Phantom Wires Part 21

"h.e.l.lo, there, Frank!--I've been looking out for you!" said the intruder, with a taunt of mockery in his easy laugh.

_It was Mac.n.u.tt_. She gaped at him stupidly, with an inarticulate throaty gasp, half of protest, half of bewilderment.

"You see, I know you, Frank, and Keenan doesn't!" And again she felt the sting of his scoffing laughter.

She looked at the subdolous, pale-green eyes, with their predatory restlessness, at the square-blocked, flaccid jaw, and the beefy, animal-like ma.s.siveness of the strong neck, at the huge form odorous of gin and cigar smoke, and the great, hairy hands marked with their purplish veinings. It seemed like a ghost out of some long-past and only half-remembered life. It came back to her with all the hideousness of a momentarily forgotten nightmare, made newly hideous by the sanities of ordered design and open daylight in which it intruded.

And her heart sank and hope burned out of her.

"You! How dare _you_ come here?" she demanded, with a show of hot defiance.

He looked at her collectedly and studiously, with an approving little side-shake of the bull-dog, pugnacious-looking head.

"You're the same fine looker!" was all he said, with an appreciative clucking of the throat. Oh, how she hated him, and everything for which he stood!

By this time they had threaded their way out of the tangled traffic of West street, and were rumbling cityward through the narrower streets of Greenwich village.

Frank's first intelligible feeling was one of grat.i.tude at the thought that Durkin had escaped the trap into which she herself had fallen.

That did not leave the situation quite so hopeless. Her second feeling was one of fear that he might be following her, then one that he might not, that he would not be near her in the coming moment of need--for she knew that now of all times Mac.n.u.tt held her in the hollow of his hand--that now, as never before, he would frustrate and crush and obliterate her. There were old transgressions to be paid for; there were old scores to be wiped out. Keenan and his Penfield wealth were nothing to her now--she was no longer plotting for the future, but shrinking away from her dark and toppling present, that seemed about to buckle like a falling wall and crush her as it fell. Month after month, in Europe, she had known visions of some such meeting as this, through nightmare and troubled sleep. And now it was upon her.

Mac.n.u.tt seemed to follow her line of flashing thought, for he emitted a short bark of a laugh and said: "It's pretty small, this world, isn't it? I guessed that we'd be meetin' again before I'd swung round the circle!"

"Where are we going?" she demanded, trying to lash her disordered and straggling thoughts into coherence.

"We're goin' to the neatest and completest poolroom in all Manhattan!"

"Poolroom?" she cried.

"Yes, my dear; I mean that we're drivin' to Penfield's brand-new downtown house, where, as somewhat of a hiker in the past, you'll see things done in a mighty whole-souled and princely fashion!"

"But why should I go there? And why with you?"

"Oh, I'm on Penfield's list, just at present, kind o' helpin' to soothe some of the city police out o' their reform tantrums. And you've got about a quarter of a million of Penfield's securities on you--so I thought I'd kind o' keep an eye on you--this time!"

Her first impulse was to throw herself headlong from the cab door. But this, she warned herself, would be both useless and dangerous. Through the curtained window she could see that they were now in the more populous districts of the city, and that the speed at which they were careering down the empty car-tracks was causing early morning foot-pa.s.sengers to stop and turn and gaze after them in wonder. It was now, or never, she told herself, with a sudden deeper breath of determination.

With a quick motion of her hand she flung open the door, and leaning out, called shrilly for the driver to stop. He went on unheeding, as though he had not heard her cry.

She felt Mac.n.u.tt's fierce pull at her leaning shoulder, but she struggled away from him, and repeated her cry. A street boy or two ran after the carriage, adding to the din. She was tearing and fighting in Mac.n.u.tt's futile grasp by this time, calling desperately as she fought him back. As the cab swerved about an obstructing delivery-wagon a patrolman sprang at the horses' heads, was jerked from his feet, and was carried along with the careering horse. But in the end he brought them to a stop. Before he could reach the cab door a crowd had collected.

A hansom dashed up as the now infuriated officer brushed and elbowed the crowd aside. Above the surging heads, in that hansom, Frank could see the familiar figure, as it leaped to the ground and dove through the closing gap of humanity, after the officer.

It was Durkin; and now, in a sudden pa.s.sion of blind fear for him she sprang from the cab-step and tried to beat him back with her naked hands, foolishly, uselessly, for she knew that if once together Mac.n.u.tt and he would fall on one another and fight it out to the end.

The patrolman caught her back, roughly, and held her.

"What's all this, anyway?" It surprised him a little, as he held her, to find that the woman was not inebriate.

"I want this woman!" cried Durkin, and at the sound of his voice Mac.n.u.tt leaned forward from the shadows of the half-closed carriage, and the eyes of the two men met, in one pregnant and contending stare.

A flash of inspiration came to the trembling woman.

"I will give everything up to him, officer, if he'll only not make a scene!" She was fumbling at a package in the bosom of her dress.

"He can have his stuff, every bit of it--if he'll let it go at that!"

Durkin caught his cue as he saw the color of one corner of the sealed yellow manila envelope.

"Stand back there!" howled the officer to the crowding circle. "And you, shut up!" he added to Mac.n.u.tt, now horrible to look upon with suppressed rage.

"This woman lifted a package of mine, officer," said Durkin quickly.

"If it's intact, why, let her go!"

His fingers closed, talon-like, on the manila envelope. He flashed the unbroken red seal at the officer, with a little laugh of triumph. That laugh seemed to madden Mac.n.u.tt, as he made a second ineffectual effort to break into that tense and rapid cross-fire of talk.

"And you don't want to lay a charge?" the policeman demanded, as he angrily elbowed back the ever intruding circle.

"Let 'em go!" said Durkin, backing toward his cab.

"But what's the papers, and what t'ell does _she_ want with 'em?"

interrogated the officer.

"Correspondence!" said Durkin easily, almost lightheartedly. "Kind of personal stuff. They're--_he's_ drunk, anyway!" For stumbling angrily out of the cab, Mac.n.u.tt was crying that it was all a pack of lies, that they were a quarter of a million in money and that the officer should arrest Durkin on the spot, or he'd have him "broke."

"And then you'll chew me up an' spit me out, won't you, you blue-gilled Irish bull-dog?" jeered the irate officer, already out of temper with the unruly crowd jostling about him.

"I say arrest that man!" screamed the claret-faced Mac.n.u.tt.

"And I say I'll run _you_ in, and run you in mighty quick, if you don't get rid o' them jim-jams pretty soon!"

"By G.o.d, I'll take it out of _you_ for this, when my turn comes!" raved Mac.n.u.tt, turning, purplish gray of face, on the deprecating Durkin.

"I'll take it out of you, by G.o.d!"

"There--there! He's simply drunk, officer; and the woman has squared herself. I don't want to press any charge. But you'd better take his name!"

"Drunk, am I? You'll be drunk when I finish with you. You won't have a name, you'll have a number, when I'm through with you!" repeated the infuriated Mac.n.u.tt.

"Look here, the two o' you!" suddenly exclaimed the outraged arm of the law, "you climb into that hack and clear out o' here, as quick as you can, or I'll run you both in!"

Mac.n.u.tt still expostulated, still begged for a private audience in the street-corner saloon, still threatened and pleaded and protested.

The exasperated officer turned to the cab-driver, as he slung the street loafers from him to right and left.

"Here, you get these fares o' yours out o' this--get them away mighty quick, or I'll have you soaked for breakin' the speed ord'nance!"

Then he turned quickly, for the frightened woman had emitted a sharp scream, as her bull-necked companion, with the vigor of a new and desperate resolution, bodily caught her up and thrust her into the gloom of the half-curtained carriage.

"Oh, Jim, Jim, don't let him take me!" she cried mysteriously to the man she had just robbed. But the man she had just robbed looked at her with what seemed indifferent eyes, and said nothing.

"Don't you know where he's taking me? Can't you see? It's to Penfield's!" she cried, through her weakening struggles.