THE GRAY MIST
I was about half-way on my return journey when I heard a car racing
along the road behind me, and as it came nearer I detected the fact
that 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 car
and staring towards me through the deepening dusk.
"Why, Gatton!" I said, walking up to him--"I waited more than ten
minutes 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 who
drove the car.
"Whatever prompted you to do that?" he said. "Coates must have given
you the wrong message. I said I would come to the house for you, not
meet 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 to
the Inspector what had taken place. As I talked I saw his expression
grow 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 was
on my way from Crossleys. I have been traveling for the last hour and
a half."
I stared at him very blankly. The object of such a communication was
difficult to imagine, and I knew of nothing incriminating in my
possession, which might have tempted the assassin to lure me from the
house whilst he obtained possession of it.
In ever-growing excitement I watched the houses slipping behind us as
we swept along. Then we came to the tree-lined expanse of road
immediately leading to the cottage. As the car stopped, I leaped out
quickly, Gatton close upon my heels, and ran up the path to the door.
From certain indications with which I was familiar, I observed that
Coates was out, whereby I concluded that he had set off to meet the
mythical "man with a box." Not without apprehension I inserted the key
in 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 quitting
the house, so that there was comparatively little draught along the
corridor. But as the door swung open I perceived a sort of gray
fog-like vapor floating over the carpet about a foot in depth and
moving in slightly sinuous spirals upward towards the opened door!
At this phenomenon I stared in speechless astonishment; for whilst it
resembled steam or the early morning mist which one sometimes sees
upon the grass in hot weather, I was wholly at a loss to account for
its presence inside my cottage!
"Good heavens!" cried Gatton, and grasped me by the arm with so strong
a grip that I almost cried out. "_Look! Look!_"
"What the devil is it?" I muttered; and turning, I stared into his
face. "What _can_ it be?"
"Stand back," he said strangely, and pulled me out into the porch. "Do
you 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 of
one 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 something
vaguely familiar, yet something which at that place and that time I
found 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, and
holding it to his nostrils went running along the corridor, his feet
oddly enveloped in that mysterious mist. A moment later I heard the
bang 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 choking
because of the fumes which arose from that supernatural fog carpeting
the passages.
The chauffeur now appeared upon the path leading from the gate to the
porch, 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 the
dusk I could see it streaming out, that deathly mist, and creeping
away across grass and flower-beds, right and left of the door.
"Give it a chance to clear," said Gatton; "I fancy one good whiff
would finish any man!"
Even as he spoke the words the nature of this vapor suddenly occurred
to me, and:
"The Abbey Inn!" I whispered. "The Abbey Inn!"
"Ah!" said he--"you've solved the mystery, have you? But can you
explain how this stuff comes to be floating about the floor of your
house?"
"I cannot," I confessed. "But at all costs we must go in. We must
learn the worst!"
"Yes, we'll risk it now," said the Inspector.
Close together we entered and made our way towards the study. As we
passed the door-way of the ante-room in which the telephone was
placed. I glanced, aside, and thereupon:
"My God, Gatton!" I groaned. "Look!"
He pulled up and the two of us stood, horror-stricken, rooted to the
spot, looking into the little room.
I have said that Coates invariably closed the windows before leaving
the house, but here the window was open. Prone upon the floor was
stretched the figure of a man!
He wore a light overcoat, and his hat lay under the telephone
table--where it had evidently rolled at the moment of his fall. The
poisonous smell was more apparent here than elsewhere; and looking
down at the prone figure, the face of which was indiscernible because
of the man's position:
"Why, Gatton!" I said in an awed whisper--"look!... he was speaking to
some 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 the
foul stuff. It was identical with that which, as we had come down from
the upper floor of the Abbey Inn, had proceeded from the room wherein
the mysterious shell had exploded. In a word my cottage was filled
with 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 in
turning over the prone figure, whereupon I quite failed to restrain a
hoarse cry of horror....
_It was Eric Coverly_!
The fume-laden room seemed to swim around me as I looked down at the
dreadfully contorted features over which was creeping that greenish
tint which had characterized the face of Sir Marcus as I had seen it
on 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 were
seized with violent nausea; for the wisps of gray mist which still
floated in the air were nevertheless sufficiently deadly. However, we
succeeded at last in dragging Eric Coverly into the passage. Here it
became necessary to detach the telephone from the death-grip in which
he held it.
I turned my head aside whilst Gatton accomplished this task; then
together we bore Coverly out into the porch. At this point we were
both overcome again by the fumes. Gatton was the first to recover
sufficiently 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 of
evident stupefaction looking over the gate, where he had been warned
to remain by the Inspector, came forward on seeing Gatton beckoning to
him.
"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 running
out to the car and soon was speeding away towards the house of a local
physician.
I find it difficult to recapture the peculiar horror of the next few
minutes, during which, half-fearful of entering the cottage, Gatton
and I stood in the little sheltered garden adjoining the porch looking
down at the body of this man who had met his end under my roof, in
circumstances at once dreadful and incomprehensible.
Tragically, Eric Coverly was vindicated; by his death he was proved
innocent. And by the manner of his death we realized that he had
fallen 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 that
throughout the period between the departure of the man with the car
and his return with the doctor and two police officers whom he had
brought from the local depôt, only one pedestrian passed my door and
he on the opposite side of the road.
How little that chance traveler suspected what a scene was concealed
from his eyes by the tall hedges which divided the garden from the
highroad! It was as the footsteps of this wayfarer became faint in the
distance, that suddenly:
"Come along!" said Gatton. "We might chance it now. I want to get to
the bottom of this telephone trick."
We returned to the door of the ante-room, and side by side stood
looking down at the telephone which had only been extracted from the
grip of the dead man with so much difficulty. The Inspector stooped
and took it up from the floor. The deadly gray mist was all but
dissipated now, and together we stood staring stupidly at the
telephone which Gatton held in his hand.
To all outward seeming it was an ordinary instrument, and my number
was written upon it in the space provided for the purpose. Then, all
at once, as we stepped into the room, I observed something out of the
ordinary.
I could see a length of green cable proceeding from the wall-plug
_out_ through the open window. The cable attached to the instrument
which Gatton held did not come from the proper connection at all, but
came _in_ through the window, and was evidently connected with
something outside in the garden!
"What does this mean, Gatton?" I cried.
Evidently as deeply mystified as I, Gatton placed the telephone on the
little 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, and
now, turning to me, he held out ... a second telephone!
"Why, Gatton!" I cried, and took it from his hand, "_this_ is the
authentic 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 ladder
against the shed. Let us trace the cable attached to the duplicate."
The ladder was one used by Coates about the garden; and now, climbing
out of the window, Gatton mounted it and surveyed the roof of the
lean-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 you
see?"
He descended and rejoined me.
"You see?" he continued. "A call from the exchange would ring the bell
in the ante-room here. This devilish contrivance"--he pointed to the
false telephone--"is really hollow. The weight of the receiver
hermetically closes the end of the tube, no doubt. But any one
answering the call and taking up the duplicate instrument would
receive the full benefit of the contents of the cylinder which lies
up there on the roof!"
"My God, Gatton!" I muttered. "The fiends! But why was the contrivance
not removed?"
"They hadn't time," he said grimly. "They had not counted on the
death-grip of the victim!"
I heard a car come racing up to the gate, followed by the sound of
many excited voices.
"At last we know where the gray mist came from," I said, as Gatton and
I 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 the
porch--"do you mean--"
He looked at me grimly.
"I mean," he said slowly, "that I have not forgotten the _gas-plug_ in
the wall of that recess in the supper-room at the Red House! The only
thing I was doubtful about (the means by which the victim was induced
to admit the gas into the room) is now as clear as daylight."
"You are right, Gatton," I agreed. "The same trick has succeeded
twice."
"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 stood
bare-headed, the unfortunate Eric Coverly was being carried out to the
waiting car; and even as I turned my eyes away in horror from that
spectacle, I was endeavoring to frame the words in which I should
acquaint Isobel with this second ghastly tragedy.
Here, indeed, was a new development of "the _Oritoga_ mystery"; and so
queerly does the mind depart from the actualities at such a moment
that I found myself thinking, even whilst Gatton was talking to me, of
the bold head-lines which would greet readers of the press in the
morning--and of the renewed excitement which would sweep throughout
the length and breadth of the land when this dreadful alibi was
proven.
Over the details of that gruesome tragedy I feel myself compelled to
pass lightly, for even now the horror of it remains with me. The fumes
of the poisonous gray mist lingered for hours in the house; and there
were official visitations, testimonies and attestations, and the
hundred and one formalities which invariably accompany such a tragedy
but which I need not deal with in detail here.
Coates returned with the Rover, just as the body of the victim was
being removed, and his account of what had occurred was simple enough,
and followed the lines which we had anticipated. He had locked up and
then 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 showed
into the study, having informed him that I should be back in less than
ten minutes. He had then proceeded to Denmark Hill railway station
only 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: to
get Coates out of the way for a long enough time to allow the
substitution of the telephone to be accomplished. The fact that Coates
had closed the windows before leaving the house didn't interfere very
much with the scheme. It's an old-fashioned catch on the ante-room
window, and I have seen the marks upon the brass-work where it was
forced from the outside with the blade of a knife. For the person who
opened the window to take out the real telephone and put the other in
its place was easy; and all that remained was to lift the gas-cylinder
on 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 difference
in the dusk. It is the next move, however, which _I_ find most
interesting."
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 assassin
possesses an almost Napoleonic capacity for working by the time-table.
Witness the employment of Constable Bolton in the Red House
affair--which showed that our man was perfectly acquainted with the
movements of the officer on that beat and timed his scheme
accordingly. Very well ... having laid the telephone trap in your
ante-room--did our man hurry away and make the call _in person_,
which brought Coverly to the 'phone?--or did he remain watching the
house 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 the
time of Sir Marcus's arrival was _fixed_--in the present instance,
some one had to watch for _your_ return from the mythical
appointment!"
"For _my_ return?"
"Unquestionably! This scheme was arranged for your benefit, Mr.
Addison. Unknowingly, poor Coverly saved you from a dreadful fate at
the price of his own life! You see, they did not know that Coverly was
coming here! Now, it will not have escaped your attention that he wore
a 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, "mistook
Coverly for you! The moment that Coates drove away, the signal was
given. 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 in
the immediate neighborhood! There wasn't time to do it otherwise. And
there is no public call office within a mile _which is open after
seven 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-mile
radius of this house!" he declared. "He has betrayed himself!
Then--look here."
Unscrewing the front of the mouthpiece of the false telephone, he took
out the strip of cardboard upon which my number was written, turned it
over ... and there upon the back was another number!
"Just look up Dr. Brown-Edwards," he said. "He was the last occupant
of 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!" cried
Gatton. "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 of
this 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 at
the Red House?" I asked, almost mechanically.
"Simple enough," Gatton replied. "Whereas here the telephone was
installed, so that the bell could be rung by some one merely calling
up your number--and the ringing stopped by the caller telling the
exchange he had made a mistake--in the Red House, as I have
discovered, 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 for
ringing the bell?"
"Yes. The opening of the first door set it ringing and the opening of
the second probably stopped it. Mr. Addison," he stood up, resting his
hands upon the table and regarding me fixedly--"we enter upon the
final battle of wits: New Scotland Yard _versus_ Dr. Damar Greefe and
the green-eyed lady of Bâst. Regarding the latter--there is a very
significant point."
"What is that?"
"The 'voice' on this last occasion was that, not of a woman, but of a
man."