The Ghost Of The Manor

CHAPTER XXVI GHOSTLY VENGEANCE

CHANCE directed Sidney Gorson’s course as the police chief reached the bottom of the stairs. As three policemen awaited further orders, Gorson strode to the door of the great reception hall. He saw Marcia Wardrop and Horatio Farman standing by the big center table of the great candlelighted room.

“Stay where you are!” ordered the police chief. Then, to the policemen: “Get going — look everywhere! I’ll take care of matters here.”

The officers scattered. Their duty was to search the house. Police Chief Gorson, striding up and down the big room, uttered words of explanation to Marcia and the lawyer.

“We’re after Clark Brosset!” he growled. “He’s in back of this! He made a get-away upstairs.”

“Clark Brosset!” exclaimed Horatio Farman.

A startled gasp came from Marcia Wardrop’s lips. The girl turned deathly pale. She staggered and nearly fell. Horatio Farman caught her. As Sidney Gorson looked for some explanation of the girl’s sudden terror, he was dumfounded by a new interruption.

A sneering voice was speaking from the level of the whispering gallery. Despite the strange acoustics of the great hall, all present recognized the tones. Clark Brosset was delivering a warning!

“Stay where you are!” ordered Brosset. “The first one who moves will die. I want that envelope, Gorson. Call your men from the study!”

Furious, but helpless, the police chief answered with a challenge. He could not see the spot where Brosset stood, because the villain was on the gallery behind the illuminating candles. But he knew that Brosset was armed, and would not hesitate to shoot. Nevertheless, Gorson was stubborn.

“We’ve got you, Brosset!” he retorted. “We’re keeping that envelope. My men are going through the house. You cannot escape.”

“Keep the envelope, then,” called Brosset. “I can leave without it. Hold your evidence and seek me. I prefer escape. One person alone can set you on my trail. I shall kill that person now. You looked for murder, Gorson. You will see it!”

A cry came from Marcia Wardrop, as the girl broke away from Horatio Farman and clutched the side of the big table, directly by the candelabrum. Acting with sudden boldness, Chief Gorson yanked a flashlight from his pocket and clicked its rays upon the gallery that bordered the room.

The light revealed Clark Brosset. The man’s lips showed a fiendish grin. The glimmering revolver in his hand was pointed directly at Marcia Wardrop!

GORSON held his own gun useless. He knew that if he attempted to fire, the fiend would slay the girl. Clark Brosset emitted a derisive sneer.

“I am leaving you, Gorson,” he proclaimed. “You will never learn my trail. But before I go—”

The police chief cried in horror as he saw Brosset’s finger on the trigger. The cry changed to one of amazement. Gorson, Farman, and Marcia, even in this moment of terror, were bewildered by what occurred.

From the blackness of the gallery, a living hand stretched out to clutch Clark Brosset’s weapon. Fingers of black jerked the revolver from the villain’s grasp. With a cry of evil disappointment, Brosset turned to grapple with a figure that had suddenly appeared beside him.

Police Chief Gorson stood motionless. He forgot that he held his own revolver. Like the girl and the lawyer, he was stupefied by an amazing conflict which suddenly occurred upon the darkened gallery.

Clark Brosset was in the clutches of a sinister shape that seemed the visible manifestation of a supernatural being! A mass of blackness, gloom of the gallery turned into solid form, had risen out of nothingness to seize the would-be slayer!

Clark Brosset’s body twisted in the toils of some superhuman force. It writhed against a power that seemed to have come from the void to gain uncanny vengeance. As the trio watched from below, Brosset still fought with this stranger from another sphere.

A cry of exultation marked a sudden change. The black shape slumped as Brosset managed to regain his grip upon the gun. Gorson saw the revolver twist in Brosset’s hand, as Brosset flung himself behind the balcony rail.

Another cry. It was a shout of momentary triumph from Brosset. The old wooden rail of the gallery quivered as a body thumped against it. A revolver roared. A flash spat through the posts of the railing.

The woodwork broke. Impelled by a terrific impetus, the railing broke apart. Amid a burst of splintering oak, the form of Clark Brosset plunged headlong through the shattered barrier.

The revolver clattered and bounced across the floor of the reception hall. Chief Gorson sprang forward. There was no need. Clark Brosset’s body, as it crashed upon the floor below the gallery, doubled like a jackknife and lay still.

Bits of woodwork had followed from the railing. Gorson, playing his light upon the gaping break, saw only blackened nothingness.

MARCIA WARDROP was staggering toward Clark Brosset’s body. She dropped beside the motionless form. Her voice came in a sighing cry.

“He’s dead!” gasped the girl. “He’s dead! Clark — is — dead—”

“Shot through the heart,” acknowledged Gorson, as he stooped over the body. “Shot by his own gun — fighting something” — he paused, correcting himself — “fighting nothing but his own imagination!”

The police chief looked sharply at Marcia Wardrop. He could see an agonized stare in the girl’s eyes. He put forth a short question:

“What do you how about Clark Brosset?”

The girl’s lips quivered. Gazing first toward Gorson, then at Horatio Farman, Marcia Wardrop made her solemn answer.

“He was my husband,” she said. “I loved him — I believed him — I obeyed him! I did not know he was a murderer — not until he wanted to kill me—”

Police Chief Gorson was silent. He arose and stood looking at the girl, crouched above the murderer’s body. Horatio Farman raised Marcia Wardrop gently.

A strange whir came from the other end of the room. Gorson swung quickly; then stood still as he listened to the chimes of the huge clock. The mammoth timepiece began to dong the hour of twelve.

A strange, whispered murmur shuddered through the room. It rose in tone and became a quivering, eerie laugh. There was no mirth in that uncanny cry. Its strident notes held a spectral solemnity.

The laugh died. Echoes followed from the walls. Whispered reverberations sent their mystic message from the gallery after the laugh had ceased — long seconds after the grandfather’s clock had sounded its final stroke.

“What was that?” gasped Police Chief Gorson, in an awed tone.

“The laugh of a ghost,” responded Horatio Farman, pale-faced in solemn sincerity. “The spirit of Caleb Delthern — the force that slew this man of murder!”

Gorson nodded, half believing. It seemed the only answer. The cry of a ghost — the shade of the former master of Delthern Manor.

Such was the belief of Horatio Farman. The old lawyer’s opinion would be unaltered now; and Marcia Wardrop, frightened, not knowing what to do, believed the same.

For the second time, the girl and the lawyer had heard the laugh of The Shadow!