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

"I'll let you go, Nora," Slim whispered. "Send the other cops back. If they try to rush us, by God we'll do the trick on Garth and kill who we can besides, the inspector first of all. So play straight."

Garth heard her retreating footsteps. After all he had accomplished his chief purpose. Through him Nora had found escape.

He heard a sharp splintering of wood, and a wan light, not much stronger than the glow of the city through the mist, diffused itself in the cellar. The inspector's breathless voice reached them.

"Nora! Garth!"

Garth saw Nora's shadowy figure advance into the well of the door. He heard her stifle her father's relief and tell him to order his men beyond ear-shot. Her voice murmured. Garth guessed that it recited his abhorrent danger and the terms on which she had agreed to buy his release.

He strained his ears, understanding fully what depended on the answer, yet convinced that reasonably it could only be a refusal. In a way Nora had placed the responsibility for whatever might happen to him on the inspector's shoulders, but the alternative was too distinct. As the price for his connivance the inspector must throw his position and his reputation to the winds, perhaps, face a trial, more than likely to jail sentence. It was conceivable that his love for Nora would dictate even that sacrifice, but she would have to force on him an illusion of a passion as unaccounting as that which had convinced Slim. Could she act to that extent with her father? In spite of his logical interpretation of it, Garth responded to the memory of her agitation. Had she, in fact, been acting in the cellar? Had his peril finally shown her heart the truth? The two most compelling issues of his own life, as well as the inspector's career, depended on the reply, and he could hear nothing. Nora and her father must have moved to one side, for their voices entered the cellar in barely audible murmurs. Slim had handed the bottle to George, and he moved now into the door well where he could listen.

Garth's nerves tightened. Always George held the acid close to the detective's bound and helpless body. Of course the inspector couldn't do it.

Slim came slinking back. His whisper warmed the cold, damp air.

"I couldn't catch it all, but she's getting away with something."

The murmuring ceased, and through the wan light Nora glided, wraith-like, into the doorway, and called to them softly across the cellar:

"Slim! He hates me for making him, but he'll do what he can. He'll tell the Harlem police and the towns along the Hudson that he's got you. He'll try to cover himself with a planted getaway. You have an automobile. Take it and leave by the Broadway bridge. You'll catch the Montreal express at Tarrytown. You've plenty of time, and everything will be arranged; but he can't keep the wool over the district attorney's eyes forever. If you're not over the border to-morrow morning it's no good. So catch that train."

"Come here, Nora," Slim sighed, "and let me thank you properly."

Her laugh was hard, more suggestive of forbidden tears than mirth.

"One hostage is enough. And, Jim, there's a condition for you. Father won't budge unless you give him your word to go quietly. You have to promise on your sacred oath not to make any effort to escape or to throw Slim down."

"What's that for?" George asked suspiciously.

Her tone was contemptuous.

"Use your head, George. It would do father a lot of good to risk so much for Jim if he took matters into his own hands and got the acid just the same."

"Right!" Slim agreed. "You've plenty of common-sense, Nora, and it's going to give us a chance."

"You promise, Jim?"

He fancied an element of command in her voice.

"I'll do what you wish, Nora," he answered. "I promise."

"Then good-by," she called, and her voice no longer held any command, nor was it steady. "Good-by. If I only dared come over to you! God bring you back safe to me."

Garth tried to fight back the response of his heart. He told himself that honorably he must accept all she had said that night as mimicry whose only intention was to save his life. She would expect him to take it at its real value, but he could not shake off the recollection of her emotion. With a great longing he watched her move into the shadows beyond the door.

At a gesture from Slim, George cut the cords that bound Garth's ankles. The detective rose. With a nod Slim motioned George towards the oak door which opened on Marlowe's cellar.

"Get to the 'phone," he whispered. "Pass the fair word, and bring the wheels here on the minute."

He swung on the detective.

"If you see anybody upstairs, just keep your back turned so they won't notice your pretty bracelets."

Garth shivered, aware that a new and disquieting element had entered the situation.

Slim indicated the revolver, held ready in his coat pocket.

"After George, and in front of me. Always like that from now on."

He touched the bottle of acid which he had taken from George.

"Remember this will be behind you like my gun, but I don't want to shoot to kill with either. Just a little in the face is better if you try to cut up."

"You heard my promise," Garth said.

He followed George through the doorway, resisting continually the impulse to turn around, to assure himself of what he already knew, that Slim was actually alert each moment to discipline his slightest effort at escape.

They crossed the damp spaces of the cellar and climbed the stairs, pausing at the head until they could be certain Marlowe's evil figure still faced a bar-room, significantly empty.

George hurried to the telephone booth, fastening the door behind him so that Garth could hear nothing. Marlowe wiped his hands on his apron. A sly smile twitched at the corners of his colorless lips.

"Well! Well! Who's rented the warehouse? Who are your pals, Mr. Garth?"

Garth kept his back turned. The glasses tinkled musically under Marlowe's nervous fingers.

"Maybe you'll name your pleasure, gentlemen."

"Nothing but a little quiet," Slim grunted.

Marlowe flung up his hands, indicating a profound disapproval.

"Then what you mean coming through my cellar? That might get me in bad with the cops. Or maybe you're detectives like Mr. Garth?"

Slim responded to the strain of this waiting. He turned angrily on the man.

"How often have I told you, Papa Marlowe, to keep your fat mouth shut?"

For Garth that outburst pitilessly defined the new element. Slim's anger had let slip real evidence of the proprietor's lawless connection with the gang; and Slim, Garth knew, was unlikely to make blunders he couldn't retrieve. This one dovetailed into the fact that the detective could still identify the four confederates he had seen down stairs—that is, if he kept his eyes. Slim, then, had no intention of holding to his bargain with Nora. He would use Garth as far as the border, then he would protect his own through the unspeakable punishment his twisted soul craved. Nor could Garth see any way to save himself. Moreover, he knew Nora too well to cast lightly aside the promise she had drawn from him on a note of command.

George emerged from the booth. The four men stared at each other without words. Once or twice Marlowe started to speak, but at a frown from Slim he smothered the impulse in a busy attention to his bar cloth.

Faintly the whirring of a motor reached them. George sprang for the door. Slim motioned Garth ahead and followed him to the sidewalk where an automobile had drawn up. It exposed, in the vague light, an air of smug respectability in itself protective.

The driver wore a fur coat with a voluminous cape, of a common chauffeur pattern. Its collar was turned up so that it completely hid the lower part of the wearer's face. Garth didn't understand at first when Slim took a smaller coat from the car, stooped, and whispered in the driver's ear. The other stepped obediently to the sidewalk, removed his great coat, handed it to Slim, and slipped on the smaller one. Slim motioned George and Garth into the car, followed them, and, while he jerked out his instructions, drew down the side curtains. Garth was to sit on the back seat with George, who would keep one hand conveniently on his automatic. Slim would be opposite, his gun handy, and the bottle of acid ready at his side.

"And that isn't all," he leered. "You're too precious to take chances with. Here! Lean forward."

He flung the chauffeur's great coat across Garth's shoulders, and, over his chained wrists, buttoned it tight about him. He chuckled as the car started.

"The cape, George, makes it look as if our friend kept his hands out of sight for warmth. Let's hope the train'll be a little chilly, too. Your arms are going to sleep and get a nice rest, Garth."

He chuckled again. He took his own handkerchief and borrowed George's. With the two he improvised a gag which he fastened skillfully in the prisoner's mouth. Then he turned the great collar up so that the gag was hidden.

"You've a swell chance to make trouble now, Garth. That's how I check up on a bull's promises. If anybody tries to stop us or to snitch you free you'll get the acid in those shining peepers without being able to move. You'd better pray everybody keeps straight."

Enough light entered from the front to draw an ashen glow from the acid which he held at his side perpetually ready.

Beyond the driver's back Garth could follow their route among tortuous downtown thoroughfares into lower Broadway. They went then at a discreet pace straight through the heart of the city. He watched the lights flash by, the impatient traffic, the crowds, hurrying and voluble. Such things, taken with the grim man opposite and his unique threat, became like one of those dreams which project against a familiar background incredible and grotesque details.

The car at last drew a hollow response from the pavement of the Broadway bridge. Slim moved restlessly.

"The first toll-gate, Garth! Who pays the bill?"

And Garth struggled, and could not move his hands, for George cried out, and Slim started to raise the bottle as the horse of a mounted policeman halted across their path. The car stopped.

Swiftly the policeman bent down, shaking his fist at the driver.

"If you want to run me down," he shouted, "why not give me a chance to make my will? You might be a good chauffeur for a baby carriage. Go ahead now, and keep to the right. I ought to run you in."

Slim grinned and lowered the bottle. George sank back. The dryness of Garth's gagged mouth choked him. How could he continue to face such moments?

During the remainder of that swift ride he sat voiceless and helplessly trussed. He smiled grimly, recalling the promise Nora had drawn from him not to resist. He was as little able to resist as he had been when bound on the floor of the warehouse cellar. Nora, he tried to tell himself, would not condemn him to the torture of that bottle opposite; nor would she, he was willing to swear, throw her father's career and reputation to the winds. She would try some trick, not realizing how many precautions Slim had taken.

He struggled again futilely to free his hands, to loosen a little the coat, buttoned tight about his own overcoat, across his body and his legs. Nora, his logic told him, could have hit upon no plan dexterous enough to control these men before they could carry out their monstrous threat. Yet what difference did it make? If she didn't intervene, Slim would let him have it at the border anyway.

The night was disturbed only by the sound of their passing, nor at the station was there