Danger in the Dark Read Online Free PDF

show. But with the river—”
    “Oh, stop, stop!” cried Daphne in a choked way. “You must not—”
    “The trouble with the river,” went on Dennis without looking at her, “is that sometime the body will come up again. Soon as it thaws. I think they could tell even then from the wound and state of—of it —what happened. It would only put off the inquiry. But the river, of course, would be the—” He stopped, as if to arrange words, and finished: “The easiest way.”
    “Dennis, Rowley!” cried Daphne, flinging out her hands violently toward them into the twilight. “You are both mad.”
    Rowley was shaken, too; she could see the tremor of his cigarette as he held it to his lips. There was a tremor in his voice, too. He said, “Yes, it would be easiest. In fact, I—” He stopped, and Dennis said:
    “Yes, I know. I couldn’t, either.”
    Daphne cried in short, jerky whispers, “I can’t stand it. You are both mad to think of such a thing. You can’t seriously consider it. Don’t you realize that it’s impossible? That we’ve got to face this—tell everybody the truth about it? You can’t possibly do anything else. Please, Dennis.” Her hands were on his arm now, feeling the smooth texture of broadcloth, finding his hand. It clasped her own, but he said nothing. “Dennis, I can’t let you. It is too dreadful. Too—Why, it’s dangerous, too! Don’t you see how dangerous it is?”
    “Not as dangerous,” said Dennis in a stiff, remote voice—“not as dangerous as—as some other things, Daphne.”
    She was beginning to sob now—with terror and with shock; with a horrible nostalgia for things to be as they had been before she had opened that springhouse door and had plunged upon disaster.
    Rowley stirred impatiently.
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Daph, you’ll have the whole house out here. All you have to do is keep still about what really happened. I mean—I mean about his being here. Dennis and I will see to the rest. We’ll plan it so no one ever knows. I—Look here, Daph, we’ve got to do this. You don’t realize how things are with the company. You don’t understand what Ben’s murder or suicide would mean just now. Dennis does. You don’t know, and you are going to wreck us all for a whim—”
    “Whim!” cried Daphne in furious, choked repudiation.
    “Yes, whim. If it would help Ben, or bring him back to life, or anything, it would be different. But he’s dead. There’s not one thing we can do for him. If he were here he would be the first to—” He checked himself, suddenly aware of the ugly aptness of his words, and Dennis took Daphne’s cold hands.
    “He’s right, Daphne, dear,” he said. “I’m going to take you to the house. It’ll take just a moment or two, Rowley. I’ll be back.”
    He put his arm around Daphne’s waist, turning her toward the door.
    “No, no!” she cried again. “Don’t you care for—for truth and justice and—”
    “I care for something else very much more,” said Dennis grimly and opened the door. Snow struck lightly upon their faces. Rowley spoke beside them, and his voice was thin and frightened:
    “I say, Dennis—you will be back, I suppose? It wouldn’t be a good idea, you know, simply to call the police and let them find me—with it.”
    “Good God, Rowley,” said Dennis, “you can think of the damnedest things!”
    “I’ll stay in the doorway,” said Rowley, unperturbed. “If anybody comes but you, I get out.”
    “That’s like Rowley,” said Dennis, leading Daphne around snow-laden shrubs. “Look out—here’s a step somewhere here. He would suspect his own mother—and as to that, I can’t say I blame him. He’ll be in a state of jitters by the time I get back. Still he was cooler about the whole thing than I would have thought Rowley could be.”
    It was dark in that chaos of snow and blackness and cold, but still there was a faint luminousness about it, and white shapes loomed out here and there. It