The porcelain mask A detective story
"I'd like to, Helen, but I'm used to things out here, and a change
usually upsets my work very badly. I've got to dig in now for all I'm
worth. Poky old hole? I thought you liked Greenacres."
"I don't; I hate it. Oh, don't start harping about 'the scenery;' the
scenery's all right for a change, but I'm fed up on it. Outside of
gawking around the country, there's nothing to do but get up, eat, and
then go to bed again. I don't know why we couldn't go down to--well,
Atlantic City, while you're finishing the book."
"Oh, tut!" Gilmore reproved mildly. "You've just got out on the wrong
side of the bed this morning. It's quite impossible for us to go away.
It won't be lonesome for you now that Joan is back. She's no end of
good fun, Joan. Greatest little pal in the world. And that reminds me
that I must ask her to help me straighten out the sixteenth chapter.
There's a little something it lacks, and I can always depend on Joan to
supply just the right touch."
Helen laughed, but not pleasantly. "Yes," she said with an edge of
sarcasm, "that stepsister of yours and I would make great pals--not!
It's all that she can do to be civil. Sometimes I feel that she
actually hates me!"
"That's nonsense, Helen. Joan hate you? How ridiculous! Joan never
hated any one in her life."
"It's not ridiculous!" flared Helen; she was one of those persons who
always flared when contradicted. She could not brook opposition, even
verbal opposition. "I tell you, Miss Sheridan dislikes me intensely."
"She might be a little hurt--temporarily," admitted Gilmore. "I'm sorry
we didn't leave the room alone until she got back. Perhaps it doesn't
seem quite right, moving her out while she was away."
"Every one in the house looks upon me as--as an interloper," Helen
rushed on. "Even the servants--I can feel their antagonism toward me. I
don't know why I should be asked to--to tolerate such treatment."
"Try and look at things more calmly," soothed Gilmore. "Naturally,
everything seems strange to you at first. Both my stepmother and Joan
are wonderful, Helen--real mother and sister to me. You'll learn to
love them very much; please, Helen, for my sake, you'll try."
"And you expect to let them make their home with us permanently?" she
demanded bitterly.
Kirklan Gilmore looked uncomfortable, unhappy; this was the first rift
in the lute. He was discovering that his wife, after all, was not quite
the perfect woman. It is a painful realization for a new husband.
"W-well," he said slowly, "I hadn't thought of that. This has been my
stepmother's home for almost twenty years, and, while it belongs to me
legally, I wouldn't think for a moment of pitching her out." He paused
for a moment, and his tone had a touch of wistfulness in it. "It's
always been my home, too, Helen. To me there is no place quite like
Greenacres; I--I wish you'd really try to be happy here."
Helen did not respond with that sympathetic understanding he had
hoped for, and Kirklan, of course, could not know that the receipt of
the letter only a few minutes before had filled her with a desperate
anxiety to flee from the thing that threatened her.
"You--you won't--take me away?" she persisted.
"Helen, you don't know how hard it is for me to deny you any wish.
Heaven knows I want to make you happy, but can't you understand that
we've got to be practical? My studio is here; my library is here; and
it's here that I've always done my best work. At least wait until the
book is finished, and then, if you still do not like Greenacres, we--we
will see what we can do." There was, despite his conciliatory tone,
a note of firmness, and Helen, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders,
dismissed the subject temporarily.
"You won't go into town with me?" asked Gilmore. "It will be a change,
and I think you'll find it a pleasant trip in the car."
Helen thought swiftly and came to a decision. She did want to go to New
York, but certainly not with her husband; she must forestall any effort
of the unsigned sender of that letter to see her at Greenacres. The
sooner the better.
"Why don't you use the train, Kirklan, and let me have the car?" she
suggested. "I'd like to take the ferry across the river to Nyack and
drive out toward Tuxedo."
Gilmore agreed promptly. "Suppose you take Joan along," he suggested.
"You can't help liking her after the first strangeness wears off;
really you've no idea what a perfect little brick she is."
Helen shook her head. "No," she refused, "I'd rather be alone to-day."
And that much was true.
Gilmore looked at his watch and moved toward his wife for a parting
embrace; it was the first time he had left her, even for a trip to
New York, and, madly in love with Helen as he was, the prospect was
depressing.
"You'll be careful about driving," he warned. "Stay on the country
roads and out of the traffic; you're still a bit new at it, you know.
I've just time to get the ten-thirty train."
There was no thought in Helen's mind, despite her decision to make a
secret trip into the city, of risking the heavy and perilous traffic of
New York. Her plan was to run the car across country to White Plains,
and there board the Boston & Westchester interurban electric. In this
way, she reasoned, she would avoid the Grand Central Station and the
possibility of getting back on the same train with her husband.
How the most cunning of plans go astray!
After a reluctant leave-taking--reluctant on Kirklan's part--he went
downstairs with the idea of getting Joan to drive him down to the
station and bring the car home, but Joan was nowhere in evidence, so
he had to call on Billings, who looked after the grounds and who could
drive in an emergency. Billings was a silent, taciturn sort of fellow,
and this silence suited Gilmore's mood exactly.
Helen's attitude worried him; her discontent alarmed him. Suddenly it
occurred to him that in the two days since Joan's return he had seen
his stepsister only at dinner and a few minutes afterward. Thinking it
over, he wondered if Joan had been quite her usual, jolly self; if she
had purposely avoided him.
Gilmore felt guilty about taking Joan's room, but it is hard to deny
a wife of a few days, and Helen had actually demanded it. It never
entered his mind that there might be some other reason, a deeper, more
vital reason for Joan's attitude--that she feared, until the first
shock of it had passed, she might unwittingly let him see into her
heart. He made up his mind that on his return he would have a talk
with Joan and let her know how sorry he was about the room.
A few minutes after Billings let him off at the station, the train
rushed in from the north, and Gilmore got aboard. During the
forty-five-minute run to New York he remained depressingly thoughtful.
"I guess, at that, it's a bit dull for Helen at Greenacres--and will be
even more dull when I've got to lock myself in with my work. I ought to
have some company down, I suppose, to liven things up for her a bit.
I'll see who I can drum up for the next week-end."
This decision gave him a feeling of relief, as it automatically solved
the problem of his wife's discontent with rural life.
Arriving at Grand Central Station, Gilmore took a taxi to the office
of his publishers and, less than half an hour later, was in conference
with Atchinson regarding the unfinished novel. The latter was a dynamic
sort of fellow, a voluble enthusiast, and their talk lengthened until
it was past one o'clock. He had read the carbon copy of what had been
written and felt that it promised to have a greater success than
"Rogue's Paradise."
"We've decided to try illustrations with this book of yours," Atchinson
was explaining. "I've selected Victor Sarbella to do the job. Sarbella
draws splendid pictures--faces with life and character in them. He's
one of those intense fellows. Half Italian, you know, although his
mother was an American. You've met him, of course?"
Gilmore nodded. "Yes, I know Sarbella; interesting chap; and, say, that
gives me an idea. I had been thinking of having some people down to
Greenacres. Helen is finding it a bit lonesome. Wouldn't it be a good
idea to have Sarbella come out?"
Atchinson beamed. "That's fine! He can pick out some of the dramatic
situations with you and get the spirit of your characters. He's
devilish slow in turning out work, and I don't want to run any chances
of spoiling the drawings by rushing him. Suppose we call him up right
now and get that part of it settled."
Word became action, as the publisher reached for the telephone and
asked the firm's private switchboard operator in the outer office to
get Victor Sarbella's apartment for him. A few minutes later the matter
was arranged, and Atchinson glanced at his watch.
"Phew!" he whistled. "Half past one, old man; we'd better hurry out and
have a bite of lunch. Speaking of Italians, what do you say to one of
those Italian feeds? I'm always digging up new places to eat and I've
run across a splendid little restaurant, where the food's uncommonly
good even if the location is poor--in the upper Forties."
Kirklan Gilmore agreed indifferently. "Most anything will suit me," he
said.
The two left the publishing-house building, and, Atchinson talking
almost incessantly and not always to the point, they started out.
"Suppose we leg it," suggested Gilmore; "it may give me a little zest
for lunch."
"I'm for that," Atchinson said heartily; "it's only a dozen blocks."
How many things hinge on trifles! As they neared Eighth Avenue, passing
along this cheap and squalid street, which one found it hard to
believe was so near to pretentious Broadway. Atchinson's emphatic voice
jarred to an abrupt stop, his hand caught at the novelist's arm.
"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Isn't that Mrs. Gilmore yonder?"
"You mean my wife? Oh, that's impossible. Where?"
But his eyes had looked too late. The woman Atchinson had seen was
gone, disappeared swiftly into one of those grimy, ugly entrances
before he could so much as glimpse her.
"I'd take my oath that was Mrs. Gilmore," muttered the publisher,
giving a puzzled stare at the sign across the way which announced,
"Furnished Rooms. Rates $3 Weekly and Up." Since Helen had worked in
the publishing office for two months, he felt certain he had not been
mistaken.
"That's ridiculous!" snorted the author. "She took the car and motored
out to Tuxedo. Besides, what would Helen be doing in a neighborhood
like this?"
Atchinson, feeling very uncomfortable, was wondering precisely the same
thing. "Humph!" he grunted. "I must have been mistaken; yes, no doubt I
was. Some one who looked like her."
But this was friendly diplomacy; he had got a square look, and he knew
quite positively that he had not been mistaken. The woman who had
hurried, almost furtively, into the cheap, unclean lodging house was
Kirklan Gilmore's wife!
CHAPTER III
HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER
Entirely unaware that she had been observed, Helen Gilmore slipped
furtively into the dark, musty vestibule of the ugly house. There were
those unpleasant odors which accumulate in a decaying house, the smell
that suggests neglect.
The opening of the second door automatically set a bell ringing, an
unpleasant jangling that caused the woman to start and compress her
lips, shutting back the nervous gasp which rose in her throat. When she
closed the door the ringing stopped.
After a wait of a moment there came down the raggedly carpeted stairs a
slovenly and haglike female, with straggling hair of dirty gray and the
shoulders of a professional wrestler in their muscular broadness. The
face of the slattern was, until she reached the bottom of the stairs,