Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/277

Rh "They'll go for Nora first. Then they'll get me. I've been afraid of it all along."

"I'm trying to warn her," the inspector raged. "She doesn't answer."

He shouted into the transmitter:

"Are you all dead out there? Get me that number, or by heaven—"

While the inspector stormed to be put in communication with his daughter Garth tried to plan. Could he devise any useful defence against Slim's imagination, abnormally clever and inscrutable; or against such naked brutality as George's? And the malevolence of these two would be all the more certain in its action since no fear of punishment would restrain it. The murder, or worse, of Garth and Nora, which undoubtedly they intended, could earn for them only the death penalty to which they were already condemned.

"You've got to get Nora," Garth urged the inspector. "The servant at least should be there."

"Her afternoon out, and Nora said she would be home."

"Then," Garth cried, "they made for her like a shot."

He turned and strode to the door.

"Where are you going, Jim?"

"Keep after that number," Garth called back. "If you get Nora tell her I'm on the way, and to sit tight."

The inspector tried to stop him.