The Penalty Part 39

x.x.xVII

Mr. Abe Lichtenstein looked up from a ma.s.s of writing. "So," he smiled, "you got your few days off?"

"Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles, his eyes big, his voice trembling, "an awful thing has happened."

"You can tell me nothing bad but I can tell you something worse. What has happened?"

"The old un is my father!"

"Yes," said Lichtenstein, "I have thought of that. You are sure?"

"I'm sure enough not to want to have anything more to do with huntin'

him. But that's for you to say. I do what you say."

"I won't ask you to go on," said Lichtenstein; "but you're still with us, Bubbles? You're still for cleaning up the dirty house and making it fit for human beings to live in?"

"Yes, sir."

"As far as your father's concerned you'll be neutral."

"Meaning I won't do nothing against him, nor for him?"

The red-headed Jew nodded. "You won't do like Rose?"

"Rose?"

Lichtenstein's face became very cold and grim. "She's gone over to him body and soul. Bubbles, and heart and mind. For weeks she's fooled us with nonsense--stuff they've made up together. Worse, she's broken every oath she ever swore. Our strength was secrecy. Well, your father knows the name of every agent in our society. Oh, he's got it all out of her!

Everything!"

"Does he know that you are--"

"Yes, confound him, he does. And my life is about as safe in this city as that of the average cat in the Italian quarter. My life isn't the important thing. It's what I've got in my head--cold facts. See all this stuff? That's what's in my head going down on paper for the first time.

It's to guide the man that takes my place--to help him over some of the hard places--three hundred sheets of it already, and only a week since I began."

"Rose!" exclaimed Bubbles.

"There was none better--none smarter--till she fell in love--_fell_ in love!"

"Does he know I'm one of us, Mr. Lichtenstein?"

"Why, yes. I suppose she'll have given even the children away." Mr.

Lichtenstein's eye roamed over the suite of rich rooms with their elaborate gambling-paraphernalia. "Not much doing," he smiled, "since Rose went over. The tip's out that I'm wanted. n.o.body drops in for a quiet game. Bubbles, you tell people when you're a man and I'm gone, that I wasn't only a gambler. Tell 'em I took money from people who had plenty but wouldn't take the trouble to do right with it, and tell 'em I used that money to do right--to help make dirty things clean."

He turned and regarded the face of the black marble clock on the mantel-piece. As he looked the face of the clock was violently shattered, and so, but on a lower level, was a pane of gla.s.s in the window immediately opposite.

Abe Lichtenstein fell face down upon his unfinished ma.n.u.script.

x.x.xVIII

Then he began to speak in a quiet voice. "Never touched me. Bubbles.

Pull that cord at the right of the window. That will close the curtains.

Careful not to show yourself. The man that fired that shot thinks he got me. I fell over to make him think so and to keep him from shooting again. Now then"--the curtain had been drawn over the window with the broken pane--"let's see what sort of a gun our friend uses, and then perhaps we can spot our friend. Did you hear the shot?"

"No, sir. There was a noise just when the clock broke like when a steel girder falls on the sidewalk."

"That noise was just _before_ the clock broke, Bubbles. And it was loud enough to drown the noise of our friend's gun. Clever work, though, to _have_ to pull the trigger at a given moment, and to make such a close shot. Probably had his gun screwed in a vise."

Meanwhile Lichtenstein had extracted from the ruined clock a .45-calibre bullet of nickel steel. A glance at the grooves made by the rifling of the barrel from which it had been expelled caused him to raise his colorless eyebrows and smile cynically.

"New government automatic, Bubbles," he said, "and the funny part of it is they've only been issued to officers so far, and the factory hasn't put 'em on sale yet."

"Must have been stole from an officer, then," said Bubbles.

"You steal her jewels from an actress," said Lichtenstein, "her mite from the widow, its romances from the people, but you don't steal his side arms from an American army officer. No. Somebody in the factory has let the weapon that fired this slip out. It doesn't matter--it's just a little link in the long chain."

He seated himself calmly at the table and set down in black and white the fact that he had been very nearly murdered by a bullet fired from the new army pistol. Then he began to gather up the sheets of his ma.n.u.script.

"Now I wonder," he said, "where I can go to finish this doc.u.ment? I don't want them to 'get' me until I've paved the way for the man that comes after me. Now then--the secret pa.s.sage isn't only for the wicked."

Kneeling on the clean hearth, Mr. Lichtenstein caused the ornamental cast-iron back of the fireplace to swing outward upon a hinge. Reaching a long arm into the disclosed opening, he unfastened and pushed ajar the iron back of a fireplace in the next house.

Bubbles, crawling through first, found himself in a somewhat overdressed pink and blue bedroom. The lace curtains were too elaborate. The room was luxurious and vulgar. Among the photographs on the centre-table reposed a champagne-bottle, three parts empty, and two gla.s.ses, in which a number of flies were heavily crawling.

Lichtenstein, having carefully replaced the fire-backs, rose smiling, and clapped a hand upon Bubbles's shoulder.

"Now then, Bubbles," he said, "push that bell-b.u.t.ton by the door four times, and we'll see what Mrs. Popple can do to get us out of this.

Never met Mrs. Popple? She's one of us, and at heart a good one."

The lady in question came swiftly in answer to the four rings. At first sight she pa.s.sed for a woman of hard and forbidding aspect; filmy laces and a clinging kimona of rose-pink silk neither softened nor made feminine the alabaster-colored face with its thin, straight mouth, heavy hairy eyebrows, and clean-cut Greek nose. Only her costume and her hair, indescribably fine, and indescribably yellow, betrayed that there were follies in her nature. But the moment she spoke you liked her. She had a slow, deep, beautiful voice, and the slowness of her speech was offset by the fewness of her words.

"What's wrong, Abe?"

Lichtenstein explained briefly, and added: "Now how are we to get out of this without being spotted and followed?"

"Easy," said Mrs. Popple. She went to a vast wardrobe painted white, and pulled the creaking doors wide open. "Wedge the man into one dress,"

she said, "pad the boy into another. Send 'em off in a taxi. Now, boy.

Is this Bubbles? Pleased to meet you. I'm old enough to be your grandmother."

The words were a command, and the boy, much embarra.s.sed, began to take off his coat.