The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow & Bruce Manning

Author:Gwen Bristow & Bruce Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2021-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The radio crackled. Jean shuddered, and felt Sylvia’s firm arm around her.

“My friends,” said the voice of the host, “you have observed the demise of Mrs. Gaylord Chisholm. You have observed also that I kept my promise that the second of our party to leave us would do so before midnight. After a few seconds’ explanation you will observe as well that I have kept the promise I made when I said that each of you shall provide me with the means of his own death.”

“But she couldn’t,” gasped Peter. “Margaret hadn’t moved—or spoken.”

“If you will lift the cushions in the chair occupied by Mrs. Chisholm,” continued the voice, “you will find hidden just where her head rested a thin black rubber object that looks like a double foot rule, joined with three clasps. This is a receiver connected with this radio by a wire which runs through the leg of the chair and under the floor. When the chair is resting on a particular spot the connection is made.”

Tim raised the cushion at the back of the chair Margaret had occupied and nodded grimly.

“While you were engaged in your entertaining conversation,” the voice went on, “I whispered into Mrs. Chisholm’s ear, and what she heard was a secret so terrible that Mrs. Chisholm, weighing it, preferred to die rather than to face the world again; for I told her that in five minutes you would all hear what she was hearing. So she died.”

“A secret!” exclaimed Dr. Reid. “Margaret had no secret. I have known her for twenty years—ever since her marriage. It’s impossible.”

“It’s absurd anyway,” said Hank. “People don’t die like that.”

“Perhaps,” said the voice of the host, “you are unaware that Mrs. Chisholm’s heart had been beating unsteadily for years. That was another secret that she guarded carefully. But that was not what I told her. I told her what she thought no human being knew but herself—that she was a bigamist.”

“A bigamist!” echoed Sylvia. “Margaret—a bigamist?”

“Mrs. Chisholm,” said the voice, “was twenty-six years old when she married for the second time. But Mrs. Chisholm had been married before. I call her Mrs. Chisholm because that was the name by which you knew her. But she had no right to it. The only name to which she had a legal right was that of her husband, Jimmy Vickers, whom she married when she was sixteen, and whom she never divorced.

“You are amazed? So was she. The secret of Jimmy Vickers lay buried, she thought, in Kansas. For when Margaret Chisholm was little Maggie Reynolds of the bayous, she went off to Kansas and got herself a job. You didn’t know that either, did you? Mrs. Gaylord Chisholm never confessed to her friends that she had ever had to work for a living.

“In Kansas she married Jimmy Vickers. But it didn’t take. They lived together three months, and Jimmy Vickers left for parts unknown, and Maggie Reynolds came back home to her folks. She was ashamed of

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