The Tragedy of Z (20 page)

It was while I was ruminating over this sad state of affairs, myself in the most indigo mood, father grouchy, Elihu Clay very busy announcing and pushing his candidacy, and Jeremy heaving explosives in his father's quarries with vicious disregard of life and limb, that the inspiration came to me. With Carmichael lost, someone should take his place. Why not I?

The more I thought about it the better I liked the idea. I was positive that Dr. Fawcett suspected father's real mission in Leeds; but with his weakness for females, combined with my own innocent appearance, I saw no reason for doubting that he would fall for my bait as many a better scoundrel has fallen for a woman's bait in the past.

And so, without father's knowledge, I went out of my way to cultivate this bearded gentleman. My first move was to bump into him in town one day—oh, quite by accident!

“Miss Thumm!” he exclaimed, eyeing me with the eagerness for detail of a connoisseur—and I had dressed myself carefully for this encounter, not neglecting to show off my good points, “this is a delightful surprise! I've been meaning to look you up, you know.”

“And have you, really?” I asked archly.

“Oh, I know I've been lax,” he said, smiling, and wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue, “but here—I'll make up for it this moment! You're having lunch with me, young woman.”

I looked coy.
“Dr.
Fawcett! You're fearfully possessive, aren't you?”

His eyes flashed, and he preened his beard. “More so than you could possibly imagine,” he said in a low, intimate voice; and he took my arm and squeezed it ever so gently. “Here's my car.”

And so I sighed, and he helped me into his car, and I thought I saw him wink at the hard-faced chauffeur, Louis, as he bustled in after me. We drove out to a roadhouse—the same at which father and I had met Carmichael weeks before—and the
maitre d'hotel,
recognizing me, I suppose, leered in his best manner and conducted us to a private room.

If I had anticipated the necessity of emulating heroines in Victorian novels and fighting for my honor, I was rather pleasantly disappointed. Dr. Fawcett proved a charming host, and my opinion of him rose. He was not crude. In me I suppose he saw a fresh young thing who was potential prey, but he did not mean to frighten off the quarry by too hasty an approach. He bought me a well-ordered luncheon with excellent
vino,
held my hand briefly across the cloth, and drove me home afterward without having uttered an improper word.

I played the fluttery damsel and waited. I had not mistaken the calibre of my swain. Several nights later he telephoned and asked if he might take me to the theater—a stock-company of sorts was performing
Candida
in town and he thought I might like to see it. I had seen
Candida
only half a dozen times before—it seemed that every prospective gallant on this side of the Atlantic or that considered Shaw's play the proper prologue to an
affaire du coeur.
Nevertheless, I cooed: “Oh, Doctor, I've
never
seen that play, and I
do
so want to. I've heard it's most
frightfully
daring!” (which was pure bilge-water, since it is as mild as a spring evening compared with the lustier products of contemporary playwrights)—and heard him chuckle and promise to call for me the next evening.

The performance was fair; the escort was perfect. We were two in a large party, rather glittering citizens of Leeds whose wives blazed with jewels and whose husbands almost to the last man had red sagging jowls and the tired cunning eyes of politicians. Dr. Fawcett hovered about me like my shadow, and afterward suggested in a casual way that “we all” go to his house for cocktails. Ha! thought Patience; the plot thickens—and I looked doubtful. Was it all right? I mean—He laughed heartily; was it all light! Why, my dear, your father couldn't possibly have any objection.… I sighed and gave in like a silly school girl doing something very, very naughty.

Nevertheless, the evening was not without its hazards. Most conveniently the rest of the party dropped off somewhere, and by the time the doctor and I reached his big bloomy house the party had dwindled miraculously to two—himself and me. I confess to certain misgivings as he held the front door open for me and I entered the house which on my last visit had held a corpse. My fears were not so much for the living menace behind as for the dead one before. I noticed with a sigh of relief as we passed the late Senator's study that its furniture had been rearranged and all evidences of the crime removed.

My visit, as it turned out, served no other purpose than to lull Dr. Fawcett into a false security and to whet his appetite. He plied me with cocktails, potently concocted; but I had matriculated from a university in which judicious drinking was a required course, and I think he was rather astonished at my capacity, despite the fact that I tried very hard to appear drunk. During the course of the evening my gallant discarded his gentleman's manner and became himself again; he drew me to a divan and, by consummate degrees, began to make love to me. It was necessary for me to exhibit both the physical agility of an adagio dancer and the histrionic genius of a Drury Lane to avoid being compromised as well as found out. Although I extricated myself from his embraces only with difficulty, it is one of my proudest boasts that I succeeded both in repulsing his advances and continuing to pique his interest in me. He was willing, it transpired, to wait for the dainty morsel. I suppose half his enjoyment derived from anticipation.

And so, having breached the wall, I brought up my shock troops. My visits to Dr. Fawcett's lair became frequent—in direct proportion to the intensity of his love-making, which made them frequent indeed. This perilous life continued for a month after Aaron Dow's commitment to Algonquin Prison; a month full of hazards, not the least of which was father's suspicious questions and Jeremy's sulky possessiveness. That young man was a positive menace; on one occasion, dissatisfied with my explanation that I had made “friends” with someone in town, he followed me; and it was necessary for me to act like an eel under water to shake him off.

Things came to a head on a Wednesday night, I recall. I had called at the Fawcett house rather earlier than the doctor had expected me, and as I entered the doctor's private study next to his medical office on the ground floor, I surprised him studying something—a most peculiar something—which stood on his desk. He looked up, muttered a curse, smiled, and meanwhile hastily put the object into the top drawer; and I had to summon every last resource to keep from betraying myself. It was—oh, impossible! And yet I had seen it with my own eyes. It had come at last; incredibly, it had come at last.

When I left the house that night, I was trembling with excitement. Even his love-making had been perfunctory, and I had had to work less hard than usual repulsing him. Why? I could not doubt that his mind was occupied with thoughts of that object in the top drawer of his desk.

So instead of walking down the driveway to where the car was waiting, I stole around to the side of the house, bound for the window of Dr. Fawcett's study. If all my visits heretofore had failed of their purpose—which was, if possible, to get my hands on documents damning to their owner—I was sure that this one would prove more fruitful than I had dreamed. There would be no documents; but something so much more important that it made my throat lumpy and my heart pound so loudly I was afraid Dr. Fawcett would hear it through the wall.

I managed, by pulling my dress up above my knees and making use of a tough vine, to clamber into a position in which the interior of the study was visible to me. I silently thanked my little gods for having evoked a moonless night. As I peeped over the outer sill and saw what Dr. Fawcett was doing at the desk, I could have screamed with triumph. As I had foreseen! He had no sooner got rid of me than he had dashed back to study that thing in his drawer.

There he sat, his lean face murky with passion, his vandyke jutting out with menace, his fingers gripping the object as if he would annihilate it by main strength. And what was that? A letter—no, a note! It lay on the desk beside him; he picked it up fiercely and read it with such a terrifying expression that, excited, I lost my balance on the vine and fell to the gravel below, making a clatter that would have awakened the dead.

He must have flashed out of his chair to the window like lightning; for the next thing I knew, as I sat sprawled on the gravel, I was staring up at his face in the wondow. I was so frightened that I could not move a muscle. His face was as black as the night about me. I saw his lips curl into a snarl, and he banged the window up. Then fear revived me, and, scrambling to my feet, I ran down the path like the wind. Dimly I heard the thud of his feet landing on the walk, and their pounding as he dashed after me.

He yelled: “Louis! Get her, Louis!” and out of the darkness before me loomed his chauffeur, hard lips a-grin, simian arms outstretched. I stumbled into them, half-fainting, and he clutched me fast with iron fingers.

Dr. Fawcett panted up and grasped my arm so tightly that I cried out. “So you are a spy, after all!” he muttered, staring into my face as if to convince himself. “You almost fooled me, you little devil.” He looked up and said curtly to the chauffeur: “Beat it, Louis.”

The chauffeur said: “Sure, boss,” and disappeared into the darkness, still grinning.

I was petrified with fear. I cowered in Dr. Fawcett's grip, dizzy, scared, sick at heart and stomach. He shook me, I remember, with a deliberate viciousness, and rasped foul things in my ear. I caught a glimpse of his eyes; his eyeballs were taut and shining with passion, and the passion was murder.…

I shall never recall exactly what happened; whether I succeeded in wriggling out of his grasp, or whether he let me go voluntarily. But the next thing I knew clearly was that I was stumbling down the pitchy road, my evening gown dragging at my heels and tripping me, the marks of Dr. Fawcett's fingers burning my arms like branding irons.

After a while I stopped, and leaned against an old black tree, and cooled my hot face in the slight breeze, and wept bitter tears of shame and relief. Father seemed very dear to me at that moment. Detective! I dashed the tears from my cheeks and snorted. I should be sitting by a fire somewhere knitting.… And then I heard the sound of a motor-car coming slowly along the road in my direction.

I shrank against the tree, scarcely breathing; in an instant stiff with panic again. Was it Dr. Fawcett, coming after me to complete that awful threat in his eyes? The car's headlights swept into view from around a bend in the road; it was coming ever so slowly, as if its driver was not sure.… And then I laughed hysterically and ran out into the road waving my arms like a madwoman, shrieking: “Jeremy! Oh, Jeremy darling! Here I am!”

For once I was grateful to the gods that made faithful young lovers. Jeremy leaped from the car and caught me in his arms, and I was so glad to see a decent friendly face that I permitted him to kiss me, and wipe away my tears, and half-carry me into the car, and tuck me in beside him.

He was so frightened himself that he forbore asking questions, for which I was doubly grateful to him. But I gathered that he had followed me that night, had seen me go into Dr. Fawcett's house, and had waited in the road all evening for me to come out. He had barely heard the commotion in the grounds, and by the time he had run up the driveway I was gone, and Dr. Fawcett was striding back to the house.

“What did you do, Jeremy?” I quavered, snuggling against his big shoulder.

He took his right hand off the wheel and sucked its knuckles, wincing. “Socked him one,” he announced briefly. “Just for luck. Then some other bird, a a chauffeur, I guess, ran up and we had a little battle. Nothing much. I was lucky—that guy's a brute.”

“You poked him too, Jeremy darling?”

“He had a glass jaw,” snapped Jeremy; and, having recovered from his initial joy in finding me, he went back into character and gloomily surveyed the road ahead, ignoring me with a fine Jovian air.

“Jeremy …”

“Well?”

“Don't you want an explanation?”

“Who—me? Do I rate one? If you want to burn your fingers on highbinders like Fawcett, Pat, that's your funeral. I'm a damned fool to mix up in it. Swell thanks I get!”

“I think you're lovely.”

He was silent, and so I sighed and stared at the road ahead, and directed Jermy to drive to Father Muir's house atop the hill. I suddenly felt the need of mature counsel, and I longed to see the kind and discerning face of Drury Lane. My news … He would be very interested. I was sure that this was what had been keeping him in Leeds.

When Jeremy brought the car to a stop before the little gate and rose-strewn stone wall of Father Muir's, I saw that the house was dark.

“Looks like nobody home,” grunted Jeremy.

“Oh, dear! Well, I'm going to make sure, anyway.” I got wearily out of the car, climbed to the porch, and rang the bell. To my surprise a light flashed on in the little hall beyond the door, and a little old lady popped her gray heat out.

“Good evenin', ma'am,” she said. “Were you lookin' for Father Muir?”

“Not exactly. Isn't Mr. Drury Lane in?”

“Oh, no, ma'am.” She lowered her voice and looked grave. “Mr. Lane and Father Muir are over to the prison, ma'am. I'm Mis' Crossett—come in at times like these to sort of keep things goin'. The good Father—he don't like to …”

“At the prison!” I exclaimed. “And this time of night? What on earth for?”

She sighed. “There's a execution in the death-house, ma'am, tonight. A New York gangster, they say; Scalzi is his name, or some such foreign name. Father Muir has to administer the last rites, and Mr. Lane, he went along as a witness. Wanted to see an execution, he did, and Warden Magnus, he give Mr. Lane a invitation.”