With the first quiver of the collapsing floor, she had leaped for the window, straight across the room. No time to turn and try for the door again, but there was a good chance of reaching the window.
She did, just as the bottom seemed to drop out of everything. She caught the sill in straining fingers, her feet found an inch of protruding beam with a broken end, and she hung there.
And an instant later, Carmella’s wildly clawing fingers caught her!
The Spanish girl’s hands fastened around Nellie’s slim ankles like leg irons; her hundred and ten pounds became an appalling death weight.
Nellie knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep this up very long. But she didn’t scream. She decided to save her breath, because Carmella was doing enough screaming for both of them.
“Somebody better come in answer to those screams pretty fast,” she thought, as her fingers slipped a hundredth of an inch on the sill.
Somebody did!
There was a kind of bellowing like that of a mother elephant suddenly aware that its offspring had fallen into danger. There was a trembling of stairs, and a flash shot its beam over the two girls.
“Nellie!” yelled Smitty in anguish.
Nellie didn’t say anything. It was not a question of saving any breath any more; it was a question of not having any breath to save. Her whole body was trembling with the frightful strain of supporting Carmella. Her fingers were slipping with slow but relentless steadiness over the sill.
Carmella kept on screaming and Nellie kept on fighting to hold on just a little longer, and Smitty turned and went down the turret stairs in two jumps.
Nellie wondered dreamily what he thought he was going to do now, but couldn’t guess, and relapsed into a kind of pink fog where time stood still.
Fifty feet beneath was a jagged pile of beams and debris. Well, that was too bad. No matter how far the drop or onto what, she couldn’t hang on any longer.
With a tired sigh, she relaxed her grip! And through the window, a vast hand lunged and grabbed her by the right wrist as she was falling. Smitty, unable to get to her from the door, had raced outside and climbed the wall to the window.
“You big dope!” whispered Nellie. “You do have your uses.”
That was all she knew till she got to the drawing room on the first floor. She regained consciousness as Smitty carried her in. Carmella, on the giant’s other arm, was still out.
“You little feather-brain!” Smitty was raging in a trembling voice. “You haven’t any more sense than a telephone slug. You said you wouldn’t leave your room.”
“I said I wouldn’t for a human,” defended Nellie, feeling pretty much a fool. “And I didn’t. I followed a ghost.”
“Ghost?” snapped Smitty, putting her into a chair. “Ghost? What the devil—”
Into the room barged their grossly fat host, waddling like a human tank, eyes heavy-lidded and stone-dull.
Nellie glared at him. She didn’t like this man, to put it mildly. She would have liked nothing better than to pin the collapsing floor and the ghost business on him. But she didn’t see how she could. Their will-o’-the-wisp guide would have been swallowed up in this man’s bulk; he could have had nothing to do with the wisp.
He had heard her last words. He echoed them along with Smitty.
“Ghost?” he said. “You mean to say you think you have seen a ghost in this house?”
Carmella was stirring, but was not yet out of her fainting spell. Nellie looked at her, then at the fat man.
“Would it be impossible to have a ghost in this house any more than in any other house?” she snapped.
“I suppose not,” said the fat man. “In fact, this house has been said by many to have a ghost. But naturally I never took any stock in the tale.”
“What do you mean — supposed to have a ghost?”
The fat man hesitated a moment. Then, before speaking, he spread his pudgy hands deprecatingly as if apologizing in advance for talking at all.
“As you perhaps know, my father was eccentric on the point of burial. He insisted that, when he died, he was to be placed in an open coffin in the cellar vault. So it is to be expected that rumors would get around that he ‘walks’ now and then.”
“And you believe that?” snapped Smitty.
The fat man shrugged.
“I never have.”
“You’re implying that you do now?”
“Well—” began the fat man.
Carmella came out of it. She regained consciousness with a cry that was almost as lusty as her former screams. She stared up wildly, then sank back as she saw where she was.
“The ghost!” she whispered.
The fat man looked at Smitty.
“You see? Your little blond friend says she saw a ghost. This girl says she saw one. Perhaps there is something to the tale, after all—”
He stopped, and became very still, staring unblinkingly past Smitty. The door was in that direction. The giant turned.
In the doorway stood The Avenger.
His black hair seemed to crackle with electrical force. His eyes were like colorless holes in the depths of which were fog and ice — and doom.
Over his arm, Dick Benson had a curious garment. And it was at this, more than at the man himself, that the fat man was staring.
The garment was a sort of rain cape with a hood. Cape and hood were black. But down the front of it had been roughly sewed a wide, uneven strip of white rubber from another raincoat.
Benson spread the cape wide. The white strip assumed the approximate shape of a small human. He turned the cape and revealed a similar strip on the other side. The whole garment, by the way, was streaming wet.
Dick’s voice was calm, vibrant, certain. He stared at the fat man as he spoke.
“Yes, it seems there is something to the ghost tale. There was a ghost. But not from the land of the dead. The ghost was you!”
The mountainous master of the island didn’t make a move. His face was almost as impassive as Benson’s. His eyes, heavy-lidded, were blank.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Benson.”
“Nellie,” said The Avenger, “when you and Carmella saw this ghost, did it seem to appear and disappear?”
“Yes,” said Nellie, nodding slowly.
“Of course!” Benson’s tone was as cold and calm as his colorless eyes. “From front or back, you could see a white strip on the black cape. But when the ‘ghost’ turned sideways, the cape disappeared into the blackness of the night, and you saw nothing.”
“That would be a silly business to go through,” said the fat man. “Easier to wear a white coat and be done with it.”
“That would have given you away because of the size,” said Benson. “You are not small. Your size, by the way, brands this cape as yours, and yours alone.”
He spread the thing. It looked like a tent.
“You’re accusing me of trying to kill my cousin, Carmella, and your friend, Miss Gray,” complained the fat man mildly. “Why would I want to do anything like that?”
“For the wealth of all the Haygars,” Dick said. “For that, you would kill Carmella. For that, you killed Shan and Sharnoff and would have killed von Bolen if he had not removed himself from the game by blundering into your sinister hog pen.”
Benson turned to Nellie.
“Apparently the same ruse tried on you and Carmella was worked on Shan — successfully. He was led to the turret and pushed over. But the thing that led him said it was leading him ‘to that which he desired.’ Did your ghost say anything?”
Nellie nodded. “Why, yes. It said about the same thing to us. Carmella said she knew what she desired and didn’t need to be led anywhere, but I told her to shut up because I wanted to follow and—”
She stopped. The Avenger’s pale, deadly eyes were like burnished agates.