The dark fantastic (35 page)

"Not if she came across the fields."

"She didn't come across the fields. She came by the turnpike and through the grove."

"How do you know?"

Judith's hand went to her throat. She had talked too much.

"You seem to be pretty well informed about Thorne's movements," said Richard. "Why haven't you told this before?"

"Because it's only a suspicion. I don't know anything."

"You know she came through the grove, don't you?"

"Yes. I know that much. But that's all."

"I don't believe you, Judith. If you'd withhold that knowledge, when eveyone else was searching, you'd withhold more. What else do you know?"

"Nothing. I saw Thorne from my window yesterday when she came home. She came through the grove—to avoid the crowd, I suppose—and ran into the house. I called to her. She said she was getting something to eat. A little later she ran out again and I saw her racing toward that wagon. That's the last time I saw her. And that's the truth, Richard. I swear it."

He looked at her with implacable coldness.

"Why have you waited twenty-four hours to tell this?"

"I never thought of it at first. Then it seemed such a bare possibility that I kept still rather than delay your search. After all, the most important thing was to make sure she had not suffered foul play in the woods. But now that you have failed to find any trace of her, I really believe she left of her own accord with those people in the wagon. They were her kind of people, Richard. That banner— California or Bust— would have caught her eye." Judith smiled as though the whole thing were working out in the happiest possible manner.

"I've always felt, Richard, that if Thorne were left to her own devices she would do the right thing. And of course the right thing was for her to go back to her own environment. So instead of wearing ourselves out with searching for the child, let's say our pravers tonight with special gratitude for the way God has worked things out for the good of all concerned."

Richard rose to his feet, and the impact of his words seemed the greater coming from that tall, stern height.

"Don't blame God, Judith, for your own conniving."

"You mean you don't believe me?"

"I believe what you've told is true. Only you haven't told it all. What happened between the time you called to Thorne and she left the house? What did you say to her, Judith? Don't answer! It would only be to lie. After what I learned about you last night, I know that you would stop at nothing to gain your purpose. You said something to Thorne that made her feel it was necessary for her to leave Timberley. Didn't you, Judith?"

Her face was white with the knowledge of defeat. She had lost everything now. She had nothing more to lose—or so she thought.

"And what if I did? Was I to stand silently by and see my home wrecked without lifting a finger?"

"Thank you for telling me, Judith." He almost smiled.

"Telling you what?"

"All I wanted to know. Now that I know why Thorne left, I believe the rest of your story is true. Those people were headed West, weren't they? And they pulled out yesterday evening. They're only a day's journey from here. A good fast horse could overtake them by tomorrow night."

"You mean you'd follow them?"

Fool, fool that she'd been to have spoken so sooni She should have waited a week at least.

"It will do you no good, Richard. It will only make you a laughingstock. After what I said to Thorne she'll never come back."

"In that case there'll be one more traveler bound for California."

"You're mad!"

"I was never so sane in my life."

"You'd leave your wife—your mother—your children—for that "

"Don't say it, Judith! I warn you."

"Can you imagine what people will say?"

"It doesn't concern me."

"You're crazy—drunk!—you don't know what you're doing."

"For the first time in my life I do know what I'm doing." There was a glow in his face, a profound assurance that none who knew him had ever seen before in the eyes of Richard Tomlinson.

"God will punish you, Richard!"

"Do you know, Judith—this is a strange thing to say under the circumstances—but I feel right with God for the first time since I married you."

There was a spring in his step as he went up the stairs.

CHAPTER 26

Judith thought, "He must be stopped. Else he'll leave tonight."

She ran swiftly up the back stairs and burst into Miss Ann's room without knocking.

"Come quick! Richard's planning to follow Thorne to California."

Ann Tomlinson was reading her Bible. There had been no family prayers this night. She closed the book and laid it aside.

"Where is Richard?"

"In Will's room, I think."

Miss Ann went down the hall and tapped at a door that muffled a sound of voices. The voices ceased.

"Who is it?" called Will.

"Your mother."

The door opened to admit Miss Ann. Judith remained outside.

There was a rise and fall of voices for minutes—hours, it seemed—before Ann Tomlinson came out. Judith could not hide the trembling of her lips as she put the question: "Well?"

"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do, Judith. He seems to have made up his mind."

"You mean—you're just going to stand by and let him go?"

"He is a grown man. He has a right to make his own decisions."

This quiet acceptance of so cataclysmic an event was incredible. That the Tomlinsons, with their strict code, should not move heaven and earth to prevent it was beyond belief.

Yet when Judith spoke to Will she met the same strange neutrality.

"It's Richard's business. Not mine."

'The girl might be considered your business," retorted Judith.

"Thorne never bound herself to me," was Will's reply.

"Well, Richard bound himself to me, and I don't intend to let him make a fool of himself."

Richard, meantime, was making hurried preparations for departure. He put together a few personal necessities—no more than would go in his saddlebags—and filled a money belt with all the currency the house yielded. Brother and mother not only watched but actually aided in these preparations. The only deterring word spoken was Will's suggestion that Richard wait till morning to give the horses a rest. They had been run pretty hard that day.

But Richard would not brook even this delay. He wouId ride his own horse as far as Turner's and get a fresh mount there. His brother-in-law was always good for a horse trade.

When Judith appealed again to Richard's mother Miss Ann said, "If he's going, the sooner he starts, the better. He'll lose the trail if that wagon gets too far ahead."

"Then you're going to let him go and do nothing about it?"

Tears filled Ann Tomlinson's eyes. There was nothing she could say.

"So! The Tomlinson religion is only skin-deep after all," sneered Judith. "The household saint, the devout Methodist, who belieyes the Bible from cover to cover, can stand by and see her son desert his wife without lifting a finger to stop him."

"What can I do?"

"You could at least talk to him."

The small gray-haired mother shook her head. "The time for me to have talked to him, Judith, was before he married you."

But if Richard's mother and brother accepted the inevitable, his wife did not. Judith caught her husband as he was starting out to the barn to saddle his horse. She drew him into the kitchen and closed the door.

"I've something to say to you, Richard, before you go." "Nothing you can say will alter my intention." "You may change your mind when you have heard me." He waited with restive patience for whatever new threat or entreaty her desperation had evolved.

"If you go to that girl, I swear, as God is my witness, that I'll charge you with the murder of your first wife."

He stood for seconds, speechless. Then he laughed mirthlessly.

"You're forgetting what I saw last night, aren't you, Judith?" "You saw me hunting on the floor of a closet for a pair of old bedroom slippers. I told you nothing. I admitted nothing. But you talked at great length about a doll which you claimed was put on Abigail's bed for the purpose of frightening her to death. How did you know about the doll, Richard, if you didn't put it on the pillow yourself? You were the last person with Abigail before the doctor came. It was you who reported her ravings about a string tied round a doll's neck. You admitted last night that you told Otis Huse it was you who hid the doll under the closet floor, where he and Lucius Goff found it. I think it would be easy to convince Mr. Huse that you also put the doll on your wife's bed with murderous intent. And Otis Huse is a clever lawyer."

He looked at her in silence so long that her hand began moving toward her throat, where the nervous pain was gathering.

He said softly, "Your name should have been Jezebel." Then he drew a deep breath of release.

"Do your worst, Judith. Go to anyone you please. What you do can't hurt me now."

"Richard! I didn't mean it. I was only trying to frighten you. I love you, Richard. Everything I've done has been for iowe of you. Don't leave me, Richard—come back—come back "

Her cry fell upon empty air. He was gone.

She lifted her eyes to the kitehen shelf above her head. A neat row of canisters held a motley assortment of condiments and household remedies. She reached for one plainly marked with skull and crossbones.

She had not yet played her final card.

Richard was saddling his horse by the light of a lantern when Jesse Moffat came running out to the barn in his night clothes.

"Come quick! Judith's dying."

Richard said, "Oh no, she's not. She's staging another scene."

"Not this time. She's took bad. Miss Ann's sent young Will for the doctor. She says you're not to go till we see what's happened."

"What do you mean?"

"She thinks Judith's taken something."

As they hurried to the house they passed Will on his way to the barn.

"What's happened?" cried Richard.

Will shouted, "Judith's taken poison," and went on running toward the barn. A moment later he dashed out of the yard on Richard's saddled horse.

Still Richard did not believe it. This was another ruse of Judith's to keep him from leaving.

But when he found her laid on the bed in the alcove, moaning and writhing in pain, he was not so sure. Her face was contorted, wet with sweat, and she seemed to be in agony.

"Tell me just what happened," he said to his mother.

"I found her like this. Lying on the bed here, groaning. And I found this on the floor beside her." Miss Ann handed him a water tumbler. There was a small amount of cloudy liquid in the bottom and white powder adhered to the moist rim.

"Is there anything in the house that she could have taken?"

"There's cockroach powder on the shelf in the kitchen."

He and Judith had been talking in the kitchen. The glass and powder had been close at hand.

"If she took something in the kitchen—by mistake, of course —why should she bring the glass in here?"

"If she did not take it by mistake," said Miss Ann significantly, "she might have wanted to be near the bed when she drank it."

Still Richard refused to believe that Judith would go so far as to commit suicide. He sat down beside her and felt her pulse. There was acceleration, but nervous excitement could have caused that. He wiped her face with his own handkerchief. The handkerchief was wet

He was sitting by her when the doctor came. Old Dr. Cax-ton, roused from sleep and none too alert, made a hasty examination of the contents of the water tumbler.

"Roach powder. Full of arsenic. A good strong emetic as fast as we can get it into her."

They worked with Judith for over an hour. When the emetic had done its utmost she lay weak and exhausted but no longer writhing. She was actually too sick now to move.

"Go to bed. Miss Ann. You too. Will. Richard and I will sit with her the rest of the night."

Dr. Caxton issued orders, took off his coat, and prepared to make himself comfortable by the living-room fire. There was nothing for Richard to do but follow his example. He could not explain to the family physician that he was on the point of leaving his wife, when that wife lay possibly dying. For The doctor made it quite clear that the solution in the glass was strong enough to kill ten women.

"I can't figure out how she happened to take the stuff," he said over and over.

"She thought she was taking salts," Richard said in sudden inspiration,

"Humph! That's what comes of keeping physics in a kitchen cupboard. It's a wonder to me . . ."

The doctor's voice droned on and on in comfortable monotone. Judith, lying behind the curtains of the alcove, smiled to herself. She was sick enough now—the emetic had been pure torture—but it was small price to pay for what she had accomplished. Vomiting never killed anyone, and it had convinced Richard that she was not malingering. It would be days, according to the doctor, before she could be pronounced out of danger. And Richard would not have the face to leave while Dr. Caxton was in attendance. When that time of grace had expired she would think of something else.

Meanwhile, a covered wagon, moving steadily westward, would soon be beyond hope of tracing.

Nothing could defeat her. She was too smart. It had been sheer genius to sprinkle that roach powder into a wet water tumbler and set it by her bed.

She fell asleep, well pleased with herself. She would outuit them all yet. She would keep Richard from Thorne, just as she had taken him from Abigail: by the use of her remarkable intelligence.

She awoke suddenly with a pain in her throat. She had no idea how late it was, but she felt as though she had slept a long while. It was the pain which had wakened her: the same old pain which Dr. Caxton had assured her was nothing but a nervous paroxysm of the larynx. She had half a mind to call to the doctor, whose voice beyond the alcove, mingled with Richard's, indicated that the two were still awake and talking.

But as she listened to the indistinct murmur she grew drowsy again and the pain began to subside. She drifted into a delicious state of semiconsciousness that was neither sleeping nor waking, but rather a dreamlike contemplation of all the delights that would be hers nowthat her path was cleared.