Joan Thursday: A Novel

"I'd rather not say, sir, if you don't mind."

Troubled by an inkling of the disaster, Matthias composed himself to patience.

Turning south on Fifth Avenue, the car passed Thirty-fourth Street before swinging eastward again. It stopped, eventually, in the side street, just short of the corner of Madison Avenue, before a private entrance to a ground-floor apartment, such as physicians prefer. But Matthias could discern no physician's name-plate upon the door at which his guide knocked, or in either of the flanking windows.

Opening, the door disclosed a panelled entry tenanted by a white-lipped woman in the black and white uniform of a lady's-maid. Her frightened eyes examined Matthias apprehensively as he entered, followed by the chauffeur.

This last demanded briefly: "Doctor been?"

The maid assented with a nervous nod: "Ten minutes ago, about. He's with the lady now – "

"Lady!" the chauffeur echoed. "But I thought it was Mr. Marbridge – "

"I mean the other lady," the maid explained – "the one what done the shooting. When Mr. Marbridge got the gun away from her, he locked her up in the bathroom, and then she had hysterics. The doctor's trying to make her hush, so's she won't disturb the other tenants, but… You can hear yourself how she's carrying on."

In a pause that followed, Matthias was conscious of the sound of high-pitched and incessant laughter, slightly muffled, emanating from some distant part of the flat.

He asked abruptly: "Where is Mr. Marbridge?"

The maid started and hesitated, looking to the chauffeur.

"This is Mr. Matthias," that one explained. "Mr. Marbridge sent for him."

"Oh, yes – excuse me, sir. This way, if you please."

Opening a door on the right, the woman permitted Matthias to pass through, then closed it.

He found himself in a dining-room of moderate proportions and handsomely furnished. Little of it was visible, however, outside the radius of illumination cast by an electric dome which, depending from the middle of the ceiling, focussed its rays upon a small round dining-table of mahogany. This table was quite bare save for a massive decanter of cut-glass standing at the edge of a puddle of spilt liquor: as if an uncertain hand had attempted to pour a drink. Near it lay a broken goblet.

On the farther side of the table a woman with young and slender figure stood in a pose of arrested action, holding a goblet half-full of brandy and water. Her features were but indistinctly suggested in the penumbra of the dome, but beneath this her bare arms and shoulders, rising out of an elaborate evening gown, shone with a soft warm lustre. Matthias remembered that gown: Joan Thursday had worn it in the last act of "Mrs. Mixer." But she neither moved nor spoke, and for the time being he paid her no further heed, giving his attention entirely to Marbridge.

Sitting low in a deeply upholstered wing-chair – out of place in the dining-room and evidently dragged in for the emergency – Marbridge breathed heavily, chin on his chest, his coarse mouth ajar, his face ghastly with a stricken pallor. His feet sprawled uncouthly. The dress coat and waistcoat he had worn lay in a heap on the floor, near the chair, and both shirt and undershirt had been ripped and cut away from his right shoulder, exposing his swarthy and hairy bosom and a sort of temporary bandage which, like his linen, was darkly stained. Closed when Matthias entered, his eyes opened almost instantly and fixed upon the man a heavy and lacklustre stare which at first failed to indicate recognition.

Matthias heard himself crying out in a voice of horror: "Good God, Marbridge! How did this happen?"

The man stirred, granted with pain, and made a deprecatory gesture with his left hand.

"Needn't yell," he said thickly: "I've been shot … done for…"

His gaze shifted heavily to the woman. With effort he enunciated one word more: "Drink…"

As though by that monosyllable freed from an enchaining spell, Joan started, moved quickly to his side and held the goblet to his lips.

He drank noisily, gulping and slobbering; overflowing at either corner of his mouth, the liquor dripped twin streams upon his naked bosom.

Mechanically Matthias put his hat down on the table.

He experienced an incredulous sensation, as though he were struggling to cast off the terror and oppression of some particularly vivid and coherent nightmare.

From the farther room that noise persisted of monotonous and awful laughter.

Marbridge ceased to swallow and grunted. Joan removed the glass and drew away without looking at Matthias. At a cost of considerable will-power, apparently, the wounded man collected himself and levelled at Matthias his louring, but now less dull, regard.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said ungraciously. "Well, you'll do at a pinch… I wanted Arlington … but you if he couldn't be found."

"Well," said Matthias stupidly, "I'm here… The doctor's seen you, I suppose?"

"Yes – did what he could for me – no use wasting effort – it's my cue to exit."

"Oh, come! It's not as bad as that!"

"The hell it ain't. The doctor knows – I know. Not that it matters. It was coming to me and I got it."

"Where's the doctor?" Matthias insisted. "Why isn't he attending you now?"

"He's in the other room … trying to silence that crazy woman… She plugged me and … went into hysterics…"

"Who?"

"Nella Cardrow… Had the devil of a time with her before doctor came … trying to keep her from rushing out and giving herself up … all this in the papers… But all right now: we'll hush it up."

"Then that's what you want of me?"

"Wait," Marbridge grunted. "Where's that girl?"

Joan moved back to his side. "What can I do?" she said; and these were all the words Matthias heard her utter from first to last of that business.

Marbridge nodded at her with a curling lip: "You can get out!"

She turned sharply and left the room, banging the door.

"That's the kind she is," Marbridge commented. "You were lucky to get rid of her as easy as you did… Give me more brandy, will you, like a good fellow – and be stingy with the water. I've got to … hold out a couple of hours more."

Matthias served him.

"I presume Venetia knows nothing about this, yet?"

Having drunk, Marbridge shook his head. "Not yet. Now, listen… You guessed it: I want you to help hush this up, for Venetia's sake… Rotten mess – do no good if it gets in the papers – only humiliation for her. Will you – ?"

"What is it you want me to do?"

"Help me home and keep your mouth shut… You see, this is my place; I've had it years; very handy – private entrance – all that… Nella used to meet me here. That's how she came to have a key. I'd forgotten… Well, I got tired of her, and she couldn't act, and Arlington was sore about that. So we planned to get rid of her. I guess you must've heard. It was a dirty business, all round… And tonight, when her play went to pieces, just as we'd planned it should, she saw how she'd been bilked and lost her head… Came here, let herself in quietly, without the maid's hearing her, and shot me when I came in with Joan. I managed to get the gun away before she could turn it on herself, and locked her up. Then – hysterics… Well, I'm finished. I asked for it, and got it… No: no remorse bunk, no deathbed repentance, nothing like that! But I realize I've been a pretty rotten proposition, first and last. Never mind… What I'm getting at's this: nobody need suffer but me. That's where you come in. For Venetia's sake. You and Arlington and the doctor can cover it all up between you. Arlie can quiet that girl – Joan – and the doctor's all right; he'll want a pretty stiff cheque to fix the undertaker – and that's all right, too. Then you've got to scare Nella Cardrow so's she won't give herself away, and buy my chauffeur and that maid out there, Sara… But first off, you'll have to help doctor get me home and in bed. I'm the sort that's got to die in the house."

His chin dropped again.

"Well … I guess it's a good job … at that…"

He shivered.