The Gray Mask, Charles Wadsworth Camp [notion reading list txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Wadsworth Camp
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He raised his paper cutter and jabbed at the desk with a massive petulance.
“Ever since I got down this morning,” he went on, “I’ve been hounded by telegrams and long-distance calls. Well? Do you want a holiday? It’s apt to be a hell of a holiday. Excuse me, Nora.”
“I see,” Garth said. “Something out of town.”
The inspector’s manner warned him. After long experience he knew it veiled a grave distrust.
“Why,” Nora asked, “don’t you tell us what the case is?”
The inspector walked around the desk and with a sigh settled himself in his easy chair.
“That’s the rumpus,” he answered, and Garth saw that his eyes were not quite steady. “Don’t know anything about it myself unless they’d like Garth to chase a few spooks. Here’s the lay-out. It’s a man who’s done me a good many favors. There’s no secret—political ones. I’m in his debt, and he’s asked me for a good detective to go up to his place in New England—not as a detective, mind you, Garth. That’s the queer side, the side I don’t like. He insists on his man’s showing up as a guest, knowing no more than a random guest would know. Sounds like tommy-rot, but he isn’t sure himself there’s anything out of the way. He wants you, if you take it up, to live quietly in the house, keeping your eyes peeled. He expects you to put him wise to the trouble or to stake your reputation that there isn’t any trouble at all. Are you willing to jump into a chase blindly that way? He’d like the fellow that swung the Hennion job, but if you turned it down cold I couldn’t help it, could I?”
“Nonsense, chief,” Garth answered. “Never heard of such a thing, but it sounds interesting. I’ll take a shot at it.”
The inspector wrote hurriedly on a piece of paper.
“Here’s his name and address. Catch the ten o’clock from the Grand Central and you’ll get up there tonight.”
Garth took the slip. Before placing it in his pocket he glanced it over.
“Andrew Alden,” he saw. “Leave Boston from North Station on four o’clock train and get off at Deacon’s Bay.”
“I’ve heard of Mr.—” Garth began.
The inspector’s quick, angry shake of the head in Nora’s direction brought him to an abrupt pause. He walked to Nora and took her hand.
“Then I won’t see you until after my holiday,” he said with a smile.
Her eyes were vaguely uneasy.
“I agree with father,” she said. “It isn’t safe to walk through the dark. Won’t you tell me where you’re going?”
Garth’s laugh was uncomfortable. He didn’t pretend to understand, but his course had been clearly enough indicated.
“I’ll leave that for the inspector,” he answered. “I have to rush to pick up my things on the way to the train.”
The uneasiness in her eyes increased.
“You know, Jim, as father says, you can turn it down. It might be wiser.”
His heart responded to her anxiety. In view of her fear it was a trifle absurd that their farewell should project nothing more impulsive than a handclasp. Its only compensation, indeed, was the reluctance with which she let his fingers go.
When Garth had left, Nora arose and faced her father.
“What’s all this mystery?” she demanded. “It’s easy enough to guess there’s danger for Jim, and you know a lot more than you pretend.”
“See here, Nora,” the inspector grumbled, “I usually give the third degree myself in this place.”
She rested her hands on the desk, studying his uncertain eyes.
“Why,” she asked, “wouldn’t you let Jim tell me the man’s name?”
His bluster was too apparently simulated.
“What did you come down for this morning anyway? No sense in your getting upset. A detective bureau isn’t a nursery.”
She straightened slowly, her face recording an unwelcome assurance.
“Politics!” she cried. “And Jim’s leaving from the Grand Central. I know. He’s going to Mr. Alden’s at Deacon’s Bay. I see why you wouldn’t let him tell me.”
“Place is all right,” the inspector said stubbornly. “You’ve seen it. You were there with me two summers ago. What’s the matter with the place?”
“No use trying to pull the wool over my eyes,” Nora answered. “It’s the loneliest place I’ve ever seen, and you ought to know I’d remember Mr. Alden’s big furnaces and machine-shop. I read the papers, father. He’s staying up so late this year on account of the enormous war orders he’s taken. You know as well as I do that that may mean real danger for Jim. What did Mr. Alden tell you?”
The inspector spread his hands helplessly.
“I sometimes think, Nora, you’d make a better detective than any of us. Alden’s sick and nervous. I guess that’s all it amounts to. He’s probably scared some German sympathizer may take a pot shot at him for filling these contracts. And he’s worried about his wife. She won’t leave him there alone, and it seems all their servants, except old John, have cleared out.”
“You said something to Jim about spooks,” Nora prompted.
“Thought you’d come to that,” the inspector said. “You’re like your mother was, Nora—always on the look-out for the supernatural.”
“So, I gather, were the servants,” she answered drily.
“Silly talk, Alden says, about the woods back of his house. You remember. There was some kind of a fight there during the Revolution—a lot of men ambushed and massacred. I guess you saw the bayonets and gun-locks Alden had dug up. Servants got talking—said they saw things there on foggy nights.”
The inspector lowered his voice to a more serious key.
“The angle I don’t like is that Alden’s valet was found dead in those woods yesterday morning. Not a mark on him. Coroner, I believe, says apoplexy, but Alden’s nervous, and the rest of the help cleared out. I suppose they’ll get somebody else up as soon as they can. Meantime Alden and his wife are alone with old John. Confound it, Nora, I had to send him somebody.”
“But without a word of this!”
“I tell you I don’t like it. I didn’t want to do it. It was Alden’s idea—would have it that way. Frankly I don’t make it out, but maybe, being on the spot, he knows best.”
“There’s something here,” she said, “that we can’t understand—maybe something big. It isn’t fair to Jim.”
The inspector looked up slyly.
“Jim,” he said, “can take care of himself if anybody can. Seems to me you’re pretty anxious. Sure you haven’t anything to tell me about you and him? If you had, I might make a place for him watching these tencent lunch joints to see that customers didn’t carry away the hardware and crockery. Then all the danger you’d have to worry about would be that he might eat the food.”
But Nora failed to smile. She glanced away, shaking her head.
“I’ve nothing to tell you, father,” she answered. “Nothing now. I don’t know. Honestly I don’t know. I only know I’ve been through one such experience, and if anything happened to Jim that I could help, I’d never forgive myself.”
THE night had gathered swiftly behind a curtain of rain. Garth, glancing out the window of the train, saw that darkness was already close upon a somber and resentful world. Pines, hemlocks, and birches stretched limitlessly. The rain clung to their drooping branches like tears, so that they expressed an attitude of mourning which their color clothed convincingly. The roaring of the train was subdued, as if it hesitated to disturb the oppressive silence through which it passed.
The car, nearly empty, was insufficiently lighted. Garth answered to the growing depression of his surroundings. His paper, already well-explored, no longer held him. He continued to gaze from the window, speculating on the goal towards which he was hurrying through this bleak desolation. The inspector’s phrase was suddenly informed with meaning. He was, in every sense, advancing through the dark. The realization left him with a troublesome restlessness, a desire to be actively at work.
The last streak of gray had long faded when the train drew up at Deacon’s Bay station—a smallbuilding with a shed like an exaggerated collar about its throat. At this hour there was no operator on duty. Only one or two oil lamps maintained an indifferent resistance to the mist. Garth saw a horse and carriage at the rear. He walked to it.
“Could you drive me to Mr. Andrew Alden’s place?” he asked.
From the depths of the carriage a native’s voice replied:
“Probably you’re the party I’m looking for. If you’re Mr. Garth from New York, step in.”
Garth obeyed, and they drove off along a road for the most part flanked by thick woods.
Without warning, through an open space, Garth saw a flame spring upward, tearing the mist and splashing the sky with wanton scarlet.
“What’s that?” he asked sharply.
The glare diminished and died. The native clucked to his horse.
“Mr. Alden’s furnaces,” he answered.
Garth stirred.
“I see. Iron. Steel. And now it works night and day?”
“On war orders,” the native answered. “Now you wouldn’t think we’d ever have got in the war, would you? There’s a whole town—board shacks—to take care of the men—more’n fifteen hundred of them.”
Garth nodded thoughtfully. Here at the start was a condition that might make the presence of a detective comforting to his host.
As they penetrated deeper into the woods the driver exhibited an increasing desire to talk, and from time to time, Garth remarked, he glanced over his shoulder.
“None of my business,” the man said, “but it’s funny Mr. Alden’s having company now.”
Garth smiled. He was certainly on the threshold of a case he had been asked to enter wholly unprepared.
“Maybe you’ll tell me why,” he encouraged.
“Because,” the driver answered, “although Mr. Alden stands to make a pile of money, he’s paying for it in some ways. You didn’t hear about his yacht?”
Garth shook his head.
“Maybe some of these rough workmen he’s got up from the city, or maybe somebody wanted to pay him out. Took it out of his boathouse a few nights ago, started on a joy-ride, I suppose, and ran it on the rocks.”
“Much loss?” Garth asked.
“Total, except for the furnishings.”
“Are you one of Mr. Alden’s servants?”
The driver’s laugh was uncomfortable.
“That’s what I meant about his having company. There aren’t any servants except the old butler. A woman from the village goes to get breakfast and lunch for them, but she won’t stay after dark.”
Garth grinned, recalling the inspector’s comment about spooks.
“Why did the servants quit?”
The driver glanced over his shoulder again. He hurried his horse.
“Laughing’s cheap,” he said, “but you can judge for yourself how lonely it is, and Mr. Alden’s right on the ocean—only house for two miles. You see, he owns a big piece of this coast—woods right down to the water. They’ve always told about a lot of soldiers being killed in those woods during the Revolution. All my life I’ve heard talk about seeing things there. Servants got talking a few days ago—said they saw shadows in grave clothes going through the woods. I laughed at that, too. But I didn’t laugh when they found Mr. Alden’s valet yesterday morning, dead as a door nail.”
Garth whistled.
“Violence?”
“Not a sign. Coroner says apoplexy, but that doesn’t convince anybody that doesn’t want to be.”
“Curious,” Garth mused.
For some time a confused murmuring had increased in his ears—the persistent fury of water turned back by a rocky coast.
They turned through a gateway,
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