The Gray Mask by Charles Wadsworth Camp (ereader iphone TXT) đź“•
Garth knew that, too. Therefore he could not understand why his conductor stooped and with an air of confidence opened the vestibule door and raised the trap. Garth started, for, as if the engineer were an accomplice and had received some subtle signal, the brakes commenced to grind while the train lost its speed rapidly.
The slender man grasped Garth's arm, and, as the train stopped, leapt with him to the right of way and hurried him into the shadows at the foot of the embankment. Any men the inspector might have had on the train had been outwitted.
He saw ahead the red and green lights of an open draw-bridge. He understood now, and marvelled at the simplicity of the trick. Certainly it would not have occurred to the inspector to post his men at the Harlem River where express trains were seldom detained at night. Yet it had been only necessary to send some small boat to loiter in the draw at the proper
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Garth was warmed by her concern for him. For the first time since their quarrel in the house with the hidden door the barrier of reserve which had risen between them lost a little its solidity.
The inspector had gone into his bedroom. From the sounds there Garth gathered that the huge man fought his way into his clothing. Nora stared helplessly .from the door to Garth and back again. Then he saw resolution tighten the lines of her face. Her eyes flashed.’ She laughed. Without shaking hands she turned and walked to the door of the inspector’s room.
“Good-by, Jim,” she called. “I suppose I’ll have to look after this reckless one first.”
Garth went. Nora’s words and manner had made him a trifle uneasy. Little time, however, remained for speculation. It was seven o’clockwhen he had completed his arrangements. He took the subway to Harlem and continued in a taxicab.
Alsop’s great wealth permitted him a rural loneliness even in this expensive neighborhood. Garth dismissed the cab at the edge of a wide property along the river, made sure he had not been followed, then climbed the fence, and entered a thick piece of woods.
Certainly nature favored the police as thoroughly as it did the conspirators. There was no moon, and sullen clouds hid the stars.
Suddenly in the dense obscurity of the woods he experienced that sensation Marvin had described of no longer being alone. He paused and waited, scarcely breathing, aware of the dangers, perhaps fatal, that might lurk for him here. And, as he stood, not knowing what to expect, he wondered if the veiled woman was abroad in the woods. He became filled with a passionate desire to learn her identity. The somber, perfumed atmosphere of the shop came back to him. There were odd things in the Orient—happenings, apparently occult, for which no explanation had ever been offered. Marvin was young and imaginative, but Alsop was not the type to be frightened by fancies, yet both of these men believed that the woman could pass through locked doors, that she could appear and disappear as she wished. And Brown had said that to look behind the veil was madness. Was she abroad in these woods? He had waited for some time. There was nothing. He stepped forward.
Immediately he knew there was someone. He sprang aside, whipping out his revolver, crouching against an expected attack; for a figure blacker than the night had glided in his path from behind a tree trunk, and the hands carried something round, black -
“Put that thing down,” Garth whispered, “then up with your hands!”
Her laugh barely reached him.
“I thought it was you, Jim.”
He dropped his revolver in his pocket and strode forward, angry and anxious.
“What are you doing here, Nora?”
He laughed uncomfortably.
“For a minute I looked for the veiled woman.”
“I’ve come,” she said confidently, “for her, and to see that you don’t throw your life away, because you won’t admit the possibility of incomprehensible forces.”
“You must go back, he said. “What’s in that bundle you’re carrying?”
She held the bundle up, and Garth touched it. It was a soft substance wrapped in a black shawl.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“A white gown,” she answered simply, “and a white veil, so that I may take the bomb after I have trapped this queer creature; so that I may talk to these men and learn how wide the organization is.”
She argued logically enough that there was less risk this way than the other. Once she had the bomb in her hands the great danger would be over. Try as he might, Garth could not move her. She walked on towards the house.
They paused at the edge of the woods. The dark, vague mass of the building frowned at them. The windows, Garth gathered, were heavily curtained, for no gleam of light escaped.
“I am going in with you, Jim, to see it through,” Nora whispered. “Don’t be disapproving. I only want to help.”
Impulsively he grasped her hand. For a moment he forgot the restraint she had forced upon him. ,
“Nora,” he said hoarsely, “since I lost my temper with Black, you’ve not been kind. You know I want you with all my heart—”
Through the darkness her voice was filled with wistful regret and sympathy. It reminded him again that her tragic love affair, preceding their capture of Slim and George, still touched her with fingers of sorrow; had not yet given her time to adjust herself to this new ardor.
“Hush! You were not to speak of that.”
But he would not let her hand go.
“And you—will you ever speak?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered dully.
She snatched her hand away. Her voice rose.
“Don’t you see? It’s because I don’t know that I can’t let you take such chances with death. That’s why I’m here, Jim.”
INSIDE the house th’e atmosphere of danger reached Garth more positively than it had done even through Brown’s unreasoning terror. Alsop and Marvin met them in the hall. Both were white-faced and nervous. Through the open door of a library Garth saw five men in evening clothes gathered about a table which was littered with papers. Alsop closed the door.
“I hope you and the inspector are satisfied,” he jeered. “We’re properly trapped.”
“The house is surrounded by detectives,” Garth said. “We’ve arranged to take care of the one with the bomb. For there is a bomb, Mr. Alsop. There’s no point lying about that.”
Alsop scarcely made an effort to hide his fear.
“How are your detectives outside going to help us in here?”
He pointed to the closed door of the library.
“All my figures, all of my plans that I’ve ever put on paper I’ve brought out here for the first time tonight for this conference. Don’t you suppose those devils know? And that thing—you can laugh at me if you like—I tell you that thing in white is after them. When I went upstairs justnow to bring them from the safe I felt it. I saw something white, and I ran down. Ask Marvin. I’m afraid. I acknowledge it. Stay in this house with that—that influence, then if you’ll tell me I’m a coward I’ll believe it.”
“I’m not sneering,” Garth said grimly. “As a matter of fact we know your veiled woman is actually to be in this house at nine o’clock. It’s likely enough she’s upstairs now in some hidden corner after failing to steal your papers. I’ll search every rat hole, because you can take it for granted her apparent magic is pure trickery, and if she isn’t to be found upstairs we’ve a net arranged down here for her a little later.”
He explained briefly the arrangement that Nora’s presence and her disguise had made possible. Alsop and Marvin were not impressed.
“Better find out what you can now,” Alsop advised.
He nodded at Marvin. Garth and Nora followed the secretary towards the stairs. Suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath, Garth turned, grasped Nora’s arm, and drew her back.
“Alsop,” he whispered excitedly, “I don’t give a hang how long you’ve had your servants, or how much you trust them. The thing’s obvious anyway. Nora! You saw that?”
Nora nodded. Her eyes were wide.
“What do you mean?” Alsop gasped.
Without answering Garth ran down the hallway and flung the curtain at the end to one side. Acrossa wide dining-room he saw a woman, slender and middle-aged. Her attitude was of flight. Her hand rested on the knob of the farther door. As Garth called sharply for Alsop she opened the door and went through. Alsop had only a glimpse.
“It’s my housekeeper,” he said. “She’s worked here for twenty years. Certainly there’s nothing wrong there.”
“I wonder.” Nora spoke softly. “Such people are clever enough to involve one’s own family against one. She can’t leave the house anyway. Suppose, Jim, we look upstairs.”
While Alsop, angry and at a loss, went back to the library, Garth and Nora climbed to the upper hall. Garth supposed that Marvin would have made a light for them, but of all the doors that opened from the stair landing one alone was wide, and no light gleamed through that.
“MarvinI” he called, and again: “Marvin! Marvin I”
He was aware of Nora’s shivering. He glanced at her. The color had left her cheeks.
“Something’s wrong up here, Jim,” she said. “I know it. I feel it. Don’t you feel anything strange? You heard him come up, and after what Mr. Alsop said—where is he? Why doesn’t he answer?”
Garth stepped forward. Nora reached out and grasped his arms. The quality of her voice startled him.
“Don’t go in there without a light, Jim.”
He shook off her hands. He entered the dark room, and immediately he knew she had been right, that he had advanced too precipitately. He stumbled against something soft and yielding, and went down, stretching out his hand to save himself. He knew what his fingers had found. He snatched them away with a little cry:
“Get back to the hall, Nora!”
But he heard no movement from her, so, since he didn’t dare wait, he took his flashlight from his pocket, pressed the control, and turned the ray on the features his hand had touched in the dark. Marvin was stretched, face downward on the floor near the head of the bed. His arm lay beyond his head, pitiful evidence that he had reached for the electric light switch which had been just beyond his grasp.
Nora with a reluctant air had come closer. Crying out her horror, she indicated the collar, at the back of Marvin’s neck.
“Blood!”
Garth nodded.
“Like Brown. The same place as Brown’s wound.”
Nora covered her face with her hands.
Garth sprang up, unconsciously quoting Brown’s words:
“That’s madness!”
He ran to the bathroom and brought water with which he bathed Marvin’s face and head. He looked up after a moment with a sigh of relief.
“It was only a glancing blow,” he said. “He’ll come around.”
Marvin, indeed, before long stirred, and tried to struggle to a sitting posture as Brown had done. He cried out, as Brown had cried:
“The veiled woman!”
“You see,” Nora breathed.
Garth lifted the secretary to the bed, but when, to an extent, the man had recovered consciousness he had nothing reasonable to tell.
He had started, he said, up the stairs, thinking Garth at his heels. He had been about to press the switch.
“I knew she was there,” he sobbed. “I saw her—all white, and with a veil over her face. Then I don’t know. I don’t remember being struck. Everything went black.”
Garth with a gesture of determination turned and commenced examining the room. Nora, crouched against the wall, watched him with the assurance of one who sees an evil prophecy fulfilled. After a quarter of an hour he gave it up. There was no one concealed in the room. Nor, he would have sworn, was there any reasonable hiding place. From behind the screen where the veiled woman had evidently disappeared twice there was no possible escape.
“Before long, Marvin,” he muttered, “I’ll be as bad as you and old Alsop. If you believe in ghosts, Nora, this certainly looks like one.”
He glanced at his watch.
“Are you still anxious to try that plan of yours after what you’ve seen?”
She nodded She went uncertainly from the room. Marvin stumbled after them. They helped him down the stairs and to a sofa in the lower hall. Garth led Nora to the west door.
“We’ve less than ten minutes,” he said, “and I don’t understand. I’d rather you kept
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