The Gray Mask/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
THE STAINED ROBE
GARTH had been aware of Nora's slow ascent. As he turned she reached the upper floor and the light from the well caught her face.
"A friend who has just come," Garth explained to Mrs. Taylor. "There is nothing to frighten you. The woman you saw is McDonald's daughter. I had satisfied myself she was in the house. We are pretty near our goal now."
"But why," Nora asked, "should McDonald's daughter cry through the house in this fashion? Why didn't Mrs. Taylor see her face?"
But Garth had started up the stairs. The two women followed, as if each was unwilling to be left alone. Garth snapped on his pocket lamp. The light shone on the only two doors on the attic floor. From behind the first keened once more that ghastly and smothered escape of suffering, scarcely audible. As Garth stepped towards the door Mrs. Taylor cried out again:
"Is it safe?"
"Don't go in there unprepared," Nora warned him.
"I want the woman in that room," Garth muttered. "I've heard her and I know she's there. The case is finished with her arrest."
He took out his revolver, flung open the door, and flashed his light about the interior of the room. He lowered his hand with the revolver. The lamp shook a little. There was no one in the room.
"You heard her, too," he said. "Look here."
The others followed him in. The light played on the usual attic chamber, common to old houses. The plaster was stained and cracked. The single window at the end was boarded over. An iron bed rested against the wall, and the customary conglomeration of old furniture cluttered the floor. But there was no possible hiding place or means of escape except a door in the side wall, and Garth found that locked, and when he had entered the other attic room to which it led he found that empty too except for dust and lumber. Yet, as he searched, that stifled and unearthly moaning reached him again.
Feeling himself caught in the sway of incomprehensible forces that mocked him, he sounded the walls and measured until he was convinced the two rooms could hold no secret place. Meantime the women watched with a deepening fear.
"Just the same, she's in this house," Garth said. "By every rule of logic she's in this attic. But I'll go through every nook and cranny. Nora, you and Mrs. Taylor take the bedrooms. I'll go through the cellar and try the lower floor again."
On his way down he saw the doctor, whom the policeman had brought, bending over McDonald.
"The wound is nothing," the doctor said in answer to his question, "but he's had a slight paralytic stroke from the shock."
"When," Garth asked eagerly, "will he be able to talk?"
"Certainly not for several days," the doctor answered. "I'll carry him to his room and make him as comfortable as possible."
As Garth went on down, helpless and bewildered, he heard again the old woman's jibing laugh. It assumed the quality of a threat as he searched unsuccessfully the cellar and the back part of the house. He met Nora in the library. Mrs. Taylor and she had found no more than Garth. As they talked, Reed's tall figure appeared in the doorway. Garth had supposed the man had gone home immediately after bringing Mrs. Taylor from the station.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
Reed yawned.
"Mrs. Taylor and this young lady woke me up searching through the spare bedroom in which I was resting. They were after a woman in black. That sounds rather silly, doesn't it? I've heard Taylor drool about his pet guest—lady in black, strangled in attic by jealous husband. I see you're surprised to find me still here. I thought it was understood I should stay and be of what help I could to Mrs. Taylor and her mother."
"Then I'm afraid you'll have to stay for some time," Garth answered dryly. "The house is guarded. No one will be permitted to leave until I have found or accounted for McDonald's daughter."
"Clever girl that!" Reed said indifferently. "Never heard her open her mouth."
He took a book from a shelf and seated himself in a comfortable chair by the lamp.
"If I can be of any use you'll find me here or in my room."
"I'm wondering," Garth answered, "if Clara knows anything about McDonald's daughter. For to-night the back part of the house interests me."
At his nod Nora followed him into the hall.
"Apparently Reed knows nothing," Nora said. "But the old woman—"
"I'm thinking about the room where Taylor's body lies," Garth replied. "From the first an attempt seems to have been made to color the case with the supernatural. The wording of Taylor's note, for instance. An illusion is furnished us that it was written after the man's death. That is followed by another illusion that his cold hand wounded McDonald with the knife. And this crying! The complete disappearance of the black figure almost under our eyes! I grant you it's a moldy, unhealthy house, but it can't shelter such miracles. These phases are clearly manifestations of some abnormal criminality. I have to work on physical lines. The black figure proves that the woman is actually hidden here. The knife on Taylor's bed means that the murderer was in the room this evening. McDonald's gesture, instead of accusing, probably tried to tell me that; tried to warn me, perhaps, that the murderer would return again to the body. I didn't tell Reed the truth. I am going to that room about which nearly everything centers. Before the night is over it may tell me what McDonald tried to say. There at any rate my mind should be more receptive to that flash of intuition I need to make some theory fit this mystery. Since the house is clearly dangerous, Nora, I want you to go home."
Her laugh was uncomfortable, but Garth recognized its determined quality.
"I'll see it through, thanks," she said. "I want this sense of suffering destroyed. I want—you don't know how anxious I am—to see the case put on a physical basis. So I'll watch with you."
Since he failed to alter her determination, he sent her upstairs to make sure no one was spying, for he wanted their entrance of the room of death to remain a secret. She beckoned him from the head of the stairs, and he went up, and they entered the black room.
Garth closed the door and snapped his light on. Immediately strange reflections played again over the face of the dead man. Its sneering expression seemed to follow Garth as he moved about, searching in the closets and the bath room, looking behind each piece of furniture. Meantime Nora waited, for the moment stripped of her familiar confidence. She watched the dead man rather than Garth. The knife and the revolver, close to the cold and motionless hand, appeared to fascinate her.
"No one," Garth whispered. "No evidence, beyond the knife, that any one has been here unlawfully."
He removed the cushions from a lounge and arranged them in a window recess. He seated himself with Nora there. He drew the curtains so that they would be thoroughly concealed from any one entering the room. Then he snapped off the light.
The vigil, Garth realized nearly at once, would not be comfortable. Nora's obvious tenseness encouraged him to morbid fancies, to formidable premonitions. The heavy black silence of the decaying house became more oppressive. The near presence of the soulless thing on the bed, which had yielded to him the puzzling note, seemed through the night capable of a malicious and unique activity. Garth, in spite of himself, became expectant of some abnormal and impossible movement in the room. Nora, he knew, listened with him. Once she whispered:
"Haven't you a feeling there is some one here who laughs at us?"
The old woman's atrocious mirth came back to him.
"Hush. It is better even not to whisper."
The minutes loitered. The silence grew thicker, the presence of Taylor's body more oppressive. Then suddenly through the night Garth became finally aware of a movement in the room, and at first it seemed to be in keeping with the supernatural fears Nora had imposed on him.
He aroused himself. He commenced to reason. He had not heard the door open or close, but the intruder must have entered that way. Again his ears caught a sly scraping sound as of one walking stealthily, and the sound was nearer the bed—between the window recess and the bed. Garth thrust his revolver and his lamp through the narrow opening between the curtains and pressed the control. There was no more shuffling. Nora swayed closer. The light revealed all of Garth's doubts. He became efficient again. For, while there was a ghoul-like quality about the picture his lamp had suddenly illuminated, the figure bending over the body was sufficiently human. In this position, however, because of the dressing gown and the slippers, its sex remained undefined, but Garth, remembering his examination of the housekeeper's room, thought he knew. Yet he couldn't understand what the creature was doing. One hand had partly drawn from beneath the mattress what appeared to be a long and wide piece of jet black cloth.
"Game's up!" Garth said. "I've got you. Turn around and let me have a look at your pretty face."
The bent shoulders twitched.
"Come!" Garth said harshly. "You're no ghost. You can't evaporate before our eyes again."
Then with a gesture of repulsion the hand let the piece of black cloth fall. It trailed across the floor, one end still caught beneath the mattress. Slowly the figure turned until a profile cut against the shaft of light. Nora cried out her surprise. Garth sprang erect, covering with his revolver, not McDonald's daughter, but the friend of Taylor and his wife, the man Reed.
The shock of discovery stripped Reed of his control. He glanced once at the dead man, then sank in a chair by the bed.
"Don't send me to the death house," he groaned. "I couldn't stand that. I won't stand that."
"You killed Taylor so you might marry his wife?" Garth shot at him.
The head jerked back and forth.
"Fortunately you did a rotten job with McDonald," Garth said. "Where's his daughter? I don't get that."
Reed shrank farther into the chair.
"I won't answer. You can't make me say any more."
Garth stooped, lifted the black cloth, and drew it clear of the bed beneath the mattress of which it had patently been hidden. As he held it up it fell in folds to the floor, and he saw it had sleeves and was a long garment without shape. But it recalled the black figure that had vanished from the attic. He ran his lamp over the gown. In spite of the coarse, tough material it was torn here and there, and on the right hand sleeve there were blood stains. That was why the gown had been hidden in the easiest place, the first place at hand. That undoubtedly explained Reed's daring intention to get the gown and destroy it before the body should be moved and the evidence discovered. Garth glanced at the man, who still shook, a picture of broken nerves, at the side of the bed. And Garth's hand, holding the tell-tale gown, commenced to tremble too, for it had offered him a solution of everything. He had no time for analysis. Already there were stirrings outside. Their voices and Nora's cry had aroused the others in the house.
"Don't you see it, Nora?" he cried, "and it wasn't intuition. The truth has stared at us from the first, but we wouldn't open our eyes."
"I see nothing," Nora said, "except that his motive was common enough, cheap enough."
"You don't understand," Garth smiled.
He stepped to the hall where he met Mrs. Taylor coming from her room.
"What is it?" she asked.
Garth shrank from telling her the truth.
"I know who murdered your husband," he answered gently.
"Who—"
But the opening of her mother's door interrupted her. The old woman appeared, her eyes wild, her hands shaking.
"What's the matter out here? Helen! What's happened?"
"I want to examine your room a little closer," he said. "I wondered at the start that there was so much furniture in it, and I'll wager there are things hidden beneath the bed and back of that large screen. I know now, too, that it wasn't you who washed your hands this afternoon. I know that you fooled me with a clean towel while the person who had tried to kill McDonald slipped through the communicating door from your bathroom—"
She screamed to stop him. She placed her slender body against the panels of the door. She stretched her arms to either side, forming a barrier he didn't care to pass. She commenced to laugh again, but there were tears in her eyes, and he saw that all along her laughter had been grief. Still without time to analyze, he received from the old lady a perfect corroboration. He whispered to Nora, instructing her to bring the policeman from the front door.
"We may have difficult violence on our hands," he warned her.
Without waiting to argue, Nora ran down the stairs. Mrs. Taylor came closer, asking the question her mother had interrupted.
"Who is it? Why do you speak to my mother like this? Not she—"
"He caught me, Helen," Reed said with dry lips.
She flung up her hands.
"What do you mean? Oh, my God! What do you mean?"
The policeman came briskly up. Nora followed him, her eyes wide and uncertain.
"Everything is accounted for," Garth said to the policeman. "Make your arrest."
Reed stepped forward, offering himself.
"I admire you, Reed," Garth said, "but your devotion can't do any more for her. Mrs. Taylor! I don't want you to get excited. This man must take you—just a form, you know—for the murder of your husband and for the attack on McDonald."
The violent rage Garth had feared flamed in her eyes.
"I did kill him. He kept me locked up for more than two months, because I didn't love him."
She commenced to struggle in the grasp of the policeman. Abruptly she went limp and her efforts ceased. Garth nodded with satisfaction.
"That's better. She's fainted. Carry her to her room. We'll have a doctor right away to go down town with her."
Reed touched his arm timidly. His husky voice was scarcely audible.
"I understand now. Once or twice this afternoon I've wondered, but she told me that Taylor had lied, that she had never been to California, that he had kept her a prisoner here because in his sick, morbid way he was jealous of me. In any case I would have done anything to help her over the next day or two, for you must understand I've loved her very deeply and for a long time—"
Garth turned away, because he didn't care to see the man's tears.
Later the humility of Nora's interest amused Garth. He told her frankly how the pivotal pieces of the puzzle had been within reach long before Reed had tried in Mrs. Taylor's service to recover and destroy the tell-tale black gown.
"Those sedatives in Taylor's bathroom," he said. "The man's perpetual questioning of his doctor about the symptoms and the treatment of insanity, the moans which frightened the other servants without affecting McDonald or his daughter, the old lady's exaggeration of her eccentricities to draw my attention from Mrs. Taylor—any of these clues ought to have reminded us, Nora, of the hundreds of similar cases in New York of fond relatives who, through a mistaken pride, hide and treat in their own homes such cases of mental disorder."
He scarcely needed to outline for her the picture, filled in by the old lady, of that black hour last night in the melancholy house, when Mrs. Taylor had tricked McDonald's daughter—a competent trained nurse—had escaped from the attic sick-room, and had got the revolver. Garth saw that Nora, too, could fancy Taylor's panic and self-reproach as he lay sick and helpless in bed, knowing his wife was free, foreseeing inevitably much the sort of thing that had happened, trying when it was too late to confess his mistake, to warn the authorities that his wife was at large and, possibly, dangerous.
"But she didn't give him time to write enough," Garth said. "She followed too quickly her ruling impulse to punish the man she blamed for her tragic situation. Moreover, the realization of what she had done, as is common in such cases, returned her to approximate sanity, suggested, even without her mother's prompting, Taylor's California blind as a road from her dreadful dilemma. And McDonald's daughter, through her fright and a promise of money, could be persuaded to avoid arousing her father or Clara, to throw on one of Mrs. Taylor's dresses, to hurry with her to Albany. Evidently the girl lost her nerve, for she was to have come back as if nothing had happened. She was to have taken care of Mrs. Taylor. Eventually she was to have placed her in a sanitarium, explaining her breakdown, as well as any present peculiarities, naturally enough through the shock of her husband's suicide. It was McDonald's demands to know what had happened to his daughter that made Mrs. Taylor turn on him finally. If he had been able to speak then I think he would have broken faith with his dead master and told us the truth about her condition."
"Is there any hope for her?" Nora asked.
"I've asked the doctor," Garth answered. "He says that the studied manner in which she threw us off the track when we caught her crying over McDonald, and her failure to lose complete control of herself when she was arrested indicate that her trouble is curable. It seems to have been brought on by her intolerable life in this gloomy house with an invalid whom she didn't love, while her affection for Reed increased hopelessly. Her illness was broken by such periods of apparent sanity as she had last night and to-day. I rather think Reed and she may be happy yet."
Nora smiled wistfully.
"Then," she said slowly, "I almost wish we had kept Taylor's secret better than he did himself."