Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1925-06-18
RICHARD Ny4SMBg1aV GRzzEl1

hard syllableS. You shall not hear
Of 1t again. Forget It, Call it mad
and foolish thing. My lips are sealed.
But the time will come. There are
stranger things In the world than you
know"
He closed the door and left her
alone, somewhat shaken; and in spite
of all that she had said, somewhat
eager to ask him more. IL she had,
he would have pressed his thin lips
i tight and said nothing. He did this on
later occasions. he had made up his
mind to wrestle with his fears, what
ever they might be, alone His physi-
/ clan told Brena confidentially that
Compton Parmalee was suffering only
from mild form of neurasthenia in
which dread had attached itself to
some particular chain Of morbid
thoughts.
In March Parnalee conceived the
idea that he was being followed. He
spoke of it several times and Brena
laughed.
"Why should any one follow your"
she inquired scornfully. "You tell me
that you understand why am fol-
lowed sometimes on my way home
from the studio, but cannot offer the
same explanation for you. Come,
j Compton, let's me sensible"
He was not amused.
"Then report it to the police" she
said.
"The police?"
eyes,"
what a suggestion ~
She heard no more, however, Of his
morbid suspicion; no one was follow
ing him she was convinced. And yet
the unknown terror, Of which he would
now say nothing, infected her so that
the cloth of each day had woven into
1t some threads Of fear, in crazy,
senseless, indistict pattern.
A crisis came on one of those warm
evenings which descend suddenly upon
the chill of the winter and tell of an
impatient, hasty, headlong spring,
which has crept up through the open
country and comes at dusk to the gates
Of the cities. Some musical perform
ance, long since forgotten by Brena,
took the pair out until nearly eleven
and Parmalee wanted to walk home
through the moonlight. A sleepy ele-
vator man took them up in chaste,
white and gold car to their apartment
door.
Goodnight" said Brena. "Good-
night, Compton. You seemed tonight
more like yourself"
He laughed and waved to her as she
went down the corridor to her cham
bers She switched on the wall lights
of her dressing room, bedroom and
bath, and undressed leisurely before
the long mirror, looking about her as
her memory took her back to the hot
room under the roof at Mrs. Wilkes
with It's yellow vanished woodwork
and its plaster walls, stained hideous
thermic orange, its little red ants that
no eradicatOr ever eradicated and the
screams Of the baby coming out Of a
window in the next house. Nothing
in the luxurious quarters she now oc-
cupied could remind one of Mrs. VIII
kies unless it were the picture of the
Acropolis that had belonged to
Brena's father, still in it's battered
frame and hanging above her bed.
And yet she stopped braiding her red
bronze hair as one of those strange
calls of wistful longing for the past,
even for the tragic or the sordid past,
that comes to all of us, came to her.
No one would credit her with re-
Numbering some few years afterward
the exact contents of her thoughts at
this moment, were it not a fact that
the thought itself had been interrupted
and therefore engraved by three quick
successive pistol shots.
They came and went as revolver
cracks do behind heavy closed doors
with a muffled thudding; she knew
what they were. They were followed
by little crash as Of a vase falling.
Her first thought was that Parmalee
had killed himself Perhaps if her
mind had been less active she would
have screamed, flung open the door
and rushed out, expecting the horrors
of a suicide; she remembered, how
ever, that there had been three shots,
more than the number usually fired by
one who seeks destruction. Brena
concluded that whatever the menace
her husband had feared, it now had
proved its reality. She has said since
that, for the moment, she at least be-
lieved, and even In her startled breath
ing she formed the words, 1T Is some
fault of mine.'
The turning out of her own lights
disclosed the fact that the corridor be-
yond the crack under her own door
was dark also. From it came no
sound, except for the distant purr of
the elevator taking up some yawn-
ing after-theater homecomers. Brena
could only hear her own heart
Without the dangerous background
of light behind her, she opened the
door cautiously and the moons rays
on the carpet beneath her feet went
forward across the carpet in the cor
ridor like sliding fingers.
"Stand back, Brena. Don't get be-
tween me and him. He's at the end
of the hail." 1t was the voice of her
husband. look out. I'm going to
turn on the lights!"
A sudden rush Of illumination filed
the corridor.
"You are a fool y said Brena.