The Gray Mask

Garth closed the door and snapped his light on. Immediately strange reflections played again over the face of the dead man. Its sneering expression seemed to follow Garth as he moved about, searching in the closets and the bath room, looking behind each piece of furniture. Meantime Nora waited, for the moment stripped of her familiar confidence. She watched the dead man rather than Garth. The knife and the revolver, close to the cold and motionless hand, appeared to fascinate her.

"No one," Garth whispered. "No evidence, beyond the knife, that any one has been here unlawfully."

He removed the cushions from a lounge and arranged them in a window recess. He seated himself with Nora there. He drew the curtains so that they would be thoroughly concealed from any one entering the room. Then he snapped off the light.

The vigil, Garth realized nearly at once, would not be comfortable. Nora's obvious tenseness encouraged him to morbid fancies, to formidable premonitions. The heavy black silence of the decaying house became more oppressive. The near presence of the soulless thing on the bed, which had yielded to him the puzzling note, seemed through the night capable of a malicious and unique activity. Garth, in spite of himself, became expectant of some abnormal and impossible movement in the room. Nora, he knew, listened with him. Once she whispered:

"Haven't you a feeling there is some one here who laughs at us?"

The old woman's atrocious mirth came back to him.

"Hush. It is better even not to whisper."

The minutes loitered. The silence grew thicker, the presence of Taylor's body more oppressive. Then suddenly through the night Garth became finally aware of a movement in the room, and at first it seemed to be in keeping with the supernatural fears Nora had imposed on him.

He aroused himself. He commenced to reason. He had not heard the door open or close, but the intruder must have entered that way. Again his ears caught a sly scraping sound as of one walking stealthily, and the sound was nearer the bed – between the window recess and the bed. Garth thrust his revolver and his lamp through the narrow opening between the curtains and pressed the control. There was no more shuffling. Nora swayed closer. The light revealed all of Garth's doubts. He became efficient again. For, while there was a ghoul-like quality about the picture his lamp had suddenly illuminated, the figure bending over the body was sufficiently human. In this position, however, because of the dressing gown and the slippers, its sex remained undefined, but Garth, remembering his examination of the housekeeper's room, thought he knew. Yet he couldn't understand what the creature was doing. One hand had partly drawn from beneath the mattress what appeared to be a long and wide piece of jet black cloth.

"Game's up!" Garth said. "I've got you. Turn around and let me have a look at your pretty face."

The bent shoulders twitched.

"Come!" Garth said harshly. "You're no ghost. You can't evaporate before our eyes again."

Then with a gesture of repulsion the hand let the piece of black cloth fall. It trailed across the floor, one end still caught beneath the mattress. Slowly the figure turned until a profile cut against the shaft of light. Nora cried out her surprise. Garth sprang erect, covering with his revolver, not McDonald's daughter, but the friend of Taylor and his wife, the man Reed.

The shock of discovery stripped Reed of his control. He glanced once at the dead man, then sank in a chair by the bed.

"Don't send me to the death house," he groaned. "I couldn't stand that. I won't stand that."

"You killed Taylor so you might marry his wife?" Garth shot at him.

The head jerked back and forth.

"Fortunately you did a rotten job with McDonald," Garth said. "Where's his daughter? I don't get that."

Reed shrank farther into the chair.

"I won't answer. You can't make me say any more."

Garth stooped, lifted the black cloth, and drew it clear of the bed beneath the mattress of which it had patently been hidden. As he held it up it fell in folds to the floor, and he saw it had sleeves and was a long garment without shape. But it recalled the black figure that had vanished from the attic. He ran his lamp over the gown. In spite of the coarse, tough material it was torn here and there, and on the right hand sleeve there were blood stains. That was why the gown had been hidden in the easiest place, the first place at hand. That undoubtedly explained Reed's daring intention to get the gown and destroy it before the body should be moved and the evidence discovered. Garth glanced at the man, who still shook, a picture of broken nerves, at the side of the bed. And Garth's hand, holding the tell-tale gown, commenced to tremble too, for it had offered him a solution of everything. He had no time for analysis. Already there were stirrings outside. Their voices and Nora's cry had aroused the others in the house.

"Don't you see it, Nora?" he cried, "and it wasn't intuition. The truth has stared at us from the first, but we wouldn't open our eyes."

"I see nothing," Nora said, "except that his motive was common enough, cheap enough."

"You don't understand," Garth smiled.

He stepped to the hall where he met Mrs. Taylor coming from her room.

"What is it?" she asked.

Garth shrank from telling her the truth.

"I know who murdered your husband," he answered gently.

"Who – "

But the opening of her mother's door interrupted her. The old woman appeared, her eyes wild, her hands shaking.

"What's the matter out here? Helen! What's happened?"

"I want to examine your room a little closer," he said. "I wondered at the start that there was so much furniture in it, and I'll wager there are things hidden beneath the bed and back of that large screen. I know now, too, that it wasn't you who washed your hands this afternoon. I know that you fooled me with a clean towel while the person who had tried to kill McDonald slipped through the communicating door from your bathroom – "

She screamed to stop him. She placed her slender body against the panels of the door. She stretched her arms to either side, forming a barrier he didn't care to pass. She commenced to laugh again, but there were tears in her eyes, and he saw that all along her laughter had been grief. Still without time to analyze, he received from the old lady a perfect corroboration. He whispered to Nora, instructing her to bring the policeman from the front door.

"We may have difficult violence on our hands," he warned her.

Without waiting to argue, Nora ran down the stairs. Mrs. Taylor came closer, asking the question her mother had interrupted.

"Who is it? Why do you speak to my mother like this? Not she – "

"He caught me, Helen," Reed said with dry lips.

She flung up her hands.

"What do you mean? Oh, my God! What do you mean?"

The policeman came briskly up. Nora followed him, her eyes wide and uncertain.

"Everything is accounted for," Garth said to the policeman. "Make your arrest."

Reed stepped forward, offering himself.

"I admire you, Reed," Garth said, "but your devotion can't do any more for her. Mrs. Taylor! I don't want you to get excited. This man must take you – just a form, you know – for the murder of your husband and for the attack on McDonald."

The violent rage Garth had feared flamed in her eyes.

"I did kill him. He kept me locked up for more than two months, because I didn't love him."

She commenced to struggle in the grasp of the policeman. Abruptly she went limp and her efforts ceased. Garth nodded with satisfaction.

"That's better. She's fainted. Carry her to her room. We'll have a doctor right away to go down town with her."

Reed touched his arm timidly. His husky voice was scarcely audible.

"I understand now. Once or twice this afternoon I've wondered, but she told me that Taylor had lied, that she had never been to California, that he had kept her a prisoner here because in his sick, morbid way he was jealous of me. In any case I would have done anything to help her over the next day or two, for you must understand I've loved her very deeply and for a long time – "

Garth turned away, because he didn't care to see the man's tears.

Later the humility of Nora's interest amused Garth. He told her frankly how the pivotal pieces of the puzzle had been within reach long before Reed had tried in Mrs. Taylor's service to recover and destroy the tell-tale black gown.

"Those sedatives in Taylor's bathroom," he said. "The man's perpetual questioning of his doctor about the symptoms and the treatment of insanity, the moans which frightened the other servants without affecting McDonald or his daughter, the old lady's exaggeration of her eccentricities to draw my attention from Mrs. Taylor – any of these clues ought to have reminded us, Nora, of the hundreds of similar cases in New York of fond relatives who, through a mistaken pride, hide and treat in their own homes such cases of mental disorder."

He scarcely needed to outline for her the picture, filled in by the old lady, of that black hour last night in the melancholy house, when Mrs. Taylor had tricked McDonald's daughter – a competent trained nurse – had escaped from the attic sick-room, and had got the revolver. Garth saw that Nora, too, could fancy Taylor's panic and self-reproach as he lay sick and helpless in bed, knowing his wife was free, foreseeing inevitably much the sort of thing that had happened, trying when it was too late to confess his mistake, to warn the authorities that his wife was at large and, possibly, dangerous.

"But she didn't give him time to write enough," Garth said. "She followed too quickly her ruling impulse to punish the man she blamed for her tragic situation. Moreover, the realization of what she had done, as is common in such cases, returned her to approximate sanity, suggested, even without her mother's prompting, Taylor's California blind as a road from her dreadful dilemma. And McDonald's daughter, through her fright and a promise of money, could be persuaded to avoid arousing her father or Clara, to throw on one of Mrs. Taylor's dresses, to hurry with her to Albany. Evidently the girl lost her nerve, for she was to have come back as if nothing had happened. She was to have taken care of Mrs. Taylor. Eventually she was to have placed her in a sanitarium, explaining her breakdown, as well as any present peculiarities, naturally enough through the shock of her husband's suicide. It was McDonald's demands to know what had happened to his daughter that made Mrs. Taylor turn on him finally. If he had been able to speak then I think he would have broken faith with his dead master and told us the truth about her condition."

"Is there any hope for her?" Nora asked.

"I've asked the doctor," Garth answered. "He says that the studied manner in which she threw us off the track when we caught her crying over McDonald, and her failure to lose complete control of herself when she was arrested indicate that her trouble is curable. It seems to have been brought on by her intolerable life in this gloomy house with an invalid whom she didn't love, while her affection for Reed increased hopelessly. Her illness was broken by such periods of apparent sanity as she had last night and to-day. I rather think Reed and she may be happy yet."

Nora smiled wistfully.

"Then," she said slowly, "I almost wish we had kept Taylor's secret better than he did himself."

CHAPTER XIX

PAYMENT IS DEMANDED FOR THE GRAY MASK

The approach of the moment when she must testify against Slim and George; must tell in public the details of that tragedy which had played such havoc with her, drove Nora into a morbid humor which neither Garth nor the inspector could alter. She followed Garth on the stand. She was dressed in black. The appeal of her personality was irresistible. It was clear that if the two criminals had ever had a chance Nora would destroy it.

Slim and George sat by their counsel. George could not quite hide the animal character of his face, but he had managed to soften it somewhat. Evidently he endeavoured to impress the jurors with the idea that he was a good-natured fellow who had been involved in the case through some curious mischance. At Nora's appearance, Garth noticed, there came into his eyes a survival of the passion he had so recklessly declared in the steel-lined room.

Slim, on the other hand, let slip nothing of the criminal. His quiet clothing gave him an air almost clerical. His sharp features expressed a polite interest. He could not, a casual spectator would have said, be capable of the evil with which he was charged.

Garth watched the men perpetually. He saw the hatred slip through while he quietly told the story that would condemn them to death. During Nora's recital, too, both men exposed something of their powerful desire for revenge against these two who quietly droned away their lives.

Garth took Nora from the courtroom well aware that, given the opportunity, Slim and George would not let them move a foot without exacting full payment.

Garth respected Nora's mood. He put her in a cab and sent her home, then wandered restlessly about the down town streets.

Perhaps Nora's attitude was partly responsible for his feeling of oppression, of imminence. Nothing could happen, he told himself again. Slim and George would start for the death house to-morrow. They would have no chance. If they delegated such work to their subordinates still at large, Garth fancied that he could take care of himself and Nora, too. It was the exceptional cunning of Slim and George that he shrank from, had feared ever since the night Nora and he had trapped them.

Angry with himself he went to headquarters. The inspector admitted that he, too, would breathe easier when the two were in the chair.

The next day Garth managed to dismiss his premonition. He chatted with two or three detectives in the outside office. The inspector sent for him. The moment he answered the summons he knew something disastrous had occurred. He felt that the exceptional, almost with the effect of a physical violence, had entered the room ahead of him.

The inspector held the telephone. The receiver was at his ear. His huge figure projected to Garth an uncontrolled fear. His voice, customarily rumbling and authoritative, was no more than a groping whisper.

"Why the devil doesn't Nora answer? Do you know, Garth, that Slim and George are loose on the town?"

Garth started back. He would have responded just so to a blow in the face.

"They are on their way to the death house," he countered.

"You mean they were," the inspector said, "condemned by your testimony and Nora's."

His voice rose and thickened.

"I've just got the word. An explosion was planted in front of their van on the way to the Grand Central. There was a crowd of rats from the slums. Those birds were torn from the sheriff's men, and their bracelets knocked off. They were spirited away. But don't you suppose Slim and George would gamble I'll never let them out of this town? Every exit's barred now. They know their liberty's only good to pay old debts. What'll they do at the start?"

Garth braced himself against the desk.

"They'll go for Nora first. Then they'll get me. I've been afraid of it all along."

"I'm trying to warn her," the inspector raged. "She doesn't answer."

He shouted into the transmitter:

"Are you all dead out there? Get me that number, or by heaven – "

While the inspector stormed to be put in communication with his daughter Garth tried to plan. Could he devise any useful defence against Slim's imagination, abnormally clever and inscrutable; or against such naked brutality as George's? And the malevolence of these two would be all the more certain in its action since no fear of punishment would restrain it. The murder, or worse, of Garth and Nora, which undoubtedly they intended, could earn for them only the death penalty to which they were already condemned.

"You've got to get Nora," Garth urged the inspector. "The servant at least should be there."

"Her afternoon out, and Nora said she would be home."

"Then," Garth cried, "they made for her like a shot."

He turned and strode to the door.

"Where are you going, Jim?"

"Keep after that number," Garth called back. "If you get Nora tell her I'm on the way, and to sit tight."

The inspector tried to stop him.

"You're out of your head. Your only chance is to keep under cover. They'll give you a bullet in the back."

"Somebody's got to look after Nora," Garth called, and caught up his coat and hat, and ran from the building.

He threaded a course through the homeward bound crowds, experiencing the sensations of a truant from an impending and destructive retribution, his eyes alert for a sudden movement, his ears constantly prepared for the sharp crack of a revolver.

As he ran he recalled that evening last summer when he had side-tracked Simmons and had taken his place behind a replica of the gray mask. He could see Nora in her cheap finery, and George, he remembered with a sense of sheer terror, had loved Nora in his way; had, in fact, through his brutal and amorous eagerness, delivered himself into her hands. He threw aside all caution. He ran faster. Somehow, no matter what the cost, he had to keep Nora out of the grasp of those men.

He reached the flat, breathless and wondering that he had not been disturbed. No one answered his ring. He questioned the hall-boy. The inspector's daughter had left fifteen minutes ago. She had said headquarters had telephoned her to go to her father without delay. The situation was clear. Garth grasped the hall-boy's arm.

"Didn't you follow her to the door? Didn't you see where she went?"

The boy shook his head, clearly alarmed before such vehemence.

"Then you must have heard. Did you hear anything?"

The boy tried to free his arm. He whimpered.

"No. Unless – maybe somebody screamed, but there are so many children in the street, playin' and hollerin' – "

Garth let him go and ran to the sidewalk. A man stood there. In spite of the sharp cold he wore no coat. Garth recognized him for a tailor who worked in a nearby shop. The tailor's excitement made him nearly incoherent, but Garth drew from him a description of Slim and George. As the inspector's daughter had stepped to the sidewalk, he said, the men had sprung upon her, stifled her one scream, and driven her off in an automobile.

"I saw it from my shop," he spluttered. "I've been telephoning the inspector. I just got him, because his wire was busy."

"Which direction did they take?"

The tailor pointed south. Garth hurried to the curb, stooped, and found fresh tire marks. He was aware of his helplessness unless Nora's ingenuity had hit upon some trick for his guidance. He searched with a greedy hope. While his eyes roved about the frozen dust of the gutter he acknowledged that the inspector had appraised his men justly. Slim and George wouldn't even try to leave the city until the hue and cry had somewhat abated. Into the windings of the underworld they had carried Nora, and Garth knew how devious those windings were – what silent and invisible machinery would nourish and secrete and protect.

He lifted a tiny tuft of fur which had nestled, almost hidden, in the dust of the gutter. He examined it closely. It's colour and texture were reminiscent of the muff he had frequently seen Nora carry. It might be a souvenir of her struggle, or else —

He arose and walked down the street, searching every inch of the pavement. At the corner his breath quickened, for he knew the piece of fur had not rested in the gutter by accident. Two others were there, trampled, but suggestive of the direction taken by the automobile. He could picture Nora surreptitiously tearing the bits from her muff and dropping them from the window of the car.

He hastened on. As soon as he was confident the pieces constituted an intelligible trail he conquered his impatience long enough to enter a drug store and telephone his discovery to the inspector.

"I'm going on," he explained. "The Lord knows what I'll find, so get after me right away."

The voice that reached him could not conceal its suspense.

"Go fast, Garth, and I'll follow with every man I can raise. Pull Nora out of this and ask me for my badge."

Garth went on, following the trail into the dark and intricate thoroughfares of the lower east side, knowing that each moment his pursuit might be abruptly and fatally ended by a flash of light from the obscurity ahead.

He emerged into a waterfront street which was nearly deserted at this hour. One or two street lamps of an antiquated pattern flickered ineffectually. The only sign of habitation was a glow, wan and unhealthy, which escaped from the broad windows of a saloon on the corner.

Garth knew the reputation of that dive, and its long resistance to a final closing of its shutters. More than once the yellow sawdust of its floor had reddened, while men had fought towards its doors through a whirling, pungent fog of powder smoke. He remembered, too, that it was suspected of harboring the explanation of stealthier and more revolting crimes, the responsibility for which, however, had never been legally determined. He was glad when the automobile tracks swung beyond it, but they turned in at the next building, a warehouse with a crumbling, picturesque façade. He saw beneath the edge of a double cellar door a larger piece of fur, mute testimony that the place had recently been opened, that the condemned men had carried Nora to its abandoned vaults; but if Slim and George had trusted themselves there, the cellar obviously furnished other exits, perhaps underground to the river, almost certainly through the evil saloon next door. That, indeed, might offer him the chance he must have to come upon his men unexpectedly, from the rear.

He glanced around. There was no policeman in sight. He saw only half a dozen pedestrians – shambling creatures who appeared to seek the plentiful darkness. The neighboring warehouses, the pier opposite, frowned back at him. The lapping of the water was expectant. Yet high in the air two brilliant arches were suspended across a slight mist. They were restless with blurred movement. Constantly they lowered into this somber pit an incessant murmuring, like an echo, heard at a distance, from some complicated and turbulent industry.

These crowded bridges, his desolate surroundings, assumed a phantasmal quality for Garth. The only real world lay beyond those sloping, silent doors which had been swung back to admit Nora.

While he looked a figure detached itself from the shadows at the corner of the warehouse. It moved, lurching, in his direction. He could only see that the newcomer was in rags with unkempt hair, and features, sunken and haggard. He grasped his revolver, suspecting that this vagabond exterior disguised a member of the gang – an outpost. Yet there was a chance that the man was one of the neighborhood's multitude of derelicts – a purveyor, possibly, of valuable information.

"Come here, my friend," he called. "How long have you been loafing in that corner?"

The other hesitated. When he answered his voice was without resonance – scarcely more than an exaggerated whisper.

"Who the devil are you?"

Garth held out some money. The claw-like hand extended itself, closing over the coins. In quick succession the man rang three of the pieces on the pavement. Garth's watchfulness increased. Such routine suggested a signal, but the fellow picked up his money, grinning.

"Seems good," he said in his difficult voice. "If you want to know that bad, maybe an hour; maybe more. Napping. Nothing better to do, but I'm honest, and I'd work if I got the chance."

"An automobile drove up here," Garth said rapidly.

"Why so it did. I seen it with these very peepers – not a quarter of an hour back."

"How many got out of it? What did they do?"

"I seen two men and a woman," the other answered. "They lifted that cellar door and went down. Now I wondered why they did that."

"Did the woman make a fight?"

The other shook his head.

"Went like it was a candy store."

Cutting across his throaty accents, a feminine cry shrilled. The heavy doors could not muffle its terror. It seemed like a response to the ringing of the coins. Suddenly it was hushed. Garth shoved the man to one side, urged by a temper that no longer permitted calculation. At any risk he must get to Nora and to those who were responsible for that unrestrained appeal.