The door closed behind the two men. Billy Kane lay motionless, save that, as they climbed to the street and their footsteps echoed back from the stairs, his hand, gripping his revolver, stole silently from his pocket. There was a grim whiteness around his set lips. His ears strained to catch the slightest sound from within the room, and strained to catch the last echo of those retreating footfalls. He dared not make a move until they were well away—out of earshot, say, of a revolver report. If it were fancy, if the movement of that door were only his imagination unhealthily stimulated, and unhealthily preying upon his nerves, he would at least put an end to it in short order now! The steps rang faintly back from the pavement, still more faintly, and were lost. And then Billy Kane spoke—a cold deadly monotony in his voice:
“Those boards are thin! Come out into the room with your hands up before I count three, or I’ll put a bullet through. One—two——”
There was a laugh, undisguised in its mockery, but low and musical. The door, bizarre and grotesque in its zigzag projections, due to its ingenious adherence to the natural joints in the wall boards, swung open wide, and a woman stood in the room.
“I was only waiting for your friends to go, Bundy,” she said coolly.
The revolver sagged a little in Billy Kane’s hand. He could not see her face very well, the single incandescent dangling from the ceiling was miserably inadequate, but dark eyes flashed at him out of an oval face, and the chin thrown up gave a glimpse of the contour of a full throat, ivory white—and all this was merged in the background of a slender figure clothed and cloaked in some dark material, unrelieved by a single vistage of color.
She spoke again.
“I don’t think you are quite as badly hurt as you pretend, Bundy,” she said, with a sort of icy composure. “You were out last night when I came here, and if you could prowl around the streets, I think perhaps you could manage now to get from the bed over to the door there and back again without doing yourself any serious injury. The door has been unlocked since Red Vallon went out, and it might be safer—locked.”
Billy Kane did not answer her. He got up, crossed to the door, locked it, and, returning, sat down on the edge of the bed. She had not moved from her position near the far end of the room. He became conscious that he was still holding his revolver in his hand, and he thrust the weapon quietly now into his pocket. A grim smile came and hovered on his lips. This complication, another of the ramifications of his stolen identity, he did not understand at all—except that it promised him no good. She was the author of last night’s note—she had just said as much—and the wording of that note was not reassuring as to her attitude toward him, nor was the mockery in her laugh, nor was the self-contained, almost contemptuous note of command with which she had just spoken. Who was she? What was she to the Rat, that she knew the secret of that underground tunnel, and the secret of that door?
He jerked his hand toward the chair Red Vallon had vacated.
“Sit down, won’t you?” There was a tingle of irony in his voice. His invitation was at least safe ground.
She came forward toward the table, a subtle, supple grace in her movements. Subconsciously he noted that she made no sound as she crossed the room. She was like a cat—but a very beautiful cat. He could see her face better now. The eyes were hard and unfriendly, but they were great, brown, steady eyes of unfathomable depths.
She leaned against the table.
“I prefer to stand.” There was a challenge in her tones. “What I have to say will not take long.”
Billy Kane waited. The initiative was with her. He meant it to remain so. Her small white hand, ungloved, clenched suddenly at her side until its knuckles stood out like little chalky knobs.
“You look sleeker about the face, clearer about the eyes—you beast!” There was a studied deliberation in her voice that gave the words the sting of a curling whip lash. “Perhaps you’ve been——”
“You were listening there at the door?” suggested Billy Kane imperturbably, as he reached into his pocket for a cigarette.
There was a mocking little lift to her shoulders.
“Of course! That is what I came for. I followed Red Vallon here. I supposed that you would meet at the old place, now that you are back; but since you are an invalid——” Again the shoulders lifted.
“I am afraid it hardly paid you for the trouble—to listen,” Billy Kane murmured caustically. “I’m sorry! I rather fancied I saw the door move, and you see, my illness has affected my voice, and at times I can scarcely speak above a whisper, otherwise you might have overheard——”
“I overheard enough!” She took a sudden step toward him. Her eyes were flashing now; there was a flush, angry red, mounting from the white throat, suffusing her cheeks. She raised her clenched hands. “You will die with insolence and bravado on your lips, I believe!” she cried out passionately. “How I hate you! But I’ve got you—like that”—she flung out an arm toward him, and the small clenched hand opened and then closed again, slowly, as though in its grip it were remorselessly crushing and exterminating some abhorrent thing. And then her hand was raised again, and was brushed across her eyes, and a little quiver ran through her form, and she spoke more calmly. “I overheard enough. I thought this Merxler affair would be worked to-night, and I came to tell you that you are to stop it. I came to tell you to—remember! I promise, before God, that if there is murder done to-night you will be in the hands of the police within an hour. And it’s not very far from the Tombs to the death chair in Sing Sing—Bundy Morgan.”
Billy Kane’s eyes were hidden by drooped lids. His eyes were studying with curious abstraction the pattern of the faded, greasy, threadbare strip of carpet on the floor beside the bed. Murder! The word had come with a shock that for a moment unnerved him. He had not associated anything that Red Vallon or Karlin had said with murder. They had spoken so lightly, referred to it in so humdrum a way. Murder! There was something ghastly in that lightness now. A tightness came to his lips, a horror was creeping into his soul. He was only on the verge of things, of hidden and abominable things, here in this shadow land, this night land of skulking shapes, this sordid realm of the underworld. He pulled himself together. He was the Rat—he had a part to play. He was conscious that those brown, fearless eyes were fixed on him contemptuously.
“What have I to do with it?” he muttered sullenly.
“Do with it! You!” Her voice rose, as though suddenly out of control. “You dare ask that! You, with your devil’s brains—you, who planned it all before you went away!”
The cigarette that he had lighted had gone out. He sucked at it, circling it around his lips. He was fencing now with unbuttoned foils.
“Well, you’ve said it!” There was a snarl creeping into his voice. “I’ve been away. I don’t know what they’ve done since I’ve been away.”
“You know about the will, and the sealed envelope in Merxler’s safe, and you know the combination to the safe,” she said levelly. “And that’s all you need to know to stop this from going any further.”
He laughed out shortly.
“And suppose I don’t know the combination! You don’t think I can carry a thing like that in my head forever, do you?”
“No,” she said. She smiled curiously, and one hand slipped into the bodice of her dress. “I don’t think you ever did memorize that combination. But perhaps you will recognize it again—the original in your own handwriting.” She held up a crumpled piece of paper before him, then tossed it on the table.
“Where did you get that?” he demanded roughly.
Her shoulders lifted mockingly again.
“There are other secrets in this room besides that door and the tunnel to the shed, aren’t there—Bundy?”
He eyed her now for a long minute, biting openly at his lip, his face twisted in a well-simulated ugly scowl.
“So, I’m to queer this game, am I?” he snarled suddenly. “And if I’m caught—as a snitch—they’ll tear me to pieces!”
She leaned a little forward from the table, a tense, lithe thing, and her voice came low with passion:
“We’re wasting time—and you’ve none to lose. We’ve gone over this ground before, haven’t we? It’s the one chance you have—to save yourself. Some day you won’t be able to save yourself. Some day the reckoning will come; but you will always have the hope that it won’t, and that you will always succeed in staving it off each time as you have in the past. But until that day does come the only chance you have for life is to pit your wits against the fiends like yourself that are around you. For what you have done there is no atonement—only punishment. I mean you to live in suspense, but even while that suspense lasts you will pull apart and unravel your devil’s work as fast as you knit it together. You have a chance that way! When the end comes and they get you, you know how the underworld will pay—but there is the chance—that is what holds you—and with the alternative—the police—there is no chance.”
She was breathing hard. She leaned back against the table, her hands gripped tightly at its edge.
For a moment there was silence in the room. Billy Kane’s mind was groping blindly now, as in some utter darkness. In some way, for there was no question of the genuineness of her self-assurance, her very presence here in seemingly placing herself in the Rat’s power proved that she held the Rat, and the Rat’s life and liberty in the hollow of her hand, at her beck and call. How? What was the secret of the power she possessed over him? He lighted a match nonchalantly, and, as he applied the flame to the half-burned cigarette he lifted his eyes to her through the blue haze of smoke that he blew negligently in her direction.
“Sometimes,” he said in a low, menacing tone, “people, even women, who grow troublesome, have been known in this neighborhood—to disappear.”
She laughed sharply.
“You have no time to waste in foolish words!” she warned him curtly. “You know the consequences of my—disappearance. You are at liberty to take those consequences any time you choose. But you do not like them, do you—Bundy?” She moved suddenly across the room, back to the secret door through which she had entered. “I am going now,” she said steadily. “If there is murder to-night, or if any part of that plan goes through—remember!”
Billy Kane made no effort to stop her, as she closed the door silently behind her. She was gone. The minutes passed, and he still sat there on the side of the bed, his eyes mechanically fixed on the spot, an innocent blank wall now, where she had disappeared. His face, hard and set at first, grew harder. What was he to do? There seemed to yawn before him, to have opened at his feet an abyss, bottomless, pitiless, and he tottered on the brink of it, and unseen hands reached up and snatched at him to drag him from the narrow ledge that was all that was left to him of safety. What was he to do? To go on? Every hour that he clung to this role of the Rat held a surer promise, not only of desperate peril to himself, but a promise that he would find himself launched in a sea of crime, of shuddering things, of murder, of blood, of sordid viciousness, of hate. In God’s name, who was this Rat, who in this hole here with its secret opening and its gnawed tunnel to the daylight made the pseudonym so apt!
He clenched his hands suddenly, and rising to his feet began to pace the room. He began to see now what, strangely enough, though it should have been plainly obvious all through that day, he had not seen until she, this unknown, mysterious woman, had, herself unconscious of it, made him see. Her power over the Rat to which he was subject in his assumed character, did not, in the final analysis, whatever the source of that power might be, materially affect the situation. It was not her threat that was the driving force that must actuate him. There was another and a far greater force which he could neither ignore nor escape. He saw that now. If the foreknowledge of proposed crime came to him, he was as guilty, if he stood idly by, as those who became the actual perpetrators of that crime. To-night, if there was to be murder done, and it was within his power to prevent that murder, or even if it were only within his power to attempt to prevent that murder—and he did nothing—he was a murderer himself. And so to-night he had no choice. He must act. It did not seem to him that there had been any question in his mind about this in a specific way at all from the moment she had spoken of murder. But afterwards—if he went on—the crimes that Red Vallon and Karlin and their confederates would plot, and that he would know of—what then?
He halted by the table, and laughed in a short, harsh way, and in the dark eyes there burned a sudden fire. Was there really any question about that, either? Had there ever been! He asked only one thing in life now, and to that everything else was subordinate—to feel his hands upon the throat of the man who had murdered David Ellsworth, and who had fastened that guilt upon him—Billy Kane—to wring from that man a confession that would clear his name. Nothing else mattered. He could run for it, discard this rôle of the Rat, and perhaps effect his escape, but he would thereby throw away almost every hope of bringing the guilty man to justice. The other way was to fight. Well, he would fight! It would be a good fight! And, as the Rat, he would not have to fight alone! If he accepted the chances as they stood, he must accept the risk involved in foiling the plots and crimes of those who thought him their confederate; but against this, the first step already inaugurated, he had the craft and cunning of the underworld at his back in the one purpose that meant anything to him now. It would be a good fight! If he failed, he might as well go out this way as any other—better this way, for then at least some of the projected deviltry would never know fruition. He drew in his breath sharply as in a sort of strange relief. It was settled now, once for all! He would go on—as the Rat—to the end. And to-night he would see this Merxler plot through to the end.
Billy Kane picked up the crumpled piece of paper she had dropped on the table, studied it for an instant, then placed it in his pocket. It contained the scrawled figures of a safe’s combination, nothing more. And now, glancing at his watch and finding that it was already a little after eight o’clock, Billy Kane worked quickly. The mask that had served him the night before was already in his pocket, as was his revolver. To these he added the electric flashlight that Whitie Jack had procured for him that morning, and, from where they dangled in the lock of the door, Whitie Jack’s bunch of skeleton keys. He extinguished the light; then passing out through the secret door, which he closed carefully behind him, he made his way quickly through the little underground passage, gained the shed through the trap-door, emerged on the lane, and from there, cautiously, he reached the street.
He walked rapidly now, but keeping always in the shadows, shunning the direct rays of the street lamps. He cared nothing for the police; his danger did not lie in that direction. Seen anywhere in the city by either police or plain-clothes man he would be recognized, not as Billy Kane, but as the Rat—and the authorities, he was fairly well satisfied, had no particular or immediate interest in the Rat. His danger lay to-night in an unlucky recognition by some prowler of the underworld, the report of which might reach the ears of Red Vallon and his crowd. Supposed to be confined to bed, pleading physical inability to take his place at that unhallowed council board of which he was accepted as a member, it would be very awkward to explain his presence on the street within half an hour after Red Vallon and Karlin had left his room! To-morrow, the day after, it would be a different matter, he could go and come then as he pleased, but to-night it multiplied his difficulties and his dangers a thousandfold. And yet, after all, that was the most simple of the problems that confronted him—with luck, he could see his way out of that. But for the rest, he was almost like a blind man groping his way along in what was already near to an inextricable maze. He knew something of Merxler both by sight and hearsay, he knew where Merxler lived, that there was a will in the safe which he must secure, that he possessed the combination of the safe, and that afterwards there was “the back door of Jerry’s before ten,” which referred undoubtedly to the notorious gambling hell of that name, and that in these fragments, once pieced together, there was murder—that was all he knew. And there was something grim, and horribly ironic, and mocking, and something forbidding, and ominous and premonitory in the fact that he was supposed to know all!
The street for the moment in his immediate vicinity was deserted, and just well enough within the radius of a street lamp to enable him to see, he drew the package of money from his vest pocket that the old millionaire had confided to his keeping the night before. He selected several bills of the smaller denominations, placed them in his trousers’ pocket, and returned the package to the inside pocket of his vest. Thank God for the money! He had enough in the bank twice over to replace this two thousand that now belonged to the Ellsworth estate, but he could not get it! He was a fugitive from the law! But this should see him through—by the time two thousand was exhausted he must either have won or lost. He smiled a little bitterly. Win or lose, the estate at least would get its two thousand back! If he won, he would pay it back himself; if he lost—well, his money in the bank had probably already been attached!
And now he retreated to the shadows of the buildings again as he went along. His surreptitious excursion from the Rat’s den last night had, to one who knew the East Side as intimately as he knew it, supplied him with a mental map, as it were, of the neighborhood in which the Rat had chosen to reside. A block further on was The Purple Scarf, a so-called Bohemian restaurant and dance hall, as lurid as its name, that for the moment was the craze with the slummers and those of New York’s upper strata who aped all things Bohemian—and from early evening until early morning a line of taxis waited to snatch their share of the spoils from the free-handed and, quite often, hilarious clientele. It was a taxi that he wanted—without attracting any unnecessary attention to himself—a taxi that he could not stand on a crowded thoroughfare and hail—and there was, as usual, a line of them there now in front of the restaurant.
He reached the corner, drew his hat far down over his eyes, stepped out into the street, and approached the last taxi in the line from the side away from the curb. The chauffeur was nodding in his seat. Billy Kane touched the man on the arm.
“I want to go up to the Nineties—Broadway—probably several places after that,” said Billy Kane pleasantly.
The chauffeur yawned, and shook his head.
“I’m waitin’ for a party in there.” He jerked his hand toward the restaurant. “I got a fare.”
“I know you have,” said Billy Kane coolly. “You’ve got me.” He extended a ten-dollar bill. “There’s another one just like this, perhaps more than one, coming later—on top of the fare.”
The chauffeur grinned, pocketed the banknote, and, leaning out, opened the door. His grin broadened.
“What did you say the address was?” he inquired.
“The one I gave you will do for the present,” Billy Kane answered quietly. “I’ll let you know where to stop. Get up there as fast as you can. I’m paying for speed to-night. Get the idea?”
“Leave it to me!” said the chauffeur. “Hop in!”
Billy Kane settled back in the seat. The car swung out of the line, shot forward, and took the first corner on little better than two wheels. Billy Kane smiled grimly. Between here and that purposely vague address in the Nineties which he had given, the chauffeur could very obviously be depended upon to do his part! In the meanwhile, and for the first time, he, Billy Kane, had an opportunity to study those scattered pieces of the puzzle in detail.
He lighted a cigarette. That there should be a will in Merxler’s safe at all had a nasty look—unless it were Merxler’s own will, which was altogether too highly improbable a supposition to be entertained seriously. And besides, in that case, what was Karlin’s, and Red Vallon’s, and the underworld’s interest in the matter? He shook his head decisively. The existence of a will did not tend to place young Merxler in an enviable light.
Merxler’s uncle, a man by the name of Theodore Rodgers, who had died some few months before, had been quite an intimate friend of David Ellsworth—that was where his, Billy Kane’s, personal knowledge of Merxler came from. He had met Rodgers several times at the old millionaire’s home; and once he had met the nephew there as well. The two did not get on very well together. Young Merxler was a notorious “high-roller.” Left a large fortune by his father two years ago, he had squandered it to the last copper. Theodore Rodgers, his uncle, had time and again, both privately and publicly, stated that he would have nothing more to do with the boy. That was the gist of it. It had occasioned some surprise then that, when Rodgers had died, it was found that he had taken no steps to keep his money, what he had of it, some sixty or seventy thousand dollars, out of the young spendthrift’s hands. But no will had been found. Rodgers was a bachelor; young Clayton Merxler was a dead sister’s only son—and Merxler had inherited as next of kin, and had promptly moved his family—he was married—into his late uncle’s residence.
Billy Kane finished his cigarette, and finished still another, as the taxi made its way uptown. There had never been anything criminal, so far as was known, about young Merxler, nothing wrong up to now, except that he had gone the pace, and that, perhaps more than anything else, he had been a foolish and unbalanced boy and had lost his head; but now there were two very unpleasant facts that loomed up insistently. First, it was common knowledge that at the time of his uncle’s death young Merxler was having an exceedingly hard time of it to make both ends meet. And, second, was the fact that Karlin was in this too. Knowing Karlin now for what Karlin really was, it looked ugly enough for young Merxler. Karlin, accepted in the upper circles in which he moved, as a respected citizen and an excellent attorney, had always been trusted as a friend and the legal adviser of both young Merxler’s father and uncle—which placed him now in a position where he could be a very useful, if not indispensable confederate in assisting Merxler to enter without obstacle into the possession of his uncle’s estate.
The minutes passed. Billy Kane, within a few blocks of his destination, noted the cross streets carefully now, as he shook his head again. The pieces did not fit so perfectly after all. Suppose that Rodgers had left a will disinheriting his nephew, and suppose that young Merxler had found that will and that it was in Merxler’s safe now, and that Karlin was a party to it—why hadn’t the will been destroyed? That would seem the obvious and safe thing to have done! And if Merxler and Karlin and Red Vallon were all hand in glove in the affair, where was the incentive for murder that she had spoken of? Whose murder? There was a snarl in the thing. He was conscious that he had not untangled it at all to his satisfaction.
He tapped suddenly on the glass front, signalling the chauffeur; and, as the taxi drew up at the curb, he stepped quickly to the sidewalk.
“Wait for me here,” he directed, and started at a brisk pace up the block.
He turned at the first corner, heading east along the cross street. It was purely a residential neighborhood here. There was no other pedestrian in sight for the moment. Merxler’s house was one of a row halfway up the block. Billy Kane’s pace became a nonchalant stroll. He passed the row of houses slowly, though apparently indifferent to their existence, and then, retracing his steps quite as negligently, slipped suddenly into the shadows of a flight of high front steps, and the next instant was crouched against the basement door.
A skeleton key from Whitie Jack’s comprehensive assortment crept into the lock. It proved abortive. Billy Kane, as he made a second attempt with another key, was subconsciously rehearsing certain details in his mind. There was a light in the vestibule or front hallway above him, but the windows on that floor were dark. Above that again the windows were lighted, and it was a fair presumption that the family proper were all upstairs. There was probably a maid, but as there was no sign of life here in the basement it might well be her evening out.
Again Billy Kane selected another key, still another—and then the door opened silently under his hand. He stepped inside, closed the door noiselessly behind him, and stood listening. There was no sound and no light. It was pitch black. He could not have seen his hand before his eyes. And then his flashlight winked through the black, went out, winked inquisitively again, and he moved forward. The stairs were just at his right, and made a right-angled turn halfway up. He gained the stairs and began to mount them, testing each separate tread cautiously before the next step was attempted. Stairs before now had been known to creak out discordantly! Billy Kane smiled in a grim, mirthless way. He was becoming an adept at this burglarious trade where silence was so prime a factor. Since last night he——
What was that?
He felt his muscles, as though without volition of his, strain suddenly and grow rigid. He was halfway up the stairs now, and he drew back into the angle made by the turn, his body hugged tight against the wall. What was that! He thought he had heard a sound as of someone moving in the hall above, but it was gone now and there was only a stillness in the house, a stillness that, as he listened, became exaggerated until it seemed to possess noises of its own that began to throb, and pound, and palpitate, and make his eardrums ring, and—no!—there it was again—a light, quick step—and, unmistakably now, upon the topmost stair.
It was inky black. He could not see. He pressed still closer, flattening himself against the wall. The step was very light, scarcely audible; a woman’s step probably, and probably the maid’s. Billy Kane held his breath. If he were found here, discovered, caught, the Rat would——He did not care to dwell upon the consequences.
Something, a shapeless thing, a deeper, shadowy blackness passed by him. It seemed to escape contact with him by the barest fraction of an inch. He heard the sound of breathing—then a step along the passageway below—and the basement door closed quietly. There was silence again, save for that din infernal that beat at his eardrums. He lifted his hand to his forehead—it was moist as he brought it away again.
A moment more, and he was grimly composed again. It was the maid probably. That seemed the natural conclusion. Who else would have gone out by the basement door? Well, if that were so, he was left now with almost unrestricted freedom of action; the family being all upstairs, he might reasonably expect to have the first floor quite to himself without very great fear of interruption.
He crept on up the stairs, and reached the main hallway. Here the dim light in the vestibule sifting down the length of the hall metamorphosed the blackness into a murky gloom. He listened again. A murmur of voices came intermittently from above. There was no other sound.
There was a door at his right. He opened it silently, and stepped through into the room beyond. He closed the door, and the flashlight winked out again. He was in luck now! This, at the first venture, was the room he was looking for. The round, white ray of the flashlight, cutting a filmy path through the darkness, fell upon the nickel dial of a small safe that stood against the opposite wall. He crossed to the safe, knelt before it, and took the crumpled piece of paper that bore the combination from his pocket. Thereafter for a moment, as his fingers moved swiftly, the silence was broken by the faint, musical whirling of the dial—and then a low, metallic thud, as he shot the lever over—and the safe door swung open.
The ray from the flashlight flooded the interior of the safe. It was a small safe, but even so it was evidently more than large enough for its requirements. On the floor of the safe was a package of securities, held together by broad elastic bands, but the pigeon-holes were but sparsely filled, some being entirely empty. A few minutes’ examination disposed of the pigeon-holes—and the skeleton keys came into service again on a little locked drawer. The drawer contained a single envelope, sealed. He slit the envelope open. It contained two folded sheets of paper. He examined only one of them, and that only to the extent of glancing at the first few words: “I, Theodore Rodgers, being of sane mind and——”
Billy Kane’s face darkened, as he thrust the envelope into his pocket and locked the drawer. It was true then! His lips pursed grimly, as his eyes fell upon the package of securities again. He took up the package and riffled it tentatively through his fingers. Theodore Rodgers had perhaps been a little eccentric—if eccentricity was defined by a divergence from the general habits and customs of others! He had made no secret that he kept his securities in his own safe, preferring that method to depositing them in a safe-deposit vault, and claiming that, as the securities were made out in his name and were therefore valueless to anyone else, they offered no temptation for robbery. Young Merxler had evidently followed in his uncle’s footsteps in this particular! But Theodore Rodgers had been credited with being worth in the neighborhood of seventy thousand dollars! Billy Kane’s lips pursed tighter, as he replaced the package of bonds and stock certificates in the safe, and closed and locked the safe door. At a generous estimate there remained no more than twelve or fifteen thousand dollars. Young Merxler, in the brief period following his uncle’s death, had evidently done well!
Billy Kane retreated from the room, descended the stairs, and let himself out through the basement door—and five minutes later, in his taxi, was being whirled downtown again. “The back room at Jerry’s before ten.” He had directed the chauffeur to drive to a side street just off the Bowery near Chatham Square—that was close to Jerry’s. He had looked at his watch, as he had entered the taxi. It was just nine o’clock. He had therefore plenty of time now. He took the envelope from his pocket and extracted the two folded sheets. There was not light enough to read by, but that was quite easily rectified. He had his flashlight.
He bent well down toward the floor of the cab so as not to attract the chauffeur’s attention, read both of the papers, read them again—and a look of stunned surprise and bewilderment settled on his face. One was a will, evidently drawn and written by Rodgers himself, and duly witnessed, bequeathing practically everything to charity, and specifying four or five different organizations as the beneficiaries. It appointed Karlin, who was referred to as a “trusted and lifelong friend,” the sole executor; and, “as a mark of personal esteem,” and as a “slight compensation” for the administration of the estate, left Karlin a legacy of two thousand five hundred dollars. The other paper was a letter signed by young Merxler. Billy Kane read this again for the third time:
“If I die before Karlin does, this is a joke on Karlin; if Karlin dies before I do the will and this letter go into the fire. Damn him—I hate him! He’s a smooth oily-tongued hypocrite! It was Karlin more than anybody else who backed my uncle up in the idea of cutting me off. Well, I guess this is where I get even! If there’s two thousand five hundred dollars left when I get through, I hope Karlin will enjoy it—but there won’t be! I just wanted him to know how thoughtful my uncle was, and it was worth the risk of keeping the cursed will for the sake of the jolt it will give Karlin’s miserly, snivelling soul. If there’s anything Karlin loves, it’s money. If Karlin’s got any God at all, it’s money. He worships that, all right!”
Here the letter veered abruptly into direct address:
“It’ll break your heart, Karlin, won’t it, to think I spent two thousand five hundred dollars of your money! That’s the joke, Karlin! It’s rich, isn’t it? And I just want to tell you, too, that you had the will in your own hands once—and overlooked the bet! That’s where you slipped up, Karlin. It was the day my uncle died, and we were going over the papers together. It was in a plain, unsealed envelope—and didn’t look like anything. You tossed it on a heap of other stuff to be looked into later—all you could think of was counting stocks and bonds, getting your fingers into money—that you didn’t know was yours—some of it, anyway! I was looking for something else—and found it. I only had to read about two words and see that it was in my uncle’s handwriting, and—well, since you’re the executor, you’ll find it enclosed herewith!
Clayton Merxler.”
Billy Kane refolded the papers, returned them to the envelope, restored the envelope and flashlight to his pockets, and leaned back in his seat. The taxi lurched and swayed along at a pace that gave small deference or heed to speed laws. Billy Kane stared out of the window.
The letter was viciously facetious, callous and unscrupulous. The boy was a self-confessed and blatantly unrepentant thief. In that at least his first supposition had evidently been justified, and it was quite clear now why Merxler had not destroyed the will—but otherwise the whole affair had now assumed an entirely different aspect. Instead of Karlin being in league with Merxler, Karlin, unknown to Merxler, it now appeared, was aware of the existence of the will—and Karlin, if she had not exaggerated, meant murder. And, since no one else was involved, meant Merxler’s murder.
Billy Kane’s face hardened in perplexity. But why? What could Karlin hope to gain thereby? Certainly it was not on account of the little legacy of two thousand five hundred dollars—Karlin had only to expose the fact that the will existed to obtain that. And that applied equally to the executorship. And what good could the executorship do Karlin? With the stocks and bonds there open to inspection and their value known, Karlin’s executorship could afford no opportunity for crooked work—he could simply turn the securities into cash, turn the cash over to the various charities, and the cash must correspond with the valuation of the estate’s schedule of assets. Why, then—murder? Personal enmity? No; Red Vallon and the underworld were interested in this, and the enmity that had caused Merxler to preserve the will, an enmity that no doubt was fully returned by Karlin, had nothing to do with Red Vallon and the rest.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by. The taxi reached the lower section of the city. Billy Kane still stared from the window, his face still hard in perplexity. Murder! No, he did not understand. But there was still the “back room at Jerry’s”—where he was going now! Did the answer lie there? Jerry’s, safely entrenched in one of the most abandoned neighborhoods of the city, was a gambling hell that yet boasted a certain exclusiveness—and its patrons quite made good the boast. It was an open secret that men whose names ranked high in the city’s commercial and professional world went there for their fling. Jerry, it was said, was an ex-croupier from Monte Carlo, and had brought the spirit of Monte Carlo with him. He, Billy Kane, had heard of the place often enough—the entertainment was lavish, the play unlimited. Did the answer lie there—in the back room at Jerry’s? He shrugged his shoulders philosophically now, and a grim little smile came and flickered across his lips. Well, if there were any means by which an uninvited guest could gain access to that back room, he would know within a very few minutes now!
The taxi drew up to the curb. Billy Kane’s hat was far over his eyes as he stepped out. He stood an instant debating with himself, then handed the chauffeur another bill. What might happen at Jerry’s he did not know—he was going it blind again. But as a means of retreat, a taxi waiting around the corner would at least add to his chances, if necessity arose. And a chauffeur well paid was a guarantee of fidelity than which there was none better.
“You’ve struck a gold mine to-night,” he said coolly. “I may be gone half an hour, or I may be gone an hour—wait for me.”
“You bet your life, I’ll wait!” said the chauffeur fervently. “I——”
Billy Kane was hurrying down the street. He turned the first corner, and headed along the intersecting street, that was dark, narrow and deserted. He passed another cross street, and thereafter counted the houses as he went along. Here tenements and the old-fashioned dwellings of New York’s early days incongruously rubbed shoulders with one another. Jerry’s, he found, was the fifth house from the cross street. There was no mistaking Jerry’s. It was one of the old private dwellings, and it had been pointed out to him more than once. He returned to the cross street, turned down it, slipped into the lane that passed in the rear of the houses he had just inspected from the front, and, guardedly now, making his way silently along, he again counted the buildings that here in the darkness loomed up like black, uncouth shapes against the sky line. He stopped in the rear of the fifth house. Here and there a thread of light showed from a window, but it was a stealthy light, a light that played truant through the interstices of closed shutters, or seeped perhaps through the folds of curtains hanging inadvertently awry. It was abnormally dark, and in the darkness there seemed to lurk a somber secrecy, like a pall, cloaking evil things.
Billy Kane swung himself up and over a high fence, and dropped noiselessly to the ground on the other side. He found himself in a yard that, even in the darkness, he could make out was strangely restricted in area. A few feet in front of him was the wall of the building itself. He crept forward, skirting along this wall. There was no window, but opening almost on a level with the ground were shuttered French doors. He continued on, rounded the angle of the building, and suddenly stooped down in a crouching posture. There was a window here just above his head, and from it came a meager gleam of light. His eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, he could distinguish his surroundings a little more clearly now. The yard here, a narrow strip of it paralleling the side fence, seemed to run back quite a distance, taking up a jut in the building. They had puzzled him, those shuttered French doors where logically he had expected to find an ordinary back door and porch, but it was obvious now that the “back room at Jerry’s” was an addition that had been built onto the house, extending almost to the fence in the rear.
The window beneath which he crouched was shoulder high. He straightened up. The light came through slightly parted, heavy portières. He felt the blood quicken suddenly in his veins. He could see in quite well. There were two men in the room—Karlin, and another man whom he did not recognize. The room was luxuriously, if somewhat garishly furnished. A green baize card table, with several unopened packs of cards upon it, stood in the center; there was a blue-and-gold Chinese rug with a huge dragon pattern upon the floor; and at one side a large buffet groaned under a load of wine and whisky bottles, bowls of fruit, and refreshments of various descriptions. The two men were talking earnestly. Karlin pulled out his watch, and scowled.
Billy Kane’s lips tightened. He could see, but he could not hear. He took his penknife from his pocket, and slipped the blade under the window sill. If he had luck, if the window was not locked, he—ah!—his breath came in a soft, long-drawn intake—the window gave slightly under a cautious pressure. An inch was all that was necessary, half an inch even. The window went up by infinitesimal fractions of that inch.
Billy Kane returned the penknife to his pocket. He could hear them now. Karlin was speaking; and the other man, it appeared now, was the proprietor of the place, Jerry, the ex-croupier of Monte Carlo.
“What’s the matter with you, Jerry—getting nervous waiting?” said Karlin curtly. “Well, forget it! This is the Rat’s plan—and that ought to be good enough, what? Nothing is going wrong, nothing can go wrong. Certainly, the police will close you up for a month, but that’s all there is to it, so far as you are concerned. They have nothing on you. That’s the inside of the whole thing—that the killing is done in an unpremeditated, drunken brawl over cards—that it just happened—just an untimely end without any other strings to it! There’s no reason why you should lose your nerve—your story is straight. Young Merxler came here often. He gives a little party here to-night. Neither you nor your doorkeeper knows a damned one of his guests. He vouched for them, and that’s all you know. You heard a row in here, then a revolver shot, and when you got here the table was upset, wine, cards and glasses all over the place, the boys beating it out through the French doors there, and young Merxler dead on the floor. You just notify the police. Your loss through being closed for a month makes it a cinch your story’s straight—you don’t have to tell the police that your share of the split is the best bet you ever made in your life! Let me do the worrying! I’m the one who’s taking the risk. I’m the one who’s been showing a seamy side to Merxler in confidence lately. I’m the one who’s invited him to the party that the police will be told he was giving. You can leave it to me that nothing goes wrong. I’ve got my own skin staked on this. There won’t be any mistake made—dead men can’t talk. The only thing I’m bothering about is what is keeping Bull McCann. He might——”
Billy Kane drew suddenly back from the window, and crouched down again against the wall of the building. Someone, unless he were curiously mistaken, was out there in the lane at the rear of the place. He was listening intently now—but there was a strange turmoil in his brain that seemed somehow to divide his attention, that had made his act of caution one that was almost purely automatic. Murder! That casual discussion of murder! There was something within him, soul deep, that he could not quite analyse—save that it seemed a lust for murder was upon him too, possessing him, engulfing him. Would that be murder? Was it murder to crush out the life of a poison-fanged snake! There was a fury upon him, but a most strange fury, a fury that was utterly cold—and utterly merciless. Murder! Yes, he knew now beyond question that there was to be murder, that the stage for it was set with a devil’s craft, with the craft of the Rat whose identity he had assumed; that it would appear on the face of it nothing more than quite a logical outcome of the life led by young Merxler, that there would appear to be no connection whatever with young Merxler’s death and what was to follow—but what was it that was to follow? How, in what way, was this murder, in dollars and cents, to show a profit at the next meeting of that unhallowed directorate of crime? How did Karlin——
Strange how his mind should isolate itself from his immediate surroundings, and yet leave him fully conscious of those surroundings! He was still listening—listening intently. There was no mistake. A boot scraped against a board. Someone was climbing the fence. Came then the soft thud of feet dropping to the ground, and now a quick step across the yard.
Billy Kane’s revolver was in his hand. If the newcomer came around the corner of the house, dark as it was, it was almost certain that—no! The other had halted evidently before those shuttered French doors, and was rapping softly—three raps, a single rap, two raps. The raps were repeated. Someone moved swiftly across the floor of the room. There was the faint clash of portière rings, and the sound of the French doors being opened.
Billy Kane was at the window again. A third man was in the room now. Karlin was speaking sharply.
“You’ve been a long time coming, Bull!”
The newcomer, his back turned to Billy Kane, shrugged his shoulders.
“I had to wait until Merxler went out,” he answered. “I didn’t lose no time after that, an’ I came downtown as fast as I could. I ain’t been much more’n half an hour from Merxler’s to here.”
“Well, all right!” grunted Karlin. “Have any trouble?”
“Nix!” said the other. “I slipped the envelope into the drawer of the safe, all right. It was a cinch! The family was all upstairs.”
Karlin nodded.
“Where are the securities?” he demanded.
The man took what Billy Kane could see were a number of stock and bond certificates from his pocket, and handed them to Karlin.
Karlin nodded again, as he ran through the papers rapidly.
“How much did you leave in the safe?” he inquired crisply.
“What Red told me—about ten or twelve thousand.”
“All right!” said Karlin. “Good work, Bull! Beat it, now!”
The man turned, and left the room. Billy Kane heard him step across the yard, heard him climb the fence, heard Karlin within the room close the shuttered French doors—but this time Billy Kane made no movement, save that there was a curious twitching of his face muscles as his jaws locked together. All the bald, hellish brutality of the scheme was beginning to take form now in his mind. It was a plant, all of it, the letter, the will; a plant with the devil’s stamp of ingenuity upon it—and it was the man who had just gone from the room, Bull McCann, who had passed him on that black stairway from the basement in Merxler’s home!
Karlin was laughing in a viciously jubilant way, as he came back to the ex-croupier’s side.
“Fifty thousand dollars!” said Karlin, as he thrust the securities into the inside pocket of his coat, and patted the pocket complacently. “Fifty thousand, Jerry, and all of it in Theodore Rodger’s name—I kept stalling the kid on the idea of transferring the securities into his own name—told him there was no hurry—that he could clip the coupons and get the dividend checks through all right, just the same. I was his attorney too—see? Works pretty smooth, eh, Jerry? Too bad you didn’t get a chance to have a look at that letter and the will! The Chipper did the job, and they’re the best pieces of forged penwork that were ever pulled in America! Some head the Rat’s got, I’ll give him credit for that—he worded the letter. It’s prima facie evidence that the kid was blowing the coin just as fast as he did when he came into his father’s money—and nobody’s surprised that most of it has gone up in smoke. And, besides that, it’s a confession. Well, what happens? Merxler is killed in a gambling brawl—at which nobody is surprised, either!—his safe is opened, the will is found, and with it that little hymn of hate against me, which accounts for what would otherwise have been a fool play in having kept the will. I am found to be the executor, empowered to transfer and sell, and administer the estate—and we find that all that’s left is about ten thousand—which is all I have to account for. I enter that as the value of the estate, split it up among the beneficiaries, and”—he chuckled softly—“I generously waive my claim to any share in the legacy on the score that the estate has been so hard hit. Neat little play, eh, Jerry? Well, after that, there’s nothing to it! My signature is legally good on any document, and little by little, here and there, we turn the fifty thousand into the long green—and pocket it. If it’s done quietly, a security or so at a time, no one would ever think of digging around to find out if it was one of those on the schedule filed by the estate. Feeling better, Jerry?”