The Gray Mask/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
PAYMENT IS DEMANDED FOR THE GRAY MASK
THE approach of the moment when she must testify against Slim and George; must tell in public the details of that tragedy which had played such havoc with her, drove Nora into a morbid humor which neither Garth nor the inspector could alter. She followed Garth on the stand. She was dressed in black. The appeal of her personality was irresistible. It was clear that if the two criminals had ever had a chance Nora would destroy it.
Slim and George sat by their counsel. George could not quite hide the animal character of his face, but he had managed to soften it somewhat. Evidently he endeavoured to impress the jurors with the idea that he was a good-natured fellow who had been involved in the case through some curious mischance. At Nora's appearance, Garth noticed, there came into his eyes a survival of the passion he had so recklessly declared in the steel-lined room.
Slim, on the other hand, let slip nothing of the criminal. His quiet clothing gave him an air almost clerical. His sharp features expressed a polite interest. He could not, a casual spectator would have said, be capable of the evil with which he was charged.
Garth watched the men perpetually. He saw the hatred slip through while he quietly told the story that would condemn them to death. During Nora's recital, too, both men exposed something of their powerful desire for revenge against these two who quietly droned away their lives.
Garth took Nora from the courtroom well aware that, given the opportunity, Slim and George would not let them move a foot without exacting full payment.
Garth respected Nora's mood. He put her in a cab and sent her home, then wandered restlessly about the down town streets.
Perhaps Nora's attitude was partly responsible for his feeling of oppression, of imminence. Nothing could happen, he told himself again. Slim and George would start for the death house to-morrow. They would have no chance. If they delegated such work to their subordinates still at large, Garth fancied that he could take care of himself and Nora, too. It was the exceptional cunning of Slim and George that he shrank from, had feared ever since the night Nora and he had trapped them.
Angry with himself he went to headquarters. The inspector admitted that he, too, would breathe easier when the two were in the chair.
The next day Garth managed to dismiss his premonition. He chatted with two or three detectives in the outside office. The inspector sent for him. The moment he answered the summons he knew something disastrous had occurred. He felt that the exceptional, almost with the effect of a physical violence, had entered the room ahead of him.
The inspector held the telephone. The receiver was at his ear. His huge figure projected to Garth an uncontrolled fear. His voice, customarily rumbling and authoritative, was no more than a groping whisper.
"Why the devil doesn't Nora answer? Do you know, Garth, that Slim and George are loose on the town?"
Garth started back. He would have responded just so to a blow in the face.
"They are on their way to the death house," he countered.
"You mean they were," the inspector said, "condemned by your testimony and Nora's."
His voice rose and thickened.
"I've just got the word. An explosion was planted in front of their van on the way to the Grand Central. There was a crowd of rats from the slums. Those birds were torn from the sheriff's men, and their bracelets knocked off. They were spirited away. But don't you suppose Slim and George would gamble I'll never let them out of this town? Every exit's barred now. They know their liberty's only good to pay old debts. What'll they do at the start?"
Garth braced himself against the desk.
"They'll go for Nora first. Then they'll get me. I've been afraid of it all along."
"I'm trying to warn her," the inspector raged. "She doesn't answer."
He shouted into the transmitter:
"Are you all dead out there? Get me that number, or by heaven—"
While the inspector stormed to be put in communication with his daughter Garth tried to plan. Could he devise any useful defence against Slim's imagination, abnormally clever and inscrutable; or against such naked brutality as George's? And the malevolence of these two would be all the more certain in its action since no fear of punishment would restrain it. The murder, or worse, of Garth and Nora, which undoubtedly they intended, could earn for them only the death penalty to which they were already condemned.
"You've got to get Nora," Garth urged the inspector. "The servant at least should be there."
"Her afternoon out, and Nora said she would be home."
"Then," Garth cried, "they made for her like a shot."
He turned and strode to the door.
"Where are you going, Jim?"
"Keep after that number," Garth called back. "If you get Nora tell her I'm on the way, and to sit tight."
The inspector tried to stop him.
"You're out of your head. Your only chance is to keep under cover. They'll give you a bullet in the back."
"Somebody's got to look after Nora," Garth called, and caught up his coat and hat, and ran from the building.
He threaded a course through the homeward bound crowds, experiencing the sensations of a truant from an impending and destructive retribution, his eyes alert for a sudden movement, his ears constantly prepared for the sharp crack of a revolver.
As he ran he recalled that evening last summer when he had sidetracked Simmons and had taken his place behind a replica of the gray mask. He could see Nora in her cheap finery, and George, he remembered with a sense of sheer terror, had loved Nora in his way; had, in fact, through his brutal and amorous eagerness, delivered himself into her hands. He threw aside all caution. He ran faster. Somehow, no matter what the cost, he had to keep Nora out of the grasp of those men.
He reached the flat, breathless and wondering that he had not been disturbed. No one answered his ring. He questioned the hall-boy. The inspector's daughter had left fifteen minutes ago. She had said headquarters had telephoned her to go to her father without delay. The situation was clear. Garth grasped the hall-boy's arm.
"Didn't you follow her to the door? Didn't you see where she went?"
The boy shook his head, clearly alarmed before such vehemence.
"Then you must have heard. Did you hear anything?"
The boy tried to free his arm. He whimpered.
"No. Unless—maybe somebody screamed, but there are so many children in the street, playin' and hollerin'—"
Garth let him go and ran to the sidewalk. A man stood there. In spite of the sharp cold he wore no coat. Garth recognized him for a tailor who worked in a nearby shop. The tailor's excitement made him nearly incoherent, but Garth drew from him a description of Slim and George. As the inspector's daughter had stepped to the sidewalk, he said, the men had sprung upon her, stifled her one scream, and driven her off in an automobile.
"I saw it from my shop," he spluttered. "I've been telephoning the inspector. I just got him, because his wire was busy."
"Which direction did they take?"
The tailor pointed south. Garth hurried to the curb, stooped, and found fresh tire marks. He was aware of his helplessness unless Nora's ingenuity had hit upon some trick for his guidance. He searched with a greedy hope. While his eyes roved about the frozen dust of the gutter he acknowledged that the inspector had appraised his men justly. Slim and George wouldn't even try to leave the city until the hue and cry had somewhat abated. Into the windings of the underworld they had carried Nora, and Garth knew how devious those windings were—what silent and invisible machinery would nourish and secrete and protect.
He lifted a tiny tuft of fur which had nestled, almost hidden, in the dust of the gutter. He examined it closely. It's colour and texture were reminiscent of the muff he had frequently seen Nora carry. It might be a souvenir of her struggle, or else—
He arose and walked down the street, searching every inch of the pavement. At the corner his breath quickened, for he knew the piece of fur had not rested in the gutter by accident. Two others were there, trampled, but suggestive of the direction taken by the automobile. He could picture Nora surreptitiously tearing the bits from her muff and dropping them from the window of the car.
He hastened on. As soon as he was confident the pieces constituted an intelligible trail he conquered his impatience long enough to enter a drug store and telephone his discovery to the inspector.
"I'm going on," he explained. "The Lord knows what I'll find, so get after me right away."
The voice that reached him could not conceal its suspense.
"Go fast, Garth, and I'll follow with every man I can raise. Pull Nora out of this and ask me for my badge."
Garth went on, following the trail into the dark and intricate thoroughfares of the lower east side, knowing that each moment his pursuit might be abruptly and fatally ended by a flash of light from the obscurity ahead.
He emerged into a waterfront street which was nearly deserted at this hour. One or two street lamps of an antiquated pattern flickered ineffectually. The only sign of habitation was a glow, wan and unhealthy, which escaped from the broad windows of a saloon on the corner.
Garth knew the reputation of that dive, and its long resistance to a final closing of its shutters. More than once the yellow sawdust of its floor had reddened, while men had fought towards its doors through a whirling, pungent fog of powder smoke. He remembered, too, that it was suspected of harboring the explanation of stealthier and more revolting crimes, the responsibility for which, however, had never been legally determined. He was glad when the automobile tracks swung beyond it, but they turned in at the next building, a warehouse with a crumbling, picturesque façade. He saw beneath the edge of a double cellar door a larger piece of fur, mute testimony that the place had recently been opened, that the condemned men had carried Nora to its abandoned vaults; but if Slim and George had trusted themselves there, the cellar obviously furnished other exits, perhaps underground to the river, almost certainly through the evil saloon next door. That, indeed, might offer him the chance he must have to come upon his men unexpectedly, from the rear.
He glanced around. There was no policeman in sight. He saw only half a dozen pedestrians—shambling creatures who appeared to seek the plentiful darkness. The neighboring warehouses, the pier opposite, frowned back at him. The lapping of the water was expectant. Yet high in the air two brilliant arches were suspended across a slight mist. They were restless with blurred movement. Constantly they lowered into this somber pit an incessant murmuring, like an echo, heard at a distance, from some complicated and turbulent industry.
These crowded bridges, his desolate surroundings, assumed a phantasmal quality for Garth. The only real world lay beyond those sloping, silent doors which had been swung back to admit Nora.
While he looked a figure detached itself from the shadows at the corner of the warehouse. It moved, lurching, in his direction. He could only see that the newcomer was in rags with unkempt hair, and features, sunken and haggard. He grasped his revolver, suspecting that this vagabond exterior disguised a member of the gang—an outpost. Yet there was a chance that the man was one of the neighborhood's multitude of derelicts—a purveyor, possibly, of valuable information.
"Come here, my friend," he called. "How long have you been loafing in that corner?"
The other hesitated. When he answered his voice was without resonance—scarcely more than an exaggerated whisper.
"Who the devil are you?"
Garth held out some money. The claw-like hand extended itself, closing over the coins. In quick succession the man rang three of the pieces on the pavement. Garth's watchfulness increased. Such routine suggested a signal, but the fellow picked up his money, grinning.
"Seems good," he said in his difficult voice. "If you want to know that bad, maybe an hour; maybe more. Napping. Nothing better to do, but I'm honest, and I'd work if I got the chance."
"An automobile drove up here," Garth said rapidly.
"Why so it did. I seen it with these very peepers—not a quarter of an hour back."
"How many got out of it? What did they do?"
"I seen two men and a woman," the other answered. "They lifted that cellar door and went down. Now I wondered why they did that."
"Did the woman make a fight?"
The other shook his head.
"Went like it was a candy store."
Cutting across his throaty accents, a feminine cry shrilled. The heavy doors could not muffle its terror. It seemed like a response to the ringing of the coins. Suddenly it was hushed. Garth shoved the man to one side, urged by a temper that no longer permitted calculation. At any risk he must get to Nora and to those who were responsible for that unrestrained appeal.
Beyond the doors of the saloon he faced the proprietor across unoccupied tables. He remembered the round, livid face beneath its crown of reddish hair. He had seen it more than once, sullen and unashamed, behind the bars at headquarters. He had often watched its wrinkles smooth into a bland hypocrisy before the frown of a magistrate. The man's past history made a connection between him and Slim's party nearly inevitable. But Garth had no choice. The proprietor, at his entrance, had braced his elbows against the bar.
"I ain't done a thing, Mr. Garth. I call God to witness there ain't anything to bring a bull here except near beer and tobaccy."
"We'll see, Papa Marlowe," Garth said evenly. "I'm going into the cellar of the warehouse next door. Dollars to dimes there's a way through your place. Will you give up the combination quietly?"
Marlowe's misgivings resolved into a smile. Instead of protestations he offered only an oily surprise.
"Now who told you there was a door through my cellar?"
"Never mind," Garth snapped. "I'll take all the chances and use it, but at a sound from you— You understand? Come ahead then."
Marlowe slouched down the stairs, muttering apologetically:
"Blest if I know what you want there. Old hole's been closed six years. That was a growler door for the warehousemen. Hold up, Mr. Garth, and I'll strike a match."
Garth ordered him ahead while he pressed the control of his pocket lamp. They continued between grim walls, splashed with mold, beaded with moisture, offering the appearance and the odor of a neglected tomb. They paused before an oak door.
"Don't open," Garth whispered. "Let me get my fingers on the latch."
"Maybe it's locked on the other side," Marlowe whispered back.
But when Garth tried the latch noiselessly he found that the door would open.
"I don't trust you, Papa," he said, "but if you want to make yourself solid at headquarters find a policeman and tell him what I'm up against."
The round, white face leered.
"The cops and I seem hand and glove these days. What are you up against, Mr. Garth? What you want in that empty cellar?"
Garth waved him away; watched him retreat towards the stairs, squinting his beady eyes, mouthing unintelligibly.
The detective snapped off his light, aware that he faced the critical moment. He opened the door and stepped into the black pall of the warehouse cellar. His memory reinforced him. Other members of the bureau had taken equal risks, had followed into such places criminals as desperate as the ones who held Nora. Moreover, they had lacked the impulse of a vigorous personal motive. They had answered only to the stimulation of duty. Not frequently they had emerged successful, unharmed.
He held his revolver ready. He moved to one side and paused. For some moments the silence was broken only by the drumming of his pulse in his ears. He realized it was not unlikely that the cellar was empty save for himself. The men might have led Nora into it as a trick to confuse the police. Nora's cry might have marked their departure by some ingeniously contrived exit. As his own immediate danger appeared to diminish his disappointment and anxiety increased. He had been prepared to risk everything for Nora. As if it had actually been prolonged to this moment, her cry still vibrated in his brain. Inaction was no longer bearable. He must assure himself that the cellar was, indeed, empty. He must find that exit and continue his pursuit. He stepped forward.
Light flashed, and from the sudden, sparkling confusion a remembered laugh jeered at him.