Doors of the Night Part 9

"Go to it, Bundy! Spill it!" He circled his lips with his tongue. "If you say so, that goes! What's the lay?"

"Five hundred thousand dollars-a half million-cold"-Billy Kane had lowered his voice.

He did not look at either of the men, but he was watching them both intently-his eyes were on the mirror, the mirror of the bureau at the far end of the room, that bore testimony to the cunning of his unwitting host. The mirror held the door and the upper part of the room in focus; and, lying there on the bed, he had the profiles of the two men in distinct outline. Karlin was fingering his Vand.y.k.e in a sort of hesitant incredulity. Vallon's face had suddenly blotched red with rapacious excitement.

"Gawd!" Red Vallon spluttered out. "D'ye mean that, Bundy?"

"Sure, I mean it!" Billy Kane answered a little curtly. "What do you think I told you to come here for? Sure, I mean it! It's all there-right on the table, hitting you between the eyes."

Red Vallon jerked himself around; and, as though he had taken the words literally, stared with a frown of bewilderment at the only thing in view upon the table-the newspaper that Whitie Jack had dropped there when he had answered the summons at the door.

Billy Kane laughed quietly.

"Get it, Red?" he inquired. "Five hundred thousand dollars-better than diamonds-blood-red rubies-red with blood, the paper says. Can't you read?"

Karlin had forgotten his beard. His hands clenched on his knees.

"You mean the Ellsworth murder-the robbery?" He was whispering hoa.r.s.ely.

"You win!" said Billy Kane.

"My G.o.d!" whispered Karlin. "Do you know where that stuff is?"

Billy Kane's eyes had returned to the mirror, and now suddenly they shifted a little to the wall at the side of the bureau. Something cold and forbidding seemed to grip at him, numbing for an instant mental and physical action-and then left him in a state of grim, unnatural calmness. Was it imagination? He could have sworn that the wall _moved_ slightly. He swung over on his left side, as though to face Karlin and Red Vallon more directly before he answered them-but his hand, slipping into his coat pocket, closed over his revolver. It _might_ be imagination, but the possibility remained that someone was on the other side of that secret door, and, having pushed the door almost imperceptibly open, was listening there. If that were so, he must get rid of Red Vallon and Karlin before any denouement came if possible, get rid of them without an instant's loss of time; but equally vital was the necessity of setting in motion, and equally without loss of time, the machinery of the underworld upon which now he was practically staking his all.

"Pull your chair over here, closer to the bed, Red-and you, too, Karlin," he said coolly. "We aren't likely to be heard from the street, but that's no reason for shouting. No; I don't know where they are, I haven't got the rubies in my pocket-but I know how to get them there.

What?"

Red Vallon's face was working in a sort of antic.i.p.atory and avaricious ugliness; Karlin's expression was scarcely less rapacious.

"Go on, Bundy!" Karlin said under his breath. "What do you know about it?"

"What you could have read for yourself in the paper," Billy Kane answered tersely. "And it looks like a cinch. It's just a case of beating the police to it, and it sizes up as though we had the jump on them." He was speaking almost mechanically. His mind was on that section of the wall that _might_ have moved; and through half-closed eyes, but as though deep in thought and as though concentrated on what he was saying, he was watching it narrowly. It had not moved a second time, of that he was sure; perhaps it had not moved at all, it might be only nerves on his part, nerves high strung, taut to the breaking point, but his fingers were still rigid around the stock of his revolver, and, in the pocket, the weapon, resting on his hip as he lay sideways, held a bead on the panels of the secret door.

"I don't quite get you," muttered Karlin, with a frown.

Red Vallon swore roughly, intolerant in his eagerness.

"Aw, give him a chance!" he said impatiently. "If he says so, that's good enough for me. Bundy never pulled a steer in his life, an' if he says this is a cinch-that goes! Give him a chance!"

"It's like this," said Billy Kane. "It's a thousand to one shot that this secretary chap who croaked the old millionaire and got away with the goods is still in New Work. Why? Well, I'll tell you why. After pulling the murder, according to the papers, he beat it out of the house with the loot, and evidently hid the stuff somewhere. Then he came back to the house again, and the footman, Jackson, grabbed him. But there was a good half hour between the time the police found out about the murder and before this guy Kane came back to the house. Get me? And during that time the police got busy and shot flycops around all the stations and ferries. It's a cinch, the way I look at it, that after he crawled into that lane and they lost him there, that he's been crawling ever since somewhere around New York. He never left the city-he never had a chance."

Red Vallon whistled low and complacently under his breath; Karlin, fingering his Vand.y.k.e again, nodded sharply now in approval.

"Besides," added Billy Kane, "he had sort of queered his own game. He'd hidden the loot somewhere, and he couldn't make a direct get-away then.

He had to get hold of the goods again before he went. All right! What I want to know is who's got the better chance of grabbing him-us or the police? He isn't one of us. He's working on his own. Well, all right! If we nip him, and he's satisfied with a little rake-off, and is willing to cough up the rest, that'll be treating him fair. If he isn't strong on coughing up, we'll find another way of making him come across that he won't like so well, and we'll get the half million, and he'll get--"

Billy Kane completed his sentence with a significant shrug of his shoulder.

An oath, the more callous and brutal for the soft purring way in which it fell from his lips, came from Red Vallon.

"What do you want done, Bundy?" Karlin was terse and to the point. "It looks good to me, if you can pull it off."

"It's the biggest haul we'll ever get our mitts on if we live a hundred years!" Billy Kane's eyes shifted for an instant from the wall to fix themselves impressively on the two men. "I've been lying here all day thinking it out. What do I want done? Well, I'll tell you! I want every string and every wire we've got pulled. Savvy? We've got to beat the police to it. We've got to get Kane-_first_. I want all the boys that the bulls think they've got sewed up as stool pigeons to stool-pigeon the police and get all the inside dope. And then that fellow Jackson, the footman, looks like a bet we can't throw down. He's dead-but he looks like a good bet. He lived all through the night, but the papers don't say anything about the story he told. Perhaps he knew something that will help, perhaps he didn't; but he doesn't go into the discard yet. Find out who he was and all about him, and get next to his family if he's got one. If he told any story to the police, any of the family that were cl.u.s.tering around the bedside will be wise to it. Get the idea?"

"Birdie Rose is the boy for that!" Red Vallon's bullet head was thrust forward in vicious earnestness, his red-rimmed black eyes were glittering with a feverish light.

"Let Birdie go to it, then!" said Billy Kane.

"Birdie was slated for the Merxler affair to-night." Karlin spoke a little dubiously.

"Shift him!" snapped Billy Kane curtly. "Red's right! Birdie's the boy for this job."

"All right!" agreed Karlin, and shrugged his shoulders. He turned to Red Vallon. "Put Bull McCann in Birdie's place, then. See that he gets to Jerry's back room before ten."

"I'll fix it!" grunted Red Vallon. "What's next, Bundy? This goes-all the boys'll fall for it."

"There's only one thing more-until something begins to crack open."

Billy Kane's lips had tightened, his eyelids had drooped still lower. It was only a bare fraction of an inch at most-if at all-but it seemed that door had moved again. His words were coming barely above a whisper now.

"There's only one way he can get anything out of those rubies, and that's through a 'fence.' They're no good to him unless he can cash in.

He'll try to get rid of some of them as soon as he can. How soon depends on how well he knows his way about. But he's probably slick enough to have got a line on a blind uncle or two. All right! The police, of course, have pa.s.sed the word down the line, but here's where we put one over on the police. There's some of the joints they don't know-we know them all. Kane might get away from the police there-but he can't get away from _us_ on that deal. I want every 'fence' in New York tipped off that he's to stall on the job the minute he gets his lamps on a ruby that's being shoved his way, and that instead of opening up to the police he's to wise us up on the hop. That's all for a starter-and now go to it!"

Red Vallon drew in his breath noisily, as though he were sucking at some luscious and juicy fruit.

"Some head, Bundy!" he applauded with undisguised admiration, as he pushed away his chair and stood up. "Sure, we'll go to it! Karlin's running the Merxler game to-night; but I'll start this other thing b.u.mping along on the high gear. What about the reports? Who'll the boys make 'em to? You? Here?"

It was a moment before Billy Kane answered. It was the one thing he must have, the one thing upon which he was staking everything-an intimate knowledge of the result of every move made in this game that he had initiated, and, beyond that again, it was vital that he, and no one else should control each successive move. But Whitie Jack was gone for the night. In one way he deplored that fact, in another way he was relieved.

If it was only imagination, if there was no one crouching there now on the other side of that secret door, Whitie Jack's presence would not matter, but otherwise-his mind leaped to that other point-if Whitie Jack was not here to perform those very necessary introductions, and Red Vallon's messengers came, messengers that he would be supposed to know but would not be able to recognize, it would spell almost certain disaster, and--

"There isn't anything likely to break to-night, Red," he said deliberately. "If there does you look after it; or if it's anything very important you come here yourself. I want to get a night's sleep if I can, I'm feeling pretty rocky. But I ought to be on my feet to-morrow, and in the morning you can swing the whole business over to me, and I'll run it."

"Attaboy!" said Red Vallon heartily. "See you in the morning, then."

Karlin too had risen from his chair.

"Good-night, Bundy!" he said-and grinned. "I pay you the compliment of being the trickiest crook unhung!"

IX-BEHIND THE DOOR

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.