CHAPTER XXII
THE GRAY MIST
I was about half-way on my return journey when I heard a car racingalong the road behind me, and as it came nearer I detected the factthat it was slowing down. Ere I could turn:
"Hi! Mr. Addison!" hailed a voice.
I stopped, turned round, and there was Gatton leaning out of the carand staring towards me through the deepening dusk.
"Why, Gatton!" I said, walking up to him--"I waited more than tenminutes for you, and then gave it up."
"Waited for me?"
"Yes, by the police-box."
He stared in evident wonder at me and then at the police chauffeur whodrove the car.
"Whatever prompted you to do that?" he said. "Coates must have givenyou the wrong message. I said I would come to the house for you, notmeet you in the street."
Still I remained dense to the truth, and:
"I know you did," I replied. "I refer to the second message."
"I sent no second message."
"What!"
"Get in," cried Gatton shortly; "this wants explaining."
I stepped into the car, and as it moved onward again I explained tothe Inspector what had taken place. As I talked I saw his expressiongrow darker and darker, until finally:
"There's something wrong!" he muttered.
"Then you did not inspire the message?"
"I know nothing whatever about it. At the time you received it I wason my way from Crossleys. I have been traveling for the last hour anda half."
I stared at him very blankly. The object of such a communication wasdifficult to imagine, and I knew of nothing incriminating in mypossession, which might have tempted the assassin to lure me from thehouse whilst he obtained possession of it.
In ever-growing excitement I watched the houses slipping behind us aswe swept along. Then we came to the tree-lined expanse of roadimmediately leading to the cottage. As the car stopped, I leaped outquickly, Gatton close upon my heels, and ran up the path to the door.
From certain indications with which I was familiar, I observed thatCoates was out, whereby I concluded that he had set off to meet themythical "man with a box." Not without apprehension I inserted the keyin the lock and opened the door.
As I did so, I beheld a most singular spectacle.
The careful Coates had closed all the windows as usual before quittingthe house, so that there was comparatively little draught along thecorridor. But as the door swung open I perceived a sort of grayfog-like vapor floating over the carpet about a foot in depth andmoving in slightly sinuous spirals upward towards the opened door!
At this phenomenon I stared in speechless astonishment; for whilst itresembled steam or the early morning mist which one sometimes seesupon the grass in hot weather, I was wholly at a loss to account forits presence inside my cottage!
"Good heavens!" cried Gatton, and grasped me by the arm with so stronga grip that I almost cried out. "_Look! Look!_"
"What the devil is it?" I muttered; and turning, I stared into hisface. "What _can_ it be?"
"Stand back," he said strangely, and pulled me out into the porch. "Doyou notice a peculiar smell?"
"I do--a most foul and abominable smell."
Gatton nodded grimly.
"God knows what has happened here since you left," he said; "but ofone thing I am sure--you must certainly bear a charmed life, Mr.Addison. There has been a third attempt at your removal!"
This choking smell which now rose to my nostrils had in it somethingvaguely familiar, yet something which at that place and that time Ifound myself unable to identify; but:
"We shall have to open the windows!" rapped Gatton.
Suiting the action to the word, he took out his handkerchief, andholding it to his nostrils went running along the corridor, his feetoddly enveloped in that mysterious mist. A moment later I heard thebang of a swiftly raised window, then another, and:
"Stand clear of the door!" called a muffled voice.
A moment later Gatton came racing back again, coughing and chokingbecause of the fumes which arose from that supernatural fog carpetingthe passages.
The chauffeur now appeared upon the path leading from the gate to theporch, but:
"Stay by the car!" ordered Gatton. "Don't move without instructions."
I scarcely noted his words. For I was watching the gray fog. In thedusk I could see it streaming out, that deathly mist, and creepingaway across grass and flower-beds, right and left of the door.
"Give it a chance to clear," said Gatton; "I fancy one good whiffwould finish any man!"
Even as he spoke the words the nature of this vapor suddenly occurredto me, and:
"The Abbey Inn!" I whispered. "The Abbey Inn!"
"Ah!" said he--"you've solved the mystery, have you? But can youexplain how this stuff comes to be floating about the floor of yourhouse?"
"I cannot," I confessed. "But at all costs we must go in. We mustlearn the worst!"
"Yes, we'll risk it now," said the Inspector.
Close together we entered and made our way towards the study. As wepassed the door-way of the ante-room in which the telephone wasplaced. I glanced, aside, and thereupon:
"My God, Gatton!" I groaned. "Look!"
He pulled up and the two of us stood, horror-stricken, rooted to thespot, looking into the little room.
I have said that Coates invariably closed the windows before leavingthe house, but here the window was open. Prone upon the floor wasstretched the figure of a man!
He wore a light overcoat, and his hat lay under the telephonetable--where it had evidently rolled at the moment of his fall. Thepoisonous smell was more apparent here than elsewhere; and lookingdown at the prone figure, the face of which was indiscernible becauseof the man's position:
"Why, Gatton!" I said in an awed whisper--"look!... he was speaking tosome one!"
"I'm looking!" replied Gatton grimly.
Grasped rigidly in his left hand the fallen man held the telephone!
"We want gas-masks for this job," said the Inspector.
His words were true enough. I had already recognized the odor of thefoul stuff. It was identical with that which, as we had come down fromthe upper floor of the Abbey Inn, had proceeded from the room whereinthe mysterious shell had exploded. In a word my cottage was filledwith some kind of poison-gas!
"We must risk it, anyway," said Gatton, "and find out who it is."
I nodded, sick with foreboding. Stooping swiftly, he succeeded inturning over the prone figure, whereupon I quite failed to restrain ahoarse cry of horror....
_It was Eric Coverly_!
The fume-laden room seemed to swim around me as I looked down at thedreadfully contorted features over which was creeping that greenishtint which had characterized the face of Sir Marcus as I had seen iton the morning of the body's recovery from the hold of the _Oritoga_.
"Drag him out," said Gatton huskily; "he may be alive."
But even as we bent to the attempt, both my companion and I wereseized with violent nausea; for the wisps of gray mist which stillfloated in the air were nevertheless sufficiently deadly. However, wesucceeded at last in dragging Eric Coverly into the passage. Here itbecame necessary to detach the telephone from the death-grip in whichhe held it.
I turned my head aside whilst Gatton accomplished this task; thentogether we bore Coverly out into the porch. At this point we wereboth overcome again by the fumes. Gatton was the first to recoversufficiently to stoop and examine the victim of this fiendish outrage.I clutched dizzily at an upright of the porch, and:
"Don't tell me he's dead," I whispered.
But Gatton stood up and nodded sternly.
"He was the last!" he said strangely. "They have triumphed after all."
The man who had driven the car and who now stood in a state ofevident stupefaction looking over the gate, where he had been warnedto remain by the Inspector, came forward on seeing Gatton beckoning tohim.
"Notify the local officer in charge
and bring a doctor," said Gatton.He turned to me. "Which is the nearest?"
Rapidly I gave the man the necessary instructions and he went runningout to the car and soon was speeding away towards the house of a localphysician.
I find it difficult to recapture the peculiar horror of the next fewminutes, during which, half-fearful of entering the cottage, Gattonand I stood in the little sheltered garden adjoining the porch lookingdown at the body of this man who had met his end under my roof, incircumstances at once dreadful and incomprehensible.
Tragically, Eric Coverly was vindicated; by his death he was provedinnocent. And by the manner of his death we realized that he hadfallen a victim to the same malign agency as his cousin.
I have explained that my cottage stood in a strangely secluded spot,although so near to the sleepless life of London; and I remember thatthroughout the period between the departure of the man with the carand his return with the doctor and two police officers whom he hadbrought from the local depot, only one pedestrian passed my door andhe on the opposite side of the road.
How little that chance traveler suspected what a scene was concealedfrom his eyes by the tall hedges which divided the garden from thehighroad! It was as the footsteps of this wayfarer became faint in thedistance, that suddenly:
"Come along!" said Gatton. "We might chance it now. I want to get tothe bottom of this telephone trick."
We returned to the door of the ante-room, and side by side stoodlooking down at the telephone which had only been extracted from thegrip of the dead man with so much difficulty. The Inspector stoopedand took it up from the floor. The deadly gray mist was all butdissipated now, and together we stood staring stupidly at thetelephone which Gatton held in his hand.
To all outward seeming it was an ordinary instrument, and my numberwas written upon it in the space provided for the purpose. Then, allat once, as we stepped into the room, I observed something out of theordinary.
I could see a length of green cable proceeding from the wall-plug_out_ through the open window. The cable attached to the instrumentwhich Gatton held did not come from the proper connection at all, butcame _in_ through the window, and was evidently connected withsomething outside in the garden!
"What does this mean, Gatton?" I cried.
Evidently as deeply mystified as I, Gatton placed the telephone on thelittle table and fully opening the window, leaned out.
"Hullo!" he cried. "The cable leads up to the roof of the tool-shed!"
"To the roof of the tool-shed!" I echoed incredulously.
But Gatton did not heed my words, for:
"What the devil have we here?" he continued.
He was hauling something up from the flower-bed below the window, andnow, turning to me, he held out ... a second telephone!
"Why, Gatton!" I cried, and took it from his hand, "_this_ is theauthentic instrument! See! It is connected in the proper way!"
"I see quite clearly," he replied. "It was simply placed outside,whilst a duplicate one was substituted for it. I observe a ladderagainst the shed. Let us trace the cable attached to the duplicate."
The ladder was one used by Coates about the garden; and now, climbingout of the window, Gatton mounted it and surveyed the roof of thelean-to which I used as a tool-shed.
"Ha!" he exclaimed. "A gas cylinder!"
"What!"
He fingered the green cable.
"This is not cable at all," he cried; "it's _covered tubing_! Do yousee?"
He descended and rejoined me.
"You see?" he continued. "A call from the exchange would ring the bellin the ante-room here. This devilish contrivance"--he pointed to thefalse telephone--"is really hollow. The weight of the receiverhermetically closes the end of the tube, no doubt. But any oneanswering the call and taking up the duplicate instrument wouldreceive the full benefit of the contents of the cylinder which liesup there on the roof!"
"My God, Gatton!" I muttered. "The fiends! But why was the contrivancenot removed?"
"They hadn't time," he said grimly. "They had not counted on thedeath-grip of the victim!"
I heard a car come racing up to the gate, followed by the sound ofmany excited voices.
"At last we know where the gray mist came from," I said, as Gatton andI walked through the cottage to meet the new arrivals.
"We know more than that," he retorted. "We know how _Sir Marcus_died!"
"Gatton!" I cried excitedly, as we approached a group waiting in theporch--"do you mean--"
He looked at me grimly.
"I mean," he said slowly, "that I have not forgotten the _gas-plug_ inthe wall of that recess in the supper-room at the Red House! The onlything I was doubtful about (the means by which the victim was inducedto admit the gas into the room) is now as clear as daylight."
"You are right, Gatton," I agreed. "The same trick has succeededtwice."
"The same trick, as you say, Mr. Addison; with one trifling variation,a device which would only suggest itself to such a brain as that of--"
"Dr. Damar Greefe!" I cried.
"I believe you are right."
And now fell an awesome silence; for whilst Gatton and I stoodbare-headed, the unfortunate Eric Coverly was being carried out to thewaiting car; and even as I turned my eyes away in horror from thatspectacle, I was endeavoring to frame the words in which I shouldacquaint Isobel with this second ghastly tragedy.
Here, indeed, was a new development of "the _Oritoga_ mystery"; and soqueerly does the mind depart from the actualities at such a momentthat I found myself thinking, even whilst Gatton was talking to me, ofthe bold head-lines which would greet readers of the press in themorning--and of the renewed excitement which would sweep throughoutthe length and breadth of the land when this dreadful alibi wasproven.
Over the details of that gruesome tragedy I feel myself compelled topass lightly, for even now the horror of it remains with me. The fumesof the poisonous gray mist lingered for hours in the house; and therewere official visitations, testimonies and attestations, and thehundred and one formalities which invariably accompany such a tragedybut which I need not deal with in detail here.
Coates returned with the Rover, just as the body of the victim wasbeing removed, and his account of what had occurred was simple enough,and followed the lines which we had anticipated. He had locked up andthen gone to the garage for the car as I had directed him to do,returning to the cottage in time to admit Eric Coverly, whom he showedinto the study, having informed him that I should be back in less thanten minutes. He had then proceeded to Denmark Hill railway stationonly to find, as I had found, that the appointment was a hoax and"the man with a box" a myth.
"You see," said Gatton, "the scheme of the plotter was simply this: toget Coates out of the way for a long enough time to allow thesubstitution of the telephone to be accomplished. The fact that Coateshad closed the windows before leaving the house didn't interfere verymuch with the scheme. It's an old-fashioned catch on the ante-roomwindow, and I have seen the marks upon the brass-work where it wasforced from the outside with the blade of a knife. For the person whoopened the window to take out the real telephone and put the other inits place was easy; and all that remained was to lift the gas-cylinderon to the shed and partly reclose the window as we found it. Coates,even if he had troubled to look, would not have noticed any differencein the dusk. It is the next move, however, which _I_ find mostinteresting."
Gatton spoke with repressed excitement, and:
"What do you mean by 'the next move'?" I asked.
"Well," he replied, "we have good evidence to show that the assassinpossesses an almost Napoleonic capacity for working by the time-table.Witness the employment of Constable Bolton in the Red Houseaffair--which showed that our man was perfectly acquainted with themovements of the officer on that beat and timed his schemeaccordingly. Very well ... having laid the telephone trap in yourante-room--did our man hurry away and make the call _in person_,which brought Coverly to the 'phone?--or did he remain watching thehouse and
give the signal to _some one else_ to do it?"
"I cannot imagine, Gatton. Nor does the point strike me as important."
"No?" said Gatton, smiling triumphantly. "Then I must explain.Whereas, in the Red House, the scheme worked _automatically_--for thetime of Sir Marcus's arrival was _fixed_--in the present instance,some one had to watch for _your_ return from the mythicalappointment!"
"For _my_ return?"
"Unquestionably! This scheme was arranged for your benefit, Mr.Addison. Unknowingly, poor Coverly saved you from a dreadful fate atthe price of his own life! You see, they did not know that Coverly wascoming here! Now, it will not have escaped your attention that he worea soft felt hat, a light overcoat, and carried a black cane. So did_you_ when you went out to keep the appointment made by the assassin!"
He paused, staring at me hard, and:
"Whoever was watching for your return," he said solemnly, "mistookCoverly for you! The moment that Coates drove away, the signal wasgiven. It _must_ have been. We were back here a few minutes later,_Now_ do you see?"
"I do not, Gatton! What are you driving at?"
"At this: The telephone call _must_ have been made from somewhere inthe immediate neighborhood! There wasn't time to do it otherwise. Andthere is no public call office within a mile _which is open afterseven o'clock!"_
"Good heavens!" I cried. "At last I understand!"
Gatton looked at me, smiling in grim triumph; and:
"Dr. Damar Greefe has a residence somewhere within a quarter-mileradius of this house!" he declared. "He has betrayed himself!Then--look here."
Unscrewing the front of the mouthpiece of the false telephone, he tookout the strip of cardboard upon which my number was written, turned itover ... and there upon the back was another number!
"Just look up Dr. Brown-Edwards," he said. "He was the last occupantof the Red House, and may still be in the book."
Grasping the purpose of his inquiry, excitedly I did as he directed;and there sure enough the number appeared!
"The identical instrument that was used at the Red House!" criedGatton. "Note the artistic finish with which even the _correct_exchange numbers are looked up!"
I sank back in my chair, silent, appalled at the perverted genius ofthis fiend whom we were pitted against in a life-or-death struggle.But presently:
"What was the object of the opening and closing of the garage doors atthe Red House?" I asked, almost mechanically.
"Simple enough," Gatton replied. "Whereas here the telephone wasinstalled, so that the bell could be rung by some one merely callingup your number--and the ringing stopped by the caller telling theexchange he had made a mistake--in the Red House, as I havediscovered, the 'phone had been disconnected shortly after Dr.Brown-Edwards left the place."
"Then the opening and closing of the doors was merely a device forringing the bell?"
"Yes. The opening of the first door set it ringing and the opening ofthe second probably stopped it. Mr. Addison," he stood up, resting hishands upon the table and regarding me fixedly--"we enter upon thefinal battle of wits: New Scotland Yard _versus_ Dr. Damar Greefe andthe green-eyed lady of Bast. Regarding the latter--there is a verysignificant point."
"What is that?"
"The 'voice' on this last occasion was that, not of a woman, but of aman."