"You should tell that by all means, Mr. Alsop," he said in a low voice. "That's what I want to find out. If I don't get some explanation of that I'll doubt my sanity."
Alsop cleared his throat.
"A ghost story," he said with an attempt at a laugh. "Fact is, Marvin and I and some of the servants are haunted by a veiled woman."
Nora came closer. The inspector turned back to the fire a little contemptuously. But Garth had no doubt that this hard-headed business man was serious.
"Go on," he said softly. "You think this ghost is connected with a dangerous conspiracy against you?"
"I can only tell you facts and let you judge," Alsop answered. "I daresay you know about my house on the river near the city line. It is lonely for that neighbourhood, and very old. I've always heard stories about a ghost, a veiled woman on the upper floor—some connection with the suicide of a beautiful girl long ago. You know the sort of thing. It's always told about old houses. The point is, I saw that veiled woman last night, and she gave me rather too much evidence of spirituality."
"Why do you connect a ghost with anarchists?" the inspector demanded.
"Because," Alsop answered, perfectly seriously, "I believe the thing was after my papers."
Garth laughed outright.
"Then why suspect your visitor of being a ghost?"
"Because," Alsop said patiently, "this visitor had every appearance of walking through a locked door."
Nora alone was thoroughly impressed.
"Tell us," she urged.
"I've a safe in my room," Alsop said, "and as an extra precaution, when I've had important papers at the house, I've locked my door. I went upstairs late last night. There was no light in the upper hall, but a glow came from the lamps downstairs. In this sort of radiance I saw the figure of a woman, clothed in white, her face hidden behind a white veil, come apparently from my room, cross the hall, and disappear. I cried out. I sprang for the door. It was locked. Marvin and I searched the house. My daughters are in Florida. The only women in the place were servants. There seemed no way in or out of the house without the collusion of one of these. And I've had them a long time. It's hard to suspect them. Besides, Marvin has had much the same experience. Tell them, Arthur."
"As a motive," Marvin said slowly, "I might mention the fact that I often take my work upstairs—letters of Mr. Alsop's to answer, statements to make out. The first time the thing happened was Thursday night. It must have been after midnight. I was in bed. I awakened with that uncomfortable feeling of being no longer alone. At first I saw nothing. The only light in the room came from a dying moon. I had been nervous for several nights, fearing an attempt on Mr. Alsop. I never could get him to take that very seriously until to-day. At any rate, after a long time, I saw this figure that Mr. Alsop describes. It did not seem to come from anywhere."
He commenced to pace up and down the room. There was about the sudden gesture of his hand a despairing belief that shocked Garth.
"The thing—white veil and all—seemed to materialize out of nothing. It moved softly about the room as if searching—searching. I thought of the letters on my desk. I called out instinctively, 'Who's there?' There was no reply. The figure did not hurry. It stepped behind a screen by the fireplace. I sprang up and went there. I couldn't believe the evidence of my eyes. There was no one—nothing behind the screen. I examined the door. It was locked as I had left it, with the key on the inside. There was no way in or out of that room. Yet the veiled woman had been there, and had gone, leaving no trace."
"The windows," Garth said, "or the fireplace?"
Marvin shook his head.
"The windows were scarcely open, and a fire burned in the fireplace. And, mind you, this was before Mr. Alsop had seen the woman. I mean, he had not suggested the vision to me. The same thing happened last night. That figure came searching and disappeared in the same impossible way. I knew I wasn't dreaming then. I spoke of it to Mr. Alsop. It frightens me. I want an explanation of that."
"Catch your enemies and you'll catch your ghost," Garth said drily. "I'd like a shot at both."
"What you want," the inspector said to Alsop and Marvin, "is protection for yourselves and your distinguished guests. What the police want is to catch these fellows red-handed. We'll try to fit the two things. Don't lose your nerve. Go ahead with your conference, and trust Garth to find out how your veiled woman gets in and out of the house and through locked doors. I should say if we find her we should have the brains of the conspiracy. There may be no danger for you to-night. We've only Brown's post card to go on. That looks serious, and I'll do my best to protect you. But you must give me every chance to nab these birds. This sort of thing's getting too bold. There's too much foreign propaganda in this country. It would please me to throw the fear of Uncle Sam into such people."
And when Nora had gone to the door with Alsop and Marvin, he called Garth over, and hurriedly whispered:
"It's a big chance, Garth, but dangerous as dynamite. These fellows won't hesitate to blow that house up if they can't block Alsop's dirty politics any other way. And remember, you're fighting a woman who behaves like a ghost. Take it from me, she's the one you've got to be afraid of. She has the brains."
"If I could get something out of Brown," Garth mused.
"Maybe he's conscious now," the inspector said. "Run up to the hospital, then look over the neighborhood where he was found. Come back here by five, and we'll lay our plans."
Nora stopped Garth in the hall.
"Jim," she breathed, "you're going to take this case?"
"Surely. I've only to lay a ghost. That ought to be simple."
She hesitated.
"I've been thinking," she said, "and I wish you wouldn't go, because it will be hard, terribly hard—with death always in the way."
Garth, in spite of Nora's fears, went confidently enough to the hospital. If he could learn all Brown knew the case should be easy sailing.
In Brown's room the blinds were down. The greenish light scarcely found the upturned face. It sought rather the bandage, ghastly and white, wound thickly about the head. From time to time Brown's lips moved with a pitiful futility. Garth, while the nurse cautioned him to silence, bent closer, so that at last he could define the pallid face and the closed eyelids that trembled. Suddenly the eyes opened. From them into Garth's brain sprang an impression of immeasurable terror as if they still secreted the outline of some monstrous vision.
Garth started back as the injured man, apparently spurred by that recollection, struggled to rise, sat bolt upright, his head swaying drunkenly, while from his wide throat vibrated an accusing and despairing cry:
"The veiled woman! Oh, my God! The veiled woman!"
Garth's nerves tightened. Again that incredible feature of the case startled him. Here was proof he needed. The figure that had frightened Alsop and Marvin was probably involved in the attack on Brown. The inspector was right. She was the brains of the affair. Brown must tell him all he knew. He urged the man desperately.
"Take hold of yourself! You've seen this woman! You've got to talk to me!"
But Brown screamed incoherently with a diminishing power. The nurse had run into the hall. Through the open doorway her voice tore anxiously, summoning a house physician.
Garth's feeling of a desperate helplessness increased. Before him was the knowledge that would safeguard Alsop and his friends, that would insure Garth's own life, that would destroy, perhaps, a dangerous foreign influence, and the man couldn't speak.
At last the nurse's calls seemed to seep through the bandage into that tortured brain, suggesting the necessity for caution. In a whisper coherent words came again from the trembling lips.
"For God's sake, don't look behind the white veil! No! No! I have. That's madness!"
The doctor slipped in and hurried to the bedside. In response to his touch Brown lay down.
"Don't dope him," Garth begged. "That man knows things on which many lives depend. He must tell them to me before night. When will he be able to talk straight?"
The doctor smiled tolerantly.
"You don't seem to understand. A frightful fracture at the base of the brain. He seems inclined to be quiet enough now."
The doctor turned away. Garth followed him to the door, urging him to use his skill to make Brown talk. The nurse had remained by the bed. Garth heard her sharp cry through his own pleading. The sound puzzled him because it was a trifle strangled. The doctor, however, turned like a flash and hurried back to the bed. Garth looked. The nurse bent over the bandaged head. The doctor fumbled quickly beneath the bed clothes. He arose, glanced at Garth, and spread his hands. Garth picked at his hat, unwilling to believe.
"You mean," he whispered, "that he's—gone?"
The doctor nodded. The nurse sobbed once. Garth had not noticed how young her face was.
The block where the murdered man had been found was flanked by long rows of similar houses. Its cobblestones, unfriendly to traffic, made it an ideal place for the brutal deception which had been attempted.
Opposite the spot where Brown had been picked up Garth paused and looked curiously across the street. The dreary house line was broken there by a number of basement and first-story shops. His eyes, alert for the unusual, had found it. A basement window displayed intricately patterned rugs, lamps of the Orient, unfamiliar and barbaric jewelry. The fact that he had not noticed the window sooner testified to a significant discretion in its arrangement. It was, he fancied, designed less to attract curiosity than to satisfy it once it was aroused. Probably it was that idea that suggested a fantastic connection between what he had heard at the flat and the hospital and what he saw now. Half derisively he recalled that Oriental women went veiled—customarily secreted their faces behind white veils.
He had intended entering all these shops and houses in search of a witness of the attack on Brown. He determined now to proceed rather more warily. Suppose Brown spying, or about to spy, had been assaulted in one of these basements—for instance, in the Oriental shop which had straightway aroused his interest?
He crossed the street and darted quickly down the steps from one side, so that he was sure he had taken by surprise whoever was in the place. What he saw was sufficient proof of his success, and his special detective sense was immediately impressed by much that was ominous in the shadowed room. The echoes of such an attack as Brown had suffered could have been easily smothered here.
Rugs were draped against the walls or flung at haphazard on the floor. Carved tables supported lacquer work. From a glass case jewelry gleamed with a dull beauty. But it was on the rear of the shop that Garth's eyes rested, while a cold fear grasped him.
A long, low divan sprawled there against a tapestry hanging of a colorful and grotesque design. On this divan, seated cross-legged, was the figure of a man, at first quite motionless, like an image in a somber and guarded temple. He wore a fez, set formally on his head. One hand clasped the sinuous stem of a water pipe.
The round, flaccid, repulsive face defied classification. Garth could not be sure whether it was Egyptian, Turkish, Arabian, or Semitic. He only knew that it was evil and accustomed to perfect control, for he suspected that his rapid entrance had made the concealment of the fez and the alteration of that ritual attitude impossible. In a matter-of-fact tone Garth spoke of examining the rugs and antiques.
The figure did not stir. The sallow face remained as if carved. The only motion in the room was a lazy curling from the water pipe of white smoke which faded in the darkened, perfumed air. Then the curtain moved stealthily at one end, disclosing a dark face of a Levantine cast. This man came through, carefully replacing the curtain behind him, stroked his bony hands, and demanded Garth's desires. The immobility of the cross-legged creature ceased. The stem of the water pipe as he raised it to his mouth writhed in sinuous curves. He commenced to puff. The water bubbled unevenly.
Garth examined the rugs with growing excitement. He was prepared to believe that he had stumbled on a meeting place. And after all wasn't this an ideal rendezvous? The shop had probably been here for years. The town was full of such stores. At any rate his impression of a calculated evil increased. He felt himself the object of suspicion. It was conceivable to him that he might suffer a fate similar to Brown's—perhaps behind that hideous curtain which the Levantine and the cross-legged figure seemed to guard.
Garth started. The unequal bubbling of the pipe had accompanied all his thoughts. Constantly it would pause, then recommence. The idea which had been struggling unconsciously in the detective's brain took shape. That uneven bubbling possessed a significance beyond the pleasures of nicotine. It suggested a means of communication, a code.
While he bargained with the Levantine his confidence in this eccentric explanation increased. It condemned the occupants of the shop. Whether or not the men were connected with the plot Brown had feared against Alsop, they were decidedly objects of interest to the police. Still, if Brown had spied here, the danger was obvious. The Levantine and the man in the fez were sinister opponents. Yet Garth wanted to see behind that grotesque curtain.
For a time, listening to the bubbling, he wondered if they would let him leave the shop at all. He was in no hurry to go until he had made sure of one or two things. While fingering a rug he managed stealthily to examine the wall. It was about what he had hoped, what he had expected. The house was very old. It was one of a row built simultaneously before the fire laws had amounted to much. He was sure that the dividing walls between these basements were not fireproof. As nearly as he could tell from the surface he examined, they would probably be lath-and-plaster, with, perhaps, rubble in the space between. His next step was to measure as accurately as he could with his eye the distance between the entrance and the curtain, which was like a ceremonial background for the man in the fez. Stooping to inspect one of the rugs, he struck the flooring with his fist, as if by accident. He was satisfied. There was no cellar beneath this basement. He dared hope that he would see what lay behind the curtain.
Approximating as nearly as he could the subtleties of a buyer, he promised to make up his mind and return with his decision the next morning. He knew that sharp and angry eyes followed him from the shop.
He had a feeling that the darkened place had become active as soon as he had turned his back.
He walked slowly to the corner, studying the houses on either side of the shop. The one to the right was a cheap boarding house. The one on the other side was evidently a private dwelling.
At the nearest hardware store he bought an auger and a screwdriver. Then he entered the alley that bisected the block, and, counting the houses, knocked at the kitchen door of the one to the right of the Oriental shop. The servant who admitted him verified his hazard. At this hour the occupants were at work. She was, for the present, alone in the house.
Garth showed her his badge, warned her to make no noise, and to stay close to him. The girl, frightened and unable to comprehend, followed him into the basement. He paced from the front of the house along the wall to a point which, according to his calculations, was opposite the hidden portion of the shop. He glanced up then with satisfaction. Against a thin and antiquated partition was suspended one of those heavy and unwieldy gas meters which are found only in very old buildings.
Garth drew up a table, climbed upon it, and examined the thick screws which held the contrivance in place. With his screwdriver he commenced noiselessly to remove one of these. He thought it likely that the screw hole would go all the way through. If it did not, his auger would complete the journey. He instructed the girl to draw the blinds and close the door so that the room would be darker. He pulled the screw from the rotten wall. The aperture was sufficiently large. It admitted the repellent odor he had noticed in the shop; so he put his eye to the hole and waited for his brain to accustom itself to these new conditions.
The drone of voices reached him, but at first he could see very little—shadowy outlines circling a dull, glowing thing close to the floor—a brazier, he decided, about which men sat. Then he started, for he thought he saw something long and white, like a woman. But the smoke from the aperture hurt his eye. He had to close it. When he opened it again there was nothing white, but out of the droning voices came words in English with a foreign accent, and he crouched against the wall, listening.
He marveled that he should hear just these words at this particular moment.
"The police are suspicious," he heard, "so it's been put ahead. At nine o'clock to-night. Two raps on the west door at Alsop's. The veiled woman will open the door and take the bomb, and then, by God, we'll show them!"
A sibilant demand for caution reached Garth. The droning recommenced. Garth fancied that it continued in the guttural accents of some eastern dialect.
He replaced the screw. He got down from the table, able to plan definitely. Against her protests, he took the girl to headquarters and warned the matron to let her communicate with no one before nine-thirty. He hurried to the flat then, and told the inspector and Nora of Brown's death and of his experience at the shop.
"That's where Brown was struck," he ended, "and Brown was right. They are after Alsop and his crowd to-night with dynamite, and the veiled woman's the figure of chief danger. Do you know, chief, I'm going to let them hand her that bomb, then I'll try to handle her."
The inspector shook his head.
"It's taking too big chances to let them get as far as the house with the thing."
"It's the veiled woman I'm thinking of," Garth answered. "Grab these people before her share commences, and you'll probably never see her. She'll bob up here and there, causing infinite trouble, because everything she does has the marks of a fiendish cleverness. Let me take the risk and land her."
"It's utter madness your way," Nora said quietly. "How could you control her with a thing like that in her hands?"
"I think I can take care of her and the bomb, too," Garth said quietly.
The inspector thought for a long time. It was clear the idea tempted him. If Garth could ambush the mysterious creature at the proper moment, her capture would be certain. His own share in the night's work was simple. He had arranged to surround the Alsop place quietly with his best detectives. They would keep themselves hidden. They would permit the conspirators to enter the grounds. Garth, at the house, would use his own judgment. When he blew his whistle this small army would close in and make the arrests. Meantime the Oriental shop would be raided. The dictaphone, which undoubtedly carried the signaling of the pipe, would probably lead the police to another rendezvous.
"It looks like a big haul," the inspector said. "We can't let Alsop's ghost slip us."
With a grumbled oath the inspector tossed his blankets aside and lumbered to his feet. He stood for a moment swaying against the chair. His pudgy fingers tore at the bandage about his throat. Nora ran to him and grasped his arm.
"What are you doing, father?"
"Haven't you any eyes?" he roared. "Getting well. I'm tired being sick. I want to get on this job. Working, I can cough my head off as comfortably as I can sitting here."
Nora spread her hands.
"You are both mad," she said. "You both want to take too great risks—impossible risks."
Garth was warmed by her concern for him. For the first time since their quarrel in the house with the hidden door the barrier of reserve which had risen between them lost a little its solidity.
The inspector had gone into his bedroom. From the sounds there Garth gathered that the huge man fought his way into his clothing. Nora stared helplessly from the door to Garth and back again. Then he saw resolution tighten the lines of her face. Her eyes flashed. She laughed. Without shaking hands she turned and walked to the door of the inspector's room.
"Good-by, Jim," she called. "I suppose I'll have to look after this reckless one first."
Garth went. Nora's words and manner had made him a trifle uneasy. Little time, however, remained for speculation. It was seven o'clock when he had completed his arrangements. He took the subway to Harlem and continued in a taxicab.
Alsop's great wealth permitted him a rural loneliness even in this expensive neighborhood. Garth dismissed the cab at the edge of a wide property along the river, made sure he had not been followed, then climbed the fence, and entered a thick piece of woods.
Certainly nature favored the police as thoroughly as it did the conspirators. There was no moon, and sullen clouds hid the stars.
Suddenly in the dense obscurity of the woods he experienced that sensation Marvin had described of no longer being alone. He paused and waited, scarcely breathing, aware of the dangers, perhaps fatal, that might lurk for him here. And, as he stood, not knowing what to expect, he wondered if the veiled woman was abroad in the woods. He became filled with a passionate desire to learn her identity. The somber, perfumed atmosphere of the shop came back to him. There were odd things in the Orient—happenings, apparently occult, for which no explanation had ever been offered. Marvin was young and imaginative, but Alsop was not the type to be frightened by fancies, yet both of these men believed that the woman could pass through locked doors, that she could appear and disappear as she wished. And Brown had said that to look behind the veil was madness. Was she abroad in these woods? He had waited for some time. There was nothing. He stepped forward.
Immediately he knew there was someone. He sprang aside, whipping out his revolver, crouching against an expected attack; for a figure blacker than the night had glided in his path from behind a tree trunk, and the hands carried something round, black—
"Put that thing down," Garth whispered, "then up with your hands!"
Her laugh barely reached him.
"I thought it was you, Jim."
He dropped his revolver in his pocket and strode forward, angry and anxious.
"What are you doing here, Nora?"
He laughed uncomfortably.
"For a minute I looked for the veiled woman."
"I've come," she said confidently, "for her, and to see that you don't throw your life away, because you won't admit the possibility of incomprehensible forces."
"You must go back," he said. "What's in that bundle you're carrying?"
She held the bundle up, and Garth touched it. It was a soft substance wrapped in a black shawl.
"What is it?" he repeated.
"A white gown," she answered simply, "and a white veil, so that I may take the bomb after I have trapped this queer creature; so that I may talk to these men and learn how wide the organization is."
She argued logically enough that there was less risk this way than the other. Once she had the bomb in her hands the great danger would be over. Try as he might, Garth could not move her. She walked on towards the house.
They paused at the edge of the woods. The dark, vague mass of the building frowned at them. The windows, Garth gathered, were heavily curtained, for no gleam of light escaped.
"I am going in with you, Jim, to see it through," Nora whispered. "Don't be disapproving. I only want to help."
Impulsively he grasped her hand. For a moment he forgot the restraint she had forced upon him.
"Nora," he said hoarsely, "since I lost my temper with Black, you've not been kind. You know I want you with all my heart—"
Through the darkness her voice was filled with wistful regret and sympathy. It reminded him again that her tragic love affair, preceding their capture of Slim and George, still touched her with fingers of sorrow; had not yet given her time to adjust herself to this new ardor.
"Hush! You were not to speak of that."
But he would not let her hand go.
"And you—will you ever speak?" he asked.
"I don't know," she answered dully.
She snatched her hand away. Her voice rose.
"Don't you see? It's because I don't know that I can't let you take such chances with death. That's why I'm here, Jim."
Inside the house the atmosphere of danger reached Garth more positively than it had done even through Brown's unreasoning terror. Alsop and Marvin met them in the hall. Both were white-faced and nervous. Through the open door of a library Garth saw five men in evening clothes gathered about a table which was littered with papers. Alsop closed the door.
"I hope you and the inspector are satisfied," he jeered. "We're properly trapped."
"The house is surrounded by detectives," Garth said. "We've arranged to take care of the one with the bomb. For there is a bomb, Mr. Alsop. There's no point lying about that."
Alsop scarcely made an effort to hide his fear.
"How are your detectives outside going to help us in here?"
He pointed to the closed door of the library.
"All my figures, all of my plans that I've ever put on paper I've brought out here for the first time to-night for this conference. Don't you suppose those devils know? And that thing—you can laugh at me if you like—I tell you that thing in white is after them. When I went upstairs just now to bring them from the safe I felt it. Isawsomething white, and I ran down. Ask Marvin. I'm afraid. I acknowledge it. Stay in this house with that—that influence, then if you'll tell me I'm a coward I'll believe it."
"I'm not sneering," Garth said grimly. "As a matter of fact we know your veiled woman is actually to be in this house at nine o'clock. It's likely enough she's upstairs now in some hidden corner after failing to steal your papers. I'll search every rat hole, because you can take it for granted her apparent magic is pure trickery, and if she isn't to be found upstairs we've a net arranged down here for her a little later."
He explained briefly the arrangement that Nora's presence and her disguise had made possible. Alsop and Marvin were not impressed.
"Better find out what you can now," Alsop advised.
He nodded at Marvin. Garth and Nora followed the secretary towards the stairs. Suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath, Garth turned, grasped Nora's arm, and drew her back.
"Alsop," he whispered excitedly, "I don't give a hang how long you've had your servants, or how much you trust them. The thing's obvious anyway. Nora! You saw that?"
Nora nodded. Her eyes were wide.
"What do you mean?" Alsop gasped.
Without answering Garth ran down the hallway and flung the curtain at the end to one side. Across a wide dining-room he saw a woman, slender and middle-aged. Her attitude was of flight. Her hand rested on the knob of the farther door. As Garth called sharply for Alsop she opened the door and went through. Alsop had only a glimpse.
"It's my housekeeper," he said. "She's worked here for twenty years. Certainly there's nothing wrong there."
"I wonder." Nora spoke softly. "Such people are clever enough to involve one's own family against one. She can't leave the house anyway. Suppose, Jim, we look upstairs."
While Alsop, angry and at a loss, went back to the library, Garth and Nora climbed to the upper hall. Garth supposed that Marvin would have made a light for them, but of all the doors that opened from the stair landing one alone was wide, and no light gleamed through that.
"Marvin!" he called, and again: "Marvin! Marvin!"
He was aware of Nora's shivering. He glanced at her. The color had left her cheeks.
"Something's wrong up here, Jim," she said. "I know it. I feel it. Don't you feel anything strange? You heard him come up, and after what Mr. Alsop said—where is he? Why doesn't he answer?"
Garth stepped forward. Nora reached out and grasped his arms. The quality of her voice startled him.
"Don't go in there without a light, Jim."
He shook off her hands. He entered the dark room, and immediately he knew she had been right, that he had advanced too precipitately. He stumbled against something soft and yielding, and went down, stretching out his hand to save himself. He knew what his fingers had found. He snatched them away with a little cry:
"Get back to the hall, Nora!"
But he heard no movement from her, so, since he didn't dare wait, he took his flashlight from his pocket, pressed the control, and turned the ray on the features his hand had touched in the dark. Marvin was stretched, face downward on the floor near the head of the bed. His arm lay beyond his head, pitiful evidence that he had reached for the electric light switch which had been just beyond his grasp.
Nora with a reluctant air had come closer. Crying out her horror, she indicated the collar, at the back of Marvin's neck.
"Blood!"
Garth nodded.
"Like Brown. The same place as Brown's wound."
Nora covered her face with her hands.
Garth sprang up, unconsciously quoting Brown's words:
"That's madness!"
He ran to the bathroom and brought water with which he bathed Marvin's face and head. He looked up after a moment with a sigh of relief.
"It was only a glancing blow," he said. "He'll come around."
Marvin, indeed, before long stirred, and tried to struggle to a sitting posture as Brown had done. He cried out, as Brown had cried:
"The veiled woman!"
"You see," Nora breathed.
Garth lifted the secretary to the bed, but when, to an extent, the man had recovered consciousness he had nothing reasonable to tell.
He had started, he said, up the stairs, thinking Garth at his heels. He had been about to press the switch.
"I knew she was there," he sobbed. "I saw her—all white, and with a veil over her face. Then I don't know. I don't remember being struck. Everything went black."
Garth with a gesture of determination turned and commenced examining the room. Nora, crouched against the wall, watched him with the assurance of one who sees an evil prophecy fulfilled. After a quarter of an hour he gave it up. There was no one concealed in the room. Nor, he would have sworn, was there any reasonable hiding place. From behind the screen where the veiled woman had evidently disappeared twice there was no possible escape.
"Before long, Marvin," he muttered, "I'll be as bad as you and old Alsop. If you believe in ghosts, Nora, this certainly looks like one."
He glanced at his watch.
"Are you still anxious to try that plan of yours after what you've seen?"
She nodded. She went uncertainly from the room. Marvin stumbled after them. They helped him down the stairs and to a sofa in the lower hall. Garth led Nora to the west door.
"We've less than ten minutes," he said, "and I don't understand. I'd rather you kept out of it."
In silence and with determination she slipped on the white gown she had brought and draped the white veil over her face. Garth, shaking his head, arranged a screen just within the doorway. He turned out the electric lamp, lighted a single candle, and placed it on a stand at some distance.
"Wait behind the screen," he said. "Actually, Nora, unless we are dealing with something beyond the human, the result is certain. I shall be at the other end of the hall just within the library door. Anybody coming from the interior of the house must pass me. I'll grab the woman. I'll see she makes no outcry. I'll keep her out of the way for she must be human to that extent. When you hear the two raps open the door and take the bomb. According to Alsop's description you won't be suspected in this light. A little over five minutes! I'll get Alsop and his crew out of the library and where their precious skins will be safe."
He touched her hand in farewell. Her fingers were very cold. She shivered and slipped behind the screen. He went to the library, knocked, entered, and closed the door. The faces that greeted him were restless with misgiving.
"I want you all out of this room now, please," Garth said. "I've delayed moving you as long as I dared, so, if anything goes wrong, those outside won't know you have left. Take them to the back part of the house, Mr. Alsop. Into the cellar, if you like. It's safest. In fifteen or twenty minutes I hope you will be able to resume your conference in perfect security."
Without words the men gathered up their papers and filed out.
Garth, left alone in the room, turned out the light, went to the window, slipped behind the curtain, opened the casement, and peered through.
The darkness was still unrelieved. Through that darkness, he knew, men crept on an errand of fanaticism and death. Through that silence he was momentarily expectant of the audible evidence of their approach. But he could hear nothing, see nothing. He couldn't wait. It was necessary for him to go to the door from behind which he was to ambush the veiled woman in order that Nora might take her place.
As he thrust the curtain aside a thin, tinkling sound stole from the silence of the room. He felt his way to the telephone and lifted the receiver.
"Hello!" he whispered. "Hello!"
The inspector's hoarse voice came to him, lowered to a note of caution.
"You, Garth? I'm in the gardener's cottage. Tell me Alsop and his people are safe."
"Yes," Garth said. "Hurry! Hurry! What's up?"
"For Heaven's sake, be careful," the inspector answered, "because, Garth, all your dope was right. There are four of them in the grounds now, and one carries a thing that looks like a bomb. Are you going to get away with it? The veiled woman—"
"She's in the house," Garth murmured. "I'm waiting. I must go. Hush! I hear—"
He broke off. Through the appalling quietness of the house he had heard distinctly from the direction of the west door two sharp raps. He flashed his light at the clock over the mantel. Its hands pointed exactly to nine o'clock. Yet he had seen no one pass the dim frame of the library doorway—nothing white.
He ran through. In the wan candle light he could see the slender figure in the white gown and the flowing veil slip from behind the screen and open the door. Then Nora would get the bomb, but where was the real veiled woman? What unaccountable intuition had warned her away?
Garth slipped along the hall, clinging to the shadow of a tapestry. He knew from the black patch at the end of the corridor that the door was wide. In that dark patch he suddenly saw the silhouette of a man. The hands were stretched out as if to meet the hands which Nora appeared to offer for the bomb. But the man carried no bomb. In the dim light Garth thought at first that he carried nothing. Then he understood his mistake, and he cried out, drawing his own revolver, darting forward:
"Nora! Look out!"
He had seen that the man's fingers fondled an automatic, raised it, aimed it at the confident, expectant figure.
"For police spies!" the man called.
Before Garth could reach the door the harsh, tearing report of the automatic came, and was repeated twice. There was no question. At that short range each sound from the stubby cylinder was the voice of death. Garth saw the form that he loved sway, clutch at nothing, without a cry crumple and lie motionless across the threshold.
Before the other could turn his gun on him the detective had grappled with the murderer. He bore him to the porch floor and struck him across the temple with the butt of his revolver. Garth arose then, and, scarcely aware of what he did, placed his police whistle at his lips, and blew shrilly through the night.
While he waited for the help that he knew would be too late for Nora or for him, he gazed at the silent, slender form. The veil alone moved, trembling from time to time in the wind which came gently from the woods. That reached the candle also, which flickered, making the light ghastly, unbearable.
Garth shook. He covered his face with his hands, for the dim, unreal illumination had shown him that the figure was no longer completely white. The reason for its stillness exposed a scarlet testimony.
That which Garth had feared but had forgotten in the rush of his more personal terror rent the silence with a chaotic turmoil. A terrific detonation was followed by the shattering of glass. Shouts and curses arose from the house. Someone hurried across the drive and up the steps. Garth was aware of a heavy hand on his shoulder. He glanced up at the inspector's startled face. Suddenly the detective realized that the old man had no misgivings for Nora. At this moment, with the white form at his feet, he must picture her quietly, safely at home. Garth moved away, but the inspector grasped him again.
"What's the matter with you? You've let them use their infernal bomb. You're responsible for Alsop and his people."
"They're safe," Garth answered.
The candle still burned. In its wan and flickering light he indicated the still, white figure.
"The veiled woman!" the inspector said. "Dead!"
He stooped swiftly.
"You've done well here anyway, Garth. Let's have a look."
Frantically Garth snatched at his arm and tried to pull him away.
"Don't look! Not you!"
The inspector glanced up amazed. Garth knelt with a gesture of despair.
"What's that?" the inspector whispered, and his voice was suddenly afraid. Garth followed his glance. From the black shadows of the woods a white figure glided. Its face was hidden beneath a white cloth.
Garth's shaking fingers reached out and lifted the stained veil from the silent form. He drew back. His cry was like a sob. For a long time the inspector and Garth stared at the features, apprehensive even in death, of the secretary, Marvin.
Nora, who ran up the steps crying out her fear for those in the house, gave Garth no opportunity for questions or for the expression of that relief which shook him with a power nearly physical. Even the inspector, after his first shock of surprise, had no time to demand the particulars of her share in the night's work.
The four prisoners were brought to the hall. They knew they must stand trial for Brown's death as well as for this attempt. The one who had shot Marvin and who had gone down before Garth's attack was still dazed. Garth identified him as the man who had disguised himself as an Oriental in the shop. The sharp face of the Levantine twitched with hatred and fright. The other two, although he knew the type, the detective had never seen before. They boasted openly that the shop had been only an outpost for this affair. Through a dictaphone and the telegraphy of the pipe, instructions had been sent to and from their headquarters. To-night, they declared, the shop had ceased to be useful. No trail would lead from it to the central force that worked in New York.
As they drove home in a taxicab the inspector bitterly lamented the fact to Garth and Nora.
"We'll get to it later," Garth said.
"If only things hadn't gone wrong at the last minute!" Nora cried. "If only I might have taken the bomb and talked to the man who brought it! Even with the others! For it's clear those fellows will give nothing away now. We can blame poor Marvin that I never had a chance."
"What do you mean?" Garth asked. "You haven't told us what happened when I left you by the west door."
"You remember we had got Marvin on a sofa in the hall," Nora answered. "He must have seen you close the door when you went in the library to warn Alsop and the others, because from my hiding place I saw him get up, and, with no appearance of an injured man, sneak along the wall to the stairs. I followed him up, and, Jim, I found him on the floor in his room again, but this time he didn't hear me, and he was talking. Then I saw his whole game. There was a dictaphone hidden beneath the bed with which he had probably communicated with those outside the house for days. We had stopped him the first time when he had just learned of my intended masquerade. Don't you see? He had to tell them that. We caught him, and he scratched himself to throw us off the track with the details of another case like Brown's. Now I heard him tell everything—just what I was to do, and that Alsop and the others were in the library. I ran downstairs, but when I reached the lower hall I saw him coming after me. So I said I had changed my mind, that I was afraid, that I wanted only to leave the house. I went to the kitchen and slipped out, intending to get to you, Jim, with my information. But I knew these men were in the grounds, and I had to go carefully. When I crept up to the library window I thought I saw you. Then the telephone bell rang, and I couldn't make you hear."
"Of course," Garth said, "Marvin, coming down, had seen that the library door was open, and that there was no longer a light there. It was too late to use the dictaphone again, but he knew he must change his instructions and tell them not to waste the bomb in the library. So he threw on his disguise and rushed to the west door as he had originally planned, in too much of a hurry to dream such a mistake could happen. I suppose he got past while I was at the window."
"Marvin," the inspector mused, "was just the man for them. Probably full of wild-eyed ideas, and feeling a divine call to help smash Alsop. I hold no brief for that millionaire. I understand he had to work, like most everybody else, for what he's got, and maybe that's the reason he can't understand these new social notions. And far be it from me to say anything about Marvin's grand thoughts, although it may be his share in this affair was made worth his while. My part in life is to see that the law's kept, and I guess without the law there wouldn't be anything much worth while for anybody to fight over. These rough boys had certainly fixed Marvin to help them break the law into little bits of pieces. So maybe he deserves just what he got. Alsop tells me he didn't trust any of his employés with his schemes for putting a stop to socialistic movements in his concerns, and that's where the big hitch came. Marvin, whenever he knew there were private papers in the house, was always searching. He had a key to Alsop's door. He used that old ghost story, and dressed himself up in case any of the servants should see him. Their fright would give him time to cover himself. When Alsop did catch him he came across with the terrible experiences he had had himself with the veiled woman. Ought to have got on to him before."
"It wasn't easy to suspect him," Nora said, "particularly after we had seen the housekeeper's curiosity, and had found him, apparently unconscious, in his room. He was really too frightened at the flat, and we might have suspected when Jim heard those directions at the shop. Such luck as that doesn't often happen. It's easily explained now. The time it took you, Jim, to go to the hospital and to visit the shop was just the time he needed to return to Wall Street with Mr. Alsop, make some excuse, and get into the shop by a back way to receive his new orders. It was simple enough."
The inspector grunted.
"If we saw all the simple things there'd be no need for detectives."
He commenced to cough with a persistent vehemence.
"Take me home, Nora," he groaned. "Back to the fireplace and the flannel for the old man. You're always right, Nora. Isn't she always right, Garth?"
But Garth, recalling that moment before Nora and he had entered the Alsop house, shook his head. Nora must have seen and understood, for she laughed lightly.
"Maybe she is," Garth said thoughtfully, "but sometimes I wonder."
Alsop was around the next day, loud with generosity, and anxious to give Garth the only form of reward he could understand—large sums of money. Garth, however, didn't care for the man. He preferred to keep their relations on a purely business basis.
"I only did my duty, Mr. Alsop," he said. "Some day I may break away from here and start an office of my own. In that case, if you cared to mention me to your friends I would feel I had been well repaid."
"Maybe you were a little too proud, Garth," the inspector grunted afterwards.
Nora, however, when she heard of it, said simply, "Jim, you did perfectly right. If you had taken money from that man he'd have believed he owned you body and soul."
"When you two combine against me I've nothing more to say," the inspector grinned.
Garth knew that the old man watched, with something like anxiety himself, the progress of his and Nora's friendship. The detective had long since made up his mind not to speak to the inspector on that subject until he had received some definite encouragement from the girl. The inspector himself brought up the matter about this time. Probably the impulse came from the trial of Slim and George which began and threatened, in spite of its clear evidence, to drag through several weeks.
It would be necessary, of course, for both Garth and Nora to testify sooner or later. So they rehearsed all the incidents of that night when Garth had worn the grey mask. After this exercise one evening the inspector followed Garth to the hall.
"I don't want my girl to become morbid, Jim."
Garth nodded.
"You mean Kridel?"
"You've said it," the big man answered with an attempt at a whisper. "I've thought that maybe you and Nora—See here, Jim, I wouldn't mind a bit. You see Nora's mother was Italian. I don't altogether understand her, but I know it isn't natural for her to mourn for this fellow forever, and I mean, if you and she ever hit it off, I won't forbid the banns. Only maybe you'll let me live with you now and then. You don't know what that girl means to me, Jim; but I want to make her happy, and I believe you're the one, for a blind, deaf, and dumb man could see you are in love with her."
Garth laughed, not altogether comfortably.
"It's up to Nora, chief, but I don't see how I can ever get along without her."
It wasn't often that the inspector had used Garth's first name. It seemed to bring the detective closer to his goal. During the daytime at headquarters, however, their relations were scarcely altered. Garth often suffered from lack of work there, probably because the inspector didn't care to send him out on unimportant matters that the least imaginative of his men could handle. When he had to assign him to an unpromising task, either to spare him too prolonged idleness, or because no other detective was available, the big man always assumed an apologetic air. It was so when he started him on the mystifying Taylor case.
"Nothing doing these days," he grumbled. "City must be turning pure, Garth. Anyway I got to give it something for its money. Run up and take a look at this suicide. Seems Taylor was a recluse. Alone with his mother-in-law and the servants. Wife's in California. Suppose you had other plans, but I don't see why the city should pay you to talk moonshine to Nora."
He grinned understandingly, encouragingly.
So the detective nodded, strolled up town, and with a bored air stepped into that curious house.
Garth for a long time stared at the pallid features of the dead man. Abruptly his interest quickened. Between the thumb and forefinger of the clenched left hand, which drooped from the side of the bed, a speck of white protruded. The detective stooped swiftly. The hand, he saw, secreted a rough sheet of paper. He drew it free, smoothed the crumpled surface, and with a vast incredulity read the line scrawled across it in pencil.
"Don't think it's suicide. I've been killed—"
There was no more. Until that moment Garth had conceived no doubt of the man's self-destruction. The bullet had entered the left side of the breast. The revolver lay on the counterpane within an inch of the right hand whose fingers remained crooked. The position of the body did not suggest the reception or the resistance of an attack. In the room no souvenir of struggle survived.
Here was this amazing message from the dead man. Its wording, indeed, offered the irrational impression of having been written after death.
Garth thought rapidly. Granted its accusation, the note must have been scrawled between the firing of the shot and the moment of Taylor's death. But a murderer, arranging this appearance of suicide, would have given Taylor no opportunity. On the other hand, the theory that Taylor had written the note before killing himself, perhaps to direct suspicion to some innocent person, broke down before the brief wording, its patent incompleteness. One possibility remained. Garth could imagine no motive, but another person might have prepared the strange message.
A number of books littered the reading table at the side of the bed. Garth examined them eagerly. He found a blank page torn from one—the sheet which Taylor had clenched in his fingers. In another was Taylor's signature. When Garth had compared it with the message on the crumpled paper no doubt remained. Taylor himself had written those obscure and provocative words.
Garth found the pencil on the floor beneath the bed, as if it had rolled there when Taylor had dropped it. The place at the moment had nothing else to offer him beyond an abnormally large array in the bath room of bottles containing for the most part stimulants and sedatives. They merely strengthened, by suggesting that Taylor was an invalid, his appearance of suicide.
The coroner and Taylor's doctor, who came together, only added to the puzzle. The coroner declared unreservedly for suicide, and, in reply to Garth's anxious question, swore that no measurable time could have elapsed between the firing of the shot, which had pierced the heart, and Taylor's death. The physician was satisfied even after Garth confidentially had shown him the note.
"Mr. Taylor," he said then, "understood he had an incurable trouble. Every one knows that his wife, whom he worshipped, had practically left him by going to California for so long. It may have appealed to a grim sense of humour, not unusual with chronic invalids, to puzzle us with that absurdly worded note. I might tell you, too, that Mr. Taylor for some time had had a fear that he might go out of his head. Perpetually he questioned me about insanity, and wanted to know what treatment I would give him if his mind went."
Garth, however, when they had left, went to the library on the lower floor and telephoned headquarters. The inspector agreed that the case held a mystery which must be solved.
Garth walked to the embrasure of a high colonial window. The early winter night was already thick above the world. The huge room was too dark. There was a morbid feeling about the house. He had noticed that coming in, for the place had offered him one of those contrasts familiar to New York, where some antique street cars still rattle over sonorous subways. The Taylor home was a large, colonial frame farmhouse which had eventually been crowded by the modern and extravagant dwellings of a fashionable up-town district. In spite of its generous furnishings it projected even to this successful and materialistic detective a heavy air of the past, melancholy and disturbing.
Garth sighed. He had made up his mind. The best way to get at the truth was to accept for the present the dead man's message at its face value. He turned on the single light above the desk in the center of the room. He arranged a chair so that the glare would search its occupant. He sat opposite in the shadow and pressed a button. Almost at once he heard dragging footsteps in the hall, then a timid rapping at the door. The door opened slowly. A bent old man in livery shuffled across the threshold. It was the servant who had admitted Garth on his arrival a few minutes earlier. The detective indicated the chair on which the light fell.
"Sit down there, please."
As the old man obeyed his limbs shook with a sort of palsy. From his sallow and sunken face, restless, bloodshot eyes gleamed.
"I understand from the doctor," Garth began, "that you are McDonald, Mr. Taylor's trusted servant. The coroner says death occurred last night or early this morning. Tell me why you didn't find the body until nearly four o'clock this afternoon."
The old servant bent forward, placing the palm of his hand against his ear.
"Eh? Eh?"
On a higher key Garth repeated his question. McDonald answered in tremulous tones, clearing his throat from time to time as he explained that because of his master's bad health his orders had been never to disturb him except in cases of emergency. He drew a telegram from his pocket, passing it across to Garth.
"Mrs. Taylor is on her way home from California. I don't think Mr. Taylor knew just what connection she would make at Chicago, but he expected her to-morrow. That telegram sent from the train at Albany says she will be in this afternoon on the Western express. I thought it my duty to disturb him and get him up to welcome her, for he was very fond of her, sir. It will be cruel hard for her to find such a welcome as this."
"Then," Garth said, "you heard no shot?"
McDonald indicated his ears. Garth tugged at his watch chain.
"I must know," he said, "more about the conditions in this house last night."
He had spoken softly, musingly, yet the man, who had displayed the symptoms of a radical deafness, glanced up, asking without hesitation:
"You don't suspect anything out of the way, sir?"
Garth studied him narrowly.
"I want to know why the shot wasn't heard. You were here and Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law. Who else?"
The bony hand snapped to McDonald's ear again.
"Eh? Eh?"
"Speak up," Garth said impatiently. "Who was in the house besides yourself and Mrs. Taylor's mother?"
"The cook, Clara, sir—only the cook, Clara."
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely, sir. Who else should there be? We've been short of servants lately."
Garth dismissed him, instructing him to send Mrs. Taylor's mother. While he waited he stared from the window again, jerking savagely at his watch ribbon. From McDonald he had received a sharp impression of secretiveness. He hadn't cared to arouse the servant's suspicions. Through strategy he might more surely learn whatever the old man had held back.
Garth swung around with a quick intake of breath. He had heard no one enter. Through the obscurity, accented rather than diminished by the circular patch of light around the chair, he could see no one. Yet almost with a sense of vibration there had reached him through the heavy atmosphere of the old house an assurance that he was watched from the shadows. Impulsively he called out:
"Who's that?"
He stepped to the desk so that he could see the portion of the room beyond the light. It was empty. Garth, as such things go, had no nerves, but through his bewilderment a vague uneasiness crept.
He sprang back, turning. A clear, girlish laugh had rippled through the dusk. A high, girlish voice had challenged him.
"Here I am! Hide and seek with the policeman!"
He saw, half hidden in the folds of the curtain at the side of the embrasure in which he had stood, a figure, indistinct, clothed evidently in black. He took it for granted McDonald had sent the girl, Clara, first.
"I wanted Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law," he said. "No matter. Come here, and let me remind you that humor is out of place in a house of death."
Nevertheless the pleasant laugh rippled again. Slowly the dark figure detached itself from the shadows and settled in the chair while Garth watched, his uneasiness drifting into a blank unbelief. He couldn't accept the girlish laughter, the high, coquettish voice as having come from the grey, witch-like hag whom the light now exposed mercilessly.
"I am Mr. Taylor's mother-in-law," she said laughingly. "Everybody's surprised because I'm so youthful. My daughter's coming home this afternoon. That's why I'm so happy. They wouldn't let me go west with her, but when one's as advanced as I young people don't bother much."
Garth experienced a quick sympathy, yet behind the mental deterioration of extreme old age something useful might lurk.
"You slept in the front part of the house last night," he tried. "You probably heard the shot."
She shook her head. Her sunken mouth twitched in a smile a trifle sly.
"Once I drop off it would take a cannonade to wake me up."
For no apparent reason her youthful and atrocious laugh rippled again.
"Please," Garth said gently. "Mr. Taylor—"
"At my age," she broke in, "you say when a younger person dies: 'Ha, ha! I stole a march on that one.'"
She arose and with a curious absence of sound moved towards the door.
"I must go now. I am knitting a sweater. It was for my son-in-law. Now that he's put himself out of the way it might fit you."
The door closed behind her slender figure, and Garth tugged at his watch ribbon, wondering. Her actions had been too determined, her last words too studied. They had seemed to hold a threat. Was she as senile as she appeared, or had she tried to throw sand in his eyes?
He rang and sent for the cook Clara, unaware that a new and significant surprise awaited him in this dreary room. The girl, when she came, was young, and, in a coarse mold, pretty. When she sat down the light disclosed a tremulousness as pronounced as McDonald's. Before Garth could question her she burst out hysterically:
"I am going to leave this house. I was going to leave to-day, anyway."
Garth pitched his voice on a cold, even note.
"For the present you'll stay. Mr. Taylor didn't kill himself. He was murdered."
She covered her face with her hands, shivering.
"I didn't kill him. I didn't—"
"But," Garth snapped, "you know who did."
She shook her head with stubborn vehemence.
"I don't know anything," she answered, "except that I must leave this house."
"Why? Because you think the old lady's crazy, and she frightens you? I want to know about that."
As Clara lowered her hands the increased fear, rather than the tears in her eyes, held Garth. She shook her head again.
"I've only been here a week. I haven't seen much of her. She's only been to meals once or twice, and then she's scarcely said a word."
She glanced about the room with its small paned windows, its deep embrasures, its shallow ceiling.
"It isn't that," she whispered. "It's because the house is full of queer things. The servants all felt it. They talked about spirits and left. Five have come and gone in the week I've been here. But I've never been superstitious, and I didn't hear anything until last night."
Garth stirred.
"What did you hear? When was it?"
"About midnight," she answered tensely. "I had had company in the kitchen until then, so I was alone downstairs. McDonald had told me before he went to bed to make sure the last thing that the library fire was all right. I had looked at it and had put the fender up and was just leaving the room when I heard this sound—like moans, sir. I—I've never heard such suffering."
She shuddered.
"It was like a voice from the grave—like somebody trying to get out of the grave."
"But you heard no shot?"
"No, sir."
Garth spoke tolerantly.
"These sounds must have come from up stairs. You've forgotten that Mr. Taylor was an invalid."
She cried out angrily.
"It wasn't like a man's or a woman's voice, and I can't tell where it came from. I tell you it was like a—a dead voice."
"You failed to trace it, of course," Garth said. "Describe to me what you did."
"I ran to the kitchen," she answered, "but, as I told you, there was no one there. McDonald had gone to bed, and so had his daughter."
Garth stooped swiftly forward and grasped her arm.
"What's that you're saying? His daughter! You mean to tell me McDonald has a daughter, and she was in the house last night?"
She shrank from his excited gesture.
"Yes. He asked me not to tell you, but I'm frightened. I don't want to get in trouble. She's the housekeeper. She engages all the servants and runs the house."
"Then where is she now?"
"She must have gone out early this morning, sir, for I haven't seen her all day. I wanted to be fair. I've only been waiting for her to come back so I could tell her I was leaving."
"Send McDonald back to me," Garth said, "unless he's left the house, too."
The butler had deliberately lied to shield his daughter, and had asked secrecy of this girl. And all this talk of spirits and of cries! It was turning out an interesting case after all—possibly an abnormal one. Moreover, he was getting somewheres with it.
McDonald slipped in. He was more agitated than before. His face was distorted. His tongue moistened his lips thirstily. Against his will Garth applied the method he knew would bring the quickest result with such a man. He grasped the stooped shoulders. He shouted:
"Why did you lie when I asked you who was in the house at the time of the murder?"
"Eh? Eh?" the old man quavered.
"You're not as deaf as that. Where's your daughter now?"
"My ears!" the old servant whined. "I can't hear, sir."
"All right," Garth shouted. "If you want to go to the lockup and your daughter too, stay as deaf as you please."
He wasn't prepared for the revolting success that came to him. McDonald clutched at one of the window curtains and hid his twitching face in its folds, while sobs, difficult and sickening, tore from his throat, shaking his bent shoulders.
"God knows! I haven't seen her since I went to bed last night. I thought she'd gone out."
He glanced up, his face grimacing.
"Don't you think she did it. Don't you think—"
"First of all," Garth said, "I want her picture."
"I haven't any," McDonald cried.
But Garth hadn't missed the man's instinctive gesture towards his watch pocket. Then, whether he actually knew anything or not, he suspected his daughter and sought to protect her. Against his protests Garth took the watch and, as he had foreseen, found a photograph in the case. The picture was not of a young woman, but the face was still attractive in an uncompromising fashion. It was this hardness, this determination about the picture that made Garth decide that the original, under sufficient provocation, would be capable of killing.
"For her sake and yours, McDonald," Garth said, "answer one thing truthfully. Did she fancy herself any more than a superior servant? Had she formed for Mr. Taylor any silly attachment?"
McDonald's reply was quick and assured.
"To Mr. Taylor she was only a trusted servant, sir, and she knew her place."
The whirring of a motor suggested that an automobile had drawn up before the house. Garth slipped the photograph in his pocket.
"If that is Mrs. Taylor arriving," he said with an uncomfortable desire to shirk the next few minutes, "the news of her husband's death might come easier from you."
"I telephoned Mr. Reed," McDonald said. "He's an old friend of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor's. I told him about the telegram, and he's probably met her and brought her home."
"I will be here," Garth said, "if she wishes to speak to me."