Part 20

Billy Kane drew silently back into the darkness at the far side of the kitchen. There was still a little more rope left to give Barloff for Barloff’s undoing! He, Billy Kane, had no intention of interfering with the hypocritical old scoundrel’s self-styled escape, nor of preventing Barloff now from rushing, for instance, to the police to amplify his tale; but Barloff, to “escape” and carry out his ruse successfully, could not rush out through the door supposed to be barred by the Wop and so reach the street that way! Barloff then, if Barloff were logical, had a choice of the kitchen and back door, or the window.

The light in Barloff’s room went out. Billy Kane smiled in satisfaction. With the kitchen in complete darkness now there was no chance of his being seen if Barloff came that way, and—no, it was the window! The sash creaked as the window was opened. There was a low thud as the man dropped to the ground, and then the sound of the other’s footsteps running across the yard toward the fence.

Billy Kane laughed a little, grimly under his breath, as he stepped instantly forward and entered the room old Barloff had just vacated. It was his turn now at the telephone! A hint to the police as to where the money was, and, with the Wop’s alibi thoroughly established, Barloff would be condemned by his own story. It would require only a moment to telephone, and then he would make his own get-away; also, it would be ten minutes at least before the police from the nearest station could answer Barloff’s call, but if, in the meanwhile, the Cadger and his pack arrived, they would not only get nothing, but would run a very excellent chance of being trapped by the police, and——.

Billy Kane with his hand groping out through the darkness for the telephone, stood suddenly tense and still; and then, as suddenly, actuated partly by some intuitive sense of danger, and partly because some indefinable sound of movement caught his ear, he swerved, throwing his body sharply to one side. There was a swish like the ugly sweep of some weapon cutting through the air from a ferocious, full-arm swing, a queer numbness from a glancing blow on the side of his head, a crash upon the desk, a metallic clatter on the floor—and then he lunged forward, and his hands, pawing out, touched and closed on a man’s form in front of him.

Billy Kane’s head was dizzy and swirling. He was conscious that arms which were like bands of steel were around him, and that his own arms, to keep from being torn apart and his hold on the other loosened, were straining until they hurt in their sockets. It seemed as though in the pitch blackness they were reeling around the room in the crazy, jerky, unbalanced dance of some mad orgy! A voice was snarling in his ear, snarling vicious oaths, snarling in a fury that seemed ungovernable, beyond all license, that seemed to have taken possession of the other, body and soul, and made the other’s strength demoniacal. That was it! It could not be anything else. That was what made the man so strong. The man was mad—a madman! He tried to think, as he gasped and panted for his breath. It wasn’t the Cadger, or French Marr, or the Pigeon, for then there would have been three of them. Who was it? His brain was sick and swimming, and refused its functions. He could not think very well. He must fight—that was all—fight!

It seemed to Billy Kane as though hours were passing. It seemed as though gradually, very gradually, his strength was oozing away, and that his hands were slipping from around the man’s back. He clenched his teeth together. He remembered suddenly that murderous swish through the air. It seemed to steady him, to bring to him, too, a sudden fury in place of that unnerving giddiness. He wanted to strike; to strike, as murderously as he had been struck, at this thing whose hot, tainted breath was on his cheek, at this thing that snarled like a beast as it struggled and fought. He wanted to strike, only the giddiness from the blow on his head was back again, and——.

The other had wrenched himself free. Billy Kane flung his weight forward to retain his hold, and with the impact both men reeled, tripped on the littered floor, lost their balance, and, locked together, crashed to the ground.

They rolled over once, and then the other’s snarl became a vicious laugh. The giddiness was coming in quick flashes over Billy Kane now, and he felt his hands wrenched and torn away from the other, and he felt the other’s body upon him now like some crushing, insupportable weight. He reached out in the darkness in a desperate, frantic effort to close again, to protect himself from the short-arm jabs that were raining into his face. His fingers touched the man’s bare, collarless throat, slipped on the throat—and suddenly held. There was a string, or a cord, or something around the man’s neck. It was very curious! But his fingers had hooked in between the cord and the flesh, and he clung there tenaciously. If he could only twist it, and twist it hard enough, he could choke the other! He wasn’t strong enough to do anything else—just twist at the cord—and choke the other—and——

There was a sound that seemed to come from the front of the house, like the opening of a door, and then voices—unmistakably voices. But the other had heard it too. The man was struggling now to get away, not to strike any more blows, just to wrench and tear himself loose from that cord that Billy Kane had twined around his hands and fingers. And then the cord gave with a sudden snap, the man sprang to his feet, and, without a sound, like a shadowy form just visible in the darkness, flung himself out through the window.

The cord was still twined around Billy Kane’s fingers as he lay, half-dazed, his head swimming weakly, flat on his back on the floor. He shook it free from his hand and raised himself up into a sitting posture, as he smiled in a queer, bitter way. There was a light in the front room now, and he was too exhausted to reach the window as his late antagonist had done, unless he stumbled and lurched there, and then he would be heard in the front room.

It was the end of the Rat, alias Bundy Morgan—and it was the end of Billy Kane. It was probably the Cadger and his crowd out there, but, at least, they would not take him alive. His hand dove into his pocket for his automatic and encountered the brandy flask that had already stood the Wop in such good stead. He snatched it from his pocket, and, his mask already awry on his face, carried the flask to his lips, and drank eagerly.

The stimulant whipped through his veins in a fiery tide. It cleared his brain. No, it wasn’t the Cadger out there—the Cadger and his crowd would be scared off for good now—there were two men—he could see them coming through the doorway—and he heard old Barloff’s voice.

He drank again greedily, shifting the flask to his left hand, while his right dove once more into his pocket, and this time secured his automatic. He drew his mask back over his face. The light over the desk went on, and, sitting there on the floor, Billy Kane blinked in the sudden glare at old Barloff and a police officer.

“Don’t move, please, either of you, except to put your hands up!” said Billy Kane in a low voice.

There was a startled exclamation from the officer, as his hands went up above his head; while a gray, blank look spread over the old miser’s face, as he, too, obeyed with equal celerity.

It was very curious! Billy Kane frowned in a puzzled way. It was very curious—not so much that he should be sitting there on the littered floor, with the side of his head trickling a warm flow of blood down under the neck of his shirt, and holding a brandy flask in one hand, and holding up two men at the point of his automatic with the other; it wasn’t so much that, it was an object on the floor near the desk that looked like a round piece of grained wood, about an inch in diameter and three feet in length.

He thrust the flask into his pocket, and, over his mask, rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. It wasn’t a vagary of his sick brain, was it? Well, he would know in a minute as soon as he lifted it and felt its weight. No, that wasn’t necessary, he remembered that _metallic_ clatter upon the floor. He knew what the thing was. It was the iron shaft of the crutch that he had seen two nights ago—a detachable shaft probably—the weapon that he was satisfied had already murdered David Ellsworth, and murdered Peters.

His mind was clear now and working in lightning flashes. His assailant had been the one man in the world upon whose throat he had prayed to get his fingers—the Man with the Crutch! Well, his fingers had been there, only he had been, at a disadvantage, weak and dizzy from the blow from that thing there, and—yes, this was curious too! He was watching the two men, his automatic covered them unswervingly; but out of the corner of his eye he could not help but see that red patch on the floor beside him, that looked like an ordinary flannel chest protector, and to which the cord that he had torn from his antagonist’s neck was still attached. He reached for it and thrust it into his pocket, as he rose slowly, and a little unsteadily, to his feet.

He eyed the two men now for a long calculating second. Yes, his brain was quite clear now—exhilaratingly clear. And the mental exhilaration seemed to bring in its train a new physical strength as well. In a flash he saw the way out now, and with it, too, the means of slipping Barloff’s self-knotted noose around the miserly old Russian’s throat. But he must work quickly. There was not an instant to spare. This officer could not have come in answer to Barloff’s telephone call, for he realized that, long as it had seemed, his fight here in the room could not have lasted in reality more than two or three minutes, and it had begun almost on the instant that Barloff had run from the house. There would not, therefore, have been time for the telephone call to have been answered, for the nearest police station was too far away, and besides, in that event, there would have been more than one officer. Barloff had probably encountered the policeman out on the street, and, carrying out his devilishly inspired plan, had poured his story into the officer’s ears, and rushed the other back to the house. But in that case, the men from the station would be on their way here now, and the leeway left him, Billy Kane, in which to act must, even now, be narrowed to the very perilous margin of but another four or five minutes—perhaps less!

“Move to the wall, face it, and keep your hands up!” ordered Billy Kane curtly.

The officer, with a chagrined scowl and a shrug of his shoulders, obeyed. Barloff, white and trembling, and thoroughly frightened, needed no urging.

“You’ve got the drop on me,” snarled the officer. “But don’t worry, my bucko, I know who you are! That mask ain’t doing you any good! There’s a free ride and board coming to you again!”

Billy Kane’s automatic was pressed into the small of the officer’s back. With his free hand he deftly relieved the other of a pair of handcuffs and a revolver.

“That’s all right!” said Billy Kane coolly. “Now, Barloff, stick your right hand out behind you!” He slipped one of the steel cuffs over the Russian’s wrist. “Now you, officer! No, your _right_ hand! I know it’s customary in making an arrest to leave your right hand free, but in the circumstances I am forced to inconvenience you a little in your movements.” He snapped the other cuff shut. “Thank you! You may both turn around now!” He stepped back, hurled the officer’s revolver out through the window, and picked up the weapon whose blow, luckily for him, he had partially evaded. He had in no way been mistaken. It was the iron shaft of the crutch, and it was ingeniously fashioned with a spring catch that obviously fitted into a socket in the now missing armpiece of the crutch. It served him now as a support. He leaned upon it, using it as a cane, as he swayed a little on his feet. “I can only spare a moment,” he said engagingly to the officer; “but possibly I can make that moment well worth your while. We’ll talk quickly, if you please. I imagine that you were on your beat out there on the street when Barloff here found you. Am I right?”

“Where else would I be?” said the officer gruffly.

“That’s what I wanted to make sure of,” returned Billy Kane pleasantly. “And that’s why I want to get through here in a hurry—before your reinforcements arrive. What story did this man tell you?”

“Say,” said the officer shortly, “you’ve got your nerve with you! But you can’t get away with it! I tell you, I know you! You might as well take that mask off. You’re the Wop.”

“You’re jumping at conclusions,” said Billy Kane calmly, “because Barloff here has told you the Wop had broken in and robbed him. Well, ask Barloff, then!” He turned on Barloff. “I’m not the Wop, am I, Barloff?”

The old man shook his head.

“No, you’re not.” Barloff swallowed hard; he was evidently floundering in a perplexed mental maze. “But my money’s gone, and the Wop was here. I saw him. I saw him. Maybe you’re a pal of his.”

“I am for to-night,” said Billy Kane quietly. “When did you see the Wop? What did you tell this officer here?”

“Oh, you are, are you!” Barloff seemed suddenly relieved. He shook his free fist at Billy Kane. “So you’re a pal of the Wop’s, are you! Well, I don’t know where you came from, but I saw the Wop just as plainly as I see you now.” He edged around and addressed the officer eagerly. “I was sitting at the desk there, officer, just as I told you, and that door was open, and there was a light in that front room. The Wop must have got the front door open without my hearing him. I saw him stealing across that room out there. I rushed to the door, and shut it, and called for help. He began to smash it in and I grabbed up the telephone and called the police, and then ran for the window, and got out by the lane to the street where I found you. He would have killed me. He swore he would when he went to prison.” His voice changed suddenly into a whining wail. “He’s got my money! Look at the floor—look at the safe! He’s got my money, and run with it when he heard us coming.” He began to claw frantically at the officer’s sleeve. “The Wop’s got it! Look, officer, this pal of his has been hurt! Look at the side of his head—that’s why he didn’t get away too—that’s why we found him here on the floor!”

“You talk as though you’d been frisked of a million!” Billy Kane was tauntingly sarcastic now. “How much did you have, anyway?”

“How much! How much!” howled Barloff. “Enough to ruin me! All this month’s rentals that I had just collected. Three hundred and eighty-seven dollars!”

“Three hundred and eighty-seven dollars!” Billy Kane mimicked the other admirably. “You don’t mean to say you’d keep three hundred and eighty-seven dollars in that crazy old safe that’s falling to pieces, do you?”

“Where else would I keep it?” Barloff was shaking his fist again. “Yes, I kept it there! And that’s where it was to-night—and it’s gone now—gone!”

“Is that all you had?” Billy Kane’s sneer was irritatingly contemptuous.

“All!” shrieked Barloff. “All—yes, it is all! But it is enough! I am a poor man, and the money was not mine, and I cannot replace it, and——”

He choked suddenly, and shrank back, dragging the officer with him a step. Billy Kane had moved abruptly to the morris chair, and had toppled it over on the floor.

“You pitiful liar! You haven’t seen the Wop in five years!” rasped Billy Kane, and the iron shaft in his hand crashed through the false bottom of the chair. A package of banknotes tumbled out on the floor, another, and yet another. A second blow dislodged the cash box, and a further rain of banknotes. “You thought the Wop was dead, and that you could make him stand for this, did you!” rasped Billy Kane again. “You yellow cur—so that you could steal those few miserable rentals yourself!”

“My God!” gasped the officer. Barloff was a grovelling thing at his side. He jerked the other toward him, and stared into the white, working features.

Billy Kane backed to the window, and there was an abrupt change in his voice as he addressed the officer.

“I’m going now,” he said softly. “I am not quite sure of the technical charge against your prisoner, but I imagine it is just plain theft—of three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. And it might be interesting, too, to know where so poor a man got that small fortune there on the floor! Perhaps Barloff will tell you! As for the Wop, he has never been near this place, and you will find him at the Reverend Mr. Claflin’s house, where he has been all evening. I think that’s all, officer, except”—Billy Kane had straddled the window sill—“except that I apologize to you for anything in the shape of lèse majesty of which I may have been guilty, but as I have certain personal reasons that justify me in not desiring to appear publicly in the matter, I am sure you will admit I had no other——”

Billy Kane did not finish his sentence. He dropped hurriedly to the ground, and ran, or, rather, half ran, half stumbled his way to the fence and lane. Someone was at the front door again—obviously the police detail from the station.

He made his way along the lane, and from that lane into another. He was still weak and progress was slow, and for half an hour he kept under cover. When he finally emerged into the open he was blocks away from Barloff’s house, and very much closer to a certain temporary sanctuary in the heart of the underworld!

Ten minutes later, behind locked doors, he was sitting at the dilapidated table under the single incandescent light, in the Rat’s den. Before him lay a small red flannel sack, that might have passed for an ordinary chest protector, and which he had cut open with his knife. He raised his hand, and passed it across his eyes. The Wop and Barloff were extraneous considerations now. There was something far more vital to think about, but his brain was refusing its functions again. He was very tired—very tired and weak. There was the Man with the Crutch, the man who, he knew now, had killed Peters and David Ellsworth, the man who had looted David Ellsworth’s vault of its money and its priceless rubies, the man for whose guilt he, Billy Kane, was held accountable, the man with whom he had fought to-night. In a numbed way, because his mind was in a sort of torpor, Billy Kane was dimly conscious that there was no more any mere coincidence in this repeated appearance of the Man with the Crutch. He knew now that Jackson, the footman, had only been an underling. It was curious, singular, sinister. Who was the man? What did it mean? The man wasn’t even lame, was he? He remembered the extraordinary agility the other had showed two nights ago—and why was the shaft of the crutch detachable?—and the man hadn’t fought like a crippled man to-night—and there had been no sign of the upper portion of the crutch, either!

Billy Kane’s head sank forward a little on his shoulders. He raised himself with a jerk, and stared at the red flannel sack in front of him. A score of magnificent rubies scintillated in fiery flashes under the light.

“They’re not all here,” mumbled Billy Kane, with a twisted smile. “They’re not all here—not yet.”

XXIII—THE RENDEZVOUS

It was night again in the underworld.

Billy Kane slipped suddenly into the dark shadows of a doorway. Fifty yards ahead of him, up the poorly lighted, narrow and miserable street, three men had paused on the sidewalk, and were engaged in what was apparently an animated discussion. Billy Kane’s eyes narrowed in a puzzled, perturbed, and yet grim way, as he watched them. He had followed them for an hour now—from a saloon, where he had found them, to a disreputable pool room, and from there again to a saloon, and now here.

He did not understand. It was one of those strange portals, so extraneous to the aim of clearing his name of the murder of David Ellsworth, and yet, too, so essentially a corollary of the Rat’s rôle that he played here in the underworld, at which he was knocking again. His lips curled in a queer smile. How long would it be before the end? And what would that end be? In his possession now, save for a portion of the rubies, perhaps half of them, was everything that the murderers of David Ellsworth had stolen from the old philanthropist’s vault on that night which seemed now to belong to some past age and incarnation. He knew now that the Man with the Crutch was the actual murderer—but there he faced a blank wall. He had even fought with the man in the blackness of old Barloff’s room last night, not knowing until too late who his assailant was, and the man had got away.

His hand at his side clenched. It could not endure very long—this impossible situation in which he found himself with that strange, unknown woman, who, believing him to be the Rat, held the threat of Sing Sing over his head. And there was the Rat himself whose name and personality and home, such as it was, he had usurped during the latter’s absence, an absence that might terminate at any moment. And there were the police who dragged the city and the country from end to end for Billy Kane. From anyone of these three sources, swift as a lightning stroke, without an instant’s warning, the end might come with that goal of life still unreached, and, greater than life, his honor, still unreclaimed. And it seemed to-night somehow that his chances were bitterly small, that somehow the odds seemed to be growing and accumulating against him. He was on another errand now, because he could not help himself. He was allowing precious moments that should have been devoted to the one chance he had, that of searching ceaselessly, pitilessly, remorselessly, for the Man with the Crutch, to be directed into other channels—because he could not help himself.

He stepped out from the shelter of the doorway, and started forward again along the street. The three men had turned from the sidewalk, and had disappeared inside a dingy, black and tumble-down tenement. Billy Kane’s lips tightened a little. It was a hard neighborhood, nestling just off the Bowery—as hard almost as the three characters themselves who had just vanished from sight. There were a few pedestrians here on the side street, a few figures that skulked along in the semi-darkness, rather than walked, but not many; and for the most part, though it was still early, not more than nine o’clock, the buildings that flanked the street were dark and unlighted.

Billy Kane jerked his slouch hat farther down over his eyes as he walked along. He did not understand. Two hours ago he had been sitting in the Rat’s den with Whitie Jack—who had ventured out of hiding again, safe now since the interest of the police in Peters’, the butler’s, murder had become definitely centered in the Man with the Crutch—and someone had knocked at the door. Whitie Jack had answered the knock, and had brought back the message that Bundy Morgan was wanted at the telephone in a little shop across the street. He, Billy Kane, in his rôle of the Rat, alias the said Bundy Morgan, had perforce answered, and, as he had picked up the receiver, he had instantly recognized the voice of the woman whom he knew by no other name than the one he himself had given her—the Woman in Black. He was subconsciously rehearsing the rather one-sided conversation now, as he moved along.

“Is that you, Bundy?” she had asked. “And do you know who is speaking?”

“Yes,” he had answered.

“Listen, then!” Her voice had been quiet, deliberate, and yet pregnant with a curiously sharp, imperative command. “Find Clarkie Munn and Gypsy Joe at once, and shadow them to-night. Do not let them out of your sight. And see that you do not fail! Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he had replied mechanically; “but——”

That was all. She had hung up the receiver at the other end of the line.