The Gray Mask Part 25

"It means," she answered in a tired voice, "that if you read what is on that paper you'll leave me no choice. I shall have to shoot."

Alden whimpered again. The paper fluttered to the floor and rested, white and uncommunicative, beneath the table. His face set. He pointed accusingly towards the rear window.

The gesture was clear to Garth. He knew what it meant before his eyes followed its direction. Before he had seen, he appreciated almost palpably the new presence in the room. At the moment it seemed inevitable to him that the tense group should be joined by a stronger force, the inspiration, probably, of the mysteries that had posed it, and that worked ahead, he could not doubt, to a graver issue for Alden and himself.

The newcomer glided from the shadows by the window and moved to Mrs.

Alden's side--huge, powerful. The cap, drawn low over his eyes, and the thick growth about the mouth, robbed his face of expression and gave to his actions a mechanical precision not lightly to be disturbed. He took the revolver from the woman.

"I couldn't," she said. "He hasn't read. It won't be necessary?"

"Necessary," the man answered, "but you were right. Not in that way. It leaves too much evidence. As the others went."

"No more death," she cried. "There has been too much death."

"These days the world is full of death," he answered. "What are one or two here?"

The voice carried as little expression as the face or the figure, but an accent, which Garth knew, hindered its flow, and defined the situation with a brutal clearness.

He turned at a slipping behind him, a heavy fall. Alden lay on the floor, his hand stretched towards the futile spot of white beneath the table. His wife stumbled across and knelt beside him, restlessly fingering his shoulders.

"Andrew!" she cried. "You don't understand. Look at me. You have to understand. I love you. Nothing changes that."

The newcomer moved to her, and, without relaxing his vigilance, grasped her arm.

"There's too much to be done to-night for tears. Keep your watch."

He indicated Garth.

"I'll come back and attend to him later."

She continued to stare at her husband's closed eyes.

"He knows now, but you shan't kill him. I tell you you shan't kill him."

"When the occasion arises you will follow your duty," he said.

He turned to Garth, pointing to the oak door in the rear corner.

"You will go in there."

A flashing recollection of Nora decided Garth. Resistance now, he knew, as he studied the great figure, would mean the end, whereas, if he waited and obeyed, the knife, secreted in his felt, offered a possible escape.

"Wait!" the man snapped.

He thrust the revolver in Mrs. Alden's hand while he ran quickly over Garth's clothing. The thickness of the belt escaped him. He found only the pocket lamp.

"The telephone is disconnected," he said, evidently to rea.s.sure the woman. "Your husband is too weak to leave the house, and no one will come near it until daylight. We won't cross that bridge before we reach it."

She shuddered.

The other opened the oak door and motioned Garth to enter. He went through, simulating a profound dejection, but actually reaching out again to confidence. For the man would come back to visit him with the silent, undemonstrative violence that had done for the two men in the woods, but Garth would be waiting for him, behind the door, with his knife. Therefore, when the door was locked, he commenced hopefully to examine his prison.

The night, he found after a moment, was not complete in here. It possessed a quality, milky but l.u.s.treless, reminiscent of the shroud through which the shadowy figures had paraded. It retained, however, the obscurity of thorough darkness. He had a feeling, indeed, of standing in a darkness that was white.

There must be windows over there, many windows. He felt his way across.

The wall, as well as the interior face of the door, was lined with sheet tin, suggesting immediately the nature of his prison--a dismantled conservatory. The glazed end was of small panes, heavily leaded. The frames in themselves offered a resistance to escape as efficacious as prison bars.

The arrangement, nevertheless, gave him one advantage. A single door to guard removed the threat of a surprise.

In the centre of the floor he found a considerable heap of wood, probably the fittings of the place. He scarcely dared pause to examine it. He hurried back to his post at the doorway, removed the knife from his belt, jointed it, and tested the point against his finger. He didn't know how long his respite would last. He couldn't hazard a guess as to the nature of the big man's occupation. He could only estimate its importance by the fact that it had prevented the other's dealing summarily with him.

He had entered the case with too little light. Nora had been right. One can not follow a straight course through the dark. Only a few dim outlines offered themselves for his appraisal. Mrs. Alden had made her choice between an evident, an exceptional affection for her husband and an enterprise directed by the sinister figure who had stepped from the shadows. Of what a vast importance that enterprise must be since it had prodded her to such a decision, since it had made her acquiesce, however unwillingly, in murder to safeguard its progress! She faced even the death of her own husband because he had learned too much of its intention. And she had no slightest amorous tendency--of that Garth was sure--towards the bearded giant to whose will she bent her own with a pitiable humility. The lack of that world-wide, easily comprehensible motive to wrong, taken with the leader's German accent, directed Garth's logic to the furnaces, which night after night stained the sky with a scarlet, significant of their feverish industry. Yet the shadowy figures of the woods were still elusive, unless the place was used as a rendezvous and the affair to-night approached a crisis. Could he escape?

Would he be in time to prevent a crime of such proportions, of such disquieting possibilities?

He stiffened at a stealthy movement of the key in the lock. The answer lay just ahead. Garth could not doubt that the German was about to enter, to annihilate in his subtle manner an enemy he believed unarmed.

With his left hand he braced himself against the door-frame for the stroke, while with his right hand he lifted the knife. The necessity of striking without warning sickened him. He had no choice. There was too much eager help within ear-shot of an alarm. The stakes loomed too commandingly to tolerate a sentimental hesitation. It was not only his own life in the scales. The lives of those who toiled at the furnaces swayed with his. But it was from the recollection of Nora that he drew the most strength, from the desire to see her again; to watch her quiet figure--a little inscrutable, unconsciously provocative; to hover again on the edge of an avowal, alert for his favorable moment.

The door hinges responded to a pressure. The lamp had evidently been extinguished again, for he saw in the uncertain radiance of the embers a thing, scarcely definable as human, p.r.o.ne beyond the threshold.

The empty doorway, the inert object on the floor, the darkness, accented rather than diminished by the embers, blurred his calculations. Where was the one who had opened and for whom his knife was eager?

Unexpectedly a brilliant light flashed in his eyes and went out.

Half-blinded, he sensed the presence of something on the sill, and he struck downward with all his force. He reached only emptiness. The one on the sill had sprung through. From somewhere in the house Garth heard the patter of hastening feet.

He fought away the effects of the flash, striving to locate the one who had entered. There beside the heap of rubbish knelt a form darker than the white darkness.

He moved noiselessly over. He reached down and grasped the bent shoulder, and, as the shoulder recoiled from his touch, so he recoiled from its quality that revealed the presence in his prison of a woman.

Through his amazement he heard the door close, but he felt sure of himself now. Mrs. Alden was his prisoner--a hostage, if he chose, for his own escape, unless, indeed, she had finally revolted and come to his aid.

"Get up," he said roughly.

The woman's sigh conveyed relief. Something sc.r.a.ped beneath her hand. A tiny flame was born and entered into the base of the rubbish.

Then the woman turned slowly, and, in the light of the flame, Garth looked into Nora's excited eyes and smiling face.

Incredulous, he grasped her arms, lifted her to her feet, and stared.

The growing flame struck a flash from his knife, drove into his brain a full realization of the monstrous misunderstanding which had nearly involved them in unspeakable disaster.

"Good G.o.d, Nora! I nearly--I tried to--"

Her smile grew.

"I didn't know what I should find in here. I couldn't afford to take chances."

"But I left you in New York," he went on uncertainly. "How did you come?

Why are you here?"