Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/206

196 feature of the case startled him. Here was proof he needed. The figure that had frightened Alsop and Marvin was probably involved in the attack on Brown. The inspector was right. She was the brains of the affair. Brown must tell him all he knew. He urged the man desperately.

"Take hold of yourself! You've seen this woman! You've got to talk to me!"

But Brown screamed incoherently with a diminishing power. The nurse had run into the hall. Through the open doorway her voice tore anxiously, summoning a house physician.

Garth's feeling of a desperate helplessness increased. Before him was the knowledge that would safeguard Alsop and his friends, that would insure Garth's own life, that would destroy, perhaps, a dangerous foreign influence, and the man couldn't speak.

At last the nurse's calls seemed to seep through the bandage into that tortured brain, suggesting the necessity for caution. In a whisper coherent words came again from the trembling lips.

"For God's sake, don't look behind the white veil! No! No! I have. That's madness!"

The doctor slipped in and hurried to the bedside. In response to his touch Brown lay down.

"Don't dope him," Garth begged. "That man knows things on which many lives depend. He must tell them to me before night. When will he be able to talk straight?"

The doctor smiled tolerantly.