The Gray Mask Part 42

Garth sighed. He had made up his mind. The best way to get at the truth was to accept for the present the dead man's message at its face value.

He turned on the single light above the desk in the center of the room.

He arranged a chair so that the glare would search its occupant. He sat opposite in the shadow and pressed a b.u.t.ton. Almost at once he heard dragging footsteps in the hall, then a timid rapping at the door. The door opened slowly. A bent old man in livery shuffled across the threshold. It was the servant who had admitted Garth on his arrival a few minutes earlier. The detective indicated the chair on which the light fell.

"Sit down there, please."

As the old man obeyed his limbs shook with a sort of palsy. From his sallow and sunken face, restless, bloodshot eyes gleamed.

"I understand from the doctor," Garth began, "that you are McDonald, Mr.

Taylor's trusted servant. The coroner says death occurred last night or early this morning. Tell me why you didn't find the body until nearly four o'clock this afternoon."

The old servant bent forward, placing the palm of his hand against his ear.

"Eh? Eh?"

On a higher key Garth repeated his question. McDonald answered in tremulous tones, clearing his throat from time to time as he explained that because of his master's bad health his orders had been never to disturb him except in cases of emergency. He drew a telegram from his pocket, pa.s.sing it across to Garth.

"Mrs. Taylor is on her way home from California. I don't think Mr.

Taylor knew just what connection she would make at Chicago, but he expected her to-morrow. That telegram sent from the train at Albany says she will be in this afternoon on the Western express. I thought it my duty to disturb him and get him up to welcome her, for he was very fond of her, sir. It will be cruel hard for her to find such a welcome as this."

"Then," Garth said, "you heard no shot?"

McDonald indicated his ears. Garth tugged at his watch chain.

"I must know," he said, "more about the conditions in this house last night."

He had spoken softly, musingly, yet the man, who had displayed the symptoms of a radical deafness, glanced up, asking without hesitation:

"You don't suspect anything out of the way, sir?"

Garth studied him narrowly.

"I want to know why the shot wasn't heard. You were here and Mr.

Taylor's mother-in-law. Who else?"

The bony hand snapped to McDonald's ear again.

"Eh? Eh?"

"Speak up," Garth said impatiently. "Who was in the house besides yourself and Mrs. Taylor's mother?"

"The cook, Clara, sir--only the cook, Clara."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely, sir. Who else should there be? We've been short of servants lately."

Garth dismissed him, instructing him to send Mrs. Taylor's mother. While he waited he stared from the window again, jerking savagely at his watch ribbon. From McDonald he had received a sharp impression of secretiveness. He hadn't cared to arouse the servant's suspicions.

Through strategy he might more surely learn whatever the old man had held back.

Garth swung around with a quick intake of breath. He had heard no one enter. Through the obscurity, accented rather than diminished by the circular patch of light around the chair, he could see no one. Yet almost with a sense of vibration there had reached him through the heavy atmosphere of the old house an a.s.surance that he was watched from the shadows. Impulsively he called out:

"Who's that?"

He stepped to the desk so that he could see the portion of the room beyond the light. It was empty. Garth, as such things go, had no nerves, but through his bewilderment a vague uneasiness crept.

He sprang back, turning. A clear, girlish laugh had rippled through the dusk. A high, girlish voice had challenged him.

"Here I am! Hide and seek with the policeman!"

He saw, half hidden in the folds of the curtain at the side of the embrasure in which he had stood, a figure, indistinct, clothed evidently in black. He took it for granted McDonald had sent the girl, Clara, first.

"I wanted Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law," he said. "No matter. Come here, and let me remind you that humor is out of place in a house of death."

Nevertheless the pleasant laugh rippled again. Slowly the dark figure detached itself from the shadows and settled in the chair while Garth watched, his uneasiness drifting into a blank unbelief. He couldn't accept the girlish laughter, the high, coquettish voice as having come from the grey, witch-like hag whom the light now exposed mercilessly.

"I am Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law," she said laughingly. "Everybody's surprised because I'm so youthful. My daughter's coming home this afternoon. That's why I'm so happy. They wouldn't let me go west with her, but when one's as advanced as I young people don't bother much."

Garth experienced a quick sympathy, yet behind the mental deterioration of extreme old age something useful might lurk.

"You slept in the front part of the house last night," he tried. "You probably heard the shot."

She shook her head. Her sunken mouth twitched in a smile a trifle sly.

"Once I drop off it would take a cannonade to wake me up."

For no apparent reason her youthful and atrocious laugh rippled again.

"Please," Garth said gently. "Mr. Taylor--"

"At my age," she broke in, "you say when a younger person dies: 'Ha, ha!

I stole a march on that one.'"

She arose and with a curious absence of sound moved towards the door.

"I must go now. I am knitting a sweater. It was for my son-in-law. Now that he's put himself out of the way it might fit you."

The door closed behind her slender figure, and Garth tugged at his watch ribbon, wondering. Her actions had been too determined, her last words too studied. They had seemed to hold a threat. Was she as senile as she appeared, or had she tried to throw sand in his eyes?

He rang and sent for the cook Clara, unaware that a new and significant surprise awaited him in this dreary room. The girl, when she came, was young, and, in a coa.r.s.e mold, pretty. When she sat down the light disclosed a tremulousness as p.r.o.nounced as McDonald's. Before Garth could question her she burst out hysterically:

"I am going to leave this house. I was going to leave to-day, anyway."

Garth pitched his voice on a cold, even note.

"For the present you'll stay. Mr. Taylor didn't kill himself. He was murdered."

She covered her face with her hands, shivering.