The Gray Mask by Charles Wadsworth Camp (children's ebooks online .txt) 📕

"Place is all right," the inspector said stubbornly. "You've seen it. You were there with me two summers ago. What's the matter with the place?"

"No use trying to pull the wool over my eyes," Nora answered. "It's the loneliest place I've ever seen, and you ought to know I'd remember Mr. Alden's big furnaces and machine-shop. I read the papers, father. He's staying up so late this year on account of the enormous war orders he's taken. You know as well as I do that that may mean real danger for Jim. What did Mr. Alden tell you?"

The inspector spread his hands helplessly.

"I sometimes think, Nora, you'd make a better detective than any of us. Alden's sick and nervous. I guess that's all it amounts to. He's probably scared some German sympathizer may take a pot shot at him for filling these contracts. And he's worried about his wife. She won't leave him there alone, and it seems all their servants, except old John, have cleared out."

"You said something to Jim about spooks," Nora prompted.

"Thought you'd come to that," the inspector said. "You're like your mother was, Nora—always on the look-out for the supernatural."

"So, I gather, were the servants," she answered drily.

"Silly talk, Alden says, about the woods back of his house. You remember. There was some kind of a fight there during the Revolution—a lot of men ambushed and massacred. I guess you saw the bayonets and gun-locks Alden had dug up. Servants got talking—said they saw things there on foggy nights."

The inspector lowered his voice to a more serious key.

"The angle I don't like is that Alden's valet was found dead in those woods yesterday morning. Not a mark on him. Coroner, I believe, says apoplexy, but Alden's nervous, and the rest of the help cleared out. I suppose they'll get somebody else up as soon as they can. Meantime Alden and his wife are alone with old John. Confound it, Nora, I had to send him somebody."

"But without a word of this!"

"I tell you I don't like it. I didn't want to do it. It was Alden's idea—would have it that way. Frankly I don't make it out, but maybe, being on the spot, he knows best."

"There's something here," she said, "that we can't understand—maybe something big. It isn't fair to Jim."

The inspector looked up slyly.

"Jim," he said, "can take care of himself if anybody can. Seems to me you're pretty anxious. Sure you haven't anything to tell me about you and him? If you had, I might make a place for him watching these ten-cent lunch joints to see that customers didn't carry away the hardware and crockery. Then all the danger you'd have to worry about would be that he might eat the food."

But Nora failed to smile. She glanced away, shaking her head.

"I've nothing to tell you, father," she answered. "Nothing now. I don't know. Honestly I don't know. I only know I've been through one such experience, and if anything happened to Jim that I could help, I'd never forgive myself."

The night had gathered swiftly behind a curtain of rain. Garth, glancing out the window of the train, saw that darkness was already close upon a somber and resentful world. Pines, hemlocks, and birches stretched limitlessly. The rain clung to their drooping branches like tears, so that they expressed an attitude of mourning which their color clothed convincingly. The roaring of the train was subdued, as if it hesitated to disturb the oppressive silence through which it passed.

The car, nearly empty, was insufficiently lighted. Garth answered to the growing depression of his surroundings. His paper, already well-explored, no longer held him. He continued to gaze from the window, speculating on the goal towards which he was hurrying through this bleak desolation. The inspector's phrase was suddenly informed with meaning. He was, in every sense, advancing through the dark. The realization left him with a troublesome restlessness, a desire to be actively at work.

The last streak of gray had long faded when the train drew up at Deacon's Bay station—a small building with a shed like an exaggerated collar about its throat. At this hour there was no operator on duty. Only one or two oil lamps maintained an indifferent resistance to the mist. Garth saw a horse and carriage at the rear. He walked to it.

"Could you drive me to Mr. Andrew Alden's place?" he asked.

From the depths of the carriage a native's voice replied:

"Probably you're the party I'm looking for. If you're Mr. Garth from New York, step in."

Garth obeyed, and they drove off along a road for the most part flanked by thick woods.

Without warning, through an open space, Garth saw a flame spring upward, tearing the mist and splashing the sky with wanton scarlet.

"What's that?" he asked sharply.

The glare diminished and died. The native clucked to his horse.

"Mr. Alden's furnaces," he answered.

Garth stirred.

"I see. Iron. Steel. And now it works night and day?"

"On war orders," the native answered. "Now you wouldn't think we'd ever have got in the war, would you? There's a whole town—board shacks—to take care of the men—more'n fifteen hundred of them."

Garth nodded thoughtfully. Here at the start was a condition that might make the presence of a detective comforting to his host.

As they penetrated deeper into the woods the driver exhibited an increasing desire to talk, and from time to time, Garth remarked, he glanced over his shoulder.

"None of my business," the man said, "but it's funny Mr. Alden's having company now."

Garth smiled. He was certainly on the threshold of a case he had been asked to enter wholly unprepared.

"Maybe you'll tell me why," he encouraged.

"Because," the driver answered, "although Mr. Alden stands to make a pile of money, he's paying for it in some ways. You didn't hear about his yacht?"

Garth shook his head.

"Maybe some of these rough workmen he's got up from the city, or maybe somebody wanted to pay him out. Took it out of his boat-house a few nights ago, started on a joy-ride, I suppose, and ran it on the rocks."

"Much loss?" Garth asked.

"Total, except for the furnishings."

"Are you one of Mr. Alden's servants?"

The driver's laugh was uncomfortable.

"That's what I meant about his having company. There aren't any servants except the old butler. A woman from the village goes to get breakfast and lunch for them, but she won't stay after dark."

Garth grinned, recalling the inspector's comment about spooks.

"Why did the servants quit?"

The driver glanced over his shoulder again. He hurried his horse.

"Laughing's cheap," he said, "but you can judge for yourself how lonely it is, and Mr. Alden's right on the ocean—only house for two miles. You see he owns a big piece of this coast—woods right down to the water. They've always told about a lot of soldiers being killed in those woods during the Revolution. All my life I've heard talk about seeing things there. Servants got talking a few days ago—said they saw shadows in grave clothes going through the woods. I laughed at that, too. But I didn't laugh when they found Mr. Alden's valet yesterday morning, dead as a door nail."

Garth whistled.

"Violence?"

"Not a sign. Coroner says apoplexy, but that doesn't convince anybody that doesn't want to be."

"Curious," Garth mused.

For some time a confused murmuring had increased in his ears—the persistent fury of water turned back by a rocky coast.

They turned through a gateway, and, across a broad lawn, he caught a glimpse of lights, dim, unreal, as one might picture will-o-the-wisps. But the night and the mist could not hide from Garth the size of the house, significant of wealth and a habit of comfort. That such an establishment should be practically bereft of service was sufficient proof that there was, indeed, something here to combat. Yet from the driver he could draw nothing more ponderable than the fancied return of the dead to their battlefield, and a distrust, natural enough in a native, of the horde of new men gathered for the furnaces.

When he had stepped from the carriage he saw that the lights were confined to the lower hall and one room to the left. The rest of the great house stretched away with an air of decay and abandonment.

In response to his ring he heard a step drag across the floor, but the door was not opened at once. Instead a quavering voice demanded his identity.

With some impatience Garth grasped the knob, and as he heard the carriage retreat towards the town, called out:

"My name is Garth. I'm expected."

The door was swung back almost eagerly, and Garth stepped across the threshold of the lonely house.

An old man faced him, white-haired, bent at the shoulders, unkempt and so out of key with the neat hard-wood floor, the hangings, and the wainscot of the hall—a witness to an abrupt relaxation of discipline.

"Thank heavens you've come, sir," the old man said.

"Then you know," Garth answered. "What's wrong here?"

But before the other could reply a man's voice, uncertain, barely audible, came from the lighted room to the left.

"Who is that? If it is Mr. Garth bring him to me at once."

Garth became aware of the rustling of skirts. He stepped into the room, and, scarcely within the doorway, met a young woman whose unquestionable beauty impressed him less than the trouble which, to an extent, distorted it. Her greeting, too, almost identical with the old servant's, disturbed him more than his. It was reminiscent of the desolate landscape he had seen from the train, of the forest loneliness through which he had just driven, of the gaping scarlet that had torn across the cloud-filled sky.

"I'm glad you've come. I—I was afraid you mightn't make it."

Garth's glance appraised the room. It was a huge apartment, running the width of the house. Casement windows rose from the floor to the ceiling. An oak door in the farther wall, towards the rear, was closed. There were many book-cases. A fire burned drowsily in a deep hearth. Before it stood a writing-table with an inefficient lamp, and at its side—the point where Garth's eyes halted—a man sat—huddled.

The man wore a dressing gown and slippers. His hair was untidy. From his cadaverous face eyes gleamed as if with a newly-born hope. He put his hands on the chair arms and started to rise, then, with a sigh, he sank back again.

"You'll excuse me," he said. "I've not been myself lately. It is an effort for me to get up, but I am glad to see you, Mr. Garth—very glad."

Garth understood now why the voice had barely carried to the hall. It lacked body. It left the throat reluctantly. It crowded the room with a scarcely vibrating atmosphere of dismay. Garth asked himself hotly if he had been summoned as an antidote to the airy delusions of an invalid.

A stifled sound behind him caused him to turn swiftly. He was in time to see the distortion of the woman's features increase, to watch the resistless tears sparkle in her eyes and fall, to be shamed by the laborious sobs which, after she had covered her face, shook her in freeing themselves.

He advanced, at a loss, shocked by this unforeseen breakdown. He took Alden's hand, but the other appeared to have forgotten his presence.

"Don't, Cora," he mumbled. "You mustn't do that any more. We are no longer—alone."

Garth glanced from one to the other, answering to the atmosphere of dismay, which moment by moment became more unavoidable. Yet what could there be here beyond loneliness, and, perhaps, threats from those against whose cherished principles Alden's furnaces were busy night and day? The loneliness, Garth acknowledged even then, could account for a lot, but, he decided, a doctor was needed here as much as a detective.

At last Mrs. Alden resumed her control. She faced Garth apologetically.

"It's because I can't get him away," she said wistfully. "And he's sick. Anybody can see that."

"A week or two more," Alden said, "until the works are running right.