Like two horns.
And that shadow on the wall behind him. It had a very disconcerting shape, indeed.
Agatha had, however, regained her self-composure. “What do you want here?”
“Nothing—now.” Their visitor smiled urbanely at them both and bowed. “I have it. Good day.”
They both stood mute as he crossed to the front door. He opened it. He went out.
“Well!” said Agatha. “I never! Trying to scare me into getting rid of this ring. Walter. Go see which way he went.”
Uncomfortably, Walter went to the window, looked out. The stranger was nowhere in sight.
* * *
“The lawn’ll have to be changed,” said Agatha.
Walter nodded, silently. He was wondering why the lawn outside the house was so parched and sere.
Jonathan’s funeral had been yesterday.
“As soon as possible,” Agatha had told the undertaker. Well, thought Walter, the undertaker had certainly been obliging. He wished disconsolately for a cigar.
Agatha stared at the house possessively. “We’ll go ahead to the bank tomorrow, and see what he had in his vaults,” she mused.
“But—” Walter found himself saying desperately. “I—I don’t think it would look good, Agatha. So soon after the funeral…”
“Don’t be so childish. Of course it’ll look all right. And I’m having the remodelers start in tomorrow.”
Walter sighed and looked up at the old house, looming huge and gaunt in the gathering dusk. Like an old, empty skull, he thought. The windows like two dark eye-sockets, the door like—
He stopped thinking. He seized Agatha by the arm.
“Look!”
Agatha stared. Her mouth dropped open, and then she started screaming shrilly for firemen, police, anyone—to come and save her house. Her beautiful house.
The house was on fire.
It was no use. The firemen squirted streams of silver water against it, long into the night. Agatha bothered the firemen interminably, until finally a cop shoved her back into the crowd with the gruff admonition to, “Keep back, lady. We’re doin’ all we can.”
Walter stood back in the crowd, watching the blaze. Great gouts of flame mounting crimson and splendid against the night sky. The screaming of sirens in the distance. The wild confusion…
Walter could not help smiling. He remembered what he had seen in that book on Jonathan Miles’ desk.
Such a book as that should very well be destroyed. Walter thought of these things, and how he could not possibly live in this house now, and he was glad.
* * *
But afterwards, on the homeward drive, he did not feel so glad. Agatha kept wailing, and alternately blaming him, the firemen, and their strange visitor of three days ago.
“It’s all your fault. You know it is. You dropped a cigarette or something on the rug and it caught fire—” She paused again for breath.
“But Agatha, I didn’t—”
“Shut up!” Walter cowered back behind the wheel, and was silent.
“Or maybe,” said Agatha ominously, “it was that fellow who said he was a lawyer. The one with the beard and the funny smile. I bet he did it. Just ’cause I wouldn’t give him this ring.”
Walter was silent. Their visitor had said something about Jonathan. Having his little joke. Giving the ring to Agatha. And that odd crystal set in it.
“Well, anyway,” Agatha said with an air of apparent unconcern. “The bonds in his safe-deposit box at the bank are safe. Three quarters of a million worth, so the executors said.
“And besides, I got this—” She rubbed her ring reflectively. “Wonder how much it’s worth? Sure shines pretty, doesn’t it, Walter?”
“Yes, dear,” he said mechanically.
He glanced sideways at the ring. He shivered as he saw the symbols carven in the sides. Strange twisting runes, like the ones he had seen on that little piece of paper back in Jonathan’s study…
“Agatha,” he ventured timidly. “Agatha, maybe you’d better sell that ring. I think—”
No answer.
He turned.
Agatha was staring into the crystal with a strained, rapt expression. Walter Simmons swallowed uncomfortably as he looked at the crystal.
In the darkness, it had a dim reddish tint, that seemed to be pulsing with a strange unsteady glow. It looked—eerie.
Walter bit his lip.
Yes, the crystal looked remarkably like some gleaming, baleful eye.
The next morning, they went to the bank. Agatha bustling ahead, buoyed up with a sense of her own importance; Walter trailing small and timid, just behind.
Agatha informed the bank clerk that they were the heirs of Jonathan Miles, and why they had come.
“Ah, yes,” the clerk said. “Right this way, please.”
They went down to the vault.
“Mr. Miles, you understand, always did business with us by mail,” said the clerk, pausing uncertainly in front of them.
“Yes,” Agatha said impatiently. “Of course. Let’s see in the boxes.”
The man drew out the two safe-deposit boxes slowly, opened them. “At last reports Mr. Miles told us he had two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of negotiable securities in this one,” he began abstractly. “And almost half a million in bonds in this—”
His voice choked off. He blinked.
Agatha stared, and Walter stared, and then Agatha’s voice rose in a shrill, angry scream, demanding to know where the money was. Who was the thief, and why didn’t the bank take care of what belonged to her, and was this the right deposit box after all?
Where was her money?
The bank clerk could not explain it.
The boxes were empty. That was plain.
And for a very brief moment, as Agatha stared around the vault, trembling, clenching and unclenching her fists on empty air, she seemed to hear the faint tinkle of distant laughter.
Jonathan’s laughter.
The president of the bank could not explain it either. He looked quite grave, informed them there would be an investigation made, but Agatha refused to be consoled.
“We’ll sue them, that’s what we’ll do!” she announced grimly to Walter afterwards. “First the house, now the money. You—you realize what this means?”
“Yes,” said Walter a little wearily. “I suppose I’ll have to get my job back.”
“You certainly will! And furthermore—” And she was off on another tirade.
Walter did not say anything. He was thinking. Thinking about what the stranger had said.
“This house will have to be taken with the rest—”
The rest. The bank securities. The house. Everything. Remembering the way the stranger’s shadow had looked, Walter Simmons was not surprised that the bank president had been unable to explain the disappearance of the bonds.
* * *
The remainder of the week dragged slowly. They managed to sell the lot the house had been on for a rather pitiful sum, but Agatha was at least half-satisfied.
“I can buy me that fur wrap from Modent’s I’ve always wanted,” she told him Friday night over the supper-table. “And maybe some new silver—”
Walter’s forehead wrinkled. “But how about that pipe you promised me for Christmas, dear? The red briar—”
“Oh, shut up! Always thinking of yourself. Why can’t I have a husband that thinks of his wife once in a while? Let’s see… I’ll wear it to church, Sunday. And will make them all jealous! Walter. Did you get your job back today?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I got it back.”
He neglected to tell her he was getting ten dollars a week less than formerly. If he had, she would only wither him with scorn and ask him, as she always did, why didn’t he stand up for his rights? Why didn’t he assert himself, instead of being a timid little mouse all his life? Why indeed?
“Pass the sugar.” Her voice broke shrill, strident, across his thought.
Walter reached for the sugar bowl casually—and then paused, his arm in midair.