The Mask Part 47

His quick ear caught the sound of approaching footsteps in the outside hall. Almost at the same instant there was a loud knocking at the door.

Keralio fell back, his face white and tense. Had his plans failed at the eleventh hour, could anyone have played him false? If the game was up, they should never take him alive. Leaving Helen, he drew a revolver, and, going quickly into the inner hall, he waited in grim silence for the visitors to force an entrance.

"Open the door, or we'll break it in!" shouted a stern voice outside.

"There's no use resisting. The place is surrounded."

Still no answer. Keralio stood grimly in the shadow of the parlor doorway, revolver in hand, while Helen cowered in the inner room, in momentary expectation of a tragedy.

Crash! The front door fell in, shattered into a thousand splinters, and through the breach thus made rushed Wilbur Steell, d.i.c.k Reynolds, and half a score husky Central Office detectives, revolvers in hand.

"There is he!" cried the lawyer, pointing to Keralio.

Quick as a flash, the Italian raised the revolver and fired, the bullet entering the plastered wall an inch away from the lawyer's head.

Almost simultaneously, another pistol shot rang out, but this time the aim was truer, for, with a cry of baffled rage, Keralio threw his arms above his head and fell to the floor dead. Quickly, one of the detectives stooped down and compared his face with a photograph he had taken from his pocket.

"Yes----" he exclaimed; "that's the fellow--well known counterfeiter.

Did time in San Quentin and Joliet. Known as Baron Rapp, Richard Barton and a dozen other aliases. He's one of the slickest rogues in the country. We've got the valet safe downstairs. I guess he'll get twenty years."

But Steell had not waited to hear about Keralio. There were others more important to think about. Rushing into the inner room, he found Helen prostrate, half fainting from fright.

"Thank G.o.d, I'm in time!" he exclaimed.

"Dorothy," she murmured weakly. "Save Dorothy! She's somewhere here."

Going into another room, the lawyer found the little girl fast asleep on a bed. Bringing her to her mother, he said tenderly:

"Here's your treasure. Now you can be happy."

She shook her head. The nightmare of what Keralio had told her, still obsessed her.

"No--" she shuddered; "--never again. They have killed him!"

To her surprise, the lawyer, instead of sharing her sorrow, actually smiled.

"Helen," he said; "I have a great surprise for you. A friend has accompanied me here. He called at your house to-day, but you had just left, so he called on me. You have not seen him since he sailed away three months ago on the _Mauretania_."

She listened bewildered. Her color came and went. What did he mean?

Could it be possible that--no, had not Keralio said he was dead?

Trembling with suppressed emotion, she whispered:

"Tell me--what is it--tell me----"

For all reply, the lawyer went to the door and beckoned to someone who had waited in the outer hall. A moment later a man entered, a tall, well set figure that was strangely familiar. Straining her eyes through her tears, it seemed to her that her mind must be playing her some trick, for there before her, stood Kenneth, not the impostor her instinct had warned her to detest and avoid, but the real Kenneth she had loved, the father of her child. With a joyous exclamation, she tottered forward.

"Kenneth!" she cried.

The man, his athletic form broken by sobs, opened his arms.

"My own precious darling!"

A moment later they were clasped in each other's arms. Ah, now she knew that he had come home! This, indeed, was the husband she loved.

There was no deception this time. Wonderingly, she turned to Steell.

"How did it happen?" she asked wonderingly.

"We'll tell you later--not now," he replied.

She shuddered as she asked in a low voice.

"But where is his brother?"

"Dead! He shot himself at the club. Kenneth and I went to confront him at the club before coming here. It was his only way out."

The detective stepped forward. Addressing the lawyer and holding out two enormous diamonds that sparkled like fire in the sunlight, he said:

"We've just found these, together with a lot of counterfeit money."

The lawyer laughed as he took charge of the diamonds.

"It'll please Mr. Parker to see these. Come, d.i.c.k. Our work is done."

Kenneth put his arms around his wife.

"Safe in port at last, dear."

"You'll never go away again," she murmured through her tears.