The Gray Mask Part 34

"I've my gun," he muttered.

"It's worthless."

The footsteps were nearer. They had persisted with a measured, an unhurried purpose. Garth drew his revolver. The curtains waved.

Suddenly Nora screamed. She flung herself upon him tigerishly.

"Jim!" she whispered. "Now!"

The contact swept him with a bitter, distorted content. He had to force himself to grasp her shoulders, and to bend them back. Her hand rose.

Scarcely understanding her intention, he saw her strike herself sharply across the face. An ugly, reddish mark survived. There was a suggestion of tears in her voice.

"You coward, Jim!"

The curtains were wider, but always, as he forced her back, he combatted the desire to draw her closer instead, to heal with his lips the scar with which his precipitancy had marked her.

She cried out again. He glanced at the curtains. He let her go, staring with a sense of loathing at a yellow, wrinkled face, which protruded from the purple, and permitted him to see, glistening above it, a braid of hair, serpent-like and perilous.

The leering face was withdrawn. Garth heard a low whistle modulated on an unfamiliar, minor interval.

"Don't resist them, Jim," Nora whispered. "I'll do what I can."

Then she turned and ran, screaming, through the curtains.

Garth dashed for the hidden door which led to the front of the house. If only he could break through there, reach a window, and signal the inspector, but when he tore the curtains back he faced panels of an exceptional stoutness, unquestionably built to deaden sound as well as to form a competent barricade. He surrendered to the realization that he was caught in the heart of this evil house. He wondered if Nora's strategy r.e.t.a.r.ded his captors.

A stealthy shuffling turned him from the door so that he faced the hall.

He had heard that same sound last night when the diminutive Chinaman had approached him. Now he saw three of the same mold whose queues appeared to writhe in the brown and stifling light as they glided along the hall, their talon-like hands outstretched.

He guessed that the picture was intended to terrify, to impress upon him the futility of resistance, yet while he had his revolver the success of such an attack was remote.

"Stay where you are," he said, puzzled, trying to understand. "Come any closer and I'll shoot."

The yellow mouths grinned. Then, when it was too late, Garth understood the trick. A rush of colder air on his back informed him that the heavy door was open. He stood between two fires. In fact, before he could turn, his wrists were grasped. Two leering faces were close to him, but as the revolver was wrenched from his hand, he pulled the trigger twice.

With the great door open those explosions might penetrate beyond the house wall, might carry even to the inspector's men on the sidewalk.

They had at least aroused in the thick brown twilight of the house a restless, incoherent stirring. Voices muttered. Steps pattered here and there. A m.u.f.fled bell commenced to complain. Through the curtains from the inner room stepped a man--a white man with cruelly intelligent features. Garth realized that he probably faced the head of this organization which for so long had outwitted the police.

Garth laughed with an effort at bravado.

"That was a signal," he said. "Block's surrounded. They'll be in here before you can light a joss stick. Call these things off, or you're as good as in the chair."

Upstairs the stirrings increased. Someone shrieked.

Nora appeared at the man's elbow. Her face was twisted with an abandoned terror.

"Men in the yard!" she gasped.

Garth guessed that it was a part of her scheme to turn the hunt from him, to give him that one moment he needed. And it worked. He felt his hands released. The Chinamen crouched along the wall, as if trying to conceal themselves, whining pitifully.

Garth jumped through the front hall. The vestibule door was locked and the key was missing. There was no time to conquer locks. His opportunity was limited. So he ran into the front room. The window catch baffled him. He didn't dare wait to fumble with it. He raised his fists and crashed them through the gla.s.s. His hands, scratched and bleeding a little, waved a frantic appeal. He shouted. And he heard answering voices and the pounding of feet. He saw figures glide into view and spring up the steps. The battering of shoulders filled the house with a turmoil that drowned its own increasing agitation.

He went back to the inner hall.

"Nora!" he called.

He pushed through the curtains into a room fantastic with Oriental furnis.h.i.+ngs. Black, in a panic, had Nora in his grasp. The girl struggled mutely.

"Drop her, Black!"

Black turned.

"That ends our bargain," Garth said harshly.

"She tried to stop me," Black quavered.

"He's the brother-in-law," Garth said scornfully, "of the very man who's been trying in his useless way to smash this gang. What do you think of that?"

Nora came forward. She was shocked, but it was clear she failed to share his scorn. As the front door yielded she put her hand on his arm.

"Have you ever seen his wife, Jim?" she asked simply.

He nodded.

"So have I," she went on. "She's the one I'm thinking of. She's too young, too happy, to have her whole life stained by this thing."

But Garth's anger persisted. Black, however, in response to Nora's nod, slipped behind the window curtains. The inspector, Manford, and a number of detectives rushed in.

"Get your men through the house," Nora advised.

The inspector motioned the men to go. He lumbered over to Nora. He put his arms around her. An excessive grat.i.tude moistened his eyes and thickened his voice.

"Thank the Lord!"

"Thank Jim," she said, "although he risked everything by appearing here."

"If you'd told us more of your plans," Garth said, "we would have worked better together."

"I didn't dare," she answered. "I knew so little myself. So much depended on success."

Manford's fragile fingers pulled at his moustache. The humor in his eyes did not quite veil a real admiration.

"Well!" he said gaily. "Let me congratulate you, inspector. The police _have_ put something worth while over--through a woman."

Garth, whose eagerness had carried him closer to the girl, noticed for the first time on her neck a bruise left by Black's urgent fingers. A sudden, unreasoning temper swept him with the necessity for atonement.

Impulsively he burst out:

"Inspector, one of the beasts you want is behind those curtains."

Nora cried out.