The Gray Mask Part 37

"Jim," she breathed, "you're going to take this case?"

"Surely. I've only to lay a ghost. That ought to be simple."

She hesitated.

"I've been thinking," she said, "and I wish you wouldn't go, because it will be hard, terribly hard--with death always in the way."

CHAPTER XIV

THE LEVANTINE WHO GUARDED A CURTAIN

Garth, in spite of Nora's fears, went confidently enough to the hospital. If he could learn all Brown knew the case should be easy sailing.

In Brown's room the blinds were down. The greenish light scarcely found the upturned face. It sought rather the bandage, ghastly and white, wound thickly about the head. From time to time Brown's lips moved with a pitiful futility. Garth, while the nurse cautioned him to silence, bent closer, so that at last he could define the pallid face and the closed eyelids that trembled. Suddenly the eyes opened. From them into Garth's brain sprang an impression of immeasurable terror as if they still secreted the outline of some monstrous vision.

Garth started back as the injured man, apparently spurred by that recollection, struggled to rise, sat bolt upright, his head swaying drunkenly, while from his wide throat vibrated an accusing and despairing cry:

"The veiled woman! Oh, my G.o.d! The veiled woman!"

Garth's nerves tightened. Again that incredible feature of the case startled him. Here was proof he needed. The figure that had frightened Alsop and Marvin was probably involved in the attack on Brown. The inspector was right. She was the brains of the affair. Brown must tell him all he knew. He urged the man desperately.

"Take hold of yourself! You've seen this woman! You've got to talk to me!"

But Brown screamed incoherently with a diminishing power. The nurse had run into the hall. Through the open doorway her voice tore anxiously, summoning a house physician.

Garth's feeling of a desperate helplessness increased. Before him was the knowledge that would safeguard Alsop and his friends, that would insure Garth's own life, that would destroy, perhaps, a dangerous foreign influence, and the man couldn't speak.

At last the nurse's calls seemed to seep through the bandage into that tortured brain, suggesting the necessity for caution. In a whisper coherent words came again from the trembling lips.

"For G.o.d's sake, don't look behind the white veil! No! No! I have.

That's madness!"

The doctor slipped in and hurried to the bedside. In response to his touch Brown lay down.

"Don't dope him," Garth begged. "That man knows things on which many lives depend. He must tell them to me before night. When will he be able to talk straight?"

The doctor smiled tolerantly.

"You don't seem to understand. A frightful fracture at the base of the brain. He seems inclined to be quiet enough now."

The doctor turned away. Garth followed him to the door, urging him to use his skill to make Brown talk. The nurse had remained by the bed.

Garth heard her sharp cry through his own pleading. The sound puzzled him because it was a trifle strangled. The doctor, however, turned like a flash and hurried back to the bed. Garth looked. The nurse bent over the bandaged head. The doctor fumbled quickly beneath the bed clothes.

He arose, glanced at Garth, and spread his hands. Garth picked at his hat, unwilling to believe.

"You mean," he whispered, "that he's--gone?"

The doctor nodded. The nurse sobbed once. Garth had not noticed how young her face was.

The block where the murdered man had been found was flanked by long rows of similar houses. Its cobblestones, unfriendly to traffic, made it an ideal place for the brutal deception which had been attempted.

Opposite the spot where Brown had been picked up Garth paused and looked curiously across the street. The dreary house line was broken there by a number of bas.e.m.e.nt and first-story shops. His eyes, alert for the unusual, had found it. A bas.e.m.e.nt window displayed intricately patterned rugs, lamps of the Orient, unfamiliar and barbaric jewelry. The fact that he had not noticed the window sooner testified to a significant discretion in its arrangement. It was, he fancied, designed less to attract curiosity than to satisfy it once it was aroused. Probably it was that idea that suggested a fantastic connection between what he had heard at the flat and the hospital and what he saw now. Half derisively he recalled that Oriental women went veiled--customarily secreted their faces behind white veils.

He had intended entering all these shops and houses in search of a witness of the attack on Brown. He determined now to proceed rather more warily. Suppose Brown spying, or about to spy, had been a.s.saulted in one of these bas.e.m.e.nts--for instance, in the Oriental shop which had straightway aroused his interest?

He crossed the street and darted quickly down the steps from one side, so that he was sure he had taken by surprise whoever was in the place.

What he saw was sufficient proof of his success, and his special detective sense was immediately impressed by much that was ominous in the shadowed room. The echoes of such an attack as Brown had suffered could have been easily smothered here.

Rugs were draped against the walls or flung at haphazard on the floor.

Carved tables supported lacquer work. From a gla.s.s case jewelry gleamed with a dull beauty. But it was on the rear of the shop that Garth's eyes rested, while a cold fear grasped him.

A long, low divan sprawled there against a tapestry hanging of a colorful and grotesque design. On this divan, seated cross-legged, was the figure of a man, at first quite motionless, like an image in a somber and guarded temple. He wore a fez, set formally on his head. One hand clasped the sinuous stem of a water pipe.

The round, flaccid, repulsive face defied cla.s.sification. Garth could not be sure whether it was Egyptian, Turkish, Arabian, or Semitic. He only knew that it was evil and accustomed to perfect control, for he suspected that his rapid entrance had made the concealment of the fez and the alteration of that ritual att.i.tude impossible. In a matter-of-fact tone Garth spoke of examining the rugs and antiques.

The figure did not stir. The sallow face remained as if carved. The only motion in the room was a lazy curling from the water pipe of white smoke which faded in the darkened, perfumed air. Then the curtain moved stealthily at one end, disclosing a dark face of a Levantine cast. This man came through, carefully replacing the curtain behind him, stroked his bony hands, and demanded Garth's desires. The immobility of the cross-legged creature ceased. The stem of the water pipe as he raised it to his mouth writhed in sinuous curves. He commenced to puff. The water bubbled unevenly.

Garth examined the rugs with growing excitement. He was prepared to believe that he had stumbled on a meeting place. And after all wasn't this an ideal rendezvous? The shop had probably been here for years. The town was full of such stores. At any rate his impression of a calculated evil increased. He felt himself the object of suspicion. It was conceivable to him that he might suffer a fate similar to Brown's--perhaps behind that hideous curtain which the Levantine and the cross-legged figure seemed to guard.

Garth started. The unequal bubbling of the pipe had accompanied all his thoughts. Constantly it would pause, then recommence. The idea which had been struggling unconsciously in the detective's brain took shape. That uneven bubbling possessed a significance beyond the pleasures of nicotine. It suggested a means of communication, a code.

While he bargained with the Levantine his confidence in this eccentric explanation increased. It condemned the occupants of the shop. Whether or not the men were connected with the plot Brown had feared against Alsop, they were decidedly objects of interest to the police. Still, if Brown had spied here, the danger was obvious. The Levantine and the man in the fez were sinister opponents. Yet Garth wanted to see behind that grotesque curtain.

For a time, listening to the bubbling, he wondered if they would let him leave the shop at all. He was in no hurry to go until he had made sure of one or two things. While fingering a rug he managed stealthily to examine the wall. It was about what he had hoped, what he had expected.

The house was very old. It was one of a row built simultaneously before the fire laws had amounted to much. He was sure that the dividing walls between these bas.e.m.e.nts were not fireproof. As nearly as he could tell from the surface he examined, they would probably be lath-and-plaster, with, perhaps, rubble in the s.p.a.ce between. His next step was to measure as accurately as he could with his eye the distance between the entrance and the curtain, which was like a ceremonial background for the man in the fez. Stooping to inspect one of the rugs, he struck the flooring with his fist, as if by accident. He was satisfied. There was no cellar beneath this bas.e.m.e.nt. He dared hope that he would see what lay behind the curtain.

Approximating as nearly as he could the subtleties of a buyer, he promised to make up his mind and return with his decision the next morning. He knew that sharp and angry eyes followed him from the shop.

He had a feeling that the darkened place had become active as soon as he had turned his back.

He walked slowly to the corner, studying the houses on either side of the shop. The one to the right was a cheap boarding house. The one on the other side was evidently a private dwelling.

At the nearest hardware store he bought an auger and a screwdriver. Then he entered the alley that bisected the block, and, counting the houses, knocked at the kitchen door of the one to the right of the Oriental shop. The servant who admitted him verified his hazard. At this hour the occupants were at work. She was, for the present, alone in the house.

Garth showed her his badge, warned her to make no noise, and to stay close to him. The girl, frightened and unable to comprehend, followed him into the bas.e.m.e.nt. He paced from the front of the house along the wall to a point which, according to his calculations, was opposite the hidden portion of the shop. He glanced up then with satisfaction.

Against a thin and antiquated part.i.tion was suspended one of those heavy and unwieldy gas meters which are found only in very old buildings.

Garth drew up a table, climbed upon it, and examined the thick screws which held the contrivance in place. With his screwdriver he commenced noiselessly to remove one of these. He thought it likely that the screw hole would go all the way through. If it did not, his auger would complete the journey. He instructed the girl to draw the blinds and close the door so that the room would be darker. He pulled the screw from the rotten wall. The aperture was sufficiently large. It admitted the repellent odor he had noticed in the shop; so he put his eye to the hole and waited for his brain to accustom itself to these new conditions.

The drone of voices reached him, but at first he could see very little--shadowy outlines circling a dull, glowing thing close to the floor--a brazier, he decided, about which men sat. Then he started, for he thought he saw something long and white, like a woman. But the smoke from the aperture hurt his eye. He had to close it. When he opened it again there was nothing white, but out of the droning voices came words in English with a foreign accent, and he crouched against the wall, listening.

He marveled that he should hear just these words at this particular moment.