The Moving Finger Read Free

once.
    She vindicated my belief in her toughness by displaying no emotion but that of amusement.
    â€œWhat an awful bit of dirt! I’ve always heard about anonymous letters, but I’ve never seen one before. Are they always like this?”
    â€œI can’t tell you,” I said. “It’s my first experience, too.”
    Joanna began to giggle.
    â€œYou must have been right about my makeup, Jerry. I suppose they think I just must be an abandoned female!”
    â€œThat,” I said, “coupled with the fact that our father was a tall, dark lantern-jawed man and our mother a fair-haired blue-eyed little creature, and that I take after him and you take after her.”
    Joanna nodded thoughtfully.
    â€œYes, we’re not a bit alike. Nobody would take us for brother and sister.”
    â€œSomebody certainly hasn’t,” I said with feeling.
    Joanna said she thought it was frightfully funny.
    She dangled the letter thoughtfully by one corner and asked what we were to do with it.
    â€œThe correct procedure, I believe,” I said, “is to drop it into the fire with a sharp exclamation of disgust.”
    I suited the action to the word, and Joanna applauded.
    â€œYou did that beautifully,” she added. “You ought to have been on the stage. It’s lucky we still have fires, isn’t it?”
    â€œThe wastepaper basket would have been much less dramatic,” I agreed. “I could, of course, have set light to it with a match and slowly watched it burn—or watched it slowly burn.”
    â€œThings never burn when you want them to,” said Joanna. “They go out. You’d probably have had to strike match after match.”
    She got up and went towards the window. Then, standing there, she turned her head sharply.
    â€œI wonder,” she said, “who wrote it?”
    â€œWe’re never likely to know,” I said.
    â€œNo—I suppose not.” She was silent a moment, and then said: “I don’t know when I come to think of it that it is so funny after all. You know, I thought they—they liked us down here.”
    â€œSo they do,” I said. “This is just some half-crazy brain on the borderline.”
    â€œI suppose so. Ugh— Nasty!”
    As she went out into the sunshine I thought to myself as I smoked my after-breakfast cigarette that she was quite right. It was nasty. Someone resented our coming here—someone resented Joanna’s bright young sophisticated beauty—somebody wanted to hurt. To take it with a laugh was perhaps the best way—but deep down it wasn’t funny….
    Dr. Griffith came that morning. I had fixed up for him to give me a weekly overhaul. I liked Owen Griffith. He was dark, ungainly, with awkward ways of moving and deft, very gentle hands. He had a jerky way of talking and was rather shy.
    He reported progress to be encouraging. Then he added:
    â€œYou’re feeling all right, aren’t you. Is it my fancy, or are you a bit under the weather this morning?”
    â€œNot really,” I said. “A particularly scurrilous anonymous letter arrived with the morning coffee, and it’s left rather a nasty taste in the mouth.”
    He dropped his bag on the floor. His thin dark face was excited.
    â€œDo you mean to say that you’ve had one of them?”
    I was interested.
    â€œThey’ve been going about, then?”
    â€œYes. For some time.”
    â€œOh,” I said, “I see. I was under the impression that our presence as strangers was resented here.”
    â€œNo, no, it’s nothing to do with that. It’s just—” He paused and then asked, “What did it say? At least—” he turned suddenly red and embarrassed— “perhaps I oughtn’t to ask?”
    â€œI’ll tell you with pleasure,” I said. “It just said that the fancy tart I’d brought down with me wasn’t my sister—not