IX--BEHIND THE DOOR
The door closed behind the two men. Billy Kane lay motionless, savethat, as they climbed to the street and their footsteps echoed back fromthe stairs, his hand, gripping his revolver, stole silently from hispocket. There was a grim whiteness around his set lips. His earsstrained to catch the slightest sound from within the room, and strainedto catch the last echo of those retreating footfalls. He dared not makea move until they were well away--out of earshot, say, of a revolverreport. If it were fancy, if the movement of that door were only hisimagination unhealthily stimulated, and unhealthily preying upon hisnerves, he would at least put an end to it in short order now! The stepsrang 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 beforeI count three, or I'll put a bullet through. One--two----"
There was a laugh, undisguised in its mockery, but low and musical. Thedoor, bizarre and grotesque in its zigzag projections, due to itsingenious adherence to the natural joints in the wall boards, swung openwide, 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 herface very well, the single incandescent dangling from the ceiling wasmiserably 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 slenderfigure clothed and cloaked in some dark material, unrelieved by a singlevistage of color.
She spoke again.
"I don't think you are quite as badly hurt as you pretend, Bundy," shesaid, with a sort of icy composure. "You were out last night when I camehere, and if you could prowl around the streets, I think perhaps youcould manage now to get from the bed over to the door there and backagain without doing yourself any serious injury. The door has beenunlocked since Red Vallon went out, and it might be safer--locked."
Billy Kane did not answer her. He got up, crossed to the door, lockedit, and, returning, sat down on the edge of the bed. She had not movedfrom her position near the far end of the room. He became conscious thathe was still holding his revolver in his hand, and he thrust the weaponquietly 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. Shewas the author of last night's note--she had just said as much--and thewording of that note was not reassuring as to her attitude toward him,nor was the mockery in her laugh, nor was the self-contained, almostcontemptuous note of command with which she had just spoken. Who wasshe? What was she to the Rat, that she knew the secret of thatunderground 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. Hisinvitation was at least safe ground.
She came forward toward the table, a subtle, supple grace in hermovements. Subconsciously he noted that she made no sound as she crossedthe room. She was like a cat--but a very beautiful cat. He could see herface 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 tosay will not take long."
Billy Kane waited. The initiative was with her. He meant it to remainso. Her small white hand, ungloved, clenched suddenly at her side untilits 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 thesting of a curling whip lash. "Perhaps you've been----"
"You were listening there at the door?" suggested Billy Kaneimperturbably, 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. Isupposed 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 Kanemurmured 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 canscarcely speak above a whisper, otherwise you might have overheard----"
"I overheard enough!" She took a sudden step toward him. Her eyes wereflashing now; there was a flush, angry red, mounting from the whitethroat, suffusing her cheeks. She raised her clenched hands. "You willdie with insolence and bravado on your lips, I believe!" she cried outpassionately. "How I _hate_ you! But I've got you--like _that_"--sheflung out an arm toward him, and the small clenched hand opened and thenclosed again, slowly, as though in its grip it were remorselesslycrushing and exterminating some abhorrent thing. And then her hand wasraised again, and was brushed across her eyes, and a little quiver ranthrough her form, and she spoke more calmly. "I overheard enough. Ithought this Merxler affair would be worked to-night, and I came to tellyou that you are to stop it. I came to tell you to--_remember_! Ipromise, before God, that if there is murder done to-night you will bein the hands of the police within an hour. And it's not very far fromthe Tombs to the death chair in Sing Sing--Bundy Morgan."
Billy Kane's eyes were hidden by drooped lids. His eyes were studyingwith curious abstraction the pattern of the faded, greasy, threadbarestrip of carpet on the floor beside the bed. Murder! The word had comewith a shock that for a moment unnerved him. He had not associatedanything that Red Vallon or Karlin had said with murder. They had spokenso lightly, referred to it in so humdrum a way. Murder! There wassomething ghastly in that lightness now. A tightness came to his lips, ahorror was creeping into his soul. He was only on the verge of things,of hidden and abominable things, here in this shadow land, this nightland of skulking shapes, this sordid realm of the underworld. He pulledhimself together. He was the Rat--he had a part to play. He wasconscious that those brown, fearless eyes were fixed on himcontemptuously.
"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 itall 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'vebeen 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, andyou know the combination to the safe," she said levelly. "And that's allyou 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 athing like that in my head forever, do you?"
"No," she said. She smiled curiously, and one hand slipped into thebodice of her dress. "I don't think you ever did memorize thatcombination. But perhaps you will recognize it again--the original inyour 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 tunnelto the shed, aren't there--Bundy?"
He eyed her now for a long minute, biting openly at his lip, his facetwisted in a well-simulated ugly scowl.
"So, I'm to queer this game, am I?" he snarled suddenly. "And if I'mcaught--as a snitch--they'll tear me to pieces!"
She leaned a little forward from the table, a tense, lithe thing, andher voice came low with passion:
"We're wasting time--and you've none to lose. We've gone over thisground before, haven't we? It's the one cha
nce you have--to saveyourself. Some day you won't be able to save yourself. Some day thereckoning 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 havein the past. But until that day does come the only chance you have forlife is to pit your wits against the fiends like yourself that arearound you. For what you have done there is no atonement--onlypunishment. I mean you to live in suspense, but even while that suspenselasts you will pull apart and unravel your devil's work as fast as youknit it together. You have a chance that way! When the end comes andthey get you, you know how the underworld will pay--but there is thechance--that is what holds you--and with the alternative--thepolice--there is no chance."
She was breathing hard. She leaned back against the table, her handsgripped tightly at its edge.
For a moment there was silence in the room. Billy Kane's mind wasgroping blindly now, as in some utter darkness. In some way, for therewas no question of the genuineness of her self-assurance, her verypresence here in seemingly placing herself in the Rat's power provedthat she held the Rat, and the Rat's life and liberty in the hollow ofher hand, at her beck and call. How? What was the secret of the powershe possessed over him? He lighted a match nonchalantly, and, as heapplied the flame to the half-burned cigarette he lifted his eyes to herthrough the blue haze of smoke that he blew negligently in herdirection.
"Sometimes," he said in a low, menacing tone, "people, even women, whogrow 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 totake those consequences any time you choose. But you do not like them,do you--Bundy?" She moved suddenly across the room, back to the secretdoor 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 goesthrough--_remember!_"