The Gray Mask Part 51

"Look out!" George warned. "You'll get burnt."

"You see, George won't stand for that," Slim said slily.

"No, no, Slim!" Nora whispered. "I'll bargain."

"You're in a swell position to bargain," George scoffed.

The handcuffs cut into Garth's wrists.

"You don't think," he muttered, "that I was fool enough to follow that trail without covering myself?"

"That doesn't affect me," Slim grinned. "There's a getaway from this place no cop will ever find. Now, Nora! Hands off!"

But she resisted him.

"Slim," she said breathlessly. "You're not a fool. You must know that I can bargain. Suppose you got clear--across the border--into Canada?

Couldn't you keep out of trouble once you were there?"

Slim ceased pulling at her hands. He stared at her, amazed, casting aside his last pretence.

"What you talking about, Nora? I know you're clever, but there aren't any more miracles. There's no way out of this town for us."

Her voice was barely audible.

"Unless my father unlocked the gates."

Slim started. Garth, too, answered to a desire almost violent. Surely Slim would realize the hopelessness of securing the inspector's complicity, or, failing that, would seek, as Garth did, for the stratagem behind her plan. Slim, nevertheless, continued to study her, and the narrow face no longer hid his greed for life.

"There's no way under heaven to get the old man to stand for that."

She took her hands from the bottle. Her eyes did not waver.

"No one else could do it, but you know how he loves me. I could make him do it as the price for myself and Jim."

Slim laughed shortly.

"One thing's certain," he mused. "If you did get away with it, I could keep you and the inspector straight. I'd take Garth, bound tight, some guns, and the acid along as gilt-edge securities. Hadn't thought of that, eh? Expected to trip me, didn't you? Well, Nora, you have let yourself in for a d.i.c.ker, and, by gad I'm inclined to think it over, because I've got you this far: the minute you played queer Garth would go blind and burnt."

Nora conquered her disappointment.

"You'd swear to let Jim go at the border?"

"On my oath I'd let him go clean."

"Not for a million," George broke in angrily. "She gets herself away, then she throws Garth down to see us roast in the chair. You ought to know the skirt. She'd double cross the devil himself."

Garth waited for Slim's answer, his gaze controlled again by the acid.

"George," Slim said slowly, "any chance is worth playing now, for we're as good as in the chair already. And I don't believe she'd throw Garth down. You know what she went through with for the sake of a dead lover."

"You've got to show me," George sneered, "that she's forgotten the dead one to take on Garth."

"We heard in the Tombs," Slim said drily, "that these pigeons wanted to roost on the same stool."

With a growing wonder Garth watched Nora fling aside her reserve. She turned on George, raising her hands in an att.i.tude of fury, as if inspired by a pa.s.sion beyond her control.

"And that's true. If you think I'd let him take that acid give the bottle to me, and I'll use it on myself instead."

She knelt at Garth's side, and for a moment the light in her eyes, her unrestraint, more than the result of her appeal, held him tense.

"Tell them, Jim," she cried. "If they made you that way I swear I'd kill myself."

She glanced up, tears in her eyes.

"I love him so much, Slim, that to save him I'd see my father dead."

A subdued murmur of voices sifted through from the street. They could hear the stealthy straining of hands at the cellar doors. Nora arose, and, hiding her face, stood trembling.

"The bulls!" George whispered. "Throw the stuff and let's make our getaway."

Slim shook his head.

"I tell you it's a chance. All of you vamoose except George. We'll wait and see, and maybe we won't need you after this. Remember, Nora, there'll always be time for us to wash Garth's face and show our heels."

"Oh, I know it," she breathed. "I know it."

The lights snapped out. Garth was aware of clandestine stirrings. Then the silence of the cellar was broken only by the fumbling at the door.

"I'll let you go, Nora," Slim whispered. "Send the other cops back. If they try to rush us, by G.o.d we'll do the trick on Garth and kill who we can besides, the inspector first of all. So play straight."

Garth heard her retreating footsteps. After all he had accomplished his chief purpose. Through him Nora had found escape.

He heard a sharp splintering of wood, and a wan light, not much stronger than the glow of the city through the mist, diffused itself in the cellar. The inspector's breathless voice reached them.

"Nora! Garth!"

Garth saw Nora's shadowy figure advance into the well of the door. He heard her stifle her father's relief and tell him to order his men beyond ear-shot. Her voice murmured. Garth guessed that it recited his abhorrent danger and the terms on which she had agreed to buy his release.

He strained his ears, understanding fully what depended on the answer, yet convinced that reasonably it could only be a refusal. In a way Nora had placed the responsibility for whatever might happen to him on the inspector's shoulders, but the alternative was too distinct. As the price for his connivance the inspector must throw his position and his reputation to the winds, perhaps, face a trial, more than likely to jail sentence. It was conceivable that his love for Nora would dictate even that sacrifice, but she would have to force on him an illusion of a pa.s.sion as unaccounting as that which had convinced Slim. Could she act to that extent with her father? In spite of his logical interpretation of it, Garth responded to the memory of her agitation. Had she, in fact, been acting in the cellar? Had his peril finally shown her heart the truth? The two most compelling issues of his own life, as well as the inspector's career, depended on the reply, and he could hear nothing. Nora and her father must have moved to one side, for their voices entered the cellar in barely audible murmurs. Slim had handed the bottle to George, and he moved now into the door well where he could listen.

Garth's nerves tightened. Always George held the acid close to the detective's bound and helpless body. Of course the inspector couldn't do it.

Slim came slinking back. His whisper warmed the cold, damp air.

"I couldn't catch it all, but she's getting away with something."

The murmuring ceased, and through the wan light Nora glided, wraith-like, into the doorway, and called to them softly across the cellar: