“RAT-A-TAT! Rat-a-tat-tat!”
The imperative summons on his bedroom door roused Hugh Wyndham. It seemed but a moment since he had fallen asleep, and he listened in uncomprehending surprise to the repeated drummings, which grew in volume and rapidity. His hesitancy was but momentary, however, and springing out of bed he seized a bathrobe, unlocked the door and jerked it open with such precipitancy that Vera Deane’s clenched fist expended its force on empty air instead of on the wooden panel. Her livid face changed the words on Wyndham’s lips.
“What’s happened?” he demanded. “Craig isn’t—?”
“No—no—not Mr. Porter”—in spite of every effort to remain calm Vera was on the point of fainting. Totally unconscious of her action she laid her hand in Wyndham’s, and his firm clasp brought a touch of comfort. “It’s B—Mr. Brainard. Come!” And turning, she sped down the hall, her rubber-heeled slippers making no more sound on the thick carpet than Wyndham’s bare feet. She paused before a partly opened door and, resting against the wall, her strength deserting her, she signed to her companion to enter the bedroom.
Without wasting words Wyndham dashed by the nurse and reached the foot of the bed; but there he stopped, and a horrified exclamation broke from him. Bruce Brainard lay on the once spotless white linen in a pool of blood which had flowed from a frightful gash across his throat.
Wyndham passed a shaking hand before his eyes and turned blindly toward the door and collided with Vera.
“Don’t come in,” he muttered hoarsely. “It’s no spectacle for a woman.” And as she drew back into the hall again he burst out almost violently: “God! Brainard can’t be dead, really dead?” He glared at her. “Why didn’t you go for Noyes instead of me? He’d know what to do.”
Vera shook her head. “Mr. Brainard was lifeless when I found him”—her voice gained steadiness as her years of training in city hospitals and still grimmer experiences in the American Hospital Corps abroad came to her aid, and she grew the more composed of the two. “I went first to summon Dr. Noyes—but his room was empty.”
“Empty!” echoed Wyndham dazedly. “At this hour?” and his glance roved about the hall, taking in the still burning acetylene gas jet at the far end of the hall, its artificial rays hardly showing in the increasing daylight. How could the household remain asleep with that ghastly tragedy so close at hand? He shuddered and turned half appealingly to Vera. “What’s to be done?”
“The coroner—”
“To be sure, the coroner”—Wyndham snatched at the suggestion. “Do you know his name?”
“No,” Vera shook her head, “but I can ask ‘Central.’ I presume the coroner lives in Alexandria.”
“Yes, yes.” Wyndham was in a fever of unrest, chafing one hand over the other. “Then will you call him? I’ll wait here until you return.”
Vera did not at once move down the hall. “Had I not better awaken Mrs. Porter?” she asked.
“No, no,” Wyndham spoke with more show of authority. “I will break the news to my aunt when you get back. The telephone is in the library. Go there.”
He was doubtful if she heard his parting injunction for, hurrying to the stairway, she paused and moved as if to enter Mrs. Porter’s boudoir, the door of which stood ajar; then apparently thinking better of her evident intention, she went noiselessly downstairs and Wyndham, listening intently, detected the faint sound made by the closing of a door on the floor below. Not until then did he relax his tense attitude.
Stepping back into Brainard’s bedroom he closed the door softly and stood contemplating his surroundings, his eyes darting here and there until each detail of the large handsomely furnished bedroom was indelibly fixed in his mind.
There was no sign of a struggle having taken place; the two high-backed chairs and the lounge stood in their accustomed places; the quaint Colonial dresser near the window, the highboy against the farther wall, and the bed-table were undisturbed. Only the bed with its motionless burden was tossed and tumbled.
Wyndham hastily averted his eyes, but not before he had seen the opened razor lying on the sheet to the left of Brainard and just beyond the grasp of the stiffened fingers. Drawing in his breath with a hissing noise, Wyndham retreated to his post outside the door and waited with ever increasing impatience for the return of Vera Deane.
The noise of the opening and shutting of a door which had reached Wyndham, contrary to his deductions, had been made not by the one giving into the library, but by the front door. Vera Deane all but staggered out on the portico and leaned against one of the columns. The cold bracing air was a tonic in itself, and she drank it down in deep gulps, while her gaze strayed over the sloping lawn and the hills in the background, then across to where the Potomac River wound its slow way between the Virginia and Maryland shores. The day promised to be fair, and through the clear atmosphere she could dimly distinguish the distant Washington Monument and the spires of the National Capital snugly ensconced among the rolling uplands of Maryland.
The quaint atmosphere of a bygone age which enveloped the old Virginia homestead had appealed to Vera from the first moment of her arrival, and she had grown to love the large rambling country house whose hospitality, like its name, “Dewdrop Inn,” had descended from generation to generation. Mrs. Lawrence Porter had elected to spend the winter there instead of opening her Washington residence.
Three months had passed since Vera had been engaged to attend Craig Porter; three months of peace and tranquillity, except for the duties of the sick room; three months in which she had regained physical strength and mental rest, and now—
Abruptly turning her back upon the view Vera re-entered the front hall and made her way down its spacious length until she came to the door she sought. A draught of cold air blew upon her as she stepped over the threshold, and with a slight exclamation of surprise she crossed the library to one of the long French windows which stood partly open. It gave upon a side portico and, stepping outside, she looked up and down the pathway which circled the house. No one was in sight, and slightly perplexed she drew back, closed the window, and walked over to the telephone instrument which stood on a small table near by. Her feeling of wonderment grew as she touched the receiver—it was still warm from the pressure of a moist hand.
Vera paused in the act of lifting the receiver from its hook and glanced keenly about the library; apparently she was alone in the room, but which member of the household had preceded her at the telephone?
The old “grandfather” clock in one corner of the library was just chiming a quarter of six when a sleepy “Central” answered her call. It took several minutes to make the operator understand that she wished to speak to the coroner at Alexandria, and there was still further delay before the “Central” announced: “There’s your party.”
Coroner Black stopped Vera’s explanations with an ejaculation, and his excited intonation betrayed the interest her statement aroused.
“I can’t get over for an hour or two,” he called. “You say you have no physician—let me see! Ah, yes! Send for Beverly Thorne; he’s a justice of the peace as well as a physician. Tell him to take charge until I come;” and click went his receiver on the hook.
Vera looked dubiously at the telephone as she hung up the receiver. Pshaw! It was no time for indecision—what if an ancient feud did exist between the Thornes and the Porters, as testified by the “spite wall” erected by a dead and gone Porter to obstruct the river view from “Thornedale”! In the presence of sudden death State laws had to be obeyed, and such things as the conventions, aye, and feuds, must be brushed aside. Only two days before, when motoring with Mrs. Porter, that stately dame had indicated the entrance to “Thornedale” with a solemn inclination of her head and the statement that its present owner, Dr. Beverly Thorne, would never be received at her house. But Coroner Black desired his immediate presence there that morning! In spite of all she had been through, a ghost of a smile touched Vera’s lovely eyes as she laid aside the telephone directory and again called “Central.”
Five seconds, ten seconds passed before the operator, more awake, reported that there was no response to her repeated rings.
“Keep it up,” directed Vera, and waited in ever growing irritation.
“Well?” came a masculine voice over the wires. “What is it?”
“I wish to speak to Dr. Beverly Thorne.”
“This is Dr. Thorne at the telephone—speak louder, please.”
Vera leaned nearer the instrument. “Mr. Bruce Brainard has died suddenly while visiting Mrs. Lawrence Porter. Kindly come at once to Dewdrop Inn.”
No response; and Vera, with rising color, was about to repeat her request more peremptorily when Thorne spoke.
“Did Mr. Brainard die without medical attendance?” he asked.
It was Vera’s turn to hesitate. “I found him dead with his throat cut,” she stated, and the huskiness of her voice blurred the words so that she had to repeat them. This time she was not kept waiting for a reply.
“I will be right over,” shouted Thorne.
As Vera rose from the telephone stand a sound to her left caused her to wheel in that direction. Leaning for support against a revolving bookcase stood Millicent Porter, and her waxen pallor brought a startled cry to Vera’s lips.
“Yes, I heard.” Millicent could hardly articulate, and her glance strayed hopelessly about the room. “I—I must go to mother.”
“Surely.” Vera laid a soothing hand on her shoulder. “But first take a sip of this,” and she poured out a glass of cognac from the decanter left in the room after the dinner the night before. She had almost to force the stimulant down the girl’s throat, then, placing her arm about her waist, she half supported her out of the room and up the staircase.
As they came into view Hugh Wyndham left his post by Brainard’s door and darted toward them. Millicent waved him back and shrank from his proffered hand.
“Not now, dear Hugh,” she stammered, reading the compassion in his fine dark eyes. “I must see mother—and alone.” With the false strength induced by the cognac she freed herself gently from Vera’s encircling arm and, entering her mother’s bedroom, closed the door behind her.
Wyndham and Vera regarded each other in silence. “Better so,” he muttered. “I confess I dreaded breaking the news to Aunt Margaret.” The gong in the front hall rang loudly and he started. “Who’s coming here at this hour?” he questioned, turning to descend the stairs.
“It is probably Dr. Thorne, the justice of the peace,” volunteered Vera, taking a reluctant step toward Brainard’s bedroom. “He said he would run right over.”
“Run over!” echoed Wyndham blankly. “Thorne? You surely don’t mean Beverly Thorne?”
“Yes.”
Wyndham missed a step and recovered his balance with difficulty just as a sleepy, half-dressed footman appeared in the hall below hastening to the front door. Wyndham continued to gaze at Vera as if not crediting the evidence of his ears. From below came the murmur of voices, then a man stepped past the bewildered servant and approached the staircase. Then only did Wyndham recover his customary poise.
“This way, Dr. Thorne,” he called softly, and waited while the newcomer handed his overcoat and hat to the footman and joined him on the stairs. Vera, an interested spectator, watched the two men greet each other stiffly, then turning she led the way into Brainard’s bedroom.
Neither man guessed the effort it cost Vera to keep her eyes turned on the dead man as with a tremor now and then in her voice she recounted how she had entered the bedroom to see her patient and had made the ghastly discovery.
“I then notified Mr. Wyndham,” she concluded.
“Did you visit your patient during the night?” questioned Thorne, never taking his eyes from the beautiful woman facing him.
“Yes, doctor, at half past one o’clock. Mr. Brainard was fast asleep.”
“And the remainder of the night—”
“I spent with my other patient, Mr. Craig Porter.” Vera moved restlessly. “If you do not require my assistance, doctor, I will return to Mr. Porter,” and barely waiting for Thorne’s affirmative nod, she slipped away, and resumed her seat in the adjoining bedroom half-way between the window and Craig Porter’s bedside.
From that vantage point she had an unobstructed view of the shapely head and broad shoulders of the young athlete whose prowess in college sports had gained a name for him even before his valor in the aviation corps of the French army had heralded him far and near. He had been taken from under his shattered aeroplane six months before in a supposedly dying condition, but modern science had wrought its miracle and snatched him from the grave to bring him back to his native land a hopeless paralytic, unable to move hand or foot.
As she listened to Craig Porter’s regular breathing Vera permitted her thoughts to turn to Beverly Thorne; his quiet, self-possessed manner, his finely molded mouth and chin and expressive gray eyes, had all impressed her favorably, but how account for his lack of interest in Bruce Brainard—he had never once glanced toward the bed while she was recounting her discovery of the tragedy. Why had he looked only at her so persistently?
Had Vera been able to see through lath and plaster, her views would have undergone a change. Working with a skill and deftness that aroused Wyndham’s reluctant admiration, Beverly Thorne made a thorough examination of the body and the bed, taking care not to disarrange anything. Each piece of furniture and the articles on tables, dresser, and mantel received his attention, even the curtains before the window were scrutinized.
“Has any one besides you and Miss Deane been in this room since the discovery of the tragedy?” asked Thorne, breaking his long silence.
“No.”
“When was Mr. Brainard taken ill?”
“During dinner last night. Dr. Noyes said it would be unwise for him to return to Washington, so Mrs. Porter suggested that he stay here all night, and I loaned him a pair of pajamas,” Wyndham, talking in short, jerky sentences, felt Thorne’s eyes boring into him.
“I should like to see Dr. Noyes,” began Thorne. “Where—”
“I’ll get him,” Wyndham broke in, hastening to the door; he disappeared out of the room just as Thorne picked up the razor and holding it between thumb and forefinger examined it with deep interest.
However, Wyndham was destined to forget his errand for, as he sped down the hall, a door opened and his aunt confronted him.
“Wait, Hugh.” Mrs. Porter held up an imperative hand. “Millicent has told me of poor Bruce’s tragic death, and Murray,” indicating the footman standing behind her, “informs me that Dr. Beverly Thorne has had the effrontery to force his way into this house—and at such a time.”
She spoke louder than customary under the stress of indignation, and her words reached Beverly Thorne as he appeared in the hall. He never paused in his rapid stride until he joined the little group, and his eyes did not fall before the angry woman’s gaze.
“It is only at such a time as this that I would think of intruding,” he said. “Kindly remember, madam, that I am here in my official capacity only. Before I sign a death certificate, an inquest must decide whether your guest, Bruce Brainard, committed suicide—or was murdered.”