Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/223

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THE VEILED WOMAN
213

"It was only a glancing blow," he said. "He'll come around."

Marvin, indeed, before long stirred, and tried to struggle to a sitting posture as Brown had done. He cried out, as Brown had cried:

"The veiled woman!"

"You see," Nora breathed.

Garth lifted the secretary to the bed, but when, to an extent, the man had recovered consciousness he had nothing reasonable to tell.

He had started, he said, up the stairs, thinking Garth at his heels. He had been about to press the switch.

"I knew she was there," he sobbed. "I saw her—all white, and with a veil over her face. Then I don't know. I don't remember being struck. Everything went black."

Garth with a gesture of determination turned and commenced examining the room. Nora, crouched against the wall, watched him with the assurance of one who sees an evil prophecy fulfilled. After a quarter of an hour he gave it up. There was no one concealed in the room. Nor, he would have sworn, was there any reasonable hiding place. From behind the screen where the veiled woman had evidently disappeared twice there was no possible escape.

"Before long, Marvin," he muttered, "I'll be as bad as you and old Alsop. If you believe in ghosts, Nora, this certainly looks like one."

He glanced at his watch.