Chapter 7
Anna Simms sipped her coffee and quietly contemplated devils. Outside, rain beat down upon cold, dark streets, but inside the drawn curtains of Anna's small library it was warm, with a fire cheerful in the grate, and the dog lazy upon the rug, and cigarettes and an old book beside the deepest armchair. An armchair which Anna just then decorated, for she had dressed for her dinner in soft trailing crimson. Too bad, thought Anna regretfully, that her best moments were so often wasted: a seductive crimson gown, and no one to see it. She smashed her cigarette sadly and returned to her book.
Devils and devil-possessed souls! Of course there were no such things, but it was curious how real the old writers made both. Anna was storing up this knowledge for future use in her mystery novels.
Then the doorbell rang. The dog barked, scrambled to his feet and bounced into the hall; Anna followed.
Two men, beaten and wet with rain, were waiting, and one of them was Jim Del Mar, with a package under his arm.
"Company?" asked Jim tersely, looking at the dress.
"No. I was alone-"
"You remember Lieutenant Mohrn?"
Of course she did! It was her volunteer work with him on a recent Chicago crime that had led the police force to regard her as a valuable consultant.
"How do you do?" said Lieutenant Mohrn. "I hope you don't mind our coming. You see, there's something-"
"Something queer," said Jim. "In point of fact, it's-"
"Murder," said Lieutenant Mohrn.
"Oh," said Anna. Her own small, warm house-and these two men with sober faces looking at her. She smoothed back her hair. "Oh," she said again.
Jim pushed the package toward her.
"I got size thirty-six," he said. "Is that right? I mean, that's what we want you to wear."
That was actually Anna's introduction to the case of the Easter Devil. Fifteen minutes later she was getting out of the glamorous crimson gown and into a brown tweed suit with a warm topcoat, and tossing a few things into a bag-the few things included the contents of the package, which proved to be several nurses' uniforms, complete with caps, and a small kit of tools which were new and shiny.
"Do you know anything about nursing?" Jim Del Mar had asked.
"Nothing," said Anna. "But I've had appendicitis."
"Oh," said Jim, relieved. "Then you can-oh, take a pulse, make a show of nursing. She's not sick, you know. If she were, we could not do this.
"I can shake a thermometer without dropping it," said Anna. "If the doctor will help-"
"Oh, he'll help all right," said Lietenant Mohrn somewhat grimly. "We have his consent and approval."
She pulled a small brown hat over her hair and then remembered to change gold slippers to brown oxfords.
In the hall Jim was waiting.
"Mohrn had to go," he said. "I'll take you out. Glenn Ash is about an hour's run from town."
"All right," said Anna. She scribbled a note to Huldah and spoke soberly to the dog, who liked to have things explained to him.
"I'm going to a house in Glenn Ash," she said gravely. "Be a good dog. And don't chase Mrs. Petruchkin's cat."
He pushed a cold nose against her hand. He didn't want her to go, and he thought the matter of Petruchkin the cat might better have been ignored. Then the front door closed and he heard presently two doors bang and a car drive away. He returned to the library. But he was gradually aware that the peace and snugness were gone. He felt gloomily that it would have been very much better if the woman had stayed at home.
And the woman, riding along a rain-swept road, rather agreed with him. She peered through the rain-shot light lanes ahead and reviewed in her mind the few facts that she knew. And they were brief enough.
At the home of one Gladstone Denisty in Glenn Ash a servant had been murdered. Had been shot in the back and found (where he'd fallen) in a ravine near the house. There was no weapon found, and anyway he couldn't have shot himself. There were no signs of attempted burglary. There were, indeed, no clues. He was a quiet, well-behaved man and an efficient servant and had been with the Denisty family for some time; so far as could be discovered, his life held no secrets.
Yet that morning he had been found in the ravine, murdered.
The household consisted of Gladstone Denisty and his wife; his mother and brother, and two remaining servants.
"It's Mrs. Gladstone Denisty-her first name is Felicia-whom we want you to nurse," Lieutenant Mohrn had said. "There's more to the thing than meets the eye. And we thought if we could get you inside the house-just to watch things, you know. There's no possible danger to you."
"There's always danger," said Jim brusquely, "where there's murder."
"If Miss Simms thinks there's danger, she's to leave," said Lieutenant Mohrn wearily. "All I want her to do is get a-line on things."
And Jim, somehow grudgingly, had said nothing; still said nothing.
It was a long ride to Glenn Ash, and that night a difficult one, owing to the rain and wind. But they did finally turn off the winding side road into a driveway and stop.
Anna could barely see the great dark bulk of the house looming above with only a light or two showing.
Then Jim's hand was guiding her up some brick steps and across a wide veranda. He put his mouth to her ear: "If anything happens that you don't like, leave. At once." And Anna whispered, "I will," and Jim was gone, and the wide door was opening, and a very pretty maid was taking her bag and leading her swiftly upstairs. The household had retired, said the maid, and Mrs. Denisty would see her in the morning.
"You mean Mrs. Gladstone Denisty?" asked Anna.
"Oh, no, ma'am. Mrs. Denisty, "said the maid. "Is there anything-? Thank you. Good night, ma'am."
Anna, after a thoughtful moment, locked her door and presently went to bed, listened to the rain against the windowpanes and wished she could sleep. However, she must have fallen asleep, for she awakened suddenly and in fright. It had stopped raining. And somewhere there had been a sound.
There had been a sound, but it was no more. She only knew that it had awakened her and that she was ridiculously terrified. And then all at once her heart stopped its absurd pounding and was perfectly still. For something-out there in the long and empty hall-had brushed against her bedroom door!
She couldn't, either then or later, have persuaded herself to go to that door and open it and look into the hall. And anyway, as the moments dragged on, she was convinced that whoever or whatever had brushed against her door was gone. But she sat huddled under blankets, stonily wide awake until slow gray dawn began to crawl into the room. Then she fell again into sleep, only to be waked this time by the maid, carrying a breakfast tray and conveying what she thought of trained nurses who slept late. Mrs. Denisty, she informed Anna, wished to see her.
Not, thought Anna, getting into the unaccustomed uniform, an auspicious beginning. And she was shocked to discover that she looked incredibly young and more than a little flip in the crisply tailored white dress and white cap. She took her horn-rimmed spectacles, which improved things very little, and her thermometer, and went downstairs, endeavoring to look stern enough to offset the unfortunate effect of the cap.
But on the wide landing of the stairs she realized that the white-haired woman in the hall below was interested only in the tongue-lashing she was giving two maids. They were careless, they were lying, they had broken it-all of it. She looked up just then and saw Anna and at once became bland.
"Good morning, Miss Simms," she said. "Will you come down?" She dismissed the servants and met Anna at the foot of the stairs. "We'll go into this drawing room," she said. She wore a creamy white wool dress with blue beads and a blue handkerchief and did not ask Anna to sit down.
"The household is a little upset just now," she said. "There was an unfortunate occurrence here, night before last. Yes-unfortunate. And then yesterday or last night the maid or cook or somebody managed to break some Venetian glass-quite a lot of it-that my daughter-in-law was much attached to. Neither of them will admit it. However, about my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Gladstone Denisty, whom you are here to care for; I only wished to tell you, Miss Simms, that her nerves are bad, and the main thing, I believe, is merely to humor her. And if there is anything you wish to know, or if any-problem-arises, come to me. Do you understand?"
Anna wondered what was wrong with the room and said she understood.
"Very well," said Mrs. Denisty, rising. "That is all."
But that was not all. For there was a whirlwind of steps, and a voice sobbing broken phrases swept through the door, and a woman ran into the room clutching in both hands something bright and crimson. A queer little chill that she could never account for crept over Anna as she realized that the woman clutched, actually, broken pieces of glass.
"Did you see, Mother Denisty?" sobbed the woman. "It's all over the floor. How much more-how much more-"
"Felicia!" cried Mrs. Denisty sternly. "Hush-yes, I know. It was an accident."
"An accident! But you know-you know-"
"The nurse is here-Miss Simms."
The young woman whirled. She was-or had been-an extraordinary beauty. Slender and tall, with fine, fair hair and great, brilliant gray eyes. But the eyes were hollow and the lids swollen and pink, and her mouth pale and uncertain.
"But I don't need a nurse."
"Just for a few days," said Mrs. Denisty firmly. "The doctor advised it."
The great gray eyes met Anna's fixedly-too fixedly, indeed, for the look was actually an unwavering stare. Was there something, then, beyond Anna-near Anna-that she did not wish to see?
"Oh," said Felicia Denisty with a thin sharp gasp and looked at her hand, and Anna ran forward. On the slender white hand was a brighter, thicker crimson than the Venetian glass which was only then, quite slowly, relinquished.
"You've cut your hand," said Anna inadequately. Felecia had turned to the older woman, who was unmoved.
"See," she said, extending her bleeding hand. "Just to be in the room with it-"
Mrs. Denisty moved forward then.
"Will you go upstairs with Mrs. Gladstone, Miss Simms," she said firmly, "and dress her hand."
Upstairs Anna blessed a brief course of Red Cross lectures which during school days she had loathed, and made a fairly workman-like job of bandaging the wound.
But it was not so easy to spend the long hours of the slow gray day with Felicia Denisty, for she had fallen into a brooding silence, sat and stared either at her bandaged hand or out the window upon a dreary balcony, and said practically nothing.
The afternoon passed much as the morning, except that with the approach of dusk the wind rose a bit and rattled shutters, and Felicia grew restless and turned on every available light in her room.
"Dinner," she said to Anna, "is at seven-thirty." She looked fully at Anna, as if for the first time. "You've been inside all day, Miss Simms, I didn't think-would you like to take a walk before dinner?"
Anna said she would, and hoped she wasn't too eager.
But at the end of half an hour's walk through rapidly increasing gray dusk she was still no wiser than she had been, except that she had a clearer notion of the general plan of the house-built like a wide-flung T with tall white pillars running up to the second-story roof of the wide double porch, which extended across the front of the house-and of the grounds.
On two sides of the house was a placid brown lawn, searching downward to roadway and to rolling meadows. But on the south lay the ravine, an abrupt, irregular gash, masked now and made mysterious by dripping shrubbery. Beyond it appeared the roof of a house, and at the deepest point of the ravine it was crossed by a small wooden bridge which lost itself in the trees at the farther end. It must lead, thought Anna, to the house, but she did not explore it, although she looked long at the spot where (as revealed by a discreet inquiry of the pretty housemaid) the butler had been murdered.
It was perhaps ten feet from the entrance to the small wooden bridge and just behind a large clump of sumach. It was not in view from the windows of the Denisty house.
Anna, made oddly uneasy by the fog-enshrouded shadows of the trees, made her way back.
Inside, she turned at once to the drawing room. It was dark, and she fumbled for the light and found it. The room was exactly as she remembered it from the morning; a large room of spaces and many windows and massive furniture. Not, somehow, a pleasant room. It was too still, perhaps too chilly. She turned suddenly as if someone had spoken her name and saw the Easter image.
And she realized what was wrong with the room.
It stood there beside the fireplace-a black, narrow image of a man-a terribly emaciated man, with protruding ribs and a queer, painted face, roughly carved. It was perhaps two feet tall and there were white marks on it that looked like, but were not, chalk. Its emaciation and its protruding ribs suggested that it was a remnant of that strangely vanished race from mysterious, somber Easter Island. When you looked at it analytically, that was all there was to see.
But it was singularly difficult to look at it analytically. And that was because of the curiously repellent look in its face; the air of strange and secret sentience that somehow managed to surround the small figure. There was a hint of something decadent, something faintly macabre, something incredibly and hideously wise. It was intangible; it was not sensible. But, nevertheless, it was there.
Yes, Anna told herself sternly, the image itself was merely a piece of wood.
A carved piece of wood from Easter Island; a souvenir, probably, of a journey there. It had no connection with the murder of a butler, with the shattered fragments of Venetian glass.
Anna turned suddenly and left the drawing room. But when in the hall the door behind her opened, Anna all but screamed before she saw the man who had entered. He flung off hat and coat and reached for a stack of letters on the hall table, then finally looked at her and said: "Oh, hullo. You must be the nurse. Miss-"
"Simms," said Anna. He was thick, white-haired, brusque, with a blunt nose and bright, hard blue eyes. He wasn't over forty-five, and he must be a Denisty.
"Simms," said he. "Nice name. Well, take care of my wife." His blue eyes shot a quick glance up the stairway, and he bent and kissed at Anna; he turned, humming, toward the library, and vanished.
Kissed at her; for what she felt would have been a rather expert kiss had been pretty well deflected by some quick action on her part.
Well, that was Gladstone.
And Marlow Denisty, the brother, who turned up at dinner, was a handsome Byronic-looking youth who talked enthusiastically of practically everything.
It was Marlow who later, in the drawing room, spoke of the Easter image.
He had brought it, he told Anna expansively, from Easter Island himself. It was a present to Gladstone.
"An akuaku," said Anna absently.
"A what?" said Gladstone, turning sharply to look at her.
Anna wished she had not spoken, and Marlow flashed her a glance of bright approval.
"An akuaku," he said, "An evil god You remember, Glad, I told you all about it when I brought the thing home. These wooden figures, or moai miro, were made first, so far as can be discovered, by Tuukoihu, who ruled the island following Hotu Matua. These small figures with protruding ribs were thought to be reminders of the imminence of death, threats of-"
"Thank you, I can read the encyclopedia myself," said Gladstone Denisty sharply. "And anyway, it's all nonsense. A piece of carved wood with white painting on it can't possible have any sort of significance."
"It can have," cried Felicia with sudden unexpected violence. "It does have!"
Mrs. Denisty, with a glance at Gladstone, interrupted. "Felicia, dear child," she cried in a deprecating way. "How can you be so absurd!"
"Hush!" Felicia's voice was all at once taut; her eyes were wide and dark, and she flung out her hand toward the image. "Don't you realize that it hears you? Don't you realize what it has brought into this house? Misfortune-suffering-murder-"
"Felicia!" The interruption was loud and covered anything Felicia might have continued to say, and Mrs. Denisty went on swiftly, "You are hysterical, my dear, and not quite yourself. As to misfortune, we have lost no more than other people and are still very comfortable. And your illness couldn't possibly have been induced by a wooden image-"
"An evil god-an evil influence," muttered Felicia, staring at the image.
Mrs. Denisty swept on, though her mouth was tight.
"And William's death, which I suppose you are referring to, was the result of his discovering an attempt to burglarize the house. It is dreadful, of course. But it had no possible connection with this-this piece of wood."
Felicia was trembling. Anna put a hand upon her arms but could not stay the uneven torrent of words.
"What of the things that have happened to me? Why, even my kitten died. Flowers die if I touch them. Something happens to everything that is mine. Why-just last night-the glass-" She was sobbing. "William-he was kind to me-he-"
Gladstone intervened.
"Take her upstairs, Miss Simms," he said quietly. "See if you can quiet her. She has some capsules the doctor gave her-try to calm yourself, Felicia."
"Oh, I'll go. I'll go."
She sobbed weakly. But she said no more, and once in her room upstairs took the sedative and afterwards lay quiet, staring at the ceiling with great tragic eyes.
"Your illness," said Anna gently. "The doctor didn't tell me-"
Felicia did not look at her.
"Nerves, he says. That's all any of them say. But I was all right until he brought the image home. About a year ago." The sedative was beginning to take effect, and she spoke calmly. "It is the image, you see, Miss Simms. It hates me. I feel it. I know it. And-I heard the story-of a woman in Tahiti, an Englishwoman who had one, and it hated her, and it brought evil and suffering and misfortune, and finally-death."
She spoke the last word in a whisper.
"Did Marlow tell you of it?"
"Yes. He told us. We thought nothing of it-then. Mother Denisty says it is wrong of me to fear it. She's religious, you know."
"She clung very firmly to the church?"
"Oh, yes. Except in the modern trend. That is-divorce, you know. She is very much against divorce." Owing perhaps to the capsule, Felicia was beginning to talk in a rambling way. "She says my feeling about the image is superstition."
"How was William kind to you?" asked Anna.
"Oh, in so many little ways. I think he liked me. It was he who told me about the flowers. Of course, I didn't believe him. I know why they died. But he told me that, so I would feel better." She was becoming drowsy, and her words were soft and slow.
Anna felt and stifled with rather shocking ease a scruple against further questions and said: "What did he tell you?"
"Oh-something about acid in the water. I don't know-it couldn't have been true.
Flowers died because they were mine. And I don't want to study French anymore."
"French," said Anna. "French!"
Felicia's drooping eyelids flared open. She stared hazily but intently at Anna and suddenly lifted herself on one elbow and leaned toward her and whispered hoarsely: "It's Dorothy. She knows about the image, I can see it in her eyes. In her eyes." She dropped back upon the pillow, repeated, "In her eyes-in her eyes," and then quite suddenly was heavily asleep.
After a long time Anna tiptoed away.
But at midnight she was still broadly awake, strongly aware, as one is at night, of the house about her and all that it held-including the thing that brooded over a downstairs room.
Only a piece of wood.
And what possible connection was there between a piece of wood, some shattered fine glass, and a murdered butler? French lessons and dead flowers and an acid? A kitten-dead, also. An image that represented the imminence of death. A hysterical woman-talking of death.
That night, if anyone brushed against her door, Anna did not know it, for she fell at length into an uneasy sleep, that only slowly-and grudgingly-deepened into a state of relaxation and pleasure.
As always, her pleasure dreams centered on Jim, who had come to occupy her subconscious in a totally dominant fashion.
She was on a beach, clad in a string bikini. It was a tropical setting-Acapulco?-and she stirred lazily beneath the hot sun, aware that the eyes of many were attracted to her lithe, deeply tanned form.
Suddenly she felt the sand shift beside her. She opened her eyes, not knowing what to expect: a beach boy, teeth glistening? An overweight fetid-breathed tourist? Neither.
It was Jim, his muscular body relaxed as he sat on the sand next to her. But it was as if he didn't know her. Perhaps, Anna thought, it's my dark glasses.
"You look absolutely ravishing," Jim said. She opened her legs as his fierce gaze moved down her thighs. He leaned over and softly licked the patch of cloth that covered her vagina. She stiffened, thinking of all the people on the beach who had seen what he had done. And then the most delicious wet feeling she had ever experienced flooded her body and she didn't move as Jim pulled down her bikini bottom and leaned over, tonguing her hard between the legs. She opened her legs even wider and suddenly Jim was crouched between her legs, holding a thigh in each hand, licking her in the most obscenely wanton manner she could imagine. Her climax was so strong that it left her trembling, wide awake, still warmed by the throbbing currents of passion that Jim's phantom tongue had brought.
Anna's second day in the Denisty household was in many ways a replica of the first, except that nothing at all happened.
Once during the morning she heard Mrs. Denisty telephone to someone she called Dorothy, saying that Felicia would not be able to do French that morning, which left Anna little wiser than she had been. And once she herself was called to the telephone for what proved to be an extremely guarded conversation with Jim Del Mar. She succeeded only in reassuring him as to her own personal safety, told him carefully that she did not know how long the "case" would last, and hung up.
That night, too, was quiet. But the next day things happened.
In the first place, "Dorothy" came to call. Anna, just entering Felicia's room with the morning paper, heard her voice on the stairs.
"Is Mrs. Gladstone in her room?"
"Yes, Mrs. Laasch," replied the housemaid's voice.
"So I thought. No, no-I know the way. Mrs. Gladstone won't mind."
Anna waited. In another moment the owner of the voice came along the hall, glanced at Anna, and preceded her into Felicia's room with the ease of very old and intimate acquaintance.
"Oh, good morning, Dorothy," said Felicia.
So this was Dorothy. Dorothy Laasch.
Anna gave Felicia the paper and at Felicia's gesture sat down near her.
"Mother Denisty tells me there'll be no more French until you are feeling better," Dorothy was saying. She was a handsome woman in perhaps her middle thirties; a blonde with short hair, vivacious, of rather large features, and light, swift eyes. She wore a green wool suit, no hat, and suede pumps. Felicia murmured something and Dorothy went on: "Since Mother Denisty says so, I suppose that settles it. You ought to rouse yourself, Felicia. You let that woman rule you. Just because she controls the purse strings-"
"Dorothy," said Felicia in a remonstrating way.
Dorothy shot a quick glance toward the door into the hall.
"She's outdoors. I met her down by the bridge."
"But-" said Felicia.
"Oh, you mean the nurse." Dorothy looked at Anna and laughed. "Nurses neither hear nor care, do they, Miss-"
"Simms." said Felicia. She turned briefly to Anna. "This is Mrs. Laasch. I thought you'd met. Let's put off the French lessons for a couple of weeks, Dorothy."
"Nonsense," said Dorothy vigorously. "You'll be all right in a day or two. How's Mother Denisty taking this business of William's death?"
"I-don't know," faltered Felicia.
"No, I don't suppose you do know," said Dorothy with something like exasperation. "Really, Felicia, you can't see anything. Have the police done anything?"
"About William, you mean? Nothing more. At least, nothing that I know of."
Dorothy patted Felicia's hand briskly.
"Then why do you worry? Mother Denisty can't live forever. And think of the insurance-"
"Mother Denisty is very kind to me," said Felicia. Her hands were trembling.
"Kind," said Dorothy. She laughed abruptly. "You are all afraid of her. Every one of-"
"Ah, there you are, Dorothy," said Mrs. Denisty's bland voice from the doorway. Dorothy turned quickly, Felicia bent closer over her knitting, and Anna felt quite suddenly as if something had shifted and moved under her feet. Like quicksand, she thought, only it was nothing so perceptible.
"I hope you've cheered up Felicia," said Mrs. Denisty. Her eyes were as blank and cold as two blue beads, but her voice was pleasant. If she had heard Dorothy's words, she gave no indication of it.
"I've tried to," said Dorothy. She rose. "I must run now. Goodbye, Felicia. Goodbye, Miss Simms. Goodbye, Mother Denisty."
She kissed Felicia's white face; she kissed Mrs. Denisty. But Anna rose and walked downstairs and out the wide front door with Dorothy, who accepted her company with the breezy manner that seemed characteristic of her.
"Poor Felicia," said Dorothy. "Do walk along to the bridge with me, Miss Simms. The path goes this way. I live just across the ravine, you know. I should be so alone but for Felicia. I'm a widow, you know. Tell me, just how is Felicia?"
"She seems not much changed," said Anna.
"That's what I feared. It seems so queer and useless for her to brood over William. I can't imagine-" She checked herself abruptly and then continued in the same rapid way: "I don't believe any of them realize the state Felicia is in. And Miss Simms-I am afraid for her."
"Afraid! Of whom?"
Dorothy paused before she said, very slowly: "I'm afraid Felicia has Felicia to fear more than anyone else."
Suicide! Brooding over William. Was that what Dorothy meant? At their right was the patch of brown, dripping sumach. Anna said: "That's where the man was murdered, isn't it?"
"About there, I believe," said Dorothy. She met Anna's eyes for a long moment. "Take care of Felicia-watch her, Miss Simms. Goodbye."
Her heels tapped the wooden floor of the bridge. Anna watched, thinking of her last words, until Dorothy's blonde head vanished around the curve in the patch beyond the bridge. Then Anna turned. As she did so, something about the floor of the bridge caught her eye, and she bent to look.
Presently she rose and very thoughtfully went back to the house. But it was exactly then that terror clutched at Anna and would not be shaken off.
Yet, at the moment, there was nothing at all that she could do. Nothing but wait and listen and look.
It made it no easier when, that dreary afternoon, Felicia talked of death. Talked absently, queerly, knitting on a yellow afghan. What did Anna think it would be-did she think it would be difficult-would one regret at the last-when it was too late-would one "Has anyone talked to you-of death?" asked Anna sharply.
"N-no," said Felicia. "That is, Dorothy and I have talked of it. Some. And Marlow always likes to discuss such things."
"But that is wrong," said Anna abruptly. "You are sad and depressed."
"Perhaps," said Felicia agreeably. She knitted a long row before she said: "Dear-he is so good to me. He would, really, give me anything I want. Why, he would even give me a divorce if I asked for it; he has often said so. Not that I want a divorce. It only shows that he would put my wishes, even about that, ahead of Mother Denisty's."
"Then why," said Anna very gently, "does he keep the-Easter image?"
Felicia flinched visibly, but replied: "Why, you see, Miss Simms, he-he believes in its power. And he keeps it because he says it would be very weak to give in to his-feeling about it."
"But he talks as if-" began Anna irrepressibly and checked herself.
"Oh, yes," said Felicia. "But that's only because he doesn't like to admit it to other people."
It was that night that the thing happened in the drawing room. And that was the matter of the yellow afghan.
While they were at dinner, somehow, sometime, under the very eyes of the Easter image, the knitting was unraveled.
They found it when they entered the chill and quiet drawing room immediately after dinner. It lay in an untidy heap of crinkly yellow yarn, half on the chair where Felicia had left it, half on the floor.
Felicia saw it first and screamed.
And even Mother Denisty looked gray when she saw the heap of yarn. But she turned at once commandingly to Anna and told her to take Felicia upstairs.
Gladstone took Felicia's arm, and Anna followed, and somehow they got her out of the room. As they passed the still, black Easter image Felicia shuddered.
Upstairs, however, she managed to reply to Gladstone's inquiries.
Yes, she said, she had left the knitting there on the chair just before dinner.
"You are sure, Felicia?"
"Why, of course. I knew we would come into the drawing room for coffee and I-I wanted to have my knitting there. It-keeps me from looking at the image-"
"Nonsense, Felicia. The image won't hurt you."
Felicia wrung her hands.
"Glad, don't keep up this pretense. You know you are afraid of it, too. And Miss Simms knows-"
"Miss Simms-" He turned; his eyes, blue and cold and exactly like his mother's, plunged into Anna's eyes and Felicia cried:
"So there's no need to pretend because she is here."
"My wife," said Gladstone to Anna, "seems to be a bit hysterical-"
"Oh, no, no," moaned Felicia. "Don't you see? Listen to me, Glad." She was leaning forward, two scarlet spots in her cheeks and her great eyes blazing. "I left the knitting there in the chair. I was the last one in the dining room-do you remember?"
"Y-yes," said Gladstone unwillingly.
"No one left the table. No one was in the drawing room. And when I returned, it was completely raveled out. Oh, it isn't the knitting that matters: I don't care about that. But it's the-the cruelty. The-" She paused searching for the word, wringing her hands again. Finally it came: "The persecution," said Felicia Denisty.
"Nonsense," said Gladstone heavily. "You are making too much of an absurdly trivial thing. Now, Felicia, do be sensible. Take one of your capsules and go to sleep. The image simply couldn't have pulled hour knitting loose-if that's what you mean."
"The image," said Felicia slowly, "couldn't have killed William, either. But William is dead."
"Don't be morbid, Felicia," said Gladstone. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Miss Simms, will you help me a moment, please?"
It was, of course, an absurdly transparent excuse. Felicia said nothing and Anna followed Gladstone into the hall. He closed the door.
"Did my wife unravel the knitting herself, Miss Simms?" he said directly. "I don't know."
His hard blue eyes, so strangely like his mother's, were plumbing her own eyes, seeking for any thought that lay behind them.
"She seems to have been talking to you a great deal," he said slowly.
"No," said Anna quietly, "not a great deal."
When they arrived at Anna's room, Gladstone followed her in. Gladstone waited for her to say more. But Anna waited, too. "I hope," he said at length, "that you realize to what her talk is due."
Anna smoothed back her hair, and Gladstone's eyes glistened. "Yes," Anna said truthfully. "I believe I do."
"That's good," Gladstone said, his lips suddenly dry. Now Anna noticed the strange look in his eyes. "I must say," Gladstone said, "you're an uncommonly attractive woman."
"Thank you," said Anna defensively.
Gladstone pushed ahead. "My wife ... she's not like you." he blurted out. "She's cold. I can tell that you are not. I could make you happy," he said quickly. "I could give you more pleasure than you've ever had!" Suddenly Gladstone became animated. "Have you ever been eaten?" he asked.
Anna stared at him. She was aware now that his trousers were tenting in evidence of his arousal.
"I could do it for you," Gladstone said. "Here. Now. I'd love to suck your juicy pussy," he said. "I love pussy juice and I bet a hot cunt like you puts out plenty. I'd drain you dry, Anna."
"I'm sure you would," Anna said, amused by Gladstone's lunatic descent into verbal sex.
"Please," Gladstone pleaded. "No one need know. It's just that I dream about it-sucking your lovely cunt has become an obsession!"
"That can be aggravating," Anna said.
His face reflected hope for the first time. "Then you'll do it? Just sit in that chair-I'll lick you until you've had enough!"
"I think not."
Gladstone was crestfallen. "Perhaps I've spoken too graphically," he said. "I apologize."
"Not at all. I admire a man who makes his needs and desires plainly known. It's just that ... the time isn't right."
Gladstone nodded sagely. "Of course," he said. "Good night."
He went downstairs at once. In a moment, Anna heard the heavy outside door close. He had not, then, joined his mother and Marlow, whose voices, steadily and blandly talking, were coming from the drawing room. The room where the Easter image brooded and waited. She returned to Felicia.
"I took two capsules," said Felicia wearily. "You needn't stay, Miss Simms. I'll be asleep in no time."
Two capsules. Anna resolved to talk to the doctor the next day, did what she could for Felicia, and left. This time she met Marlow, his arms full of yellow yarn.
"Oh, hello there, Miss Simms," he said. "I was just looking for you. What shall we do with this? Mother is frightfully upset about it. Glad is the apple of her eye, you know. It's never been exactly a happy marriage-You've probably guessed it. Poor mother. And now Felicia's got this queer notion about the Easter image."
"How did she get the notion?" said Anna. "I mean-has it been long?"
"Mmm, a few months. Seems to have got worse since these unlucky things have been happening. Just accidents, of course. But it is a bit queer. Isn't it?"
"Very," said Anna. "Tell me, is she interested in the French lessons?"
"With Dorothy, you mean? Oh, I don't know. She goes regularly, nine o'clock every morning. Mother sees to that. But I don't know that she likes it much. Funny thing, psychology, isn't it? I suppose you see a lot of queer things in your profession, don't you?"
"Well," said Anna guardedly, "yes and no. Good night. Oh, I don't think it would be a good thing to give the yarn to her just now. Anyway, she's asleep."
He turned toward the stairway, his arms still full of yellow yarn.
In her room, Anna locked the door as she had done carefully every night in the silent haunted house. Haunted by a wooden image.
And then, vehemently, she rejected the thought. It was no wooden image that men aced that house and those within it. It was something far stronger.
And yet she was shaken in spite of herself by the incident of the knitting. After all, had Felicia herself unraveled it? The family were all at the table and no one left it even momentarily, and the pretty housemaid who was, since William's death, acting as waitress, had been busily occupied and also, naturally, the cook.
But Anna was dealing only with intangibles. There was still no definite, material clue.
She turned, smoothed back her hair, and sat down at the writing desk. And set herself to reducing intangibles to tangibles.
It was after midnight when she leaned back and looked at what she had written.
A conclusion was there, of course, implicit in those facts. But she needed one link. And, even with that one link, she had no proof. Anna turned off the light and opened the window and stood there for a moment, looking out into the starless, quiet night.
Through the darkness and quiet a small, dull sound came, beating with rhythmic little thuds upon her ears. And quite suddenly it was as if a small faraway tom-tom was beating out its dark and secret message.
Easter Island and a devil.
"This," said Anna firmly to herself, "is fantastic. The sound is made by footsteps on the wooden bridge."
She listened, and faintly the footsteps came nearer. She could see nothing through the soft damp blackness. But suddenly, not far below her window, the footsteps ceased. Whoever was on the bridge then had now reached the path.
There was no way to know who had passed.
Yet quite suddenly Anna knew as surely as if she had seen.
And with the knowledge came the strangest feeling of urgency. For she knew, with a blinding flash of light, what those footsteps on the bridge meant.
She snatched a dark silk dressing gown and flung it around her shoulders, unlocked her door and fled down the hall. She waited in the dusk above the stair railing, until the door below opened and she caught a glimpse of the person who entered. It was as she expected, and she turned and was at Felicia's door by the time steps began to ascend the stairs.
If Felicia's door was locked! But it was not. She opened it and slipped inside and leaned against it, her heart pounding as if she'd been racing. Felicia was sleeping quietly and peacefully.
Now what to do? If there were only time-time to plan, time to make arrangements. But there was not.
And she had no proof.
And the feeling of urgency was stronger.
Felicia lay so sunk in sleep that only her heavy drugged breathing told Anna that she was alive.