Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/231

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THE VEILED WOMAN
221

intended masquerade. Don't you see? He had to tell them that. We caught him, and he scratched himself to throw us off the track with the details of another case like Brown's. Now I heard him tell everything—just what I was to do, and that Alsop and the others were in the library. I ran downstairs, but when I reached the lower hall I saw him coming after me. So I said I had changed my mind, that I was afraid, that I wanted only to leave the house. I went to the kitchen and slipped out, intending to get to you, Jim, with my information. But I knew these men were in the grounds, and I had to go carefully. When I crept up to the library window I thought I saw you. Then the telephone bell rang, and I couldn't make you hear."

"Of course," Garth said, "Marvin, coming down, had seen that the library door was open, and that there was no longer a light there. It was too late to use the dictaphone again, but he knew he must change his instructions and tell them not to waste the bomb in the library. So he threw on his disguise and rushed to the west door as he had originally planned, in too much of a hurry to dream such a mistake could happen. I suppose he got past while I was at the window."

"Marvin," the inspector mused, "was just the man for them. Probably full of wild-eyed ideas, and feeling a divine call to help smash Alsop. I hold no brief for that millionaire. I understand he had to work, like most everybody else, for what he's got, and maybe that's the reason he can't under-