The porcelain mask A detective story

shoot, but brought the butt of the weapon down in a vicious swing on the fellow's head. With a grunting, choking groan the latter collapsed into black unconsciousness, still sitting at the wheel. The approaching car swept past; another followed; and neither paused their swift progress. There was no reason why they should have noticed anything. Don Haskins lifted out the limp form and carried it well back to the side of the road, where he quickly rifled the senseless man's pockets, taking nineteen dollars and thirty-five cents in cash, a good watch, and the driving license. Then he donned the chauffeur's cap and climbed into the taxi; an instant later he was speeding on northward--alone. He was headed for the one place where he was sure that he would find money and protection--Greenacres. CHAPTER VIII CAUGHT IN THE WEB The wife of Kirklan Gilmore was not literary, had not even any tendencies in that direction; no literary qualifications had been required for her employment as a typist in Atchinson's publishing house. Her reading had been superficial, shallow, but she had an adaptable mind and was constantly picking up surface things, chance clever little quips and quotations, which, if she were not put to a severe test, might pass for an acquaintance with the classics. When, overwhelmed by the appearance of Victor Sarbella as her husband's guest, she had fled to her room, it was with the realization that still another specter of the past had appeared to haunt and undo her. And there flashed through her mind a fragment of an old quotation: Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive. Yes, what a tangled web she had woven--inextricably enmeshed in the snarled skeins of her ambitious folly. How circumstances had conspired against her. "What a fool I was to think I could get by with it!" she whispered bitterly. "How will it end? It was bad enough without Sarbella. Him--him! It was like a ghost from the grave. He will tell my husband; of course he will tell him--he could want no better revenge than that. That look in his eyes--how he hates me!" She began to think of flight, even made a half-hearted, indecisive move to gather up some of her things, but there was no train now until morning, and the thought of driving the car, novice at the wheel that she was, through the dark night terrified her. Besides which the car was probably in the garage, locked; and she did not have the key. There seemed nothing to do but wait. Helen would have been a very blind person indeed had she not realized that Kirklan had sensed something amiss in the amazing meeting between her and Sarbella; and, as time dragged on--eight o'clock, nine, and then ten--she wondered why her husband had not come raging upstairs to fling the past accusingly into her face, to order her out of the house, perhaps to kill her! "Surely he would come if he knew," she told herself. "Hasn't Sarbella told him? Why, he--he must have told him!" It was past her understanding. Wearily she went to her dressing table, removed the dress she had worn at dinner, slipped into a flowing-sleeved dressing gown that was charmingly open at the throat, and began to let down her glorious bronze hair which cascaded over her shoulders. Detached as Greenacres was, the house was very still, so still that the many sounds which always fill a country night, floated through the window, magnified by her taut, tortured nerves to crescendo volume. "Something has got to happen. Why can't it happen now and be over with!" she moaned. "The suspense, this awful suspense! I can't stand it--I can't!" Nervously she went to the window, and, pushing aside the curtains, leaned out, staring into the night. The future, her future, was like that--black, impenetrable, void, and she felt that there could never be any dawn--not for her. "My life's been nothing but tragedy," she told herself bitterly. "I thought I might be happy and respectable. There's a curse on me; that's what it is, a curse. I'd be better off dead, but--I don't want to die." Helen, staring off into black space, did not see the skulking form that moved stealthily through the shrubbery, circling uneasily, furtively about the house. The slinking man stared upward at the lighted window, stopped, as she leaned out across the sill, framed in the open space by the light which burned within the room behind her. "It's her!" he grunted, but, as he crept forward, intending to call softly, she disappeared. Don Haskins had deserted the stolen taxicab two miles down the road; by cautious questioning he had learned the location of Greenacres and had walked the rest of the way, and here he was. It had been a troubling problem as to how he would get in touch with Helen. He had thought of going into the village and calling her on the telephone, but there were objections to this plan. In the first place he did not want to risk an appearance in the village; added to that, it might be bad business calling her to the phone so late at night. It had been his tentative idea to find a hiding place on the spacious estate until he could get in touch with her. Already he had considered the stable as a likely place for his purpose. "That's her room," he told himself, still looking up at the lighted window. "Now, if she was alone----" He crept closer to the house the better to study the situation, and he found it very much to his liking. The window of Helen's room opened out on the roof of the veranda which semicircled the house on two sides. It might be risky business, but a desperate man, the prospect of the death chair looking him in the face, does not stop to weigh such minor risks as this. He reached an almost instant decision. He sat down in the grass and removed his shoes; tying the laces together, he swung them about his neck. "I never done no porch climbin'," he muttered, "but it don't look so hard." But it was hard, much harder than he had anticipated; the porch post was large of circumference, making it difficult to hug his arms about it with a freezing grip. Several times he slid pantingly down just as his straining fingers were within a few inches of the raised awning. The perspiration poured from his body and moistened the palms of his hands, so that he had to keep wiping them dry. In one last desperate effort he got hold of the awning's edge and began to pull himself upward to the cornice. The triumph, however, was far from noiseless; awning hooks snapped loose from the wood, and the awning itself tore with a ripping sound under the strain. Panting, breathless, exhausted, Haskins lay flat on the roof, waiting to see if the sounds would arouse the house. He marked the time by counting, one to sixty, one to sixty, until four minutes had dragged past. Not even Helen, within the room of the open window directly above, seemed to have heard. Haskins began edging himself, a few inches at a time, across the shingles toward the patch of light that streamed out across the roof. Presently he had reached the sill and, drawing himself up, peered within. Helen was again at the dressing table, mechanically applying bedtime cosmetics. Otherwise the room was empty; Don made sure of that before he pulled himself still further forward. "Sh!" he hissed. "It's me--Don. Douse the glim!" Helen Gilmore did not turn; there was no need. Through the dressing-table mirror she could see his unshaven face at the corner of the window sill. Her hand clapped to her mouth to stem the scream which rose in her throat. Her body rocked in the low-backed chair, but she did not faint. "Douse the light!" Haskins commanded again in a piercing whisper. "Somebody might see me sneakin' in." Helen stumbled unsteadily to her feet and snapped out the lights. In the darkness she heard him floundering through the window and into the room, heard the curtains rip, when he caught at them, evidently to keep his balance, as he lunged forward. She even heard his panting breath, as it wheezed through his mouth. Don turned, lowered the sash, and drew down the blind. "Lock the door an' then flash on the lights again," he ordered tensely. "The door is already locked," answered Helen, as she fumbled for the light switch. The next instant they were blinking at each other; she leaning limply against the wall, he standing in the center of the floor. "My God, Don, what made you come here--to-night of all nights? I can't stand any more; I can't. You gave me until to-morrow----" "Blame the damn cops," he grunted. "It was them did it--them an' Eighth Avenue Annie. She sicked 'em onto me." He still believed that the old hag had double crossed him. "You mean----" "Yeah, they're after me. I'm in for it right. They had the darbies on me, but I beaned the dick that nabbed me, got 'em off, took his gat, swiped a taxi, an' here I am. My hunch was right. Dago Mike squealed on the loft-job croak." "How did you--find me--this room?" gasped Helen. Despite the desperation of the situation, Don Haskins grinned a little. "Seen you when you poked your head outta the window; shinned up the porch, an' here I am." "I--I haven't got the money, Don; I haven't got it--yet." "But you're gonna get it to-morrow? I betcha y'are." His tone was menacing. "You gotta hide me somewheres until----Mebbe you can drive me somewheres in a car. Boston, huh?" Helen lifted her hands in a weary gesture. "Everything seems to be happening at once," she whispered. "I--I don't know if I am going to be able to get the money or not--now." The man glowered menacingly. "Don'tcha try to pull no stall on me; that stuff don't go. Understand?" "Don, listen. My husband was on the same street yesterday when--when I went to that place to see you. His publisher saw me--the man I used to work for." "Aw, say; you don't expect me to swallow no guff like that?" "Sh! Not so loud, Don. It's true. Atchinson saw me. Kirklan didn't believe it at first, but now he feels sure it's true. At first he'd promised me the money. I told him that I wanted to pay an old bill, but I don't know what he is going to do now. Then"--a shudder went through her--"to make it all worse, a man came to the house to-night, a Mr. Sarbella. He----" Haskins lifted his hand to his unshaven chin and stared at her dubiously. "Sarbella? I guess you're bats, ain'tcha? Why, that guy's dead!" "Not--not Andrea," choked Helen. "Victor Sarbella. At first I thought--they look so much alike. He recognized me. Oh, the awful look of hatred that he gave me!" "You mean that Sarbella spilled to Gilmore?" "I--I don't know. I haven't seen any one since dinner. I--I suppose he did. He hates me, and he wants revenge. The newspapers said----" "That he was gonna get you," finished Don. "Yeah, I remember readin' that. The papers made quite a piece about it--Eyetalian revenge an' that sort of spiel. I guess you're some scared that the Sarbella guy's gonna croak you, huh? Right here in the house, is he?" Helen nodded. "Yes, right here in the house," she answered. Don whistled softly. "Well, if that ain't the cat's eyebrows!" he murmured, as he stared at her suspiciously. If what she told him was true, he probably had lost the club he had been holding over her head to extort money from her. But he doubted if it were true; Helen, he told himself, was clever. Perhaps she hadn't found it easy to get the thousand dollars blackmail money from her husband, and she had made up this story as a pure bluff. "Where's the Gilmore guy?" he demanded. "I don't know. I told you that I hadn't seen any one since dinner. I can't understand why Kirklan hasn't come to me, if Sarbella has told him."