The Complete Works of L M Montgomery, page 581
Oh, if he were only at home in his own bed and nightshirt, with the cat sleeping across his legs and a hot water bottle at his feet! Confound nurses who gadded and women who got their legs broken in car accidents and Georges who disappeared! Could she really have hung George in the closet? It sounded incredible... but an insane person might do anything... anything!
And what closet? Why, it might be the one of the room he was in! At the thought Anthony broke out in a cold perspiration.
What Caroline did do next was something the unhappy Anthony had never dreamed of. She came back, stalking in without anything so conventional as a rap. He heard her footsteps coming up the stairs and quivered with agony, drew the bedclothes up to his chin and peered at her in dismay.
She had put on a dress... a rather handsome one of grey silk... and a pair of shell-rimmed glasses. She had her teeth in but her head was bare, her hair still floated in elf-locks around her shoulders, and she still wore the old felt bedroom slippers she had worn on her first appearance. Likely Mrs. Abe’s, too. And she still carried the dagger. Anthony gave himself up for lost.
He would never see Clara again... never join in the local gossip in Carter Flagg’s store of an evening... never wear a nightshirt. But there was not so much comfort in that thought as he would have expected. Were shrouds so much better than pyjamas? He wished he had humoured Clara. It would have been something for her to remember when he was gone.
“Get up,” said Caroline. “We are going for a drive.”
Anthony broke into another cold perspiration.
“I... I’d rather not... it’s too late... and I’m very comfortable here.”
“I said get up.”
Caroline pointed with the dagger. Anthony got up. You had to humour them. What on earth had become of Abe? Or had that crazy old car of his broken down? He caught sight of himself in the mirror and had to admit that pyjamas did look... well, more manly than a nightshirt. Only he did not admire Norman’s taste in colours.
“Never mind your clothes,” said Caroline. “I’m in a hurry. Somebody may come home at any moment. I haven’t had a chance like this for years.”
“I... I... I can’t go out in these things,” stammered Anthony, gazing in horror at the violent orange and purple pyjamas.
“Why not? They cover you all up and that is more than can be said of a nightshirt. Can you fancy me, Caroline Wilkes, driving with a man in a nightshirt? Don’t be a moron.”
Anthony hadn’t the least idea what a moron was but he did know that a poisoned dagger was a poisoned dagger.
Meekly he preceded Caroline down the stairs, out of the house, and across the lawn to the garage. The big Wilkes car was outside and Anthony, still at the dagger’s point, got in.
“Now we’ll step on the gas,” said Caroline with a fiendish chuckle, as she laid the dagger on the seat beside her and took the wheel.
A faint hope came into Anthony’s heart that he might at least get possession of the dagger. But Caroline seemed to have eyes all over her head.
“Leave that alone, little man,” she said, “or I’ll stick it clean through you. Do you think I am going to be left without a weapon of defence when driving with such a desperate character as you? Now rig-a-jig-jig and away we go! Oh, we’ll have a merry drive. It is a long time since I had a chance to drive a car. And once I was the best driver in Montreal. Where would you like to go, little man?”
“I... I think I’d better go home,” chattered Anthony.
“Home!... Nonsense! A body can go home when they can’t go anywhere else. Clara won’t be worried. She knows you too well, little man.”
Yes, of course it was a nightmare. It couldn’t be anything else. He couldn’t be flying along the highway at nine o’clock at night in a car with Caroline Wilkes as a driver. Once such a thought would have seemed to him as unalloyed bliss! And Clara would be worried. Like all women she was in the habit of worrying over nothing. He had developed a sudden anxiety in regard to Clara’s feelings.
“We’re... we’re going rather fast, ain’t we?” said the poor buccaneer, wondering if anyone had ever died of sheer terror.
“Why, this is nothing to what I can do,” laughed the cheerful old ghoul beside him.
Then she proceeded to show what she could do. She spun off into a corkscrew side road on two wheels... she went slap through the spruce hedge that was the pride of Nathan MacAllister’s heart... she went through a wide brook and through a field of potatoes... up a muddy, narrow lane... through John Peterson’s backyard... through another hedge... and finally out to the highway, which, on this especial night, seemed crowded with traffic. There were really not many cars, though a considerable number of horses and buggies, but to poor Anthony’s eyes there seemed no room anywhere.
Finally they struck a cow who had imprudently ambled out of a side road. The animal promptly disappeared in the most unaccountable fashion. In truth she was only slightly grazed and hurried back to her side road. But Anthony thought she must have been scared into that “fourth dimension” he had heard Dr. Blythe and Dr. Parker joking about. Anthony hadn’t the slightest idea what the fourth dimension was but he had gathered that anyone or anything that went there was not seen again. Well, he would not be seen again but his dead body would... clad in Norman’s pyjamas. And Tom Thaxter had always wanted Clara. Even in the horror of the moment Anthony felt for the first time a pang of jealousy in regard to Clara.
“We saved ten minutes by that shortcut,” Caroline was chortling. “Nothing like shortcuts... I’ve taken them all my life. Got ten times more fun than most women. Now for a clear road to Charlottetown. We’ll teach these country bumpkins what joyriding really means. They haven’t the slightest idea, you know. Clara ever go joyriding?”
Anthony had been supported through that terrible “shortcut” by the conviction that somewhere or other he had heard or read that nothing ever happened to a lunatic.
But now he gave himself up for lost. Not even a lunatic could negotiate the night traffic on the Charlottetown highway at the rate that tiger-cat of a Caroline was going. On Saturday nights every boy in the country took his best girl to a show in town and everyone who boasted possession of a Ford was out showing off.
Besides, there were three railroad crossings.
His only remaining hope was that death might not be too terrible. The idea of dying in bed was no longer so unattractive as it had once seemed. Even if you were wearing pyjamas.
Then a dreadful thought occurred to Anthony. They would have to pass through Lowbridge. And hadn’t he heard poor Clara say there was to be a community dance and street parade in Lowbridge that night?
She had spoken disapprovingly and... Anthony had thought... narrow-mindedly. It was the first thing of its kind that had ever been heard of in that part of the country... but it sounded romantic.
Everybody in Lowbridge knew him, of course. And any number of Clara’s relations lived there... people who had never approved of Clara “taking” him.
Suppose they saw him... tearing through the town in pyjamas with Caroline Wilkes! And of course they would see him. Everybody would be out.
“And me an elder in the church!” groaned Anthony.
He knew now how he had prized that eldership... although he had affected to despise Clara’s pride and Susan Baker’s increased, though veiled, respect. What was an eldership to the heroes of his dreams?
But he knew now. And of course it would be taken from him. He didn’t know how such things were done but of course there was a way. It wouldn’t be the slightest use to point out that pyjamas were more respectable things than nightshirts to drive about with ladies in. Nobody would see the necessity of either.
Everybody would think he was drunk... that was it, drunk. Jerry Cox had been fined ten dollars and costs for driving a car when drunk. Jim Flagg had to spend ten days in jail. Suppose he, Anthony Fingold, was sent to jail!
And what if Old Maid Bradley heard of this escapade... as of course she would... and wrote it up for that scoundrelly Enterprise of hers that hadn’t six words of truth in it from one year’s end to the other?
Poor, poor Clara! She would never lift her head again. And how Dr. Parker would roar! How Susan Baker would smile and say she had always expected it! How he would lose the respect of everybody! Welcome death! It would be far better than such a fate.
“I never thought the like of this would happen to me on this side of the grave,” groaned Anthony. “I’ve never done anything very bad... except in imagination. But I suppose you are punished for that.” What was that sermon Mr. Meredith preached last year that everyone talked of? “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” By that rule, he, Anthony Fingold, was wicked beyond description.
Perhaps he deserved even this... but it was very bitter.
“I wonder if they’ll find the axe,” said Caroline.
“What axe?” asked Anthony through chattering teeth.
“Why, you old fool, the one I chopped George up with. I dropped it under the loose boards in the back porch floor. I suppose you’ll blazon that all over the country. Men can never hold their tongues.”
“You told me you hung him in the closet,” yelled Anthony, to whom, for some inexplicable reason, this change in George’s fate seemed the last straw. “You couldn’t have both hung him and chopped him up.”
“Why not, little man? I hung him first... then I cut him down and carved him up. You don’t suppose I’d leave his body there to be found, do you? None of the men I’ve murdered have ever been found. Did you ever have the fun of murdering anyone, Anthony?”
“I never wanted to murder anyone,” said Anthony rashly and falsely. “And I don’t believe... yes, you can stick the dagger in me if you like... I’m not altogether a worm... you carved George up.”
“A Mallard can do anything,” said Caroline superbly.
It seemed as if a Mallard could. Caroline flew along that highway at a terrible rate, cutting out, cutting in, and never dreaming of slowing down at curves. It might have been some small comfort to Anthony if he had known they were going so fast that no one they met or passed got the faintest idea what he was wearing. They only recognized the Wilkes car and cursed the driver thereof. Even Dr. Blythe told Anne when he got home that something really ought to be done about that Wilkes man. “He’ll kill someone yet.”
Anthony would have thought he could tell him who that someone would be. He was resigned. The sooner death came the better. Only he was sorry he could not tell Clara he repented having snubbed her so often in the matter of pyjamas.
Caroline’s grey hair streamed behind her and her eyes blazed. A score of times Anthony closed his eyes in expectation of the inevitable collision and a score of times it did not take place. Perhaps there was some truth after all in the old belief that nothing ever happened to a lunatic. Surely Caroline would stop when they got to Charlottetown. A policeman... but would Caroline pay any attention to a policeman?
And then, about a mile out of town, Caroline suddenly turned and shot down a side road.
“The car that has just turned in there is after no good,” she deigned to explain. “I’ve been keeping my eye on it for some time.”
To Anthony the car seemed like any other car. To be sure, it was going at an awful rate for a narrow side road full of S-bends. Even Caroline couldn’t catch up with it, though she kept it in sight. On and on they went, twisting and turning until Anthony lost all sense of direction and all sense of time. To him it seemed that they must have been driving for hours. But they were in uninhabited country now, all scrub spruce. It must be blueberry barrens. In his despair Anthony looked back.
“We are being followed ourselves,” he gasped. “Hadn’t we better stop?”
“Why?” said Caroline. “We have as good a right to the road as anyone. Let them follow. I tell you, Anthony Fingold, I am going to catch those fellows ahead. They’ve been up to no good. Would they be driving at such a rate on this kind of a road if they weren’t trying to get away from the police? Answer me that question if you have any brains. You used to have some at school. You could always beat me in arithmetic. You were in love with me then, you know... and I was quite gone on you... though I would have died rather than admit it. What fools we are when we are young, aren’t we, Anthony?”
Caroline Mallard was calmly admitting to him that she had been “gone” on him when they went to school together... when he had thought she was hardly aware of his existence... and now the only word of her speech that made much impression on him was “police.”
He looked at the car behind. He was sure the driver was in uniform. And no one but police or lunatics would be travelling at such a rate. The police were after him and Caroline. He did not know whether the thought was a comfort or a torture. And what would happen? Caroline, he felt sure, would not stop for a policeman or anything else. Oh, what a story for the Enterprise! What a tale for the Glens! He would never dare to show his face in Carter Flagg’s store again. As for Clara... she might and probably would leave him. In Prince Edward Island people did not get divorces... but they “separated.” He was sure Clara’s Aunt Ellen had “left” her husband.
“A-ha, we’re gaining on them,” said Caroline exultantly.
The car ahead had slowed down as they spun around a hairpin curve and saw it crossing a creek bridge ahead of them. It had slowed down a little and Anthony could see plainly, by the light of a moth-eaten old moon that was just rising above the horizon, that someone in it threw a bag over the railing of the bridge as they whirled across it. Perhaps the remains of the chopped-up George were in it. By this time Anthony had so nearly lost his own reason that any wild idea seemed plausible to him.
Caroline saw the bag go over, too. In her excitement she pushed heavily on the accelerator and Anthony’s long-awaited catastrophe came. The Wilkes car banged into the decrepit old railing... the railing gave way... and they went over.
To the last day of his life Anthony Fingold firmly believed in the truth of the adage that no harm could befall a lunatic.
The big car was smashed to bits but he crawled out of the wreck unharmed, to find himself standing in the middle of a shallow, muddy, deep-banked stream. Caroline was already beside him. Behind them the third car had stopped at the edge of a cow path that led down to the brook. Two men and a woman were scrambling down it, one of them in a chauffeur’s uniform which Anthony had mistaken and still mistook for a policeman’s. All three, even the chauffeur, smelled to high heaven of what Clara would have called “grog.”
“Now you’ll catch it for kidnapping me,” said Caroline. “You might have drowned me. And where did you get my son’s pyjamas? You are a thief, that is what you are, Anthony Fingold. And look what you have done to my car!”
She came threateningly towards him with that infernal dagger still in her hand. Anthony quaked with terror. He caught up the first protective thing that came to hand... a bag that was lying high and dry on the edge of a log... a bag that rustled oddly as he struck blindly at Caroline’s uplifted arm.
The poisoned dagger... it was really an old paper cutter... flew from her grasp and spun away into the darkness.
“Upon my word the little fellow has spunk after all,” said Caroline admiringly.
But Anthony did not see that long-desired admiration. Nor would he have cared if he had. It no longer mattered to him... never would matter again... what Caroline Wilkes thought of him.
He was scrambling up the opposite bank of the brook, still keeping an unconscious hold on the bag. They should not catch him... he would not be arrested for kidnapping a crazy old woman who ought to be in an asylum.
As he disappeared in the shadows of the trees the other people gave their attention to Caroline Wilkes, whom they knew slightly, and took her home. She went meekly enough, her “spell” being over.
Poor Anthony had run for the best part of a mile before he realized that no one was pursuing him. Then he pulled up, quite out of breath, and gazed around him, hardly daring to believe his good fortune. For such it certainly seemed, after the horrors of the preceding hours.
He was in the blueberry barrens behind the Upper Glen. In all that wild racing and chasing along side roads they must have doubled back until he was within five miles of home. Home! Never had the word seemed so sweet to Anthony Fingold... if, indeed, he still had a home! He had read of men spending what they thought was a few hours somewhere and finding that a hundred years had passed. He felt that it would not surprise him to find that a century had elapsed since he had gone to Carter Flagg’s store to get that liniment for Clara.
Beloved Clara! Worth a hundred Caroline Mallards. Of course he would get a scolding from her but he felt he deserved it. He wished he might appear before her clad in something else than Norman Wilkes’ pyjamas. But there were no houses in the barrens and he would not have had the spunk to call at them if there had been. Besides, the fewer times he had to tell the tale the better.
An hour later a weary, aching Anthony, still clad in wet orange and purple pyjamas, crept into his own kitchen. He was very tired. His heart might be as young as it used to be but he had discovered that his legs were not.
He had hoped that Clara would be asleep but Clara was not. The tasty little snack she had always left out for Anthony when he was out late was spread on the kitchen table but it was untouched. For the first time in their married life he found Clara... calm, placid Clara... on the verge of hysterics.
The story had reached her over the telephone that Anthony had been seen driving at a terrific rate with old Caroline Wilkes, who was not right in her head, as everybody knew. A distracted Abe Saunders had telephoned. A distracted George Mallard had called. Clara had practically spent the evening at the telephone, making or answering calls. Everybody at Ingleside seemed away, as she could get no answer from them, or she might have had some comfort. She had just decided to get the neighbours out searching when Anthony shambled in.
