Legacy Of Terror

frightened for him. He was too good, too considerate, and he would end up paying for his consideration if she did not stop him from going through with this foolish plan.
    “Elaine, you don't understand how-”
    “I won't let you do it, Gordon!”
    She pushed him aside, spun by him, pushing away his hand as he reached for her. She ran down the hallway as fast as her legs would carry her and took the stairs two at a time. Downstairs, she hurried into the main drawing room and picked up the telephone. She began to dial the seven digits in the police number that she had gotten from the operator last night, and she had dialed the fifth number before she realized that she had never heard the dial tone. She hung up and tried again.
    The line was dead.
    “Elaine, what are you doing?” Gordon asked, running into the drawing room and coming to stand beside her at the phone.
    “It isn't working,” she said.
    He took it from her and listened.
    She lifted the cord, drew on it, and found no resist-ence. It came through her hands until she was holding the cut end.
    “Someone has cut the line,” Gordon said.
    “Gordon, we must get out of here!”
    “Let me go up and talk to him.”
    “He knows, Gordon,” she said. She felt cold, clammy, as if she were standing in the middle of a very old, dew-slimed tomb. “He knows that I suspect him, and he's taken steps to see I don't call the police. Don't you see what I mean? If he has done this much, he won't stop at trying to kill us all, this morning, before we can get help.”
    “But if we can't call the police, what else is there to do but let me talk to him, see if I can get him settled down? He might give himself up.”
    “I'll get my car, and we'll drive in to the police station,” she said. She turned and ran past him, hurrying into the hallway.
    “Elaine-”
    “Hurry!” she said.
    She turned and ran for the kitchen, not bothering to see whether he was following her. Neither Bess nor Jerry was in the empty, quiet kitchen, and she did not see any sign of them outside, on her way to the garage. She lifted the white, windowless door over the garage stall which Lee Matherly had said was for her use and hurried to the Volkswagen. She opened the door, slid behind the wheel, and only then realized that she did not have her keys.
    For a moment, she froze as she considered returning to that house, climbing that dark staircase again, returning to her room, so close to the studio where Dennis worked.
    She couldn't do that.
    She'd rather stay here and-
    And what? Die?
    No, she couldn't give up so easily. Her whole life had been geared to survival, to learning to cope. She had early understood that the world was a hard place, and that had never gotten her down. She had stood up to it, a little mite of a girl with long black hair, and she had bested it time and time again. She was sober and serious and not at all frivolous, and she would not sit here and do nothing.
    Besides, there was Gordon. Dennis could hardly harm both of them, if they got the keys together. The advantages would be with them. And, most likely, they would not even be bothered. Dennis might still be sleeping.
    She slid out of the car, closed the door, and stopped cold.
    She looked, for the first time, into the rear seat of the car, stared hard at what had caught her eye. It was the gleam of a wristwatch. The wristwatch was attached to a wrist. The wrist to a shoulder. The shoulder to a body.
    She opened the front door.
    In the overhead light, she looked at the face of the dead man, and she saw that it was Captain Rand. He had been stabbed several times.

Chapter 18
    No.
    This was not the way it was supposed to be, not at all the way the world was supposed to operate. True, the world was hard, life was difficult. But there had to be some certainties. One of these was the law. If there were trouble, you went to the police, and you received help, and everything was all right again. In a good, sensible world, organized law was supreme, always triumphant over madness since madness was disorganized. When insanity could strike down the law, could smash your last hope, then the whole world must be insane. Madness then ruled supreme and law was useless, hope was useless.
    She reached over the seat and touched the Captain's face, as if by her hand she would prove this was nothing more than a very solid illusion, a bit of her imagination that she was taking far too seriously. But when she touched him, he did not fade away. He remained on the seat,