The porcelain mask A detective story
"She was employed in some minor capacity by Kirklan's publishers," Mrs.
Gilmore replied. "As to who she is--I wonder. Yes, I wonder. I don't
think even Kirklan knows anything about her. I don't consider it a good
sign when a girl is reticent about her family. Kirklan says, 'I've
married a girl I love, not a family tree.'"
Joan winced again, for that was a line she had written into Kirklan's
successful novel.
"If--if they're in love with each other, mother, I suppose that's all
that matters."
"He's in love with her, but they're not in love with each other, and
those one-sided romances always end in disaster. I can't help but feel
that she is going to smash his life."
"She--she'd better not!" whispered Joan, her hands clenched. "We won't
talk about it any more--please. I'm going to my room and unpack.
I'll--I'll come back in a little while, mother." Her tone was weary,
lifeless.
Mrs Gilmore gave her daughter another quick glance, as she prepared to
deliver the second blow.
"I--I guess you'll miss your old room, Joan; you've always loved it so,
with its view of the river."
Startled, bewildered, the girl turned away from the window. "Miss my
old room? Why, mother, what--what do you mean?"
"Kirklan had your things moved to the east wing, dear. He tried to make
her understand, but----"
"The things moved--from my room!" cried Joan. "Kirklan did that? He--he
tried to make her understand? You mean that woman----"
"It wasn't Kirklan's fault, Joan; he tried hard enough to reason with
her, but his wife is so headstrong. It is the best room in the house,
of course, and I suppose she felt that she had a right, as the new
mistress of Greenacres, to it. The place is Kirklan's property."
"That--that woman--in my room!" There was a catching sob in Joan's
voice. "Oh, how dare she? And Kirk let her do it."
"You don't understand how headstrong she is," Mrs. Gilmore explained
hastily. "She's the sort who demands, who takes what she wants. Kirklan
tried to avert it, but I suppose it's hard for a man to deny his bride
anything. Kirklan has the adjoining room, a separate sleeping chamber.
It's the modern thing, I believe, these days. She's had a doorway cut
through; the carpenters finished their work yesterday. I knew you would
resent giving up your room."
"Of course I resent it!" flared Joan. "She has no right----" She paused
and then added bitterly, "No, I suppose I'm wrong; the house is Kirk's,
and she did have a right--to everything. I'm going to unpack now, there
are some little souvenirs I brought back with me----"
This was but an excuse to get away, to be alone. Leaving the sentence
unfinished, she fled. A moment later she was in the east wing, where
her personal belongings had been banished by the usurper. Some
one--Kirk, no doubt--had tried to hang her pictures in the same
position they had occupied in the beloved room that had been hers for
so long. An effort had been made to make things appear the same, but
they were not the same; they would never be the same. Here she felt a
stranger, almost like a guest in a transient hotel. Nothing would ever
be the same--now.
Bates had already brought up her bags, and they were stacked in an
orderly pile on the floor, but Joan made no move to unpack. That had
been but an excuse. She stumbled toward her bed and flung herself
across it, giving way to a torrent of tears.
"I love him so!" she sobbed. "It never would have happened--if I hadn't
gone away. I know it wouldn't have happened. No other woman has a right
to him when I love him so much."
Presently she got herself in check and went listlessly to the window
and, lifting back the curtains, looked out. From here she had not so
much as a glimpse of the Tappan Zee, where the Hudson broadens a good
three miles wide. In her old room, curled up in the window seat, with
soft pillows at her back, she had been able to look out across the
water to the rugged rise of the Palisades looming up picturesquely from
the New Jersey shore--and dream.
And now in that other room--her room--would be Kirklan's wife! Perhaps
the other woman and Kirklan would sit in her beloved window seat, his
arm about her; the thought of it made the blood pound in Joan's brain,
made a red mist swim before her eyes.
Below her a figure moved across the lawn, a graceful figure in a white
sport skirt. Even from that distance the woman's bronze hair glinted in
the strong sunlight. Joan stared down, her hands clenching until the
nails bit deep into her palms.
"She has taken two of the things I have loved best!" she whispered
fiercely. "I hate her! I can't help it, I hate her!"
CHAPTER II
THE SQUALID HOUSE
Relic of the horse-and-carriage days was the Gilmore stable, with
living quarters for the now obsolete coachman and footman. Kirklan
Gilmore, that he might have more detachment and quiet than the house
afforded, had remodeled the stable into a studio, and here it was
that he did his writing. Success in anything means hard work, and
authorship is no exception. Being a successful novelist, he was a hard
worker, but for weeks now, except for a mildly curious visit by Helen,
who had been frankly disappointed in the unpretentiousness of her
husband's workshop, the place had been locked. The manuscript of the
new novel, for which his publishers waited fretfully, lay untouched and
uncompleted.
It was two days after Joan's home-coming. As had been customary since
her arrival at Greenacres as a bride, the new Mrs. Gilmore was having a
breakfast tray in her room, and she sat at a small table by the window
which commanded Joan Sheridan's beloved view of the Tappan Zee.
Frilly, lacy things were becoming to the new mistress of Greenacres,
and she was an alluring picture, with the loose, flowing sleeves of
her morning gown falling back from shapely arms, as she lifted her
coffee cup. Morning is the severest test of a woman's beauty, and, only
twenty minutes out of bed, although it was half an hour past nine,
Helen Gilmore was undeniably a beautiful woman. Her age might have been
twenty-three; it may have been even twenty-seven, for she was of the
type that clings long to youth. Just now, however, there was in her
blue eyes a look of brooding discontent that does not become a bride of
three brief, honeymooning weeks.
At the hallway door there sounded the rap of knuckles against wood, and
in answer to the petulant, "Yes, come," Bates, the butler, crossed the
threshold with his shambling gait.
"Mail for you, madam," said Bates, holding a silver tray toward her.
The topmost envelope was patently an advertising circular, which
completely concealed the one beneath, and Helen with a contemptuous
glance waved the tray aside.
"You should know better than bothering me with things like that," she
said shortly; "take it away."
"There is also a letter--a personal letter," Bates answered stiffly, as
he moved aside the offending advertisement, and revealed a small, cheap
envelope, rather smudgy and addressed with a lead pencil in a ragged,
scrawling script, as if the hand that wrote it was not far advanced
beyond illiteracy. The postmark was New York City.
Rather a strange, disreputable-looking missive, one might have thought,
to be received by the mistress of Greenacres. Bates stared sharply, as
he saw the startling effect that the sight of the letter had on Mrs.
Gilmore. Her coffee cup, poised for a moment in mid-air, clattered down
to the saucer, and her fingers, reaching swiftly for the envelope,
trembled noticeably. Her face had gone white, and into her eyes there
came a look that was unquestionably apprehension, perhaps fear. With
an effort she controlled herself.
"Probably from my little nephew," she said, evidently thinking to
explain the smudgy appearance, the crudity of the handwriting. But
Bates, moving toward the door with the perfunctory murmur, was not
misled.
"Huh, little nephew!" he grunted, as he went down the hall. "That
was a man's handwritin'. Poor Mr. Kirklan! I'm afraid he's been
fooled--fooled bad."
When the butler had gone, Helen Gilmore relaxed self-restraint, and
there returned to her face that haunted look of fear. Several times she
turned the envelope over in her unsteady hands, delaying the opening of
it.
"He's traced me here!" she whispered. "He knows."
After another moment of hesitation she opened the envelope and drew
forth a sheet of paper. Quickly her eyes went over the scrawl. It
began with the address, "Dear Mrs. Gilmore," and the last two words of
that were underscored, as if there was a concealed gibe in the "Mrs.
Gilmore."
I want to talk with you on some business. If you don't want me to
come there, you better come to see me. Phone Joe's place & he'll
tell you where I am.
It was unsigned, but no signature was needed for her to know the
identity of the sender; she knew that all too well. Her hands clenched,
crushing the paper between her fingers.
"Oh, what a fool I've been to take this chance!" she exclaimed
bitterly. "He'll hound me, as he hounded me before. I--I thought I'd
got away from him for good. I thought he was----"
A step sounded down the hall, a quick step that she had learned to know
during the past three weeks. Hastily she thrust the crumpled letter
and its envelope into the bodice of her morning gown and, as the door
opened, forced a smile to her lips.
"Good morning, my dear," she greeted her husband. "Your indolent wife
is just finishing her breakfast. You look as if you had been up for
hours, and you must be going somewhere!"
Kirklan Gilmore, clad in a gray business suit, instead of white
flannels, blazer coat, and canvas Oxfords that he wore for his mornings
at home, crossed the room eagerly and bent to kiss the lips raised
dutifully to him.
Gilmore was dark, while his wife was fair. He was slender, and his
eyes had something of a poet's dreaminess in them--black eyes, with
an intense light when he felt any strong emotion, either personally
or through the characters that he put down on paper and breathed the
breath of life into. He sat down beside the narrow table and touched
his fingers in a gentle caress to the back of his wife's hand, as his
eyes devoured her fondly.
"You don't know how wonderful you are, Helen! If I could only put you
into a book--as you are. But I'm afraid it would turn out to be a
volume of poetry, and poetry doesn't make a best seller. You--you are
the most beautiful thing that ever lived!"
Despite an agitation that she could hardly keep from being observed,
Helen flushed, and her eyes lighted with pleasure. She liked being
told she was beautiful. It was the one story that never grew old to her.
"Thanks, Kirklan; it's nice of you to say that--especially in the
morning. Why the street clothes? Are you going somewhere?"
"Yes, I am, worse luck. That slave-driving publisher of mine has called
a halt to our honeymoon. A wire came from him this morning, commanding
me to come in town and see him. I know what that means; he's going to
pep me and send me back to my knitting. Well, we can't blame Atchinson
for that; I've promised him the new book for winter publication. Thank
Heaven, it's two thirds finished. I thought we might run into New York
together; make the trip in the car, you know. There'll be lunch with
Atchinson."
Helen managed to look languid and bored. "Lunch with that old pill,
Atchinson? It doesn't appeal to me; but don't you think we might go
away while you are finishing the book? It will take you weeks upon
weeks, and that means I've got to stick around this poky hole, mooning
around by myself, while you're locked in that old stable for endless
hours. I'd like to go away, Kirklan."
Kirklan patted his wife's hand.