There Is Confusion/Chapter 26

A Few moments later Mr. Simpson came rushing up the front steps. He tried the door gingerly and found to his relief that it was not locked. That meant Mrs. Ellersley had not yet returned to chide him for his carelessness. Miss Maggie now was different; she would never carry on, no matter what a fellow did. It would be just as well for him to stop at the room at the head of the stairs and let her know he had returned.

The landing was still dark, but long experience had taught him to navigate the troublesome chair. Without mishap he reached the door of the sitting-room. Everything was absolutely silent, still he would just put his head inside to make sure.

He was concluding there was nobody there when his eye caught something protruding from the other side of the table which stood in the center of the room. A chair, too, had been overturned, and scattered about on the floor were several little bright shiny things. He picked one up, looked at the legend on the handle, "Chilled steel, England, Peter Bye."

The name of the maker evidently. Queer doings here. Half afraid, wholly curious, he ventured in further, especially intrigued by that light brown object which protruded from beyond the table and which looked—though this, he knew, was imagination—like a hand. He bent over it, touched it, followed it with eyes and fingers to an arm dripping and scarlet with blood and beyond the arm a face golden and immobile. Beyond the head lay still another of those small strange objects. ​Only this was neither bright nor shining; it was red, a vivid red and the handle which he touched with a shaking finger was sticky.

He sprang backwards, his face ghostly under its brown skin, his eyes goggling. This was—Death. "Oh, God! Help! Murder! Police! Miss Maggie!" Down the stairs he tore, his hands twisted and fumbled at the locks. The door opened to disclose Joanna standing on the door-step about to ring the bell.

She looked past him into the dim hall. "Do you know if Miss Ellersley is in?"

His eyes widened in horror. "For Christ's sake, lady, keep out. Don't go in there, she's dead, pore girl, murdered."

"Nonsense! Maggie murdered! What do you mean?"

Stammering and shrinking he told her of his ghastly find. "Don't go in there, lady, don't know nothin' about it. I don't mean to."

She caught his arm. "Here, come on, you must take me to it—to her; she can't be left like this. Be a man." But for all her brave words her knees were shaking.

Unwillingly he led her to the quiet form in the green and red-soaked dress. Joanna dropping beside it put her hand on Maggie's wrist. A faint pulse fluttered.

"She's alive. I must get this dress off her arm and shoulder. Got a knife?"

"Ain't they a million of 'em layin' around you, lady?"

Shudderingly she turned from the red one. "How queer! How awful! Hand me that clean one over there." Her eye fell, as she took it from him, on the handle—"Chilled steel, England, Peter Bye"—rested there stricken.

"Ought to be able to trace the murderer awful quick, don't you think, ma'am? This man Bye would know who he sold them knives to."

​Without answering she cut away the cloth, used her handkerchief—worthless for this—to stanch the blood. "Find me a towel, there must be one somewhere." If Peter had done this she must save Maggie in order to save him. And if this were Peter's work—he did not love Maggie.

Ashamed of her thought she bent closer. "There's a bad cut below the shoulder but the cut in the arm is worse. Have you a large soft handkerchief? Quick, I must stop the bleeding. I can't manage with this stiff towel." He was off and back in a jiffy with three handkerchiefs, immense and happily clean, the testimony of Mrs. Ellersley's supervision.

She twisted one of them. "Now a pencil?" Somewhere out of the past floated a memory of Miss Shanley's direction how to make a tourniquet, one of the things Joanna had meant to forget after she grew up. Subconscious memories guided her fingers. "Now where's a bedroom? Help me to carry her there."

She had already dispatched him to a telephone to get, if possible, Harry Portor, whose office was in the San Juan district. Puzzled by Mr. Simpson's incoherence, the doctor promised to come at once and soon the chug-chug of his little Ford rose above the sounds of the noisy street.

Joanna ran down to let him in, meeting his astonishment as the two climbed the stairs with breathless information. Harry praised her tourniquet. "Good work, Joanna. Fortunately it's a clean cut, no jaggedness. I suppose he was trying to get at her heart. Where's the knife it was done with?" He busied himself with fresh bandages and restoratives.

"I don't know," she told him faintly. Why had she not thought of this? Now she must keep him out of the sitting-room. Her confusion escaped him, but Mr. Simpson hovering in the background had heard the question and slipping out returned with the knife.

​"Here it is, doc. I was just tellin' the lady, ought sure to be able to catch that 'sassin; man who sold him the knife's done got his name stamped on the handle."

Harry took it. "H'm, a surgeon's knife." He turned it over. "Where's the name? Peter—why look here, Joanna, did you see this?"

"There's a whole case in the other room, sir."

"Yes, go get it and bring it to me. What do you suppose this means, Joanna?"

She whispered, "Wait till that man goes."

"All right, I'll send him off." He sent the willing Simpson on his return with the case, to the druggist.

"Now, Joanna?"

She had her story ready. "I came to see Maggie about—about Peter, Harry. One of the girls who works at Madame Harkness, saw Sylvia last night and told her Maggie was in town." This much was true. "So I came to see her. Just before I came, it seems, Peter came. She told me about it. I couldn't stand it. And I caught up one of his little knives—he'd left his case here—and cut her. I must have been crazy."

"You must still be crazy to think I'd believe that. You're not a good liar, Joanna. Now tell me the truth, dear. Were you here when he stabbed her?"

She stuck to her story. "He didn't stab her."

The quiet figure on the bed moved ever so slightly, opened its lips, moaned faintly. "What's the matter with my arm?"

Harry leaned over her. "A bad cut, Maggie! How'd you come to get it?" Her attention wandered. "Who's that standing over there?" Joanna retreated further into the shadows. "Who are you? Oh, it hurts me here, too." She laid her hand on her breast.

"I'm the doctor, Harry Portor, you remember me, don't you?"

​He could see her make an effort. "You're sure Henderson's not here? It would make him angry to see you. Peter was here a little while ago—we're going to be married, you know. That's why Henderson cut me." Her voice grew stronger. "I thought he had killed me."

Harry cast Joanna a fleeting look. "Wait down in my car," his lips formed. She slipped down the stairs out of the house.

She sat in the car a long time while the street darkened. She saw Mr. Simpson return and hard on his footsteps Mrs. Ellersley. He must have told the news just inside the hall, for Joanna heard a shriek cut short by the closing door. Presently Harry came running down the steps, peering short-sightedly through his thick glasses at her crouching figure.

He said briefly, "A bad business, but she's not in any danger unless there's a breakdown from nervous shock."

The words were meaningless to her, reviewing Maggie's statement: "Peter was here, we're going to be married, you know."

When they got to her house Joanna politely asked him to come in.

"No, but wait a moment. I want to tell you something." He fiddled with the brake a moment. "Joanna, you've been avoiding me lately because you know I love you and you were afraid I'd ask you to marry me. Don't avoid me any more. I've got my answer. When a girl loves a man as you do Peter Bye, so much so that she'll accuse herself for his sake—oh, it makes no difference that he was innocent—well, nobody else need think there's a chance for him. But I'm your friend, Joanna, believe that."

She thanked him sadly. "Good-night, Harry."

Sylvia sent Roger up to her room to tell her that Miss Vera—Vera—"I forget her other name, Aunt Janna," had called up. She would call again the next day.

​Joanna thanked him indifferently. "All right, darling, tell Mamma I'll look out for her."

She thought to herself as he pattered down stairs: "Peter and Maggie, here in New York . . . I won't think of them, I'm not going through all that sick agony again. I believe I'll go South to-morrow."