XVII--THE MAN WITH THE CRUTCH
Billy Kane smiled with grim irony, as he walked rapidly down the block.She was not here to-night with her cool, contemptuous voice bidding himto do this thing. It was evident, therefore, that she was not quite asinfallible as she apparently believed herself to be! For once, she wasnot acquainted beforehand with the Crime Trust's movements, it seemed!Perhaps it was because, for once, the Rat might not have had anything todo with originating the plan that was afoot to-night, for she hadcertainly always appeared to be thoroughly informed where the Rat wasconcerned!
He shrugged his shoulders suddenly, dismissing her from his thoughts. Hewould better concentrate his mind on the work in hand! The secret lay inthe manila envelope. That the envelope contained something of greatvalue, or was of great value to someone, was obvious; to Dayler,probably, since it was in Dayler's carefully guarded possession. Heshrugged his shoulders again. He could tell better about that in thecourse of another hour--when the envelope was in his pocket instead ofDayler's safe! To balk this organized gang of super-criminals wassufficient for the moment! Once more his shoulders lifted. He perhapswas not even entitled to any great credit to-night in fulfilling his"moral obligations!" For once, there appeared to be neither any greatdanger, nor any great difficulty. The house was empty; it was not veryfar away; he had an hour in which to work undisturbed; and at theexpiration of that time he should be back in his room, and ready to setout with the Cadger and Gannet to rob an _empty_ safe. If he with thetwo men then entered the house, and, for their pains, found the manilaenvelope already gone, certainly there could be no suspicion to restupon him!
Billy Kane had reached the Bowery now. He went in through the sideentrance of a corner saloon. Here, a minute's search in the telephonedirectory supplied him with the number of Dayler's house on NinthStreet. After that, he made his way over to Washington Square, crossedthe Square, gained the lower end of Fifth Avenue, practically desertednow at this hour, and, a moment later, turning into Ninth Street, headeddown the block in the direction of Sixth Avenue.
It was one of the old aristocratic neighborhoods of New York, butchanged now a great deal with the changing years. What had once beenclassed as mansions had in many cases been metamorphosed into lodgingand boarding houses; but the "mansions" were still here, big,substantial, commodious stone dwellings. Nor had the boarding housesentirely ousted a certain unobtrusive type of wealth and means fromtheir midst, and it argued not at all that this Dayler, for instance,because he had his residence here, was not well to do, even exceedinglywell to do.
The street was quiet. Billy Kane located the house he sought. He passedby it, noting that it had a basement entrance, a flight of stone stepsto the front door, that it was entirely in darkness, and, returning, hemounted the steps quietly and without any attempt at concealment, foundthe outer vestibule door unlocked, opened it--after making pretense ofringing the doorbell for the benefit of anyone on the street who mighthave paid him any notice--stepped inside, and closed the door behindhim. The inner door was locked. His skeleton keys came into play. Stillfar from an adept in their use, he was several minutes at this work.Then he stepped forward into the hall of the house itself.
His flashlight stabbed a lane of light through the darkness. The stairsleading to the upper floors of the house were ahead of him and on hisright; on his left, opening off the hall, which seemed to run almost thedepth of the house, were several doors, all of which were closed. Thehouse was empty, the cipher message had assured him of that, butnevertheless he moved now with extreme caution to the first door on hisleft. He knew nothing of the plan of the house, but it was at leastlogical to assume that the library was on this floor, and the librarywas the objective of his search.
He opened the door slightly, quietly, then drew sharply back, and stoodtense and motionless, listening. There was a dull, faint glow of lightin there, not as though the room itself were illuminated, but as thoughthe light came from, perhaps, another room beyond. But there was nosound. A minute passed, and still he stood there, alert, his earsstrained to catch the slightest noise. And then, reassured, he pushedthe door wider open, and stepped over the threshold. That a light mighthave been left burning, either intentionally or inadvertently, presentedin itself nothing of the unusual, or----
He was drawing his hand across his eyes like a man dazed from a blow.The light had gone in the winking of an eye. It was pitch black. He wasstill involuntarily staring, through darkness now, toward the front endof the room. The light had not come from that direction, it had comethrough a portiered archway in quite the opposite direction, but for themoment his mind was chaotic, out of control. The room was adrawing-room, a large, stately sort of a drawing-room, and there hadbeen a huge pier glass, gilt-framed, between the heavily curtained frontwindows. What he had seen could not have been a fantasy, nor due todisordered imagination. His eyes, the instant he had entered the room,had gone straight to that glass because it reflected the light from theother room. The surface of the glass had been blank as his eyes hadfirst fallen upon it, and then, like a flash, enduring for but theminutest fraction of a second, the reflection of a figure, a man'sfigure, a man's figure _with a crutch_, had swept across it--and thelight in the other room had gone out.
And now Billy Kane acted quickly. The time that he had stood there,inert, mentally stunned, had been but a matter of seconds exaggeratedinto seemingly interminable, measureless hours. Swiftly, silently, hereached the archway, and, sheltering himself behind the folds of theportieres, but in a position to command the other room with hisautomatic, which he had whipped from his pocket, he stood still andlistened. There was only the quick, fierce pounding in his own eardrums,in tempo with the mad race of blood through his veins. The Man with theCrutch!
How or why the man came to be here, or what the other had to do withwhat was afoot to-night, scarcely entered his mind. It did not matter!Nothing mattered--save to get the Man with the Crutch. Everything elsepaled into insignificance. It was the _same_ man that had murderedPeters; there would not be _two_ men with crutches who prowledstealthily at night in other people's houses! But that it was Peters'murderer was significant now only because it identified the man as onewho held the secret of David Ellsworth's murder; the man who, if he,Billy Kane, could but get to grips with him, would tell what he knew tothe last word, or one or the other of them would never leave this housealive. It was the man who could end this hideous masquerade that he,Billy Kane, was forced to assume; the man who could clear his name ofthe foul blot that had cost him friends, the companionship of honestmen, and that was like at any instant to cost him his life.
There was no sound.
And then Billy Kane's voice rang suddenly, imperatively through thesilence:
"Hands up!"
His flashlight bored through the darkness, circling the room in front ofhim. The room--it was the library beyond doubt--was empty. His jawslocked. He had taken a chance. It had failed. But now his glance fellupon the door, diagonally across the library from him, that, from itsposition, obviously opened on the hall. He could have sworn that thedoors opening on the hall were all closed when he had entered the house.This one was ajar now!
He crossed the library with a bound, swung the door wide, and peered outinto the hall. He could see nothing; but now, from somewhere below, hecaught a sound as of a boot heel thudding on a bare floor--or, perhaps,the tap of a crutch!
Along at the rear of the hall his flashlight focused on the head of abasement stairway. He ran for this now; and then, with more caution,wary of offering himself as a target for a shot that would put an end toany hope of getting within reach of the other, his flashlight out, hebegan to pick his way downstairs. Halfway down, he caught another sound.From the front of the house, softly and cautiously though it was done,there came the unmistakable opening and closing of the basement door.
Billy Kane took the remaining stairs in a leap, and, his flashlightpointing the way, dashed along the hallway below. He reached the door,and pulled at it. Then, wi
th an angry, muttered exclamation, he stoodthere for an instant hesitant. The man had managed to lock the doorbehind him! Mechanically his hand went toward his pocket for hisskeleton keys, but stopped halfway as, turning suddenly, he raced backupstairs. It would take too long to try out key after key. There was abetter way. There was the front door. He had left that unlocked when hecame in. He gained this now, jerked it open, lunged through the littlevestibule, snatched at the knob of the outer door--and wrenched at itviciously like a madman in mingled rage and chagrin. It was locked! Ithad not been locked even when he had come in!
Calmer in an instant, he took his keys from his pocket and worked withfeverish haste at the lock. It would possibly take less time to run intothe drawing-room, get a window open, and jump to the ground, but he didnot dare do that. He had to come back here with the Cadger and Gannet ina little while, and he dared not risk anything that would imperil hisrole in the eyes of the underworld. Even a number of people coming andgoing from the house, if they acted naturally, entering by the door asthough they had a right to enter, would never attract the slightestnotice from either neighbors or passers-by. That was what doors werefor! But a man leaping out through one of the front windows would invitecertain attention, suspicion, and instant investigation.
Another key! Would he never get one that would fit! This wasn't the doorhe had opened before. A minute, perhaps two, perhaps even three, musthave gone by! God, how clumsy his fingers were! The man must have hadamazing agility for a cripple, and the craft and cunning of a devil tocome up here instantly on leaving the basement and lock this door! Wouldhe never get the--yes, he had it now! He swung the door open, and fromthe top step his glance swept the street in both directions. And thenthere came a sort of bitter philosophical acceptance of a situation thathe had already more than half expected. The Man with the Crutch had hadtoo much time. There was no sign of him now.
But there was still a chance! Billy Kane closed the door behind him,went quietly down the steps to the pavement--there was still theinviolability of the house to be preserved--walked along without unduehaste until far enough away to preclude the chance of any connectionbeing established between himself and the house he had just left, andthen broke into a run. There was still a chance. But it was a slim one.He knew that. The man must have gone toward either Sixth Avenue or FifthAvenue. It was more likely Sixth Avenue; there would be more peoplethere, more traffic, more opportunity to "lose himself." It was thelogical thing to do. Lower Fifth Avenue at night was almost as desertedas a tomb; the man could have been seen there blocks away.
Perhaps fifteen minutes passed. At the expiration of that period BillyKane returned to the Dayler residence, and for the second time thatnight coolly and quite casually mounted the steps, and again entered thehouse. His search had been futile. He had circuited the blocks in theneighborhood, and hunted up and down the adjacent section of SixthAvenue; and the more he had hunted the more he had realized the futilityof what he was doing, though, at that, he had even, as a last hope,returned by Fifth Avenue. And now he was back in the house again, andquite conscious that this, too, was likely now to prove as barren ofresults as his search had been. The man had got away, and with the manin all likelihood had gone, too, the manila envelope from the wall safein the library! What else had the other been in the library for?
Billy Kane shrugged his shoulders, as, using his flashlight again, hestepped from the hall into the drawing-room, and from there through thearchway into the library. There was the one possibility that he had comeupon the Man with the Crutch and interrupted the other in his work_before_ the envelope had been secured. That was the one possibilitythat remained, and that was the one possibility that had prompted him tocome back.
He stood for a moment now beside the table that occupied the center ofthe room, his flashlight creeping in a slow, inquisitive circle aroundthe walls. And now the round white ray, arrested, held on the mantelopposite the archway. On either side of the mantel, shoulder high, andprojecting out a little from the wall, were what appeared to bebric-a-brac, or, perhaps, liqueur cupboards, with leaded glass doors."Wall safe, left of mantel," the message had said. He smiled a littlegrimly in appreciation and understanding, as he moved over and haltedbefore the left-hand cupboard. It was a rather neat ambush for a wallsafe, this idea of Dayler's--whoever Dayler might be!
The leaded glass door opened readily. The ray of the flashlight floodedthe interior. Billy Kane's smile was gone. He was quite sure now that hewas too late. The cupboard was used for liqueurs, but the liqueurs inturn were evidently used for the purpose of veiling the little nickeldial of a safe that protruded from the wall at the rear of the cupboard,for the bottles were all pushed now to one side, and the dial, with asort of diabolical mockery, it seemed, winked back reflected rays fromthe glare of the flashlight. It was blatantly apparent now that this hadbeen the object of the other's visit to the house, and it was almost asequally apparent that the man had got what he had come for. And yet----
"Two right, eighteen; one left"--almost perfunctorily, muttering thecombination, Billy Kane had reached in and was twirling the knob of thedial--"eight; one right, twenty-eight."
The little steel door swung noiselessly open. Billy Kane stared into theminiature safe, bewildered. And then he laughed a little. A minutebefore and he would not have given a penny for his chances! The otherhad got only so far as to move the bottles to one side. He had beatenthe Man with the Crutch by the very narrow margin of time it would havetaken to manipulate the combination! Perhaps, though, the other hadn'tknown the combination, and was just about to set to work to force thesafe! Well, it didn't matter! The manila envelope lay there, sealed,intact.
He took the envelope from the safe, closed the door, and locked it--andwhirled suddenly around from his position in front of the mantel. Hisflashlight, jerked upward, played full upon the archway. A cool,disdainful laugh rippled low through the room--a woman's laugh. BillyKane did not move. The chill that had clutched at his heart, the fear ofdiscovery, was gone almost as quickly as it had come. He had nothing todread on that score from--the Woman in Black! And it was not the firsttime she had come upon him unexpectedly! And it was she who stood therenow; and she still stood full in the glare of his flashlight, abewitching, entrancing, mysterious little figure, whose great dark eyeswere fixed on him, half in a deliberate, speculative way, and half in asort of contemptuous mockery.
It was she who broke the silence.
"I wonder if it's true, Bundy?" she said softly.
He felt the blood surge hot into his cheeks. He knew a sudden bitterrebellion at the contempt in those steady eyes, the same bitterrebellion he had known last night in her presence, a rebellion againstthe fate that caused him, through reason of being the counterpart ofsome incarnate fiend, to stand in her eyes as that actual fiend himself,as the one who in some way had done her, or hers, irreparable wrong, asthe embodiment of all that was loathsome and hideous to her. He was theRat to her, as to everybody else. The envelope crackled in his fingers,as he clenched his hand. Would he always have to play the Rat--to her!What would that perfect oval face, beautiful even now in its fearlesscontempt, look like in softer mood?
"Is what true?" he demanded gruffly.
She came toward him across the room.
"That you are really playing the game," she said slowly. "It's not muchcredit to you, of course, since you are doing it through fear, butstill----" She shrugged her shoulders daintily, as she stood beside him."Do you know, Bundy, that lately you seem to have changed somehow. I donot know just how, and I cannot account for it. It puzzles me."
"Forget it!" growled Billy Kane, alias the Rat. "And I don't know whatgame you're talking about, either!"
"Oh, yes, you do!" she answered. "I told you that I would hold youresponsible for any crime committed by your accomplices that it laywithin your power to circumvent. That was the chance I gave you, and youseem to be taking it. I thought I would test you out to-night when youmight imagine that I was ignorant of what was going on, an
d that youmight, therefore, count on escaping the consequences as far as I wasconcerned. You were to come here with the Cadger and Gannet at nineo'clock to rob that safe. You are here alone long before that hour, andyou have robbed the safe. I presume, at least I am going to give youcredit for it, that it is because you are playing the game I referredto, and are checkmating your partners, and preventing the crime frombeing carried any further."
There was silence for a moment.
"I think you had better put out that flashlight," she said.
He must play the Rat. His soul jeered at him ironically. He snapped offthe light.
"How did you get wise to this?" he flung out.
"About to-night? Why, it was one of your own pet schemes, wasn't it,Bundy--all worked out quite a while ago? That's how I knew! Well, am Iright about the reason for you being here alone? And, if so, how did youpropose to square yourself with your cronies of the underworld?"
"By coming back here with the Cadger and Gannet, of course," he repliedcurtly, "and letting them fall for the idea that someone had beaten usall to it."
"Yes," she said calmly. "Well, I quite approve, Bundy. And I'll takethat envelope now, please! You won't have any further use for it, andI'll attend to the rest of this affair."
He handed her the envelope. He asked nothing better than that she shouldassume any further responsibility that might be connected with itscontents. As far as he was concerned there were matters of far greatermoment now. There was the Man with the Crutch! And that was a matter inwhich he had very cogent reasons for desiring to play a lone hand. Hislips tightened. It was fairly evident that she had not been in the housethe first time he had entered but he wanted to be sure.
"When did you get in here?" he snapped. "Followed me, I suppose!"
"About five minutes ago," she said quietly. "And you left the doorunlocked--though I had a key. No, I didn't follow you! Why should I? Iknew that you would be here at nine o'clock anyway, and I simply came alittle ahead of time. I really hoped, you see, that you would do thesame--and for more reasons than the one I have just mentioned."
"What do you mean?" he grunted.
"I haven't seen you since last night, you know," she said deliberately."What about the diamonds that were stolen from Vetter?"
"I've got them," he answered shortly.
"_Vetter_ hasn't!" There was a cold, unpleasant inflection in her voice.
"Well, what do you expect!" He forced a raucous note into his voice. Hewas not sure that it sounded genuine. It was not easy to play the Ratwith her! "Think it over! It's not so soft a job to get them back to himwithout leaving a trail behind that might trip me up! See?"
She appeared to consider this for a moment.
"That is true," she said at last. "Well, have you got them here?"
"Yes." He reached into his pocket and took out the chamois pocketbook.He laughed brusquely, as he held it out to her. "If you can handle thatenvelope, maybe you can handle the sparklers, too!"
"I can--and I will," she said simply, as she took the pocketbook fromhim. "That's only fair. I told you once that I would put no difficultiesin the way of your keeping yourself solid--if you could!--with yourfellow yeggs. And that applies equally to to-night. You may bring theCadger back here. You will find the house empty."
"Thanks!" he said grimly. "I'll move along then; I've got just aboutenough time left. And would you mind _locking_ the front door when yougo out? I'd like the Cadger to get all the run that's coming to him forhis money."
He stepped forward to pass her, but she laid a detaining hand on hisarm.
"Wait!" she said tersely. "I agreed to look after this envelope, buteven so you are not through yet to-night, Bundy. I know where Mr. Dayleris this evening, and I am going to bring him back here to his own housemyself. But I will give you time first to play out your little farcewith your two thugs, and send them about their business. Say, teno'clock. Mr. Dayler and myself will be here at that time--and so willyou."
"Will I?" inquired Billy Kane insolently. "Whats the lay? A trap?"
"No--an experiment," she said evenly. "I would like to find out if thereis really anything _human_, if there is a shred of decency left in you.I want you to see your crime for once from your victim's standpoint. Itmay help you, if you _are_ human, to keep on 'playing the game'; andthat will help you, if you can keep out of the clutches of theunderworld, to keep out of the electric chair at Sing Sing. You quiteunderstand, Bundy? At ten o'clock! And I should not even mind if you arefound here in this room--in the dark--when Mr. Dayler and myself enterthe house--at ten o'clock. And now I think you had better hurry, Bundy."
There was a twisted smile on Billy Kane's lips. He was the Rat, and theRat would be here, or anywhere else at ten o'clock--if she said so.There was no comment to make. The Rat had no choice.
"All right!" he said gruffly, and moved past her to the door, and out tothe hall; and a moment later, reaching the street, he swung into ahurried stride, heading back for the Rat's den.