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

He swung in a fury on Randall.

"Two murders on your soul! That's what it comes to. What were you thinking of, man? You'll go to the chair for this."

Randall staggered against the wall where he leant, covering his face with his hands.

"My only human witness!" he mumbled.

Garth knew it would be a kindness to get him out of this house, but first he did his duty with a strong distaste.

"You'd better tell us," he said. "Say something. It might help you in the end."

Randall lowered his hands. His face worked.

"I'll say nothing—nothing," he cried fiercely.

He stretched out his hands to Garth.

"No handcuffs," Garth said gruffly. "We might go in one of those automobiles."

Randall stumbled forward. He groped about the hat-rack.

"My hat! Where's my hat? Do as you wish. But not Treving's car. Good God! You wouldn't take me to jail in Treving's car!"

Garth was restless the next day. The public, in common with the police department and the district attorney's office, looked upon the case against Randall as proved and, to all purposes, disposed of. But Garth, walking along upper Fifth Avenue in the afternoon, could not resist stopping at an expensive florist's and demanding a rose for his button-hole. When it was brought he asked the price, and, a good deal disconcerted, handed over the money.

For some time he gazed at the colorful, fragrant flower which swayed on its graceful stem. Then, with an absent air, he placed it on the marble stand and moved towards the door.

The clerks glanced at each other, amused.

"You've forgotten your rose, sir," one of them said.

"No matter," Garth replied. "I've had my money's worth."

He called at the inspector's flat after dinner. The inspector was still at the office, but Nora commented on his restlessness immediately.

"What are you working on, Jim? Of course you're through with the Elmford case."

"Not quite."

He faced her, fighting back the quick emotions in which her proximity always involved him. He loved her too much to risk demanding at random a fixed understanding. Moreover, with this case on his mind, it was clearly not the hour.

"I've arranged for a number of subpoenas to be served in the morning," he said. "The servants have left the house. Your father has arranged to call his men in. In an hour or so the house will be empty. Nora—I—can't stay long this evening."

"Jim! What's on your mind? It's a clear case."

"Yes," he answered. "That's why Jones and the other flat-foot your father sent out yesterday didn't search the neighborhood far enough to find the stone building where Randall hid. It's why when I arrested him I didn't look it over either. The arrest at the time seemed enough. But he didn't act like a man caught with the goods. Your father says he's clever. Maybe he is, but I wonder if he is to that extent. It's been the trouble all along. It's too clear a case. I talked to his lawyers this afternoon. He's refused to put in any defence."

"Isn't that proof, Jim, that he knows he hasn't a chance?"

He fumbled, almost unconsciously, with the button-hole in the lapel of his coat.

"It might mean," he answered, "that he was protecting somebody else, and that makes one wonder if there mightn't be something in the house—letters, perhaps, in that bedroom I've never had a chance to explore—something he would like to have destroyed."

"Trust your instinct, Jim."

He arose smiling.

"That's what I've arranged to do."

"Then you're going out there to-night?"

"Yes."

He hesitated, but the temptation was too strong.

"How would you like a taxi-ride to Elmford?"

"Jim, you talk like a millionaire."

"If anything comes of it," he said, "the city will pay. If nothing does I'll look an awful fool, so I'd rather you didn't ask any questions now. But if you want to come—I know you're game."

She laughed and got her hat and coat.

So they drove to the lonely patch of woods near the Elmford gate where Garth instructed the driver to wait for them. He led Nora, warning her not to speak, through the obscurity to the entrance. There he paused, and, after a moment, whistled on a low, prolonged note.

Almost immediately the sound of voices came to them and the scraping of feet in the gravel. Two blacker patches scarcely outlined themselves against the black shrubbery.

"Jones!" Garth called softly.

The men approached.

"All right," Garth said. "Go along home. When did they take Mrs. Randall away?"

"Over an hour ago. Thought you were never coming. Spooky hole!"

"No alarms?" Garth asked.

"No," Jones replied, "but I can hear that woman yelling yet."

Garth laughed, uneasily.

"Well, good-night. There's no secret about your leaving, but don't mention at the station that I'm here."

The men merged into the darkness by the gate.

Garth took Nora's arm, and, circling the house at a distance, reached the stone building by the stream. He entered, sniffing suspiciously. When he had closed the door he took his flashlight from his pocket and pressed the control.

"Don't move around, Nora."

Quickly he examined the confusion of footprints. It impressed him at once as significant that none strayed far from the threshold. The damp floor farther in was disturbed only by a long, irregular depression modelled, he knew, by a body, lying prone.

"Think of lying there, Nora," he said. "I'd have preferred standing indefinitely. And why didn't he move around?"

Nora's teeth chattered.

"It's bitter cold in here."

Garth's face set.

"And a fastidious man like the doctor lies here all night and most of the day. Then let's see."

He went outside and ran his light over the lines of footprints which converged at the door. One set straggled unevenly up the stream. With an exclamation he followed it along the bank until it swung close to the water. He stooped. His lamp moved searchingly about the bottom of the shallow creek. Nora bent over his shoulder.

"Jim! Do you see that stone? There. Hold your light steady. It's been moved. Look at the dark stain on this side."

Garth reached over, rolling the stone away. He drew from the water a stout, slender rope and a black cloth. As he raised the cloth a tiny bottle fell from its folds and splintered on the rock.

Nora's eyes sparkled.

"Does it fit, Jim?"

"It suggests a lot," he answered, "and it explains something, but it's little use unless—"

He caught his breath.

"He might be that kind of a fool."

He sprang upright.

"Come along. We've got to turn up something in the house that will make Randall talk. Nora! If there had been letters do you think she would have destroyed them one by one? You see there was no chance after the murder, and don't women cling to such things?"

"She'd probably keep them," Nora said.

They climbed the hill. The unlighted house, like a thing dead itself and surrendered to decay, arose before them forbiddingly.

"Jones was right," Nora said. "It's spooky."

Garth crossed the verandah on tip-toe and silently opened the door.

"No lights," he breathed.

Nora shivered.

"It's as cold and damp here as the stone house. Can you find your way?"

"Yes. Sh-h."

He led her across the hall, up the staircase, and down the corridor to the dressing-room. The window had been closed in there, and there was no escape for a humid and depressing chill which enveloped them with discomfort.

He found the easy chair and told Nora to sit down. He drew another one close.

"But why not lights, Jim?"

"It's logic to wait awhile," he said. "The letters, you know."

She gasped.

"I begin to see."

"Maybe I shouldn't have brought you," he whispered.

"But who—"

"Sh-h!"

"Did you hear anything?" she asked.

"No. If Randall never wore a rose—"

"Jim! I've never—felt such darkness."

"I must think," he said.

But his brain refused to enter the new country of speculation whose gates the discovery in the stream had opened. The dank air of the room where Treving had been murdered was thick with imminence. A formless anticipation possessed Garth's mind. He had a quick instinct to turn on the lights and proceed with his search, abandoning this course which logic had suggested, but which was fraught, he had no doubt, with positive apprehension to Nora. Why not, indeed, satisfy her curiosity now? But his pride denied the impulse. He wanted first something more tangible, something more provocative of her praise.

"It frightens me here," Nora breathed. "I've the queerest desire to—to scream."

Her laugh was scarcely audible.

Her words had set Garth's memory to work. He knew again what he missed in this silent house—the amorphous screams of a woman in an agony powerless to express itself. How she must have wanted to speak! How horribly she had tried until the supreme, the enduring silence had clutched about her throat! The sullen and sepulchral air of the room seemed to vibrate with the wraiths of those efforts.

Was the door open to the next room where she had struggled and died?

Garth stirred uneasily.

Nora spoke.

"How long?"

"Not long," Garth whispered, "or I'll turn the lights on. I'll look."

His thoughts swung back to the next room and the despair it had harbored. Could such passionate resistance to circumstance perish utterly? Could the violent will behind it accept silence and pass with the body into nothingness?

What had she wanted to say?

A movement, scarcely audible, reached him from the next room.

Nora's hand touched his arm. He was aware of the trembling of her fingers. He leant forward, listening. He scarcely caught Nora's voice.

"You heard—that?"

The movement was repeated—somebody—something stirred in the dark room where the woman had died.

Nora swayed against him. Her other hand touched his shoulder. His heart leapt, but he realized that this contact was only an impersonal appeal for protection. So he drew his arms back, but his brain was clearer. He no longer answered to the fancy that the echoes of those screams tortured his ears.

"Stay here quietly," he whispered.

"Don't go in there, Jim."

He pushed her hands gently away. His movements as he crossed the floor were stealthier than those which still persisted in the bedroom. He paused in the doorway. The darkness was complete, yet he could locate the movements now against the farther wall.

He drew out his revolver and his flashlight. He pressed the button. The glare splintered the blackness and centered on the figure of a man who bent over the open drawer of a desk.

"Throw your hands up!" Garth said.

In the dressing-room Nora cried out.

The man at the desk swung around, lifting his hands and exposing the white and contorted face of the butler, Thompson.

Garth laughed nervously.

"I've got him, Nora."

"Wh—what do you mean?" the man asked. "I came back—Who are you? What do you want of me?"

Garth stepped forward aggressively. His conscience troubled him not at all.

"I want you for the murder of Frederick Treving—there in the next room."

The fellow's jaw dropped.

"No—no. I had nothing to do with it. I swear."

Garth raised his hand to the lapel of the butler's coat.

"I thought so," he said. "No question about you, my man. You wore the rose I found where Treving's body lay. Got it at the wedding, didn't you?"

The man sank on the unmade bed.

"What are you talking about? I had nothing to do with it."

"Tell that to the judge who'll send you to the chair," he said.

The butler shook. He raised his uncertain hands to his face. He shuddered.

"No, no. I tell you I had nothing to do with it. It was Mrs. Randall. He attacked her, and she shot him."

Garth relaxed.

"You heard that, Nora?"

Nora came to the door.

"Yes."

"Then," Garth said, "I am about through with the case."

He turned back to Thompson.

"But you're not clear yet. How did you happen to be here? I know you went to the wedding with the rest."

"Yes, but Mrs. Randall got me on the telephone—said the doctor had been called back to town and she was nervous and I'd have to come home. As I let myself in the back way I heard her scream. I ran up and through this room. I got to the door just in time to see her shoot him. But when I rushed in and tried to lift her up she screamed. I couldn't do anything with her. And I got frightened. When