The Mask: A Story of Love and Adventure
eyes ran over her figure in a way that made the crimson rush furiously
to her cheek. There was no mistaking that smile. It was the bold,
lustful look of the voluptuary who enjoys letting his eyes feast on the
prey that he knows cannot now escape him.
"Mrs. Traynor," he began in the caressing, dulcet tones which she
feared more than his anger, "you are an exceptional woman. To most men
of my temperament you would not appeal. They would find your beauty
too statuesque and cold. I know you are clever, but love cannot feed
on intellect alone, I have loved many women, but never a woman just
like you. Your coldness, your haughty reserve, your refinement would
intimidate most men and keep them at a distance, but not me. Your
aloofness, your indifference only spurs me, only adds to the acuteness
of my desire. I swore to myself that I would conquer you, overcome
your resistance, bend you to my will. You turned me out of your home.
I swore to be avenged."
He stopped for a moment and watched her closely as if studying and
enjoying the effect of his words. Then, amid a cloud of blue tobacco
smoke, he went on:
"I knew only one way to win you--it was to humiliate you, to place you
in a position where you would have to come to me on your knees."
She half rose from her chair.
"I would never do that," she cried. "I would rather die!"
"Oh, yes, you will," he continued, calmly, making a gesture to her to
remain seated. "When I've told you all, you'll see things in a
different light." Fixing her steadily with his piercing black eyes, he
asked: "Have you noticed any difference in your husband since his
return."
She looked up quickly.
"Yes--what does it mean? Can you explain?"
He nodded.
"Did you ever hear your husband speak of a twin brother he once had?"
Her face turned white as death and her heart throbbing violently, she
stared helplessly at her persecutor. She tried to be calm, but she
could not. Yet, why be so alarmed, why should this single question so
agitate her? In the deepest recesses of her being she knew that it was
her unerring instinct warning her that she was about to hear something
that would entail worse suffering than any she had yet endured.
"Yes--yes--why do you ask?" she gasped.
"You all thought the brother dead."
"Yes."
"You were mistaken. He is alive."
"Where is he?" she faltered.
"Here in New York."
"Where?"
"In your house. The man who returned home was not your husband. He
was your husband's twin brother."
She looked at him as one bewildered, as if she did not understand what
he was saying, as if words had suddenly lost their meaning. Her face,
white as in death, she faltered:
"Not Kenneth--then where is Kenneth?"
"He is dead!"
Her powers of speech paralyzed, her large eyes starting from their
sockets from terror, an expression of mute helpless agony on her
beautiful face, she looked up at him with horror. Not yet could she
fully grasp the meaning of his words. At last the frightful spell was
broken. With an effort the words came:
"Then you," she cried. "You are his assassin!"
He shook his head as he replied carelessly:
"No--not I--his brother!"
She gave a cry of anguish and, starting to her feet, made a movement
forward, her hands clutching convulsively at her throat. Air! air!
She must have air. She felt sick and dizzy. The room was spinning
round like a top, and then everything grew dark. Lurching heavily
forward she would have fallen had he not caught her.
Instantly she shrank from the contact as from something unclean, and
with a low moan sank down on a chair and buried her face in her hands.
Her instinct had told her true. Her loved one was dead, she would
never see him again, and that man who had come into the sanctity of her
home and fondled her in his arms was his murderer. Oh, it was too
horrible!
The bitter, cynical smile was still on Keralio's lips as he went on:
"You see the folly of resisting me. Had you surrendered at that time
all might have been well. The price was not too much to pay. I would
have been discreet. No one but ourselves would have known that you and
I were----"
He did not complete the sentence, for at that moment she sprang forward
like an enraged tiger cat, and, seizing a cane that stood close by,
struck him across the face with all the force of her outraged womanhood.
"Murderer! Assassin!" she cried indignantly. "How dare you talk like
that to me? I will denounce you to the whole world. I will not rest
till I see you and that other scoundrel punished and my poor husband is
avenged. On leaving here I shall go direct to the police."
Imbued with strength she never dreamed she possessed, she was about to
hit him again when he seized the cane and threw it away. But across
his pale, handsome face lay a telltale red mark, the smart of which
burned into his soul.
His eyes flashed with anger and he made a visible effort to control
himself. He took a step forward and, as he advanced she saw an
expression in his face which prompted her to retreat precipitately. It
was a dangerous look, the look of a man who knew he had a helpless
woman in his power, a man who was desperate and would stop at nothing
to encompass his ends. Now thoroughly frightened, she looked around
for some way to escape. The windows were impossible, the only way was
by the door and he barred the way. Besides, she would never go without
her child.
He noticed the movement and look of alarm, and he smiled. Continuing
to advance, he said:
"There's no use making a fuss. No one could hear you if you shouted
for help till the crack of doom. You are alone with me--and absolutely
in my power. Do as I ask and there is nothing you shall not have.
Refuse, and I answer for nothing. Come----"
Her whole body trembling, her face white with terror, she kept on
retreating:
"Leave me alone!" she gasped, "or I will scream."
"Scream away," he laughed. "There's no one here to hear you."
Suddenly he made a quick lunge forward and seized her. She struggled
and resisted with all the energy born of despair, pushing, twisting,
scratching. But they were too unevenly matched. She was like an
infant in the grasp of an Hercules. Slowly, she felt her strength
leaving her. His iron grasp gradually closed on her, nearer and nearer
he drew her into his embrace.
With a last, superhuman effort, she managed to wrench herself free, out
of his grip, and breaking completely away, she fled into the next room.
But he was after her in a minute and again seized her, but not before
she screamed at the top of her voice:
"Help! Help! Kenneth! Wilbur! Help! Help!"
He tried to gag her mouth to stifle her cries, but it was too late.
His quick ear caught the sound of approaching footsteps in the outside
hall. Almost at the same instant there was a loud knocking at the door.
Keralio fell back, his face white and tense. Had his plans failed at
the eleventh hour, could anyone have played him false? If the game was
up, they should never take him alive. Leaving Helen, he drew a
revolver, and, going quickly into the inner hall, he waited in grim
silence for the visitors to force an entrance.
"Open the door, or we'll break it in!" shouted a stern voice outside.
"There's no use resisting. The place is surrounded."
Still no answer. Keralio stood grimly in the shadow of the parlor
doorway, revolver in hand, while Helen cowered in the inner room, in
momentary expectation of a tragedy.
Crash! The front door fell in, shattered into a thousand splinters,
and through the breach thus made rushed Wilbur Steell, Dick Reynolds,
and half a score husky Central Office detectives, revolvers in hand.
"There is he!" cried the lawyer, pointing to Keralio.
Quick as a flash, the Italian raised the revolver and fired, the bullet
entering the plastered wall an inch away from the lawyer's head.
Almost simultaneously, another pistol shot rang out, but this time the
aim was truer, for, with a cry of baffled rage, Keralio threw his arms
above his head and fell to the floor dead. Quickly, one of the
detectives stooped down and compared his face with a photograph he had
taken from his pocket.
"Yes----" he exclaimed; "that's the fellow--well known counterfeiter.
Did time in San Quentin and Joliet. Known as Baron Rapp, Richard
Barton and a dozen other aliases. He's one of the slickest rogues in
the country. We've got the valet safe downstairs. I guess he'll get
twenty years."
But Steell had not waited to hear about Keralio. There were others
more important to think about. Rushing into the inner room, he found
Helen prostrate, half fainting from fright.
"Thank God, I'm in time!" he exclaimed.
"Dorothy," she murmured weakly. "Save Dorothy! She's somewhere here."
Going into another room, the lawyer found the little girl fast asleep
on a bed. Bringing her to her mother, he said tenderly:
"Here's your treasure. Now you can be happy."
She shook her head. The nightmare of what Keralio had told her, still
obsessed her.
"No--" she shuddered; "--never again. They have killed him!"
To her surprise, the lawyer, instead of sharing her sorrow, actually
smiled.
"Helen," he said; "I have a great surprise for you. A friend has
accompanied me here. He called at your house to-day, but you had just
left, so he called on me. You have not seen him since he sailed away
three months ago on the _Mauretania_."
She listened bewildered. Her color came and went. What did he mean?
Could it be possible that--no, had not Keralio said he was dead?
Trembling with suppressed emotion, she whispered:
"Tell me--what is it--tell me----"
For all reply, the lawyer went to the door and beckoned to someone who
had waited in the outer hall. A moment later a man entered, a tall,
well set figure that was strangely familiar. Straining her eyes
through her tears, it seemed to her that her mind must be playing her
some trick, for there before her, stood Kenneth, not the impostor her
instinct had warned her to detest and avoid, but the real Kenneth she
had loved, the father of her child. With a joyous exclamation, she
tottered forward.
"Kenneth!" she cried.
The man, his athletic form broken by sobs, opened his arms.
"My own precious darling!"
A moment later they were clasped in each other's arms. Ah, now she
knew that he had come home! This, indeed, was the husband she loved.
There was no deception this time. Wonderingly, she turned to Steell.
"How did it happen?" she asked wonderingly.
"We'll tell you later--not now," he replied.
She shuddered as she asked in a low voice.
"But where is his brother?"
"Dead! He shot himself at the club. Kenneth and I went to confront
him at the club before coming here. It was his only way out."
The detective stepped forward. Addressing the lawyer and holding out
two enormous diamonds that sparkled like fire in the sunlight, he said:
"We've just found these, together with a lot of counterfeit money."
The lawyer laughed as he took charge of the diamonds.
"It'll please Mr. Parker to see these. Come, Dick. Our work is done."
Kenneth put his arms around his wife.
"Safe in port at last, dear."
"You'll never go away again," she murmured through her tears.