The Big-Town Round-Up Part 18

"Can I get in that way?"

"Surest thing you know--if the trapdoor ain't latched. Say, stick around outside my room half a sec, will you?"

The cattleman waited in the darkness of the pa.s.sage. If his enemies were trying to ambush him in the house next door the girl's plan might save him. He would have a chance at least to get them unexpectedly in the rear.

It could have been scarcely more than two minutes later that the young woman joined him.

Her small hand slipped into his to guide him. They padded softly along the corridor till they came to a flight of stairs running up. The girl led the way, taking the treads without noise in her stockinged feet.

Clay followed with the utmost caution.

Again her hand found his in the darkness of the landing. She took him toward the rear to a ladder which ended at a dormer half-door leading to the roof. Clay fumbled with his fingers, found a hook, unfastened it, and pushed open the trap. He looked up into a starlit night and a moment later stepped out upon the roof. Presently the slim figure of the girl stood beside him.

They moved across to a low wall, climbed it and came to the dormer door of the next house. Clay knelt and lifted it an inch or two very slowly. He lowered it again and rose.

"I'm a heap obliged to you, Miss," he said in a low voice. "You're a game little gentleman."

She nodded. "My name is Annie Millikan."

"Mine is Clay Lindsay. I want to come and thank you proper some day."

"I take tickets at Heath's Palace of Wonders two blocks down," she whispered.

"You'll sure sell me a ticket one of these days," Clay promised.

"Look out for yourself. Don't let 'em get you. Give 'em a chance, and that gang would croak you sure."

"I'll be around to buy that ticket. Good-night, Miss Annie. Don't you worry about me."

"You will be careful, won't you?"

"I never threw down on myself yet."

The girl's flippancy broke out again. "Say, lemme know when the weddin' is and I'll send you a salad bowl," she flashed at him saucily as he turned to go.

Clay was already busy with the door.

CHAPTER XIV

STARRING AS A SECOND-STORY MAN

Darkness engulfed Clay as he closed the trapdoor overhead. His exploring feet found each tread of the ladder with the utmost caution.

Near the foot of it he stopped to listen for any sound that might serve to guide him. None came. The pa.s.sage was as noiseless as it was dark.

Again he had that sense of cold finger-tips making a keyboard of his spine. An impulse rose in him to clamber up the ladder to the safety of the open-skyed roof. He was a son of the wide outdoors. It went against his gorge to be blotted out of life in this trap like some foul rodent.

But he trod down the panic and set his will to carry on. He crept forward along the pa.s.sage. Every step or two he stopped to listen, nerves keyed to an acute tension.

A flight of stairs brought him to what he knew must be the second floor. To him there floated a murmur of sounds. They came vague and indistinct through a closed door. The room of the voices was on the left-hand side of the corridor.

He soft-footed it closer, reached the door, and dropped noiselessly to a knee. A key was in the lock on the outside. With infinite precaution against rattling he turned it, slid it out, and dropped it in his coat pocket. His eye fastened to the opening.

Three men were sitting round a table. They were making a bluff at playing cards, but their attention was focused on a door that evidently led into another room. Two automatic revolvers were on the table close to the hands of their owners. A blackjack lay in front of the third man. Clay recognized him as Gorilla Dave. The other two were strangers to him.

They were waiting. Sometimes they talked in low voices. For the most part they were silent, their eyes on the door of the trap that had been baited for a man Clay knew and was much interested in. Something evil in the watchfulness of the three chilled momentarily his veins. These fellows were the gunmen of New York he had read about--paid a.s.sa.s.sins whose business it was to frame innocent men for the penitentiary or kill them in cold blood. They were of the underworld, without conscience and without honor. As he looked at them through the keyhole, the watcher was reminded by their restless patience of mountain wolves lying in wait for their kill. Gorilla Dave sat stolidly in his chair, but the other two got up from time to time and paced the room silently, always with an eye to the door of the other room.

Then things began to happen. A soft step sounded in the corridor behind the man at the keyhole. He had not time to crawl away nor even to rise before a man stumbled against him.

Clay had one big advantage over his opponent. He had been given an instant of warning. His right arm went up around the neck of his foe and tightened there. His left hand turned the doork.n.o.b. Next moment the two men crashed into the room together, the Westerner rising to his feet as they came, with the body of the other lying across his back from hip to shoulder.

Gorilla Dave leaped to his feet. The other two gunmen, caught at disadvantage a few feet from the table, dived for their automatics.

They were too late. Clay swung his body downward from the waist with a quick, strong jerk. The man on his back shot heels over head as though he had been hurled from a catapult, crashed face up on the table, and dragged it over with him in his forward plunge to the wall.

Before any one else could move or speak, Lindsay's gun was out.

"Easy now." His voice was a gentle drawl that carried a menace.

"Lemme be boss of the _rodeo_ a while. No, Gorilla, I wouldn't play with that club if I was you. I'm sure h.e.l.l-a-mile on this gun stuff.

Drop it!" The last two words came sharp and crisp, for the big thug had telegraphed an unintentional warning of his purpose to dive at the man behind the thirty-eight.

Gorilla Dave was thick-headed, but he was open to persuasion. Eyes hard as diamonds bored into his, searched him, dominated him. The barrel of the revolver did not waver a hair-breadth. His fingers opened and the blackjack dropped from his hand to the floor.

"For the love o' Mike, who is this guy?" demanded one of the other men.

"I'm the fifth member of our little party," explained Clay.

"Wot t'ell do youse mean? And what's the big idea in most killin' the chief?"

The man who had been flung across the table turned over and groaned.

Clay would have known that face among a thousand. It belonged to Jerry Durand.

"I came in at the wrong door and without announcin' myself," said the cattleman, almost lazily, the unhurried indolence of his manner not shaken. "You see I wanted to be on time so as not to keep you waitin'.

I'm Clay Lindsay."

The more talkative of the gunmen from the East Side flashed one look at the two automatics lying on the floor beside the overturned table.

They might as well have been in Brazil for all the good they were to him.

"For the love o' Mike," he repeated again helplessly. "You're the--the--"

"--the hick that was to have been framed for house-breaking. Yes, I'm him," admitted Clay idiomatically. "How long had you figured I was to get on the Island? Or was it yore intention to stop my clock for good?"

"Say, how did youse get into de house?" demanded big Dave.

"Move over to the other side of the room, Gorilla, and join yore two friends," suggested the master of ceremonies. "And don't make any mistake. If you do you won't have time to be sorry for it. I'll ce'tainly shoot to kill."

The big-shouldered thug shuffled over. Clay stepped sideways, watching the three gunmen every foot of the way, kicked the automatics into the open, and took possession of them. He felt safer with the revolvers in his coat pocket, for they had been within reach of Durand, and that member of the party was showing signs of a return to active interest in the proceedings.