Doors of the Night Part 29

"You're jumping at conclusions," said Billy Kane calmly, "because Barloff here has told you the Wop had broken in and robbed him. Well, ask Barloff, then!" He turned on Barloff. "I'm not the Wop, am I, Barloff?"

The old man shook his head.

"No, you're not." Barloff swallowed hard; he was evidently floundering in a perplexed mental maze. "But my money's gone, and the Wop was here.

I saw him. I saw him. Maybe you're a pal of his."

"I am for to-night," said Billy Kane quietly. "When did you see the Wop?

What did you tell this officer here?"

"Oh, you are, are you!" Barloff seemed suddenly relieved. He shook his free fist at Billy Kane. "So you're a pal of the Wop's, are you! Well, I don't know where you came from, but I saw the Wop just as plainly as I see you now." He edged around and addressed the officer eagerly. "I was sitting at the desk there, officer, just as I told you, and that door was open, and there was a light in that front room. The Wop must have got the front door open without my hearing him. I saw him stealing across that room out there. I rushed to the door, and shut it, and called for help. He began to smash it in and I grabbed up the telephone and called the police, and then ran for the window, and got out by the lane to the street where I found you. He would have killed me. He swore he would when he went to prison." His voice changed suddenly into a whining wail. "He's got my money! Look at the floor-look at the safe!

He's got my money, and run with it when he heard us coming." He began to claw frantically at the officer's sleeve. "The Wop's got it! Look, officer, this pal of his has been hurt! Look at the side of his head-that's why he didn't get away too-that's why we found him here on the floor!"

"You talk as though you'd been frisked of a million!" Billy Kane was tauntingly sarcastic now. "How much did you have, anyway?"

"How much! How much!" howled Barloff. "Enough to ruin me! All this month's rentals that I had just collected. Three hundred and eighty-seven dollars!"

"Three hundred and eighty-seven dollars!" Billy Kane mimicked the other admirably. "You don't mean to say you'd keep three hundred and eighty-seven dollars in that crazy old safe that's falling to pieces, do you?"

"Where else would I keep it?" Barloff was shaking his fist again. "Yes, I kept it there! And that's where it was to-night-and it's gone now-gone!"

"Is that all you had?" Billy Kane's sneer was irritatingly contemptuous.

"All!" shrieked Barloff. "All-yes, it is all! But it is enough! I am a poor man, and the money was not mine, and I cannot replace it, and--"

He choked suddenly, and shrank back, dragging the officer with him a step. Billy Kane had moved abruptly to the morris chair, and had toppled it over on the floor.

"You pitiful liar! You haven't seen the Wop in five years!" rasped Billy Kane, and the iron shaft in his hand crashed through the false bottom of the chair. A package of banknotes tumbled out on the floor, another, and yet another. A second blow dislodged the cash box, and a further rain of banknotes. "You thought the Wop was dead, and that you could make him stand for this, did you!" rasped Billy Kane again. "You yellow cur-so that you could steal those few miserable rentals yourself!"

"My G.o.d!" gasped the officer. Barloff was a grovelling thing at his side. He jerked the other toward him, and stared into the white, working features.

Billy Kane backed to the window, and there was an abrupt change in his voice as he addressed the officer.

"I'm going now," he said softly. "I am not quite sure of the technical charge against your prisoner, but I imagine it is just plain theft-of three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. And it might be interesting, too, to know where so poor a man got that small fortune there on the floor! Perhaps Barloff will tell you! As for the Wop, he has never been near this place, and you will find him at the Reverend Mr. Claflin's house, where he has been all evening. I think that's all, officer, except"-Billy Kane had straddled the window sill-"except that I apologize to you for anything in the shape of lese majesty of which I may have been guilty, but as I have certain personal reasons that justify me in not desiring to appear publicly in the matter, I am sure you will admit I had no other--"

Billy Kane did not finish his sentence. He dropped hurriedly to the ground, and ran, or, rather, half ran, half stumbled his way to the fence and lane. Someone was at the front door again-obviously the police detail from the station.

He made his way along the lane, and from that lane into another. He was still weak and progress was slow, and for half an hour he kept under cover. When he finally emerged into the open he was blocks away from Barloff's house, and very much closer to a certain temporary sanctuary in the heart of the underworld!

Ten minutes later, behind locked doors, he was sitting at the dilapidated table under the single incandescent light, in the Rat's den.

Before him lay a small red flannel sack, that might have pa.s.sed for an ordinary chest protector, and which he had cut open with his knife. He raised his hand, and pa.s.sed it across his eyes. The Wop and Barloff were extraneous considerations now. There was something far more vital to think about, but his brain was refusing its functions again. He was very tired-very tired and weak. There was the Man with the Crutch, the man who, he knew now, had killed Peters and David Ellsworth, the man who had looted David Ellsworth's vault of its money and its priceless rubies, the man for whose guilt he, Billy Kane, was held accountable, the man with whom he had fought to-night. In a numbed way, because his mind was in a sort of torpor, Billy Kane was dimly conscious that there was no more any mere coincidence in this repeated appearance of the Man with the Crutch. He knew now that Jackson, the footman, had only been an underling. It was curious, singular, sinister. Who was the man? What did it mean? The man wasn't even lame, was he? He remembered the extraordinary agility the other had showed two nights ago-and why was the shaft of the crutch detachable?-and the man hadn't fought like a crippled man to-night-and there had been no sign of the upper portion of the crutch, either!

Billy Kane's head sank forward a little on his shoulders. He raised himself with a jerk, and stared at the red flannel sack in front of him.

A score of magnificent rubies scintillated in fiery flashes under the light.

"They're not all here," mumbled Billy Kane, with a twisted smile.

"They're not all here-not yet."

XXIII-THE RENDEZVOUS

It was night again in the underworld.

Billy Kane slipped suddenly into the dark shadows of a doorway. Fifty yards ahead of him, up the poorly lighted, narrow and miserable street, three men had paused on the sidewalk, and were engaged in what was apparently an animated discussion. Billy Kane's eyes narrowed in a puzzled, perturbed, and yet grim way, as he watched them. He had followed them for an hour now-from a saloon, where he had found them, to a disreputable pool room, and from there again to a saloon, and now here.

He did not understand. It was one of those strange portals, so extraneous to the aim of clearing his name of the murder of David Ellsworth, and yet, too, so essentially a corollary of the Rat's role that he played here in the underworld, at which he was knocking again.

His lips curled in a queer smile. How long would it be before the end?

And what would that end be? In his possession now, save for a portion of the rubies, perhaps half of them, was everything that the murderers of David Ellsworth had stolen from the old philanthropist's vault on that night which seemed now to belong to some past age and incarnation. He knew now that the Man with the Crutch was the actual murderer-but there he faced a blank wall. He had even fought with the man in the blackness of old Barloff's room last night, not knowing until too late who his a.s.sailant was, and the man had got away.

His hand at his side clenched. It could not endure very long-this impossible situation in which he found himself with that strange, unknown woman, who, believing him to be the Rat, held the threat of Sing Sing over his head. And there was the Rat himself whose name and personality and home, such as it was, he had usurped during the latter's absence, an absence that might terminate at any moment. And there were the police who dragged the city and the country from end to end for Billy Kane. From anyone of these three sources, swift as a lightning stroke, without an instant's warning, the end might come with that goal of life still unreached, and, greater than life, his honor, still unreclaimed. And it seemed to-night somehow that his chances were bitterly small, that somehow the odds seemed to be growing and acc.u.mulating against him. He was on another errand now, because he could not help himself. He was allowing precious moments that should have been devoted to the one chance he had, that of searching ceaselessly, pitilessly, remorselessly, for the Man with the Crutch, to be directed into other channels-because he could not help himself.

He stepped out from the shelter of the doorway, and started forward again along the street. The three men had turned from the sidewalk, and had disappeared inside a dingy, black and tumble-down tenement. Billy Kane's lips tightened a little. It was a hard neighborhood, nestling just off the Bowery-as hard almost as the three characters themselves who had just vanished from sight. There were a few pedestrians here on the side street, a few figures that skulked along in the semi-darkness, rather than walked, but not many; and for the most part, though it was still early, not more than nine o'clock, the buildings that flanked the street were dark and unlighted.

Billy Kane jerked his slouch hat farther down over his eyes as he walked along. He did not understand. Two hours ago he had been sitting in the Rat's den with Whitie Jack-who had ventured out of hiding again, safe now since the interest of the police in Peters', the butler's, murder had become definitely centered in the Man with the Crutch-and someone had knocked at the door. Whitie Jack had answered the knock, and had brought back the message that Bundy Morgan was wanted at the telephone in a little shop across the street. He, Billy Kane, in his role of the Rat, alias the said Bundy Morgan, had perforce answered, and, as he had picked up the receiver, he had instantly recognized the voice of the woman whom he knew by no other name than the one he himself had given her-the Woman in Black. He was subconsciously rehearsing the rather one-sided conversation now, as he moved along.

"Is that you, Bundy?" she had asked. "And do you know who is speaking?"

"Yes," he had answered.

"Listen, then!" Her voice had been quiet, deliberate, and yet pregnant with a curiously sharp, imperative command. "Find Clarkie Munn and Gypsy Joe at once, and shadow them to-night. Do not let them out of your sight. And see that you do not fail! Do you understand?"

"Yes," he had replied mechanically; "but--"

That was all. She had hung up the receiver at the other end of the line.

He had heard of Clarkie Munn and Gypsy Joe in the days when he had frequented the Bad Lands on old David Ellsworth's philanthropic missions, for the very simple reason that they were notorious and outstanding criminal characters even in the heart and center of the worst crime and vice in the city. They were both lags, both men with prison records, and marked by the police. Also they were versatile. They had in turn been apaches, gangsters, box-workers, poke-getters and second-story sneaks; and they were credited with measuring human life purely as a commercial commodity-worth merely what they could get for it.

He had heard of Clarkie Munn and Gypsy Joe-who hadn't?-but as to their lair, or where they were to be found, he had not had the slightest inkling. Whitie Jack, however, had solved that problem for him. He had sent Whitie Jack out to run them down, and Whitie had returned within an hour with the report that they were in a certain far from reputable saloon, and that they had been joined by the Cherub. He, Billy Kane, had never heard of the Cherub, but an adroit leading question or two had set Whitie Jack's glib tongue in motion. The Cherub had proved a topic that had aroused an unbounded enthusiasm in Whitie Jack.

"Dey ain't got nothin' on de Cherub-none of 'em has," Whitie Jack had a.s.serted, switching his cigarette b.u.t.t from one corner of his mouth to the other in order to permit of an admiring grin. "He's de angel kid-he is! Youse'd think he spent his life handin' around hymn books an'

leadin' de singin' down at de mission joints-only he don't! If he got enough for it he'd pull a gun an' blow yer bean off, an' youse wouldn't believe it was him even while he was doin' it, he'd look dat innocent.

Believe me, Bundy! He's got 'em all skinned, an' he ain't got no limit except de sky. Mabbe some day de police'll get wise, but dey ain't fallen to de sweet little face of him wid his baby eyes yet. But, aw, say, wot's de use! Youse know him as well as I do. Youse'd think dey'd just lifted him out of a d.i.n.ky little cradle an' soused him all over wid Florida water-dat's de Cherub. But de guy dat knows him ducks his nut-dat's all."

Billy Kane shook his head in a sort of savage perplexity. He had dismissed Whitie Jack then, picked up Clarkie Munn, Gypsy Joe and the Cherub, and had followed them here. He had come abreast of the tenement in which they had disappeared now, and he looked quickly around him.

There was no one on the street close enough to pay any particular attention to his movements; and there was no doorbell to ring, for in that locality the formality of entering a tenement, where humans hived instead of lived, and where at all hours the occupants came and went as a matter of course, consisted in pushing the door open without further ceremony. His hand slipped into the side pocket of his coat, and his fingers closed in a rea.s.suring touch upon his automatic. For what particular reason he was to watch Gypsy Joe and Clarkie Munn he was as much as ever in the dark; but one thing was clear-there was only one way to keep in touch with his quarry.

He stepped from the sidewalk, and, with well-simulated unconcern, pushed the tenement door open, entered, closed the door softly behind him, and stood still, listening intently. The place was gloomy and dark, and heavy with a musty, unsavory odor of garlic and rank, stale tobacco; but ahead of him, along what seemed like a narrow pa.s.sage flanking the stairs, a faint glow of light struggled out into the blackness, as though from a partially opened door, and from this direction a murmur of men's voices reached him.

He moved stealthily forward for a few steps; and then halted abruptly, and pressed back against the wall. Yes, here were the men he sought. In so far as locating them in the tenement was concerned, he was in luck.

The hallway had widened out beyond the staircase, and from where he now stood, through a half-opened door, a door that was in poverty-stricken and disreputable repair, whose panels, smashed and broken probably in some fracas of former days, were patched with strips of cardboard that in turn, hanging by a tack or two, gaped blatantly, he could make out Clarkie Munn's dark, scowling, unshaven features, as the man sat sprawled out on a chair in the centre of the room; also, Clarkie Munn was swearing viciously:

"Well, where's Shaky Liz-eh? Where's Shaky Liz? Who's right now about comin' back here? Her tongue's been hangin' out fer a drink now fer two weeks, an' she's bust loose. Dat's wot she's done-yes, an' probably queered de whole lay too! I told youse so! I told youse youse'd have to show me about Shaky Liz before I'd go de limit. See! I ain't fer any juice chair up de river-not yet! Savvy?"

"Aw, shut up!" The words were clipped off; the voice was almost a boyish treble. "Can yer croakin', Clarkie, youse give me a pain! Youse came back here because I said so-dat's why! I had to steer clear of Shaky Liz while she put de stunt across, an' we got to know now if de girl fell fer it all right."

"Yes," growled Clarkie Munn, "an' Shaky Liz has gone an' got drunk, an'