CHAPTER XVIII.
Unmasked.
Betty sprang to her feet and in a swift inspiration born of her extremity, tottered toward Welch with outstretched arms.
"Help!" she shrieked, her clear ringing voice echoing through the silent house. "Burglars! Thieves! Help!"
Muffled screams answered her from above and lights began to waver down the stairway. Welch seized the girl roughly by the shoulder.
"What's the game!" His thick tones rumbled in her ear, and he pointed with a shaking hand. "Is that your work?"
"They've killed him!" she cried, wrenching herself from his grasp. "I heard a struggle and came down and found him—oh; Mrs. Atterbury! Mrs. Atterbury!"
A fresh chorus of shrieks told of the finding of Caroline and mingling with them sounded a deeper masculine note. Who could it be? The only male members of the household were there before her.
"Betty, where are you? What has happened?" Mrs. Atterbury rushed down the stairs with Madame Cimmino clinging to her gown and behind them appeared two pajama-clad forms which the girl did not at first recognize.
Someone turned the wall-switch, flooding the room with light and Welch lurched dazedly to Wolvert's recumbent figure, toppling down to his knees beside him.
Although every nerve in her body recoiled from the contact, Betty nevertheless precipitated herself upon her employer's unresponsive form, sobbing as if in genuine hysteria. Mrs. Atterbury, after one swift comprehensive glance about the wrecked room stood as if turned to stone, her eyes fixed immovably upon the yawning safe, a bluish tinge slowly overspreading her waxen pallor.
Madame Cimmino, however, passed her like a white flame and cast herself shrieking upon Wolvert's unconscious breast. One of the pajamaed figures halted aghast in the doorway, but the other stepped forward and with an added shock Betty recognized Doctor Bayard's venerable head even before his commanding tones dominated the tumult.
"What does this mean? Who first discovered this affair? Welch! Young woman!"
"I found her here!" Welch pointed an accusing finger at Betty but his head lolled drunkenly upon his short bull neck. "She was kneelin' beside him. He ain't dead, only put to sleep. Ask her how it happened!"
"We're sold out!" A high-pitched male voice squeaked like that of a cornered rat from the doorway and Ide's glassy eyes fastened venomously on the girl. She became conscious, too, that Madame Cimmino's cries were stilled, the tumult had subsided and she herself was the cynosure of all eyes.
Straightening, her hands fell to her sides and she stepped forward.
"Something woke me," she began unsteadily. "I didn't know what it was at first, then I heard a thumping, banging noise down here as if furniture was being moved around. I got up and opened my door just as there came a heavy thud like the sound of a body falling and terrible groans that died slowly away.
"I was frightened and I didn't know what to do. Mrs. Atterbury had told me not to venture downstairs late at night for Welch might mistake me for a burglar and injure me, but I did not want to disturb her unnecessarily and I thought I had better investigate.
"I lighted my candle and crept downstairs. There was a funny sweetish odor on the air and I traced it to this door. When I looked in I saw Mr. Wolvert lying there and all the room upset, but no sign of anyone else. I ran to him and was kneeling beside him, trying to feel if his heart was still beating, when Welch stumbled into the room and accused me. Oh, have the burglars killed him?"
It was superb acting but the girl was wrought up to such an emotional pitch that she was scarcely conscious of its effect. She lived in her vivid imagination each phase of the story she was narrating and it bore the impress of truth.
The rest looked at one another, reading in each face the belief which confirmed their own. It was Madame Cimmino, however, who broke the silence crying out in a paroxysm of jealous fury:
"What is it to you if he lives or dies? He is not yours, but mine! My husband!"
"Betty." Mrs. Atterbury spoke for the first time and her tones were dull and lifeless as she wrenched her eyes with an almost visible effort from the rifled safe. "You had better go to your room, if you are not afraid of being alone. You might try to revive Caroline if you will; she is lying ill in the hall upstairs. Cook is a heavy sleeper, but should she awaken and attempt to come down, please detain her; we must have no more excitement."
Betty accepted her dismissal with a swift leap of her heart. Her task was accomplished; there remained only to make her escape and the way seemed clear before her.
"I am not afraid, Mrs. Atterbury," she said quietly. "If you need me, please call."
She slipped up the stairs and past the still unconscious form of Caroline with feet that trod on air. To throw on her cloak and boots and steal out the kitchen door by which she had entered only a few short hours before would be a simple matter and the man who loved her would be waiting, on guard.
Removing her felt slippers, she had picked up her shoes, when an imperative rap on her locked door made her drop them hastily, her spirit sinking in a premonition of further trouble.
"Who's there?" she demanded in a trembling voice.
"It is I; Madame Cimmino." The tones were repressed and oddly civil after the tempestuous outburst of a few minutes previous. "Open the door, please; I have a message from Mrs. Atterbury."
Betty drew on her slippers and, wondering, obeyed. The sallow face of the Italian was still flushed and her dull eyes glowed with undiminished resentment, but she essayed a faint smile.
"You must not mind what I have said to you just now. I was quite mad! My nerves are shattered by this sudden calamity and I, too, feared that Mr. Wolvert had been killed." She spoke reluctantly with an obvious effort, and Betty realized at whose instigation the halting apology was tendered. "Mrs. Atterbury requests that you sleep in her room for the rest of the night. She will join you presently and does not wish to be left alone. You need not trouble about Caroline. I, myself, will attend to her. Come at once, please."
There was a veiled command beneath her studied courtesy and she had placed herself upon the threshold so that the door could not be closed again barring her out.
Betty's gleam of hope died within her, but she forced herself to reply composedly:
"Certainly, Madame Cimmino. If you will wait a moment I shall be with you."
Her simple preparations made before the unwavering eyes of the other woman, she followed docilely down the hall to Mrs. Atterbury's room. The bed was in disorder and the embers dying in the grate, but her companion replenished them and closed and locked the windows, drawing the heavy parted curtains tightly together.
"Sleep if you can, Miss Shaw." She paused in the doorway, a little triumphant gleam lighting her eyes. "There is nothing now to fear. No intruder can enter for he will be shot on sight. I hope you will rest comfortably."
She closed the door and the lock clicked as a key was deliberately turned in it and withdrawn. Betty was a prisoner!
For a time the girl stood motionless in the middle of the floor where the other had left her. She was trying to fathom the motive for this sudden move. What had occurred, what suspicion had arisen the instant she had left the room, for Madame Cimmino to be despatched upon her very heels to intercept and guard her? Had Jack Wolvert been conscious enough to realize her swift attack on him, and recovering, denounce her? In terror at the thought her hands flew to her breast and encountered the whistle hanging from its slender chain beneath her gown. Her fingers closed convulsively upon it and a little sob of gratitude tore its way from her throat. If actual peril came there was one chance left to her; she was not utterly at the mercy of these wolves.
When Mrs. Atterbury unlocked the door and entered an hour later, she found the girl curled up on the couch seemingly asleep. She stood over her for a long moment staring down at the tranquil face upon which the birthmark glowed in the light from the grate, and listening to the gentle regular breathing. At last she turned away and Betty, opening her eyes cautiously, beheld her employer crouching before the hearth, her dark, unbound hair increasing the pallor of her waxen face and her inscrutable gaze fixed upon the gleaming coals. The girl fell into a troubled slumber at dawn, but when she awakened the other still sat immovable, staring into the dead embers with unseeing eyes.
"You are awake, Betty? Run to your own room and dress and then come back to me quickly. We have much to do today." She barely glanced at the girl, and her tones were lifeless.
"Was—was the burglar caught?" Betty stammered as she rose to obey. "Did you lose very much of value?"
"The man whoever he was escaped, but the police have been notified," Mrs. Atterbury replied without turning her head. "I cannot tell how much has been taken until I have made an inventory of what is left. Hurry, please."
Betty returned to her room, to find Caroline on the couch at the bed's foot. The woman seemed dazed and shaken, but her eyes followed Betty craftily and the girl realized that her presence meant continued surveillance.
Wolvert appeared little the worse for his experience of the previous night when he joined the others at breakfast and he greeted Betty with perfect sang-froid, but she fancied that a speculative gleam lightened his pale eyes when they rested on her; and as the day wore on, he attached himself to her with an assiduity which left her in no doubt of his lurking suspicion.
Although the subject of the burglary was avoided as much as possible, there was a tension in the atmosphere which no one attempted to disguise, an air of repressed apprehension greater than the exigency demanded. In spite of Mrs. Atterbury's assertion that the day would be a busy one, a state of enforced idleness prevailed and Betty wandered about like an unquiet ghost with some one of the household inevitably at her heels.
As dusk drew down the espionage became more openly manifest and the girl's self-control faltered beneath the protracted strain. Was she destined to be held in duress until the raid which Herbert had predicted took place and escape was forever cut off? A new anxiety was added to the rest; if she were to continue this ghastly farce indefinitely a few minutes of absolute privacy in her own room would be essential, but how was this to be obtained?
No suggestion of leaving the house had been made by anyone during the day, but toward evening Welch was dispatched with a telegram to the nearest office. He went with marked reluctance, a furtive look of fear in his heavy-lidded eyes, still dazed from the effects of the drug. Betty watched his departing figure in bitter envy from behind the library curtains. Would her moment never come?
"You are very quiet, Little Mouse." Wolvert had come up silently behind her in the gathering gloom of the room. "Last night's excitement has depressed you?"
"On the contrary," she responded coolly. "I am sorry, of course, for Mrs. Atterbury's loss, but I am quiet because I have been thinking. So many things about the affair puzzle me."
"Indeed? What, for instance?" He flung himself into a chair and smiled up at her.
"Why it was that I did not hear the smash of that vase in your struggle, and why, although your hands were tied after you were chloroformed, of course, the burglar did not also gag you. It was no doubt an oversight on his part, but it impressed me as being odd."
The mocking smile had vanished and he was staring at her with a narrowed intensity of gaze as if to read her very soul. When he replied it was in a hurried, uneasy tone distinctly at variance with his usual aplomb.
"It was the crash of the vase that awakened you, perhaps, and the thief must have been frightened away. He left his tools, you know, and he probably did not dare stop to finish his work with me.—But I did not realize that we had such an efficient detective in our midst!"
He added the last sentence with deliberate intent and Betty met his gaze with a little mocking light in her own eyes.
"I think the burglar finished his work with you very thoroughly, Mr. Wolvert!"
Leaving him to ponder over the ambiguity of her remark she passed out to the hall just as Welch burst in at the side door, his ratlike eyes fairly starting from his head. Sheer panic was written upon his pasty face and he charged headlong up the stairs like a maddened beast.
Betty was torn with the conflict of hope and fear. Had he encountered Herbert on guard, or was the house already surrounded by officers of the law?
No comment was made upon his abrupt return, but Betty sensed a redoubled tension in the air. To her relief, however, the onus of suspicion seemed to have been lifted from her, although the house was so palpably under guard by the masculine members of the group that immediate escape was out of the question.
Betty had no need, as the hours lengthened, to feign fatigue. Her nervous exhaustion was manifest in her drawn face, and Mrs. Atterbury at length laid her hand upon the girl's arm.
"You are tired, my dear. Go to bed if you like but you will be obliged to sleep, for a while at least, with closed windows. Welch has connected all those on the second floor with the alarm system down here, and if one is raised during the night the whole house will be aroused again."
Betty understood the covert warning, but rejoiced that the privacy so vital to her was assured. Murmuring good night she ascended the stairs and disappeared around the gallery.
Scarcely had the soft thud of her closing door broken the silence, when Welch entered from the dining-room and approached the circle seated about the hearth, took his place uninvited among the rest.
"How're we going to make our get-away?" he demanded gruffly. "That's what I want to know, with the place surrounded—"
"Rot!" interrupted Wolvert. "For a thorough-going coward, commend me to a strong-arm bully every time. Yes, I mean you, Welch, don't try to bluff me, my man! You're in a blue funk and you'd conjure up a copper behind every tree! Why haven't they closed in on us, if the bulls are on the job?"
Welch muttered sullenly beneath his breath, but Doctor Bayard leaned forward in his chair.
"That is a reasonable conclusion," he remarked in his quiet, well-bred tones. "I admit, however, that taken in conjunction with the crowning misfortune which has come to us, the possibility is disquieting. You have examined the papers thoroughly, Marcia? You are sure that practically everything of value has been taken?"
"Everything." Mrs. Atterbury spread out her hands in an eloquent gesture. "We are cleaned! The result of five years of planning and scheming and desperate risk has vanished in an hour!"
"Except what we may have saved from our individual profits," Wolvert observed smoothly. "You at least will not starve, my dear Marcia."
Mrs. Atterbury darted a vicious glance at him, as Madame Cimmino said with a shudder:
"Unless the end has come, and we are lost! As for me I shall kill myself before again the doors of a hideous American prison close on me!"
"Don't be morbid, Speranza." Mrs. Atterbury shrugged impatiently. "I am not even thinking of that. I am concerned only with one question:—Who among us is the traitor?"
Wolvert raised his eyebrows.
"Us?" he queried. "You speak with painful directness, Marcia! Surely you except our own immediate circle!"
"If you ask me, it was an inside job," asserted Welch bluntly. "I was doped and so was Caroline. There's no gettin' around that!"
Ide coughed nervously.
"I hope the loyalty of none of us is in question." His thin high voice quavered. "Personally I—"
"Personally, you're absolved!" interrupted Wolvert with a sneer. "You wouldn't have the nerve to chloroform a blind kitten!"
"Someone has betrayed us," Mrs. Atterbury re-iterated. "Only one who possessed the most intimate knowledge of our plans and the deals we are working on now could have chosen so well among all the papers in the safe. With one trifling exception everything missing was negotiable."
Wolvert darted a keen glance at her.
"'One exception'?" he repeated. "What was that?"
"The packet containing the Westcote documents," replied Mrs. Atterbury. "That has vanished with the rest."
"Impossible!" Wolvert started visibly. "He didn't take that!"
"What does it matter?" Dr. Bayard shrugged. "It was worthless!"
"But he didn't take it, I know!" insisted Wolvert, caution forgotten in his surprise. "It must be there! There's some mistake—"
"Why are you so sure?" Mrs. Atterbury flashed at him. "How can you know that it was not stolen?"
"Because I was certain it was there when we first went through the safe after I recovered consciousness, don't you remember?" he stammered, taken aback. "I distinctly saw a blue envelope——"
"There was no blue envelope in the safe." Mrs. Atterbury spoke with absolute finality. "It had disappeared."
"Then by God! it is an inside job!" Wolvert sprang from his chair. "And I know who is back of it—that girl!"
"What!" Doctor Bayard exclaimed, as the rest sat spellbound. "The young woman upstairs?"
"The young spy, d—n her!" retorted Wolvert, his dark face ablaze. "I had a hazy idea that I saw her last night while the thief was pressing the sponge over my mouth but I laid it to delirium. I tell you she was in league with him, and what is more, I don't think he was one of our gang gone crooked. I didn't tell you before because I didn't want to throw you all into a panic but I'm convinced he's a 'tec and she was working in with him. He heard Welch coming and beat it, but she didn't have a chance and we've kept too close a watch on her for her to get away since!"
"I knew it!" Madame Cimmino shrilled. "I knew there was something wrong when she came!"
"I, too!" exclaimed Ide. "I've had a deucedly queer feeling since I first met her at your dinner, Marcia, as if I had seen her before somewhere."
"She's the only outsider!" Welch put in dazedly. "I always said no good would come of draggin' in strange girls and usin' them for a blind, but you knew it all!"
He glared at Mrs. Atterbury who sat gazing intently straight before her.
"It is impossible," she said at last. "I chose the girl myself, and she has kept her position perfectly—"
"Too perfectly!" Wolvert snarled. "She was too good to be true, going wherever you sent her without question. You've been a blind fool! She was planted here, I tell you! That advertisement was a trick and you fell for it! 'Stranger in city and without relatives!' Bah! it was too easy!"
Mrs. Atterbury's immobile face was distorted with gathering menace but her voice was still controlled.
"She is not a detective. I have encountered a few of them and I know the earmarks. Whose game could she be playing?"
"The game of someone with whom we are doing business, perhaps. How can we know?" Ide squeaked. "Remember I 'phoned you only two days ago that I saw her talking with a man up the Drive! She's sold us out!"
"What was she nosing around the house at night for, with an electric torch?" demanded Wolvert savagely. "Is that a usual part of a social secretary's equipment?"
"A torch!" Mrs. Atterbury turned on him in sudden fury. "She told me you had it when she came upon you in the library and you corroborated her story afterward by saying it was yours!"
"I lied," he admitted through set teeth. "This is no time to defend myself or dodge the facts. I'm not the first infatuated ass!"
"Infatuated! A-ah!" Madame Cimmino leaped for him like a tigress, but Welch seized her roughly and dragged her back. "That simpering she-devil with the brand upon her face! For her you have betrayed us all!"
"Cut it out!" Welch admonished roughly. "Forget the sentiment stuff! This is business!"
"I'll make a clean breast of it," Wolvert shrugged. "I suspected her vaguely from the first. There was something about her that baffled me but it fascinated me, too. I had her number from that night in the library, but I thought she was playing a lone hand and I could handle her. I even had a notion I could win her over and get her to go in with us, but she's beaten us at our own game!"
"Not yet!" Mrs. Atterbury rose and even Welch shuddered at the new ominous note in her voice. "Don't forget that something else has taken place beneath this roof since she came. She cannot leave it to bear witness against us! I will go to her and wring the truth from her!"
She mounted the stairs, the others following silently in her wake. The rigid emotionless poise with which she had maintained her domination over them all for years had in a moment been swept aside and the real woman stood revealed in all the nakedness of her sinister malevolent passion.
Like a vengeful fury she crouched before the girl's locked door and motioned savagely to Welch to break it down. He put his massive shoulder against it and with a single mighty heave crashed it in.
A startled cry echoed in their ears and the girl seated before her dressing-table turned her face to them, full in the glare of the boudoir lights. It was a blanched terror-stricken face, but they, too, paused aghast, for the birthmark had vanished utterly and the girl who rose slowly before them was like yet vastly unlike the personality they had known.
For a tense moment they paused and then Ide's trembling voice cried:
"I know her now! I was sure I'd seen her before! It's old Westcote's daughter!"
The girl's hand flashed from her breast to her lips and a shrill, ear-splitting whistle cleaved the air as Welch sprang upon her with a bull-throated roar.
The world crashed down about her head and darkness came; a darkness filled with shots and shouts and vague struggling forms. Then all at once a shaft of brilliant light seemed to break over her and full in its radiance the face of Herbert Ross hovered close.
"Herbert!" It was little more than a whisper but her weak, hot hands fluttered out and clutched him convulsively and in her eyes shone the light of a faith which had not faltered. "I knew—I knew that you would come!"
"My wonderful, brave dear!" His voice had a curious, throaty catch in it. "You have been in frightful danger but you are safe now, thank God!"
Betty smiled wanly.
"I was not afraid, for I knew that you were there. No harm could come to me while you waited."
"You mean that?" His arms tightened about her. "Oh, my dearest, you had such faith in me?"
"As you trusted me, believed in me through everything. And—and for the same reason."
"You mean that you care?" he whispered close to her ear. "Dear, is it that? Is it—love?"
Her eyes gave him his answer and for a moment he lowered his head upon her breast as she lay propped up in his arms.
Then she became dimly aware of lights once more, low moving lights which revealed shadowy tense forms and a jumble of wrecked furniture.
As Herbert raised his head a strange freak of vagrant memory darted through her numbed brain and a still, small voice which she did not recognize as her own gasped:
"Mike has the evidence! Porter Street, two forty-seven. Before midnight!"
Herbert's face wavered and blurred before her eyes, a whirling, crashing void encompassed her and darkness descended again.