# The Pit That He Digged

Extracted from Green Book magazine, August 1918, pp. 299–310. Illustrations by Arthur D. Fuller may be omitted.
The Pit That He Digged
By ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD
KEN PAULSON stared across the table. With a strange feeling of the irrevocable, he realized that this was the Other Woman. A sidelong glance at his wife revealed her, dainty and delicate in every line and in every shade of her pale coloring. He noted with annoyance the pout of her almost childish lips as they closed over the straw in her lemonade-glass. Then his eyes, under their heavy, unmoving lids, slid back to the vivid face of his vis-à-vis. Her gaze was fixed amusedly on his, as if she heard the pounding of his heart, sensed the biting tingle of his nerves and was mocking him.
The color mounted to his face, came creeping toward his tightly curled red hair. To hide his confusion, he lifted the highball glass and gulped its contents. Then he leaned forward on his elbows, contemplating his hands—hands at once nervous and unresponsive, their lines deeply etched and darkly red. Conscious of the observation of the woman opposite, he closed his fists, suddenly withdrew his arms and, leaning back in the bent-wood restaurant chair, thrust both hands protectingly into his pockets. He had the crafty man's knowledge that his naked fingers spoke louder than his masklike countenance.
“Nickey!” It was his wife's clear voice that spoke. “Leave Bobby and come over here by me. It's an age since we were together, and I'm just hungry for gossip.”
Nicaise Morley rose, her tall, slim figure a gracious silhouette against the white woodwork of the wall, and crossed behind McMonigal's chair to the vacant seat Doris Paulson had drawn over from an unoccupied table. There she subsided with an easy uncoiling movement. Immediately the two women became absorbed in low-voiced, intimate talk. Paulson, McMonigal and Marham were abandoned to the affairs of men—McMonigal and Markham, that is, for Paulson sat silent; he was usually silent.
Paulson's curiously direct, uncompromising mind, faced the situation squarely. He intended to have this woman, his wife's friend. He had no doubt at all of his ability to interest her, to hold her, to bind her to him. He had a way with women. As for his wife, he had no qualm or question. As long as she did not make trouble, she was free to go on existing. If she made herself a convenience, so much the better. Meanwhile, until he should have burned his passion into her brain and heart, Nicaise Morley must be kept within sight, within touching-distance. Doris should invite her to the house at once—at the close of the present visit that had brought this tempting danger from the South. Doris' voice raised in high-pitched laughter grated on his nerves. It came over him with a sense of shock that she bored him—had, in fact, bored him for months.
He turned toward her, setting his huge shoulders sidewise against the back of the chair that creaked to his weight. He looked at her coldly, analytically. Why, he asked himself frankly, had he married her? First, the appeal of her almost nunlike, ethereal loveliness—he had desired to “humanize” it. Then too, he had wanted a wife, tractable, easily molded, weak—in short, one unlearned in the vices of his chosen world. He had wanted a wife with no immediate family ties to complicate his plan of life. Doris was an orphan, without brothers or sisters. Her fortune was unquestionably hers without let or hindrance. The aunt who had brought her up was no dependent but a shrewd New Englander who was rumored to be more than “well fixed.” Paulson admitted frankly to himself that all the obvious conditions had been fulfilled in his selection of Doris. He had wanted her not of his world, and she was not of his world; but therefore she bored him. That had been an oversight. He had broken her to his harness; she was bitted and trained. Yet it had needed only the sight of the unruly vitality, the unbroken pride, independent, attacking mind and the daring beauty of a stranger to breed hatred of colorless, obedient purity.
Yes, he decided, Doris would have to get out, even if she was as complacent as need be, as blind and deaf to his foibles as he had made her. He couldn't be bothered having her around. Her presence in the future must inevitably annoy him. He must send her back to her aunt at once—no, he needed her for bait for the Other Woman, the real woman, to bring her within his grasp. Doris would have to be put up with until his desire had closed upon its object.
McMoNIGAL'S heavy laugh broke in upon his concentration.
“Hey, Ken, can't you stop gazing at your Frau? Lord, you're a constant lover! There's the waiter, and this round is on me.”
Paulson, having readjusted his point of view to suit the new twist of fate, turned back both physically and mentally to the table and became affable. With a word caught on the fly he deftly broke up the talk between the two women, and conversation became general. By a simple maneuver he placed Doris between the men and settled himself beside Nickey Morley. Without a word, without a glance, relying on the nameless emanation of personal magnetism, he set himself to attract her—and found her dynamic force the equal of his own. She seemed to be studying him, weighing him, as she talked, talked sense with consummate frankness.
The party broke up at the door of the road-house, where their cars drew up, and farewells were exchanged.
“Doris,” said Paulson as he tucked the robes about his wife's feet, “why don't you ask Miss Morley to come to you after she leaves the Hendersons? I may have to go to Chicago for a couple of weeks, and it would be nice for you to have some one, some one you like, with you.”
Doris beamed. “Nickey,” she called, crawling halfway over the back of the seat like an eager child, “call me up in the morning. I want to talk with you; and I want you to plan to come and stay with me. Ken's going away.”
“I'd love to come,” the girl called back as the roar of the car drowned her voice.
Settling back in the seat, Doris began a rapid patter of reminiscences. Nickey and she had been to school together in New Orleans, years ago. After the yellow fever had orphaned her, and Aunt Ernestine, her mother's sister, had sent for the child to come North, Nicaise—that was her real name, because she was born in Nice—had passed from her life until accident had brought them together in New York. Since then, whenever Nickey came to the city, they had renewed the friendship. Nickey was such a queer girl, so defiant and independent. She'd even gone to Europe quite alone, and traveled for a year. And there wasn't anything she didn't know. She was wonderful.
Doris talked in italics, with curious inflections and the ghost of a lisp. Even while he greedily listened to the matter of her monologue, Paulson loathed the mannerisms that clothed the information.
As the car drew up in front of the wide veranda of his country home, a strange sense of contentment, of physical well-being, invaded Ken. It was as if he saw in the doorway, not his wife's girlish figure, but the vital, almost powerful body of the Other Woman, and her vivid, compelling face. Doris had never fitted the richness of the house; he felt it suddenly, just as he had realized in a flash that she bored him. Well, it would not be long.
Two weeks slipped by, punctuated by several gatherings, where the lovely Louisianian appeared only to deepen the impression she had made.
AT last, amid a mighty clatter of childish glee from Doris, Nickey arrived for the promised visit. Two days before, Ken had announced that as the principals in the deal he had in view had decided to meet in New York, his trip to Chicago was indefinitely postponed. When the guest arrived, he apologized for his presence with a show of regret that was intended to lure an expression of pleasure. It elicited only a laugh.
That intrigued Paulson. He meant the girl to believe that for her he was prepared to wreck any plan, invent any lie; but he did not mean her to be amused. In point of fact, Nicaise Morley was unaware of the subterfuge, and had she realized it, would have packed her bag at once and departed in scorn. But this was beyond Paulson's guessing. His power over women had never once met the buckler of indifference. His devotion she interpreted as the assiduities of a host. His veiled innuendoes and his outspoken admiration she received frankly as an expression of kindliness toward his wife's friend. Against his will, Paulson had deceived her as thoroughly as he had the large majority of those who thought they knew him, and believed him to be “a good-enough sort.”
The beginning of Paulson's fortune, his marriage when almost a youth to an elderly and infatuated woman of wealth, had long ago been forgotten, particularly as the lady did not long survive; and the widower, having cashed in on all of his wife's holdings, had left the Western city of his birth, traveled extensively in Europe and with a set of New York acquaintances acquired abroad returned to America to make the metropolis his home.
There was nothing in his heavy-set but athletic figure, or his handsome Napoleonic face, to indicate the cunning and cruelty of his nature—nothing but his hands, and few observed them.
Unaware of the passion that enveloped her like the burning garment of Nessus,—which in this case consumed him and not the wearer,—Nickey danced and laughed her way through the days with unconscious freedom. Even the evil of his touch, because she was unresponsive, left her unnoticing. As his familiarities increased, she met them with increasing gayety and friendliness.
Paulson was not used to such women. That she did not resent, meant to him that she knew and acquiesced. In all her freedom and frankness he read abandon. In the exaggeration of her speech, he read invitation. Yet brutal as he was, he toyed with his desire, enjoying what he imagined to be the electric understanding between them, unwilling to declare his passion in words, until he felt he had exasperated her by his silence, never for once guessing that he lived in a world of delusion of his own making.
During this period he almost tolerated his wife. She added piquancy to the situation. Her obvious blindness to the affair, her immediate response to any suggestion, amused him. Her enjoyment of the night-life he stage-managed for their guest's entertainment was a new development; hitherto he had sedulously kept her away from cabarets, public dances, all-night “clubs” and the like. The limit of Doris' dissipations had been tea or dinner at a road-house, supper after the theater at Sherry's or Delmonico's. But Paulson visualized Nicaise, the vital, the unconventional, queening it in the surroundings he himself reveled in.
Therefore for the first two weeks of Nicaise's stay the Paulson motorcar stood till morning in front of plate-glass entrances, of pleasure-palaces where drawn blinds and closed doors hinted at closing-time, but from the upper windows of which strains of wild music met the chill air of dawn.
Then, though it was only mid-October, the Paulsons opened the city house to be nearer the center of gayety. Nickey enjoyed it all. Her indefatigable vitality kept pace with every tax placed upon it. She was as keen and brilliant at gray daybreak as the others had been at dinner-time. Before Doris, who drank quarts of lemonade every night as she stared in wonder at the passing show of Broadway all-nighters, Nicaise maintained a temperance diet as rigid as her hostess. But aside, she tasted strange drinks Paulson mixed for her, remarking at their variety and potency. She talked freely to him of the excellence of the fizzes of “the Stag,” the perfection of the New Orleans country-club juleps, the marvels of Antoine's “pink ladies.” Before Doris she never mentioned having tasted one.
Paulson grinned to himself at this sign of duplicity.
As Nicaise's visit drew to a close, she frankly lamented the necessity for departure and as frankly begged to be invited again and soon. It was arranged that when she journeyed on for her Christmas shopping she was to come directly to Doris. She said “Doris”—but Paulson fancied that she looked at him.
They had sat long that last night at “Pauline's Little Club;” several of his friends had joined them. Doris was pale,—tired, she owned,—but unwilling to break up the party. It was Mrs. Henderson who ordered the waiter to pour a glass of champagne for her.
“I do believe I will,” said Doris. “Will it wake me up?”
“Wake you up?” said Mrs. Henderson. “Try it and see.”
Nicaise had been absorbed in conversation with her host when her attention was diverted to the other end of the table. Doris held the slender glass and sniffed the bubbles, wrinkling her pretty nose as they pricked and stung. Nicaise's face turned suddenly white; even her crimson lips paled.
“No,” she gasped. “Doris, don't take that!”
Doris set down the glass, her innocent eyes open wide. “Why?” she asked. “She said it would wake me up.”
“Wake you up!” Nickey's voice trembled. “Come, you don't want to wake up; you want to go to bed. And so do I; I'm all in. Ken, get our wraps, please.”
Paulson looked at her, hesitated—and obeyed. Doris put down the glass untouched, yawned like an unmannerly kitten and rose from the table. Mrs. Henderson looked puzzled, but said nothing, while the others bade the party adieu with an absent eye on tables where other acquaintances appeared not to waver in their terpsichorean allegiance until egg-and-bacon time.
Doris was so tired that with a mumbled excuse she cuddled in the corner of the limousine and fell asleep as instantly as a baby.
“What did you do that for?” Ken whispered, leaning so close to Nicaise that his lips were almost on her bare neck.
She drew a quick breath. “You saw? Don't you understand?”
“No. Why did you act that way? Why did you turn as white as chalk? What's the answer?”
“Don't you know?” she asked, again in a tone of bewilderment.
“Know what?” he came back. “Why shouldn't Doris have a glass of champagne if she wants it?”
She twisted toward him. In the gleam of the street-lights her face was sharply defined and lost again in flashes of darkness. She was very beautiful.
“Do you mean to tell me,” she murmured, “that you don't know? Didn't her aunt ever tell you? Doris, of course, has no idea. She thinks her father died of yellow fever; but her aunt, she should have warned you!”
“Warned me?” he repeated. “I don't understand.”
Nicaise seemed stunned. There was a moment's silence.
“Promise me, promise me,”—the girl's voice was warm and intense,—“that you'll never tell Doris, and swear to me you'll never let her drink again—will you?”
“I'll promise you anything,” he answered. The accent was on the “you,” but she did not notice.
She lowered her voice to an even more intimate whisper, drawing him toward her with strong, excited hands. “Her father died in the insane asylum from drink, her father's father too, her uncle. All on that side of the house have gone that way—dipsomania, you understand, in the worst form. It's in her blood. Never, never, on any pretext, even if the doctor should prescribe it, let her taste liquor. I suppose her aunt was ashamed to tell you, and she relied on the temperance bringing up she'd given her. But to-night—to-night, she would have drunk that champagne if I hadn't stopped her. She's seen everybody drink things of late, and she's lost her aversion, and her idea that it's a sin and that decent women never touch liquor. I—I thought, of course, that you knew the danger and were looking out for her. You saw how careful I was never to let her see me even sip a thing stronger than her own lemonade. … I hope, I hope,” she added after a little pause, “it's all right that I told you. You understand, don't you?” she pleaded.
Paulson's brain was seething. He believed he understood. She was giving him the key to freedom—to freedom and herself. If this were the case! His ingrained cunning and love of the underhand gloated. This woman, this magnificent woman, saw too, as he would see—saw and placed the weapon in his hand as cunningly, as innocently, it seemed, as he himself would have managed it in her place. In the darkness his hand sought hers and held it. Her fingers closed over his in a quick clasp.
“You promise?” she whispered.
“I promise to see to it. Thank you for telling me. We understand each other.”
At parting, the following day, Nicaise found occasion to speak of the matter again. With meaning in his eyes, he again assured her that he understood. Above Doris' schoolgirl kisses, Nicaise managed an appealing look at Ken, who gave back the look with one of promise.
WITH the going of the guest, the hectic life of the Paulsons did not slack. They still made part of every riotous party of their acquaintances. Three days after Nicaise had gone, Doris took her first glass of champagne from her husband's hand. She sputtered and did not like the taste. He insisted, and she drained her glass. A week later Paulson took her home from supper at Pauline's Little Club, drunk.
Horrified at herself, for a week Doris did not appear at the cabarets. Ken laughed at her, told her to forget it, and at home insisted on cocktails and champagne with his dinner, with highballs in the evening. At the Loughborros, Doris drank highballs, and played a bridge game that made the others laugh uproariously. From the quiet, demure child she became suddenly glittering, with unexpected flashes of wit and daring that merged soon into incoherence. Two or three friends, surprised and anxious over the change, spoke to Kenneth. He accepted their interference in good part, explained that he was annoyed but thought it best to remonstrate quietly rather than forbid her outright to touch stimulants.
So rapid was the progress of the disease that, like a tiger that had tasted blood, the craving leaped full grown in Doris' predisposed system. Then with a great show of pain and reproval Kenneth forbade his wife to touch a drop. But he left temptation ever before her. The well-stocked cellaret was not locked. Then came a day when the cellaret was emptied and the supplies destroyed, and the servants received orders not to provide intoxicants.
In four short months Doris, the delicate and unsmirched, was a drunkard; and now, driven by the craving and no longer able to obtain it in her home, where she might lie unobserved, denying herself to her callers with the excuse of indisposition, she was forced to betray herself in the open. She had ample money of her own.
Paulson, apparently at his wits' end, consulted everyone; and everybody was very sorry for Paulson. He employed a companion for Doris; but Doris, her passion thwarted, abused the woman so roundly that she left. A trained nurse fared no better after an attack almost of delirium had been mastered. A week at a sanitarium, and Doris escaped—and was gone ten days, to be found at last semiconscious in a cheap hotel-room that reeked of alcohol.
KEN forgave her and took her home. Everybody admired “poor old Ken.” Gradually a change came over the character of Doris' excesses. As her system absorbed the poison more and more, and as her frantic mind strove to master the antics of her tongue and body, a sort of lucid madness resulted. Hours of which the following day she could remember nothing, could be passed in the open, and no one not intimately conversant with her nature and personality would have guessed her actual condition. The subconscious mind managed to put coherence in her sentences, to direct her movements. Her face no longer assumed a congested color; rather it was white, with a curious toxic whiteness. She could “get away with it.” Doris went down without a struggle. Her recoveries left her so dazed that she had no time between sprees to realize her danger.
Ken, who was very busy these days, saw comparatively little of his wife. At the various hotels she had been known to frequent he left orders that she was not to be served. His chauffeur had directions to keep away from such places. He knew perfectly well that the monster within her could be trusted to find a way to elude every effort at restraint.
In despair, so he informed his friends, he made application to have her committed, but failed to prove a sufficient case.
A week later he had the evidence that entitled him to a divorce. There could be no defense. There was none. He was free.
ALL this while the woman of his desire was in the Argentine, on a six-months trip. He could have written her had he so willed; the frequent post-cards sent to Doris passed through his hands. But he did not. When she returned, he would meet her—he would meet her a free man, blameless, even admired for his forbearance, his kindness and long-suffering. That Doris' physical needs might not prey upon the future, he had played the final card of magnanimity. He had secured her a trust-fund that would provide for her necessities and had legally tied up her own fortune so that she could not waste the principal. Her will left everything to him. In her condition it was more than doubtful if she could ever change it.
When he should meet Nicaise Morley, she would understand. All obstacles had been removed. They would be married. At thought of her Paulson's passion gripped and wrung him like the hand of a giant.
But Doris, in a lucid interval, had cabled a frightened call for help; and Nicaise, filled with a nameless dread of what that twisted, incoherent message might portend, had begun her journey north just as the divorce-proceedings had been instituted.
The reassuring cable from Havana, “I'm coming at once,” never reached Doris. It was delivered to Ken. It was he who met her on the pier. She grasped his hand eagerly, her face strained and questioning.
“What's the trouble, Ken? Where's Doris?”
His fingers shook as they closed over her gloved hands. This was the moment he had waited for—this of the telling. His eyes sought hers.
This time even her innocent blindness could not mistake their meaning. His voice was thick as he answered:
“There is no trouble—now. Doris is—out of it. Come, the car is here waiting for you, Nicaise.”
She was stunned, utterly confused. Her mind seemed full of scraps that formed no known thing—the confused fragments of a wreck after an explosion. A horrible sense of impending revelation gripped her. She must know, and quickly. She submitted to his care of her baggage, his calm assumption of protectorate, anxious only for the moment when, alone in the limousine, and headed toward her hotel, she might get at the truth of whatever disaster had befallen.
SHE had not long to wait; money expedites matters; and Paulson was as anxious as she for the slam of the car door that should shut them into seclusion. They faced each other at last, she chalk-white and tight-lipped, he controlled but quivering with emotion.
“What has happened to Doris?” Nicaise demanded. “I received a wild message from her, a threat to kill herself. I came at once. Where is she?”
He leaned close to her. “Doris is out of it, I told you—divorced.” He paused to let his words sink in, and was surprised at her shocked amazement.
“Divorced!” she exclaimed.
“What did you expect? It was inevitable, wasn't it?” His voice was full of intimate suggestion.
“Inevitable?” Her tone was blank.
He laughed. “Well, it couldn't go on, could it? And when a woman drinks like that,—all the time, never sober, you know,—sooner or later a pretty woman like Doris is bound to get into trouble, isn't she?”
Still the girl remained blind to the implied inclusion of herself. “Doris—drink! How was it? You were warned—I told you. Couldn't you prevent it somehow? Oh, poor Doris! Oh, poor, poor child!”
Something in the genuine horror and pity of her tone angered him. For the successful “woman in the case” she was carrying the game rather far.
“What did you expect?” he repeated.
“That you'd guard her, keep her, watch over her,” she flamed.
As usual he misinterpreted her agitation. “Well, nobody has anything against me,” he reassured her. “I did forbid it. I sent her to a cure. I had a companion for her. I took her back when she went off on a bat and was gone nearly two weeks—you can ask anyone. There'll never be a word said against me. And when I marry again,”—he looked at her with devouring eyes,—“when we're married, they'll say: 'God bless 'em!'” He laughed shakily.
“We? Marry!” The words stumbled from Nickey's lips.
“Soon,” he whispered. “Ah, how I wish we were in your sitting-room at the hotel, instead of this infernal glass cage! I'd—kiss the color back to your face!”
The threatening wave of revelation broke over her; she knew.
“So you saw to it?” she demanded.
“Didn't I promise you?” he questioned. “Didn't you show me the way?” he continued.
“I? Oh, my God!”
HIS face purpled with anger. “What's the big idea?” he demanded. “Why this play-acting now? We understand each other. We're free.”
She wrenched from him. “You, you, what are you?” she gasped. “A devil, a blind devil! And you dare accuse me—me—of—of—” She could not finish her sentence, but shrank back in the corner, hating him with her eyes.
It was his turn to be stunned. That Nicaise warned him of Doris' danger for the sole purpose of protecting Doris had never once entered his head.
“Don't play innocence,” he snarled. “You wanted me to get rid of her, and you showed me the way to do it and keep us both clear. Deny it all you please; I knew, and you know that I knew. Why this pretense? There's no danger. Investigation will only show that she was an hereditary dipsomaniac, and that I didn't know it. Her aunt never breathed a word; she'll have to own to that. Who's to know you told me?”
Nicaise broke down completely. “I told you, good heavens! I told you—you, a scheming devil, wanting to get rid of her! It's my fault! Somehow it's my fault. What shall I do—what shall I do?”
The car had turned into the avenue at a familiar street and headed northward. Within a block or two loomed the hotel of her destination. She turned on him fiercely.
“I've got to find her—I've got to save her somehow. I brought this on her, through you. I'll never rest till I find her. And you!” Her face seemed chiseled of marble, but her eyes blazed. “Let me tell you something. You may have worse yet on your soul. You don't know all you've done. The Langfords, all of them, have homicidal mania when delirium gets them, and Doris' father murdered her mother—yes, stabbed her to death. Now—you understand. I've got to find her; you have got to find her if you don't want blood on your hands!”
The car had swung to the curb. The uniformed chasseur had his hand on the knob. She thrust past Paulson, motioned the servant to secure her hand-baggage and passed quickly into the hotel.
PAULSON did not attempt to follow her. He needed to think, to readjust. In his luxurious sitting-room he paced the floor, all that afternoon, all that night. He did not even enter his bedroom or modify his dress. As always, he faced things squarely. He had made the one colossal blunder of his life. Not that he regretted Doris' destruction. He was through with her anyhow, and therefore well rid of her by whatever means; even if in her madness she did become involved in some drunken brawl, no blame could be fastened on him. But on the other hand, his stripped pride, his vanity, smarted and cringed. The woman he desired above everything else was not his and never would be.
Worn out, he dozed in his chair, where his Japanese servant found him when he brought the morning paper. His first glance was for the Personal column. He was sure that through that medium Nicaise would try to reach Doris. It would be her first practical thought.
   Will Do. communicate with Nickey back from Argentina, at the Waldorf.
Without a doubt his wife would answer the call, would go to her, and Nicaise would see the wreck of what once had been Doris. In spite of his cold-blooded indifference, he winced. There were memories of Doris—dainty, girlish, delicately beautiful Doris—when she had been an ugly sight to look upon; and he did not care to recall that débâcle. Repeatedly that day he tried to communicate with Nicaise—over the telephone, and she hung up the receiver; at the door of her suite, and it was slammed in his face; at last by letter, with a request for an answer. An answer did come. “If I get in touch with your wife,”—the last two words were savagely underscored,—“I shall let you know by telephone at your house. I will give you the opportunity to help her, if it becomes necessary, but if it can be avoided, I will see it through alone. In any event I will inform you as to Doris' condition.”
With that he had to be content. But he waited for the sound of her voice, long hours alone.
At about six o'clock she called him. Her voice was agitated.
“I promised to let you know,” she said abruptly. “She called me at the hotel. I located her boarding-place, but she had already gone. I couldn't get her to promise to come to me. She was”—the voice became more constrained—“not herself. But I shall follow and trace her—”
“You had better let me go with you,” he interrupted.
“If I need you, I shall not hesitate to make use of you,”—her voice was ice-edged,—“but I hardly think it necessary.”
“Where are you now?” he begged. The click of the hung-up receiver closed the message.
ALREADY it was the third evening after Nicaise's return. He realized it, as he ate his solitary dinner. Then he sought the window-seat of his own den, on the fourth floor of the house, from whence he looked down to the glittering, ice-covered pavements. He preferred this room; it held nothing of Doris. She had seldom dared intrude into his privacy. Presently he crossed to the massive center-table, drew a note-pad and pencil toward him and began jotting down notes. He must have Nicaise followed. A competent detective must be put on her trail. If it led him to Doris, no matter. He thought of the company whose services he had employed in securing the divorce, and decided it the part of wisdom to go elsewhere. Then, he decided, he would close the house and sell it, furnished, if possible. Nicaise must learn to know him as distinct from Doris' environment.
The country-house must be disposed of also. He must be absolutely free to follow the quarry wherever she went. He cursed himself for his clumsiness. He should never have confessed his complicity in Doris' downfall, not even when he was convinced of the hideous partnership he had believed to exist between himself and Nicaise. And as things had turned out, it was all but fatal to his future. If necessary,—he looked the situation over calmly,—if Nicaise insisted, he would even take Doris back temporarily and try to reform her. It couldn't be done, but he might make Nicaise believe that he had repentantly attempted the impossible. It might keep her near; he might win her after the inevitable end. Doris couldn't last. Already her frail physique was breaking.
He was very tired. He had not slept for two nights. He determined to calm his strained nerves and take a long rest. He poured himself a high-ball and returned to his place in the window. But his weariness caught him unawares, and he slept, his head resting against the closed-back inner shutter, his body twisted into the entrance of the narrow window-seat.
A gentle tittering, like the laughter of a playing child, woke Paulson. He opened his eyes with a start, but the room was silent, and he thought he had been dreaming. The clock on the mantel struck one. He was cramped; the room was hot and stuffy. He stretched his powerful body, threw up the window and breathed three long inhalations. It came again, that chuckling, twittering laugh. He started back into the room, and stopped with an oath. Before him stood Doris—her clothes just a little awry, her face a trifle whiter than its normal pallor; but her eyes were brilliant, hard and opaque as cabochon cat's-eyes. In her hand she held a latchkey.
“I really didn't know where to go, Ken,” she said, still with that insane giggle, “till I remembered I had my latchkey. Then I came right here. I thought I'd find you in the den. Say—do you know there's somebody after me? Yes, there is,” she insisted, “and I'm tired of being followed. It makes me nervous.”
PAULSON drew back from the woman who had been his wife. His mind worked coolly. What should he do? What was the best play for him to make, considering Nicaise? Call the Jap to take care of her, and leave her sole occupant of the house? Then he remembered that his servant had left after dinner not to return till the following afternoon. No, he decided; he would call Nicaise and beg her to come at once. He half rose from the seat. On the table was the telephone-switch. She seemed to divine his purpose.
“Oh, you want to tell them to come and get me!” she tittered. “Well, you sha'n't!”
“Nicaise Morley's here; she wants to see you,” he said placatingly.
“I know it,” she shrilled. “You got it framed to send me off somewhere. Oh, yes—I know. Everywhere I go, I hear she's been after me, asking for me. Well, she'll never think to come here.” She laughed her strange twittering giggle. “I got her fooled. Gee! I'm tired.” Her eye fell on the whisky-decanter and siphon on the table, and lighted with a look of infantile greediness. “Mind if I take a little drink?”
It was pitiful and ghastly. Even Paulson's dead conscience turned in its grave as Doris, the once delicate and dainty, snatched up the decanter and ravenously upturned it to her lips.
“Stop,” he ejaculated.
For answer she launched the heavy glass bottle at his head. So sudden and violent was the movement that he failed to ward off the blow.
It struck him down, as an ox is felled. He rose, staggering, blood pouring into his eyes. What was it he had heard? “Homicidal mania!” He wiped away the blood and dizzily faced about.
By the table stood Doris, in her hand the sleek steel Japanese dagger he was wont to use as a paper-cutter. She seemed to have forgotten him, fascinated by the wavy, lustrous pear-skin grain of the metal. He could see its fine sparkle as the light caught the turning blade. Without warning panic seized him—unreasoning hot terror, that tore his vitals, stopped his heart and blinded his brain. Yet he strove for control.
A voice broke the silence. Some one was running in the hall. The door was flung open, and Nicaise stumbled gasping across the threshold.
“Doris! Doris! Come, come with me,” she panted. “I followed. Thank God, you didn't fasten the hall door. Oh, thank God, I've found you!”
She came forward without hesitation. Only the table was between the two women. Doris raised her eyes from the contemplation of the knife.
“I'll teach you to follow me!” she croaked in a dry whisper. She sprang around the corner of the table with the quickness of a cat.
Nicaise, with a sharp cry of terror, thrust a heavy chair before her.
But Paulson had instantly steadied. In a bound he was beside Doris, his heavy right hand closed over his wife's slender wrist in a bone-breaking clasp, as with his left he wrung the dagger from her paralyzed fingers. Then came blackness. He staggered; his foot caught in the rug. The chair slid on the polished floor, and his heavy body pitched forward with the full momentum of his swift action, full on the sheathless blade.
In the breathless silence that followed, Doris tittered.
“Look at Ken; he's dead drunk,” she said.
WHEN Doris awoke, it was late in the afternoon. Her head was throbbing, her mind a blank. In utter amazement she gazed on the face of Nicaise Morley.
“Nickey,” she moaned feebly. “Nickey—when did you come?” She looked about her blankly.
“You're at my hotel, with me,” said Nicaise, smiling. “I ran across you just outside Jo's café last night, so I took you around the Park in a taxi to steady up and brought you here. You came as quietly as a lamb. No one would have guessed.”
Doris looked grateful. “Isn't it awful, Nickey?” she pleaded childishly. “I don't remember a thing. I don't remember yesterday at all. Oh, Nickey, what's going to become of me!”
Nicaise crossed to the bed; very gently but very firmly she took the hot, dry hand that twisted the counterpane.
“You are going to a sanitarium in the hills, Doris, and I'm going with you. I sha'n't leave you, not until you are yourself again. You are to ask no more questions—just rest. We leave to-night. I'll attend to everything. Go to sleep now, dear. There is nothing to worry about.”
Kenneth Paulson's death remains to-day a mystery to all the world—save to one woman.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse