The Gray Mask Part 17

"Jones!" Garth called softly.

The men approached.

"All right," Garth said. "Go along home. When did they take Mrs. Randall away?"

"Over an hour ago. Thought you were never coming. Spooky hole!"

"No alarms?" Garth asked.

"No," Jones replied, "but I can hear that woman yelling yet."

Garth laughed, uneasily.

"Well, good-night. There's no secret about your leaving, but don't mention at the station that I'm here."

The men merged into the darkness by the gate.

Garth took Nora's arm, and, circling the house at a distance, reached the stone building by the stream. He entered, sniffing suspiciously.

When he had closed the door he took his flashlight from his pocket and pressed the control.

"Don't move around, Nora."

Quickly he examined the confusion of footprints. It impressed him at once as significant that none strayed far from the threshold. The damp floor farther in was disturbed only by a long, irregular depression modelled, he knew, by a body, lying p.r.o.ne.

"Think of lying there, Nora," he said. "I'd have preferred standing indefinitely. And why didn't he move around?"

Nora's teeth chattered.

"It's bitter cold in here."

Garth's face set.

"And a fastidious man like the doctor lies here all night and most of the day. Then let's see."

He went outside and ran his light over the lines of footprints which converged at the door. One set straggled unevenly up the stream. With an exclamation he followed it along the bank until it swung close to the water. He stooped. His lamp moved searchingly about the bottom of the shallow creek. Nora bent over his shoulder.

"Jim! Do you see that stone? There. Hold your light steady. It's been moved. Look at the dark stain on this side."

Garth reached over, rolling the stone away. He drew from the water a stout, slender rope and a black cloth. As he raised the cloth a tiny bottle fell from its folds and splintered on the rock.

Nora's eyes sparkled.

"Does it fit, Jim?"

"It suggests a lot," he answered, "and it explains something, but it's little use unless--"

He caught his breath.

"He might be that kind of a fool."

He sprang upright.

"Come along. We've got to turn up something in the house that will make Randall talk. Nora! If there had been letters do you think she would have destroyed them one by one? You see there was no chance after the murder, and don't women cling to such things?"

"She'd probably keep them," Nora said.

They climbed the hill. The unlighted house, like a thing dead itself and surrendered to decay, arose before them forbiddingly.

"Jones was right," Nora said. "It's spooky."

Garth crossed the verandah on tip-toe and silently opened the door.

"No lights," he breathed.

Nora s.h.i.+vered.

"It's as cold and damp here as the stone house. Can you find your way?"

"Yes. Sh-h."

He led her across the hall, up the staircase, and down the corridor to the dressing-room. The window had been closed in there, and there was no escape for a humid and depressing chill which enveloped them with discomfort.

He found the easy chair and told Nora to sit down. He drew another one close.

"But why not lights, Jim?"

"It's logic to wait awhile," he said. "The letters, you know."

She gasped.

"I begin to see."

"Maybe I shouldn't have brought you," he whispered.

"But who--"

"Sh-h!"

"Did you hear anything?" she asked.

"No. If Randall never wore a rose--"

"Jim! I've never--felt such darkness."

"I must think," he said.

But his brain refused to enter the new country of speculation whose gates the discovery in the stream had opened. The dank air of the room where Treving had been murdered was thick with imminence. A formless antic.i.p.ation possessed Garth's mind. He had a quick instinct to turn on the lights and proceed with his search, abandoning this course which logic had suggested, but which was fraught, he had no doubt, with positive apprehension to Nora. Why not, indeed, satisfy her curiosity now? But his pride denied the impulse. He wanted first something more tangible, something more provocative of her praise.

"It frightens me here," Nora breathed. "I've the queerest desire to--to scream."