He heard McDonald open and close the front door. Then the widow entered, followed by a young man with an abundance of dark hair curling over a low forehead and shading eyes a trifle too deep set. But at first Garth saw only the widow, and he marveled that one so young and lovely in an etherial sense should have been mated with the elderly invalid upstairs. As he looked it suddenly occurred to him that Reed, since he had lost Taylor as a friend, might crave more than friendship from the widow.
She sank on a divan. Even in the shadows her heavy black hair and the dark grey traveling dress she wore heightened the weary pallor of her face. Had her eyes held tears they would have been easier to meet, for the shock was there, dry and unrelieved.
"It is dreadful to come home this way," she said, "dreadful! I had never dreamed of his doing such a thing."
"It is by no means certain," Garth said gently, "that he killed himself. There is a curious situation in this house. McDonald's daughter, the housekeeper, for instance, has not been seen since a short time before the crime."
Her lips twitched a little. He fancied hope in her eyes.
"If I could only cry!" she said. "At any rate that would be better for his memory, wouldn't it? You suspect this woman?"
"If you are able," Garth said, "I would like you to tell me something about her."
"I have never seen her," she answered. "She came after I went west. McDonald had a good deal of influence over Mr. Taylor, and I never quite trusted him. There's no use. You might as well know the truth about Mr. Taylor and me. You've probably heard. We were never quite happy. He was so much older. We never quite belonged to each other. But that is all. It isn't true all this gossip that I went west for a divorce, and I don't believe he was the man to kill himself. If there has been a crime against him I want the world to know it. I want his memory clean."
Quickly the man Reed touched her shoulder. For the first time since entering the room he spoke. His voice possessed a peculiar, aggressive resonance.
"Helen, you shouldn't take this man's suspicion that he was murdered too seriously."
Garth motioned him to silence.
"At such a time," he said to Mrs. Taylor, "I dislike to bother you, but I'd like to ask one or two questions. Your mother? Her mind?"
He caught a flash of pain across her white face.
"She has always been peculiar," she answered, "but she isn't out of her head, if that's what you mean. I've always thought it's a habit of hers to hide her real thoughts behind apparent absurdities."
"I had wondered about that," Garth said with satisfaction. "One more thing. There has been talk among the servants of spirits, of moans."
She shivered.
"I know nothing about that," she said, "except that the house is unbearable. That is one reason I decided on this long visit, why I shrank from coming home."
"Unbearable?" Garth helped her out.
"Old, moldy, and depressing. My husband, I think, believed in it a little. I've heard him and my mother talk about a figure who sometimes walked. I laughed at that, and I laughed when they heard moans. You see the wind often cries in the narrow space between us and the high wall of the next house. I've never liked it here. It depresses me too much. That's all."
"Thanks," Garth said. "You will want time to accustom yourself. Rest assured I will do everything I can to get the truth."
"You must," she said tensely, "and don't hesitate to disturb me if I can be of any use."
As they went out the resonance of Reed's undertone reached Garth.
"Helen. You are giving this man's suspicion too much weight. He seems to have no evidence."
After the door had closed Garth telephoned the inspector, suggesting that the house be guarded in order that he might have McDonald, Clara, and the old lady at hand.
"I'll give instructions," the throaty rumble of the inspector came back, "to arrest any one who tries to make a getaway."
Garth hurried to the kitchen. The night was nearly complete there, but, as he entered, he caught a swift, silent movement from the servants' stairs. He walked to the entrance.
"I thought so."
The girl Clara shrank from him in the shadows. She wore a hat and cloak. She carried a hand bag.
"If you don't want yourself locked up, charged with murder, take those things off," Garth said. "From this moment the house is watched, and any one attempting to leave will be arrested."
The girl commenced to cry again.
"I am afraid," she sobbed. "Afraid."
Garth turned on the light.
"Take me," he directed her, "to the room occupied by the housekeeper."
Shaken and uncertain, Clara led him to a room at the head of the stairs, which, Garth found, had a second door opening into the upper hall of the front portion of the house. The room displayed a taste seldom found among servants. His examination of it from the first spurred Garth's curiosity. The bed had been occupied last night, but to all appearances for only a brief period, since the blankets and sheets were little disturbed. Some clothing and a pair of shoes lay at one side, and clothing, shoes, and hats were neatly arranged in the closet, but nowhere could he find a dressing gown or a pair of bedroom slippers. Clara, moreover, could not recall having seen the housekeeper wear any hat or clothes other than those in the closet. If McDonald's daughter had fled from the house in slippers and dressing gown it was strange she hadn't been heard of long ago. It became increasingly clear to him that the woman remained hidden in the house. It should be easy enough to find her. He would search every corner for the one whose brain, he was now convinced, held the solution of the mystery. But on the lower floor he found no trace. He paused in the lower hall, intending to ring for McDonald to guide him through the rest of his task.
All at once his hand which he had raised to the bell hesitated. He braced himself against the wall. Through the heavy atmosphere a stifled groan had reached him, followed by a difficult dragging sound. But as he sprang up the stairs he knew he hadn't heard the cause of Clara's fright, for the groan had sufficiently defined itself as having come from a man.
In the upper hall there was no light beyond the glow sifting through the stair well. It was enough to show Garth a dark form huddled at the foot of the stairs leading to the third story. He ran over and stooped.
"McDonald! What's the matter? Are you hurt?"
The silence of the house was heavier, more secretive than before.
At last, in response to Garth's efforts, a whimpering came from McDonald's throat. The heap against the wall struggled impotently to rise. Garth recalled the medicines in Taylor's bath room and started down the hall. The unintelligible whimpering increased. Garth went on, aware that the black, huddled figure crawled after him with the sublime and unreasonable courage of a wounded animal.
He snapped on the light and ran to Taylor's bath room where he poured a stimulant into a glass. As he stepped back to the bedroom he faced Taylor's body on which the light shone with peculiar reflections. They gave to the pallid face the quality of a sneer. But it was only in connection with another radical difference at the bed that that illusion arrested Garth and sent a chill racing along his nerves. For on the counterpane, as near the crooked fingers as the revolver lay, now rested a long and ugly kitchen knife.
With a graver fear the detective glanced at the door of the hall. McDonald had dragged himself that far. He raised his trembling hand, stretching it towards the bed in a gesture, it seemed to Garth, of impossible accusation. Then the crouched figure toppled and fell across the threshold while from somewheres beyond the door a high girlish laugh rippled.
Garth sprang forward and knelt by the old man, reluctant to search for what he expected to find. There it was at the back of the coat, a jagged tear whose edges were stained, showing where the knife had penetrated the shoulder. The wound didn't look deep or dangerous, and in his unconsciousness McDonald breathed regularly. So Garth hurried back to the bed and examined the knife. There was no ambiguity about the red stains on the blade. The knife, resting close to the dead hand, had wounded McDonald who had seemed to accuse the still form whose note projected the impression of having been written after death.
Garth smothered his morbid thoughts. McDonald's daughter was the living force, probably at large in this house, that he wanted to chain. If she were guilty of the earlier crime she had sufficient motive for this attempt to keep the old man silent. She could have got such a knife from the kitchen. So, for that matter, could Clara. But the eccentric had laughed. Was that merely coincidence? Garth ran across the hall and listened at her door with an increasing excitement. He heard the running of water, regularly interrupted, as if by hands being cleansed under an open faucet. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He entered, staring at the daring indifference of the old woman who stepped from the bath room, calmly drying her hands on a towel.
"Come in, policeman," she said in her high girlish voice. "Don't suffer in the black hall."
"Let me have that towel," he cried.
Without hesitation she offered him the piece of linen. It showed no stains, nor were there stains to be found about the wash basin, but the slab of marble in which it was set was damp as if it had just now been carefully cleansed. She watched, her wrinkled face set in an expression of contempt.
"What are you up to? Think if I wanted to do anything wrong I'd let you find me out?"
"Then you know," he said, "what happened out there in the hall. I heard you laugh."
She started. Her voice was lower. At last it was as old as herself.
"Things always happen out there. It is crowded with the people who have lived in this house before us—unhappy and angry people. Often I have seen and heard the black thing out there. I would never laugh at her."
Again the doubt of her senility attacked him.
"You can't impress me with that," he said harshly. "I am talking about McDonald. He was stabbed out there a few minutes ago."
She laughed foolishly.
"Horrid old man! But why should I want to see him stabbed?"
He watched her closely.
"I saw you strike him. You didn't have enough strength to send the blow home."
The assurance of her voice increased his doubt. Whatever her mental state she was at least purposeful.
"You need glasses, policeman. Don't neglect your eyes. You have only one pair."
He felt himself against a blank wall, and there was McDonald to think of. He asked one more question.
"When did you last see McDonald's daughter?"
"Maybe at dinner last night," she said. "Nice girl, in spite of her father. I must go back to my knitting, policeman."
Garth left her, hurrying down stairs to the front door. He called the policeman from the shadows of the portico, instructing him to go to the large apartment house on the corner where he would almost certainly find a physician.
As he gave his directions he saw Nora's slender figure cross the street and come up the steps, and, as he looked at the pretty Latin face, expressive of an exceptional intelligence, his morose and puzzled mind brightened. He was surprised to see her now, and a little worried, for a grave menace existed for every one in this house. Moreover, the case mystified him to the point where he felt he must find the solution himself. He didn't care to place himself again under obligations to her. Rather he was ambitious to impress her, perhaps to the removal of her reserve.
"Father's told me about the case," she said. "I couldn't keep away, because you're so hard-headed, Jim."
Smiling whimsically, she glanced at his frayed watch ribbon.
"I see you haven't found the answer yet. Tell me everything you have learned while you have been torturing that poor ribbon."
"Ghosts or not, Nora," he answered, "the house isn't healthy, and I'd rather you didn't stay."
She laughed and walked in. Shrugging his shoulders, he followed her, closed the door, and told her what had happened since he had telephoned the inspector. Her face, he noticed, had grown pale, and a troubled look had entered her eyes. She shivered.
"What an uncomfortable place! I can guess what Clara meant. Don't you get an impression of great suffering, Jim?"
He was familiar with her superstitious sensibility which at times seemed nearly psychic. It irritated him that to his own matter-of-fact mind the house had from the first conveyed a sense of unhealth. As he started to laugh at her, Nora with a quick movement shrank against the wall.
"What's that?" she whispered.
Garth strained forward, listening, too. He had heard what Clara had described, a crying, smothered and scarcely audible, and he knew what the girl had meant when she had spoken of a voice from the grave—a dead voice.
Across the moaning cut a shrill feminine scream.
"Stay here," Garth called to Nora as he started up the stairs.
He heard her voice, like an echo behind him, as full of misgivings as Clara's had been.
"I am afraid."
At the foot of the attic stairs he saw the white figure of Mrs. Taylor, staring upward, trembling, hysterical, a violent fear in her eyes.
"You heard it, too," she breathed. "It wasn't the wind."
With a shuddering gesture she indicated McDonald's still form.
"He isn't dead," Garth said.
While she relaxed a little the fear in her eyes didn't diminish.
"I—I heard her moan," she said. "I opened my door, and there she was—a black thing—bending over him like—like a vampire. I couldn't seem to see her face. She ran up these stairs, and I could see through the banisters that she went in the big attic room—the room they always talked about where the woman—"
She broke off, screaming sharply again.
"Look out! Back of you! There's something black creeping up the stairs—"
Garth had been aware of Nora's slow ascent. As he turned she reached the upper floor and the light from the well caught her face.
"A friend who has just come," Garth explained to Mrs. Taylor. "There is nothing to frighten you. The woman you saw is McDonald's daughter. I had satisfied myself she was in the house. We are pretty near our goal now."
"But why," Nora asked, "should McDonald's daughter cry through the house in this fashion? Why didn't Mrs. Taylor see her face?"
But Garth had started up the stairs. The two women followed, as if each was unwilling to be left alone. Garth snapped on his pocket lamp. The light shone on the only two doors on the attic floor. From behind the first keened once more that ghastly and smothered escape of suffering, scarcely audible. As Garth stepped towards the door Mrs. Taylor cried out again:
"Is it safe?"
"Don't go in there unprepared," Nora warned him.
"I want the woman in that room," Garth muttered. "I've heard her and I know she's there. The case is finished with her arrest."
He took out his revolver, flung open the door, and flashed his light about the interior of the room. He lowered his hand with the revolver. The lamp shook a little. There was no one in the room.
"You heard her, too," he said. "Look here."
The others followed him in. The light played on the usual attic chamber, common to old houses. The plaster was stained and cracked. The single window at the end was boarded over. An iron bed rested against the wall, and the customary conglomeration of old furniture cluttered the floor. But there was no possible hiding place or means of escape except a door in the side wall, and Garth found that locked, and when he had entered the other attic room to which it led he found that empty too except for dust and lumber. Yet, as he searched, that stifled and unearthly moaning reached him again.
Feeling himself caught in the sway of incomprehensible forces that mocked him, he sounded the walls and measured until he was convinced the two rooms could hold no secret place. Meantime the women watched with a deepening fear.
"Just the same, she's in this house," Garth said. "By every rule of logic she's in this attic. But I'll go through every nook and cranny. Nora, you and Mrs. Taylor take the bedrooms. I'll go through the cellar and try the lower floor again."
On his way down he saw the doctor, whom the policeman had brought, bending over McDonald.
"The wound is nothing," the doctor said in answer to his question, "but he's had a slight paralytic stroke from the shock."
"When," Garth asked eagerly, "will he be able to talk?"
"Certainly not for several days," the doctor answered. "I'll carry him to his room and make him as comfortable as possible."
As Garth went on down, helpless and bewildered, he heard again the old woman's jibing laugh. It assumed the quality of a threat as he searched unsuccessfully the cellar and the back part of the house. He met Nora in the library. Mrs. Taylor and she had found no more than Garth. As they talked, Reed's tall figure appeared in the doorway. Garth had supposed the man had gone home immediately after bringing Mrs. Taylor from the station.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
Reed yawned.
"Mrs. Taylor and this young lady woke me up searching through the spare bedroom in which I was resting. They were after a woman in black. That sounds rather silly, doesn't it? I've heard Taylor drool about his pet guest—lady in black, strangled in attic by jealous husband. I see you're surprised to find me still here. I thought it was understood I should stay and be of what help I could to Mrs. Taylor and her mother."
"Then I'm afraid you'll have to stay for some time," Garth answered dryly. "The house is guarded. No one will be permitted to leave until I have found or accounted for McDonald's daughter."
"Clever girl that!" Reed said indifferently. "Never heard her open her mouth."
He took a book from a shelf and seated himself in a comfortable chair by the lamp.
"If I can be of any use you'll find me here or in my room."
"I'm wondering," Garth answered, "if Clara knows anything about McDonald's daughter. For to-night the back part of the house interests me."
At his nod Nora followed him into the hall.
"Apparently Reed knows nothing," Nora said. "But the old woman—"
"I'm thinking about the room where Taylor's body lies," Garth replied. "From the first an attempt seems to have been made to color the case with the supernatural. The wording of Taylor's note, for instance. An illusion is furnished us that it was written after the man's death. That is followed by another illusion that his cold hand wounded McDonald with the knife. And this crying! The complete disappearance of the black figure almost under our eyes! I grant you it's a moldy, unhealthy house, but it can't shelter such miracles. These phases are clearly manifestations of some abnormal criminality. I have to work on physical lines. The black figure proves that the woman is actually hidden here. The knife on Taylor's bed means that the murderer was in the room this evening. McDonald's gesture, instead of accusing, probably tried to tell me that; tried to warn me, perhaps, that the murderer would return again to the body. I didn't tell Reed the truth. I am going to that room about which nearly everything centers. Before the night is over it may tell me what McDonald tried to say. There at any rate my mind should be more receptive to that flash of intuition I need to make some theory fit this mystery. Since the house is clearly dangerous, Nora, I want you to go home."
Her laugh was uncomfortable, but Garth recognized its determined quality.
"I'll see it through, thanks," she said. "I want this sense of suffering destroyed. I want—you don't know how anxious I am—to see the case put on a physical basis. So I'll watch with you."
Since he failed to alter her determination, he sent her upstairs to make sure no one was spying, for he wanted their entrance of the room of death to remain a secret. She beckoned him from the head of the stairs, and he went up, and they entered the black room.
Garth closed the door and snapped his light on. Immediately strange reflections played again over the face of the dead man. Its sneering expression seemed to follow Garth as he moved about, searching in the closets and the bath room, looking behind each piece of furniture. Meantime Nora waited, for the moment stripped of her familiar confidence. She watched the dead man rather than Garth. The knife and the revolver, close to the cold and motionless hand, appeared to fascinate her.
"No one," Garth whispered. "No evidence, beyond the knife, that any one has been here unlawfully."
He removed the cushions from a lounge and arranged them in a window recess. He seated himself with Nora there. He drew the curtains so that they would be thoroughly concealed from any one entering the room. Then he snapped off the light.
The vigil, Garth realized nearly at once, would not be comfortable. Nora's obvious tenseness encouraged him to morbid fancies, to formidable premonitions. The heavy black silence of the decaying house became more oppressive. The near presence of the soulless thing on the bed, which had yielded to him the puzzling note, seemed through the night capable of a malicious and unique activity. Garth, in spite of himself, became expectant of some abnormal and impossible movement in the room. Nora, he knew, listened with him. Once she whispered:
"Haven't you a feeling there is some one here who laughs at us?"
The old woman's atrocious mirth came back to him.
"Hush. It is better even not to whisper."
The minutes loitered. The silence grew thicker, the presence of Taylor's body more oppressive. Then suddenly through the night Garth became finally aware of a movement in the room, and at first it seemed to be in keeping with the supernatural fears Nora had imposed on him.
He aroused himself. He commenced to reason. He had not heard the door open or close, but the intruder must have entered that way. Again his ears caught a sly scraping sound as of one walking stealthily, and the sound was nearer the bed—between the window recess and the bed. Garth thrust his revolver and his lamp through the narrow opening between the curtains and pressed the control. There was no more shuffling. Nora swayed closer. The light revealed all of Garth's doubts. He became efficient again. For, while there was a ghoul-like quality about the picture his lamp had suddenly illuminated, the figure bending over the body was sufficiently human. In this position, however, because of the dressing gown and the slippers, its sex remained undefined, but Garth, remembering his examination of the housekeeper's room, thought he knew. Yet he couldn't understand what the creature was doing. One hand had partly drawn from beneath the mattress what appeared to be a long and wide piece of jet black cloth.
"Game's up!" Garth said. "I've got you. Turn around and let me have a look at your pretty face."
The bent shoulders twitched.
"Come!" Garth said harshly. "You're no ghost. You can't evaporate before our eyes again."
Then with a gesture of repulsion the hand let the piece of black cloth fall. It trailed across the floor, one end still caught beneath the mattress. Slowly the figure turned until a profile cut against the shaft of light. Nora cried out her surprise. Garth sprang erect, covering with his revolver, not McDonald's daughter, but the friend of Taylor and his wife, the man Reed.
The shock of discovery stripped Reed of his control. He glanced once at the dead man, then sank in a chair by the bed.
"Don't send me to the death house," he groaned. "I couldn't stand that. I won't stand that."
"You killed Taylor so you might marry his wife?" Garth shot at him.
The head jerked back and forth.
"Fortunately you did a rotten job with McDonald," Garth said. "Where's his daughter? I don't get that."
Reed shrank farther into the chair.
"I won't answer. You can't make me say any more."
Garth stooped, lifted the black cloth, and drew it clear of the bed beneath the mattress of which it had patently been hidden. As he held it up it fell in folds to the floor, and he saw it had sleeves and was a long garment without shape. But it recalled the black figure that had vanished from the attic. He ran his lamp over the gown. In spite of the coarse, tough material it was torn here and there, and on the right hand sleeve there were blood stains. That was why the gown had been hidden in the easiest place, the first place at hand. That undoubtedly explained Reed's daring intention to get the gown and destroy it before the body should be moved and the evidence discovered. Garth glanced at the man, who still shook, a picture of broken nerves, at the side of the bed. And Garth's hand, holding the tell-tale gown, commenced to tremble too, for it had offered him a solution of everything. He had no time for analysis. Already there were stirrings outside. Their voices and Nora's cry had aroused the others in the house.
"Don't you see it, Nora?" he cried, "and it wasn't intuition. The truth has stared at us from the first, but we wouldn't open our eyes."
"I see nothing," Nora said, "except that his motive was common enough, cheap enough."
"You don't understand," Garth smiled.
He stepped to the hall where he met Mrs. Taylor coming from her room.
"What is it?" she asked.
Garth shrank from telling her the truth.
"I know who murdered your husband," he answered gently.
"Who—"
But the opening of her mother's door interrupted her. The old woman appeared, her eyes wild, her hands shaking.
"What's the matter out here? Helen! What's happened?"
"I want to examine your room a little closer," he said. "I wondered at the start that there was so much furniture in it, and I'll wager there are things hidden beneath the bed and back of that large screen. I know now, too, that it wasn't you who washed your hands this afternoon. I know that you fooled me with a clean towel while the person who had tried to kill McDonald slipped through the communicating door from your bathroom—"
She screamed to stop him. She placed her slender body against the panels of the door. She stretched her arms to either side, forming a barrier he didn't care to pass. She commenced to laugh again, but there were tears in her eyes, and he saw that all along her laughter had been grief. Still without time to analyze, he received from the old lady a perfect corroboration. He whispered to Nora, instructing her to bring the policeman from the front door.
"We may have difficult violence on our hands," he warned her.
Without waiting to argue, Nora ran down the stairs. Mrs. Taylor came closer, asking the question her mother had interrupted.
"Who is it? Why do you speak to my mother like this? Not she—"
"He caught me, Helen," Reed said with dry lips.
She flung up her hands.
"What do you mean? Oh, my God! What do you mean?"
The policeman came briskly up. Nora followed him, her eyes wide and uncertain.
"Everything is accounted for," Garth said to the policeman. "Make your arrest."
Reed stepped forward, offering himself.
"I admire you, Reed," Garth said, "but your devotion can't do any more for her. Mrs. Taylor! I don't want you to get excited. This man must take you—just a form, you know—for the murder of your husband and for the attack on McDonald."
The violent rage Garth had feared flamed in her eyes.
"I did kill him. He kept me locked up for more than two months, because I didn't love him."
She commenced to struggle in the grasp of the policeman. Abruptly she went limp and her efforts ceased. Garth nodded with satisfaction.
"That's better. She's fainted. Carry her to her room. We'll have a doctor right away to go down town with her."
Reed touched his arm timidly. His husky voice was scarcely audible.
"I understand now. Once or twice this afternoon I've wondered, but she told me that Taylor had lied, that she had never been to California, that he had kept her a prisoner here because in his sick, morbid way he was jealous of me. In any case I would have done anything to help her over the next day or two, for you must understand I've loved her very deeply and for a long time—"
Garth turned away, because he didn't care to see the man's tears.
Later the humility of Nora's interest amused Garth. He told her frankly how the pivotal pieces of the puzzle had been within reach long before Reed had tried in Mrs. Taylor's service to recover and destroy the tell-tale black gown.
"Those sedatives in Taylor's bathroom," he said. "The man's perpetual questioning of his doctor about the symptoms and the treatment of insanity, the moans which frightened the other servants without affecting McDonald or his daughter, the old lady's exaggeration of her eccentricities to draw my attention from Mrs. Taylor—any of these clues ought to have reminded us, Nora, of the hundreds of similar cases in New York of fond relatives who, through a mistaken pride, hide and treat in their own homes such cases of mental disorder."
He scarcely needed to outline for her the picture, filled in by the old lady, of that black hour last night in the melancholy house, when Mrs. Taylor had tricked McDonald's daughter—a competent trained nurse—had escaped from the attic sick-room, and had got the revolver. Garth saw that Nora, too, could fancy Taylor's panic and self-reproach as he lay sick and helpless in bed, knowing his wife was free, foreseeing inevitably much the sort of thing that had happened, trying when it was too late to confess his mistake, to warn the authorities that his wife was at large and, possibly, dangerous.
"But she didn't give him time to write enough," Garth said. "She followed too quickly her ruling impulse to punish the man she blamed for her tragic situation. Moreover, the realization of what she had done, as is common in such cases, returned her to approximate sanity, suggested, even without her mother's prompting, Taylor's California blind as a road from her dreadful dilemma. And McDonald's daughter, through her fright and a promise of money, could be persuaded to avoid arousing her father or Clara, to throw on one of Mrs. Taylor's dresses, to hurry with her to Albany. Evidently the girl lost her nerve, for she was to have come back as if nothing had happened. She was to have taken care of Mrs. Taylor. Eventually she was to have placed her in a sanitarium, explaining her breakdown, as well as any present peculiarities, naturally enough through the shock of her husband's suicide. It was McDonald's demands to know what had happened to his daughter that made Mrs. Taylor turn on him finally. If he had been able to speak then I think he would have broken faith with his dead master and told us the truth about her condition."
"Is there any hope for her?" Nora asked.
"I've asked the doctor," Garth answered. "He says that the studied manner in which she threw us off the track when we caught her crying over McDonald, and her failure to lose complete control of herself when she was arrested indicate that her trouble is curable. It seems to have been brought on by her intolerable life in this gloomy house with an invalid whom she didn't love, while her affection for Reed increased hopelessly. Her illness was broken by such periods of apparent sanity as she had last night and to-day. I rather think Reed and she may be happy yet."
Nora smiled wistfully.
"Then," she said slowly, "I almost wish we had kept Taylor's secret better than he did himself."
The approach of the moment when she must testify against Slim and George; must tell in public the details of that tragedy which had played such havoc with her, drove Nora into a morbid humor which neither Garth nor the inspector could alter. She followed Garth on the stand. She was dressed in black. The appeal of her personality was irresistible. It was clear that if the two criminals had ever had a chance Nora would destroy it.
Slim and George sat by their counsel. George could not quite hide the animal character of his face, but he had managed to soften it somewhat. Evidently he endeavoured to impress the jurors with the idea that he was a good-natured fellow who had been involved in the case through some curious mischance. At Nora's appearance, Garth noticed, there came into his eyes a survival of the passion he had so recklessly declared in the steel-lined room.
Slim, on the other hand, let slip nothing of the criminal. His quiet clothing gave him an air almost clerical. His sharp features expressed a polite interest. He could not, a casual spectator would have said, be capable of the evil with which he was charged.
Garth watched the men perpetually. He saw the hatred slip through while he quietly told the story that would condemn them to death. During Nora's recital, too, both men exposed something of their powerful desire for revenge against these two who quietly droned away their lives.
Garth took Nora from the courtroom well aware that, given the opportunity, Slim and George would not let them move a foot without exacting full payment.
Garth respected Nora's mood. He put her in a cab and sent her home, then wandered restlessly about the down town streets.
Perhaps Nora's attitude was partly responsible for his feeling of oppression, of imminence. Nothing could happen, he told himself again. Slim and George would start for the death house to-morrow. They would have no chance. If they delegated such work to their subordinates still at large, Garth fancied that he could take care of himself and Nora, too. It was the exceptional cunning of Slim and George that he shrank from, had feared ever since the night Nora and he had trapped them.
Angry with himself he went to headquarters. The inspector admitted that he, too, would breathe easier when the two were in the chair.
The next day Garth managed to dismiss his premonition. He chatted with two or three detectives in the outside office. The inspector sent for him. The moment he answered the summons he knew something disastrous had occurred. He felt that the exceptional, almost with the effect of a physical violence, had entered the room ahead of him.
The inspector held the telephone. The receiver was at his ear. His huge figure projected to Garth an uncontrolled fear. His voice, customarily rumbling and authoritative, was no more than a groping whisper.
"Why the devil doesn't Nora answer? Do you know, Garth, that Slim and George are loose on the town?"
Garth started back. He would have responded just so to a blow in the face.
"They are on their way to the death house," he countered.
"You mean they were," the inspector said, "condemned by your testimony and Nora's."
His voice rose and thickened.
"I've just got the word. An explosion was planted in front of their van on the way to the Grand Central. There was a crowd of rats from the slums. Those birds were torn from the sheriff's men, and their bracelets knocked off. They were spirited away. But don't you suppose Slim and George would gamble I'll never let them out of this town? Every exit's barred now. They know their liberty's only good to pay old debts. What'll they do at the start?"
Garth braced himself against the desk.
"They'll go for Nora first. Then they'll get me. I've been afraid of it all along."
"I'm trying to warn her," the inspector raged. "She doesn't answer."
He shouted into the transmitter:
"Are you all dead out there? Get me that number, or by heaven—"
While the inspector stormed to be put in communication with his daughter Garth tried to plan. Could he devise any useful defence against Slim's imagination, abnormally clever and inscrutable; or against such naked brutality as George's? And the malevolence of these two would be all the more certain in its action since no fear of punishment would restrain it. The murder, or worse, of Garth and Nora, which undoubtedly they intended, could earn for them only the death penalty to which they were already condemned.
"You've got to get Nora," Garth urged the inspector. "The servant at least should be there."
"Her afternoon out, and Nora said she would be home."
"Then," Garth cried, "they made for her like a shot."
He turned and strode to the door.
"Where are you going, Jim?"
"Keep after that number," Garth called back. "If you get Nora tell her I'm on the way, and to sit tight."
The inspector tried to stop him.
"You're out of your head. Your only chance is to keep under cover. They'll give you a bullet in the back."
"Somebody's got to look after Nora," Garth called, and caught up his coat and hat, and ran from the building.
He threaded a course through the homeward bound crowds, experiencing the sensations of a truant from an impending and destructive retribution, his eyes alert for a sudden movement, his ears constantly prepared for the sharp crack of a revolver.
As he ran he recalled that evening last summer when he had side-tracked Simmons and had taken his place behind a replica of the gray mask. He could see Nora in her cheap finery, and George, he remembered with a sense of sheer terror, had loved Nora in his way; had, in fact, through his brutal and amorous eagerness, delivered himself into her hands. He threw aside all caution. He ran faster. Somehow, no matter what the cost, he had to keep Nora out of the grasp of those men.
He reached the flat, breathless and wondering that he had not been disturbed. No one answered his ring. He questioned the hall-boy. The inspector's daughter had left fifteen minutes ago. She had said headquarters had telephoned her to go to her father without delay. The situation was clear. Garth grasped the hall-boy's arm.
"Didn't you follow her to the door? Didn't you see where she went?"
The boy shook his head, clearly alarmed before such vehemence.
"Then you must have heard. Did you hear anything?"
The boy tried to free his arm. He whimpered.
"No. Unless—maybe somebody screamed, but there are so many children in the street, playin' and hollerin'—"
Garth let him go and ran to the sidewalk. A man stood there. In spite of the sharp cold he wore no coat. Garth recognized him for a tailor who worked in a nearby shop. The tailor's excitement made him nearly incoherent, but Garth drew from him a description of Slim and George. As the inspector's daughter had stepped to the sidewalk, he said, the men had sprung upon her, stifled her one scream, and driven her off in an automobile.
"I saw it from my shop," he spluttered. "I've been telephoning the inspector. I just got him, because his wire was busy."
"Which direction did they take?"
The tailor pointed south. Garth hurried to the curb, stooped, and found fresh tire marks. He was aware of his helplessness unless Nora's ingenuity had hit upon some trick for his guidance. He searched with a greedy hope. While his eyes roved about the frozen dust of the gutter he acknowledged that the inspector had appraised his men justly. Slim and George wouldn't even try to leave the city until the hue and cry had somewhat abated. Into the windings of the underworld they had carried Nora, and Garth knew how devious those windings were—what silent and invisible machinery would nourish and secrete and protect.
He lifted a tiny tuft of fur which had nestled, almost hidden, in the dust of the gutter. He examined it closely. It's colour and texture were reminiscent of the muff he had frequently seen Nora carry. It might be a souvenir of her struggle, or else—
He arose and walked down the street, searching every inch of the pavement. At the corner his breath quickened, for he knew the piece of fur had not rested in the gutter by accident. Two others were there, trampled, but suggestive of the direction taken by the automobile. He could picture Nora surreptitiously tearing the bits from her muff and dropping them from the window of the car.
He hastened on. As soon as he was confident the pieces constituted an intelligible trail he conquered his impatience long enough to enter a drug store and telephone his discovery to the inspector.
"I'm going on," he explained. "The Lord knows what I'll find, so get after me right away."
The voice that reached him could not conceal its suspense.
"Go fast, Garth, and I'll follow with every man I can raise. Pull Nora out of this and ask me for my badge."
Garth went on, following the trail into the dark and intricate thoroughfares of the lower east side, knowing that each moment his pursuit might be abruptly and fatally ended by a flash of light from the obscurity ahead.
He emerged into a waterfront street which was nearly deserted at this hour. One or two street lamps of an antiquated pattern flickered ineffectually. The only sign of habitation was a glow, wan and unhealthy, which escaped from the broad windows of a saloon on the corner.
Garth knew the reputation of that dive, and its long resistance to a final closing of its shutters. More than once the yellow sawdust of its floor had reddened, while men had fought towards its doors through a whirling, pungent fog of powder smoke. He remembered, too, that it was suspected of harboring the explanation of stealthier and more revolting crimes, the responsibility for which, however, had never been legally determined. He was glad when the automobile tracks swung beyond it, but they turned in at the next building, a warehouse with a crumbling, picturesque façade. He saw beneath the edge of a double cellar door a larger piece of fur, mute testimony that the place had recently been opened, that the condemned men had carried Nora to its abandoned vaults; but if Slim and George had trusted themselves there, the cellar obviously furnished other exits, perhaps underground to the river, almost certainly through the evil saloon next door. That, indeed, might offer him the chance he must have to come upon his men unexpectedly, from the rear.
He glanced around. There was no policeman in sight. He saw only half a dozen pedestrians—shambling creatures who appeared to seek the plentiful darkness. The neighboring warehouses, the pier opposite, frowned back at him. The lapping of the water was expectant. Yet high in the air two brilliant arches were suspended across a slight mist. They were restless with blurred movement. Constantly they lowered into this somber pit an incessant murmuring, like an echo, heard at a distance, from some complicated and turbulent industry.
These crowded bridges, his desolate surroundings, assumed a phantasmal quality for Garth. The only real world lay beyond those sloping, silent doors which had been swung back to admit Nora.
While he looked a figure detached itself from the shadows at the corner of the warehouse. It moved, lurching, in his direction. He could only see that the newcomer was in rags with unkempt hair, and features, sunken and haggard. He grasped his revolver, suspecting that this vagabond exterior disguised a member of the gang—an outpost. Yet there was a chance that the man was one of the neighborhood's multitude of derelicts—a purveyor, possibly, of valuable information.
"Come here, my friend," he called. "How long have you been loafing in that corner?"
The other hesitated. When he answered his voice was without resonance—scarcely more than an exaggerated whisper.
"Who the devil are you?"
Garth held out some money. The claw-like hand extended itself, closing over the coins. In quick succession the man rang three of the pieces on the pavement. Garth's watchfulness increased. Such routine suggested a signal, but the fellow picked up his money, grinning.
"Seems good," he said in his difficult voice. "If you want to know that bad, maybe an hour; maybe more. Napping. Nothing better to do, but I'm honest, and I'd work if I got the chance."
"An automobile drove up here," Garth said rapidly.
"Why so it did. I seen it with these very peepers—not a quarter of an hour back."
"How many got out of it? What did they do?"
"I seen two men and a woman," the other answered. "They lifted that cellar door and went down. Now I wondered why they did that."
"Did the woman make a fight?"
The other shook his head.
"Went like it was a candy store."
Cutting across his throaty accents, a feminine cry shrilled. The heavy doors could not muffle its terror. It seemed like a response to the ringing of the coins. Suddenly it was hushed. Garth shoved the man to one side, urged by a temper that no longer permitted calculation. At any risk he must get to Nora and to those who were responsible for that unrestrained appeal.
Beyond the doors of the saloon he faced the proprietor across unoccupied tables. He remembered the round, livid face beneath its crown of reddish hair. He had seen it more than once, sullen and unashamed, behind the bars at headquarters. He had often watched its wrinkles smooth into a bland hypocrisy before the frown of a magistrate. The man's past history made a connection between him and Slim's party nearly inevitable. But Garth had no choice. The proprietor, at his entrance, had braced his elbows against the bar.
"I ain't done a thing, Mr. Garth. I call God to witness there ain't anything to bring a bull here except near beer and tobaccy."
"We'll see, Papa Marlowe," Garth said evenly. "I'm going into the cellar of the warehouse next door. Dollars to dimes there's a way through your place. Will you give up the combination quietly?"
Marlowe's misgivings resolved into a smile. Instead of protestations he offered only an oily surprise.
"Now who told you there was a door through my cellar?"
"Never mind," Garth snapped. "I'll take all the chances and use it, but at a sound from you—You understand? Come ahead then."
Marlowe slouched down the stairs, muttering apologetically:
"Blest if I know what you want there. Old hole's been closed six years. That was a growler door for the warehousemen. Hold up, Mr. Garth, and I'll strike a match."
Garth ordered him ahead while he pressed the control of his pocket lamp. They continued between grim walls, splashed with mold, beaded with moisture, offering the appearance and the odor of a neglected tomb. They paused before an oak door.
"Don't open," Garth whispered. "Let me get my fingers on the latch."
"Maybe it's locked on the other side," Marlowe whispered back.
But when Garth tried the latch noiselessly he found that the door would open.
"I don't trust you, Papa," he said, "but if you want to make yourself solid at headquarters find a policeman and tell him what I'm up against."
The round, white face leered.
"The cops and I seem hand and glove these days. Whatareyou up against, Mr. Garth? What you want in that empty cellar?"
Garth waved him away; watched him retreat towards the stairs, squinting his beady eyes, mouthing unintelligibly.
The detective snapped off his light, aware that he faced the critical moment. He opened the door and stepped into the black pall of the warehouse cellar. His memory reinforced him. Other members of the bureau had taken equal risks, had followed into such places criminals as desperate as the ones who held Nora. Moreover, they had lacked the impulse of a vigorous personal motive. They had answered only to the stimulation of duty. Not frequently they had emerged successful, unharmed.
He held his revolver ready. He moved to one side and paused. For some moments the silence was broken only by the drumming of his pulse in his ears. He realized it was not unlikely that the cellar was empty save for himself. The men might have led Nora into it as a trick to confuse the police. Nora's cry might have marked their departure by some ingeniously contrived exit. As his own immediate danger appeared to diminish his disappointment and anxiety increased. He had been prepared to risk everything for Nora. As if it had actually been prolonged to this moment, her cry still vibrated in his brain. Inaction was no longer bearable. He must assure himself that the cellar was, indeed, empty. He must find that exit and continue his pursuit. He stepped forward.
Light flashed, and from the sudden, sparkling confusion a remembered laugh jeered at him.
Four shadowy figures stood in front of him, holding flashlights. Behind the blinding barrier he could make out Nora, crouched against a stained and rugged wall. And the brute, George, was at her side, his muscular hands on her arm. Slim stepped out of the obscurity, moving for Garth with a stealth and an evenness nearly cat-like.
Garth raised his revolver, strengthened by the knowledge that the inspector with many men would soon be tearing through the cellar doors. If only he could postpone the issue for himself—fight for time until that saving moment! There lay Nora's best chance, but her ignorance of such a possibility couldn't account for the horror in her customarily expressionless face.
"It's no use," she screamed. "Get back, Jim! Quick! Through the door!"
Slim was so close that Garth could see the automatic held at his hip.
"You'll stick here, Garth," came the smooth tones. "And you might's well drop your gun."
Garth saw George's hands tighten on Nora's arm. He understood then the real threat by which they would control him.
"Hands off the girl!" he said.
But George smiled, and pressed tighter until Nora cried out involuntarily.
"That means, drop your gun. For any little damage you do here Nora'll foot the bill."
She shook her head, but her face recorded an insufferable pain. Garth knew that the one shot for which he would have time would spare her nothing.
"I never expected to see the pride of your gang slinking behind a woman's skirts," he sneered. "I suppose those are four of the rats who helped put your breakaway over. Six against one, and a woman for a shield!"
It chilled him that the four strangers exposed their faces to his glance with a contemptuous indifference. He laughed, however, as Slim took his revolver.
"You giants must know that you haven't the chance of a pretzel at a Dutch wedding."
Slim affected not to have heard, but his gestures lacked smoothness.
"Let's see how you enjoy your own jewelry, Garth."
And he reached in Garth's pocket and drew out the pair of handcuffs he had been certain to find there. He snapped them on the detective's wrists. The four confederates lounged forward, produced stout cords, and bound them about Garth's ankles. His momentary resistance was smothered by Nora's sharp cry:
"Don't fight, Jim!"
His sense of utter helplessness increased, while the men, in obedience to Slim's gestures, stretched him on the floor. The surface was wet, as if the ooze of the river had penetrated this far. Slim stooped and glared at him, his eyes exposing a measureless resentment.
"Thanks for walking into our parlor, you fly cop. We heard how you and the skirt had fallen for each other. We guessed if we gave you a lead with some of her trinklets, you'd play the busy sleuth hound."
Nora's voice held the quality of a sob.
"Jim! Why did you come?"
He shrugged his shoulders. He forced on himself a semblance of confidence.
"Planted or not, the trail was my best chance."
Slim beckoned to George.
"Straight you've come to the place where I've dreamed for months of getting you."
Garth managed a grin.
"Cut out the bum acting, Slim. Let's hear what you've got on your mind."
He shrank from a reply. More and more he was impressed by the indifference with which these confederates constantly revealed their faces. He knew, if the inspector did not arrive quickly, he must suffer an eccentric and barbarous punishment. He tried to forecast the penalty, but his imagination was insufficient and his appraisal of Slim's cruelty too conservative. It wasn't until George stepped forward and Nora screamed that he guessed why the others were unafraid of his identification, that he understood how his situation might involve more than life and death. And, perhaps, the shambling creature outside had put the inspector's party on the wrong track.
George placed a pint bottle in Slim's hand. A smoky liquid did not quite fill it. Slim turned to the others, assuming an attitude of mockery.
"This is the brave guy that side-tracked Simmons last summer and wore the gray mask just as if he had something, too, that would frighten women and children. He's the bull that steered us against the black cap yesterday. Let's see how he likes hearing the sentence read himself. Only he isn't going to get anything as comfortable as the electric chair."
A laugh sneered through the cellar.
"Better speed it up, Slim," George advised.
Slim drew the cork from the bottle while his thin lips ceased to smile.
"Since you found a gray mask so becoming, Garth," he snarled, "it's only fair to give you honest cause to wear one. But you'll go poor Simmons one better.Yourmask won't need any eye holes."
Nora cried out again.
"You couldn't do it," Garth muttered.
Beneath his rage lurked a fear of which he had never dreamed himself capable. To face death would have been so much simpler.
"What's in that bottle, Slim?"
"A black cap for you, damn you! Pure vitriol!"
He bent closer.
"Squirm! Those ropes and your own handcuffs will hold you. You'll beg me for a bullet before I'm through."
George twisted the girl so she had to watch.
"Pipe your handsome beau, Nora! You'll think I'm more your style in about ten seconds."
She shuddered.
"You're not bad enough to do that, Slim!"
"Watch me," he answered.
A complete satisfaction blotted from his eyes the fear he had hitherto never quite concealed—the quiet fear of a strong man who acknowledges his own inevitable destiny. Garth reminded him of that. It was his last weapon.
"They'll get you, Slim. They're keeping the chair warm for you. Will this help then?"
Slim laughed.
"Will it hurt? I've waited for this moment ever since you and she sent me to rot in the Tombs. I'll pay old scores while I can."
With an extreme deliberation he commenced to tip the bottle. The fluid, almost imperceptibly approaching the mouth, exercised for Garth a dreadful fascination. It was easy to estimate its progress. George had been right. In about ten seconds! And he couldn't get his chained hands to his eyes. He tried to tell himself it was impossible that that innocent-appearing fluid in the control of this criminal could condemn him to an unrelieved blackness through which, hideously scarred, he must grope henceforth, a thing repellent and past use.
The lights were centred upon his face. It struck him as ironic that their glare should hurt his eyes.
Suddenly Nora sprang forward. She stretched her hand towards Slim, but she didn't touch the bottle or his wrist, for the fluid filled the neck; was so close to the edge that a quick contact might have spilled it. George looked on, his hands in his pockets, his attitude expressing satisfaction at a just and long-deferred punishment.
Slim smiled at Nora. He moved the bottle a little. A drop fell. Something tortured the skin of Garth's cheek. It was as if an iron at white heat had been applied against his flesh with a strong pressure. The stuff was real enough.
Again Slim moved the bottle sluggishly, so that the liquid, ready to trickle out, was directly above Garth's eyes. Nora reached and closed her hands about the mouth.
"Look out!" George warned. "You'll get burnt."
"You see, George won't stand for that," Slim said slily.
"No, no, Slim!" Nora whispered. "I'll bargain."
"You're in a swell position to bargain," George scoffed.
The handcuffs cut into Garth's wrists.
"You don't think," he muttered, "that I was fool enough to follow that trail without covering myself?"
"That doesn't affect me," Slim grinned. "There's a getaway from this place no cop will ever find. Now, Nora! Hands off!"
But she resisted him.
"Slim," she said breathlessly. "You're not a fool. You must know that I can bargain. Suppose you got clear—across the border—into Canada? Couldn't you keep out of trouble once you were there?"
Slim ceased pulling at her hands. He stared at her, amazed, casting aside his last pretence.
"What you talking about, Nora? I know you're clever, but there aren't any more miracles. There's no way out of this town for us."
Her voice was barely audible.
"Unless my father unlocked the gates."
Slim started. Garth, too, answered to a desire almost violent. Surely Slim would realize the hopelessness of securing the inspector's complicity, or, failing that, would seek, as Garth did, for the stratagem behind her plan. Slim, nevertheless, continued to study her, and the narrow face no longer hid his greed for life.
"There's no way under heaven to get the old man to stand for that."
She took her hands from the bottle. Her eyes did not waver.
"No one else could do it, but you know how he loves me. I could make him do it as the price for myself and Jim."
Slim laughed shortly.
"One thing's certain," he mused. "If you did get away with it, I could keep you and the inspector straight. I'd take Garth, bound tight, some guns, and the acid along as gilt-edge securities. Hadn't thought of that, eh? Expected to trip me, didn't you? Well, Nora, you have let yourself in for a dicker, and, by gad I'm inclined to think it over, because I've got you this far: the minute you played queer Garth would go blind and burnt."
Nora conquered her disappointment.
"You'd swear to let Jim go at the border?"
"On my oath I'd let him go clean."
"Not for a million," George broke in angrily. "She gets herself away, then she throws Garth down to see us roast in the chair. You ought to know the skirt. She'd double cross the devil himself."
Garth waited for Slim's answer, his gaze controlled again by the acid.
"George," Slim said slowly, "any chance is worth playing now, for we're as good as in the chair already. And I don't believe she'd throw Garth down. You know what she went through with for the sake of a dead lover."
"You've got to show me," George sneered, "that she's forgotten the dead one to take on Garth."
"We heard in the Tombs," Slim said drily, "that these pigeons wanted to roost on the same stool."
With a growing wonder Garth watched Nora fling aside her reserve. She turned on George, raising her hands in an attitude of fury, as if inspired by a passion beyond her control.
"And that's true. If you think I'd let him take that acid give the bottle to me, and I'll use it on myself instead."
She knelt at Garth's side, and for a moment the light in her eyes, her unrestraint, more than the result of her appeal, held him tense.
"Tell them, Jim," she cried. "If they made you that way I swear I'd kill myself."
She glanced up, tears in her eyes.
"I love him so much, Slim, that to save him I'd see my father dead."
A subdued murmur of voices sifted through from the street. They could hear the stealthy straining of hands at the cellar doors. Nora arose, and, hiding her face, stood trembling.
"The bulls!" George whispered. "Throw the stuff and let's make our getaway."
Slim shook his head.
"I tell you it's a chance. All of you vamoose except George. We'll wait and see, and maybe we won't need you after this. Remember, Nora, there'll always be time for us to wash Garth's face and show our heels."
"Oh, I know it," she breathed. "I know it."
The lights snapped out. Garth was aware of clandestine stirrings. Then the silence of the cellar was broken only by the fumbling at the door.
"I'll let you go, Nora," Slim whispered. "Send the other cops back. If they try to rush us, by God we'll do the trick on Garth and kill who we can besides, the inspector first of all. So play straight."
Garth heard her retreating footsteps. After all he had accomplished his chief purpose. Through him Nora had found escape.
He heard a sharp splintering of wood, and a wan light, not much stronger than the glow of the city through the mist, diffused itself in the cellar. The inspector's breathless voice reached them.
"Nora! Garth!"
Garth saw Nora's shadowy figure advance into the well of the door. He heard her stifle her father's relief and tell him to order his men beyond ear-shot. Her voice murmured. Garth guessed that it recited his abhorrent danger and the terms on which she had agreed to buy his release.
He strained his ears, understanding fully what depended on the answer, yet convinced that reasonably it could only be a refusal. In a way Nora had placed the responsibility for whatever might happen to him on the inspector's shoulders, but the alternative was too distinct. As the price for his connivance the inspector must throw his position and his reputation to the winds, perhaps, face a trial, more than likely to jail sentence. It was conceivable that his love for Nora would dictate even that sacrifice, but she would have to force on him an illusion of a passion as unaccounting as that which had convinced Slim. Could she act to that extent with her father? In spite of his logical interpretation of it, Garth responded to the memory of her agitation. Had she, in fact, been acting in the cellar? Had his peril finally shown her heart the truth? The two most compelling issues of his own life, as well as the inspector's career, depended on the reply, and he could hear nothing. Nora and her father must have moved to one side, for their voices entered the cellar in barely audible murmurs. Slim had handed the bottle to George, and he moved now into the door well where he could listen.
Garth's nerves tightened. Always George held the acid close to the detective's bound and helpless body. Of course the inspector couldn't do it.
Slim came slinking back. His whisper warmed the cold, damp air.
"I couldn't catch it all, but she's getting away with something."
The murmuring ceased, and through the wan light Nora glided, wraith-like, into the doorway, and called to them softly across the cellar:
"Slim! He hates me for making him, but he'll do what he can. He'll tell the Harlem police and the towns along the Hudson that he's got you. He'll try to cover himself with a planted getaway. You have an automobile. Take it and leave by the Broadway bridge. You'll catch the Montreal express at Tarrytown. You've plenty of time, and everything will be arranged; but he can't keep the wool over the district attorney's eyes forever. If you're not over the border to-morrow morning it's no good. So catch that train."
"Come here, Nora," Slim sighed, "and let me thank you properly."
Her laugh was hard, more suggestive of forbidden tears than mirth.
"One hostage is enough. And, Jim, there's a condition for you. Father won't budge unless you give him your word to go quietly. You have to promise on your sacred oath not to make any effort to escape or to throw Slim down."
"What's that for?" George asked suspiciously.
Her tone was contemptuous.
"Use your head, George. It would do father a lot of good to risk so much for Jim if he took matters into his own hands and got the acid just the same."
"Right!" Slim agreed. "You've plenty of common-sense, Nora, and it's going to give us a chance."
"You promise, Jim?"
He fancied an element of command in her voice.
"I'll do what you wish, Nora," he answered. "I promise."
"Then good-by," she called, and her voice no longer held any command, nor was it steady. "Good-by. If I only dared come over to you! God bring you back safe to me."
Garth tried to fight back the response of his heart. He told himself that honorably he must accept all she had said that night as mimicry whose only intention was to save his life. She would expect him to take it at its real value, but he could not shake off the recollection of her emotion. With a great longing he watched her move into the shadows beyond the door.