Chapter II

Charles Moray looked through the hole in the panelling and saw what
surprised him very much. The room beyond was half in shadow and half in
light. There was a lamp with a tilted shade on the rosewood table which
held his mother’s photograph albums. It stood perched on the fattest
album with its green silk shade tipped back so as to throw all the light
towards the door.

Charles drew back instinctively lest he should be seen; but the ray fell
away to the left of his panelling and was focused on the door across
whose threshold he had seen the pencilled line of light.

There were two men sitting at the table. One of them had his back to
Charles, who could see no more than a black overcoat and a felt hat. The
other man was in the shadow facing him. Charles, peering and intrigued,
beheld a white shirt-front framed, as it were, in a sort of loose black
cloak. Above the shirt front a blur, formless and featureless. Certainly
the man had a head; but, as certainly, he seemed to have no face.
However deep the shadow, you ought to be able to see the line where the
hair meets the forehead, and the outline of the jaw.

Charles drew a longish breath. The man didn’t seem to have any hair or
any jaw; he was just a shirt front and a cloak and a greyish blur that
had no form or feature. It was rather beastly.

Then as he felt the short hairs on his neck begin to prickle, the man
with his back to him said,

‘Suppose there’s a certificate?’

The shoulders under the black cloak were shrugged; a deep, soft voice
gave an answer;

‘If there’s a certificate, so much the worse for the girl.’

‘What do you mean?’ The first man hurried over the question.

‘Why, she must go of course. I should think a street accident would be
the safest way.’ The words were spoken with a gentle, indifferent
inflexion. The man in the shadow lifted a paper, looked down at it with
that blur of a face, and inquired, ‘You are sure there was no will?’

‘Oh, quite sure. The lawyer took care of that.’

‘There might have been a second one—millionaires have a curious passion
for making wills.’

‘Twenty-seven was quite sure. Here’s his report. Will you look at it?’

A paper passed. The lamp was turned a little, the shade adjusted.
Charles saw the light touch part of a hand, and saw that the hand wore a
grey rubber glove. His heart gave a jump.

‘By gum! That’s what he’s got on his face too! Beastly! All over his
face and head—grey rubber—a grey rubber mask!’

The lamp was his mother’s reading-lamp. The room, unused since her
death, remained for Charles Moray a place of warmth and shaded light, a
place where he mustn’t make a noise, a fire-lit evening place where he
sat cross-legged on the floor beside a sofa and a soft, tired voice told
him stories. What were these unbelievable people doing in this place? It
made him feel rather sick to see the light slant from the reading-lamp
across that grey, smooth hand on to the pages of Twenty-seven’s report;
it made him very angry too. Of all the infernal cheek—

The pages turned with an even flick; Grey Mask was a quick reader. He
dropped the report in a heap and said, in that deep purring voice,

‘Is Twenty-seven here?’

The other man nodded.

‘Are you ready for him?’

‘Yes.’

Charles jerked back from his peep-hole. Someone had moved so near him
that the recoil was instinctive. Coming cautiously forward again, he
became aware that there was a third man in the room, away on his left,
keeping guard over the door. When he stood close to the door he was out
of sight; but when he opened it he came sufficiently forward to be
visible as a blue serge suit and the sort of khaki muffler which
everybody’s aunts turned out by the gross during the war. The muffler
came up so high that the fellow was really only a suit of clothes and a
scarf.

Through the open door there came a man who looked like a commercial
traveller. He wore a large overcoat and a bowler hat. Charles never got
a glimpse of his face. He walked up to the table with an air of
assurance and looked about him for a chair.

There was no chair within reach, and under Grey Mask’s silent, unmoving
stare some of the assurance seemed to evaporate. The stare was a very
curious one, for the holes in the smooth grey face were not eye-shaped
but square—small square holes like dark dice on a grey ground. They
gave Charles himself an indescribable feeling of being watched.

‘Twenty-seven—’ said Grey Mask.

‘Come to report.’

Grey Mask tapped the sheets of the written report sharply.

‘Your report is too long. It leaves out essentials. There’s too much
about you—not enough about the facts. For instance, you say the lawyer
took care of the will. Did he destroy it?’

Twenty-seven hesitated. Charles suspected him of a desire to hedge.

‘Did he?’

‘Well—yes, he did.’

‘How?’

‘Burnt it.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘One’s dead. The other—’

‘Well?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a woman.’

‘Her name?’

‘Mary Brown—spinster.’

‘Know who she was?’

‘No.’

‘Find out and report again. That’s essential. Then there’s another
point. There was no certificate?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘I couldn’t find one. The lawyer doesn’t know of one. I don’t believe
there is one—I don’t believe there was a marriage.’

‘Too much “you”,’ said Grey Mask. ‘Find out about that witness. You can
go now.’

The man went, looking over his shoulder as if he were expecting to be
called back.

Charles did not see his face at all. He was cursing himself for a fool.
He ought to have got downstairs before Twenty-seven. He had his plan all
made, and he ought to have been attending to it instead of listening to
the gentleman confessing his criminal activities. Twenty-seven would now
get away, whereas if Charles had cut along the corridor and locked the
door at the end of it, he might very well have had a bag of four waiting
for the police.

At a very early stage of this interview his thoughts had dwelt hopefully
on the fact, so much deplored by Mr Packer, that his telephone
subscription had been kept going during those four years of absence.

Twenty-seven had faded—must fade if the other three were to be bagged.
It was a pity; but perhaps the police would gather him in later.

‘I’ll get along,’ said Charles; and as he said it, he heard the
invisible man on his left move again. He moved and he said, in a
whispering Cockney voice.

‘Twenty-six is ’ere, guvnor.’

Grey Mask nodded. He had pushed Twenty-seven’s report across the table,
and the other man was straightening the sheets and laying them tidily
together.

‘Shall I let ’er in?’ The ‘’er’ brought Charles’s eye back to the
knot-hole again. He had withdrawn it an inch or two preparatory to
getting noiselessly on to his feet; but the Cockney’s ‘Shall I let ’er
in’ intrigued him.

There was the sound of the opening door. The blue serge suit and the
khaki muffler bulged into view again, and, passing them, there came a
straight black back and a close black cap with a long fold of black
gauzy stuff that crossed the cap like a veil and hung down in two
floating ends.

Charles received such a shock that the room went blank for a moment. He
saw, and did not see; heard words, and made no sense of what he heard.
He was within an ace of lurching sideways, and actually thrust out a
hand to save his balance. The hand encountered the panelling against
which his mother’s dresses used to hang. He kept it there pressed out
against the cold wood, whilst with all his might he stared at the
straight black back of Number 26 and told himself with a vehement
iteration that this was not, and could not be, Margaret Langton.

The iteration died; the rushing sound that filled his ears dwindled. His
hand pressed the wall. The blankness passed. He saw the room, with its
familiar furnishings—the blue curtains, dark and shadowy; the faded
carpet with the wreaths of blue flowers on a fawn-coloured ground; the
table with the photograph albums and the lamp with its tilted shade. The
ray of light crossing the room showed him the edge of the closing door.
It passed out of sight and shut without a sound.

Margaret was standing with her back to him. Margaret was standing at the
table with her back to him. The light would miss her face because she
was standing above it. He needed neither the sight of that face nor any
light upon it to be sure that it was Margaret who was standing there.
Her hands were in the light. They were ungloved. She was putting down a
packet of papers; they looked like letters.

Charles saw the hands that were more familiar to him than any of the
familiar things in the room which he had known ever since he had known
anything at all. He looked at Margaret’s hands. He had always thought
them the most beautiful hands that he had ever seen—not small or
slender, but strong white hands, beautifully formed, cool and alive to
the touch. The hands were quite bare. He had made sure that Margaret was
married, but there was no wedding ring on the finger that had worn his
square emerald.

As he saw these things he became aware that Margaret was speaking, her
voice so very low that the sound barely reached him and the words did
not reach him at all. She stood holding the edge of the table and
speaking in that low voice; and then with a quick movement she turned
and came back along the ray of light to the door, which swung open to
pass her through. The light was at her back. The scarf with the floating
ends veiled her face. She moved with her old free step and the little
swing of the shoulders that he knew by heart. She held up her head. The
ends of the scarf moved behind her. She passed through the door and was
gone. The door shut.

Charles drew a very long breath. He had not seen her face.