Officer 666 Part 36

As the gentlemanly outlaw entered the kitchen, Phelan was standing on the tubs of the adjoining laundry, his face almost glued to the window-pane and his eyes uplifted to the fourth story rear window of a house diagonally opposite, through which he could observe a pantomime that thrilled him.

It was late, well past bedtime even for the aristocratic precincts of New York. Yet there was going on behind that brilliantly lighted window a one-man drama strangely and grotesquely wide-awake.

A first casual glance had conveyed the impression to Phelan that a tragedy was being enacted before his eyes--that murder was being done with fiendish brutality, and he--Phelan--powerless to intervene.

The seeming murderer was a man of amazing obesity, a red-faced man with a bull neck and enormous shoulders, clad in pink striped pajamas and a ta.s.selled nightcap of flaming red.

Back and forth the rotund giant swayed with something in his arms, something which he crushed in his fists and brutally shook, something which he held off at arm's length and hammered with ruthless blows.

"The murtherin' baste!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Phelan as he switched off the one light he had been reading by and darted into the next room to get a better view from the summit of the kitchen tubs.

Suddenly the mountain of flesh and the debile victim that he was ruthlessly manhandling disappeared from view. For several long thundering seconds the petrified Phelan could see nothing save a dancing crimson ta.s.sel, the ta.s.sel attached to the nightcap. Surely a mighty struggle was going on on the floor!

Phelan did not hear the light step upon the kitchen stair or the stealthy tread of the big man in evening dress as he p.u.s.s.y-footed his way to the kitchen door leading out into the back yard and found that it was easily opened.

Every sentient nerve in Michael Phelan's being was concentrated in his eyes at that moment and it is highly doubtful if he would have heard a fife and drum corps in full blare enter the kitchen. He heard nothing and saw nothing below that upward focal angle.

The man Phelan should have heard flashed the light in his cane only at infrequent intervals. He did not aim its bright revealing beam into the half open door of the adjoining laundry and he was as unconscious of the proximity of Phelan as that unfrocked or de-uniformed officer was of the invader. He returned to Miss Helen Burton in complete ignorance of the fact that the lower regions of the dwelling were otherwise than empty.

But the second he re-entered the room he saw the girl was strangely agitated and that she feared to look at him. Laying down his cane he crossed the room to her side and said in his softest tones:

"Well, you haven't got on very fast in your packing, have you, dear?"

Helen was leaning against the back of a chair, feeling she was surely going to topple over in a swoon. Summoning all her reserve of nerve power, she strove to reply naturally:

"No. I--I didn't quite understand how to pack."

He was at her side now and seized both her hands.

"Why, Helen, what's the matter? Your hands are cold as ice."

He spoke warmly and tenderly, while at the same time his eyes were everywhere about the room and he was listening with the wary alertness of a rodent.

There was more than a little of the rat in the soul inclosed in this splendid envelope.

"It's nothing--only I'm faint," she said tremulously.

"That policeman has been talking to you--hasn't he?" he said quietly.

"Yes, he has," she blurted, with a catch in her throat.

"Did he tell you who he was?"

He measured out each word and conveyed the sense. "Did he tell you who he pretended to be?"

"Yes," the girl responded, scarcely above a whisper.

He took her by the shoulders and turned her squarely toward him, looking down into her face with frowning eyes.

"Now, Helen, I want you to tell me the truth--the truth, you understand? I shall know it even if you don't. Who did he say he was?"

A feeling of repugnance took possession of the girl and she shook herself free and stood back. Her body had warmed into life again and she looked steadily into his eyes as she answered:

"Travers Gladwin!"

He needed all his great bulk of flesh and steel-fibred nerve to fend off this shock. Not the remotest fancy had crossed his mind that Travers Gladwin might be in New York. It was with a palpably forced laugh that he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:

"Travers Gladwin! Oh, he did, eh?"

The girl had read more than he imagined the sudden contraction of his features and dilation of his eyes had revealed.

"I want you to tell me the truth--you must!" she said pa.s.sionately.

"_Who are you?_"

"A man who loves you," he let go impulsively. The desire to possess her had sprung uppermost in his mind again.

"But are you the man you pretended to be--are you Travers Gladwin?"

she insisted, compelled against her convictions to grope for a forlorn hope.

"And if I were not?" he cried, with all the dramatic intensity he could bring to voice. "If instead of being the son of a millionaire, a pampered molly-coddle who never earned a dollar in his life--suppose I were a man who had to fight every inch of the way"----

He stopped. His alert ear had caught a sound in the hallway. He sped noiselessly to the folding door and forced one back, revealing Officer Murphy.

"Come in," he said threateningly, and Gladwin came in a little way.

"Where's that bag?" said the thief, with a glare and a suggestive movement with his hands.

"What bag, sorr?" said Gladwin, feeling that for the moment discretion was the better part of valor.

"The one you brought in here."

"You told me to unpack it, sorr. It's upstairs, sorr."

"Go and get it. Go now--and don't waste time."

Gladwin went, determined this time that he must arm himself with some weapon, even if it were one of the rusted old bowie knives of his grandfather that ornamented the wall of his den. He estimated accurately that he would prove a poor weak reed in the hands of that Hercules in evening dress, and while the thought of a knife sickened him, he was impelled to seek one.

As he mounted the stairs the thief strode to the table near the window and gathered up Helen's opera cloak and handed it to her.

"Now, go quickly," he urged; "my car is just across the street. There is no time to argue your absurd suspicions."

"No, I shan't go," retorted Helen, accepting the cloak and backing away.

"So you believe that man?" he asked reproachfully.

"I am afraid I do," she said firmly.

"Then I'll show you mighty quick you're wrong," he cried, as a crowning bluff. "He's probably some spy sent by your aunt. I'll get my man in here and will have him arrested after you and I have gone. Wait here--I shan't be a moment."