The Black Mask — page 42: what you’re looking at

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40° As we were silent, she choked and then with an air of bravado, continued: “T am sorry I cannot offer you any better hospitality, but—”’ a wave of a very thin white hand expressed more than words could have done. “Offer us any better hospitality—?” Alan repeated dumbly after her. “Yes, This.is my home,.but it isn’t the same as it was when [ lived here.” “I—I don’t quite understand,” I stammered, III A THIN white line settled about Alan’s rigid mouth, I knew he was wondering what connection the beauti- ful pallid woman had with the dead man lying upstairs. If she had herself killed him—or if she even knew of his exist- ence. She seemed to sense what I did; for the half-born smile on her lips faded, the dark eyes became darker, if possible, as they widened. Her hands fluttered upward, then dropped help- lessly to the side of her orchid-colored gown. “Yes,” she said dully, as if in reply to a question—“I killed him. I was in the oset upstairs when you went into the other room, While you were in there I stole out through the door I had locked on the inside, and down the stairs, I took your cloak, and ran out to the stable. I was going to drive away, when yon called me back. Perhaps it is just as well you did. It doesn’t matter much one way or another.” “You killed Judge MacPherson?’ I gasped. “Why?” “You knew him ?” “Very well.” An enigmatical smile played about her lips, full and softly rounded like a child’s. That smile held a world of wisdom and tragedy in a moment’s flicker. It made her face strangely old and careworn in the light of the oil i The Abandoned House lamp, I suddenly seemed to be looking at the remnants of a once beautiful wo- man, at a battered and bruised soul— not at the woman herself, =A “T wonder just how well you knew him,” she said as though to herself. _ "Not as well as I.did, at any rate.” * “He was your lover?” Alan asked. We lowered our voices as if taking our key from her. Curiously, I felt more of an interest in the woman her-~ self than the fact that she had killed Judge MacPherson. head in reply to Alan’s question and her lips curled scornfully. After a little, she said: ““Would you like to have me tell you all about it? Somehow, I feel as if I should be relieved if I did so; I’m really very unnerved and shaken. After all, it’s a terrible thing to take a human life —to. watch a soul leave a man’s body, even though you know that man to be a reptile and deserving of more than one death. I shan’t speak when I am arrested. They can do as they like with me. But I'll not have the newspapers and their ravenous readers gloating over my miserable downfall. You do not know who I am, nor do I know you— we shall never meet again—and some- thing tells me that when morning comes you will allow me to go my way, and you will go another, so—I should like you to know the truth.” q She was strangely calm. Only the pallid whiteness of her face, and a glit- ter to her dark eyes, showed any of the tumult seething within her. Alan and 1 both hung upon her words. Somehow it seemed unnecessary for us to talk. She shivered. Without a word Alan pulled the box on which he had flung his coat nearer the fire, and half assisted her to sit upon it. “Shall I go upstairs and fetch you a chair?” he said. “No! No! Oh, no!” For one instant she lost control of herself. The next -. t q ee Fs - rei Ps - - o : ¥y\- a |p icomi She shook her — ‘books.com ST