CHAPTER   29.

TOBIAS LAY ALIVE, IF IT COULD BE called life. He breathed. In his room, here on the upper floor, which was vast, he lay in a double bed, sheet to his chin, arms limp outside the covering. He lay, and his eyes were open although they looked blind.

No one questioned Mandy’s right to go to his bedside, to bring herself in her crimson frock, with her dirty face, her tousled hair, to a spot where, if he could see, he would see her. Thone stood close behind her. All the wires were up and vibrating between them now.

Ione was at the right of the bed. If Tobias could see, she, in her lavender, was in his sight also.

Kelly and the doctor stood a pace or two away from the foot of the bed. At the open door, Fanny peered in and Kate, unwilling to let Mandy out of her reach, was beside the actress. Gene alone remained in the hall, biting on a sense of loss, as one worries an aching tooth.

The doctor took an uncertain step forward. “Mr. Garrison …”

“Toby, dear …” said Ione musically.

He did not rouse.

“Dad …” said Thone. Mandy felt at her back the coursing of sudden grief through his body.

Tobias lay alive. If thoughts moved in his brain at all, they would be old patches, memories and tags, a hodge-podge. He did not seem to hear or even to know that they were there.

“I doubt if he can tell us …” the doctor began.

But Fanny spoke excitedly. “There’s that old French book. What is it? Something by Dumas. The old man and the eyelids! Don’t you remember? He made a sign with his eyelids! Ask …”

The doctor took one startled, unhappy glance at her. “Can you close your eyes, sir? If so, will you?”

The weary lids trembled. They did tremble.

“I’ll ask it,” Kelly moved closer. “Mr. Garrison,” he said in a quiet, respectful, and somehow official voice, “if you turned the table in the other room and changed the glasses around, will you please close your eyes.”

Tobias lay with his eyes open. If he heard, they couldn’t tell.

“If you did not,” said Kelly desperately, “will you try to tell us so. By closing your eyes.”

The sick old man kept staring. He did not even blink. If his mind took in impressions, they could not tell. Nothing reacted. Nothing returned.

“Ah, maybe he can’t …” cried Mandy. Her heart filled up with pity and love. She sat on the bed and took his poor hand. She smiled her loveliest. The eyes seemed to rest on her face. Then, slowly, they closed.

Thone turned to look at the Lieutenant.

Ione said tremulously, “Come away. That’s enough. Oh, come away.”

But Mandy bent down and kissed the quiet hand that would paint no more. She didn’t believe he had answered anything. She brooded, watching his face. Behind her, someone’s breath sawed painfully.

In a moment, Tobias reopened his eyes. She thought she saw the tiniest flicker of an expression. Thone thought so, too. He leaned. “Dad …”

Something about the eyes said, No. No, you shall not rouse me. No, I will not come back. No, it’s too much to bear. I cannot. I will not. Let me go.

Mandy stifled the need to sob. She thought, he’s going to die and he’ll never know. He’s got that burden, that awful burden. He thinks Belle killed herself. He still thinks so. He has no doubt. If we could only tell him it wasn’t so. If it were only proved so that we could tell him for sure.

The room seemed to have fallen under a spell. It settled as it was. They were like statues, grouped, waiting. Waiting on death, perhaps. In the upper spaces of the chamber it poised its black wings. Ione’s back was straight. Her little pigeon bosom swelled under the lavender silk. She folded her hands, to wait with courage and decorum. The folding of those small hands was a kind of victory. Minutes passed.

Mandy’s glance caught a catalogue lying on the bedside table. A catalogue of Tobias’ recent show. It was folded to a black and white reproduction of “Belle in the Doorway.” She thought, Dare I lift it up? If I should hold it up, could he see? Dare I even try to remind him of Belle now? Her heart, her pity answered, No. Idly, her eye traced the lines of the work. Such a stupid …!

She caught at this trace of an old thought in surprise. That was what she’d thought when she saw it in the newspaper, when she’d first seen it, the day Cousin Edna had left. That Sunday morning, eons ago. Wait. Why stupid? Why had she been so harsh and even brutal in her judgment and then, when she’d seen the picture itself, gone overboard in plunging excitement and admiration?

She turned her mind in on itself, examining some movement of thought that had been continuing without her conscious attention. All this time, she realized, there had been a word beating in her brain. Blood? Blood? Blood?

She caught at that, too. Where had it come from? That word, in that tone. Why, Thone had said it, as she kept hearing it, in dull surprise, in total blank incomprehension. As if he said, “Blood? Why blood?” Gene, of course, had meant her red dress. That’s what he’d seen on the workshop floor. But Thone … He knew, of course. He expected her red dress. Yet he didn’t understand.

Her mind began to race, clicking off one point after another. She got to her feet, trembling.

“Thone,” she said, very quietly. It didn’t matter that Tobias lay there. He would not hear. Nerve failed her and she hedged. “Have you a driver’s license?” she faltered.

“I wangled one,” he murmured, barely attending. “I shouldn’t have it.”

She knew why not! She knew why he’d had trouble getting the Army to take him. Why he’d had to talk his way through the war. And why he’d let her drive the car. And why he’d mistaken, that same day, her yellow and dark blue costume for the yellow and brown she’d worn before. Why he’d seen no difference! Why he wasn’t a painter! Although he understood line and space. Why he’d seen nothing to make him think of blood, as she lay in her crimson on the floor!

“You are color-blind,” she said aloud, “aren’t you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

The doctor squirmed. But nothing disturbed Tobias. Nothing could touch him. Somehow, they were all listening to Mandy and she went on.

“Your mother was color-blind, too,” she said.

“She was, yes.” Thone’s attention caught up with the conversation. “Why, Mandy?”

“It’s unusual in women.” She was so excited she could hardly stand.

“Very. But she was.”

Oh, yes, of course Belle was color-blind. Witness the drab and neutral clothes she wore until she met Tobias, that colorist, that man in love with the rainbow. And afterward, how she’d never dared vary her “costumes,” as Fanny said. Of course, she wore what the dressmaker put together, since this only was guaranteed against clashing error. Oh, no, Belle didn’t care for painting. Could not. And of course she rarely drove a car: she had no license.

“Why didn’t you say!” Mandy’s voice raised a little. “Oh, Thone, Thone, why didn’t you ever say!”

“She was a little bit sensitive about it,” said Thone, quietly, matter-of-fact. “She never spoke of it. So we didn’t, either.”

Just quietly, like that, they never spoke of it.

“But that’s why she didn’t like the picture!” cried Mandy, “and you don’t, either. ‘Belle in the Doorway’! I don’t like it, myself, without the color!”

“It’s … No …” He was letting her lead him. He knew she was going somewhere. He didn’t know where.

Amanda said, “Mr. Kelly, about the Consolidated Cab Company. What’s painted on those cabs? Do you know?”

“The name,” said Kelly in astonishment. “Why?”

“Not the color?”

“Huh?”

“Not the word ‘green’?”

“No.”

“Did you tell your mother, the night she died,” she cried at Thone, “that her cab, when it came, would be green?”

“I never even knew. Anyhow, why would I tell her? It wouldn’t have meant anything to her. She couldn’t …”

“Ah, but she did! The woman in the road!” Mandy turned on Ione. “You did! Out there in the road, that night. You could tell. And you didn’t know Belle was color-blind, did you? Or you’d never have called out, ‘Cab … green cab.’”

“Wait a minute,” said Kelly. “That driver positively identified Mrs. Garrison.”

“He was mistaken,” said Mandy. “He was just plumb wrong. This Mrs. Garrison, yes. But not Belle. Not possibly Belle. Not Belle at all.

“And that’s how she did it. She sent the cab away. She took Belle with her, somehow. That’s how she got her chance to murder Belle. Nobody mixed up chloral in this house. She must have …”

“My patient,” said the doctor crisply. “All of you, please. Get out of this room.”

But Mandy bent down. She said to the living eyes, “She murdered Belle. She tried to murder me. You’ll help us prove that, now. You did change the glasses? Close your lids, say yes.”

Tobias closed his eyelids. It was perfectly deliberate. It had meaning. The eyes that opened again were alive.

“Oh, dear … dear …” sobbed Mandy. “No, no, she never meant to leave you. She never would have gone. Now you can be sure.”

“Oh, no,” cried Thone in pain, “never would she leave you! Ah, Dad, why didn’t you tell me, why did you keep it from me, what you thought? I could have told you.”

“This will not do!” snapped the doctor.

But Mandy, as they collected themselves and rose, thought privately that it did very well.

Something about Tobias was at peace.

Not once did he glance at Ione.

Kelly’s grasp was on that little lady’s arm. She let him draw her away. There was nothing in here that belonged to her. All here was Belle’s.