The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 52

And she went her own way. She went, indeed, much more expeditiously than I had antic.i.p.ated, for in five minutes' time she was dressed and booted and hatted and scurrying off through the now darkened streets.

Which trail she took and what cover she sought didn't in the least interest me once I had made sure of the fact she was faring in an opposite direction to Mickey's thirst-appeasing caravansary. But she went. She shook the dust of that house off her febrile young heels; and that was the one thing I desired of her. For that night, I knew, still held a problem or two for me which would be trying enough without the presence of the redoubtable Lady Babbie and her sanguinary bicuspid.

Yet once she was clear of that house, I decided to follow her example.

This, however, was not so easy as it had promised to be. For I had scarcely reached the foot of the stairway when I heard the sound of voices outside the street door. And I promptly recognized them as Crotty's and Latreille's.

That discovery sent me groping hurriedly backward into the darkened hallway. By the time the door opened I had felt my way to a second flight of steps which obviously led to the bas.e.m.e.nt. I could hear the voice of the man known as The Doc, for the three men were now advancing, and advancing none too quietly, into their musty-aired harborage. But my own flight down those bas.e.m.e.nt stairs was quiet enough, for I realized now the expediency of slipping away and putting in a call for help.

It was only after a good deal of groping about, however, that I was able to reach the door opening on the bas.e.m.e.nt-area, directly under the street-steps. A huge bra.s.s key, fortunately, stood in place there. So as I pa.s.sed out I took the trouble to relock that door after me and pocket the key.

In five minutes I had found a side-street grocery-store with a sufficiently sequestered telephone. And by means of this telephone I promptly called up Headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Belton.

He listened to what I had to say with much more interest than I had antic.i.p.ated.

"Witter," he called back over the wire, "I believe you've stumbled across something big."

"Then supposing you stumble over here after it," was my prompt suggestion. But Belton wasn't to be stampeded into the over-hasty action of the amateur.

"If that isn't that bunch Headquarters has been wanting to interview for the last three months, I miss my one best bet. But in this business, Witter, you've got to _know_. So I'll slip over to the Bureau and look up mugs and records. If that faint-spiller is Bab Nadeau, _alias_ Car-Step Sadie, there's no doubt about your man being Crotty."

"She _is_ Car-Step Sadie," I told him.

"Then we'll be out there with bells on," he calmly announced.

"But what do you expect me to do, in the meantime?" I somewhat peevishly demanded.

"Just keep 'em guessing," he tranquilly retorted, "keep 'em guessing until we amble over there and take 'em off your hands!"

That was easy enough to say, I remembered as I made my way back to Crotty's broken-faced abode, but the problem of holding that unsavory trio in subjection didn't impress me as an over-trivial one. Yet I went back with a new fort.i.tude stiffening my backbone, for I knew that whatever might happen that night, I now had the Law on my side.

That casual little flicker of confidence, however, was not destined to sustain me for long. A new complication suddenly confronted me. For as I guardedly approached the house from which I'd sent Bab Nadeau scampering off into the night I noticed the Nile-green car already drawn up close beside the curb. And this car, I further noticed, was empty.

So it was with a perceptibly quickened pulse that I sidled down into the unclean area, unearthed my bra.s.s key, and let myself silently into the unlighted bas.e.m.e.nt. Then I just as quietly piloted my way in through the darkness, found the stairway, and ascended to the ground floor.

The moment I reached the hallway I could hear the sound of voices through a door on my left. I could hear Mary Lockwood's voice, and then the throaty tones of that opianic old impostor known as The Doc.

... "No doubt of the fact at all, my dear young lady. The spine has been injured, very seriously injured. Whether or not it will result in paralysis I can't tell until I consult with my colleague, Doctor Emmanuel Paschall. But we must count on the poor girl being helpless for life, Crotty, helpless for life!"

This was followed by a moment or two of silence. And I could imagine what that moment or two was costing Mary Lockwood.

"But I want to see the girl," she said in a somewhat desperate voice.

"I _must_ see her."

"All in good time, my dear, all in good time," temporized her bland old torturer. This was followed by a lower mumble of voices from which I could glean nothing intelligible. But those three conspirators must have consulted together, for after a moment of silence I caught the sound of steps crossing the floor.

"He'll just slip up and make sure the patient can be seen," I heard the suave old rascal intone. And I had merely time to edge back and dodge about the bas.e.m.e.nt stairhead as the room-door was flung open and Latreille stepped out in the hall. The door closed again as he vanished above-stairs.

When he returned, he didn't step back into the room, but waited outside and knocked on the closed door. This brought old Crotty out in answer to the summons. Just what pa.s.sed between that worthy trio, immured in their whispering consultation in that half-lighted hallway, failed to reach my ears. But this in no way disturbed me, for I knew well enough that Latreille had at least pa.s.sed on to them the alarming news that their much needed patient was no longer under that roof. And what was more, I knew that this discovery would serve to bring things to a somewhat speedier climax than we had all antic.i.p.ated. There was a sort of covert decisiveness about their movements, in fact, as they stepped back into the room and swung the door shut behind them. So I crept closer, listening intently. But it was only patches and shreds of their talk that I could overhear. I caught enough, however, to know they were protesting that their patient was too weak to be interviewed.

I could hear Crotty feelingly exclaim that it wasn't kind words which could help this poor child now, but only something much more substantial, and much more mundane.

"Yes, it's only money that can talk in a case like this," pointedly concurred The Doc, clearly spurred on to a more open boldness of advance. And there were further parleyings and arguments and lugubrious enumerations of possibilities from the man of medicine. I knew well enough what they were doing. They were conjointly and cunningly brow-beating and intimidating that solitary girl who, even while she must have gathered some inkling of their worldliness, comprehended nothing of the wider plot they were weaving about her.

And I further knew that they were winning their point, for I could hear her stifled little gasp of final surrender.

"Very well," her strained voice said. "I'll give you the check."

This pregnant sentence was followed by an equally pregnant silence.

Then came a series of small noises, among which I could distinguish the sc.r.a.pe of a chair-leg and steps crossing the floor. And I surmised that Mary was seating herself at a desk or table, to make out and sign the precious little slip of paper which they were so unctuously conspiring for. So it was at this precise moment that I decided to interfere.

I opened the door, as quietly as I could, and stepped into the room.

It was Latreille who first saw me. The other two men were too intently watching the girl at the desk. They were still watching her as she slowly rose from her chair, with a blue-tinted oblong of paper between her fingers. And at the same moment that Mary Lockwood stood up Latreille did the same. He rose slowly, with his eyes fixed on my face, backing just as slowly away as he continued to stare at me. But that retreat, I very promptly realized, wasn't prompted by any sense of fear.

"Mary," I called out sharply to the girl who still stood staring down at the slip of blue paper.

She looked up as she heard that call, peering at me with half incredulous and slightly startled eyes. I don't know whether she was glad or sorry to see me there. Perhaps it was both. But she neither moved nor spoke.

"Mary," I cried out to her, "don't give that up!"

I moved toward her, but she in turn moved away from me until she stood close beside the ever watchful Latreille.

"This is something which you don't understand," she said, much more calmly than I had expected.

"But I _do_," I hotly contended.

"It's something which you can't possibly understand," she repeated in tones which threw a gulf yawning between us.

"But it's _you_ who don't," I still tried to tell her. "These three here are claim fakers; nothing but criminals. They're bleeding you!

They're blackmailing you!"

A brief but portentous silence fell on that room as the bewildered girl looked from one face to the other. But it lasted only a moment. The tableau was suddenly broken by a movement from Latreille. And it was a quick and cat-like movement. With one sweep of the hand he reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the oblong of blue paper from Mary Lockwood's fingers.

And as I beheld that movement a little alarm-gong somewhere up at the peak of my brain went off with a clang. Some remote cave-man ancestor of mine stirred in his grave. I saw red.

With one unreasoned and unreasoning spring I reached Latreille, crying to the girl as I went: "Get out of this house! Get out--quick!"

That was all I said. It was all I had a chance to say, for Latreille was suddenly taking up all my attention. That suave brigand, instead of retreating, caught and held the slip of paper between his teeth and squared for combat. And combat was what he got.

We struck and countered and clenched and went to the floor together, still striking blindly at each other's faces as we threshed and rolled about there. We sent a chair spinning, and a table went over like a nine-pin. We wheezed and gasped and clumped against the baseboard and flopped again out into open s.p.a.ce. Yet I tore that slip of paper from between Latreille's teeth, and macerated it between my own, as we continued to pound and thump and writhe about the dusty floor. And I think I would have worsted Latreille, if I'd been given half a chance, for into that onslaught of mine went the pent-up fury of many weeks and months of self-corroding hate. But that worthy known as The Doc deemed it wise to take a hand in the struggle. His interference a.s.sumed the form of a blow with a chair-back, a blow which must have stunned me for a moment or two, for when I was able to think clearly again Latreille had me pinned down, with one knee on my chest and old Crotty stationed at the door with a Colt revolver in his hand. The next moment Latreille forced my wrists down in front of me, jerked a handkerchief from my pocket, and with it tied my crossed hands close together. Then he turned and curtly motioned to Crotty.

"Here," he commanded. "Bring that gun and guard this pin-head! If he tries anything, let him have it, and have it good!"

Slowly and deliberately Latreille rose to his feet. He paused for a moment to wipe the blood and dust from his face. Then he turned to Mary Lockwood, who stood with her back against the wall and her tightly clenched fists pressed close to her sides. She was very white, white to the lips. But it wasn't fear that held her there. It was a sort of colorless heat of indignation, a fusing of rage and watchfulness which she seemed at a loss to express in either word or action.

"Now you," barked out Latreille, motioning her to the desk, "make good on that paper. And do it quick!"

Mary surveyed him, silently, studiously, deliberately. He was, apparently, something startlingly new in her career, something which she seemed unable to fathom. But he'd by no means intimidated her.

For, instead of answering him, she spoke to me.

"Witter," she called out, watching her enemy as she spoke. "Witter, what do you want me to do?"

I remembered Lieutenant Belton and his message. I remembered my own helplessness, and the character of the men confronting us. And I remembered that time was a factor in Mary's favor and mine.