“How utterly ridiculous!” Theresa Lanyard exclaimed.
Harrington, meeting her as he went to his room to dress for his journey, had just told her of the astounding letter Marsh had dictated and the equally astounding instructions he had given. Everything considered, he thought it best that she should know.
“Ridiculous?” he echoed. “Well, perhaps. Wish I could be sure. The whole thing looks like such unmitigated nonsense that I’m inclined to believe that Marsh has something up his sleeve.”
“But what could it be?” The forehead beneath the white cap was delicately puckered. “We are not plotting against Mr. Marsh. At least”—with a quick glance up and down the hall—“we are not plotting to kill him.”
“No, but evidently he thinks we are. Even so, it doesn’t make sense. If he thinks we are after his life, why doesn’t he do something besides write a letter?” She fixed him with a long, thoughtful glance.
“It may be his twisted sense of humor. That’s the only explanation I can see. And it would be just like him to perpetrate a joke of that kind. I heard him chuckling to himself when he went out a while ago.”
“Marsh went out? In this rain?”
“Yes, he did. It surprised me, too. He started off toward the main road. Curious, isn’t it? It’s the first time I’ve seen him go more than a hundred steps away from the house. Wonder where he was going.”
“I know!” Harrington suddenly exclaimed. “To the post-office. He’ll have a nice, long walk, and I’ll bet it took him a lot of courage to start out Hope he took his pistol along. By the way,” and his face clouded of a sudden, “if anything should happen to him—”
“Yes,” with a nod, “people would probably blame you and me? Mr. Harrington, are you going to deliver that letter?”
“Why not? Nothing is to be gained by destroying it. Whittaker will receive a carbon copy of it by tomorrow morning’s mail. Marsh is now on his way to the post-office to mail it.”
She lowered her head and thought. Her face, now that she had dropped her artificial professional manner, was altogether womanly and attractive. Suddenly she looked up again.
“I don’t like it. I wish you wouldn’t deliver that letter.”
“But the carbon copy—”
“Yes, I know. That isn’t what I mean. I mean that—Oh, I don’t know. I just have a feeling that something is wrong.”
“Then chase it away. Everything is all right. You see, I simply have to deliver the letter. If for no other reason, I must do it for your sake and mine. Suppose something happened to Marsh. Whittaker will have the carbon copy. I’ll wager Marsh wrote an annotation on it to the effect that his secretary is delivering the original in person. Whittaker will wonder why the original wasn’t delivered, and that will lead to all sorts of ugly suspicions. You see, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—“ Her head drooped again. “I wonder if Marsh really intended that you should deliver the letter.”
“What?” He stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “My partner is all tired out, I see. Too much excitement lately. Now go to your room and try to sleep. I’ll see you some time during the evening.”
She moved away reluctantly, with a long backward glance, and Harrington went to his room and hurried into a change of clothes. A little later, with the astonishing letter tucked into his inside breast pocket, he went out to the garage and tried to start the Wayne-fleet sedan. The starter gave only the feeblest response as he set his foot on it. Either there was a loose connection, as Marsh had suggested, or else the battery was weak. Being a poor mechanic, although a very good driver, Harrington took the crank from the tool box and started the engine by hand.
In a few moments he was on his way, but the uneven functioning of the motor told that the battery was not doing its duty. He drew up at the garage situated at the point where the private driveway forked into the old Peekhaven turnpike.
A stocky individual with a grimy face and in greasy overalls came out from the little garage, which looked as if business were none too good in this desolate region.
“Trouble?” he inquired mournfully, and then, as his sluggish eyes traveled along the sleek streamer lines of the car, he brightened perceptibly. “Why, if it ain’t Mr. Marsh’s car! She’s a good old bus. They ain’t none better. No-siree! Some of the old tubs aroun’ here would make you plumb sick to look at. But this one—Well, sir, she’s a pippin!” He came closer, and his face relapsed into its former gloom. “You don’t know anybody that wants to buy a nice garage, eh?”
“No,” said Harrington, with an amused glance at the sorry-looking establishment. “Thinking of selling out?”
“I might. Trouble is that nobody wants to buy. You see, the garage is all right—as nice a little garage as you ever see—but the business has been rotten ever since the new state road went through a mile west of here. It’s a wonner they wouldn’t put the road where it’d do folks some good.”
“It is,” Harrington agreed, perceiving that the man’s garrulity was due to sheer loneliness. He would gladly have stopped to chat for a while, but he would have to hurry if he was to reach his destination on time. “What’s your name?” he inquired.
“Garbo—Luke Garbo,” said the man mournfully, as if the name itself were an added affliction.
“Well, Mr. Garbo, I wish you would have a look at the battery.”
“Righto.” With a lugubrious air Mr. Garbo went into his garage, returning shortly with a hydrometer. He stuck his head and shoulders through the rear door, removed the mat and floor boards, and after a while he straightened up and held the hydrometer to the light.
“Eleven-seventy,” he announced. “That means she’s just about dead. Better let me charge her up for you. I’ve got a battery here you can use in the meantime.”
Harrington approved the idea, and Mr. Garbo proceeded with the exchange of batteries. All the while, as he went about his task, he was muttering to himself about the state of his business and lamenting the fact that the new state road had ruined his prospects.
Harrington fell to inspecting the scenery. It was dismal enough, with a steady drizzle in the air and a raw wind sweeping over the hills. With the mist and the waning of the day, the horizons were narrowing, and the only dwelling within sight was a small hovel leaning against an immense boulder.
“Well,” Garbo was muttering, “we’re here today and gone tomorrow.”
Harrington glanced back over his shoulder. He had not been listening to the man’s mournful soliloquy. He had been thinking about the curious letter in his pocket and the strange things going on at Peekacre. Garbo’s last muttered words caught in his mind, however.
“Apropos of what?” he asked.
The man straightened up from his labor and started to put the floor boards and mat back into place.
“Eh? Apro—Say, that’s a new one, ain’t it? I was just thinkin’ about poor Mr. Marsh. He looks as if he wasn’t long for this world.”
“How so?”
“If ever a man looked as if he was goin’ straight to his own funeral, that’s him. He’s got into the habit of talkin’ to himself, too. That’s allus a bad sign. I do it myself.”
He chuckled dismally and gathered his tools.
“Oh, well,” he sighed, “we’re here today and gone tomorrow. Reckon you’d better have these here winders closed. They’s a heavy rain comin’.”
He twirled the knob, raising the two windows in the rear, one on each side. Harrington started the engine, realizing he would have to hurry. He heard Garbo slam the side doors shut, and he caught another dolorous mutter to the effect that we’re here today and gone tomorrow. Then he slipped the dutch in and swung into the highway.
The speedometer went from twenty to thirty, and then to forty, and there Harrington held it The engine was fairly singing now, and he could easily have gone much faster, but the road was slippery and he knew that the brakes were in poor condition and would not be much good in an emergency.
Garbo’s weather prediction was coming true. It was raining harder and harder. As he set the windshield wiper in motion and closed the window on his right, another prophecy of Garbo’s recurred to him. Mr. Marsh was not long for this world, the man had said. Only idle talk, perhaps, but somehow the words lingered in Harrington’s mind with a prophetic significance. And then he found himself repeating Garbo’s words: “We’re here today and gone tomorrow.”
He laughed at the absurdity of his own trend of thoughts. It was only empty talk that Garbo had poured into his ears, the meaningless chatter of a lonely man who eagerly seizes the opportunity to talk to someone. Yet it was true that Marsh himself lived in constant fear of death. His demeanor during the past few weeks, not to mention the preposterous letter he had dictated that morning, proved it And now Harrington carried in his pocket a letter in which Marsh named the persons he suspected of plotting his death. Was there ever such a grotesque situation?
A motor’s horn screamed in the rear, interrupting his thoughts. A glance into the rear-view mirror over the windshield showed a magnificent coach, with a liveried chauffeur at the wheel, approaching at terrific speed. Harrington, with a mental comment on some people’s recklessness, edged over to the side, and the speed monster flashed past him.
Taking the wheel with one hand, he glanced at his watch. He had been driving nearly three-quarters of an hour, and now the road was becoming a succession of steep hills and declines. Reluctantly, with a thought to the unsatisfactory condition of his brakes, he slowed down a little. The wind had risen, and it was driving the rain through the open window on his left. Already his shoulder was wet. Since he would have no occasion to signal on this open road, he closed the window.
He would have felt quite snug and comfortable now if he could but have turned his thoughts away from Marsh, from the letter in his pocket, and from the incoherent fears that Theresa had voiced just before they parted in the hall. She had said a very curious thing, he remembered, something to the effect that perhaps Marsh did not intend that the letter should be delivered. What on earth could she have meant by that? A woman’s intuition, perhaps. Intuitions were usually vague and apparently senseless. But this particular intuition—
A thick exclamation fell from his lips. The wheel slipped in his hand; the car lurched wildly. Without apparent reason, he had just cast another glance at the rear-view mirror, and now he stared into it with the intensity of a man who doubts his senses.
He blinked his eyes and gave a feeble groan. It couldn’t be, he told himself. It must be some sort of illusion. But there, in the rear-view mirror above the windshield, he saw it clearly—the coarse, crafty and malevolently smiling countenance of Christopher Marsh.