Part 7

“Sure!” grunted Red Vallon corroboratingly. “But Karlin’s never been here before.” He pushed a chair with the toe of his boot across the floor toward Karlin, and appropriated one beside the table for himself. “Well, spill it, Bundy!” he invited. “We got to hurry! It’s too bad you’re laid up an’ can’t sit in on the showdown, but Merxler’s plum’s got ripe, an’ we got to pick it to-night. Savvy?”

Billy Kane duplicated the first smoke ring. Merxler! He had identified Karlin now! Karlin and Merxler! That was where he had heard Karlin’s name—in connection with Merxler—and it must, necessarily then be the same Merxler. Was young Merxler, whom he had heard of and had even met through David Ellsworth, more then than simply the notorious spendthrift that he was credited with being? Karlin, it was obvious, was leading a double life. Was Merxler another of the inner circle, another from the higher ranks of society—and the greater criminal therefor!

“Piker stuff!” commented Billy Kane complacently.

Karlin leaned forward with a jerk in his chair.

“Piker stuff!” he ejaculated, and the little black eyes contracted and fixed on Billy Kane in a puzzled glitter. “Piker stuff!” he echoed challengingly.

Billy Kane nodded indifferently. He was skating on thin ice, on perilously thin ice. Whatever the “Merxler plum” might be, it was obviously far from the definition he had given it, and having apparently displayed an intimacy with the affair, an intimacy that he was evidently supposed to possess, it was decidedly best left alone!

“That’s what I said,” he drawled deliberately. “Piker stuff—compared with what I’ve got. I told you I had something, Red—didn’t I?”

Red Vallon hitched sideways in his chair, his head thrust forward.

“Go to it, Bundy! Spill it!” He circled his lips with his tongue. “If you say so, that goes! What’s the lay?”

“Five hundred thousand dollars—a half million—cold”—Billy Kane had lowered his voice.

He did not look at either of the men, but he was watching them both intently—his eyes were on the mirror, the mirror of the bureau at the far end of the room, that bore testimony to the cunning of his unwitting host. The mirror held the door and the upper part of the room in focus; and, lying there on the bed, he had the profiles of the two men in distinct outline. Karlin was fingering his Vandyke in a sort of hesitant incredulity. Vallon’s face had suddenly blotched red with rapacious excitement.

“Gawd!” Red Vallon spluttered out. “D’ye mean that, Bundy?”

“Sure, I mean it!” Billy Kane answered a little curtly. “What do you think I told you to come here for? Sure, I mean it! It’s all there—right on the table, hitting you between the eyes.”

Red Vallon jerked himself around; and, as though he had taken the words literally, stared with a frown of bewilderment at the only thing in view upon the table—the newspaper that Whitie Jack had dropped there when he had answered the summons at the door.

Billy Kane laughed quietly.

“Get it, Red?” he inquired. “Five hundred thousand dollars—better than diamonds—blood-red rubies—red with blood, the paper says. Can’t you read?”

Karlin had forgotten his beard. His hands clenched on his knees.

“You mean the Ellsworth murder—the robbery?” He was whispering hoarsely.

“You win!” said Billy Kane.

“My God!” whispered Karlin. “Do you know where that stuff is?”

Billy Kane’s eyes had returned to the mirror, and now suddenly they shifted a little to the wall at the side of the bureau. Something cold and forbidding seemed to grip at him, numbing for an instant mental and physical action—and then left him in a state of grim, unnatural calmness. Was it imagination? He could have sworn that the wall _moved_ slightly. He swung over on his left side, as though to face Karlin and Red Vallon more directly before he answered them—but his hand, slipping into his coat pocket, closed over his revolver. It _might_ be imagination, but the possibility remained that someone was on the other side of that secret door, and, having pushed the door almost imperceptibly open, was listening there. If that were so, he must get rid of Red Vallon and Karlin before any dénouement came if possible, get rid of them without an instant’s loss of time; but equally vital was the necessity of setting in motion, and equally without loss of time, the machinery of the underworld upon which now he was practically staking his all.

“Pull your chair over here, closer to the bed, Red—and you, too, Karlin,” he said coolly. “We aren’t likely to be heard from the street, but that’s no reason for shouting. No; I don’t know where they are, I haven’t got the rubies in my pocket—but I know how to get them there. What?”

Red Vallon’s face was working in a sort of anticipatory and avaricious ugliness; Karlin’s expression was scarcely less rapacious.

“Go on, Bundy!” Karlin said under his breath. “What do you know about it?”

“What you could have read for yourself in the paper,” Billy Kane answered tersely. “And it looks like a cinch. It’s just a case of beating the police to it, and it sizes up as though we had the jump on them.” He was speaking almost mechanically. His mind was on that section of the wall that _might_ have moved; and through half-closed eyes, but as though deep in thought and as though concentrated on what he was saying, he was watching it narrowly. It had not moved a second time, of that he was sure; perhaps it had not moved at all, it might be only nerves on his part, nerves high strung, taut to the breaking point, but his fingers were still rigid around the stock of his revolver, and, in the pocket, the weapon, resting on his hip as he lay sideways, held a bead on the panels of the secret door.

“I don’t quite get you,” muttered Karlin, with a frown.

Red Vallon swore roughly, intolerant in his eagerness.

“Aw, give him a chance!” he said impatiently. “If he says so, that’s good enough for me. Bundy never pulled a steer in his life, an’ if he says this is a cinch—that goes! Give him a chance!”

“It’s like this,” said Billy Kane. “It’s a thousand to one shot that this secretary chap who croaked the old millionaire and got away with the goods is still in New Work. Why? Well, I’ll tell you why. After pulling the murder, according to the papers, he beat it out of the house with the loot, and evidently hid the stuff somewhere. Then he came back to the house again, and the footman, Jackson, grabbed him. But there was a good half hour between the time the police found out about the murder and before this guy Kane came back to the house. Get me? And during that time the police got busy and shot flycops around all the stations and ferries. It’s a cinch, the way I look at it, that after he crawled into that lane and they lost him there, that he’s been crawling ever since somewhere around New York. He never left the city—he never had a chance.”

Red Vallon whistled low and complacently under his breath; Karlin, fingering his Vandyke again, nodded sharply now in approval.

“Besides,” added Billy Kane, “he had sort of queered his own game. He’d hidden the loot somewhere, and he couldn’t make a direct get-away then. He had to get hold of the goods again before he went. All right! What I want to know is who’s got the better chance of grabbing him—us or the police? He isn’t one of us. He’s working on his own. Well, all right! If we nip him, and he’s satisfied with a little rake-off, and is willing to cough up the rest, that’ll be treating him fair. If he isn’t strong on coughing up, we’ll find another way of making him come across that he won’t like so well, and we’ll get the half million, and he’ll get——” Billy Kane completed his sentence with a significant shrug of his shoulder.

An oath, the more callous and brutal for the soft purring way in which it fell from his lips, came from Red Vallon.

“What do you want done, Bundy?” Karlin was terse and to the point. “It looks good to me, if you can pull it off.”

“It’s the biggest haul we’ll ever get our mitts on if we live a hundred years!” Billy Kane’s eyes shifted for an instant from the wall to fix themselves impressively on the two men. “I’ve been lying here all day thinking it out. What do I want done? Well, I’ll tell you! I want every string and every wire we’ve got pulled. Savvy? We’ve got to beat the police to it. We’ve got to get Kane—_first_. I want all the boys that the bulls think they’ve got sewed up as stool pigeons to stool-pigeon the police and get all the inside dope. And then that fellow Jackson, the footman, looks like a bet we can’t throw down. He’s dead—but he looks like a good bet. He lived all through the night, but the papers don’t say anything about the story he told. Perhaps he knew something that will help, perhaps he didn’t; but he doesn’t go into the discard yet. Find out who he was and all about him, and get next to his family if he’s got one. If he told any story to the police, any of the family that were clustering around the bedside will be wise to it. Get the idea?”

“Birdie Rose is the boy for that!” Red Vallon’s bullet head was thrust forward in vicious earnestness, his red-rimmed black eyes were glittering with a feverish light.

“Let Birdie go to it, then!” said Billy Kane.

“Birdie was slated for the Merxler affair to-night.” Karlin spoke a little dubiously.

“Shift him!” snapped Billy Kane curtly. “Red’s right! Birdie’s the boy for this job.”

“All right!” agreed Karlin, and shrugged his shoulders. He turned to Red Vallon. “Put Bull McCann in Birdie’s place, then. See that he gets to Jerry’s back room before ten.”

“I’ll fix it!” grunted Red Vallon. “What’s next, Bundy? This goes—all the boys’ll fall for it.”

“There’s only one thing more—until something begins to crack open.” Billy Kane’s lips had tightened, his eyelids had drooped still lower. It was only a bare fraction of an inch at most—if at all—but it seemed that door had moved again. His words were coming barely above a whisper now. “There’s only one way he can get anything out of those rubies, and that’s through a ‘fence.’ They’re no good to him unless he can cash in. He’ll try to get rid of some of them as soon as he can. How soon depends on how well he knows his way about. But he’s probably slick enough to have got a line on a blind uncle or two. All right! The police, of course, have passed the word down the line, but here’s where we put one over on the police. There’s some of the joints they don’t know—we know them all. Kane might get away from the police there—but he can’t get away from _us_ on that deal. I want every ‘fence’ in New York tipped off that he’s to stall on the job the minute he gets his lamps on a ruby that’s being shoved his way, and that instead of opening up to the police he’s to wise us up on the hop. That’s all for a starter—and now go to it!”

Red Vallon drew in his breath noisily, as though he were sucking at some luscious and juicy fruit.

“Some head, Bundy!” he applauded with undisguised admiration, as he pushed away his chair and stood up. “Sure, we’ll go to it! Karlin’s running the Merxler game to-night; but I’ll start this other thing bumping along on the high gear. What about the reports? Who’ll the boys make ’em to? You? Here?”

It was a moment before Billy Kane answered. It was the one thing he must have, the one thing upon which he was staking everything—an intimate knowledge of the result of every move made in this game that he had initiated, and, beyond that again, it was vital that he, and no one else should control each successive move. But Whitie Jack was gone for the night. In one way he deplored that fact, in another way he was relieved. If it was only imagination, if there was no one crouching there now on the other side of that secret door, Whitie Jack’s presence would not matter, but otherwise—his mind leaped to that other point—if Whitie Jack was not here to perform those very necessary introductions, and Red Vallon’s messengers came, messengers that he would be supposed to know but would not be able to recognize, it would spell almost certain disaster, and——

“There isn’t anything likely to break to-night, Red,” he said deliberately. “If there does you look after it; or if it’s anything very important you come here yourself. I want to get a night’s sleep if I can, I’m feeling pretty rocky. But I ought to be on my feet to-morrow, and in the morning you can swing the whole business over to me, and I’ll run it.”

“Attaboy!” said Red Vallon heartily. “See you in the morning, then.”

Karlin too had risen from his chair.

“Good-night, Bundy!” he said—and grinned. “I pay you the compliment of being the trickiest crook unhung!”

IX—BEHIND THE DOOR

The door closed behind the two men. Billy Kane lay motionless, save that, as they climbed to the street and their footsteps echoed back from the stairs, his hand, gripping his revolver, stole silently from his pocket. There was a grim whiteness around his set lips. His ears strained to catch the slightest sound from within the room, and strained to catch the last echo of those retreating footfalls. He dared not make a move until they were well away—out of earshot, say, of a revolver report. If it were fancy, if the movement of that door were only his imagination unhealthily stimulated, and unhealthily preying upon his nerves, he would at least put an end to it in short order now! The steps rang faintly back from the pavement, still more faintly, and were lost. And then Billy Kane spoke—a cold deadly monotony in his voice:

“Those boards are thin! Come out into the room with your hands up before I count three, or I’ll put a bullet through. One—two——”

There was a laugh, undisguised in its mockery, but low and musical. The door, bizarre and grotesque in its zigzag projections, due to its ingenious adherence to the natural joints in the wall boards, swung open wide, and a woman stood in the room.

“I was only waiting for your friends to go, Bundy,” she said coolly.

The revolver sagged a little in Billy Kane’s hand. He could not see her face very well, the single incandescent dangling from the ceiling was miserably inadequate, but dark eyes flashed at him out of an oval face, and the chin thrown up gave a glimpse of the contour of a full throat, ivory white—and all this was merged in the background of a slender figure clothed and cloaked in some dark material, unrelieved by a single vistage of color.

She spoke again.

“I don’t think you are quite as badly hurt as you pretend, Bundy,” she said, with a sort of icy composure. “You were out last night when I came here, and if you could prowl around the streets, I think perhaps you could manage now to get from the bed over to the door there and back again without doing yourself any serious injury. The door has been unlocked since Red Vallon went out, and it might be safer—locked.”

Billy Kane did not answer her. He got up, crossed to the door, locked it, and, returning, sat down on the edge of the bed. She had not moved from her position near the far end of the room. He became conscious that he was still holding his revolver in his hand, and he thrust the weapon quietly now into his pocket. A grim smile came and hovered on his lips. This complication, another of the ramifications of his stolen identity, he did not understand at all—except that it promised him no good. She was the author of last night’s note—she had just said as much—and the wording of that note was not reassuring as to her attitude toward him, nor was the mockery in her laugh, nor was the self-contained, almost contemptuous note of command with which she had just spoken. Who was she? What was she to the Rat, that she knew the secret of that underground tunnel, and the secret of that door?

He jerked his hand toward the chair Red Vallon had vacated.

“Sit down, won’t you?” There was a tingle of irony in his voice. His invitation was at least safe ground.

She came forward toward the table, a subtle, supple grace in her movements. Subconsciously he noted that she made no sound as she crossed the room. She was like a cat—but a very beautiful cat. He could see her face better now. The eyes were hard and unfriendly, but they were great, brown, steady eyes of unfathomable depths.

She leaned against the table.

“I prefer to stand.” There was a challenge in her tones. “What I have to say will not take long.”

Billy Kane waited. The initiative was with her. He meant it to remain so. Her small white hand, ungloved, clenched suddenly at her side until its knuckles stood out like little chalky knobs.

“You look sleeker about the face, clearer about the eyes—you beast!” There was a studied deliberation in her voice that gave the words the sting of a curling whip lash. “Perhaps you’ve been——”

“You were listening there at the door?” suggested Billy Kane imperturbably, as he reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

There was a mocking little lift to her shoulders.

“Of course! That is what I came for. I followed Red Vallon here. I supposed that you would meet at the old place, now that you are back; but since you are an invalid——” Again the shoulders lifted.

“I am afraid it hardly paid you for the trouble—to listen,” Billy Kane murmured caustically. “I’m sorry! I rather fancied I saw the door move, and you see, my illness has affected my voice, and at times I can scarcely speak above a whisper, otherwise you might have overheard——”

“I overheard enough!” She took a sudden step toward him. Her eyes were flashing now; there was a flush, angry red, mounting from the white throat, suffusing her cheeks. She raised her clenched hands. “You will die with insolence and bravado on your lips, I believe!” she cried out passionately. “How I _hate_ you! But I’ve got you—like _that_”—she flung out an arm toward him, and the small clenched hand opened and then closed again, slowly, as though in its grip it were remorselessly crushing and exterminating some abhorrent thing. And then her hand was raised again, and was brushed across her eyes, and a little quiver ran through her form, and she spoke more calmly. “I overheard enough. I thought this Merxler affair would be worked to-night, and I came to tell you that you are to stop it. I came to tell you to—_remember_! I promise, before God, that if there is murder done to-night you will be in the hands of the police within an hour. And it’s not very far from the Tombs to the death chair in Sing Sing—Bundy Morgan.”

Billy Kane’s eyes were hidden by drooped lids. His eyes were studying with curious abstraction the pattern of the faded, greasy, threadbare strip of carpet on the floor beside the bed. Murder! The word had come with a shock that for a moment unnerved him. He had not associated anything that Red Vallon or Karlin had said with murder. They had spoken so lightly, referred to it in so humdrum a way. Murder! There was something ghastly in that lightness now. A tightness came to his lips, a horror was creeping into his soul. He was only on the verge of things, of hidden and abominable things, here in this shadow land, this night land of skulking shapes, this sordid realm of the underworld. He pulled himself together. He was the Rat—he had a part to play. He was conscious that those brown, fearless eyes were fixed on him contemptuously.

“What have I to do with it?” he muttered sullenly.

“Do with it! _You!_” Her voice rose, as though suddenly out of control. “You dare ask that! You, with your devil’s brains—you, who planned it all before you went away!”

The cigarette that he had lighted had gone out. He sucked at it, circling it around his lips. He was fencing now with unbuttoned foils.

“Well, you’ve said it!” There was a snarl creeping into his voice. “I’ve been away. I don’t know what they’ve done since I’ve been away.”

“You know about the will, and the sealed envelope in Merxler’s safe, and you know the combination to the safe,” she said levelly. “And that’s all you need to know to stop this from going any further.”

He laughed out shortly.

“And suppose I don’t know the combination! You don’t think I can carry a thing like that in my head forever, do you?”

“No,” she said. She smiled curiously, and one hand slipped into the bodice of her dress. “I don’t think you ever did memorize that combination. But perhaps you will recognize it again—the original in your own handwriting.” She held up a crumpled piece of paper before him, then tossed it on the table.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded roughly.

Her shoulders lifted mockingly again.

“There are other secrets in this room besides that door and the tunnel to the shed, aren’t there—Bundy?”

He eyed her now for a long minute, biting openly at his lip, his face twisted in a well-simulated ugly scowl.

“So, I’m to queer this game, am I?” he snarled suddenly. “And if I’m caught—as a snitch—they’ll tear me to pieces!”

She leaned a little forward from the table, a tense, lithe thing, and her voice came low with passion:

“We’re wasting time—and you’ve none to lose. We’ve gone over this ground before, haven’t we? It’s the one chance you have—to save yourself. Some day you won’t be able to save yourself. Some day the reckoning will come; but you will always have the _hope_ that it won’t, and that you will always succeed in staving it off each time as you have in the past. But until that day does come the only chance you have for life is to pit your wits against the fiends like yourself that are around you. For what you have done there is no atonement—only punishment. I mean you to live in suspense, but even while that suspense lasts you will pull apart and unravel your devil’s work as fast as you knit it together. You have a chance that way! When the end comes and they get you, you know how the underworld will pay—but there is the chance—that is what holds you—and with the alternative—the police—there is no chance.”

She was breathing hard. She leaned back against the table, her hands gripped tightly at its edge.

For a moment there was silence in the room. Billy Kane’s mind was groping blindly now, as in some utter darkness. In some way, for there was no question of the genuineness of her self-assurance, her very presence here in seemingly placing herself in the Rat’s power proved that she held the Rat, and the Rat’s life and liberty in the hollow of her hand, at her beck and call. How? What was the secret of the power she possessed over him? He lighted a match nonchalantly, and, as he applied the flame to the half-burned cigarette he lifted his eyes to her through the blue haze of smoke that he blew negligently in her direction.

“Sometimes,” he said in a low, menacing tone, “people, even women, who grow troublesome, have been known in this neighborhood—to disappear.”

She laughed sharply.

“You have no time to waste in foolish words!” she warned him curtly. “You know the consequences of my—disappearance. You are at liberty to take those consequences any time you choose. But you do not like them, do you—Bundy?” She moved suddenly across the room, back to the secret door through which she had entered. “I am going now,” she said steadily. “If there is murder to-night, or if any part of that plan goes through—_remember!_”

X—THE PIECES OF A PUZZLE