XVIII--MIRRORED YEARS
It was quite dark here in Dayler's library, yet he had sat so long inthis chair that his eyes seemed to have accommodated themselves to thedarkness, and it seemed as though he could distinguish every object inthe room. Surely, interminably as the minutes dragged themselves out,the quarter-hour that had stood between ten o'clock and the time he hadsent the Cadger and Gannet away was up now! His flashlight winkedthrough the blackness, played on the dial of his watch, and theblackness fell again. It still lacked five minutes of the hour.
Strange how his mind worked! There was no speculation as to preciselywhy she had demanded his presence here, there was only intolerant, angryimpatience because she had done so. If it had not been for her, he couldhave been making vital use of every one of these minutes! There wasnothing else to have hindered him! It had been almost childishly easy topull the wool over Gannet's and the Cadger's eyes. He had let the Cadgerand Gannet take all the initiative--apparently. The two men had forcedthe basement door, and then, going upstairs, had opened the front doorfor him, which he, strolling down the street a few minutes later, hadentered as casually as he had already done before on two occasions thatnight. After that, the three of them, clustered around the mantel, theCadger manipulating the dial of the safe while Gannet held theflashlight, had made the discovery in _common_ that the safe had beenalready looted. He had joined in the dismay, chagrin and fury of hiscompanions; he had joined in the frantic search of desks and drawers,which he had inaugurated, and which he had permitted to endure for afull half hour. At the expiration of that time he had coded a tersecipher report, and had handed it to the Cadger and Gannet for delivery.They were to leave the house, himself last, a few minutes apart in orderto avoid arousing any attention; and the Cadger and Gannet, obedientlyand unsuspiciously, had gone. And he had remained!
It had been very simple. And there remained no trace of the search thathad been made. His eyes now, so strangely accustomed to the darkness,reassured him on that score. He had warned the men not to leave anytraces behind them!
He stirred uneasily in his chair. All this had been essential,necessary, vital, in order to preserve his role of the Rat fromsuspicion, and himself from subsequent and quick disaster at the handsof the underworld; but the minutes that were slipping away from him now,as he sat here impotent, were priceless. Red Vallon and the Pippin atany moment might run the Man with the Crutch to earth, and his handswere tied. He had no concern with the effect that the loss of theenvelope might have had on this Dayler; he was utterly indifferent toeither the contents of that envelope, or Dayler's connection with it. Itseemed to plumb the very depths of irony that she appeared to laborunder the impression she might somehow, in this way, arouse his betternature and touch some softer human chord within him! He was concernedmore with the connection between that envelope and the Man with theCrutch; and very much more with the contents of that handbag the Manwith the Crutch had carried away from Peters' flat the night before; andstill more again with the Man with the Crutch himself! The man hadtricked him here tonight, slipped through his fingers this time, but----
The front door was being opened. Billy Kane stood up, shrugging hisshoulders. He was in a truculent mood now, impatient to be gone,prompted even now to go, restrained only by the cooler counsel of commonsense. She had the whip-hand over him. A word from her, and he would bein exactly the same case as if he had failed in the play he had justmade with the Cadger and Gannet. Voices reached him; hers, quiet andcontrolled; a man's, gruff, irritated, sharply antagonistic.
And then the door from the hall opened, and the lights in the librarywent on. Billy Kane's eyes, passing swiftly over the trim little figurein black across the room, met and held those of a man who, startled now,stepped hastily back, only to discover that his companion had quietlyand swiftly closed the door behind them.
The man's lips were suddenly compressed and hard, though the color hadebbed a little from his face.
"Please sit down over there at the table, Mr. Dayler," she requestedsoftly.
"No!" exclaimed the man angrily. "I'll do nothing of the kind! What'sthe meaning of this? You inveigled me back here by hinting at some kindof story, and you run me, in my own house, into the presence of a thug!"
She shook her head.
"It is true that I asked this--gentleman"--she hesitated over the choiceof the word, while her eyes in a sort of mocking humor inventoried BillyKane's none too reputable appearance and attire--"to come here; but itis equally true that I have 'some kind of a story' that I think willinterest you. Bundy, you might try and _persuade_ Mr. Dayler to sitdown!"
A grim smile came to Billy Kane's lips. He was a pawn too, like thisDayler; a pawn to be moved about at will by this outrageouslycourageous, imperturbable, and, yes, in spite of his own irritation,adorable little personage. He turned his attention now to Dayler. Theother could have been no more than forty-five, yet his hair was notmerely prematurely gray, it was white, as a very old man's is white; hisface, clean shaven, was kindly, though drawn now in tense lines aboutthe lips and forehead.
"Sit down!" Billy Kane ordered curtly. He was fingering his automatic,playing up to the cue she had given him.
Dayler hesitated; and then abruptly stepped forward and flung himselfinto a chair at the table, his back to the mantel.
"Well?" he challenged. "You got me out of my club on the pretext ofhaving something to say about a man named Keats whom I once knew; butfrom the look of things it appears to be much more likely that, with myown house affording you protection, I am to be coolly robbed of mywatch, money, and such other valuables as you may be able to lay yourhands on!"
The slim little figure had slipped gracefully into a chair, facingDayler on the opposite side of the table. She smiled curiously.
"But, at least, I will keep my promise first, and tell you about thisKeats," she said. "Buck Keats, wasn't it, Mr. Dayler? And, as yourservants may be back in another half hour or so, we won't waste any timein getting to the story. It goes back about twenty years. At that timeyou were in the Yukon, and pretty well away from civilization, and youhad been prospecting all summer with your partner, a man quite a littleolder than you were, a man named Laynton, Joe Laynton--Square Joe, theycalled him in that country, and you ought to know why. He was a bigman--in his body and in his soul--a God's nobleman, wasn't he, Mr.Dayler?"
Dayler was leaning forward, staring at her in a strange, puzzled way.
"How do you know all this?" he demanded sharply.
She shook her head again.
"I may not be quite accurate in the little details," she went on. "Youwill overlook that. You and Laynton delayed your return to Dawson toolong that fall. You were caught in bad weather. Your provisions ran low.Laynton met with a nasty accident with an axe. In reaching up above hishead to cut some branches for fuel, the axe in some way glanced off andinflicted a very serious and a very ugly wound in his shoulder andchest. Things went from bad to worse. For days Laynton could do nothingbut lie in his blood-soaked bunk. Provisions ran still lower. The winterwas settling down hard. You had already delayed too long, and nowLaynton couldn't go. And yet you woke up one morning to find his bunkempty."
She paused. Billy Kane's eyes, as he stood beside the table, passed fromone to the other. Her small gloved hand, resting on the arm of herchair, had closed tightly; and into Dayler's face, grown haggard now,had come the look of a dumb beast in hurt.
"On a sheet of paper on the table"--her voice was lower now--"Layntonhad left a message for you, the kind a brave man would leave, explainingit all, and bidding you take the one chance you had and go without him.And piled on the table beside the sheet of paper was his money, quite afew hundred dollars. You went to the door of the shack, and you followedthe tracks in the snow. And you found him, and you found his revolverbeside him. You were already weak and half delirious yourself for lackof food, and I think this crazed you and unhinged your mind. You buriedhim in the snow, and picked up the revolver and put it in your pocket.You took the pap
er and the money and what food there was, and you ran,like the madman you then were, away from the shack. I do not know howlong you wandered, nor how you existed, nor the number of miles you putbetween yourself and the man who had given his life for you; buteventually you were found by a trapper, and the trapper's name wasKeats, Buck Keats, a man with a very unsavory record. You spent sometime with Keats. You recovered your physical health, but your mindremained affected. What had taken place was temporarily a blank to you.Keats robbed you of Laynton's money and most of your own, and he stolethat paper which later on was to mean so much to you. He preferred, ifanything were ever known, that you, and not he, should be credited withhaving stolen Laynton's money, and he further helped out that suggestionby getting you, after some months, out of the country, by having you, ina word, disappear. I imagine you were like a child in his hands. I amsure you do not even know how you got there, but the spring found you,quite normal in all respects save a broken memory, working at anythingyou could get to do in Mexico, and living there under the name ofDayler. Your proper name is Forbes, John Forbes, isn't it?"
Dayler's head was forward on the table, and buried in his hands. AndBilly Kane, meeting her glance, read through a sudden mist in the browneyes, a bitter condemnation of himself that he did not quite fullyunderstand. He was not the Rat, was he? He was only playing the Rat in afight for his life, and to win back a name of his own! How should heunderstand!
"I am taking too long," she said hurriedly. "Your awakening came then.You read in a paper of the discovery of a brutal and revolting crime inthe Yukon--the murder of Joe Laynton. The snow had melted, and a trooperof the Royal Northwest Mounted Police had found the body. If ever therewas a _prima facie_ case of murder it was there: The axe wound,presupposing a quarrel, the blood-soaked bunk, the final wound from arevolver shot, the absence of any weapon left in the possession of thedead man, the fact that he had apparently been stripped of his money,and, most damning of all, that _you_ had disappeared. It all came backto you in a flash then; and, like the last straw, adding to this arrayof evidence already against you, you realized that you were now livingunder an _assumed_ name. The letter, written and signed by Laynton, thatwould have saved you, was gone. You naturally did not know that it hadbeen stolen from you; you believed that you had lost it. It would take avery brave man, and a man that was very sure of himself indeed, to judgeyou for what you did then. Without that paper, you, an innocent man,were already as good as hanged if you gave yourself up. You continued tolive on as Dayler. Twenty years went by. You prospered. You lived in allquarters of the globe. No breath of suspicion ever associated JohnDayler with John Forbes. But you knew, because you knew the record ofthe Royal Northwest Mounted, that the Men Who Never Sleep had notforgotten the case, nor given over the search--and that they neverwould. But at last, with the long lapse of years, you felt yourselfsecure; and finally, a few years ago, you came here and settled in NewYork."
Dayler's head came up. He passed his hand across his eyes.
"How do you know all these things?" he asked again.
"Does it matter?" she answered. "They are true, aren't they?"
"Yes, they are true." His voice was scarcely audible.
"It was Keats who found you, not the Royal Northwest Mounted," shecontinued. "Keats had long ago left the Yukon, and had settled inChicago--a drunkard. He was an old man now, and down and out, livingfrom hand to mouth. I do not know how he found you; I only know thatafter all these years he decided to make restitution, though counting nodoubt on you giving him some money in return for the letter. However, bethat as it may, two days ago a man brought you a sealed envelope, whichhe said a man named Keats, who had just died in Chicago, had confessed,as he was dying, to have stolen from you, and that Keats, as a lastrequest, had asked that it be given back to you. You opened theenvelope, and found that it contained Laynton's letter. With this inyour possession at last you were absolutely secure, even in the veryimprobable event of anything ever being done by the police. Why then,after twenty years, should you voluntarily open the case and disrupt theassociations you had formed, and your life as you had molded it in allthat time? In any event, you would consider long and carefully beforetaking so vital and momentous a step. I do not know what your finaldecision was, or even if you have come to one yet; but, pending such adecision, you--" She motioned suddenly across the table. "But first,will you please open the table drawer in front of you, Mr. Dayler."
He obeyed her, a sort of slow wonder in his movements. The drawer, open,disclosed, among other supplies of stationery, a pile of long, manilaenvelopes.
She motioned again--this time to the envelopes.
"You sealed the letter up again, in one of those envelopes and put itaway. And that brings us to to-night. I would like to have you show thatletter to"--she indicated Billy Kane with a curt nod of her head--"thisman here."
For an instant Dayler did not move, then he stiffened back in his chair,his eyes narrowed.
"I begin to see!" His jaws snapped hard together. "So that's what youare after! You propose to steal that paper from me, and then blackmailme with it afterwards. It is the letter that you want!"
"And perhaps you will get it for us?" she suggested softly.
There was a grim sort of finality in Dayler's short, unpleasant laugh.
"_No!_" he said.
"Well then"--she still spoke softly--"suppose I were to tell you thatthe Men Who Never Sleep have been advised that Dayler and John Forbesare one, and that they are travelling down from the Canadian West now,and that to-morrow you will be arrested--_and that the letter is alreadygone._"
"Gone!" It came in a startled cry. Dayler half rose from his chair, butdropped back again quite coolly, a sarcastic smile suddenly on his lips."Clever!" he said ironically. "Quite a pretty little ruse to get me toindicate the whereabouts of that paper! Perhaps you will try somethingelse now!"
"Bundy"--she turned calmly to Billy Kane--"open the door of that littlecupboard on the left of the mantel."
Billy Kane stepped across the room in a sort of mechanical obedience,and opened the leaded glass door--just as Dayler, his self-assuranceshaken now, jumped from his chair, and rushed to the mantel.
"Perhaps"--her voice came calmly again from the table--"Mr. Daylerprefers to look for himself, after all, Bundy!"
The man seemed to be fighting desperately for a grip upon himself, andagain his jaws snapped hard together.
"No!" he cried. "It's another trick to get the combination of that safe,to get me to open it! Do you think I'm a fool to let that paper go now,even at the cost of my life, after you have so kindly warned me that Iam to be arrested to-morrow? You would have done better not to havetalked quite so much!"
"Open the safe, Bundy!" she instructed evenly. "Watch him, Mr. Dayler,and satisfy yourself."
The dial whirled deftly, swiftly, under Billy Kane's fingers. The steeldoor swung open.
"_Gone!_ My God, it is gone!" Dayler's cry now was broken, almostinarticulate. His head half buried in the cupboard, he was staring intothe empty safe. And then he reeled back to the table, and stood thereclawing at its edge, gray to the lips, looking from one to the other.
"I have not quite finished my story," she said quietly. "It is quitetrue that Keats is dead; but he did not die two or three days ago, hehas been dead well over a month. Nor did he die from natural causes. Hewas murdered. There is a gigantic Crime Ring in this country, whoseheadquarters are here in New York, that is as implacable and heinous asit is far-spread and powerful. Keats, far under the influence of liquorin a low dive one night and in maudlin self-admiration at the idea ofmaking restitution to you, became drunkenly confidential, and his'confidant,' as it happened, was an old broken-down yegg of about hisown age, too old for active work at his sordid trade, a pensioner, ahanger-on, as it were, of this Crime Ring, who made himself as valuableas he could in any way that he could. He reported the story. Keats waspromptly murdered--not so much for the sake of the paper, for that couldeasily have been taken from him
without resorting to murder, but thatthere should be no Keats, with his change of heart, ready to take thewitness stand in your behalf, and therefore render the paper of no valueto them at all. The Crime Ring did not, however, act with the same hasteas far as you were concerned. That is not their way! They watched you,they became thoroughly conversant, intimately acquainted with you, andyour house, and your mode of living. It was necessary that they shoulddo so before the next move could be decided upon. It was essential thatyou should know that the document was still in existence, and it wasequally essential that you should know Keats was dead and wouldtherefore never be able to help you with his testimony. The actualdelivery of the document into your hands was the really clever andfinished play to make, for it not only accomplished those endsnaturally, simply, and without possibility of alarming you, but yourtemporary possession of the letter would also psychologically enhanceits value in your eyes and make the shock of its subsequent loss all thegreater--and you all the more _generous_! But unless they could be sureof recovering it--if for instance you had a safe-deposit vault where youwould likely place it--that plan would not do at all, and some othermust be devised. They satisfied themselves on that score, however; andthe discovery of that wall safe, and, incidentally, its combination,made it as certain as anything is humanly certain that they would knowwhere to find the letter again when they wanted it. And, finally, therewas the police, the men of the Royal Northwest Mounted, to be put uponyour trail. It was only when you stood facing arrest for murder, andonly when that paper was all that stood between you and the hangman'snoose, that it was worth--well, perhaps you will say what it is worth?That is the situation to-night, Mr. Dayler."
The man was rocking on his feet, still clawing at the edge of the tablefor support. He seemed to have lost all self-control.
"Blackmail!" he said, through dry, twitching lips.
"And without any come-back!" She shrugged her shoulders. "You are ratedat a quarter of a million. What will you give for that paper?"
Dayler did not answer at once. He reached out behind him, felt for thearm of his chair, and sat down heavily. He spoke at last, brushing hishand nervously across his forehead.
"I--I'll give--ten thousand dollars," he said hoarsely.
"You do not place a very complimentary value on your life," she saidevenly.
"Twenty." His hand still nervously brushed at his forehead."Twenty-five."
Her laugh rippled through the room. It was low and coolly disdainful,but it seemed to Billy Kane, standing by the mantel, tight-lipped,watching the scene, that it held, too, a queer, underlying, tremulousnote.
Dayler wet his lips.
"Thirty-five."
"That paper is the only thing that will save you," she explainedmonotonously. "Is money any good to you--unless you live?"
It was Dayler who laughed now, but it was hysterically. His hands wouldnot remain still. He had let his head alone now, and, instead, keptlaying his hands on the table in front of him, by turns opening andclenching them, and they left damp prints on the top of the table.
"Fifty--I--I'll make it fifty thousand dollars," he whispered.
She shook her head.
"My God!" It was a helpless cry. Dayler stretched out his armsimploringly. "You don't understand! It's not easy for me to get eventhat amount. I'm not worth what you think I am. I--I've gone the limit."
Her voice was still monotonous.
"Are you _sure_?" she asked.
"Give me--give me time, and--and I might make it a little more." Therewas no doubt of the agonized sincerity in the man's voice."Perhaps--sixty."
"No!" she said. She was on her feet now, her voice breaking a little. "Iwant more than that--what it will perhaps be harder for you to give thansixty thousand dollars. I want your forgiveness for what I have justmade you suffer--for this scene here. I had reasons, reasons that Ibelieved justified me." She glanced at Billy Kane. "I do not think youwould understand, and I am afraid you would not see the justification inthem even if I tried to explain, and so"--she had drawn the manilaenvelope from the bodice of her dress, and was holding it out to him--"Ican only ask you to forgive me."
He took the envelope wonderingly, rising slowly to his feet. He was likea man dazed. Stupefaction, incredulity, a mighty relief, mingled theirexpressions in his face. He turned the envelope over and over; and then,opening it, extracted a folded piece of paper from within. And then forthe second time his laugh rang through the room, but now it was a laughlike the laugh of a man that was insane, high-pitched, sustained.
"Go on!" he cried wildly. "Go on with your hellish tricks! What's next?"
Billy Kane had involuntarily stepped closer to the table. He drew in hisbreath sharply now, in an amazed, startled way. Dayler was holding a_blank_ piece of paper in his hands!
And she, too, was leaning tensely forward. He glanced at her. She turnedher head toward him; and out of a face that was as white as death, herdark eyes burned full of fury and bitter condemnation, as they fixedupon him.
"I see it now!" Her lips were quivering with passion. She steadied hervoice with an obvious effort. "I gave you credit for too much! I caughtyou at your work just a second too late. I thought you were taking anenvelope out of the safe, whereas you were attempting to put one _in_!The one you took out was already in your pocket. You were checkmatingyour miserable accomplices unquestionably--but it was for your own ends!You were playing the traitor to them and to me at the same time. Youmeant, with your cold-blooded cunning, to use that paper against Mr.Dayler for your own private gain. You lied to me! It wasn't an emptysafe to which you meant to introduce the Cadger and Gannet; there was alittle more finesse, it clouded the issue a little more to put a dummyenvelope there. And it was so easy! Just one of those envelopes takenfrom the drawer there, and a piece of paper slipped inside!" She pausedan instant, surveying him with merciless eyes. "I hardly suppose thatyou would be fool enough not to have already put it in a safer placethan your pocket, but if you still have it there--_hand it over!_"
Billy Kane did not move. Somehow he was not paying undivided attentionto her. It was the Man with the Crutch who seemed to be standing therein her place, grinning at him--only he could not see the man's face. Andthen, with a mental jerk, he pulled himself together. He could not tellher that he had almost caught someone else in the act of stealing thepaper, but that the "some one else" had got away. It would soundridiculous! She would laugh in his face! He could not tell her that,like a thunderbolt falling upon him, there had just come the realizationthat the Man with the Crutch had stolen the paper after all. He couldnot explain the Man with the Crutch, Peters' murder, a hundred otherthings, so that she would believe him, without telling her that he wasBilly Kane. And he could not tell her that he was Billy Kane! The old,hard, ironical, mirthless smile came to his lips. He was--the Rat!
"Maybe you'd like to search me!" he snarled insolently.
She turned to Dayler. The man had sunk into his chair again and wassmiling now, but in a horribly apathetic sort of way.
"Mr. Dayler," she said quietly, "it does not matter in the least if hehas got rid of it for the moment. I promise you that paper will be inyour possession again by to-morrow morning." She swung on Billy Kane,and pointed to the door. "I think you heard what I said, Bundy"--hervoice was ominously low now, strained with menace--"I will give youuntil to-morrow morning to produce that paper. The alternative is theelectric chair."
She was still pointing to the door.
He shrugged his shoulders. What was the use! The net was closing tighterabout him, tighter than ever before, and the strands now were like somedevil's tentacles that would not let go. He swung on his heel abruptly,and without a word left the room.