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

In silence and with determination she slipped on the white gown she had brought and draped the white veil over her face. Garth, shaking his head, arranged a screen just within the doorway. He turned out the electric lamp, lighted a single candle, and placed it on a stand at some distance.

“Wait behind the screen,” he said. “Actually, Nora, unless we are dealing with something beyond the human, the result is certain. I shall be at the other end of the hall just within the library door. Anybody coming from the interior of the house must pass me. I’ll grab the woman. I’ll see she makes no outcry. I’ll keep her out of the way for she must be human to that extent. When you hear the two raps open the door and take the bomb. According to Alsop’s description you won’t be suspected in this light. A little over five minutes! I’ll get Alsop and his crew out of the library and where their precious skins will be safe.”

He touched her hand in farewell. Her fingers were very cold. She shivered and slipped behind the screen. He went to the library, knocked, entered, and closed the door. The faces that greeted him were restless with misgiving.

“I want you all out of this room now, please,” Garth said. “I’ve delayed moving you as long as I dared, so, if anything goes wrong, those outside won’t know you have left. Take them to the back part of the house, Mr. Alsop. Into the cellar, if you like. It’s safest. In fifteen or twenty minutes I hope you will be able to resume your conference in perfect security.”

Without words the men gathered up their papers and filed out.

Garth, left alone in the room, turned out the light, went to the window, slipped behind the curtain, opened the casement, and peered through.

The darkness was still unrelieved. Through that darkness, he knew, men crept on an errand of fanaticism and death. Through that silence he was momentarily expectant of the audible evidence of their approach. But he could hear nothing, see nothing. He couldn’t wait. It was necessary for him to go to the door from behind which he was to ambush the veiled woman in order that Nora might take her place.

As he thrust the curtain aside a thin, tinkling sound stole from the silence of the room. He felt his way to the telephone and lifted the receiver.

“Hello!” he whispered. “Hello!”

The inspector’s hoarse voice came to him, lowered to a note of caution.

“You, Garth? I’m in the gardener’s cottage. Tell me Alsop and his people are safe.”

“Yes,” Garth said. “Hurry! Hurry! What’s up?”

“For Heaven’s sake, be careful,” the inspector answered, “because, Garth, all your dope was right. There are four of them in the grounds now, and one carries a thing that looks like a bomb. Are you going to get away with it? The veiled woman-”

“She’s in the house,” Garth murmured. “I’m waiting. I must go. Hush! I hear-”

He broke off. Through the appalling quietness of the house he had heard distinctly from the direction of the west door two sharp raps. He flashed his light at the clock over the mantel. Its hands pointed exactly to nine o’clock. Yet he had seen no one pass the dim frame of the library doorway—nothing white.

He ran through. In the wan candle light he could see the slender figure in the white gown and the flowing veil slip from behind the screen and open the door. Then Nora would get the bomb, but where was the real veiled woman? What unaccountable intuition had warned her away?

Garth slipped along the hall, clinging to the shadow of a tapestry. He knew from the black patch at the end of the corridor that the door was wide. In that dark patch he suddenly saw the silhouette of a man. The hands were stretched out as if to meet the hands which Nora appeared to offer for the bomb. But the man carried no bomb. Inthe dim light Garth thought at first that he carried nothing. Then he understood his mistake, and he cried out, drawing his own revolver, darting forward :

“Nora! Lookout!”

He had seen that the man’s fingers fondled an automatic, raised it, aimed it at the confident, expectant figure.

“For police spies!” the man called.

Before Garth could reach the door the harsh, tearing report of the automatic came, and was repeated twice. There was no question. At that short range each sound from the stubby cylinder was the voice of death. Garth saw the form that he loved sway, clutch at nothing, without a cry crumple and lie motionless across the threshold.

Before the other could turn his gun on him the detective had grappled with the murderer. He bore him to the porch floor and struck him across the temple with the butt of his revolver. Garth arose then, and, scarcely aware of what he did, placed his police whistle at his lips, and blew shrilly through the night.

While he waited for the help that he knew would be too late for Nora or for him, he gazed at the silent, slender form. The veil alone moved, trembling from time to time in the wind which came gently from the woods. That reached the candle also, which flickered, making the light ghastly, unbearable.

Garth shook. He covered his face with his hands, for the dim, unreal illumination had shownhim that the figure was no longer completely white. The reason for its stillness exposed a scarlet testimony.

That which Garth had feared but had forgotten in the rush of his more personal terror rent the silence with a chaotic turmoil. A terrific detonation was followed by the shattering of glass. Shouts and curses arose from the house. Someone hurried across the drive and up the steps. Garth was aware of a heavy hand on his shoulder. He glanced up at the inspector’s startled face. Suddenly the detective realized that the old man had no misgivings for Nora. At this moment, with the white form at his feet, he must picture her quietly, safely at home. Garth moved away, but the inspector grasped him again.

“What’s the matter with you? You’ve let them use their infernal bomb. You’re responsible for Alsop and his people.”

“They’re safe,” Garth answered.

The candle still burned. In its wan and flickering light he indicated the still, white figure.

“The veiled woman!” the inspector said. “Dead!”

He stooped swiftly.

“You’ve done well here anyway, Garth. Let’s have a look.”

Frantically Garth snatched at his arm and tried to pull him away.

“Don’t look! Not you!”

The inspector glanced up amazed. Garth knelt with a gesture of despair.

“What’s that?” the inspector whispered, and his voice was suddenly afraid. Garth followed his glance. From the black shadows of the woods a white figure glided. Its face was hidden beneath a white cloth.

Garth’s shaking fingers reached out and lifted the stained veil from the silent form. He drew back. His cry was like a sob. For a long time the inspector and Garth stared at the features, apprehensive even in death, of the secretary, Marvin.

Nora, who ran up the steps crying out her fear for those in the house, gave Garth no opportunity for questions or for the expression of that relief which shook him with a power nearly physical. Even the inspector, after his first shock of surprise, had no time to demand the particulars of her share in the night’s work.

The four prisoners were brought to the hall. They knew they must stand trial for Brown’s death as well as for this attempt. The one who had shot Marvin and who had gone down before Garth’s attack was still dazed. Garth identified him as the man who had disguised himself as an Oriental in the shop. The sharp face of the Levantine twitched with hatred and fright. The other two, although he knew the type, the detective had never seen before. They boasted openly that the shop had beenonly an outpost for this affair. Through a dictaphone and the telegraphy of the pipe, instructions had been sent to and from their headquarters. Tonight, they declared, the shop had ceased to be useful. No trail would lead from it to the central force that worked in New York.

As they drove home in a taxicab the inspector bitterly lamented the fact to Garth and Nora.

“We’ll get to it later,” Garth said.

“If only things hadn’t gone wrong at the last minute!” Nora cried. “If only I might have taken the bomb and talked to the man who brought it! Even with the others! For it’s clear those fellows will give nothing away now. We can blame poor Marvin that I never had a chance.”

“What do you mean?” Garth asked. “You haven’t told us what happened when I left you by the west door.”

“You remember we had got Marvin on a sofa in the hall,” Nora answered. “He must have seen you close the door when you went in the library to warn Alsop and the others, because from my hiding place I saw him get up, and, with no appearance of an injured man, sneak along the wall to the stairs. I followed him up, and, Jim, I found him on the floor in his room again, but this time he didn’t hear me, and he was talking. Then I saw his whole game. There was a dictaphone hidden beneath the bed with which he had probably communicated with those outside the house for days. We had stopped him the first time when he had just learned of myintended masquerade. Don’t you see? He had to tell them that. We caught him, and he scratched himself to throw us off the track with the details of another case like Brown’s. Now I heard him tell everything—just what I was to do, and that Alsop and the others were in the library. I ran downstairs, but when I reached the lower hall I saw him coming after me. So I said I had changed my mind, that I was afraid, that I wanted only to leave the house. I went to the kitchen and slipped out, intending to get to you, Jim, with my information. But I knew these men were in the grounds, and I had to go carefully. When I crept up to the library window I thought I saw you. Then the telephone bell rang, and I couldn’t make you hear.”

“Of course,” Garth said, “Marvin, coming down, had seen that the library, door was open, and that there was no longer a light there. It was too late to use the dictaphone again, but he knew he must change his instructions and tell them not to waste the bomb in the library. So he threw on his disguise and rushed to the west door as he had originally planned, in too much of a hurry to dream such a mistake could happen. I suppose he got past while I was at the window.”

“Marvin,” the inspector mused, “was just the man for them. Probably full of wild-eyed ideas, and feeling a divine call to help smash Alsop. I hold no brief for that millionaire. I understand he had to work, like most everybody else, for what he’s got, and maybe that’s the reason he can’t understand these new social notions. And far be it from me to say anything about Marvin’s grand thoughts, although it may be his share in this affair was made worth his while. My part in life is to see that the law’s kept, and I guess without the law there wouldn’t be anything much worth while for anybody to fight over. These rough boys had certainly fixed Marvin to help them break the law into