Linda Lee, Incorporated Part 52

To the woman pinned to the wall by shock--the s.h.i.+mmering frivolity of her evening gown, a flimsy, fluttery affair of silver tissue, lilac and blue, lending form and colour to the illusion of a bright b.u.t.terfly impaled--the moments immediately following that murderous fusillade were a raving welter of horrors.

Between two heartbeats she saw Lynn, with a face as blank as paper, spinning, toppling, beating the air with aimless arms, pitching to the floor like something blasted, resting there in a sickening, inert crumple; and was keenly aware of the acrid reek of smokeless powder cutting, as acid cuts oil, the sensuous scent of the roses that dressed the room in her honour; and all the while was conscious of the pistol nosing in between the draperies like an animate thing of infinite malice, and the pallid oval of the face behind it, that seemed to float in the dark as might the mask of some mad ghost.

As the din of those three shots, beating from wall to wall, lost weight and volume, a thin shouting became audible from some point outside the house, and Nelly Marquis with the sweep of a fury broke through the hangings at the window, and pulled up with pistol levelled point-blank at Lucinda's breast.

Through the least of pauses, the merest fragment of a second, a time measureless in its lapse to one whose every function was frozen in paralysis of fear, a single thought persisted: _Another instant and I shall be as Lynn_.... Nelly's eyes were burning like black malignant opals in a countenance at once luminous and wan. Death's icy grin glimpsed in the play of light along that blunt blue barrel. Lucinda felt as one caught fast in the pitiless jaws of some tremendous vice whose pinch stilled the beating of her heart and arrested her labouring lungs.

Then abruptly through the window a dark body hurled and fastening upon the woman's back, swinging her aside, the pistol detonated with a bellow, the bullet plumped into the wall close by Lucinda's head.

She heard a voice crying out again and again: "Bel! Bel! Bel! ..."

Her own voice....

For an indeterminable time she hung in dread upon the issue of that swaying combat: while Bel clung to the woman's arm, muttering and panting in futile efforts to wrest her weapon away; while Nelly clawed, bit, kicked, pounded her free fist repeatedly into Bel's face, and wrenched madly at her captive wrist.

Of a sudden, from her hand a spiteful tongue of fire licked out at Bel, his right arm flailed back and fell useless, agony convulsed his features; and free, the woman bounded away and with the laugh of a maniac swung the pistol to bear upon his head.

Lucinda's faculties clicked together then as gears mesh when the motor has been idling; the call of the emergency met with response in the form of instant and direct action. Without knowing what she did, she flung herself upon Nelly's arm and bore it down. With deflected muzzle the pistol exploded for the last time. Dropping it, Nelly turned on Lucinda and dealt with her as might a madwoman. Impressions grew confused beyond a.s.sortment, of flopping wildly this way and that, of hot breath beating into her face, of her bare flesh suffering a rain of cruel blows; of elemental l.u.s.ts to maim and kill awakening from lifelong slumber, in this moment of close grips with a warm, living, hating and hateful human body....

Thrown off without warning, how she couldn't guess, she felt herself reeling back, tripping, falling. Something struck the back of her head a stunning blow, and she knew flickering nausea while dense night like a moving cloud on every hand closed in upon her, and the world, in the likeness of a rainbow swirl streaked with fiery paths of sparks, guttered into blank nullity....

Nothingness absolute and still received her, harboured her for a s.p.a.ce, spewed her back into life again.

Cold rain spattering cheeks and brows ... once more the heart-rending perfume of roses ... anguish incomparable racking her temples ... her heart a wild thing caged ... ammonia in strangling whiffs....

Choking and coughing she unclosed her eyes upon the vision of Bel's face. A hand holding a bottle of smelling salts dropped away from her nose. Bel saluted her reviving intelligence with an even growl: "Coming round, eh? About time. You'll do now, I guess. Try to pull yourself together. No time to lose."

She was on the floor, the bulk of the lounge between her and the spot where Summerlad had fallen; her shoulders propped against Bel's knee, her head resting in the crook of his arm. Summerlad's j.a.p boy was standing by with water in a silver vessel. At a nod from Bel he filled a gla.s.s and, bending over, set it to Lucinda's lips. While she was gulping thirstily, Bel said something she didn't catch; but as soon as she turned her head from the gla.s.s, the j.a.panese took it away and himself as well.

The living-room, with its softly lighted walls and draped black rectangles of windows open to the night, presented itself in a guise inexplicably unfamiliar. She felt as if she had been a long time away.

In mystification, looking back to Bel, she asked: "I fainted, didn't I?"

He grunted: "You struck your head, when that h.e.l.l-cat threw you--went out for ten minutes by the clock. How do you feel now?"

"My head aches...." She discovered that Bel was in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, with the cuff turned back above his right elbow, the forearm rudely bandaged with torn linen on which a deep stain was spreading. "But Bel--your arm----?"

"Hurts like h.e.l.l, but that's the worst of it, thank G.o.d. Bullet ploughed through the underside from wrist to elbow, nearly. I'd be dead if you hadn't jumped for her."

"And I, if you hadn't come through the window when you did."

"If you're grateful for that--try to get up."

"But ... Lynn?"

Bel laughed shortly. "The excellent Mr. Summerlad's all right--I mean to say, still breathing. That's all we can tell till the surgeon gets here.

I've telephoned. The fellow ought to show up any minute now. If you can manage to get a grip on yourself, I'd be glad to get you out of here first."

"I don't understand.... What became of--her?"

"Got away clean, worse luck!--ducked past me and through the window like a shot. I tried to follow but she gave me the slip in the dark. _That's_ all right: she won't trouble us again. She left her pistol behind--anyway, it was empty--and the police will pick her up before morning.... Now: how about getting up?"

"I'll try," Lucinda said meekly. "Please help me." But then, appreciating that she was in no way incapacitated, she got up unaided, and steadied herself with a hand on the back of the lounge.

Summerlad lay where he had fallen, on the far side of that piece of furniture. His face, upturned to the staring light, was like a thing of sculptured ivory, expressionless and bleached; the lips ajar, the whites of his eyes alone visible under the half-shut lids with their effeminate lashes. The s.h.i.+rt beneath the flowered dressing-gown was hideously blotted. He was so deathly still that terror took hold on Lucinda's heart and mind.

"You think.... O Bel! do you really think he will live?"

"No fear," Bel sneered. "He'll make a fool of many another woman before he's finished. Here: put this on, will you?"

He was proffering her wrap. Like an automaton Lucinda accepted it, but seemed to forget that the thing was meant for wear.

"Where's your car?"

"I told my driver to call up about ten----"

"I'll attend to that, then. My chauffeur will run you down to the hotel.

I think he's to be trusted. Wish I felt as sure of that j.a.p."

"Sure of him?"

"Why do you suppose I'm hurrying you away? Do you want the papers to get hold of the fact you were keeping an a.s.signation with this actor when his wife caught you and shot him?"

Lucinda flinched, faintly remonstrated: "Bel!"

"Well?" he demanded--"got anything to say to that?"

"You don't think ... n.o.body would dare...."

"What's the reason I don't think? Why wouldn't anybody dare? I presume you expect the world--this good, kind, charitable world we live in--to believe 'appearances are against you'!"

Affronted, she held her answer, seeing her husband as with eyes from which scales had newly dropped, as a man she barely knew, whose fleshy husk alone was familiar in her sight, but whose spirit was altogether strange: a man self-reliant and resolute, skeptical, cold and hard of temper, estranged and unforgiving; witness the contemptuous incredulity that animated his regard.

Smouldering indignation blazed, she threw back her head with eyes as cold as his, a mouth as hard.

"You are insolent," she p.r.o.nounced slowly. "If you think--if you dare think what you hint--what is it to you whether I go or stay?"

"You forget you neglected to get rid of a husband before taking on with this busy lover ... who got precisely what was coming to him, if you want the truth for once!"

"Do I hear you setting yourself up to judge him, Bel?"

"Do you know anybody better qualified?"

"By what right----"

"The husband's right! Do you think I want every paper in the country linking your name--my wife's--with Lynn Summerlad's as his latest mistress, the woman who made his deserted wife so jealous she tried to murder him?"

Lucinda let her wrap fall. "If my relations.h.i.+p to Lynn is what you imply--then my place is here with him."