He turned to the butler.
"Surely, Thompson, there isn't as much evidence as all that. Come. We ought to get back to town."
As they went down the stairs Garth wondered that his success borrowed its chief value from its effect on Nora. As large as the satisfaction of clearing an innocent and harassed man, loomed the fact that he had, indeed, provoked her praise.
At the turn their hands met in the darkness. He rejoiced that the warmth of her fingers lingered momentarily in his.
From the moment of his solution of the Elmford affair Garth was recognized at headquarters as the man for the big jobs—the city's most serviceable detective. For one who accepted his success so modestly it was difficult to breed jealous enemies. There was, to be sure, some speculation as to how long such a man would chain his abilities by the modest pay of the department, and a wish here and there that he would find it convenient to free himself for broader fields in the near future.
Garth realized that it was the inspector's attitude that had determined his new standing. Under other circumstances things might have progressed more slowly. The tie formed the night of the arrest of Slim and George was still strong.
Garth arranged, when he went to bear the news of his discovery to Dr. Randall in the Tombs, to catch a glimpse of the two. Their greeting sufficiently defined the threat he had always known existed. In their faces he read an intention from which he shrank, more for Nora's sake than for his own. He didn't stay to argue. He walked on to Randall's cell and told the stricken man that in a few minutes he would be free.
Garth had been a good prophet. Randall's first resentment gave way to a gratitude, expressed with difficulty but genuine.
"It—it was exceptionally fine of you to let Thompson destroy those things."
"I would want someone to do as much for me," he answered, "that is, if I ever had the nerve to do what you did. That was the fine thing, doctor."
And Garth went away, aware that he had made a staunch friend.
The inspector was troubled when he heard of Slim and George's open hatred. He saw the district attorney, and others whose ears he had. On his return he sent for Garth.
"The district attorney tells me," he said, "that there isn't a loophole. They'll be convicted and go to the chair as certain as that when the moon shines lovers kiss. If they don't escape. Without suggesting that every crook doesn't get the same attention, I've seen to it that those chair warmers will be watched closer than Fido watches the butcher."
So again Garth put the matter out of his mind, and was aided by an unexpected threat, apparently just as serious, that faced him a very short time after.
On that fall morning he paused on the threshold of the inspector's office, and, surprised and curious, glanced quickly within. It was not so much that Nora sat by the window, clothed in her habitual black, nor was his interest quickened by the fact that she knitted deftly on some heavy, gray garment. Rather his concern centered on the inspector who had left his desk and whose corpulent, lethargic figure moved about the room with an exceptional and eccentric animation.
At Garth's step Nora glanced up, smiling. The inspector retarded his heated walk. To ease the perceptible strain Garth spoke to Nora.
"Seems to me you knit no matter where you are."
"When one knits for the hospitals," she answered, "any place will do. I had hoped my example might quiet father. I only dropped in for a chat, and look at him. What a welcome! I'm afraid, Jim, he has something disagreeable for you."
The inspector paused and sat on the edge of his desk.
"Maybe so. Maybe not," he rumbled. "I don't like working through the dark, so I don't like to ask anybody else to do it. I've got to, though. Cheer up, Garth. I'm asking you."
He raised his paper cutter and jabbed at the desk with a massive petulance.
"Ever since I got down this morning," he went on, "I've been hounded by telegrams and long-distance calls. Well? Do you want a holiday? It's apt to be a hell of a holiday. Excuse me, Nora."
"I see," Garth said. "Something out of town."
The inspector's manner warned him. After long experience he knew it veiled a grave distrust.
"Why," Nora asked, "don't you tell us what the case is?"
The inspector walked around the desk and with a sigh settled himself in his easy chair.
"That's the rumpus," he answered, and Garth saw that his eyes were not quite steady. "Don't know anything about it myself unless they'd like Garth to chase a few spooks. Here's the lay-out. It's a man who's done me a good many favors. There's no secret—political ones. I'm in his debt, and he's asked me for a good detective to go up to his place in New England—not as a detective, mind you, Garth. That's the queer side, the side I don't like. He insists on his man's showing up as a guest, knowing no more than a random guest would know. Sounds like tommy-rot, but he isn't sure himself there's anything out of the way. He wants you, if you take it up, to live quietly in the house, keeping your eyes peeled. He expects you to put him wise to the trouble or to stake your reputation that there isn't any trouble at all. Are you willing to jump into a chase blindly that way? He'd like the fellow that swung the Hennion job, but if you turned it down cold I couldn't help it, could I?"
"Nonsense, chief," Garth answered. "Never heard of such a thing, but it sounds interesting. I'll take a shot at it."
The inspector wrote hurriedly on a piece of paper.
"Here's his name and address. Catch the ten o'clock from the Grand Central and you'll get up there to-night."
Garth took the slip. Before placing it in his pocket he glanced it over.
"Andrew Alden," he saw. "Leave Boston from North Station on four o'clock train and get off at Deacon's Bay."
"I've heard of Mr.—" Garth began.
The inspector's quick, angry shake of the head in Nora's direction brought him to an abrupt pause. He walked to Nora and took her hand.
"Then I won't see you until after my holiday," he said with a smile.
Her eyes were vaguely uneasy.
"I agree with father," she said. "It isn't safe to walk through the dark. Won't you tell me where you're going?"
Garth's laugh was uncomfortable. He didn't pretend to understand, but his course had been clearly enough indicated.
"I'll leave that for the inspector," he answered. "I have to rush to pick up my things on the way to the train."
The uneasiness in her eyes increased.
"You know, Jim, as father says, you can turn it down. It might be wiser."
His heart responded to her anxiety. In view of her fear it was a trifle absurd that their farewell should project nothing more impulsive than a hand-clasp. Its only compensation, indeed, was the reluctance with which she let his fingers go.
When Garth had left, Nora arose and faced her father.
"What's all this mystery?" she demanded. "It's easy enough to guess there's danger for Jim, and you know a lot more than you pretend."
"See here, Nora," the inspector grumbled, "I usually give the third degree myself in this place."
She rested her hands on the desk, studying his uncertain eyes.
"Why," she asked, "wouldn't you let Jim tell me the man's name?"
His bluster was too apparently simulated.
"What did you come down for this morning anyway? No sense in your getting upset. A detective bureau isn't a nursery."
She straightened slowly, her face recording an unwelcome assurance.
"Politics!" she cried. "And Jim's leaving from the Grand Central. I know. He's going to Mr. Alden's at Deacon's Bay. I see why you wouldn't let him tell me."
"Place is all right," the inspector said stubbornly. "You've seen it. You were there with me two summers ago. What's the matter with the place?"
"No use trying to pull the wool over my eyes," Nora answered. "It's the loneliest place I've ever seen, and you ought to know I'd remember Mr. Alden's big furnaces and machine-shop. I read the papers, father. He's staying up so late this year on account of the enormous war orders he's taken. You know as well as I do that that may mean real danger for Jim. What did Mr. Alden tell you?"
The inspector spread his hands helplessly.
"I sometimes think, Nora, you'd make a better detective than any of us. Alden's sick and nervous. I guess that's all it amounts to. He's probably scared some German sympathizer may take a pot shot at him for filling these contracts. And he's worried about his wife. She won't leave him there alone, and it seems all their servants, except old John, have cleared out."
"You said something to Jim about spooks," Nora prompted.
"Thought you'd come to that," the inspector said. "You're like your mother was, Nora—always on the look-out for the supernatural."
"So, I gather, were the servants," she answered drily.
"Silly talk, Alden says, about the woods back of his house. You remember. There was some kind of a fight there during the Revolution—a lot of men ambushed and massacred. I guess you saw the bayonets and gun-locks Alden had dug up. Servants got talking—said they saw things there on foggy nights."
The inspector lowered his voice to a more serious key.
"The angle I don't like is that Alden's valet was found dead in those woods yesterday morning. Not a mark on him. Coroner, I believe, says apoplexy, but Alden's nervous, and the rest of the help cleared out. I suppose they'll get somebody else up as soon as they can. Meantime Alden and his wife are alone with old John. Confound it, Nora, I had to send him somebody."
"But without a word of this!"
"I tell you I don't like it. I didn't want to do it. It was Alden's idea—would have it that way. Frankly I don't make it out, but maybe, being on the spot, he knows best."
"There's something here," she said, "that we can't understand—maybe something big. It isn't fair to Jim."
The inspector looked up slyly.
"Jim," he said, "can take care of himself if anybody can. Seems to me you're pretty anxious. Sure you haven't anything to tell me about you and him? If you had, I might make a place for him watching these ten-cent lunch joints to see that customers didn't carry away the hardware and crockery. Then all the danger you'd have to worry about would be that he might eat the food."
But Nora failed to smile. She glanced away, shaking her head.
"I've nothing to tell you, father," she answered. "Nothing now. I don't know. Honestly I don't know. I only know I've been through one such experience, and if anything happened to Jim that I could help, I'd never forgive myself."
The night had gathered swiftly behind a curtain of rain. Garth, glancing out the window of the train, saw that darkness was already close upon a somber and resentful world. Pines, hemlocks, and birches stretched limitlessly. The rain clung to their drooping branches like tears, so that they expressed an attitude of mourning which their color clothed convincingly. The roaring of the train was subdued, as if it hesitated to disturb the oppressive silence through which it passed.
The car, nearly empty, was insufficiently lighted. Garth answered to the growing depression of his surroundings. His paper, already well-explored, no longer held him. He continued to gaze from the window, speculating on the goal towards which he was hurrying through this bleak desolation. The inspector's phrase was suddenly informed with meaning. He was, in every sense, advancing through the dark. The realization left him with a troublesome restlessness, a desire to be actively at work.
The last streak of gray had long faded when the train drew up at Deacon's Bay station—a small building with a shed like an exaggerated collar about its throat. At this hour there was no operator on duty. Only one or two oil lamps maintained an indifferent resistance to the mist. Garth saw a horse and carriage at the rear. He walked to it.
"Could you drive me to Mr. Andrew Alden's place?" he asked.
From the depths of the carriage a native's voice replied:
"Probably you're the party I'm looking for. If you're Mr. Garth from New York, step in."
Garth obeyed, and they drove off along a road for the most part flanked by thick woods.
Without warning, through an open space, Garth saw a flame spring upward, tearing the mist and splashing the sky with wanton scarlet.
"What's that?" he asked sharply.
The glare diminished and died. The native clucked to his horse.
"Mr. Alden's furnaces," he answered.
Garth stirred.
"I see. Iron. Steel. And now it works night and day?"
"On war orders," the native answered. "Now you wouldn't think we'd ever have got in the war, would you? There's a whole town—board shacks—to take care of the men—more'n fifteen hundred of them."
Garth nodded thoughtfully. Here at the start was a condition that might make the presence of a detective comforting to his host.
As they penetrated deeper into the woods the driver exhibited an increasing desire to talk, and from time to time, Garth remarked, he glanced over his shoulder.
"None of my business," the man said, "but it's funny Mr. Alden's having company now."
Garth smiled. He was certainly on the threshold of a case he had been asked to enter wholly unprepared.
"Maybe you'll tell me why," he encouraged.
"Because," the driver answered, "although Mr. Alden stands to make a pile of money, he's paying for it in some ways. You didn't hear about his yacht?"
Garth shook his head.
"Maybe some of these rough workmen he's got up from the city, or maybe somebody wanted to pay him out. Took it out of his boat-house a few nights ago, started on a joy-ride, I suppose, and ran it on the rocks."
"Much loss?" Garth asked.
"Total, except for the furnishings."
"Are you one of Mr. Alden's servants?"
The driver's laugh was uncomfortable.
"That's what I meant about his having company. There aren't any servants except the old butler. A woman from the village goes to get breakfast and lunch for them, but she won't stay after dark."
Garth grinned, recalling the inspector's comment about spooks.
"Why did the servants quit?"
The driver glanced over his shoulder again. He hurried his horse.
"Laughing's cheap," he said, "but you can judge for yourself how lonely it is, and Mr. Alden's right on the ocean—only house for two miles. You see he owns a big piece of this coast—woods right down to the water. They've always told about a lot of soldiers being killed in those woods during the Revolution. All my life I've heard talk about seeing things there. Servants got talking a few days ago—said they saw shadows in grave clothes going through the woods. I laughed at that, too. But I didn't laugh when they found Mr. Alden's valet yesterday morning, dead as a door nail."
Garth whistled.
"Violence?"
"Not a sign. Coroner says apoplexy, but that doesn't convince anybody that doesn't want to be."
"Curious," Garth mused.
For some time a confused murmuring had increased in his ears—the persistent fury of water turned back by a rocky coast.
They turned through a gateway, and, across a broad lawn, he caught a glimpse of lights, dim, unreal, as one might picture will-o-the-wisps. But the night and the mist could not hide from Garth the size of the house, significant of wealth and a habit of comfort. That such an establishment should be practically bereft of service was sufficient proof that there was, indeed, something here to combat. Yet from the driver he could draw nothing more ponderable than the fancied return of the dead to their battlefield, and a distrust, natural enough in a native, of the horde of new men gathered for the furnaces.
When he had stepped from the carriage he saw that the lights were confined to the lower hall and one room to the left. The rest of the great house stretched away with an air of decay and abandonment.
In response to his ring he heard a step drag across the floor, but the door was not opened at once. Instead a quavering voice demanded his identity.
With some impatience Garth grasped the knob, and as he heard the carriage retreat towards the town, called out:
"My name is Garth. I'm expected."
The door was swung back almost eagerly, and Garth stepped across the threshold of the lonely house.
An old man faced him, white-haired, bent at the shoulders, unkempt and so out of key with the neat hard-wood floor, the hangings, and the wainscot of the hall—a witness to an abrupt relaxation of discipline.
"Thank heavens you've come, sir," the old man said.
"Then you know," Garth answered. "What's wrong here?"
But before the other could reply a man's voice, uncertain, barely audible, came from the lighted room to the left.
"Who is that? If it is Mr. Garth bring him to me at once."
Garth became aware of the rustling of skirts. He stepped into the room, and, scarcely within the doorway, met a young woman whose unquestionable beauty impressed him less than the trouble which, to an extent, distorted it. Her greeting, too, almost identical with the old servant's, disturbed him more than his. It was reminiscent of the desolate landscape he had seen from the train, of the forest loneliness through which he had just driven, of the gaping scarlet that had torn across the cloud-filled sky.
"I'm glad you've come. I—I was afraid you mightn't make it."
Garth's glance appraised the room. It was a huge apartment, running the width of the house. Casement windows rose from the floor to the ceiling. An oak door in the farther wall, towards the rear, was closed. There were many book-cases. A fire burned drowsily in a deep hearth. Before it stood a writing-table with an inefficient lamp, and at its side—the point where Garth's eyes halted—a man sat—huddled.
The man wore a dressing gown and slippers. His hair was untidy. From his cadaverous face eyes gleamed as if with a newly-born hope. He put his hands on the chair arms and started to rise, then, with a sigh, he sank back again.
"You'll excuse me," he said. "I've not been myself lately. It is an effort for me to get up, but I am glad to see you, Mr. Garth—very glad."
Garth understood now why the voice had barely carried to the hall. It lacked body. It left the throat reluctantly. It crowded the room with a scarcely vibrating atmosphere of dismay. Garth asked himself hotly if he had been summoned as an antidote to the airy delusions of an invalid.
A stifled sound behind him caused him to turn swiftly. He was in time to see the distortion of the woman's features increase, to watch the resistless tears sparkle in her eyes and fall, to be shamed by the laborious sobs which, after she had covered her face, shook her in freeing themselves.
He advanced, at a loss, shocked by this unforeseen breakdown. He took Alden's hand, but the other appeared to have forgotten his presence.
"Don't, Cora," he mumbled. "You mustn't do that any more. We are no longer—alone."
Garth glanced from one to the other, answering to the atmosphere of dismay, which moment by moment became more unavoidable. Yet what could there be here beyond loneliness, and, perhaps, threats from those against whose cherished principles Alden's furnaces were busy night and day? The loneliness, Garth acknowledged even then, could account for a lot, but, he decided, a doctor was needed here as much as a detective.
At last Mrs. Alden resumed her control. She faced Garth apologetically.
"It's because I can't get him away," she said wistfully. "And he's sick. Anybody can see that."
"A week or two more," Alden said, "until the works are running right. Then we'll go back to New York. I've had trouble replacing unsatisfactory workmen, and I can't make the government wait."
"New York!" the woman echoed.
"You've a doctor?" Garth asked.
"From the village," Alden answered. "I'm afraid he doesn't understand me."
"Then," Garth said firmly, "I should let the works go to blazes until I'd looked after myself."
Alden moved his hand vaguely.
"It's nothing—cold, maybe a touch of the gout. I sometimes suffer, and my nerves are a little under. Too much involved here, Mr. Garth. You couldn't afford to take chances with that."
Garth glanced at the room's luxurious furnishing.
"I couldn't," he answered captiously. "I'm not so sure about you."
It annoyed him that the lamp on the table failed to drive the shadows from the corners.
Mrs. Alden approached him timidly.
"You'll forgive our welcome? You'll try to understand? You may have noticed something about the fall in a remote place. It is very depressing here. If only you could persuade him to leave. You see we've no servants but old John. Shall I tell him to get you something—a whiskey and soda?"
Garth shook his head.
"I never drink when I'm at work."
"But you are our guest," she said.
"Our guest," came in her husband's difficult voice.
In neither of their faces could Garth read the reproof their tones had suggested. What point could there be in this abnormal masquerade?
He glanced at his watch. Mrs. Alden caught the gesture. She walked to a cabinet and measured her husband's medicine.
"It's time," she said as she gave it to him, "that we all were in bed. Shall I ring for John?"
"I'll ring," Garth answered, "a little later. I should be glad of a word with your husband."
When Mrs. Alden had gone he tried to talk sanely to the sick and melancholy man, urging him to seek more cheerful surroundings. Alden merely shook his head.
"See here," Garth exploded at last. "There's no point in your closing your confidence to me. It only makes matters a thousand times more difficult. You're afraid. Of what?"
The other answered with a difficulty that was not wholly physical. He had hit upon this incomprehensible plan and he would carry it through.
"Then it's only fair to tell you," Garth said, "that the man who drove me out talked a little. I've heard about your boat, of why your servants ran, of the strange men with whom you've crowded the village. Tell me one thing. Have you had threatening letters about your contracts?"
"Several."
The deep lines in Alden's face tightened.
"Don't think," he managed to get out, "that I'm a coward. I'll stay. My contracts will be carried through."
"No," Garth answered, "you're not that kind of a coward, but there's something else. Don't deny, Mr. Alden. You're more than sick. You're afraid. What is it?"
Alden shuddered.
"A—a coward."
The words stumbled out of his mouth.
"But I don't know what it is. You're to tell me, Mr. Garth, if it's anything."
"This rot about the woods and the spirits of dead soldiers?" Garth asked.
Alden stirred. He nodded in the direction of the rear casement windows.
"Just across the lawn."
"You haven't seen?" Garth asked sharply.
"But," Alden said, "the servants—"
This, then, Garth decided, must be the source of the fear the other's appearance recorded.
"Nonsense, Mr. Alden. That's one of the commonest superstitions the world over, that soldiers come back to the battlefields where they have died, and in time of war—"
"If there's nothing in it," Alden whispered, "why is it so common? Why did my servants swear they had seen? And the fog! We've had too much fog lately—every night for a week. My man died in the fog."
Garth whistled.
"Could they have mistaken him for you?"
"There were no marks on the body."
Alden looked up. His voice thickened.
"We are talking too much. I—I want you to stay and judge for yourself."
Garth arose and walked to the rear window, but he could see nothing for the mist. He stood there, nevertheless, for some time, puzzled and half angry. The mental and physical condition of his host, Mrs. Alden's shattered nerves, the extreme loneliness, impressed on him a sense of uncharted adventuring.
"Why," he asked himself, "won't these people talk? What do they expect me to find in this house?"
When he turned back he saw that Alden's eyes were closed. The regular rising and falling of his chest warned Garth to quietness. He would not disturb the worn-out man. So he pressed the electric bell and walked to the hall. He met John there.
"Please show me to my room," he said. "Mr. Alden's asleep. Perhaps you'd better speak to his wife before you disturb him."
John bowed and led him upstairs.
"Good-night, sir," he said, opening the door. "May you sleep well. It's a little hard here lately."
He hesitated. He cleared his throat.
"You couldn't persuade him to send his wife away?" he went on at last. "She's not strong, sir. It's pitiful."
"See here, John," Garth said impulsively. "I know it's against the rules, but tell me what's wrong here. What are you all afraid of?"
The old man's lips moved. His eyes sought Garth's urgently. With a visible effort he backed out of the room. His glance left Garth. When he opened his lips all he said was:
"Good-night, sir."
Garth closed the door, shrugging his shoulders. Of what a delicacy the threat must be to require such scrupulous handling! "If there is anything," Alden had said. Garth brought his hands together.
"There is something," he muttered, "something as dangerous as the death Alden is manufacturing back there."
He went to bed, but the restlessness of the train returned to him. Reviewing Alden's exhaustion and the old servant's significant comment, he wondered half seriously if sleep refused to enter this house. The place, even for his splendidly controlled emotions, possessed a character, depressive, unhealthy, calmly malevolent.
He had lost account of time. He had been, perhaps, on the frontier of sleep, for, as he sprang upright, he could not be all at once sure what had aroused him. A man's groan, he thought. Suddenly, tearing through the darkness, came the affirmation—a feminine scream, full of terror, abruptly ended.
He threw on his clothes, grasped his revolver, dashed down the stairs, and burst into the living-room. There was no light now beyond the wan glow of the fire, but it was still sufficient to show him Alden, huddled more than ever in the chair, and the terror that had quivered through the cry, persisted now in Alden's face.
His wife, in a dressing gown, knelt at his side, her arm around his knees. At Garth's entrance she sprang erect, facing him.
"It came," she gasped. "Oh, I knew it would. All along I've known."
"Tell me what's happened," Garth commanded.
The woman's voice was scarcely intelligible.
"I let him sleep here. Just now he groaned. I ran in. Somebody—something had attacked him. I ran in. I—I saw it."
"Where?"
She pointed to the rear window.
"I saw it going out there. It was foggy. It went in the fog. I couldn't—"
Garth sprang to the window. It was, in fact, half open. Before he could get through Mrs. Alden had caught his arm.
"Don't follow. It isn't safe out there."
"I want that man," he said.
She leaned weakly against the casement.
"But out there," she whispered, "they are not men."
Again she caught his arm.
"Don't leave me alone now that they can come in."
She pointed at her husband.
"Look at him. He saw it in the fog that came through the window. It is all fog out there. Don't leave me alone."
He thrust the revolver impatiently in her hand.
"Then take this. Not much use outside on such a night."
He jumped to the lawn and started swiftly across. Since the intruder had fled this way he might hear him in the woods, might grapple with him. He regretted the loss of his revolver, although he realized it would be useless to-night except at close quarters, and for that he possessed a cleverly-devised reserve, which he had arranged on first joining the force—a folding knife, hidden in his belt, sharp, well-tested, deadly.
At the edge of the woods he paused, straining his ears, trying to get his bearings, for he was on unfamiliar ground and the fog was very dense here. It lowered a white, translucent shroud over the nocturnal landscape. Beneath its folds he could make out only one or two tree trunks and a few drooping branches. These, as he stared, gave him the illusion of moving surreptitiously.
The moon, he knew, was at the full, but its golden rotundity was heavily veiled to-night, so that it had the forlorn, the sorrowful appearance of a lamp, once brilliant, whose flame has gradually diminished and is about to expire.
Garth could hear nothing, but he waited breathlessly, still straining his ears. This, he mused, was the place where many soldiers had died in battle, the setting for ghostly legends, the spot where the servants had fancied a terrifying and bodiless re-animation, the death-bed of Alden's valet.
Now that he had time to weigh it, Mrs. Alden's manner puzzled him. She had saidithad been in the house, that nowtheycould come in, and that out heretheywere not men. Had the loneliness imposed upon her intelligence such a repulsive credulity?
He had to admit that imagination in such a medium could precipitate shameful and deceptive fancies.
Then, without realizing at first why, Garth knew he had been unjust. He found his eyes striving to penetrate the night to the left. Surely it was not the old illusion of moving trees and branches that had set the fog in lazy motion over there. He stepped cautiously behind a pine tree. The chill increased. A charnal atmosphere had crept into the woods. As he shivered he realized that this sepulchral place had filled with plausible inhabitants—shapes as restless and unsubstantial as if sprung solely from a morbid somnambulism.
Shadows advanced through the shadowy fog, and Garth could define them as no more than shadows. In one place the mist thinned momentarily, and he glimpsed, apparently floating forward, the trunk of a man's figure. Pallid tatters, such as might survive in a mortuary, flapped about bare shoulders, and from a little distance beyond came a sickly gleam—the doubtful response uncertain moonlight might draw from a bayonet or a musket barrel.
The fog closed in. There were no more shadows. Garth, eager to follow, forced himself to wait. He told himself that the march of phantoms possessed a meaning which would give direction to his task. The unveiling of its impulse, he was confident, would unveil the mystery at the house. Against so many only caution was useful at present.
He was glad Nora was not with him. He knew how profoundly she would have been stirred, how ready she would have been to discard a rational explanation for the occult. He could smile a little. In this one respect of vulnerability to superstition he felt himself immeasurably her superior. He was glad she had not involved herself in such a case.
Finally, phantom-like himself, he proceeded through the fog in the direction the silent shadows had taken. He walked for some distance.
Without warning he stumbled and pitched forward to his knees. Reaching out to save himself, his fingers touched something wet, cold, and possessed of a revealing quality which in one breathless moment drove into his brain the excuse for those at the house, and focussed for him their terror of the unexplored world of whose adjacence their solitude must have convinced them.
He snatched his hand back, rendered for the moment without purpose by this silent and singular tryst to which chance had led him in the evil forest. It was necessary, however, to strip the mask of night from the face of the one who lay, defeated and beyond resistance, in the path of the shadowy army.
He took his pocket lamp from his coat and pressed the control. The light fought through the fog to the face of the old servant who a few hours ago had begged him to get Mrs. Alden away, whose lips had been incomprehensibly sealed.
Quickly he searched for the manner of death, for there could be no coincidence about two such catastrophes in the same spot. In spite of the coroner's verdict, murder was the only sensible deduction. Yet he found no slightest souvenir of violence. The face alone held a record of an attack—the features were twisted as if from its vehemence, and the eyes appeared to secrete some shocking vision.
Garth sprang to his feet. Alden's sick fear and his wife's hysterical misgivings were placed on a basis far sounder than imagination. A danger, unconformable, but none the less real, skirted their isolated house, had at last, according to the woman, forced an entrance.
Garth knew his limitations. He must have help, and now Alden must be made to talk.
He ran back to the house and stepped through the window. The lamp had been lighted. It shone on Mrs. Alden who bent over the writing-table, her gaze directed hypnotically towards the huddled man in the chair. Garth, since he came from the rear, could not see Alden's face at first.
"Mrs. Alden," he said, "I found your man, out there—"
Her hands left the table. She straightened. With a perceptible effort she raised her eyes from the chair to meet Garth's.
"Not de—"
She put her hand to her mouth and crushed back the word.
Garth nodded.
"I must have help. Where's the telephone?" he asked.
He started for the hall.
"Lock that window," he said. "I've left it open."
Suddenly he paused and turned. A sound, scarcely human, had come from the chair—a hollow, a meaningless vocal attempt, as though there were no palate behind it, no tongue to shape its intention.
From where he stood Garth could see Alden distinctly enough. His head was sunk forward on his chest. His fingers clutched powerlessly at the chair arms. His eyes appeared to have hoarded and just now released all the strength of which his meager body had been stripped. They flashed with a passionate purpose which drew Garth magnetically until he was close and had stooped and was staring into them with a curiosity almost as pronounced as their eagerness.
"What is it, Mr. Alden?" he asked.
The other's fingers continued to stray about the chair arms.
"You've got to tell me what you know—all you suspect," Garth urged. "We've murder on our hands. What do you know?"
Alden's head rose and fell affirmatively.
"Out with it."
But Alden did not answer, although his eyes burned brighter; and Garth guessed.
"Speak, Mr. Alden," he begged.
Alden's lips moved. His throat worked. His face set in a grotesque grimace.
"There's danger for all of us," Garth cried. "The time for silence has passed."
Then Alden answered, but it was only with that helpless, futile sound—such a whimper as escapes unintelligibly from the fancied fatality of a nightmare.
Garth drew back. Now when it was too late Alden wanted to talk. Now when he had been robbed of the power he craved the abandonment of words.
"Mrs. Alden," Garth whispered. "You know your husband can't speak! Look at him!"
About her advance there was that hypnotic quality Garth had noticed before. He read in her face, moreover, a sympathy and a love that made it as difficult of unmoved contemplation as the helpless suffering in Alden's.
Alden smiled sorrowfully as his wife came close and stooped to him. His hands ceased their straying about the chair arms. They rose with a quick motion, an unsuspected strength, and closed about her white and beautiful throat.
She did not cry out. Perhaps there was no time. Her eyes closed. Her lips were wistful.
Garth tore at the man's fingers. It took all his force to break their hold. And as he fought the answer to a great deal came to him. Alden was clearly insane, and his wife's fear and John's doubt of her safety were accounted for. Yet it didn't answer all. What was the share of the shrouded army in the forest? What was the connection of the death that had struck there twice?
Alden's vise-like grip was broken. Mrs. Alden swayed against the writing-table, gasping. Alden's whimpering had recommenced.
Garth looked from one to the other.
"Good God!" he said.
She turned on him.
"Why did you come? It is your fault."
Garth pointed at the cabinet where the medicine was kept. The nightmare whimpering did not cease.
"Get him something," Garth directed. "The doctor must have left you a narcotic."
She walked with a pronounced lurch to the cabinet where Garth heard her fumbling among the bottles, but he did not turn away from Alden. The imbecile sounds stopped, but the lips worked ineffectively again. One of the hands moved slowly with an apparent sanity of purpose. Garth realized that it was motioning him back. Alden started to rise. Garth saw his veins swell and the emaciated muscles strain as he literally dragged himself out of the chair and braced his elbows against the writing-table. He grasped a pencil and wrote rapidly on a piece of paper. Garth understood, and he reached out for the sheet on which Alden had written the words—perhaps a warning, perhaps the truth—which his tongue had been unable to form.
"Don't touch that paper."
There was a new quality about the voice Garth could not deny. There was no more tinkling of glass at the cabinet. He found it difficult to credit Mrs. Alden with that clear, authoritative command. He turned warily and looked into the muzzle of his own revolver. Mrs. Alden's outstretched hand, he noticed, did not waver.
"What does this mean?" he cried.
"It means," she answered in a tired voice, "that if you read what is on that paper you'll leave me no choice. I shall have to shoot."
Alden whimpered again. The paper fluttered to the floor and rested, white and uncommunicative, beneath the table. His face set. He pointed accusingly towards the rear window.
The gesture was clear to Garth. He knew what it meant before his eyes followed its direction. Before he had seen, he appreciated almost palpably the new presence in the room. At the moment it seemed inevitable to him that the tense group should be joined by a stronger force, the inspiration, probably, of the mysteries that had posed it, and that worked ahead, he could not doubt, to a graver issue for Alden and himself.
The newcomer glided from the shadows by the window and moved to Mrs. Alden's side—huge, powerful. The cap, drawn low over his eyes, and the thick growth about the mouth, robbed his face of expression and gave to his actions a mechanical precision not lightly to be disturbed. He took the revolver from the woman.
"I couldn't," she said. "He hasn't read. It won't be necessary?"
"Necessary," the man answered, "but you were right. Not in that way. It leaves too much evidence. As the others went."
"No more death," she cried. "There has been too much death."
"These days the world is full of death," he answered. "What are one or two here?"
The voice carried as little expression as the face or the figure, but an accent, which Garth knew, hindered its flow, and defined the situation with a brutal clearness.
He turned at a slipping behind him, a heavy fall. Alden lay on the floor, his hand stretched towards the futile spot of white beneath the table. His wife stumbled across and knelt beside him, restlessly fingering his shoulders.
"Andrew!" she cried. "You don't understand. Look at me. You have to understand. I love you. Nothing changes that."
The newcomer moved to her, and, without relaxing his vigilance, grasped her arm.
"There's too much to be done to-night for tears. Keep your watch."
He indicated Garth.
"I'll come back and attend to him later."
She continued to stare at her husband's closed eyes.
"He knows now, but you shan't kill him. I tell you you shan't kill him."
"When the occasion arises you will follow your duty," he said.
He turned to Garth, pointing to the oak door in the rear corner.
"You will go in there."
A flashing recollection of Nora decided Garth. Resistance now, he knew, as he studied the great figure, would mean the end, whereas, if he waited and obeyed, the knife, secreted in his felt, offered a possible escape.
"Wait!" the man snapped.
He thrust the revolver in Mrs. Alden's hand while he ran quickly over Garth's clothing. The thickness of the belt escaped him. He found only the pocket lamp.
"The telephone is disconnected," he said, evidently to reassure the woman. "Your husband is too weak to leave the house, and no one will come near it until daylight. We won't cross that bridge before we reach it."
She shuddered.
The other opened the oak door and motioned Garth to enter. He went through, simulating a profound dejection, but actually reaching out again to confidence. For the man would come back to visit him with the silent, undemonstrative violence that had done for the two men in the woods, but Garth would be waiting for him, behind the door, with his knife. Therefore, when the door was locked, he commenced hopefully to examine his prison.
The night, he found after a moment, was not complete in here. It possessed a quality, milky but lustreless, reminiscent of the shroud through which the shadowy figures had paraded. It retained, however, the obscurity of thorough darkness. He had a feeling, indeed, of standing in a darkness that was white.
There must be windows over there, many windows. He felt his way across. The wall, as well as the interior face of the door, was lined with sheet tin, suggesting immediately the nature of his prison—a dismantled conservatory. The glazed end was of small panes, heavily leaded. The frames in themselves offered a resistance to escape as efficacious as prison bars.
The arrangement, nevertheless, gave him one advantage. A single door to guard removed the threat of a surprise.
In the centre of the floor he found a considerable heap of wood, probably the fittings of the place. He scarcely dared pause to examine it. He hurried back to his post at the doorway, removed the knife from his belt, jointed it, and tested the point against his finger. He didn't know how long his respite would last. He couldn't hazard a guess as to the nature of the big man's occupation. He could only estimate its importance by the fact that it had prevented the other's dealing summarily with him.
He had entered the case with too little light. Nora had been right. One can not follow a straight course through the dark. Only a few dim outlines offered themselves for his appraisal. Mrs. Alden had made her choice between an evident, an exceptional affection for her husband and an enterprise directed by the sinister figure who had stepped from the shadows. Of what a vast importance that enterprise must be since it had prodded her to such a decision, since it had made her acquiesce, however unwillingly, in murder to safeguard its progress! She faced even the death of her own husband because he had learned too much of its intention. And she had no slightest amorous tendency—of that Garth was sure—towards the bearded giant to whose will she bent her own with a pitiable humility. The lack of that world-wide, easily comprehensible motive to wrong, taken with the leader's German accent, directed Garth's logic to the furnaces, which night after night stained the sky with a scarlet, significant of their feverish industry. Yet the shadowy figures of the woods were still elusive, unless the place was used as a rendezvous and the affair to-night approached a crisis. Could he escape? Would he be in time to prevent a crime of such proportions, of such disquieting possibilities?
He stiffened at a stealthy movement of the key in the lock. The answer lay just ahead. Garth could not doubt that the German was about to enter, to annihilate in his subtle manner an enemy he believed unarmed.
With his left hand he braced himself against the door-frame for the stroke, while with his right hand he lifted the knife. The necessity of striking without warning sickened him. He had no choice. There was too much eager help within ear-shot of an alarm. The stakes loomed too commandingly to tolerate a sentimental hesitation. It was not only his own life in the scales. The lives of those who toiled at the furnaces swayed with his. But it was from the recollection of Nora that he drew the most strength, from the desire to see her again; to watch her quiet figure—a little inscrutable, unconsciously provocative; to hover again on the edge of an avowal, alert for his favorable moment.
The door hinges responded to a pressure. The lamp had evidently been extinguished again, for he saw in the uncertain radiance of the embers a thing, scarcely definable as human, prone beyond the threshold.
The empty doorway, the inert object on the floor, the darkness, accented rather than diminished by the embers, blurred his calculations. Where was the one who had opened and for whom his knife was eager?
Unexpectedly a brilliant light flashed in his eyes and went out. Half-blinded, he sensed the presence of something on the sill, and he struck downward with all his force. He reached only emptiness. The one on the sill had sprung through. From somewhere in the house Garth heard the patter of hastening feet.
He fought away the effects of the flash, striving to locate the one who had entered. There beside the heap of rubbish knelt a form darker than the white darkness.
He moved noiselessly over. He reached down and grasped the bent shoulder, and, as the shoulder recoiled from his touch, so he recoiled from its quality that revealed the presence in his prison of a woman.
Through his amazement he heard the door close, but he felt sure of himself now. Mrs. Alden was his prisoner—a hostage, if he chose, for his own escape, unless, indeed, she had finally revolted and come to his aid.
"Get up," he said roughly.
The woman's sigh conveyed relief. Something scraped beneath her hand. A tiny flame was born and entered into the base of the rubbish.
Then the woman turned slowly, and, in the light of the flame, Garth looked into Nora's excited eyes and smiling face.
Incredulous, he grasped her arms, lifted her to her feet, and stared. The growing flame struck a flash from his knife, drove into his brain a full realization of the monstrous misunderstanding which had nearly involved them in unspeakable disaster.
"Good God, Nora! I nearly—I tried to—"
Her smile grew.
"I didn't know what I should find in here. I couldn't afford to take chances."
"But I left you in New York," he went on uncertainly. "How did you come? Why are you here?"
"No time for explanations now," she answered quickly. "We must get out of here."
He recalled the patter of hastening feet, the soft closing of the door. In the growing light he saw its tin-sheeted face flush with the wall.
"The door has been shut," he said. "I'm afraid—locked. Why did you light that fire?"
She ran across, grasped the knob, then commenced to beat with her fists at the tin. Suddenly she stopped. Her shoulders drooped.
"No use," she whispered. "She must have come in. She won't open now."
Garth hurried to her side.
"I don't understand," he said, "but it's evident we are caught here, and that fire has been fixed—a signal?"
She nodded.
"Why did you light it?"
"Because," she answered dully, "it had to burn to-night."
The crisis they faced was clear to him.
"Nora! In a minute this room will be a furnace."
He imagined from the excitement still flashing in her eyes that she did not quite realize, but she spoke without regret, and her words carried the shocking fatality of the German's.
"I'm sorry, Jim, but if I had known we would be caught I would have lighted it just the same. After all, a small price in the long run—only the two of us."
He brushed the rapid perspiration from his face. The fire had reached the heart of the pile. The air thickened with a reddish, pungent smoke. He choked.
"I'm sorry, Jim. I came only to help you, but I found—"
The vapour cut her voice.
The sentimental possibilities of their predicament came with a gentle wonder to Garth. They over-weighed the danger, robbed him for the moment of full comprehension. This clearly was his moment, and whatever the next might bring seemed a fair exchange for her probable response. He reached blindly towards her through the smoke.
"Nora!"
His heart leapt as she swayed a little. Then he heard the grating of the key in the lock. It impressed him as curious that the saving sound carried to him a sense of disappointment, the emptiness of a destiny unfulfilled.
Nora turned the knob. He pushed against the door. They stumbled into the next room, breathing deeply the fresh, clean air.
Alden's prostrate form lay just within. His wife stood across the room by the hall door, the revolver held listlessly in her hand. Her hair, more than ever disordered, fell about her weary eyes, and gave her face an air of ironical witchery.
Garth caught the meaning of the tableau. He glanced with admiration at the sick man, appreciating the bitter obstacle he had overcome, the abhorrent chance he had taken after conquering his physical incapacity and reaching the door. The result, Garth noticed, had carried to Alden a vast relief, a shadow of content. The light from the conservatory flickered about his face, exposing an expression of pride. The silent lips moved as if to frame a boast.
"So, Mrs. Alden," Garth said, "you left him again. To warn the others?"
She did not answer. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Anyway," he went on, "when you came back and found him at the key you didn't have time to get to him, and you weren't quite as bad as you should have been. You let him unlock the door. You didn't have the nerve to shoot—your husband."
"Don't, Jim," Nora warned. "You don't understand."
Frankly he didn't, but he knew that Mrs. Alden, in a sense, still controlled the situation. Her revolver could compel their movements. Its explosion would doubtless bring help swarming to her side.
"And you see," Nora went on, speaking to her gently, "what a useless sacrifice it would have been. Everything was finished for you the moment I lighted the beacon."
Mrs. Alden nodded.
Garth grinned as the protective feminine instinct expressed itself through this woman in her most intricate hour.
"It was all arranged," she said. "If you will close that door the house will be safe enough from the fire."
She indicated her husband. There were tears in her eyes again.
"You will take care of him?"
"Yes," Nora said.
She turned and closed the door. Through the sudden darkness Garth heard Mrs. Alden run into the hall. He sprang after her, but Nora's voice, sharp and commanding, halted him.
"Let her go, Jim. I'll explain. Light the lamp now."
"You've earned the right to give the orders," he said.
He felt his way to the writing-table and lighted the lamp.
"You know," he said, "that there are many men near here—that they can trap us in this house?"
"I don't think," she answered, "that they will come to this house again."
He turned to her.
"Nora! What is it? Even after all I've seen I can't be sure. The furnaces? They are two miles away."
She shook her head.
"Not the furnaces, Jim. Come with me and I will show you."
She led him to an unlighted room across the hall and flung back the curtains.
The glare of a conflagration, far vaster than that which had threatened them in the conservatory, flashed in their eyes and lighted the neighborhood with a brilliancy fiercer than noonday.
For the first time Garth could see that the house stood on a high, wooded plateau. The trees had been cleared away between it and the water, and a slope, bordered with hedges, had been blasted to a beach, small and crescent-shaped. The fire blazed with a destructive violence in a structure on this beach. He recalled the driver's gossip about Alden's yacht. He saw a small launch, heavily-laden, making for the open sea.
"The boat house," he said.
"Yes," Nora answered. "Look."
She drew a little back. An explosion tore at their ears. Somewheres upstairs a window broke. The tinkling of glass was like an absurdly attenuated echo. But Garth's attention was fixed on the boat-house. The building appeared to disintegrate. Out of its ruins rose a colossal column of muddy smoke. From its summit streaming banners of purple and violet flame unfurled. They waved their frantic message to Garth. He turned, gaping, to Nora.
"That building!" he gasped. "It's crowded with gasolene—oil!"
"You didn't guess, Jim? You see now I couldn't take chances. I had to light the signal that made them fire this."
"And you were right," he agreed. "Only the two of us—"
He gazed at her wonderingly. There was only pride in his voice.
"How many lives! How many millions of dollars! You've spared them, Nora."
Garth had lifted Alden to the sofa and had left Nora hovering over the man who, they knew now, had been systematically drugged for days. After reconnecting the telephone and notifying the federal authorities he had returned to the living-room. Nora arose, and, with her finger at her lips, joined him by the fireplace.
"He's asleep," she said. "You know, Jim, there wasn't much point in your telephoning. They've destroyed the evidence. They've gone."
She sat down. Garth drew a chair close to her. Their voices were low in order that Alden might not be disturbed.
"Was it near?" he asked. "The fact that they took the launch—yet they might put in at some lonely cove and scatter."
"It must have been expected soon," she answered. "They were working desperately. They were very anxious to-night."
"You must have guessed, Nora, as soon as I left New York. How?"
"By giving father a scolding," she answered with a smile. "I knew that Mrs. Alden had been born in Berlin, and that her family was still prominent there where Mr. Alden had married her. Even since her marriage she's spent much time abroad. I wondered what these shadowy figures were doing in the woods on foggy nights unless they were transporting something or working about some building. But Mr. Alden would know if it had anything to do with the house or the stable. Since he was sick, the boat-house might be their objective without his knowing it. I suspected the truth then. Such an opportunity! No one would doubt the property of a man who manufactured ammunition for the government. The natural thought was that any attempts by Germans here would be directed against the furnaces or Alden personally. It was ideal. All that was necessary was to scare the servants away and keep Alden in the house while his wife and the rest made ready for it."
"Still those men in the woods?" Garth asked.
"They were probably working at the furnaces. When you saw them they were on their way to the boat-house to make the necessary alterations. And, of course, they carried all the supplies there. You see, I went to the freight agent of the only railroad that runs to Deacon's Bay. He helped me a lot. We found that a large number of heavy cases had been sent here and to nearby stations, falsely invoiced and labelled to be called for. He had suspected gasolene in one of them and was about to hold up further shipments. That settled it for me. I knew you were going blindly, so I took the next train."
"How did you learn about the signal?" he asked.
"I came very quietly," she answered, "a little like a sneak-thief, I'm afraid. That front window is a little open. I overheard Mrs. Alden and a huge man. Of course she was only to light that signal if the game was wholly up. It meant to them that there was a party big enough to handle the lot of them. So I made up my mind I must slip in and burn it to-night, in case it was near by. I knew then they would burn the evidence, escape themselves, while the submarine would turn back, believing that the game was up."
"What a base!" he muttered. "With the trans-atlantic lanes at its mercy. All those transports and freighters marked for destruction! Alden saved the fat."
"Yes," Nora answered, "I gathered from what they said that he made sure to-night somehow and faced her with it. That was when she screamed and tried to send you out. Then her courage failed her and she called you back. She wasn't strong enough for murder. And from her point of view what she did was pure patriotism."
"It was because he suspected his wife, poor devil," Garth answered, "that he'd tell me nothing. I guess he hoped I'd convince him he was wrong."
He had been staring at the fire. He looked up now to find that Nora was knitting complacently on something heavy and comfortable and grey. Her eyes were thoughtful.
"Wife against husband," she mused. "Such tragedies are common in war. And she loved him. Have you noticed the conservatory door?"
It stood open. Through the glass Garth could see the far sea, still ruddy from the fire, and there entered again into his consciousness the restless clamor of water.
"He made me open it," Nora went on. "He looked out there until he went to sleep—a sort of farewell, a welcome if she should come back. Perhaps she will some day."
Such devotion stirred anew in Garth the sensations he had experienced in the conservatory. He watched Nora as her fingers moved with their accustomed deftness about her knitting. She made the old picture, lovable and tempting, of quiet, house-wifely efficiency.
"You always knit," he said in an uncertain voice.
"Another winter is very close," she answered gravely, "and if the peace should be delayed there would be so much suffering—"
He stretched out his hand.
"Nora," he said huskily, "you've saved my life to-night. It's yours. What will you do with it?"
She glanced up. She smiled a little.
"You very nearly took mine, Jim, so aren't we quits?"