Read Online Wall by Mary Roberts Rinehart - Free Book Online Page B

coffee before I left. Then the car came in, and still dazed I was on my way to the doctor’s. Only one thought was in my mind. Had she or had she not told Arthur that she was riding that morning? I could not remember. All I could remember was his desperate face. “Now you’re fastened onto me like a leech, and, by heaven, I can’t get rid of you.”
    I found Doctor Jamieson at his lunch, but he came with me at once. He put a bag into the car and, folding his long legs into the space beside me, gave me a whimsical smile.
    “Don’t look like that, girl,” he said. “All I’ve got is a few bandages and some iodine. Probably neither of them needed at that. Most people fall off a horse sooner or later.”
    His matter-of-factness was good for me. Then, too, once out of the house I felt less morbid. The weather had cleared and the air was bracing, almost exhilarating. The golf links showed a brilliant green on the fairways, and Bob Hutchinson was driving a row of balls from the ninth tee, with Fred Martin, the professional, standing by. Tony was just coming in with Howard Brooks, both looking warm and cheerful. They waved, but I drove on past and into the dirt road which led to the bridle path. At the foot of the trail I stopped the car, and the doctor gave me a cigarette and took one himself.
    “Pretty spot,” he said. “Relax and look at it, girl. You’re tightened up like a drum.”
    “I’m frightened, doctor.”
    He turned and looked at me.
    “See here,” he said, “let’s look at this thing. At the least let’s say she merely lost her horse. That’s possible. Then let’s say she’s had a fall and is used up a bit—well, that’s easily fixed. You’re not so fond of her as all that, Marcia. What are you scared about?”
    “Suppose she’s dead?” I said with stiff lips.
    “Why suppose anything of the sort? But just to be practical, she hasn’t meant so much to you and Arthur that you couldn’t outlive even that. How is Arthur, anyhow?”
    “Fine, so far as I know.”
    My voice may have been constrained, for he glanced at me.
    “Haven’t seen him lately, then?”
    Once again I should have told him, of course; told him the whole story. As I write this I find my hand shaking. What if I had told him? Could any lives have been saved? Perhaps not. Almost certainly not. The motives were too deeply buried. Yet I would like to feel that I had trusted him.
    But Arthur’s story to Mary Lou and his insistence on secrecy were uppermost in my mind.
    “Not for some time,” I said, and then I heard a horse coming down the trail. It was one of Ed’s boys, and he stopped beside the car.
    “Haven’t found her yet,” he said, touching his cap. “Mr. Smith and Joe’s gone on a ways. One thing, she didn’t do any jumping. Doesn’t look like it, anyhow.”
    Over an hour passed before Ed Smith and Joe came back. Their animals were sweating, and had evidently traveled far and fast. Ed took off his hat and wiped his face.
    “Only thing I can think of,” he said, “she started to walk home and tried a short cut. Maybe she’s lost. Maybe she fell and hurt herself. There’s a lot of steep places, and she was in boots. If she slipped—”
    It was past two o’clock by that time, and the doctor had to go back. I turned the car in the narrow road by which Ed stood.
    “What I was thinking,” he said, “was to get some of those CCC fellows and let them look around. If she’s hurt herself we ought to get her, and even if she’s lost it’s cold at night. Those boys know the country. They’ve been cutting trail all spring.”
    But I was convinced by that time that Juliette was not lost.
    It is strange to remember that the picture of Loon Lake was delivered late that afternoon. William received it and carried the small canvas gingerly up to my room.
    “There’s a person downstairs,” he said stiffly, “who says you ordered it. The price is fifteen dollars if you like it and nothing if you don’t.”
    I did