_Unmasked._
Betty sprang to her feet and in a swift inspiration born of her
extremity, tottered toward Welch with outstretched arms.
"Help!" she shrieked, her clear ringing voice echoing through the
silent house. "Burglars! Thieves! Help!"
Muffled screams answered her from above and lights began to waver down
the stairway. Welch seized the girl roughly by the shoulder.
"What's the game!" His thick tones rumbled in her ear, and he pointed
with a shaking hand. "Is that your work?"
"They've killed him!" she cried, wrenching herself from his grasp. "I
heard a struggle and came down and found him--oh; Mrs. Atterbury! Mrs.
Atterbury!"
A fresh chorus of shrieks told of the finding of Caroline and mingling
with them sounded a deeper masculine note. Who could it be? The only
male members of the household were there before her.
"Betty, where are you? What has happened?" Mrs. Atterbury rushed
down the stairs with Madame Cimmino clinging to her gown and behind
them appeared two pajama-clad forms which the girl did not at first
recognize.
Someone turned the wall-switch, flooding the room with light and Welch
lurched dazedly to Wolvert's recumbent figure, toppling down to his
knees beside him.
Although every nerve in her body recoiled from the contact, Betty
nevertheless precipitated herself upon her employer's unresponsive
form, sobbing as if in genuine hysteria. Mrs. Atterbury, after one
swift comprehensive glance about the wrecked room stood as if turned to
stone, her eyes fixed immovably upon the yawning safe, a bluish tinge
slowly overspreading her waxen pallor.
Madame Cimmino, however, passed her like a white flame and cast herself
shrieking upon Wolvert's unconscious breast. One of the pajamaed
figures halted aghast in the doorway, but the other stepped forward and
with an added shock Betty recognized Doctor Bayard's venerable head
even before his commanding tones dominated the tumult.
"What does this mean? Who first discovered this affair? Welch! Young
woman!"
"I found her here!" Welch pointed an accusing finger at Betty but his
head lolled drunkenly upon his short bull neck. "She was kneelin'
beside him. He ain't dead, only put to sleep. Ask her how it happened!"
"We're sold out!" A high-pitched male voice squeaked like that of a
cornered rat from the doorway and Ide's glassy eyes fastened venomously
on the girl. She became conscious, too, that Madame Cimmino's cries
were stilled, the tumult had subsided and she herself was the cynosure
of all eyes.
Straightening, her hands fell to her sides and she stepped forward.
"Something woke me," she began unsteadily. "I didn't know what it
was at first, then I heard a thumping, banging noise down here as if
furniture was being moved around. I got up and opened my door just as
there came a heavy thud like the sound of a body falling and terrible
groans that died slowly away.
"I was frightened and I didn't know what to do. Mrs. Atterbury had told
me not to venture downstairs late at night for Welch might mistake
me for a burglar and injure me, but I did not want to disturb her
unnecessarily and I thought I had better investigate.
"I lighted my candle and crept downstairs. There was a funny sweetish
odor on the air and I traced it to this door. When I looked in I saw
Mr. Wolvert lying there and all the room upset, but no sign of anyone
else. I ran to him and was kneeling beside him, trying to feel if his
heart was still beating, when Welch stumbled into the room and accused
me. Oh, have the burglars killed him?"
It was superb acting but the girl was wrought up to such an emotional
pitch that she was scarcely conscious of its effect. She lived in her
vivid imagination each phase of the story she was narrating and it bore
the impress of truth.
The rest looked at one another, reading in each face the belief which
confirmed their own. It was Madame Cimmino, however, who broke the
silence crying out in a paroxysm of jealous fury:
"What is it to you if he lives or dies? He is not yours, but mine! My
husband!"
"Betty." Mrs. Atterbury spoke for the first time and her tones were
dull and lifeless as she wrenched her eyes with an almost visible
effort from the rifled safe. "You had better go to your room, if you
are not afraid of being alone. You might try to revive Caroline if you
will; she is lying ill in the hall upstairs. Cook is a heavy sleeper,
but should she awaken and attempt to come down, please detain her; we
must have no more excitement."
Betty accepted her dismissal with a swift leap of her heart. Her task
was accomplished; there remained only to make her escape and the way
seemed clear before her.
"I am not afraid, Mrs. Atterbury," she said quietly. "If you need me,
please call."
She slipped up the stairs and past the still unconscious form of
Caroline with feet that trod on air. To throw on her cloak and boots
and steal out the kitchen door by which she had entered only a few
short hours before would be a simple matter and the man who loved her
would be waiting, on guard.
Removing her felt slippers, she had picked up her shoes, when an
imperative rap on her locked door made her drop them hastily, her
spirit sinking in a premonition of further trouble.
"Who's there?" she demanded in a trembling voice.
"It is I; Madame Cimmino." The tones were repressed and oddly civil
after the tempestuous outburst of a few minutes previous. "Open the
door, please; I have a message from Mrs. Atterbury."
Betty drew on her slippers and, wondering, obeyed. The sallow face
of the Italian was still flushed and her dull eyes glowed with
undiminished resentment, but she essayed a faint smile.
"You must not mind what I have said to you just now. I was quite mad!
My nerves are shattered by this sudden calamity and I, too, feared that
Mr. Wolvert had been killed." She spoke reluctantly with an obvious
effort, and Betty realized at whose instigation the halting apology was
tendered. "Mrs. Atterbury requests that you sleep in her room for the
rest of the night. She will join you presently and does not wish to be
left alone. You need not trouble about Caroline. I, myself, will attend
to her. Come at once, please."
There was a veiled command beneath her studied courtesy and she had
placed herself upon the threshold so that the door could not be closed
again barring her out.
Betty's gleam of hope died within her, but she forced herself to reply
composedly:
"Certainly, Madame Cimmino. If you will wait a moment I shall be with
you."
Her simple preparations made before the unwavering eyes of the other
woman, she followed docilely down the hall to Mrs. Atterbury's room.
The bed was in disorder and the embers dying in the grate, but her
companion replenished them and closed and locked the windows, drawing
the heavy parted curtains tightly together.
"Sleep if you can, Miss Shaw." She paused in the doorway, a little
triumphant gleam lighting her eyes. "There is nothing now to fear. No
intruder can enter for he will be shot on sight. I hope you will rest
comfortably."
She closed the door and the lock clicked as a key was deliberately
turned in it and withdrawn. Betty was a prisoner!
For a time the girl stood motionless in the middle of the floor where
the other had left her. She was trying to fathom the motive for this
sudden move. What had occurred, what suspicion had arisen the instant
she had left the room, for Madame Cimmino to be despatched upon
her very heels to intercept and guard her? Had Jack Wolvert been
conscious enough to realize her swift attack on him, and recovering,
denounce her? In terror at the thought her hands flew to her breast
and encountered the whistle hanging from its slender chain beneath
her gown. Her fingers closed convulsively upon it and a little sob of
gratitude tore its way from her throat. If actual peril came there
was one chance left to her; she was not utterly at the mercy of these
wolves.
When Mrs. Atterbury unlocked the door and entered an hour later, she
found the girl curled up on the couch seemingly asleep. She stood over
her for a long moment staring down at the tranquil face upon which the
birthmark glowed in the light from the grate, and listening to the
gentle regular breathing. At last she turned away and Betty, opening
her eyes cautiously, beheld her employer crouching before the hearth,
her dark, unbound hair increasing the pallor of her waxen face and her
inscrutable gaze fixed upon the gleaming coals. The girl fell into a
troubled slumber at dawn, but when she awakened the other still sat
immovable, staring into the dead embers with unseeing eyes.
"You are awake, Betty? Run to your own room and dress and then come
back to me quickly. We have much to do today." She barely glanced at
the girl, and her tones were lifeless.
"Was--was the burglar caught?" Betty stammered as she rose to obey.
"Did you lose very much of value?"
"The man whoever he was escaped, but the police have been notified,"
Mrs. Atterbury replied without turning her head. "I cannot tell how
much has been taken until I have made an inventory of what is left.
Hurry, please."
Betty returned to her room, to find Caroline on the couch at the bed's
foot. The woman seemed dazed and shaken, but her eyes followed Betty
craftily and the girl realized that her presence meant continued
surveillance.
Wolvert appeared little the worse for his experience of the previous
night when he joined the others at breakfast and he greeted Betty with
perfect sang-froid, but she fancied that a speculative gleam lightened
his pale eyes when they rested on her; and as the day wore on, he
attached himself to her with an assiduity which left her in no doubt of
his lurking suspicion.
Although the subject of the burglary was avoided as much as possible,
there was a tension in the atmosphere which no one attempted to
disguise, an air of repressed apprehension greater than the exigency
demanded. In spite of Mrs. Atterbury's assertion that the day would be
a busy one, a state of enforced idleness prevailed and Betty wandered
about like an unquiet ghost with some one of the household inevitably
at her heels.
As dusk drew down the espionage became more openly manifest and the
girl's self-control faltered beneath the protracted strain. Was
she destined to be held in duress until the raid which Herbert had
predicted took place and escape was forever cut off? A new anxiety
was added to the rest; if she were to continue this ghastly farce
indefinitely a few minutes of absolute privacy in her own room would be
essential, but how was this to be obtained?
No suggestion of leaving the house had been made by anyone during the
day, but toward evening Welch was dispatched with a telegram to the
nearest office. He went with marked reluctance, a furtive look of fear
in his heavy-lidded eyes, still dazed from the effects of the drug.
Betty watched his departing figure in bitter envy from behind the
library curtains. Would her moment never come?
"You are very quiet, Little Mouse." Wolvert had come up silently behind
her in the gathering gloom of the room. "Last night's excitement has
depressed you?"
"On the contrary," she responded coolly. "I am sorry, of course, for
Mrs. Atterbury's loss, but I am quiet because I have been thinking. So
many things about the affair puzzle me."
"Indeed? What, for instance?" He flung himself into a chair and smiled
up at her.
"Why it was that I did not hear the smash of that vase in your
struggle, and why, although your hands were tied after you were
chloroformed, of course, the burglar did not also gag you. It was no
doubt an oversight on his part, but it impressed me as being odd."
The mocking smile had vanished and he was staring at her with a
narrowed intensity of gaze as if to read her very soul. When he replied
it was in a hurried, uneasy tone distinctly at variance with his usual
aplomb.
"It was the crash of the vase that awakened you, perhaps, and the thief
must have been frightened away. He left his tools, you know, and he
probably did not dare stop to finish his work with me.--But I did not
realize that we had such an efficient detective in our midst!"
He added the last sentence with deliberate intent and Betty met his
gaze with a little mocking light in her own eyes.
"I think the burglar finished his work with you very thoroughly, Mr.
Wolvert!"
Leaving him to ponder over the ambiguity of her remark she passed out
to the hall just as Welch burst in at the side door, his ratlike eyes
fairly starting from his head. Sheer panic was written upon his pasty
face and he charged headlong up the stairs like a maddened beast.
Betty was torn with the conflict of hope and fear. Had he encountered
Herbert on guard, or was the house already surrounded by officers of
the law?
No comment was made upon his abrupt return, but Betty sensed a
redoubled tension in the air. To her relief, however, the onus of
suspicion seemed to have been lifted from her, although the house was
so palpably under guard by the masculine members of the group that
immediate escape was out of the question.
Betty had no need, as the hours lengthened, to feign fatigue. Her
nervous exhaustion was manifest in her drawn face, and Mrs. Atterbury
at length laid her hand upon the girl's arm.
"You are tired, my dear. Go to bed if you like but you will be obliged
to sleep, for a while at least, with closed windows. Welch has
connected all those on the second floor with the alarm system down
here, and if one is raised during the night the whole house will be
aroused again."
Betty understood the covert warning, but rejoiced that the privacy so
vital to her was assured. Murmuring good night she ascended the stairs
and disappeared around the gallery.
Scarcely had the soft thud of her closing door broken the silence, when
Welch entered from the dining-room and approached the circle seated
about the hearth, took his place uninvited among the rest.
"How're we going to make our get-away?" he demanded gruffly. "That's
what I want to know, with the place surrounded--"
"Rot!" interrupted Wolvert. "For a thorough-going coward, commend me
to a strong-arm bully every time. Yes, I mean you, Welch, don't try to
bluff me, my man! You're in a blue funk and you'd conjure up a copper
behind every tree! Why haven't they closed in on us, if the bulls are
on the job?"
Welch muttered sullenly beneath his breath, but Doctor Bayard leaned
forward in his chair.
"That is a reasonable conclusion," he remarked in his quiet, well-bred
tones. "I admit, however, that taken in conjunction with the crowning
misfortune which has come to us, the possibility is disquieting.
You have examined the papers thoroughly, Marcia? You are sure that
practically everything of value has been taken?"
"Everything." Mrs. Atterbury spread out her hands in an eloquent
gesture. "We are cleaned! The result of five years of planning and
scheming and desperate risk has vanished in an hour!"
"Except what we may have saved from our individual profits," Wolvert
observed smoothly. "You at least will not starve, my dear Marcia."
Mrs. Atterbury darted a vicious glance at him, as Madame Cimmino said
with a shudder:
"Unless the end has come, and we are lost! As for me I shall kill
myself before again the doors of a hideous American prison close on me!"
"Don't be morbid, Speranza." Mrs. Atterbury shrugged impatiently. "I am
not even thinking of that. I am concerned only with one question:--Who
among us is the traitor?"
Wolvert raised his eyebrows.
"Us?" he queried. "You speak with painful directness, Marcia! Surely
you except our own immediate circle!"
"If you ask me, it was an inside job," asserted Welch bluntly. "I was
doped and so was Caroline. There's no gettin' around that!"
Ide coughed nervously.
"I hope the loyalty of none of us is in question." His thin high voice
quavered. "Personally I--"
"Personally, you're absolved!" interrupted Wolvert with a sneer. "You
wouldn't have the nerve to chloroform a blind kitten!"
"Someone has betrayed us," Mrs. Atterbury re-iterated. "Only one who
possessed the most intimate knowledge of our plans and the deals we are
working on now could have chosen so well among all the papers in the
safe. With one trifling exception everything missing was negotiable."
Wolvert darted a keen glance at her.
"'One exception'?" he repeated. "What was that?"
"The packet containing the Westcote documents," replied Mrs. Atterbury.
"That has vanished with the rest."
"Impossible!" Wolvert started visibly. "He didn't take that!"
"What does it matter?" Dr. Bayard shrugged. "It was worthless!"
"But he didn't take it, I know!" insisted Wolvert, caution forgotten in
his surprise. "It must be there! There's some mistake--"
"Why are you so sure?" Mrs. Atterbury flashed at him. "How can you know
that it was not stolen?"
"Because I was certain it was there when we first went through the safe
after I recovered consciousness, don't you remember?" he stammered,
taken aback. "I distinctly saw a blue envelope----"
"There was no blue envelope in the safe." Mrs. Atterbury spoke with
absolute finality. "It had disappeared."
"Then by God! it is an inside job!" Wolvert sprang from his chair. "And
I know who is back of it--that girl!"
"What!" Doctor Bayard exclaimed, as the rest sat spellbound. "The young
woman upstairs?"
"The young spy, d--n her!" retorted Wolvert, his dark face ablaze. "I
had a hazy idea that I saw her last night while the thief was pressing
the sponge over my mouth but I laid it to delirium. I tell you she was
in league with him, and what is more, I don't think he was one of our
gang gone crooked. I didn't tell you before because I didn't want to
throw you all into a panic but I'm convinced he's a 'tec and she was
working in with him. He heard Welch coming and beat it, but she didn't
have a chance and we've kept too close a watch on her for her to get
away since!"
"I knew it!" Madame Cimmino shrilled. "I knew there was something wrong
when she came!"
"I, too!" exclaimed Ide. "I've had a deucedly queer feeling since I
first met her at your dinner, Marcia, as if I had seen her before
somewhere."
"She's the only outsider!" Welch put in dazedly. "I always said no good
would come of draggin' in strange girls and usin' them for a blind, but
you knew it all!"
He glared at Mrs. Atterbury who sat gazing intently straight before her.
"It is impossible," she said at last. "I chose the girl myself, and she
has kept her position perfectly--"
"Too perfectly!" Wolvert snarled. "She was too good to be true, going
wherever you sent her without question. You've been a blind fool! She
was planted here, I tell you! That advertisement was a trick and you
fell for it! 'Stranger in city and without relatives!' Bah! it was too
easy!"
Mrs. Atterbury's immobile face was distorted with gathering menace but
her voice was still controlled.
"She is not a detective. I have encountered a few of them and I know
the earmarks. Whose game could she be playing?"
"The game of someone with whom we are doing business, perhaps. How can
we know?" Ide squeaked. "Remember I 'phoned you only two days ago that
I saw her talking with a man up the Drive! She's sold us out!"
"What was she nosing around the house at night for, with an electric
torch?" demanded Wolvert savagely. "Is that a usual part of a social
secretary's equipment?"
"A torch!" Mrs. Atterbury turned on him in sudden fury. "She told me
you had it when she came upon you in the library and you corroborated
her story afterward by saying it was yours!"
"I lied," he admitted through set teeth. "This is no time to defend
myself or dodge the facts. I'm not the first infatuated ass!"
"Infatuated! A-ah!" Madame Cimmino leaped for him like a tigress,
but Welch seized her roughly and dragged her back. "That simpering
she-devil with the brand upon her face! For her you have betrayed us
all!"
"Cut it out!" Welch admonished roughly. "Forget the sentiment stuff!
This is business!"
"I'll make a clean breast of it," Wolvert shrugged. "I suspected her
vaguely from the first. There was something about her that baffled me
but it fascinated me, too. I had her number from that night in the
library, but I thought she was playing a lone hand and I could handle
her. I even had a notion I could win her over and get her to go in
with us, but she's beaten us at our own game!"
"Not yet!" Mrs. Atterbury rose and even Welch shuddered at the new
ominous note in her voice. "Don't forget that something else has taken
place beneath this roof since she came. She cannot leave it to bear
witness against us! I will go to her and wring the truth from her!"
She mounted the stairs, the others following silently in her wake. The
rigid emotionless poise with which she had maintained her domination
over them all for years had in a moment been swept aside and the real
woman stood revealed in all the nakedness of her sinister malevolent
passion.
Like a vengeful fury she crouched before the girl's locked door and
motioned savagely to Welch to break it down. He put his massive
shoulder against it and with a single mighty heave crashed it in.
A startled cry echoed in their ears and the girl seated before her
dressing-table turned her face to them, full in the glare of the
boudoir lights. It was a blanched terror-stricken face, but they, too,
paused aghast, for the birthmark had vanished utterly and the girl who
rose slowly before them was like yet vastly unlike the personality they
had known.
For a tense moment they paused and then Ide's trembling voice cried:
"I know her now! I was sure I'd seen her before! It's old Westcote's
daughter!"
The girl's hand flashed from her breast to her lips and a shrill,
ear-splitting whistle cleaved the air as Welch sprang upon her with a
bull-throated roar.
The world crashed down about her head and darkness came; a darkness
filled with shots and shouts and vague struggling forms. Then all at
once a shaft of brilliant light seemed to break over her and full in
its radiance the face of Herbert Ross hovered close.
"Herbert!" It was little more than a whisper but her weak, hot hands
fluttered out and clutched him convulsively and in her eyes shone the
light of a faith which had not faltered. "I knew--I knew that you would
come!"
"My wonderful, brave dear!" His voice had a curious, throaty catch in
it. "You have been in frightful danger but you are safe now, thank God!"
Betty smiled wanly.
"I was not afraid, for I knew that you were there. No harm could come
to me while you waited."
"You mean that?" His arms tightened about her. "Oh, my dearest, you had
such faith in me?"
"As you trusted me, believed in me through everything. And--and for the
same reason."
"You mean that you care?" he whispered close to her ear. "Dear, is it
that? Is it--love?"
Her eyes gave him his answer and for a moment he lowered his head upon
her breast as she lay propped up in his arms.
Then she became dimly aware of lights once more, low moving lights
which revealed shadowy tense forms and a jumble of wrecked furniture.
As Herbert raised his head a strange freak of vagrant memory darted
through her numbed brain and a still, small voice which she did not
recognize as her own gasped:
"Mike has the evidence! Porter Street, two forty-seven. Before
midnight!"
Herbert's face wavered and blurred before her eyes, a whirling,
crashing void encompassed her and darkness descended again.