The Gray Mask

CHAPTER XVII

THE KNIFE BY THE LIFELESS HAND

He heard McDonald open and close the front door. Then the widow entered, followed by a young man with an abundance of dark hair curling over a low forehead and shading eyes a trifle too deep set. But at first Garth saw only the widow, and he marveled that one so young and lovely in an etherial sense should have been mated with the elderly invalid upstairs. As he looked it suddenly occurred to him that Reed, since he had lost Taylor as a friend, might crave more than friendship from the widow.

She sank on a divan. Even in the shadows her heavy black hair and the dark grey traveling dress she wore heightened the weary pallor of her face. Had her eyes held tears they would have been easier to meet, for the shock was there, dry and unrelieved.

"It is dreadful to come home this way," she said, "dreadful! I had never dreamed of his doing such a thing."

"It is by no means certain," Garth said gently, "that he killed himself. There is a curious situation in this house. McDonald's daughter, the housekeeper, for instance, has not been seen since a short time before the crime."

Her lips twitched a little. He fancied hope in her eyes.

"If I could only cry!" she said. "At any rate that would be better for his memory, wouldn't it? You suspect this woman?"

"If you are able," Garth said, "I would like you to tell me something about her."

"I have never seen her," she answered. "She came after I went west. McDonald had a good deal of influence over Mr. Taylor, and I never quite trusted him. There's no use. You might as well know the truth about Mr. Taylor and me. You've probably heard. We were never quite happy. He was so much older. We never quite belonged to each other. But that is all. It isn't true all this gossip that I went west for a divorce, and I don't believe he was the man to kill himself. If there has been a crime against him I want the world to know it. I want his memory clean."

Quickly the man Reed touched her shoulder. For the first time since entering the room he spoke. His voice possessed a peculiar, aggressive resonance.

"Helen, you shouldn't take this man's suspicion that he was murdered too seriously."

Garth motioned him to silence.

"At such a time," he said to Mrs. Taylor, "I dislike to bother you, but I'd like to ask one or two questions. Your mother? Her mind?"

He caught a flash of pain across her white face.

"She has always been peculiar," she answered, "but she isn't out of her head, if that's what you mean. I've always thought it's a habit of hers to hide her real thoughts behind apparent absurdities."

"I had wondered about that," Garth said with satisfaction. "One more thing. There has been talk among the servants of spirits, of moans."

She shivered.

"I know nothing about that," she said, "except that the house is unbearable. That is one reason I decided on this long visit, why I shrank from coming home."

"Unbearable?" Garth helped her out.

"Old, moldy, and depressing. My husband, I think, believed in it a little. I've heard him and my mother talk about a figure who sometimes walked. I laughed at that, and I laughed when they heard moans. You see the wind often cries in the narrow space between us and the high wall of the next house. I've never liked it here. It depresses me too much. That's all."

"Thanks," Garth said. "You will want time to accustom yourself. Rest assured I will do everything I can to get the truth."

"You must," she said tensely, "and don't hesitate to disturb me if I can be of any use."

As they went out the resonance of Reed's undertone reached Garth.

"Helen. You are giving this man's suspicion too much weight. He seems to have no evidence."

After the door had closed Garth telephoned the inspector, suggesting that the house be guarded in order that he might have McDonald, Clara, and the old lady at hand.

"I'll give instructions," the throaty rumble of the inspector came back, "to arrest any one who tries to make a getaway."

Garth hurried to the kitchen. The night was nearly complete there, but, as he entered, he caught a swift, silent movement from the servants' stairs. He walked to the entrance.

"I thought so."

The girl Clara shrank from him in the shadows. She wore a hat and cloak. She carried a hand bag.

"If you don't want yourself locked up, charged with murder, take those things off," Garth said. "From this moment the house is watched, and any one attempting to leave will be arrested."

The girl commenced to cry again.

"I am afraid," she sobbed. "Afraid."

Garth turned on the light.

"Take me," he directed her, "to the room occupied by the housekeeper."

Shaken and uncertain, Clara led him to a room at the head of the stairs, which, Garth found, had a second door opening into the upper hall of the front portion of the house. The room displayed a taste seldom found among servants. His examination of it from the first spurred Garth's curiosity. The bed had been occupied last night, but to all appearances for only a brief period, since the blankets and sheets were little disturbed. Some clothing and a pair of shoes lay at one side, and clothing, shoes, and hats were neatly arranged in the closet, but nowhere could he find a dressing gown or a pair of bedroom slippers. Clara, moreover, could not recall having seen the housekeeper wear any hat or clothes other than those in the closet. If McDonald's daughter had fled from the house in slippers and dressing gown it was strange she hadn't been heard of long ago. It became increasingly clear to him that the woman remained hidden in the house. It should be easy enough to find her. He would search every corner for the one whose brain, he was now convinced, held the solution of the mystery. But on the lower floor he found no trace. He paused in the lower hall, intending to ring for McDonald to guide him through the rest of his task.

All at once his hand which he had raised to the bell hesitated. He braced himself against the wall. Through the heavy atmosphere a stifled groan had reached him, followed by a difficult dragging sound. But as he sprang up the stairs he knew he hadn't heard the cause of Clara's fright, for the groan had sufficiently defined itself as having come from a man.

In the upper hall there was no light beyond the glow sifting through the stair well. It was enough to show Garth a dark form huddled at the foot of the stairs leading to the third story. He ran over and stooped.

"McDonald! What's the matter? Are you hurt?"

The silence of the house was heavier, more secretive than before.

At last, in response to Garth's efforts, a whimpering came from McDonald's throat. The heap against the wall struggled impotently to rise. Garth recalled the medicines in Taylor's bath room and started down the hall. The unintelligible whimpering increased. Garth went on, aware that the black, huddled figure crawled after him with the sublime and unreasonable courage of a wounded animal.

He snapped on the light and ran to Taylor's bath room where he poured a stimulant into a glass. As he stepped back to the bedroom he faced Taylor's body on which the light shone with peculiar reflections. They gave to the pallid face the quality of a sneer. But it was only in connection with another radical difference at the bed that that illusion arrested Garth and sent a chill racing along his nerves. For on the counterpane, as near the crooked fingers as the revolver lay, now rested a long and ugly kitchen knife.

With a graver fear the detective glanced at the door of the hall. McDonald had dragged himself that far. He raised his trembling hand, stretching it towards the bed in a gesture, it seemed to Garth, of impossible accusation. Then the crouched figure toppled and fell across the threshold while from somewheres beyond the door a high girlish laugh rippled.

Garth sprang forward and knelt by the old man, reluctant to search for what he expected to find. There it was at the back of the coat, a jagged tear whose edges were stained, showing where the knife had penetrated the shoulder. The wound didn't look deep or dangerous, and in his unconsciousness McDonald breathed regularly. So Garth hurried back to the bed and examined the knife. There was no ambiguity about the red stains on the blade. The knife, resting close to the dead hand, had wounded McDonald who had seemed to accuse the still form whose note projected the impression of having been written after death.

Garth smothered his morbid thoughts. McDonald's daughter was the living force, probably at large in this house, that he wanted to chain. If she were guilty of the earlier crime she had sufficient motive for this attempt to keep the old man silent. She could have got such a knife from the kitchen. So, for that matter, could Clara. But the eccentric had laughed. Was that merely coincidence? Garth ran across the hall and listened at her door with an increasing excitement. He heard the running of water, regularly interrupted, as if by hands being cleansed under an open faucet. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He entered, staring at the daring indifference of the old woman who stepped from the bath room, calmly drying her hands on a towel.

"Come in, policeman," she said in her high girlish voice. "Don't suffer in the black hall."

"Let me have that towel," he cried.

Without hesitation she offered him the piece of linen. It showed no stains, nor were there stains to be found about the wash basin, but the slab of marble in which it was set was damp as if it had just now been carefully cleansed. She watched, her wrinkled face set in an expression of contempt.

"What are you up to? Think if I wanted to do anything wrong I'd let you find me out?"

"Then you know," he said, "what happened out there in the hall. I heard you laugh."

She started. Her voice was lower. At last it was as old as herself.

"Things always happen out there. It is crowded with the people who have lived in this house before us – unhappy and angry people. Often I have seen and heard the black thing out there. I would never laugh at her."

Again the doubt of her senility attacked him.

"You can't impress me with that," he said harshly. "I am talking about McDonald. He was stabbed out there a few minutes ago."

She laughed foolishly.

"Horrid old man! But why should I want to see him stabbed?"

He watched her closely.

"I saw you strike him. You didn't have enough strength to send the blow home."

The assurance of her voice increased his doubt. Whatever her mental state she was at least purposeful.

"You need glasses, policeman. Don't neglect your eyes. You have only one pair."

He felt himself against a blank wall, and there was McDonald to think of. He asked one more question.

"When did you last see McDonald's daughter?"

"Maybe at dinner last night," she said. "Nice girl, in spite of her father. I must go back to my knitting, policeman."

Garth left her, hurrying down stairs to the front door. He called the policeman from the shadows of the portico, instructing him to go to the large apartment house on the corner where he would almost certainly find a physician.

As he gave his directions he saw Nora's slender figure cross the street and come up the steps, and, as he looked at the pretty Latin face, expressive of an exceptional intelligence, his morose and puzzled mind brightened. He was surprised to see her now, and a little worried, for a grave menace existed for every one in this house. Moreover, the case mystified him to the point where he felt he must find the solution himself. He didn't care to place himself again under obligations to her. Rather he was ambitious to impress her, perhaps to the removal of her reserve.

"Father's told me about the case," she said. "I couldn't keep away, because you're so hard-headed, Jim."

Smiling whimsically, she glanced at his frayed watch ribbon.

"I see you haven't found the answer yet. Tell me everything you have learned while you have been torturing that poor ribbon."

"Ghosts or not, Nora," he answered, "the house isn't healthy, and I'd rather you didn't stay."

She laughed and walked in. Shrugging his shoulders, he followed her, closed the door, and told her what had happened since he had telephoned the inspector. Her face, he noticed, had grown pale, and a troubled look had entered her eyes. She shivered.

"What an uncomfortable place! I can guess what Clara meant. Don't you get an impression of great suffering, Jim?"

He was familiar with her superstitious sensibility which at times seemed nearly psychic. It irritated him that to his own matter-of-fact mind the house had from the first conveyed a sense of unhealth. As he started to laugh at her, Nora with a quick movement shrank against the wall.

"What's that?" she whispered.

Garth strained forward, listening, too. He had heard what Clara had described, a crying, smothered and scarcely audible, and he knew what the girl had meant when she had spoken of a voice from the grave – a dead voice.

Across the moaning cut a shrill feminine scream.

"Stay here," Garth called to Nora as he started up the stairs.

He heard her voice, like an echo behind him, as full of misgivings as Clara's had been.

"I am afraid."

At the foot of the attic stairs he saw the white figure of Mrs. Taylor, staring upward, trembling, hysterical, a violent fear in her eyes.

"You heard it, too," she breathed. "It wasn't the wind."

With a shuddering gesture she indicated McDonald's still form.

"He isn't dead," Garth said.

While she relaxed a little the fear in her eyes didn't diminish.

"I – I heard her moan," she said. "I opened my door, and there she was – a black thing – bending over him like – like a vampire. I couldn't seem to see her face. She ran up these stairs, and I could see through the banisters that she went in the big attic room – the room they always talked about where the woman – "

She broke off, screaming sharply again.

"Look out! Back of you! There's something black creeping up the stairs – "

CHAPTER XVIII

THE STAINED ROBE

Garth had been aware of Nora's slow ascent. As he turned she reached the upper floor and the light from the well caught her face.

"A friend who has just come," Garth explained to Mrs. Taylor. "There is nothing to frighten you. The woman you saw is McDonald's daughter. I had satisfied myself she was in the house. We are pretty near our goal now."

"But why," Nora asked, "should McDonald's daughter cry through the house in this fashion? Why didn't Mrs. Taylor see her face?"

But Garth had started up the stairs. The two women followed, as if each was unwilling to be left alone. Garth snapped on his pocket lamp. The light shone on the only two doors on the attic floor. From behind the first keened once more that ghastly and smothered escape of suffering, scarcely audible. As Garth stepped towards the door Mrs. Taylor cried out again:

"Is it safe?"

"Don't go in there unprepared," Nora warned him.

"I want the woman in that room," Garth muttered. "I've heard her and I know she's there. The case is finished with her arrest."

He took out his revolver, flung open the door, and flashed his light about the interior of the room. He lowered his hand with the revolver. The lamp shook a little. There was no one in the room.

"You heard her, too," he said. "Look here."

The others followed him in. The light played on the usual attic chamber, common to old houses. The plaster was stained and cracked. The single window at the end was boarded over. An iron bed rested against the wall, and the customary conglomeration of old furniture cluttered the floor. But there was no possible hiding place or means of escape except a door in the side wall, and Garth found that locked, and when he had entered the other attic room to which it led he found that empty too except for dust and lumber. Yet, as he searched, that stifled and unearthly moaning reached him again.

Feeling himself caught in the sway of incomprehensible forces that mocked him, he sounded the walls and measured until he was convinced the two rooms could hold no secret place. Meantime the women watched with a deepening fear.

"Just the same, she's in this house," Garth said. "By every rule of logic she's in this attic. But I'll go through every nook and cranny. Nora, you and Mrs. Taylor take the bedrooms. I'll go through the cellar and try the lower floor again."

On his way down he saw the doctor, whom the policeman had brought, bending over McDonald.

"The wound is nothing," the doctor said in answer to his question, "but he's had a slight paralytic stroke from the shock."

"When," Garth asked eagerly, "will he be able to talk?"

"Certainly not for several days," the doctor answered. "I'll carry him to his room and make him as comfortable as possible."

As Garth went on down, helpless and bewildered, he heard again the old woman's jibing laugh. It assumed the quality of a threat as he searched unsuccessfully the cellar and the back part of the house. He met Nora in the library. Mrs. Taylor and she had found no more than Garth. As they talked, Reed's tall figure appeared in the doorway. Garth had supposed the man had gone home immediately after bringing Mrs. Taylor from the station.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Reed yawned.

"Mrs. Taylor and this young lady woke me up searching through the spare bedroom in which I was resting. They were after a woman in black. That sounds rather silly, doesn't it? I've heard Taylor drool about his pet guest – lady in black, strangled in attic by jealous husband. I see you're surprised to find me still here. I thought it was understood I should stay and be of what help I could to Mrs. Taylor and her mother."

"Then I'm afraid you'll have to stay for some time," Garth answered dryly. "The house is guarded. No one will be permitted to leave until I have found or accounted for McDonald's daughter."

"Clever girl that!" Reed said indifferently. "Never heard her open her mouth."

He took a book from a shelf and seated himself in a comfortable chair by the lamp.

"If I can be of any use you'll find me here or in my room."

"I'm wondering," Garth answered, "if Clara knows anything about McDonald's daughter. For to-night the back part of the house interests me."

At his nod Nora followed him into the hall.

"Apparently Reed knows nothing," Nora said. "But the old woman – "

"I'm thinking about the room where Taylor's body lies," Garth replied. "From the first an attempt seems to have been made to color the case with the supernatural. The wording of Taylor's note, for instance. An illusion is furnished us that it was written after the man's death. That is followed by another illusion that his cold hand wounded McDonald with the knife. And this crying! The complete disappearance of the black figure almost under our eyes! I grant you it's a moldy, unhealthy house, but it can't shelter such miracles. These phases are clearly manifestations of some abnormal criminality. I have to work on physical lines. The black figure proves that the woman is actually hidden here. The knife on Taylor's bed means that the murderer was in the room this evening. McDonald's gesture, instead of accusing, probably tried to tell me that; tried to warn me, perhaps, that the murderer would return again to the body. I didn't tell Reed the truth. I am going to that room about which nearly everything centers. Before the night is over it may tell me what McDonald tried to say. There at any rate my mind should be more receptive to that flash of intuition I need to make some theory fit this mystery. Since the house is clearly dangerous, Nora, I want you to go home."

Her laugh was uncomfortable, but Garth recognized its determined quality.

"I'll see it through, thanks," she said. "I want this sense of suffering destroyed. I want – you don't know how anxious I am – to see the case put on a physical basis. So I'll watch with you."

Since he failed to alter her determination, he sent her upstairs to make sure no one was spying, for he wanted their entrance of the room of death to remain a secret. She beckoned him from the head of the stairs, and he went up, and they entered the black room.