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

He had been prepared for fright, for a struggle, but scarcely for the shrill, animal cry that greeted his surprise, nor for the violent and unnatural strength that quivered through the little body as it tried to break away.

And at first Garth combatted a quick impulse to let go. The quality of the bare hand in his own revolted him. The fingers were long, slender, and hard. The skin was dry. It gave him an impression that there was no flesh between it and the bones it covered.

"Steady, my friend," he muttered. "That's my money in your claw. Let's have a look at you."

The other's squirming increased. The scream was not repeated. Only a difficult, sobbing sound came recurrently from the man's throat.

At last Garth managed to twist the small wrist so that practically he controlled the fellow's movements. Then he pressed the button of his lamp. The light shone mercilessly upon an abhorrent face.

The skin was yellow, and tight, like parchment, across the high cheek bones. The tiny eyes lay far back in rounded sockets. In the lamplight they were deceptively reminiscent of the eyes of a cat. But it was on the head, from which the hat had fallen, that Garth's glance lingered with the most distaste. A queue was curled about it. It gave the last touch to the fantasy of the snow, the mist, the deserted street of old houses—a fitting setting for the night's vagaries.

For him the coil of hair gleamed like a serpent, carefully poised and awaiting the most favorable moment for its stroke. As the yellow head moved spasmodically the coil appeared to writhe. It provoked Garth's imagination. With quiet eloquence it symbolized a vicious conservatism, publicly dead. It suggested secret ceremonials in forbidden shrines. In a broader sense it was the outward survival, properly snake-like, of unconquerable and scarcely apprehended customs.

Garth shuddered. He found it more difficult than before to cling to that bony hand. He arose, snapped off the light, and grasped the Oriental by the shoulder.

"How did you know you'd find this money on the sidewalk?" he asked.

The other shivered, as if for the first time the cold had reached him.

"Talk up," Garth ordered. "Who's the fashion-plate that left it?"

The Chinaman made a last effort to escape. Garth subdued him.

"No talk-ee, eh? All right, little one. Then you'll have a nice free ride downtown—just as a suspicious character."

For a possibility had occurred to him from which he shrank. Still, since it existed, it dictated a clear enough duty. He stepped from the areaway.

"Hustle along, sonny."

The other exploded into a torrent of Chinese. Garth understood not a word, yet the shrill voice, rising and falling, cried to him a fear and a despair that were tragic.

"Bluff away," he muttered, "though I don't see what good it will do you. Plenty of interpreters at headquarters. Point is, are you coming peaceably, or will I have to wake up a patrolman to get a wagon?"

The Chinaman was on the point of collapse. Garth practically carried him to the corner. He experienced a feeling of remorse, which, however, vanished before the recollection of the queue, glistening, serpent-like.

He was relieved to turn his man over at headquarters. He saw him placed in an empty detention cell.

"Sleep tight," he called as the key turned. "Maybe you'll learn English by morning."

His own sleep was untroubled, save by his persistent uneasiness about Nora.

As soon as he was up the next morning he telephoned the Bureau of Licenses and apparently ran his one clue into a dead wall. The limousine, he found, belonged to Thomas Black, a young man of more than ordinary wealth and position. Garth flushed uncomfortably. He began to suspect that he had been guilty of an indiscretion, for Black, some years ago, had married the sister of Rufus Manford, whose recent selection as head of the Society for Social Justice had set in motion a cumbersome amount of self-satisfied and unusually ill-designed activity against crime. Still Garth knew that Manford was working with the inspector now on some urgent cases about which little was said at headquarters. It was possible, then, that the trail of coins had been arranged by Manford in the society's office for a purpose which his interference might have destroyed.

But the growing day diminished the importance of the whole adventure. That returned to it only when the telephone summoned him as he was about to leave his rooms.

"Hello!" he called.

The voice that answered was gruff, disapproving, almost reproachful, he would have said.

"It's Ed, at headquarters. Say, you've got me in bad. Hustle on down. Inspector's on his ear and wants you."

"What's up, Ed?"

"That pigtail of yours. Can't make out the chief. Might be a member of his own family."

"What are you driving at, Ed? What's the matter with the pigtail?"

"Dead—that's all."

"Dead!" Garth echoed.

"Yup. Must have done it right after you left. Choked himself to heaven with his bloomin' queue. Now if he'd had it cut off proper—"

For the first time Garth entered the inspector's office with the discomfort of a culprit. Yet he could not accuse himself justly of blundering. Nevertheless the brief telephone conversation with the doorman had informed him that the inspector attached an uncommon importance to the chance capture of the Chinaman. Because of it he would place the blame for the suicide where it fell most conveniently.

When he opened the door he appreciated that there was more than that out of the way at headquarters this morning. A woman bent, ancient, poor, sat in a chair to the right of the inspector's desk. He could hazard no more concerning her, because of an intricately-patterned shawl which was draped over her head and nearly covered her face. Her presence was less astonishing than her bearing in this room, terrible alike to wrong-doers and to the reluctant witnesses of crime. Her attitude, indeed, was expectant. Her lack of distrust impressed him as aggressive. Moreover, its customary rumble had left the inspector's voice which had flowed, Garth had remarked, with a conciliatory blandness.

It paused shortly as Garth entered. The huge man turned slowly in his chair. His eyes, somnolent as a rule, fixed Garth with a lively reproach.

"Shut the door," he grumbled.

Garth obeyed.

"Here's a pretty mess! Why did you bring him in at all?"

"The chink?" Garth asked mildly.

"No," the inspector roared. "Queen Lilliokulani! Who do you suppose I mean? How many mugs have you brought in since I saw you last? Maybe you thought the big Chinese population was unhealthy."

"I never dreamed he'd do that," Garth protected himself.

"Why didn't you warn the boys to keep an eye on him?" the inspector demanded.

Garth threw up his hands.

"How could I tell? I only brought him in on a chance. I knew you were after the funny medicine crowd. He was up to some queer business last night, and I thought he looked the type."

"Yes," the inspector agreed drily, "he certainly looked the type, so much so that I'd gamble that wizzened brain of his held all I want to know."

He seized a paper weight and commenced to toss it ponderously from fist to fist.

"That's what you've let get away from you. Maybe you'll be accommodating enough to tell me how you happened to pick him up."

Garth glanced questioningly at the woman.

"Don't fret," the inspector said scornfully. "She won't give you away even if you have made an ass of yourself."

Garth reddened. Impulsively he turned on his heel. Later he would be ashamed, since he understood the inspector thoroughly. But for the moment he surrendered himself to pride. The sound of the chair shoved back by the inspector was not unexpected, nor did he fail to catch the note of apology, the appeal for terms in the gruff voice.

"Come back here. Where are you going?"

But it was another voice that swung him sharply.

"Jim! Don't lose your temper."

The inspector's fist scattered the papers on his desk top.

"Who's running this office?"

Garth scarcely heard. He strode to the woman. He snatched the intricately-patterned shawl from her head. The face beneath was old, stained, and wrinkled; but there was no disguising the dark, young eyes which smiled up at him.

"So that's why?" he gasped. "You've done it well, Nora. Now maybe I can know something about it."

She laughed.

"Not if you resign. So much dignity!"

He laughed back.

"Nor if I'm fired."

The inspector grinned.

"I'm glad you let me in this on some basis."

The disclosure of the girl's personality had scattered Garth's revolt, and her eyes, now that they were no longer concealed, seemed to have rebuked the inspector to a milder humour.

"Understand," he said, "Nora doesn't tell me any too much how she's working, and she's been at this off and on for a long time. It's only the last two weeks that it's gotten serious. She had to see me to-day. That's why I'm on my ear about the Chinaman. He might have saved her a good deal. You see, she's working on that case."

Garth's heart sank.

"Dope!" he cried. "It isn't safe. I tell you she's fighting desperate people, inspector. Look at that Chinaman, whether he's mixed up with the traffic or not, if a brute like him suspected her!"

The inspector returned to his chair. He waved his hands helplessly.

"Talk to Nora. I've told her all that. Once or twice I've wanted her to use her brain in cases where there wasn't any risk. Nothing doing. When this rotten business came up she would go into it on her own hook. I guess that's because she knows Manford and his high-brow, meddling society have got the district attorney behind them, and they've put it up to me hard."

Nora shook her head, smiling a trifle wistfully.

"No, father, I did it to save souls and bodies. You see, Jim, they can handle the little fellows under the new laws, but everybody knows there's this one place up-town, marvelously hidden and guarded—a distributing center, the heart of the whole surviving drug traffic. When I found out from father that everybody else had failed I just had to try. My conscience kept at me. Success would turn so much misery into happiness, so much sickness into health, so much crime into usefulness. And to-night, I believe, if we're lucky—Jim! I want you to be there."

"She thinks she's spotted the house," the inspector said softly. "That's what she had to see me about. She wants a raid arranged for to-night."

Garth's voice was anxious.

"How are you working, Nora? I don't like it. I wish you were out of it."

But Nora would tell him nothing, and he realized instinctively that in her crusade she had taken desperate chances and would face more, probably the worst, to-night.

"You must tell us," she said, "how you found the Chinaman. I've no doubt he was one of them. In itself his death was a confession—a pitifully silent one."

Garth told his story of the man in the limousine, of the trailing Oriental, of what he had learned at the Bureau of Licenses. Nora offered no interpretation, but she smiled sympathetically at the inspector's rage. He saw in the affair more than Garth. To him it meant an underhanded attempt on the part of the society to trap a material witness.

"They put it up to me," he grumbled, "then they want to put it over me. Manford gets a line of his own and keeps it to himself. Out for a little glory and advertising! What happens every time I work with these silk-stockinged, fur-coated societies that think they know more about vice than the police. And to think, Garth, you snitched him away from them, then let him croak!"

Nora arose.

"No use crying over spilt milk, father."

She prepared to leave. Garth followed her to the hallway. He urged her to let him share her plans, to give him a more pronounced part in the risks. She shook her head.

"It's best