Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

“Shut up!” I screamed.

Somehow I got out of the room. I walked down the corridor outside, not seeing its walls, not feeling its floor under my feet.

Only remembering. That longing that was almost pain. That terrible, pitiful hunger. Even death hadn’t erased it from her face, and I knew at last why Allene Buford had never been quite beautiful...

Originally published in 15 Story Detective , August 1950.

The gale was turning into a full blown hurricane. Sobbing across the Florida bay like an embodiment of fury, it buffeted Dorothy Janeway’s new gray sedan. She tightened her hands on the plastic steering wheel, feeling the whole car shiver in a wailing blast of wind.

Driving alone, she was prey to a thousand fears — the lonely empty stretch of spray-swept road — the possibility of a flat tire. She realized she was a person who despised loneliness, and being on the highway late at night like this appalled her.

Except for the two frail holes her headlights bored in the black wet night, she could see nothing clearly. Dimly, she made out the shifting shadows of tall pines heaving and bending beneath the force of the storm.

Her sensuous lower lip crept between her teeth. Perhaps she should have stayed over in Bradenton with Harry and Sue. But she’d laughed at Harry’s fears. “Of course there are storm warnings. But I’ve plenty of time to get back to St. Pete.”

“No use arguing, Harry,” his wife Sue had sighed. “What Dorothy Janeway intends is always what she does — but do be careful, darling.”

There was a reason Dorothy Janeway meant to be home exactly on schedule. But she said nothing about this to Harry and Sue. The visit with them had been nice, she was anxious to be home with Robert in the storm — that was all.

Her eyes glued to the slick stretch of highway, she thought of the way Robert had looked the day she’d packed to visit in Brandenton. She had snapped her bag closed, not wanting to look at him again.

“I’m sure this is the best way, Robert,” she had said. “Lord knows I don’t owe this girl anything, least of all my generosity in allowing you to see her again. But these things are better when the break is final and complete, if there’s no room left for willy-nilly hope and indecision in her mind. You’ll have a day or so to think things over, to get in mind just what you’re going to say to her.”

She had looked at him then. A tall, lean man with a fine-boned face, gray sprinkling his temples, wearing tropical worsteds debonairly. Moody eyed, his face white about the lips. President of her family’s company, Larkin’s Citrus, he had the worldly appearance of an artist.

She had looked down at her bag. “When I get back from Brandenton perhaps we can live on the beach for a week and you can do a painting.”

The indrawn expression of his face hadn’t changed. “You’ve been darned decent about this, Dorothy.”

He’d stowed her bag in her car, and kissed her goodbye with lips cold against her cheek. She’d tried to smile. She’d been sure it would pass. He would break off permanently with the redheaded Janice Carter. There’d been difficult times before. Robert had always been moody; sometimes in the early years of their marriage, his crazy drinking bouts lasted days at a time while he railed against this house, against Larkin Citrus.

But he loved the comforts her money bought too well ever to break away. And Dorothy was pleased with the bargain of their married life: Robert cut a good figure as host and husband. Not since their honeymoon had he suggested they live on his meager income while he established himself with his painting. She’d exerted all her charms to get him to enter her father’s firm. He was successful except for a lack of firmness with the employees.

The storm outside the car was melting into one continuous roar. Dorothy Janeway breathed relievedly when she saw the street lights along Fourth Street were still burning. Soon the light power would go off, leaving the city desolately black, in hurricane-riven oblivion.

Watching skittering dead palm fronds, she wheeled into her driveway from the deserted street. Her rambling Spanish style house stood limned faintly against the black maw of sky.

Through the iron grillwork enclosing the patio, she could see a single lighted window. She clamped her hand on the horn, waited, blew the horn again in short, angry barks. Nothing happened, the rumbling wind increased.

Impatiently, she slipped into her rain hood. She blew the horn twice more in long, annoyed blasts. Then she opened the car door. The wind struck with such force she had to cling to the door handle. Rain, wind-driven, slashed her cheeks. Lowering her head, she ran to the garage doors. Counterbalanced, they swung up easily.

When she had the car safely in the garage beside Robert’s, she made her way through the house to the lighted study. The study was empty. All the rest of the house was dark.

“Robert?”

The rising thunder of the hurricane made the silence here in the house all the more hateful.

“Robert!”

Standing in the doorway, she reminded herself coldly that a single lamp turned low in a silent house was no reason to get the shakes. But Robert’s coupe was in the garage. He must be in the house.

She heard a loud metallic crash, realized it was a metal chair hurled by the wind against one of the pillars in the patio. It struck her then that Robert had done nothing to ready the house for the blow. Windows unshuttered, lawn furniture exposed in a battened-down town.

She went on standing there, staring at the light, the silent deserted study. Annoyed because she knew Robert had furloughed the servants the moment she was out of the house. Now, where was he?

She crossed to the telephone, picked up the receiver, dialed. There was nothing, no contact, just the immensity of silence.

She went stiffly through the house, turning on lights as she passed each switch. Out in the gleaming white kitchen, she found the candles she’d bought for candlelight dinners. She was glad she had plenty of them. The power would be going off soon.

The cabinet door stood open. Tensing, she thought if someone beside Robert were in the house — had heard the car horn — hidden... It’s nerves, she told, herself firmly.

With the box of candles under her arm, she started back to the living room, glancing at windows and doors as she passed, making sure they were closed and locked. Except for the things outside, she felt the house, unprepared, could weather another hurricane. She paused in the dining room, listening to the wind. It was sending tremors through the house now.

In the living room, she put the box of candles on an end table and sank in a deep club chair. There was nothing more she could do now but wait, listening to the rain against the windows. The lights flickered, dimmed, and she stiffened involuntarily. There were hours of utter darkness ahead. But she didn’t want candlelight yet. She hoped fervently the lights would not go out until Robert returned.

From her chair, she could not avoid seeing a portrait Robert had done of her, on the opposite wall. He could really paint, she admitted reluctantly, but somehow she’d never liked this particular painting.

Now she found herself staring at it. The lights dimmed again, the face in the painting seemed to come to life, the shadows about the cheekbones deepening, the eyes leaping at her, almost glowing.

She caught her breath. Rising, she moved slowly toward the painting. The hurricane pounded against the wails of the house.

Why, she’d never really seen this painting before. Those lean cheeks, the tilted, stubborn chin, the contempt in the violet eyes, the hauteur stamped in the shadowed planes of forehead, cheeks and jaw.