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

Garth’s fingers reached out, then he thought of the frayed piece of paper possibly in the inspector’s hands and already urging the night to a successful climax. This anguish, too, he must suffer. So he drew back profoundly shaken.

Nora, however, was protecting her lips.

“You promised—” George began.

“I said if you had that much nerve. But I know you haven’t. Even if you had croaked him you wouldn’t dare acknowledge it here. Why, George, you’re kneeling where he lay.”

He threw back his shoulders. He laughed demonstratively.

“What difference does that make? I’m kneeling to you. And let Slim rave. I’ll give you your price. You needn’t be ashamed to kiss me, Nora. It wasn’t Slim. I did it. The cop jumped me from behind that sofa, and I let him have the knife.”

He raised his lips expectantly.

Garth didn’t understand at first. He only realized with a savage joy that their lips did not touch. Yet he questioned why the big man, instead of answering the temptation of that mouth, half-open and inviting, drooped backwards until he lay stretched on the floor.

George’s cry in his ears aroused him, and he saw in the reeling, drunken shaft of light that blood flowed and joined the ancient stain in the carpet.

He arose. He knew what that scream would unloose upon them.

Springing backward, he grasped the handle of the safe and opened the doors.

“Nora,” he whispered. “Come here.”

She obeyed him with mechanical precision,; but when he took the lamp from her listless hand, turning it upward to examine her face, he read in her eyes awakening realization and horror.

He snapped off the light. Still grasping her hand, he seated himself on the floor with his back to the open safe. He drew her down. For a moment he thought she would resist, then she yielded and sank passively to the cushion at his side.

“Why?” she asked.

“They will be here,” he said. “There is no way out except through that door which they will use. It is safer to wait here. Why don’t they come?”

“They are careful,” she whispered back. “They will come slowly. They will take no chances.”

He felt the quick shaking of her body.

“I know what I have done,” she said, “what I have done to you.”

He realized that his hand still grasped hers. He released it gently.

“I understand a little,” he answered, “but if you cared enough to accomplish this madness for him, you should have been even less kind to me than you were this afternoon.”

“Perhaps,” she answered. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I was so young. I loved him so much, and my father said his murderer would never be punished—justice must fail. Maybe it was my Italian blood, but I swore over his body the day they buried him that, if there was no other way, I would get justice for the poor boy. We were practically certain it was this gang. I said nothing to my father. Through a girl I had helped I met Slim. It pleased his vanity to have a spy at headquarters. I made him trust me. But I couldn’t find out who—Yet sooner or later I knew the time would come. That’s why I worked so hard for tonight, why I wouldn’t let anything interfere, because I thought in this room—Well! You see—Listen!”

She breathed hard for a moment.

“Since I’ve known you I’ve doubted, but I couldn’t turn back. You despise me, Jim, but in a way I have done good. I made them respect me. I have restrained them. I think, because I have been with them, I have saved lives. And always I had planned at the end to punish them as they deserved. But now—in a trap. We’re like mice in a trap, Jim. I’ve done that to you. They’ll find me out now, and what’s behind the mask, too. They’ll kill us both. They’ll have to. Listen!”

“We’ll make a fight of it, Nora,” he said grimly. “No matter what I do, trust me.”

“Hush!” she breathed. “I think the door is open.”

“I’m going to flash the light,” he answered.

“No. I know they are here. I know they are in the room. I hear—”

He snapped the button. The white shaft pierced the darkness. Nora had been right. Slim and three others with ready revolvers were half way across the room. Garth put his finger to his lips.

“Sh-h,” he said. “Wait! Don’t come any closer.”

“What’s wrong, Simmons?” Slim whipped out. “Who called? That’s George. What—”

“He got fresh with the girl,” Garth answered.

Slim waited, taking in the details of the tableau, weighing Garth’s words and manner, studying Nora’s collapsed figure and its proximity to Garth’s.

“You’re bluffing, Simmons,” he said at last. “I’m after facts now. Toss up your hands.”

He raised his revolver, aiming at Garth’s body. Nora gave a little cry. Garth laughed.

“You don’t quite understand,” he answered slowly, “and you’re usually so observant, Slim. Look around. The safe is open behind us. Your bullets would clip through Nora and me into those sacks of army destroyers. What then? So you won’t be surprised when I take my hands down.”

He lowered them. He took his own revolver from his pocket.

“But,” he went on, “there’s nothing behind you but a steel wall, and if one of you comes a step closer I’ll shoot.”

The four gathered together, whispering, inaudibly to Garth; but this tense grouping, this excited council warned him of their only possible answer.

“If you try to rush me,” he cried, “or if you try to get out of the room, I’ll turn the revolver on the safe and blow the whole lot of us to powder in this pleasant steel shell.”

Slim turned, white-faced.

“You wouldn’t have the nerve,” he said. “After all, you’re a bull.”

“Just to show you,” Garth answered quietly, “I’ll put the whole pack on the table. You’ve called the turn, Slim. I’m that.”

He snatched the mask from his face, and took a police whistle from his pocket. He raised it to his lips. He blew a call which he felt would penetrate beyond these steel walls. It was the first unrestrained sound the room had heard that night. It thrilled Garth. It was like a tonic. He laughed outright.

“No more fighting in the dark. Thank God!”

The four men stared with the helpless rage, the abandoned suffering of snared animals.