The Gray Mask by Charles Wadsworth Camp (best reads txt) 📖

again. Garth warned him and helped him on with his overcoat.

“You leave me no choice,” Black whimpered. “No choice.”

Garth drew him to the sidewalk.

“If you waste time steering me wrong,” he said, “I’m through. And don’t forget I have a gun. Try to throw me down once we’re in, I’ll use it.”

Black made an effort to square his shoulders. He crossed the avenue with a lurching gait. Garth glanced back. A dark figure skulked after them. So that was all right. The inspector would know their destination immediately.

“One thing,” Garth asked. “How did you have the nerve to drive your limousine to the place last night?”

“I didn’t,” Black answered. “I picked it up in Third Avenue.”

He did not speak again, and Garth no longer urged him. He walked straight for the block in which he had been at his folly last night. But he did not pause there. He continued across Lexington Avenue and made confidently for the deserted, dust-filled house which just now had mocked the police. Garth, amazed, followed him to the basement door.

Black took a key from his pocket, and with the ease of long habit inserted it through the obscurity in the lock. The door opened and Garth walked into the blackness with a quickening suspense. His apprehension was for Nora rather than himself. What had happened to her when she had stepped into the dusty hall? Her only chance was that hewould not be caught in this somber pit as she had probably been. He put his hand on his revolver.

“Go first,” he whispered.

The darkness was so complete that Garth had to keep his fingers on the other’s arm to avoid stumbling against the walls. Yet his guide went with a quick assurance to the rear door which he opened with another key. They stepped beneath a rough shelter of corrugated iron such as is hastily thrown up for the protection in summer of washboards, or, in winter, for the storing of wood. Black proceeded beneath this shelter along the fence to the corner. Garth noticed a large accumulation of rubbish in the yard, souvenirs, doubtless, of indolent and utilitarian neighbors.

Black stooped. Evidently he had given a signal which Garth had not seen or heard, for straightway he arose and leant against the fence, waiting.

“What now? “Garth asked.

Black raised his finger to his lips.

Garth looked down at a rustling among the rubbish. A thin piece of flagging had opened at his feet as if hinged like a trap-door, leaving visible the top of a flight of rough wooden steps.

Black stepped down and Garth followed. The steps led diagonally under the angle of the fence. Others rose into the corner of the adjacent yard. If this was their destination it was neither to one side nor directly behind the empty house used as an entrance. Garth marvelled at the simplicity of the contrivance. Two men in half a day could haveaccomplished the entire excavation and arranged the steps. Moreover, without a definite clue the police would never suspect such an entrance.

While Black carefully lowered the flag on the other side Garth glanced around. They stood in the kitchen shed of a house which, of course, faced the next street. Garth had no doubt that the place was masked with a physician’s office, or, perhaps, an appeal for boarders, who, nevertheless, would always fail to find rooms available at the hour of their application. He saw nothing of the man who had admitted them by raising the flag. He was more disturbed than before, since he could picture the inspector’s bewilderment on learning that he had entered the house which had been so recently raided and combed.

Garth had small time for speculation. He saw Black press an electric button. Faintly he heard the response from a muffled bell—two rings short, and one long. Almost at once the door opened a crack, but no gleam of light came through. Black muttered something unintelligible to Garth, and led him into a darkness as complete as that which had oppressed him in the empty house. Yet in spite of it he was sure it was a woman who had admitted them.

“This way,” Black said.

Garth followed, scarcely breathing. Where would he find Nora? How would he find her?

A door opened ahead, and at last there was alight—a subdued, brown light, unhealthy, suggestive of a melancholy repose.

Black went first, then Garth, into an inner hallway, which was saturated with this aberrant radiance.

Garth turned sharply to inspect the woman who had followed them in. He drew back. He controlled his gasp of relief and gratitude, for it was Nora herself who had opened the door for them and who stood now on the threshold of the hall. Yet he saw that his presence, instead of bringing to them a grateful welcome, had drawn into her eyes a fear which quickly approached despair.

She wore the apron and the cap of a housemaid, transparent hints as to how she had found an entrance and remained here, unmolested. Her features, in addition, were subtly changed, so that one, less acquainted with them than Garth, might have passed her unrecognizing.

His astonishment had held him longer than was discreet. He turned at a sound to find his conductor gone. He knew what that portended. He cursed his carelessness.

Nora took his arm.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered tensely. “Go before it’s too late. I knew they suspected trouble tonight, but I never dreamed of your getting in here alone. Go—the way you came.”

“To be caught in the yard?” he scoffed. “Thatfellow’s given me away by this time. They’ll watch that exit first.”

He ran along the hallway. The strange brown light appeared to have given the air a substantial resistance. He breathed it with distaste. It choked him. At the foot of the stairs Nora caught his arm again.

“Where are you going?”

“Up there,” he answered. “I haven’t the ghost of a show in this suffocating basement. They’ll look for me here first.”

He climbed the stairs. She followed him.

“Jim,” she breathed, “it’s hopeless. They’ll never let you out.”

He turned at the head of the stairs. The same dim, unreal light was repugnant in his lungs here. A repellent odor, not to be classified, crept into his nostrils, made him want to cough. Heavy purple hangings were draped across two doorways.

“Tell me the lay-out,” he whispered. “Quick! The yard isn’t the only getaway?”

“Except the roof and the front,” she whispered back, “and they’re locked. The head one keeps the keys. For God’s sake, Jim, try to get out of this house before it’s too late.”

He pointed to one of the draped doorways. It was at the end of the hall, but the hall appeared to him too short.

“Is that the front door?”

She shook her head.

“Only leads to the front of the house. That’splanted, of course—a boarding house. I tell you that door’s locked.”

“Then how can I get to a front window?”

“You can’t, Jim.”

He tried to plan.

“Then how am I—”

A heavy step seemed to set the thick, brown air in lazy motion. It came from a nearby room. It approached. Garth glanced at the purple hangings, expecting them to part on one who would discipline without mercy his presumption.

“Jim! They’ve got you, and if they see me with you—”

She spread her arms.

“They know you’re a detective. Your only hope is that they shouldn’t suspect me. And I can’t lose all I’ve done. Hit me, Jim.”

“Nora!”

“Trust me,” she begged, “and we’ve a chance. They mustn’t doubt me. Hit me, Jim. Take hold of me. Clap your hand over my mouth. Quick!”

He drew back. He knew she was right, but he couldn’t, all at once, bring himself to obey.

“I’ve my gun,” he muttered.

“It’s worthless.”

The footsteps were nearer. They had persisted with a measured, an unhurried purpose. Garth drew his revolver. The curtains waved.

Suddenly Nora screamed. She flung herself upon him tigerishly.

“Jim!” she whispered. “Now!”

The contact swept him with a bitter, distorted content. He had to force himself to grasp her shoulders, and to bend them back. Her hand rose. Scarcely understanding her intention, he saw her strike herself sharply across the face. An ugly, reddish mark survived. There was a suggestion of tears in her voice.

“You coward, Jim!”

The curtains were wider, but always, as he forced her back, he combatted the desire to draw her closer instead, to heal with his lips the scar with which his precipitancy had marked her.

She cried out again. He glanced at the curtains. He let her go, staring with a sense of loathing at a yellow, wrinkled face, which protruded from the purple, and permitted him to see, glistening above it, a braid of hair, serpent-like and perilous.

The leering face was withdrawn. Garth heard a low whistle modulated on an unfamiliar, minor interval.

“Don’t resist them, Jim,” Nora whispered. “I’ll do what I can.”

Then she turned and ran, screaming, through the curtains.

Garth dashed for the hidden door which led to the front of the house. If only he could break through there, reach a window, and signal the inspector, but when he tore the curtains back he faced panels of an exceptional stoutness, unquestionably built to deaden sound as well as to form a competent barricade. He surrendered to the realization that he was caught in the heart of this evil house. He wondered if Nora’s strategy retarded his captors.

A stealthy shuffling turned him from the door so that he faced the hall. He had heard that same sound last night when the diminutive Chinaman had approached him. Now he saw three of the same mold whose queues appeared to writhe in the brown and stifling light as they glided along the hall, their talon-like hands outstretched.

He guessed that the picture was intended to terrify, to impress upon him the futility of resistance, yet while he had his revolver the success of such an attack was remote.

“Stay where you are,” he said, puzzled, trying to understand. “Come any closer and I’ll shoot.”

The yellow mouths grinned. Then, when it was too late, Garth understood the trick. A rush of colder air on his back informed him that the heavy door was open. He stood between two fires. In fact, before he could turn, his wrists were grasped. Two leering faces were close to him, but as the revolver was wrenched from his hand, he pulled the trigger twice. With the great door open those explosions might penetrate beyond the house wall, might carry even to the inspector’s men on the sidewalk.

They had at least aroused in the thick brown twilight of the house a restless, incoherent stirring. . Voices muttered. Steps pattered here and there. A muffled bell commenced to complain. Throughthe curtains from the inner room stepped a man—a white man with cruelly intelligent features. Garth realized that he probably faced the head of this organization which for so long had outwitted the police.

Garth laughed with an effort at bravado.

“That was a signal,” he said. “Block’s surrounded. They’ll be in here before you can light a joss stick. Call these things off, or you’re as good as in the chair.”

Upstairs the stirrings increased. Someone shrieked.

Nora appeared at the man’s elbow. Her face was twisted with an abandoned terror.

“Men in the yard!” she gasped.

Garth guessed that it was a part of her scheme to turn the hunt from him, to give him that one moment he needed. And it worked. He felt his hands released. The Chinamen crouched along the wall, as if trying to conceal themselves, whining pitifully.

Garth jumped through the front hall. The vestibule door was locked and the key was missing. There