The Gray Mask Part 43

"I didn't kill him. I didn't--"

"But," Garth snapped, "you know who did."

She shook her head with stubborn vehemence.

"I don't know anything," she answered, "except that I must leave this house."

"Why? Because you think the old lady's crazy, and she frightens you? I want to know about that."

As Clara lowered her hands the increased fear, rather than the tears in her eyes, held Garth. She shook her head again.

"I've only been here a week. I haven't seen much of her. She's only been to meals once or twice, and then she's scarcely said a word."

She glanced about the room with its small paned windows, its deep embrasures, its shallow ceiling.

"It isn't that," she whispered. "It's because the house is full of queer things. The servants all felt it. They talked about spirits and left.

Five have come and gone in the week I've been here. But I've never been superst.i.tious, and I didn't hear anything until last night."

Garth stirred.

"What did you hear? When was it?"

"About midnight," she answered tensely. "I had had company in the kitchen until then, so I was alone downstairs. McDonald had told me before he went to bed to make sure the last thing that the library fire was all right. I had looked at it and had put the fender up and was just leaving the room when I heard this sound--like moans, sir. I--I've never heard such suffering."

She shuddered.

"It was like a voice from the grave--like somebody trying to get out of the grave."

"But you heard no shot?"

"No, sir."

Garth spoke tolerantly.

"These sounds must have come from up stairs. You've forgotten that Mr.

Taylor was an invalid."

She cried out angrily.

"It wasn't like a man's or a woman's voice, and I can't tell where it came from. I tell you it was like a--a dead voice."

"You failed to trace it, of course," Garth said. "Describe to me what you did."

"I ran to the kitchen," she answered, "but, as I told you, there was no one there. McDonald had gone to bed, and so had his daughter."

Garth stooped swiftly forward and grasped her arm.

"What's that you're saying? His daughter! You mean to tell me McDonald has a daughter, and she was in the house last night?"

She shrank from his excited gesture.

"Yes. He asked me not to tell you, but I'm frightened. I don't want to get in trouble. She's the housekeeper. She engages all the servants and runs the house."

"Then where is she now?"

"She must have gone out early this morning, sir, for I haven't seen her all day. I wanted to be fair. I've only been waiting for her to come back so I could tell her I was leaving."

"Send McDonald back to me," Garth said, "unless he's left the house, too."

The butler had deliberately lied to shield his daughter, and had asked secrecy of this girl. And all this talk of spirits and of cries! It was turning out an interesting case after all--possibly an abnormal one.

Moreover, he was getting somewheres with it.

McDonald slipped in. He was more agitated than before. His face was distorted. His tongue moistened his lips thirstily. Against his will Garth applied the method he knew would bring the quickest result with such a man. He grasped the stooped shoulders. He shouted:

"Why did you lie when I asked you who was in the house at the time of the murder?"

"Eh? Eh?" the old man quavered.

"You're not as deaf as that. Where's your daughter now?"

"My ears!" the old servant whined. "I can't hear, sir."

"All right," Garth shouted. "If you want to go to the lockup and your daughter too, stay as deaf as you please."

He wasn't prepared for the revolting success that came to him. McDonald clutched at one of the window curtains and hid his twitching face in its folds, while sobs, difficult and sickening, tore from his throat, shaking his bent shoulders.

"G.o.d knows! I haven't seen her since I went to bed last night. I thought she'd gone out."

He glanced up, his face grimacing.

"Don't you think she did it. Don't you think--"

"First of all," Garth said, "I want her picture."

"I haven't any," McDonald cried.

But Garth hadn't missed the man's instinctive gesture towards his watch pocket. Then, whether he actually knew anything or not, he suspected his daughter and sought to protect her. Against his protests Garth took the watch and, as he had foreseen, found a photograph in the case. The picture was not of a young woman, but the face was still attractive in an uncompromising fashion. It was this hardness, this determination about the picture that made Garth decide that the original, under sufficient provocation, would be capable of killing.

"For her sake and yours, McDonald," Garth said, "answer one thing truthfully. Did she fancy herself any more than a superior servant? Had she formed for Mr. Taylor any silly attachment?"

McDonald's reply was quick and a.s.sured.

"To Mr. Taylor she was only a trusted servant, sir, and she knew her place."

The whirring of a motor suggested that an automobile had drawn up before the house. Garth slipped the photograph in his pocket.

"If that is Mrs. Taylor arriving," he said with an uncomfortable desire to shirk the next few minutes, "the news of her husband's death might come easier from you."

"I telephoned Mr. Reed," McDonald said. "He's an old friend of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor's. I told him about the telegram, and he's probably met her and brought her home."