CHAPTER   18.

MANDY SLEPT WELL AND WHEN SHE awoke it was Thursday. It was a misty morning. The long vistas were closed in. The canyon swooned in green and gray. Trees blurred and wept. The world was smaller. It was a small round clearing within a dreamy margin, a circle that moved and followed the eye, in which one walked and carried like a horizontal hoop the close horizon.

Tobias may have slept but he had not rested. His eyelids seemed barely able to lift and uncover his glance. He said he would do no work that day. No work at all.

So Mandy was free to sit and shiver in her white and yellow cotton. She told herself, after a while, that it was stupid to be chilly, and ran down to get her woolly jacket. When she came back, Tobias had gone to write in his room. Thone told her. Thone had hobbled to the sofa in the studio, and there he lay.

They looked at each other. There was much they could have whispered, had they dared. But nothing to say aloud, across the room. No words to match the normal crust of things, as around them the work of the house went on, all the housekeeping sounds. Elsie was busy. Ione, in the hall, spoke on the telephone to tradesmen, in gracious command.

Mandy went to sit on the window seat and stare out over the gardens that plunged so swiftly down into the misty gulch. She saw Burt, far below, digging in slow rhythm near the garage.

Thone put his eyes on a book. Ione glanced in.

In a little while Amanda saw her picking her way along the terraces below. No hat, but decent in a gray suit, with her purse under her arm. Was she going out?

Mandy turned. Was it safe? The vacuum hummed on the floor below. She pointed and grimaced.

“Give me the telephone,” said Thone instantly.

She snatched it from its shelf in the hall. The long cord reached around the arch. “You keep on watching,” he told her.

So she went back to the window seat. Ione was far below now, surely too far to hear the whir of the dial or the low rumble of Thone’s voice. She was talking to Burt, who had stopped digging and listened respectfully.

She heard Thone ask for Lieutenant Kelly. Automatically, she filled in words from the other end of the wire. Lieutenant Kelly was not there. Thone was trying to leave a message. His low voice was staccato.

Below, Ione drew away from the gardener. He began to climb upward, dragging a tool. She opened the workshop door and went inside. The bottom of the canyon was not visible from the house, except at some distance, off toward the mouth of it, where a brief bare stretch of pavement could be seen. This morning the mist blurred it over. Mist, which was slowly dissolving in pale sunlight, but which lingered in the hollows below. If the car should pass that point on its way out, would it make a darker moving object? Amanda’s eyes blinked with strain.

Thone hung up. He said, not very loud, but projecting the sound, “Kelly’s not there. Where is she now?”

Amanda thought she saw something pass. “Gone out. Took the car, I think. I’m not sure.”

He was getting up, reaching for the crutch. “Mandy, is there anybody you can ask? I’ll be damned,” he said, standing so close behind her that she could feel his voice vibrating in his chest, “if I’ll trust your safety to a piece of paper on a cop’s desk. Can’t have him call back here. God knows if we’ll get another chance. Messages don’t always get delivered. He might not take it seriously. Can’t let it go at that. Mandy, think of someone.”

“There’s Gene,” she said. “He’s—the chemist.”

“Would he?”

“Yes.”

“Then for God’s sake, call him, now!” Thone hobbled a pace or two. “I’m going down there.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes, I’ve got to see.”

“I’ll come too.”

“No, no, you mustn’t. You call. Get him. Get him! You know what to say. Make him swear to be there. He’ll do that for you, won’t he?”

“Yes,” said Mandy.

“Then I’ll go down. If she hasn’t gone out, I can give you time. Hold her up. Make up a reason why I’m down there. But Mandy, if I can I want to see that place. Those door hooks.”

“Can you walk enough?”

“Easily.” He swung away. Turned his head. “Be careful. Remember Dad.”

“I’ll speak low,” she said.

How did one telephone to Gene and explain that one expected to be murdered this evening and wouldn’t he please come and watch! To a point … to any point at all!

Mandy called the Callahan number. She wouldn’t ask for Kate. She couldn’t risk her voice to Kate. Kate would catch it in one “hello,” her fear, her excitement. Gene was different. He knew a little more. He knew about the poison. She saw her strategy.

“Gene? It’s Mandy. I have to talk very fast and you must listen. Remember the test you made for me?”

“Yeah?”

“Something like that … up here. Will you be what you said, if ever I needed …”

“Bodyguard!” His voice was suddenly louder and alarmed.

“Tonight, by eight o’clock, be in the lower road below this house. Abermarle Road, it is. Off Linda Vista. Almost all the way to the end there is a garage in the hillside, on the left. Gene, please be there to watch what happens. It may—catch somebody. Do you understand?”

“The one who fixed it before?” He was cautious.

“Yes. Don’t be seen. It has to go far enough. Will you believe me, Gene, and do what I say?”

“Sure, Mandy.”

“Notice everything. Don’t—do anything, unless the doors stay closed or are closed again and the car is running inside. If it gets that far, then raise a row and get in.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Who am I likely to find in there? This son? This attractive chocolate drinker?”

“That’s it,” said Mandy.

“And where will you be?”

“I’ll be watching from here,” she murmured.

“Does the guy know what he’s in for?”

“Yes, yes, and he’ll be careful. But something might go wrong. Gene, will you promise?”

“You don’t make much sense. You know that?”

“I can’t make sense,” she wailed. “I haven’t got time. Quick, say you will!”

“Anything you say.”

“Oh, Gene, you’re—”

“Yeah,” he said, “sure I am. How are you, honey?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” She steadied her voice, raised it to cheerfulness.

“Coming home—lessee—tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“See you,” said Gene, “anyhow, then.”

“But tonight—you surely will?” she whispered.

“Surely. Surely. Don’t worry. So if nothing happens?”

“Then tomorrow I’ll try to thank you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “O.K.”

She put up the phone, rested her mouth on her wrist. If he knew it was her danger, he’d interfere. He’d bust the pattern, if it was a pattern, wide-open. He’d have none of it. Therefore, she had lied.

“What a delicate web it was! Cobweb and countercobweb. Now, in this misty morning, with the vacuum humming in the quiet house, it was a cobweb of fantasy, spun out of nothing, unreal, impossible, a phantom structure. So tenuous and subtle, so unlinked to the earth, to that which was solid, to the flesh or the fact …

She moved her mouth on the skin of her hand. Her mind went down around the path again. Belle was dead. In a web of strange construction, she’d been caught and she had died. If mere blind chance had woven it, could blind chance duplicate? Or had there been a spider, after all?

Now, here, one thought one saw all these duplicating threads, repeating the pattern. But perhaps it was a cobweb that drifted in air, silken, invisible, spun in the mind.…

Yet it was anchored! It did swing from one point. In one place, it was glued to reality. There had been poison in the chocolate. A chocolate cobweb, she thought, half hysterically. It’s a chocolate cobweb.…