CHAPTER XVIII
THE STAINED ROBE
Garth had been aware of Nora's slow ascent. As he turned she reached theupper floor and the light from the well caught her face.
"A friend who has just come," Garth explained to Mrs. Taylor. "There isnothing to frighten you. The woman you saw is McDonald's daughter. I hadsatisfied myself she was in the house. We are pretty near our goal now."
"But why," Nora asked, "should McDonald's daughter cry through the housein this fashion? Why didn't Mrs. Taylor see her face?"
But Garth had started up the stairs. The two women followed, as if eachwas unwilling to be left alone. Garth snapped on his pocket lamp. Thelight shone on the only two doors on the attic floor. From behind thefirst keened once more that ghastly and smothered escape of suffering,scarcely audible. As Garth stepped towards the door Mrs. Taylor criedout 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 Iknow she's there. The case is finished with her arrest."
He took out his revolver, flung open the door, and flashed his lightabout 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 singlewindow 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 doorin the side wall, and Garth found that locked, and when he had enteredthe other attic room to which it led he found that empty too except fordust and lumber. Yet, as he searched, that stifled and unearthly moaningreached him again.
Feeling himself caught in the sway of incomprehensible forces thatmocked him, he sounded the walls and measured until he was convinced thetwo rooms could hold no secret place. Meantime the women watched with adeepening fear.
"Just the same, she's in this house," Garth said. "By every rule oflogic 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 cellarand 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, "buthe'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 himto his room and make him as comfortable as possible."
As Garth went on down, helpless and bewildered, he heard again the oldwoman's jibing laugh. It assumed the quality of a threat as he searchedunsuccessfully the cellar and the back part of the house. He met Nora inthe library. Mrs. Taylor and she had found no more than Garth. As theytalked, Reed's tall figure appeared in the doorway. Garth had supposedthe man had gone home immediately after bringing Mrs. Taylor from thestation.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
Reed yawned.
"Mrs. Taylor and this young lady woke me up searching through the sparebedroom in which I was resting. They were after a woman in black. Thatsounds rather silly, doesn't it? I've heard Taylor drool about his petguest--lady in black, strangled in attic by jealous husband. I seeyou're surprised to find me still here. I thought it was understood Ishould 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 answereddryly. "The house is guarded. No one will be permitted to leave until Ihave found or accounted for McDonald's daughter."
"Clever girl that!" Reed said indifferently. "Never heard her open hermouth."
He took a book from a shelf and seated himself in a comfortable chair bythe 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 aboutMcDonald's daughter. For to-night the back part of the house interestsme."
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 casewith the supernatural. The wording of Taylor's note, for instance. Anillusion is furnished us that it was written after the man's death. Thatis followed by another illusion that his cold hand wounded McDonald withthe knife. And this crying! The complete disappearance of the blackfigure almost under our eyes! I grant you it's a moldy, unhealthy house,but it can't shelter such miracles. These phases are clearlymanifestations of some abnormal criminality. I have to work on physicallines. 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 thisevening. McDonald's gesture, instead of accusing, probably tried totell me that; tried to warn me, perhaps, that the murderer would returnagain to the body. I didn't tell Reed the truth. I am going to that roomabout which nearly everything centers. Before the night is over it maytell me what McDonald tried to say. There at any rate my mind should bemore receptive to that flash of intuition I need to make some theory fitthis mystery. Since the house is clearly dangerous, Nora, I want you togo home."
Her laugh was uncomfortable, but Garth recognized its determinedquality.
"I'll see it through, thanks," she said. "I want this sense of sufferingdestroyed. I want--you don't know how anxious I am--to see the case puton a physical basis. So I'll watch with you."
Since he failed to alter her determination, he sent her upstairs to makesure no one was spying, for he wanted their entrance of the room ofdeath 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 strangereflections played again over the face of the dead man. Its sneeringexpression seemed to follow Garth as he moved about, searching in theclosets and the bath room, looking behind each piece of furniture.Meantime Nora waited, for the moment stripped of her familiarconfidence. She watched the dead man rather than Garth. The knife andthe revolver, close to the cold and motionless hand, appeared tofascinate her.
"No one," Garth whispered. "No evidence, beyond the knife, that any onehas been here unlawfully."
He removed the cushions from a lounge and arranged them in a windowrecess. He seated himself with Nora there. He drew the curtains so thatthey would be thoroughly concealed from any one entering the room. Thenhe 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 formidablepremonitions. The heavy black silence of the decaying house became moreoppressive. The near presence of the soulless thing on the bed, whichhad yielded to him the puzzling note, seemed through the night capableof a malicious and unique activity. Garth, in spite of himself, becameexpectant of some abnormal and impossible movement in the room. Nora, heknew, 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'sbody more oppressive. Then suddenly through the night Garth becamefinally aware of a movement in the room, and at first it seemed to be inkeeping with the supernatural fears Nora had imposed on him.
He aroused himself. He commenced to reason. He had not heard the dooropen or close, but the intruder must have entered that way. Again hisears caught a sly scraping sound as of one walking stealthily, and thesound was nearer the bed--between the window recess and the bed. Garththrust his revolver and his lamp through the narrow opening between thec
urtains and pressed the control. There was no more shuffling. Noraswayed closer. The light revealed all of Garth's doubts. He becameefficient again. For, while there was a ghoul-like quality about thepicture his lamp had suddenly illuminated, the figure bending over thebody was sufficiently human. In this position, however, because of thedressing 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 hadpartly drawn from beneath the mattress what appeared to be a long andwide piece of jet black cloth.
"Game's up!" Garth said. "I've got you. Turn around and let me have alook at your pretty face."
The bent shoulders twitched.
"Come!" Garth said harshly. "You're no ghost. You can't evaporate beforeour eyes again."
Then with a gesture of repulsion the hand let the piece of black clothfall. It trailed across the floor, one end still caught beneath themattress. Slowly the figure turned until a profile cut against the shaftof light. Nora cried out her surprise. Garth sprang erect, covering withhis revolver, not McDonald's daughter, but the friend of Taylor and hiswife, the man Reed.
The shock of discovery stripped Reed of his control. He glanced once atthe 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'shis 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 bedbeneath the mattress of which it had patently been hidden. As he held itup it fell in folds to the floor, and he saw it had sleeves and was along garment without shape. But it recalled the black figure that hadvanished from the attic. He ran his lamp over the gown. In spite of thecoarse, tough material it was torn here and there, and on the right handsleeve there were blood stains. That was why the gown had been hidden inthe easiest place, the first place at hand. That undoubtedly explainedReed's daring intention to get the gown and destroy it before the bodyshould 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. AndGarth's hand, holding the tell-tale gown, commenced to tremble too, forit had offered him a solution of everything. He had no time foranalysis. Already there were stirrings outside. Their voices and Nora'scry had aroused the others in the house.
"Don't you see it, Nora?" he cried, "and it wasn't intuition. The truthhas 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 womanappeared, 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 atthe start that there was so much furniture in it, and I'll wager thereare things hidden beneath the bed and back of that large screen. I knownow, too, that it wasn't you who washed your hands this afternoon. Iknow that you fooled me with a clean towel while the person who hadtried to kill McDonald slipped through the communicating door from yourbathroom--"
She screamed to stop him. She placed her slender body against the panelsof the door. She stretched her arms to either side, forming a barrier hedidn't care to pass. She commenced to laugh again, but there were tearsin 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 perfectcorroboration. He whispered to Nora, instructing her to bring thepoliceman 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 camecloser, 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 anduncertain.
"Everything is accounted for," Garth said to the policeman. "Make yourarrest."
Reed stepped forward, offering himself.
"I admire you, Reed," Garth said, "but your devotion can't do any morefor her. Mrs. Taylor! I don't want you to get excited. This man musttake you--just a form, you know--for the murder of your husband and forthe 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, becauseI didn't love him."
She commenced to struggle in the grasp of the policeman. Abruptly shewent limp and her efforts ceased. Garth nodded with satisfaction.
"That's better. She's fainted. Carry her to her room. We'll have adoctor 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 shetold 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 hewas jealous of me. In any case I would have done anything to help herover the next day or two, for you must understand I've loved her verydeeply 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 franklyhow the pivotal pieces of the puzzle had been within reach long beforeReed had tried in Mrs. Taylor's service to recover and destroy thetell-tale black gown.
"Those sedatives in Taylor's bathroom," he said. "The man's perpetualquestioning of his doctor about the symptoms and the treatment ofinsanity, the moans which frightened the other servants withoutaffecting McDonald or his daughter, the old lady's exaggeration of hereccentricities to draw my attention from Mrs. Taylor--any of these cluesought to have reminded us, Nora, of the hundreds of similar cases in NewYork of fond relatives who, through a mistaken pride, hide and treat intheir own homes such cases of mental disorder."
He scarcely needed to outline for her the picture, filled in by the oldlady, of that black hour last night in the melancholy house, when Mrs.Taylor had tricked McDonald's daughter--a competent trained nurse--hadescaped from the attic sick-room, and had got the revolver. Garth sawthat Nora, too, could fancy Taylor's panic and self-reproach as he laysick and helpless in bed, knowing his wife was free, foreseeinginevitably much the sort of thing that had happened, trying when it wastoo late to confess his mistake, to warn the authorities that his wifewas at large and, possibly, dangerous.
"But she didn't give him time to write enough," Garth said. "Shefollowed too quickly her ruling impulse to punish the man she blamed forher tragic situation. Moreover, the realization of what she had done, asis common in such cases, returned her to approximate sanity, suggested,even without her mother's prompting, Taylor's California blind as a roadfrom her dreadful dilemma. And McDonald's daughter, through her frightand a promise of money, could be persuaded to avoid arousing her fatheror Clara, to throw on one of Mrs. Taylor's dresses, to hurry with her toAlbany. Evidently the girl lost her nerve, for she was to have come backas if nothing had happened. She was to have taken care of Mrs. Taylor.Eventually she was to have placed her in a sanitarium, explaining herbreakdown, as well as any present peculiarities, naturally
enoughthrough the shock of her husband's suicide. It was McDonald's demands toknow what had happened to his daughter that made Mrs. Taylor turn on himfinally. If he had been able to speak then I think he would have brokenfaith 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 studiedmanner in which she threw us off the track when we caught her cryingover McDonald, and her failure to lose complete control of herself whenshe was arrested indicate that her trouble is curable. It seems to havebeen brought on by her intolerable life in this gloomy house with aninvalid whom she didn't love, while her affection for Reed increasedhopelessly. Her illness was broken by such periods of apparent sanity asshe had last night and to-day. I rather think Reed and she may be happyyet."
Nora smiled wistfully.
"Then," she said slowly, "I almost wish we had kept Taylor's secretbetter than he did himself."