Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/124

114 "You couldn't persuade him to send his wife away?" he went on at last. "She's not strong, sir. It's pitiful."

"See here, John," Garth said impulsively. "I know it's against the rules, but tell me what's wrong here. What are you all afraid of?"

The old man's lips moved. His eyes sought Garth's urgently. With a visible effort he backed out of the room. His glance left Garth. When he opened his lips all he said was:

"Good-night, sir."

Garth closed the door, shrugging his shoulders. Of what a delicacy the threat must be to require such scrupulous handling! "If there is anything," Alden had said. Garth brought his hands together.

"There is something," he muttered, "something as dangerous as the death Alden is manufacturing back there."

He went to bed, but the restlessness of the train returned to him. Reviewing Alden's exhaustion and the old servant's significant comment, he wondered half seriously if sleep refused to enter this house. The place, even for his splendidly controlled emotions, possessed a character, depressive, unhealthy, calmly malevolent.

He had lost account of time. He had been, perhaps, on the frontier of sleep, for, as he sprang upright, he could not be all at once sure what had aroused him. A man's groan, he thought. Suddenly, tearing through the darkness, came the