Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/226

216 "You, Garth? I'm in the gardener's cottage. Tell me Alsop and his people are safe."

"Yes," Garth said. "Hurry! Hurry! What's up?"

"For Heaven's sake, be careful," the inspector answered, "because, Garth, all your dope was right. There are four of them in the grounds now, and one carries a thing that looks like a bomb. Are you going to get away with it? The veiled woman—"

"She's in the house," Garth murmured. "I'm waiting. I must go. Hush! I hear—"

He broke off. Through the appalling quietness of the house he had heard distinctly from the direction of the west door two sharp raps. He flashed his light at the clock over the mantel. Its hands pointed exactly to nine o'clock. Yet he had seen no one pass the dim frame of the library doorway—nothing white.

He ran through. In the wan candle light he could see the slender figure in the white gown and the flowing veil slip from behind the screen and open the door. Then Nora would get the bomb, but where was the real veiled woman? What unaccountable intuition had warned her away?

Garth slipped along the hall, clinging to the shadow of a tapestry. He knew from the black patch at the end of the corridor that the door was wide. In that dark patch he suddenly saw the silhouette of a man. The hands were stretched out as if to meet the hands which Nora appeared to offer for the bomb. But the man carried no bomb. In