Date with Death Read online

  Jonas heard her heels clicking madly up the steps, a door slam, a chair crash to the floor as she stumbled blindly over it. Then there was silence, and the clock ticking again. He looked back. Grymes had slumped down in the chair and put his head forward in his hands on the table. He was crying, his shoulders shaking with the dry sobs that racked his body.

  He raised his face suddenly. There was something terrible in the hag-ridden despair that corroded it.

  “It’s a damned lie. I did care about him. I cared a lot about him. He was a… a so-and-so in lots of ways, but we got got along. He and I got along. We understood each other. But that she-devil up there… she’s got me. She’s got me, doctor. I tell you, she’s got me. And she’ll ruin me. That’s what she’s after. I know—”

  He got up and went drunkenly to the door, remembered his hat on the chair by the table, came back and got it and went to the front door and out.

  Jonas stood there. The tiger cat rubbed affectionately back and forth against his legs, purring like a small successful witch. It was a hellish brew of some kind steaming in the Grymes-Van Holt cauldron. What, in the name of anything sensible or reasonable, he thought, was going on? It was bad about Grymes. He’d look back on the scene he’d put on with an intense and hideous embarrassment. And what was it all for? What did it mean?

  He went over to the crowded mantel to look at the pictures on it. As Philippa had said, the Grymes’ family quarrels were no business of his. There was a photograph of a midshipman inscribed “To Miss Olive from Tom.” He picked it up, took it over to the window and looked at it in the light. That it was Midshipman Thomas Darrell there was not much doubt. The resemblance between him and his sister Elizabeth was as strong as the contrast between the two of them and the dark elf-cum-gypsy that was their younger sister. He was blond, clean-cut and serious-eyed, with a look of pride and dependability that was good to see.

  Jonas looked at it, so absorbed in thinking about what this day’s reaction to what had happened out at Arundel Creek would be to a young man with a face as open and straightforward as this that he did not hear Philippa Van Holt until she was there beside him.

  “You think something’s happened to him too, don’t you?” she asked soberly. “I don’t know what it could be that would be too serious. He wouldn’t be unsat in academics, he’s too bright and he works too hard. He wouldn’t lie. That’s serious, over the wall. He might have a girl and he might have married her and they found it out. But I’ve never heard of him having any particular girl. Or he could have frenched out and got caught. That’s what they call being out at unauthorized hours. But that’s sort of out of style, I’m told, since the new superintendent decided midshipmen should be treated like intelligent adults and relaxed a lot of the old rules. They have so much liberty now they don’t have to play games with the Jimmylegs.”

  She put the photograph back on the mantel.

  “I certainly hope that boy isn’t in trouble. He really wants to be a naval officer. His father was a captain, killed in the Battle of Midway. Their mother died a long time ago. I don’t know much about her. Of course Professor Darrell is sort of an anachronism—or he would be anywhere but Annapolis. He spends his mornings at the Annapolitan Club, his afternoons between the Yacht Club and the Alumni House and his evenings between the Yacht Club and the Annapolitan Club. He was a professor of mathematics two years in the last war at the Naval Academy and a year afterwards at St. John’s College. Otherwise I don’t suppose he’s done a lick of work in his life. And he’s a perfect stinker to poor little Jenny. Sometimes I want to cry when he bellows at her, and when I see her watching him like the adoration of the magi.”

  She broke off, drew her breath in sharply, put her foot up on the chair and scratched her slim and elegant leg.

  “And very nice too,” Jonas remarked.

  “Man speaking or doctor?” She laughed. “Don’t get me wrong. Just take a look out back. If I’m ever drowned you’ll know where. This fantastic female I live with has a fish pond that breeds mosquitoes the size of jaguars. The fish are why you’ll see her—and me, for God’s sake—out walking this damned cat on a string. I walk it when Miss Olive baby-sits and cuts out facts. And let’s get out before she flits in.”

  Jonas looked out the back window at the border of iris and peonies along the uneven brick walk. At the end of the garden he could see the pond under lilac and syringa bushes.

  “Or if Miss Olive and the cat are drowned…”

  The telephone rang in the hall.

  “I’d better answer it. It might be the police, if Franklin got up nerve enough…”

  He heard her say, “Hello. Why yes, he is here. Would you like to speak to him?” Her voice changed to instant concern. “Oh, no!”

  Jonas went toward her. She shook her head at him, listening.

  “Oh my dear, I’m terribly sorry. I know he’ll come. He’ll be there in about three minutes.”

  She put the phone down and snatched up her bag. “Quickly. Professor Darrell’s had a stroke or something. Dr. Pardee’s out in the country having a baby. She wants you, if you’ll come. I’ll drive you.”

  The screen door slammed behind them as they ran down the steps. She started the car, backed it and brought it around with a skill and efficiency that Jonas noticed admiringly in spite of his concern.

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it?”

  They shot out into College Avenue, turned down Prince George Street, and were at Blanton-Darrell Court in less than the three minutes.

  “I’ll stop at the gate, it’ll save time,” Philippa said. “I’ll go on alone. Don’t worry about me. The living are more important than the dead. But may I come over and see you later? I can’t bear the idea of Miss Olive this evening.”

  “Sure, come ahead,” Jonas said. “And thanks.”

  He slammed the car door shut, dashed into the Court and into his own house to get his bag. Miss Van Holt was right, of course. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The bulbous nose, the swelling vein in the old man’s temple when he flared up about Jenny and the Sunday paper, the glaring old eyes, were all signs, to say nothing of Wetherby’s “black as your heart is, you best watch yourself.” More gravely concerning, to Jonas’s mind, was what might have brought this on.

  “Oh, thanks for coming!”

  Elizabeth met him in the hall. She was almost as pale as the white sharkskin dress she wore.

  “He’s in here. We haven’t tried to move him.”

  Jonas had already heard the thick stertorous breathing. Professor Darrell was lying unconscious in the middle of the floor in the room Jonas had been in. As he went quickly to him he was aware of the shocked and frightened faces of the two midshipmen standing helplessly in the background, and Jenny hunched into a small paralyzed knot of terror in a corner of the love seat. Wetherby was kneeling on the floor. “—It’s all right, Professor, sir. The doctor here now. He young, but he here, sir, that’s one consolation. You ain’ goin’ to die. God ain’ got no use for you, not yet he ain’, nor the devil ain’.”

  As Jonas looked at the suffused apoplectic face, purple membranes and the cyanotic stain darkening the finger nails he was not so sure.

  “Let’s get him to bed,” he said. He motioned to the midshipmen.

  “In his own room, if you can make it,” Elizabeth said quickly. “It’s ready.” She took Jonas’s bag. “Stay down here, Jenny, and wait for Tom.”

  The midshipmen and Jonas carried him up the broad stairway.

  “I guess it’s my fault,” one of them mumbled unhappily. “All I did was tell him Tom was in a jam and confined to his room. I guess I should have waited. It’s my—”

  “No it isn’t, George,” Elizabeth said. “He had to be told.”

  In a corner room overlooking the back garden they lifted him onto the fourposter bed. Wetherby got the old man out of his se
ersucker suit.

  “Have you left word for Dr. Pardee?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I talked to him. He said he wouldn’t come. He’s always said it was going to happen, and he wouldn’t come when it did. But he’ll be here. He and Grandfather quarrel, but they’re old friends really. He’s tried for years to make Grandfather behave himself.”

  She watched the needle of the dial of the blood pressure apparatus as Jonas listened to the pumping heart. Her hands were tightly clenched at her sides. The pale light from the darkened window behind her transformed her hair into a smooth softly golden cap.

  “How old is he, Miss Darrell?”

  “Seventy-three his last birthday.”

  “Is this the first—”

  “He’s never been sick a day in his life. That’s why he thinks all doctors are fools. They always said this would happen and it never has, before.”

  Her eyes followed him, poignantly questioning, as he put his stethoscope back in his bag. Even in the darkened room her fragile lovely face stood out with startling purity above the grotesque and terrible figure of the old man on the bed, his powerful chest heaving, his purple lips emitting their drunken snores. It was at that moment that Jonas Smith knew he was deeply, and with no possibility of turning back from it, truly in love with her. His hands trembled as he closed his bag. It was a different thing from what had happened to him the night before, as different as the reflected image of her in the mirror was to her real and actual presence there across the width of the bed from him now. It was an intense and acutely physical awareness of her that quivered and burned in every nerve and pulse of his body and surged up in a blinding tenderness, a desire to go to her and take her in his arms, to comfort her and give her hope. Or what hope he could give her of the kind she needed then with the shadow of death there between them.

  “Is he… Dr. Smith, will my grandfather…?”

  He steadied himself at the desperate appeal in her voice.

  “I can’t tell you.” He was surprised to find his own voice as normal and professionally matter-of-fact as if nothing had happened to him at all. “We’ll have to wait until he’s conscious to see. He may not regain consciousness. You’ve got to prepare yourself for that. It may be a cerebral apoplexy, though as far as I can tell now there isn’t any extensive paralysis at this point. It may come from an oedema in the brain—if you want the technical language—or a cerebral angiospasm he may or may not get over. It has happened that people do come out of it. We just have to wait, Miss Darrell. There’s nothing to do but keep him quiet and get fluids into him. Give him expectant care. Keep him from biting his tongue or choking on it. We ought to get a nurse.”

  “I can take care of him, Wetherby and I together. It’d be much worse if he woke up and found a stranger here. He’d fly into another rage.”

  “Was that what—”

  She nodded as Jonas hesitated.

  “He got infuriated when—”

  She broke off, her eyes widening in sudden alarm. Jonas heard steps hurrying up the stairs, a man’s voice.

  “Jenny! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m just waiting for you. Oh, Tom, it’s all my fault. I’ve killed him too. I have! And oh, Tom, what I’ve done to you! Oh, Tom, Tom!”

  Elizabeth was around the end of the bed like a flashing gold-tipped arrow, her face white, her eyes drained as grey as a rain-washed hyacinth.

  Jonas took a quick step and caught her arm. “Elizabeth!” She had thrown the door open. In the hall just outside Jenny was held in her brother’s arms, her dark head buried against his shoulder, sobbing wildly, her whole small body shaking and tormented.

  “—I’ve killed Grandfather too. I’ve killed him too! First Gordon—”

  “Stop her, Tom—make her stop! She doesn’t know what she’s saying!”

  The midshipman’s face was white as he stared over the girl’s dark head at Jonas Smith and beyond him at the bed. He was as tall as Jonas, older looking than in the photograph on Miss Olive’s mantel, and he was the man Jonas had seen at the cottage. There was no possible mistake. He was the man out there in the ensign’s uniform.

  Tom Darrell put his hand gently over Jenny’s mouth, picked her up and carried her a few steps down the hall and into her room. Elizabeth turned back to Jonas, her breath coming in frightened gasps.

  “It… she doesn’t know what she’s saying…”

  The midshipman appeared in the doorway, strode past them to the bed, looked down at his grandfather for an instant, went to the window and stood there, his back to them. He turned in a moment and looked at Jonas. His jaw was set, his eyes steady.

  “Who is this, Elizabeth?”

  “Dr. Smith. Dr. Jonas Smith. My brother, Tom Darrell.”

  The men’s eyes met in an unwavering scrutiny. The midshipman was broad-shouldered, erect in the blue uniform with the insignia of the First Class. The stripes that should have marked his rank of honor were no longer on his sleeve.

  Elizabeth took an uncertain step toward him. “Tom… what happened?”

  His eyes moved from Jonas to her, and back again.

  “I frenched out last night. There was a girl I wanted to see. I was Midshipman Officer of the Watch. I left as soon as I secured Bancroft Hall. I saw her and came back. I’d have got away with it, but a fellow on a visiting team went out on a party and got drunk. He kicked up such a row when he got in that the Officer of the Day sent for me. I wasn’t in my room. I came back through the gate and the Jimmylegs were waiting for me. I’d put on my ensign’s uniform to get out, I was impersonating an officer. I was on duty and deserted my post. I’m through, Elizabeth. The Commandant let me out for two hours to see Grandfather. I’ve got to go back to my room and report to the Main Office every hour. They may let me come and see him tomorrow. But I’m out.”

  As Elizabeth turned away Jonas saw the tears in her eyes.

  “—If you told the Commandant the truth, Darrell…” he said.

  “I’ve told the truth, Dr. Smith. I went out to see a girl. I saw her. I got caught. That’s the truth. It wouldn’t be healthy even for a doctor to make any mistake about it. If you’ll excuse me, I want to see Jenny before I go back to Bancroft Hall.”

  He started to the door. Jonas stepped in front of it.

  “I meant the whole truth,” he said. “Don’t you people think all this is a pretty steep price to pay for one late date?”

  CHAPTER 7

  “—Wickedly and damnably steep,” Jonas Smith said deliberately.

  He looked from one of them to the other. He couldn’t tell which was the more staggered—the young midshipman totally unprepared for the blow, or his sister, in spite of everything not prepared for the crushing completeness of it. How she could have allowed herself to cling to any hope or deluded herself into believing there could be any, after the incident of the beach bag and what had gone on for the last hour and a half in her grandfather’s living room, Jonas had no idea. That she had done it was poignantly clear as she reached out unsteadily for the mahogany bedpost to steady herself, in her parted lips and the look of shocked dismay she fixed on him.

  The midshipman caught himself quickly after one speechless instant. His shoulders stiffened.

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about, Dr. Smith.” He spoke with a surprising composure that would have been more convincing if it had not been for the warning glance he shot his sister. “I think you must have got all mixed up somewhere, doctor.”

  “That… is right,” Jonas said. He wondered what either of them would do, knowing how mixed up he really had got. “Not the way you think. If you don’t know what I’m talking about I’ll be glad to explain. The sooner the better.” He turned to Elizabeth Darrell. “If you’ll get Wetherby back here to stay with your grandfather I’ll do it right now. Is there some place we can go where there won’t be people listening in?”<
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  He saw an evanescent spark of hope spring up in her eyes and die a small cold death as she caught another of her brother’s swift warning glances. For an instant she’d been ready to trust him. The instant was gone, with little hope of its returning. Jonas was aware of it even more sharply a moment later as he went through a narrow passage off the old man’s room into a small crowded study and heard Tom Darrell’s quick whisper behind him:

  “Watch it. Could be a trap. What do you know about him?”

  Nothing, of course. They knew nothing about him—Tom less than Elizabeth if her brief impulse toward faith in him had been what Jonas wanted to believe it was, an instinctive if as yet unconscious response to his own emotion about her. So profoundly was he moved by it himself that he didn’t see how there could help be some communication of it, no matter how tenuous, between them. But as Tom closed the door and Elizabeth went over to the window and turned to face him again, there was nothing left to indicate it. All there was between them was a blank defensive wall, invisible but as tangibly real as if it had had both substance and shadow of its own.

  “I mean this,” he said quietly. “I was at the Fergusons’ cottage when Jenny came there to phone for you last night, or this morning rather.”

  He kept his eyes on Tom Darrell, standing with his shoulders back against the mahogany door, his hand still behind him holding the knob. He was acutely aware of Elizabeth without having to look at her.

  Neither of them moved.

  “I was out on the pier when they first came. What she told you, about the car keys and the telephone, is true. When she rowed over, I saw her change her dress and leave her own in Natalie Ferguson’s beach bag. I didn’t speak to her because I didn’t want to frighten her any worse than she was frightened already. I followed her back to the Milnors’. I didn’t know who Jenny was or who Gordon Darcy was, and I didn’t know he was dead. I thought there’d been trouble—he’d passed out or something—and I’d stick around until you showed up… just in case. I was there when you two came. I didn’t know who you were either, but I heard your first names. I saw what you did, Darrell, and I heard what all of you said. I saw you leave.