A Poor Wise Man by Mary Roberts Rinehart (popular books of all time TXT) 📖

But Elinor, knowing him well, gained nothing from his face.

Late that night she heard Doyle come in and move about the lower floor. She knew every emphasis of his walk, and when in the room underneath she heard him settle down to steady, deliberate pacing, she knew that he was facing some new situation, and, after his custom, thinking it out alone.

At midnight he came up the stairs and unlocked her door. He entered, closing the door behind him, and stood looking at her. His face was so strange that she wondered if he had decided to do away with her.

“Tomorrow,” he said, in an inflectionless voice, “you will be moved by automobile to a farm I have selected in the country. You will take only such small luggage as the car can carry.”

“Is Olga going with me?”

“No. Olga is needed here.”

“I suppose I am to understand from this that Louis has been defeated and there is no longer any reason for delay in your plans.”

“You can understand what you like.”

“Am I to know where I am going?”

“You will find that out when you get there. I will tell you this: It is a lonely place, without a telephone. You’ll be cut off from your family, I am afraid.”

She gazed at him. It seemed unbelievable to her that she had once lain in this man’s arms.

“Why don’t you kill me, Jim? I know you’ve thought about it.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of it. But killing is a confession of fear, my dear. I am not afraid of you.”

“I think you are. You are afraid now to tell me when you are going to try to put this wild plan into execution.”

He smiled at her with mocking eyes.

“Yes,” he agreed again. “I am afraid. You have a sort of diabolical ingenuity, not intelligence so much as cunning. But because I always do the thing I’m afraid to do, I’ll tell you. Of course, if you succeed in passing it on - ” He shrugged his shoulders. “Very well, then. With your usual logic of deduction, you have guessed correctly. Louis Akers has been defeated. Your family - and how strangely you are a Cardew! - lost its courage at the last moment, and a gentleman named Hendricks is now setting up imitation beer and cheap cigars to his friends.”

Behind his mocking voice she knew the real fury of the man, kept carefully in control by his iron will.

“As you have also correctly surmised,” he went on, “there is now nothing to be gained by any delay. A very few days, three or four, and - ” His voice grew hard and terrible - “the first stone in the foundation of this capitalistic government will go. Inevitable law, inevitable retribution - ” His voice trailed off. He turned like a man asleep and went toward the door. There he stopped and faced her.

“I’ve told you,” he said darkly. “I am not afraid of you. You can no more stop this thing than you can stop living by ceasing to breathe. It has come.”

She heard him in his room for some time after that, and she surmised from the way he moved, from closet to bed and back again, that he was packing a bag. At two o’clock she heard Olga coming in; the girl was singing in Russian, and Elinor had a sickening conviction that she had been drinking. She heard Doyle send her off to bed, his voice angry and disgusted, and resume his packing, and ten minutes later she heard a car draw up on the street, and knew that he was off, to begin the mobilization of his heterogeneous forces.

Ever since she had been able to leave her bed Elinor had been formulating a plan of escape. Once the door had been left unlocked, but her clothing had been removed from the room, and then, too, she had not learned the thing she was waiting for. Now she had clothing, a dark dressing gown and slippers, and she had the information. But the door was securely locked.

She had often thought of the window, In the day time it frightened her to look down, although it fascinated her, too. But at night it seemed much simpler. The void below was concealed in the darkness, a soft darkness that hid the hard, inhospitable earth. A darkness one could fall into and onto.

She was not a brave woman. She had moral rather than physical courage. It was easier for her to face Doyle in a black mood than the gulf below the window-sill, but she knew now that she must get away, if she were to go at all. She got out of bed, and using her crutches carefully moved to the sill, trying to accustom herself to the thought of going over the edge. The plaster cast on her leg was a real handicap. She must get it over first. How heavy it was, and unwieldy!

She found her scissors, and, stripping the bed, sat down to cut and tear the bedding into strips. Prisoners escaped that way; she had read about such things. But the knots took up an amazing amount of length. It was four o’clock in the morning when she had a serviceable rope, and she knew it was too short. In the end she tore down the window curtains and added them, working desperately against time.

She began to suspect, too, that Olga was not sleeping. She smelled faintly the odor of the long Russian cigarettes the girl smoked. She put out her light and worked in the darkness, a strange figure of adventure, this middle-aged woman with her smooth hair and lined face, sitting in her cambric nightgown with her crutches on the floor beside her.

She secured the end of the rope to the foot of her metal bed, pushing the bed painfully and cautiously, inch by inch, to the window. And in so doing she knocked over the call-bell on the stand, and almost immediately she heard Olga moving about.

The girl was coming unsteadily toward the door. If she opened it -

“I don’t want anything, Olga,” she called, “I knocked the bell over accidentally.”

Olga hesitated, muttered, moved away again. Elinor was covered with a cold sweat.

She began to think of the window as a refuge. Surely nothing outside could be so terrible as this house itself. The black aperture seemed friendly; it beckoned to her with friendly hands.

She dropped her crutches. They fell with two soft thuds on the earth below and it seemed to her that they were a long time in falling. She listened after that, but Olga made no sign. Then slowly and painfully she worked her injured leg over the sill, and sat there looking down and breathing with difficulty. Then she freed her dressing gown around her, and slid over the edge.