She turned her head away quickly.
“We had just four days together, but . . . but I guess that was enough. I . . . oh, I can’t bear it, Grace. I can’t, I can’t! I loved him so much! And now I hate him! I hate him! Oh, why did he have to——”
I went over to her and drew her down by me on the sofa.
“Stop it, Molly!” I said sharply. “Stop it right now. You’re just being a fool, a complete absolute fool. Cass knew you a long time before he played checkers with you, so it isn’t as if he’d run into you on a street corner and married you because he had a free Saturday night. You’ve certainly heard from him since he’s been away, and——”
She shook her head quickly.
“But I haven’t. He told me I wouldn’t, because nobody was supposed to know where he was. A couple of times people came through and brought me a message, but all he ever said was for me to brush up on my checkers and he was all right. But I didn’t mind that . . . but if he could let Courtney know . . .”
“Look, Molly,” I said. “I’m going to the phone and call him now.”
She was on her feet in an instant, her eyes blazing, her face pale, her fists tightly clenched at her sides.
“No you’re not!” she cried. “If you do, I’ll go somewhere else. You don’t understand! I was right—in the very beginning I was right. He was making fun of me. Courtney knew it. Then he got down in the jungles and it looked different, and that’s why he thought he was in love with me. It’s Courtney he really loves—he always has. And she loves him. And I know it, and I hate them both!”
I got up.
“You go to bed,” I said firmly. “Tomorrow you can decide what you’re going to do——”
“I’ve decided already.”
She was perfectly calm again.
“In fact, I’ve not only decided what I’m going to do—I’ve already done it. You may think it’s awful, but I’m going to show them both I can be just as cold-blooded as they are. You haven’t any idea what I’ve put up with from people around here the last four months.”
Her eyes were blazing again suddenly, and as yellow as a topaz.
I managed a smile.
“Nobody’s likely to think you’re particularly cold-blooded, angel,” I said. “So go to bed, and go to sleep.”
In the doorway she turned back.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” she said. “I haven’t any right forcing my troubles on you and then acting this way. If you’d rather I’d go——”
“All I want you to do is go to bed,” I said. “You’re welcome to stay. There’s a key in the top drawer of the desk over there, and you can come and go as you please. But do try to use your head. After all, Cass isn’t responsible for what Courtney——”
I stopped. Sheila, lying on her stomach on the cool hearth bricks, gave a low growl and got to her feet. That usually meant someone coming up the front steps. I hadn’t heard anyone, and I couldn’t now, but she growled again, the hair on her back rising a little as she went through the dining room toward the front door.
4
“Is somebody coming?” Molly asked quickly.
“It’s rather late for visitors.”
I looked at the clock on the desk. It was twenty minutes to twelve.
“I’m going up,” she said. “If it’s anybody for me, I’m not here. Please, Grace. And you don’t know where I am.”
She slipped off her shoes and disappeared. I could hear the step half-way up that always creaks, and her door close softly, as I waited for the doorbell to ring. Sheila gave an impatient high-pitched bark and scratched at the door. It wasn’t like her at all, and in that otherwise completely silent house it was a little disturbing. The doorbell isn’t hard to find, and if it were there’s a knocker there.
I went out into the hall and switched on the overhead light. I tried to tell myself it was probably someone not wanting to ring the bell at that time of night if I’d gone upstairs, and I knew no lights were visible from the street, with the old-fashioned solid wood shutters locked and barred in the dining room windows. I turned on the outside light, however, and reached out to take down the chain Molly had put in place when Randy had gone. As I touched it Sheila gave such a savage growl that I dropped it instantly.
It may be absurd to endow a dog with an intuition of danger, but when you’re alone—except for a colored cook wrapped in primeval slumber downstairs—you come to depend on their acuter senses. Anyway, it would have taken more courage than I had just then to have opened that door. I switched off the hall light instead, slipped into the dining room, unbolted the shutter on the farthest window, and opened the flap enough to peer out.
There wasn’t anybody on the front stoop at all, or anybody that I could see in the radius of the light reaching out under the trees.
I closed the shutter and went back to the front door. Sheila was still sniffing and whining. Perhaps it was just a cat she didn’t like, I thought. I turned the bolt and opened the door. She shot out in front of me, growling. I looked quickly along the street. The red tail lights of a car going a little on the diagonal straightened and went on as she dashed down the steps, nose to the bricks, following a scent that brought her to an abrupt stop at an open place on the curb four houses down. She sniffed around and came back to it, and back to the door again. I watched her, completely bewildered, as she went back to the curb, and suddenly lifted her head and howled. It was that long low howl that some people think is a warning of death . . . reeking in a dog’s nostrils before mortals are aware of its chilling shadow lengthening across the doorway. I don’t believe that, but I shivered a little, thinking that Lilac might hear it, and remembering her agony when a picture fell, long ago, one evening just at dusk, and the next day two little boys and she and I began to carry on by ourselves in that same house.
I also found myself glancing down the block and across the street at the yellow brick house where Colonel Primrose lives. Seven generations of John Primroses have been born and lived in that house, but fortunately only one of Sergeant Bucks. I don’t know where he was born, or if he was born at all. It’s hard to imagine he was ever a baby lisping at his mother’s knee. It’s easier to think of him as hacked full-grown out of a stone quarry. Still, it was always rather comforting to know they were both just across the way.
Or it was until I remembered they weren’t there. They’d gone out of town on account of the heat. Or that’s what Sergeant Buck told Lilac, and the newspapers ostensibly confirmed it. It was the first time, however, I’d ever heard of Colonel Primrose announcing his holidays publicly, and since his job is that of a special and apparently unofficial investigator for various of the Intelligence branches, it’s always a little hard to tell. All I know is that he once gave me a telephone number I was to learn and destroy, so that if I ever needed him and he didn’t appear to be at home I could get him. I’ve never used it, but I thought of it now as I whistled for Sheila.
She came reluctantly back, and I pulled her inside and closed the door, double-locking it and putting the chain up, to keep something dark and amorphous that Sheila still felt—and that I was beginning to feel—out of our lives if I could.
I turned off the sitting room lights and went upstairs.