into the ante-room, nicked the groom-to-be with a medical syringe full of drugs, and are carrying the hapless unconscious Guthrie out the side door.

The groom regains consciousness in a motel in a distant state. Yeggs still present. Then, at that point, father’s fifty thou is stuffed into his pocket and the groom warned never to return.

Nuts, thinks the groom. Fifty million wouldn’t be enough. When the yeggs at last depart, the groom tries to phone the love of his life. He cannot get a call through to her. He comes back, to the palatial home on Vanderling Boulevard. He learns a tragic truth. Atha, his darling Atha, is sealed away in a private mental hospital. Lost to him forever.

He never wants to see the house on Vanderling Boulevard again.

The groom has gone to the west coast to try and find a life for himself. He has married, never had children, and not once has he held his wife in his arms without aching with the thought of Atha. His wife has died. Couple years ago? Or a year? Why not a few months back? Yes, a few months would be better. Growing emptily old, he has at last returned, goaded by the need to find out what happened to the only woman he ever really loved.

Marley leaped to his feet. It was a bit soapy. But it could have happened. It offered the images he wanted to transmit to her, and don’t forget... believing in Guthrie’s return she’s burned a candle nightly for thirty years...

She answered the muted front door chimes herself. And Marley felt a slight chill. The old face was a dead white collection of sharp angular bones and wrinkles. And the garment she wore... it was not a nightgown after all. It was a white satin wedding dress.

She was limned in a pale lighting of the enormous, vaulted entry foyer. Marley felt the darkness over the lawn behind him like a weight against his back.

“Yes?” she asked.

Marley’s gaze flicked toward the right, toward the window where the candle glowed. He took heart from the wealth exuded by the house.

“Atha,” he murmured, “don’t you remember? Don’t you recognize me?”

She leaned, peering at him closely.

“Atha, surely you remember... the breeze in our faces when I took you sailing... that lovely emerald green gown you wore to the hospital benefit... the way we danced the night the Leyer orchestra kept playing Sunrise Serenade for us?”

A small flicker showed in her sunken eyes. “Guthrie?”

“Yes, Atha, oh, yes!” Marley said fervently.

“Guthrie?” she repeated, like a child whispering in an empty room. “Can it really be Guthrie?”

“Of course, Atha.” He reached and took her bony hands in his. “And I can explain everything, my darling. Let me in. Let me fill my eyes with the sight of you. Let me tell you what really happened.”

A small seizure went through her. Her hands locked tightly on his. “Guthrie... Guthrie... Guthrie...” she whispered.

She drew him inside, not taking her eyes from his face. Across the entry foyer, down two steps into a vast sunken living room where the candle burned on a table set close to the front windows.

“Atha, it’s so...”

“Please,” she said. “Not now.” She stepped back, looking him up and down.

“Atha...” A strange feeling of alarm began pouring through Marley.

“No,” she said, turning away. “You mustn’t say a word.” She braced herself against a small, drop leaf desk. “Not another lying word.”

Her hand dipped into the desk drawer and drew out a gun. She pointed it steadily at Marley.

“I always knew the lure of the money would bring you back someday,” she said.

“Atha, no! Wait... You’ve got it all wrong!”

“And this,” she said, “is the only thing that’s kept me alive for thirty years.”

She squeezed the trigger, and Marley died painlessly, a bullet between his eyes at such short range. He crumpled and fell.

Her whole body seeming to lift in a long-lost self respect and pride, Atha Vanderling quietly, a rustling of white satin, stepped across the prone form, reached out her hand, and pinched the flame from the candle.