The House of Intrigue/Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
I WAS still worrying over the problem of the name in the ring when Miss Ledwidge came and led me out of the room. She took me through a passage-way lined with a clothes-press with carved wooden doors, then through a heavily furnished room with a big marble fireplace that reminded me of a mausoleum, then through a white-tiled bathroom with a Roman pool-tub, and on again into a darkened chamber. On one side of it I could see a huge bed, but that was about all I could make out, except that the room was a big one. And the shadows of that room, for some reason, began to give me goose-flesh.
"I want some light in here," I firmly demanded.
"But Mr. Bartlett said not."
"I don't care what Mr. Bartlett said. I've just got to have some light. You can do what you like later on, but I'm going to know the lay-out of this crib before I curl up in it!"
So, plainly against her will, Miss Ledwidge switched on a few of the electrics, There seemed to be a good many of them, one at either side of the bed, one at either side of a tiny fireplace, and one at either side of an equally tiny writing-desk. And if Bud had seen that room he would undoubtedly have said, "Some crib, believe me!"
For that whole room, I saw, was done in old rose and cream. It had a cream and rose chaise-longue near an ivory colored reading-table, and rose-shaded electric reading-lamps, and a little Chinese pagoda of old rose to stow away the desk-telephone in. Then there were three rose and cream prayer-rugs and heavy rose-colored curtain draperies that reminded me of a glorified circus-wagon.
But the thing that hit my eye, from the first, was the bed itself. It was something to dream about. For it was the most gorgeous bed I've ever bumped into, barring not even that Du Barry contraption my old friend Leslie Carter used to throw fits on. I don't know whether it was a Louis-Quinze relic or a prize-winner from Grand Rapids. But I know that the head of it had carved Cupids mixed up with a lot of fruit and vines and two-legged goats playing flutes and interwoven flowers and ribands and gim-cracks. And the big heavy curtains were a sort of lilac red with flashes of gold and there was a cream and rose eider-down as light as sea- foam and pillows as big as a steamer-trunk, with lace-bordered and lace-crested pillow-cases over them. I noticed, too, that the sheets were lace bordered, with the same crest worked on them, and a blanket of creamy wool was edged with three inches of pale rose satin.
But, oh, the softness of that bed when I hopped into it; the soothing pliancy of it as I rolled over between those crested sheets! It seemed to take me in its arms and hold me there, the way that a man who really cares for a woman tries to hold her. It seemed to billow up all about me, like lazy waves that were floating me off to warm-scented islands where all the fat little Cupids could rock in the palm-tops and the two-legged goats could do lazy minuets to the drone of their own flutes.
I wormed and squirmed from one side of that bed to the other, just to get used to the softness of it all. Then I tried a stretch or two. And as I did so it came home to me how I'd always liked luxury, how I'd always nursed that absurd and hopeless ache for grandeur.
"Call me at noon to-morrow, Celeste!" I quietly announced to Aliss Ledwidge.
But there wasn't the ghost of a smile on that nurse's face as she went about adjusting the covers and draping the lilac-red curtains and switching out most of the electrics.
I looked up, with a sharp word of warning. For I intended to have at least a couple of those bulbs left on, if Miss Ledwidge felt sure it wouldn't break the firm. For it seemed very still and shadowy in that big room. It made me feel creepy.
Then I suddenly remembered something, and sat straight up in that bed. I had forgotten all about the Cupids and crests and lace-bordered sheets.
"My God!" I gasped. "That woman died in this bed not twenty minutes ago!"
And I started to climb out.
"Hush!" warned the nurse, as she tried to hold me back.
"Do you s'pose I'm going to lie right where that dead woman must have been?" I shrilled out at her. "Not on your life! Not for all the money on Manhattan Island! Not for—"
"Hsssssssh! broke in the nurse again. And I think her face must have looked as frightened as mine. "That woman didn't die in this bed!"
"Then where did she?" I demanded.
"When I give you my word of honor that no woman died in this bed, will you believe me?" asked Miss Ledwidge. She was in deadly earnest, and she spoke with a sort of coerced restraint that made me sit back and look at her. She met my stare without flinching.
"You'll swear that?" I said. And still again it impressed me that this quiet-voiced woman knew more of that house and its mysteries than she cared to talk about.
"I swear it," she replied, looking back over her shoulder, for a tap had plainly sounded on the hall door.
The next moment that door swung open, and the little old weasel himself stepped softly into the room. It rather astonished me to see that he was holding a handkerchief to his eyes. I even thought I heard a whimper or two as he hurriedly shut the door. But the moment that door was shut behind him he had the handkerchief stowed away, and his ferrety little face was peering about in every corner of the room. He reminded me of a somewhat worried stage-manager inspecting his "set" before the curtain rolled up.
"What's wrong here?" he demanded, as he sidled over to where the nurse was still holding me down in bed by the arm. I noticed a new note in his voice as he spoke, a note of power, a note of authority.
"Our patient is a little nervous," explained the quiet-eyed woman who stood at my side. She delivered this message so casually that I turned and looked up into her face, wondering, for a moment, if she had hypnotized herself into believing I was actually a sick woman.
Her face, however, was once more as expressionless as a mask. And it remained that way even when the old weasel advanced to the bedside and pushed her bruskly to one side. With my free hand I could feel my Sheffield-plate candlestick under the sheet. And that gave my tugging nerves a sort of wind-anchor.
"My dear," that old scoundrel purred, as he leaned close down over me, "you do as you've been told to do and nothing whatever will happen to you. Nothing can happen to you!"
Notwithstanding that assurance I could feel his fingers close about my wrist. They made me think of the claws of a bird of prey.
"But there's too much happening here already," I protested. "And there are a few things I want set straight!"
"Listen to me," retorted that old weasel, and he spoke in a sort of hissing whisper as he stooped closer over my face, "if you make one move to interfere with these plans of ours, you'll never get out of this house alive!"
He was trying to make himself out the human puff-adder, all right. But there was one thing that didn't escape me. If he hadn't for some reason or other been as scared of me as I was of him, he would never have stooped to that threat. So I sat tight. He, on his part, tried to accentuate that threat by increasing the pressure of his claws on my flesh.
"Hold on there!" I told him, in no tempered tone of voice. "You're hurting my wrist. And you may as well know right now that you can't try to man-haul me and get away with it!"
"Hssssh!" he warned, desperately, with a worried look over his shoulder. And for a moment I even imagined he was going to see what choking could do to shut me off.
"Then play your side square," I told him, "or you needn't expect me to play my side that way!"
He looked down at me for a moment or two, and his eyes weren't exactly beaming with love-light. Then he took a deep breath, tiptoed to the door, peered out, and hurried back to the side of the bed.
"Now remember, it will be Mr. Scripps, Mr. Theobald Scripps who will do the reading," whispered the little old man.
"And who is he?" I demanded.
"He's the family lawyer. You must listen as he reads that will, but you must never speak—never, at least, above a whisper. When he finishes you must say 'Yes, that is what I wanted.' You must whisper that. We want the others to hear you say it, for it's our duty to convince those others that the legality of this will can never be attacked. They must see you sign it!"
"And they'll believe I'm Clarissa Rhinelander Bartlett?"
"They can't believe anything else! They've got to believe that you are Clarissa Bartlett. They believe it now, and nothing will happen to shake that belief. They know you're not long for this world, that you're about to pass"
"Hey!" I cut in. "Don't harp on that any more or you'll sure give me the willies!"
For just a moment the little old scoundrel looked puzzled. It was plain that he didn't know what the "willies" were.
"Then, when you've stated that the will is satisfactory," he went on, "I want you to whisper: "I'd like Aunt Agatha Widdemer as a subscribing witness. And Miss Ledwidge here for the other witness, please!'" He looked back over his shoulder at the trained nurse. "It's Aunt Agatha, isn't it, who's the short-sighted one?" he inquired.
"And slightly deaf," amended the trained nurse, with an ironic flutter of her eyelids. But that was her only expression of human amusement in the incident.
The little old weasel turned back to me.
"Can you do that?" he inquired.
I nodded my head.
"Then try it," he commanded.
Since he wanted acting, I decided to give him his money's worth. I let my head roll back and my body go limp between the sheets. I relaxed my jaw-muscles and let my lips fall apart. Then I did my whisper act. I did it brokenly, weakly, as though it was coming with my last gasp of life.
The old scoundrel nodded his head, promptly, approvingly.
"Some actress, eh?" I impertinently inquired. But he ignored that irrelevancy.
"That is just what we want, my dear, just what we want! And there's one thing more. I mean these buzzards down-stairs who are all wondering which way the Bartlett estate is going to go. There may be one or two in that collection of—of—eh—parasites who will want to say good-by. I doubt it, after they've heard that will, but we have to be prepared."
"What'll they want to do to me?" I asked.
"Your Aunt Agatha, I imagine, may even want to kiss you."
"Gee!" I gasped. "I've got to earn that six hundred, after all!"
"But don't worry, my dear. It'll all go off as smooth as a corps-drill. All you must remember is to lay limp—lay limp and don't move. Let 'em kiss your hand if they want to. But keep weak. Don't try more than a mere whispered *Good-by,' a very faint 'Good-by,'" he lilted, pinching the air between a pointed thumb and forefinger.
"But supposing one of that bunch should try to talk to me?" I demanded, sharing little of that old scoundrel's faith in his policy of limpness.
"Doctor Klinger, of course, will be here beside you. He'll be present, naturally, to protect his patient. And Miss Ledwidge will also help. They will see that you are not overtaxed."
The old weasel looked up as Doctor Klinger himself stepped into the room. That man of medicine was plainly a bad color and quite as plainly far from being at his ease. He tried to conceal this, I could see, by an extra dose of professional pomposity.
"They're getting restless—restless," he announced in a warning whisper.
I caught sight of Miss Ledwidge's face as she glanced at him. It flashed through me that this calm-eyed young woman had no love for that big-boned hulk of a conspirator. Why it was, I could not tell. They were certainly both in the same game. But some sixth sense kept whispering to me that she disliked the man, that she distrusted him, although she couldn't afford to show her real feelings.
"I don't see how we're going to hold 'em down there much longer," he repeated in his warning whisper.
I noticed the nurse and the old weasel exchange glances.
"Well, we're ready for 'em!" retorted the old scoundrel, with a snap of the jaws.