Fair Warning by Mignon Good Eberhart Read Free Book Online

waste of inward seething.
    “What would I do with him! There’s a whole laboratory full of things to do. Cute little test tubes crowded with—say, botulism cultures. Typhus germs… . Forgive me, my dear. Doctors’ jokes are likely to be a bit grim. Don’t worry about him. He’s cautious; he’ll take care of himself, all right. But see that you get to looking better yourself, Marcia. Get out doors in the sun. I’ll send you some capsules —”
    Ancill materialized at Marcia’s elbow and said, so suavely that for an instant it escaped offensiveness, that Mr. Godden noticed the draft.
    “Good-bye, Marcia,” said Dr. Blakie and closed the door himself with considerable force. It did not quite bang, however, for Ancill caught it and eased it gently to.
    “Lunch,” said Ancill, “is to be served at a small table in the library.”
    Lunch. Marcia went back to the library. To Ivan and to Beatrice. She felt as if she were poised precariously above a precipice, above a dangerous height. Going over rapids in a canoe. A breath, a tilt to the right or a tilt to the left would be disaster. Tomorrow, she thought, would be better. She would have had by then, a little time to adjust herself. To think, to map her course more definitely and with more security. Today was dangerous. And one look into Ivan’s face, one touch of his hand, threatened such small certainty and self-possession as she might have stored up.
    That was perhaps two o’clock, and it was about three that Rob’s letter came. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Marcia was in the hall when it arrived, and either by chance or because Rob had planned it that way, it arrived with the afternoon mail, though it was not postmarked and had probably been placed in the mail box by Stella, the Copley housemaid. At any rate, there it was on top of the sheaf of letters Ancill brought in, and Marcia saw it and instantly recognized the writing.
    “This is for me,” she said and took the letter swiftly.
    “But Madam—”
    “This is for me,” she repeated steadily. Ancill looked over her shoulder but, probably, saw the writing and the lack of postmark. “You may take the rest of the mail in to Mr. Godden.”
    He did so disapprovingly.
    Marcia turned quickly into the closed and seldom-used drawing room, running along parallel with the hall and in front of the library. She closed the door behind her and tore the letter open with hands that were cold and shaking at the thought of the nearness of the thing. Only a moment and it would have gone straight into Ivan’s hands. Rob, of course, couldn’t have known.
    The writing was jerky and black, against the single piece of white notepaper:
“Dear Marcia: You must leave him now. He’s home; I saw him come. Don’t you see now that it’s impossible; that you can’t stay there? You are never to be his wife again. I can’t let you, Marcia. You’re to come today, tonight, when you come to Verity’s dinner. You must come. He’s killing you by inches. I can’t just stand by and see it. I love you.”
    It was signed “Rob.”
    Ivan was at home, yes. But Rob couldn’t know that his return only held her tighter. That the fact of his presence only further paralyzed her.
    She did, then, for one clear, revealing instant think of obeying Rob; not that day, of course, but later, when there was time to decide how to do it, time to call all her strength together and to do it because she loved Rob. She did for a blinding flash see that, sometime, it might be inevitable and that the urgency of her love for Rob might give her, eventually, the strength to do it.
    But it was for only one clear, bright instant. For Ancill opened the door.
    She thrust the letter and the envelope hastily in the pocket of her sweater.
    He said that Mr. Godden wanted her and looked at her sweater pocket and followed her as she went through the hall and back into the library, so she had no chance to dispose of the letter.
    Ivan was for the moment alone.
    “What