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

"Sit down there, please."

As the old man obeyed his limbs shook with a sort of palsy. From his sallow and sunken face, restless, bloodshot eyes gleamed.

"I understand from the doctor," Garth began, "that you are McDonald, Mr. Taylor's trusted servant. The coroner says death occurred last night or early this morning. Tell me why you didn't find the body until nearly four o'clock this afternoon."

The old servant bent forward, placing the palm of his hand against his ear.

"Eh? Eh?"

On a higher key Garth repeated his question. McDonald answered in tremulous tones, clearing his throat from time to time as he explained that because of his master's bad health his orders had been never to disturb him except in cases of emergency. He drew a telegram from his pocket, passing it across to Garth.

"Mrs. Taylor is on her way home from California. I don't think Mr. Taylor knew just what connection she would make at Chicago, but he expected her to-morrow. That telegram sent from the train at Albany says she will be in this afternoon on the Western express. I thought it my duty to disturb him and get him up to welcome her, for he was very fond of her, sir. It will be cruel hard for her to find such a welcome as this."

"Then," Garth said, "you heard no shot?"

McDonald indicated his ears. Garth tugged at his watch chain.

"I must know," he said, "more about the conditions in this house last night."

He had spoken softly, musingly, yet the man, who had displayed the symptoms of a radical deafness, glanced up, asking without hesitation:

"You don't suspect anything out of the way, sir?"

Garth studied him narrowly.

"I want to know why the shot wasn't heard. You were here and Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law. Who else?"

The bony hand snapped to McDonald's ear again.

"Eh? Eh?"

"Speak up," Garth said impatiently. "Who was in the house besides yourself and Mrs. Taylor's mother?"

"The cook, Clara, sir—only the cook, Clara."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely, sir. Who else should there be? We've been short of servants lately."

Garth dismissed him, instructing him to send Mrs. Taylor's mother. While he waited he stared from the window again, jerking savagely at his watch ribbon. From McDonald he had received a sharp impression of secretiveness. He hadn't cared to arouse the servant's suspicions. Through strategy he might more surely learn whatever the old man had held back.

Garth swung around with a quick intake of breath. He had heard no one enter. Through the obscurity, accented rather than diminished by the circular patch of light around the chair, he could see no one. Yet almost with a sense of vibration there had reached him through the heavy atmosphere of the old house an assurance that he was watched from the shadows. Impulsively he called out:

"Who's that?"

He stepped to the desk so that he could see the portion of the room beyond the light. It was empty. Garth, as such things go, had no nerves, but through his bewilderment a vague uneasiness crept.

He sprang back, turning. A clear, girlish laugh had rippled through the dusk. A high, girlish voice had challenged him.

"Here I am! Hide and seek with the policeman!"

He saw, half hidden in the folds of the curtain at the side of the embrasure in which he had stood, a figure, indistinct, clothed evidently in black. He took it for granted McDonald had sent the girl, Clara, first.

"I wanted Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law," he said. "No matter. Come here, and let me remind you that humor is out of place in a house of death."

Nevertheless the pleasant laugh rippled again. Slowly the dark figure detached itself from the shadows and settled in the chair while Garth watched, his uneasiness drifting into a blank unbelief. He couldn't accept the girlish laughter, the high, coquettish voice as having come from the grey, witch-like hag whom the light now exposed mercilessly.

"I am Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law," she said laughingly. "Everybody's surprised because I'm so youthful. My daughter's coming home this afternoon. That's why I'm so happy. They wouldn't let me go west with her, but when one's as advanced as I young people don't bother much."

Garth experienced a quick sympathy, yet behind the mental deterioration of extreme old age something useful might lurk.

"You slept in the front part of the house last night," he tried. "You probably heard the shot."

She shook her head. Her sunken mouth twitched in a smile a trifle sly.

"Once I drop off it would take a cannonade to wake me up."

For no apparent reason her youthful and atrocious laugh rippled again.

"Please," Garth said gently. "Mr. Taylor—"

"At my age," she broke in, "you say when a younger person dies: 'Ha, ha! I stole a march on that one.'"

She arose and with a curious absence of sound moved towards the door.

"I must go now. I am knitting a sweater. It was for my son-in-law. Now that he's put himself out of the way it might fit you."

The door closed behind her slender figure, and Garth tugged at his watch ribbon, wondering. Her actions had been too determined, her last words too studied. They had seemed to hold a threat. Was she as senile as she appeared, or had she tried to throw sand in his eyes?

He rang and sent for the cook Clara, unaware that a new and significant surprise awaited him in this dreary room. The girl, when she came, was young, and, in a coarse mold, pretty. When she sat down the light disclosed a tremulousness as pronounced as McDonald's. Before Garth could question her she burst out hysterically:

"I am going to leave this house. I was going to leave to-day, anyway."

Garth pitched his voice on a cold, even note.

"For the present you'll stay. Mr. Taylor didn't kill himself. He was murdered."

She covered her face with her hands, shivering.

"I didn't kill him. I didn't—"

"But," Garth snapped, "you know who did."

She shook her head with stubborn vehemence.

"I don't know anything," she answered, "except that I must leave this house."

"Why? Because you think the old lady's crazy, and she frightens you? I want to know about that."

As Clara lowered her hands the increased fear, rather than the tears in her eyes, held Garth. She shook her head again.

"I've only been here a week. I haven't seen much of her. She's only been to meals once or twice, and then she's scarcely said a word."

She glanced about the room with its small paned windows, its deep embrasures, its shallow ceiling.

"It isn't that," she whispered. "It's because the house is full of queer things. The servants all felt it. They talked about spirits and left. Five have come and gone in the week I've been here. But I've never been superstitious, and I didn't hear anything until last night."

Garth stirred.

"What did you hear? When was it?"

"About midnight," she answered tensely. "I had had company in the kitchen until then, so I was alone downstairs. McDonald had told me before he went to bed to make sure the last thing that the library fire was all right. I had looked at it and had put the fender up and was just leaving the room when I heard this sound—like moans, sir. I—I've never heard such suffering."

She shuddered.

"It was like a voice from the grave—like somebody trying to get out of the grave."

"But you heard no shot?"

"No, sir."

Garth spoke tolerantly.

"These sounds must have come from up stairs. You've forgotten that Mr. Taylor was an invalid."

She cried out angrily.

"It wasn't like a man's or a woman's voice, and I can't tell where it came from. I tell you it was like a—a dead voice."

"You failed to trace it, of course," Garth said. "Describe to me what you did."

"I ran to the kitchen," she answered, "but, as I told you, there was no one there. McDonald had gone to bed, and so had his daughter."

Garth stooped swiftly forward and grasped her arm.

"What's that you're saying? His daughter! You mean to tell me McDonald has a daughter, and she was in the house last night?"

She shrank from his excited gesture.

"Yes. He asked me not to tell you, but I'm frightened. I don't want to get in trouble. She's the housekeeper. She engages all the servants and runs the house."

"Then where is she now?"

"She must have gone out early this morning, sir, for I haven't seen her all day. I wanted to be fair. I've only been waiting for her to come back so I could tell her I was leaving."

"Send McDonald back to me," Garth said, "unless he's left the house, too."

The butler had deliberately lied to shield his daughter, and had asked secrecy of this girl. And all this talk of spirits and of cries! It was turning out an interesting case after all—possibly an abnormal one. Moreover, he was getting somewheres with it.

McDonald slipped in. He was more agitated than before. His face was distorted. His tongue moistened his lips thirstily. Against his will Garth applied the method he knew would bring the quickest result with such a man. He grasped the stooped shoulders. He shouted:

"Why did you lie when I asked you who was in the house at the time of the murder?"

"Eh? Eh?" the old man quavered.

"You're not as deaf as that. Where's your daughter now?"

"My ears!" the old servant whined. "I can't hear, sir."

"All right," Garth shouted. "If you want to go to the lockup and your daughter too, stay as deaf as you please."

He wasn't prepared for the revolting success that came to him. McDonald clutched at one of the window curtains and hid his twitching face in its folds, while sobs, difficult and sickening, tore from his throat, shaking his bent shoulders.

"God knows! I haven't seen her since I went to bed last night. I thought she'd gone out."

He glanced up, his face grimacing.

"Don't you think she did it. Don't you think—"

"First of all," Garth said, "I want her picture."

"I haven't any," McDonald cried.

But Garth hadn't missed the man's instinctive gesture towards his watch pocket. Then, whether he actually knew anything or not, he suspected his daughter and sought to protect her. Against his protests Garth took the watch and, as he had foreseen, found a photograph in the case. The picture was not of a young woman, but the face was still attractive in an uncompromising fashion. It was this hardness, this determination about the picture that made Garth decide that the original, under sufficient provocation, would be capable of killing.

"For her sake and yours, McDonald," Garth said, "answer one thing truthfully. Did she fancy herself any more than a superior servant? Had she formed for Mr. Taylor any silly attachment?"

McDonald's reply was quick and assured.

"To Mr. Taylor she was only a trusted servant, sir, and she knew her place."

The whirring of a motor suggested that an automobile had drawn up before the house. Garth slipped the photograph in his pocket.

"If that is Mrs. Taylor arriving," he said with an uncomfortable desire to shirk the next few minutes, "the news of her husband's death might come easier from you."

"I telephoned Mr. Reed," McDonald said. "He's an old friend of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor's. I told him about the telegram, and he's probably met her and brought her home."

"I will be here," Garth said, "if she wishes to speak to me."

He heard McDonald open and close the front door. Then the widow entered, followed by a young man with an abundance of dark hair curling over a low forehead and shading eyes a trifle too deep set. But at first Garth saw only the widow, and he marveled that one so young and lovely in an etherial sense should have been mated with the elderly invalid upstairs. As he looked it suddenly occurred to him that Reed, since he had lost