The Gray Mask/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
THE KNIFE BY THE LIFELESS HAND
HE heard McDonald open and close the front door. Then the widow entered, followed by a young man with an abundance of dark hair curling over a low forehead and shading eyes a trifle too deep set. But at first Garth saw only the widow, and he marveled that one so young and lovely in an etherial sense should have been mated with the elderly invalid upstairs. As he looked it suddenly occurred to him that Reed, since he had lost Taylor as a friend, might crave more than friendship from the widow.
She sank on a divan. Even in the shadows her heavy black hair and the dark grey traveling dress she wore heightened the weary pallor of her face. Had her eyes held tears they would have been easier to meet, for the shock was there, dry and unrelieved.
"It is dreadful to come home this way," she said, "dreadful! I had never dreamed of his doing such a thing."
"It is by no means certain," Garth said gently, "that he killed himself. There is a curious situation in this house. McDonald's daughter, the housekeeper, for instance, has not been seen since a short time before the crime."
Her lips twitched a little. He fancied hope in her eyes.
"If I could only cry!" she said. "At any rate that would be better for his memory, wouldn't it? You suspect this woman?"
"If you are able," Garth said, "I would like you to tell me something about her."
"I have never seen her," she answered. "She came after I went west. McDonald had a good deal of influence over Mr. Taylor, and I never quite trusted him. There's no use. You might as well know the truth about Mr. Taylor and me. You've probably heard. We were never quite happy. He was so much older. We never quite belonged to each other. But that is all. It isn't true all this gossip that I went west for a divorce, and I don't believe he was the man to kill himself. If there has been a crime against him I want the world to know it. I want his memory clean."
Quickly the man Reed touched her shoulder. For the first time since entering the room he spoke. His voice possessed a peculiar, aggressive resonance.
"Helen, you shouldn't take this man's suspicion that he was murdered too seriously."
Garth motioned him to silence.
"At such a time," he said to Mrs. Taylor, "I dislike to bother you, but I'd like to ask one or two questions. Your mother? Her mind?"
He caught a flash of pain across her white face.
"She has always been peculiar," she answered, "but she isn't out of her head, if that's what you mean. I've always thought it's a habit of hers to hide her real thoughts behind apparent absurdities."
"I had wondered about that," Garth said with satisfaction. "One more thing. There has been talk among the servants of spirits, of moans."
She shivered.
"I know nothing about that," she said, "except that the house is unbearable. That is one reason I decided on this long visit, why I shrank from coming home."
"Unbearable?" Garth helped her out.
"Old, moldy, and depressing. My husband, I think, believed in it a little. I've heard him and my mother talk about a figure who sometimes walked. I laughed at that, and I laughed when they heard moans. You see the wind often cries in the narrow space between us and the high wall of the next house. I've never liked it here. It depresses me too much. That's all."
"Thanks," Garth said. "You will want time to accustom yourself. Rest assured I will do everything I can to get the truth."
"You must," she said tensely, "and don't hesitate to disturb me if I can be of any use."
As they went out the resonance of Reed's undertone reached Garth.
"Helen. You are giving this man's suspicion too much weight. He seems to have no evidence."
After the door had closed Garth telephoned the inspector, suggesting that the house be guarded in order that he might have McDonald, Clara, and the old lady at hand.
"I'll give instructions," the throaty rumble of the inspector came back, "to arrest any one who tries to make a getaway."
Garth hurried to the kitchen. The night was nearly complete there, but, as he entered, he caught a swift, silent movement from the servants' stairs. He walked to the entrance.
"I thought so."
The girl Clara shrank from him in the shadows. She wore a hat and cloak. She carried a hand bag.
"If you don't want yourself locked up, charged with murder, take those things off," Garth said. "From this moment the house is watched, and any one attempting to leave will be arrested."
The girl commenced to cry again.
"I am afraid," she sobbed. "Afraid."
Garth turned on the light.
"Take me," he directed her, "to the room occupied by the housekeeper."
Shaken and uncertain, Clara led him to a room at the head of the stairs, which, Garth found, had a second door opening into the upper hall of the front portion of the house. The room displayed a taste seldom found among servants. His examination of it from the first spurred Garth's curiosity. The bed had been occupied last night, but to all appearances for only a brief period, since the blankets and sheets were little disturbed. Some clothing and a pair of shoes lay at one side, and clothing, shoes, and hats were neatly arranged in the closet, but nowhere could he find a dressing gown or a pair of bedroom slippers. Clara, moreover, could not recall having seen the housekeeper wear any hat or clothes other than those in the closet. If McDonald's daughter had fled from the house in slippers and dressing gown it was strange she hadn't been heard of long ago. It became increasingly clear to him that the woman remained hidden in the house. It should be easy enough to find her. He would search every corner for the one whose brain, he was now convinced, held the solution of the mystery. But on the lower floor he found no trace. He paused in the lower hall, intending to ring for McDonald to guide him through the rest of his task.
All at once his hand which he had raised to the bell hesitated. He braced himself against the wall. Through the heavy atmosphere a stifled groan had reached him, followed by a difficult dragging sound. But as he sprang up the stairs he knew he hadn't heard the cause of Clara's fright, for the groan had sufficiently defined itself as having come from a man.
In the upper hall there was no light beyond the glow sifting through the stair well. It was enough to show Garth a dark form huddled at the foot of the stairs leading to the third story. He ran over and stooped.
"McDonald! What's the matter? Are you hurt?"
The silence of the house was heavier, more secretive than before.
At last, in response to Garth's efforts, a whimpering came from McDonald's throat. The heap against the wall struggled impotently to rise. Garth recalled the medicines in Taylor's bath room and started down the hall. The unintelligible whimpering increased. Garth went on, aware that the black, huddled figure crawled after him with the sublime and unreasonable courage of a wounded animal.
He snapped on the light and ran to Taylor's bath room where he poured a stimulant into a glass. As he stepped back to the bedroom he faced Taylor's body on which the light shone with peculiar reflections. They gave to the pallid face the quality of a sneer. But it was only in connection with another radical difference at the bed that that illusion arrested Garth and sent a chill racing along his nerves. For on the counterpane, as near the crooked fingers as the revolver lay, now rested a long and ugly kitchen knife.
With a graver fear the detective glanced at the door of the hall. McDonald had dragged himself that far. He raised his trembling hand, stretching it towards the bed in a gesture, it seemed to Garth, of impossible accusation. Then the crouched figure toppled and fell across the threshold while from somewheres beyond the door a high girlish laugh rippled.
Garth sprang forward and knelt by the old man, reluctant to search for what he expected to find. There it was at the back of the coat, a jagged tear whose edges were stained, showing where the knife had penetrated the shoulder. The wound didn't look deep or dangerous, and in his unconsciousness McDonald breathed regularly. So Garth hurried back to the bed and examined the knife. There was no ambiguity about the red stains on the blade. The knife, resting close to the dead hand, had wounded McDonald who had seemed to accuse the still form whose note projected the impression of having been written after death.
Garth smothered his morbid thoughts. McDonald's daughter was the living force, probably at large in this house, that he wanted to chain. If she were guilty of the earlier crime she had sufficient motive for this attempt to keep the old man silent. She could have got such a knife from the kitchen. So, for that matter, could Clara. But the eccentric had laughed. Was that merely coincidence? Garth ran across the hall and listened at her door with an increasing excitement. He heard the running of water, regularly interrupted, as if by hands being cleansed under an open faucet. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He entered, staring at the daring indifference of the old woman who stepped from the bath room, calmly drying her hands on a towel.
"Come in, policeman," she said in her high girlish voice. "Don't suffer in the black hall."
"Let me have that towel," he cried.
Without hesitation she offered him the piece of linen. It showed no stains, nor were there stains to be found about the wash basin, but the slab of marble in which it was set was damp as if it had just now been carefully cleansed. She watched, her wrinkled face set in an expression of contempt.
"What are you up to? Think if I wanted to do anything wrong I'd let you find me out?"
"Then you know," he said, "what happened out there in the hall. I heard you laugh."
She started. Her voice was lower. At last it was as old as herself.
"Things always happen out there. It is crowded with the people who have lived in this house before us—unhappy and angry people. Often I have seen and heard the black thing out there. I would never laugh at her."
Again the doubt of her senility attacked him.
"You can't impress me with that," he said harshly. "I am talking about McDonald. He was stabbed out there a few minutes ago."
She laughed foolishly.
"Horrid old man! But why should I want to see him stabbed?"
He watched her closely.
"I saw you strike him. You didn't have enough strength to send the blow home."
The assurance of her voice increased his doubt. Whatever her mental state she was at least purposeful.
"You need glasses, policeman. Don't neglect your eyes. You have only one pair."
He felt himself against a blank wall, and there was McDonald to think of. He asked one more question.
"When did you last see McDonald's daughter?"
"Maybe at dinner last night," she said. "Nice girl, in spite of her father. I must go back to my knitting, policeman."
Garth left her, hurrying down stairs to the front door. He called the policeman from the shadows of the portico, instructing him to go to the large apartment house on the corner where he would almost certainly find a physician.
As he gave his directions he saw Nora's slender figure cross the street and come up the steps, and, as he looked at the pretty Latin face, expressive of an exceptional intelligence, his morose and puzzled mind brightened. He was surprised to see her now, and a little worried, for a grave menace existed for every one in this house. Moreover, the case mystified him to the point where he felt he must find the solution himself. He didn't care to place himself again under obligations to her. Rather he was ambitious to impress her, perhaps to the removal of her reserve.
"Father's told me about the case," she said. "I couldn't keep away, because you're so hard-headed, Jim."
Smiling whimsically, she glanced at his frayed watch ribbon.
"I see you haven't found the answer yet. Tell me everything you have learned while you have been torturing that poor ribbon."
"Ghosts or not, Nora," he answered, "the house isn't healthy, and I'd rather you didn't stay."
She laughed and walked in. Shrugging his shoulders, he followed her, closed the door, and told her what had happened since he had telephoned the inspector. Her face, he noticed, had grown pale, and a troubled look had entered her eyes. She shivered.
"What an uncomfortable place! I can guess what Clara meant. Don't you get an impression of great suffering, Jim?"
He was familiar with her superstitious sensibility which at times seemed nearly psychic. It irritated him that to his own matter-of-fact mind the house had from the first conveyed a sense of unhealth. As he started to laugh at her, Nora with a quick movement shrank against the wall.
"What's that?" she whispered.
Garth strained forward, listening, too. He had heard what Clara had described, a crying, smothered and scarcely audible, and he knew what the girl had meant when she had spoken of a voice from the grave—a dead voice.
Across the moaning cut a shrill feminine scream.
"Stay here," Garth called to Nora as he started up the stairs.
He heard her voice, like an echo behind him, as full of misgivings as Clara's had been.
"I am afraid."
At the foot of the attic stairs he saw the white figure of Mrs. Taylor, staring upward, trembling, hysterical, a violent fear in her eyes.
You heard it, too," she breathed. "It wasn't the wind."
With a shuddering gesture she indicated McDonald's still form.
"He isn't dead," Garth said.
While she relaxed a little the fear in her eyes didn't diminish.
"I—I heard her moan," she said. "I opened my door, and there she was—a black thing—bending over him like—like a vampire. I couldn't seem to see her face. She ran up these stairs, and I could see through the banisters that she went in the big attic room—the room they always talked about where the woman—"
She broke off, screaming sharply again.
"Look out! Back of you! There's something black creeping up the stairs—"