Helen's patience was almost exhausted, but her sense of humor came to her rescue. Her lips began to twitch.

"Tell Mr. Vanardy," she said, "that the subject I wish to discuss with him has to do with a certain Mr. Shei."

The little man's eyes opened wide. She fancied his hand shook a trifle as he made an annotation on the pad he carried.

"Quite so," he murmured, quickly controlling himself. "You have come here on business connected with a certain Mr. Shei. Just one more question. Very few people know there is such a place as Azurecrest.

How did you happen to find it?"

"Mr. Vanardy once gave me the directions. But you are exerting yourself needlessly, Hawkes. I am sure all that is necessary is to mention my name to Mr. Vanardy."

"Perhaps so." The humpback made another annotation on the pad, after which he put it in his pocket. "I'll repeat to Mr. Vanardy what you have just told me." He walked out of the room.

Helen could not tell why, but the silence that fell upon the room as the door closed impressed her uncomfortably. She did her best to m.u.f.fle a faint inward whisper of warning, a premonition that something was wrong. Hawkes' questions had left a train of disturbing thoughts in her mind.

She waited a few minutes, then got up and began to pace the floor in an effort to quell a rising nervousness. She glanced at the pictures on the walls, but they did not seem to be the same as those that had hung there on her last visit, and they failed to interest her.

Presently she stepped to the window and looked out. The trees were nodding drowsily in the gentle night wind. The mist rising from the lowlands on all sides of the hill gave her a curious sense of remoteness from the world.

Then she drew back a step suddenly. Someone was pa.s.sing the window, and she caught a momentary glimpse of a face. For a second or two a pair of large and oddly piercing eyes were fixed on her. Then the figure vanished, but the vision left her white and shaken. A hoa.r.s.e cry rose to her lips. Unless her imagination had deceived her, the face that had just pa.s.sed the window was the same swarthy, loathsome face she had seen in the Thelma Theater scarcely twenty-four hours ago.

Seized with a great fear, she ran across the floor and opened the door. The face, with its squatty features and long black hair fluttering in the breeze, had crystallized all the vague misgivings she had felt since she entered the house. For the moment she was unable to think, but an unreasoning impulse to flee drove her swiftly down the long hall. She felt she must escape from Azurecrest at once.

She had nearly reached the end of the hall when she came to a dead stop. She stood rigid, listening. Somewhere a laugh sounded. The staccato accents seemed to fill the house with volumes of hideous sound. Each vibrant note conjured up a fearful picture before her eyes. She staggered back against the wall, stopping her ears to shut out a repet.i.tion of the sound, but the echoes of it lingered in her imagination. She knew the laugh well. It was the same kind of laugh that Virginia Darrow had taken with her into eternity.

CHAPTER V

PERPLEXITIES

Minutes pa.s.sed, each dragging a train of monstrous fancies before Helen's mental vision. The tips of her fingers shut out all sounds from her ears, but the laughter still dinned and echoed in her imagination. It reminded her of the haunting strains of glee that had come from Virginia Darrow's dying lips. Somehow this laughter was different, but the difference was so subtle that she could but vaguely sense it. It was loud and delirious, in contrast to the gentle, dirgelike notes that had characterized the other.

She could stand the suspense no longer. Sped on by fear, she ran in the direction where she thought the door was. She brought up against a stairway instead. A noise caused her to lift her head. Down the stairs, lurching and sliding, came a woman. Her hair was wildly tousled and her clothing in disorder, and peal after peal of harsh laughter cut through the silence as she scurried down the steps.

Then she saw Helen, and she stopped as abruptly as if she had dashed against a material barrier. Clutching the railing with one hand, she wagged drunkenly from side to side. Her face was ashen, but her skin was clear and smooth as a young girl's. The eyes, unnaturally wide and bright, stared down at Helen with fierce intensity. She had ceased laughing, but the lips were still agape, as if suddenly frozen into rigidity.

Helen forgot her fears as she saw the strange look in the woman's face. She wondered whether it meant madness, terror, or intoxication.

It seemed to be neither, but rather a blending of all three. Slowly, with the outspread fingers of one hand pressing against her breast, the woman came down the remaining steps. Her great eyes were still fixed on Helen, but the mad flame in their depths was gradually yielding to a look of sanity.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded. Her voice was dry, and she spoke with little hissing sounds, as if each word were exhausting her breath.

Helen winced as the woman clutched her arm. Streaks of gray in the tumbled ma.s.ses of her black hair clashed sharply with her youthfully rounded face, and Helen guessed that the contrast had been brought about by some terrifying experience.

"Do you know where you are?" the woman went on, tightening her grip on Helen's arm.

"This is Azurecrest, isn't it?" Helen's words voiced an indefinite doubt that had been stirring faintly in the back of her mind since she saw the face at the window. "I came here to see the Gray--to see Mr.

Vanardy."

"Azurecrest?" The woman's mind seemed to be slowly struggling out of a daze. "Yes--that's what they call the place. But there is no Mr.

Vanardy here. You have been deceived, just as I was. Those monsters!

Do you know what will happen to you if you remain here?"

Helen shrugged as if to fight off a stupor that seemed to be gradually infolding body and mind.

"They'll inject the fever into your veins," the woman told her, without waiting for an answer. "The fever that always kills. Sometimes it kills quickly, but most the time very slowly, just as it is killing me. You will not feel much pain. You will laugh and sing and dream strange dreams. Those are always the symptoms. At first, before the fever reaches the last stage, you will laugh loud and hilariously--like this." She threw back her head, and then came an outburst of screaming laughter that made Helen shudder. "That's how it sounds at first. But later, when the fever has burned out your strength and destroyed your reason, the laughter will be low and soft and lilting. Then it sounds like this." She gave a series of low, tinkling sounds that were like a requiem set to laughter.

Helen shivered. Just so had Virginia Darrow gone laughing to her death. The coincidence seemed rather weird. The stark realism of the imitation gripped her, and yet she wondered whether she were dreaming or whether the woman beside her were reveling in the fancies of a maniac.

The other stiffened suddenly. She seemed to recall something which her encounter with Helen had temporarily blotted from her mind. Placing two fingers across her lips, she cast a swift glance up the stairs.

For a brief s.p.a.ce she stood tense, listening.

"The woman who watches me went to sleep and I stole away from her,"

she whispered. "We must try to get out before they begin looking for me. You must come, too. It won't do for you to remain a moment longer.

S-sh!"

Silent as a wraith she stole down the hall. Helen, scarcely knowing what she was doing, followed dazedly. She did not know what to think, but there was an undertow of vague dread in her jumbled thoughts and emotions. What she had just heard sounded wildly fantastical, like the raving of a deranged mind. Yet she had a feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. The strange laughter and the face at the window appeared to give a background of reality to what the woman had said.

They seemed to suggest, too, that there was a connecting link between Azurecrest and the tragedy in the Thelma Theater. It was this circ.u.mstance, bewildering and almost unbelievable, that clogged the functioning of Helen's mind and rendered her willing to be led along by her guide.

The door was unlocked and they pa.s.sed unhindered into the open. In a dull and indifferent fashion Helen thought it strange that the woman's loud laughter had not already betrayed them, but then it occurred to her that perhaps such outbursts were common at Azurecrest. After what she had already seen and heard, nothing would have surprised her greatly. She wondered how her companion meant to overcome the obstacles of the locked gate and the high picket fence. Perhaps, in her beclouded state of mind and eagerness to escape, she was not even giving them a thought. Or perhaps----

Her guide stopped so abruptly that Helen, who had been following close behind, nearly ran into her. Out of the mist and shadows came a low, rumbling growl. A huge, black shape bounded toward them.

"The dog!" exclaimed the other. "I forgot--oh!"

The beast, rearing on hind legs, sprang at her throat and felled her.

She lay p.r.o.ne on the ground, the dog crouching over her with jaws slavering and forefeet pawing her body. Helen stood motionless in her tracks. The dog's eyes and teeth gleamed menacingly in the moonlight, and she knew that the slightest move would precipitate an attack upon her. Her mind, clearing rapidly under the stress of danger, was seeking a way out of the predicament when hurried footsteps came down the walk.

"Caesar!" called a gruff voice.

The dog let go its hold as a man came running toward them. He stopped and gathered the fallen woman in his arms, and Helen recognized the individual who had met her at the gate on her arrival. With scarcely a glance in her direction, he turned and walked toward the house with his burden. Helen feeling the gleaming eyes of the beast on her face, dared not move. As she stood wondering what to do, a shadow fell across the graveled walk and a second man came toward her.

"Back to your kennel, Caesar!" he commanded, and the dog obediently slunk away. "Excellent watchdog, but a bit ferocious when he is kept on half rations. Won't you come inside, Miss--er, Hardwick? Hawkes told me about you. I am Mr. Slade. Sorry to have kept you waiting."

His manner and appearance were pleasant enough; yet Helen felt an impulse to run. The things she had seen and heard since coming to Azurecrest were highly mystifying, and they had left a number of questions and suspicions in her mind. She glanced quickly toward the picket fence, then in the direction whence Caesar had disappeared.

Something told her that a whistle would set the dog snapping and snarling at her heels if she should try to break away. She decided that her hope lay in diplomacy rather than flight.

As if he had read her thoughts, Slade touched her arm and escorted her to the house. She sensed that a trying ordeal was ahead of her, and she was already steeling her nerves for it. She had faced danger many times, and her buoyant nature always responded to the demands of a crisis with a quickening of wits and rising courage.

"I trust Miss Neville didn't annoy you" murmured Slade apologetically as he opened the door and conducted her down the hall. "A very difficult case of paranoia. She gets quite violent at times, and she is subject to all sorts of hallucinations. To-night she broke away from her nurse and would no doubt have attempted to scale the fence if Caesar hadn't interrupted her."

Helen walked beside him in silence. She had already wondered whether Miss Neville could be quite sane. Oddly enough, Slade's words almost convinced her that the woman was of sound mind, though perhaps she was suffering from the effects of illness and shock. Helen had conceived an immediate and instinctive distrust of Slade, despite his smooth-flowing speech and suave manners.

He ushered her into the same room she had left so hurriedly upon hearing the laughter, and placed a chair for her. A look at his face in the electric light gave edge to her misgivings, but at first she could not tell what there was about him that repelled her. According to all standards, he should have attracted her and inspired confidence in her. His personality contained that blend of strength and gentleness which she had liked in men ever since her days of inconsequential hero worship. He had the strong jaw and high forehead that often go with aggressiveness and mental keenness, and he carried his tall figure with the easy grace of a man of the world. His presence would have been quite magnetic if only---- But Helen could not finish the thought. There was an unnamable something about him that eluded her mental grasp.

"Quite a sad case, that of Miss Neville," he continued. "She was once a very brilliant woman, but her genius was consumed by its own fire, so to speak. I might as well tell you that she is my half-sister. For her own good and to avoid unpleasant notoriety, I am keeping her here under the care of a physician. Her friends believe that she is traveling abroad, and so far I have succeeded in keeping the true state of affairs secret. There is a possibility, though a very remote one, that she will recover."

Helen made no comment. Though his eyes were lowered seemingly on the floor, she felt he was watching her and wondering whether she believed him. She thought it strange that he should have taken her into his confidence in regard to matters which one usually does not divulge to strangers. There were a number of questions on the tip of her tongue, but she thought it better to hold them back.