BOOK III: PATHS OF THE UNDERWORLD

I--THE DOOR ON THE LANE

WAS that a shadow cast by the projection of the door porch out there across the street, or was it _more_ than a shadow? It was true that, to a remarkable degree, one's eyes became accustomed to the murk, almost akin to blackness, of the ill-lighted street; but the mind did not accommodate itself so readily--a long and sustained vigil, the brain spurred into abnormal activity and under tense strain, produced a mental quality of vision that detracted from, rather than augmented, the dependence to be placed upon the physical organs of sight. It peopled space with its own imaginations; it created, rather than descried. Dave Henderson shook his head in grim uncertainty. He could not be sure what it was out there. With the black background of the unlighted room behind him he could not be seen at the window by any one on the street, which was two stories below, and he had been watching here since it had grown dark. In that time he had seen a dozen shadows that he could have sworn were not shadows--and yet they were no more than that after all. He was only sure of one thing--that out there somewhere, perhaps nowhere within eye range of his window, perhaps even half a block away, but somewhere, some one was watching. He had been sure of that during every hour of his new-found freedom, since he had reached 'Frisco that noon. He had been sure of it intuitively; but he had failed signally to identify any one specifically as having dogged or followed him.

Freedom! He laughed a little harshly. There weren't any stone walls any more; this window in front of him wasn't grated, nor the door of the room steel-barred, nor out there in the corridor was there any uniformed guard--and so it was freedom.

The short, harsh laugh was on his lips again. Freedom! It was a curious freedom, then! He could walk at will out there in the streets--within limits. But he did not dare go yet to that shed where Mrs. Tooler's old pigeon-cote was. The money probably wasn't there anyhow--Millman almost certainly had won the first trick and had got away with it; but it was absolutely necessary that he should be sure.

He had freedom; but he had dared go nowhere to procure a steel jimmy, for instance, or a substitute for a steel jimmy, with which to force that shed door; nor had he dared to go anywhere and buy a revolver with which to arm himself, and of which he stood desperately in need. He had only a few dollars, but he knew where, under ordinary circumstances, he could obtain those things without any immediate outlay of money--only it was a moral certainty that every move he made was watched. If he procured, say, a chisel, if he procured, say, a revolver, he was not fool enough to imagine such facts would be hidden long from those who watched. They would be suspicious facts. It was his play now to create no suspicion. He could make no move until he had definitely and conclusively identified and placed those who were watching him; and then, with that point settled, it should not be very hard to throw the watchers off the track long enough to enable him to visit Mrs. Tooler's pigeon-cote, and, far more important, his one vital objective now, old Tony Lomazzi's friend--Capriano.

His jaws locked. He meant to force that issue tonight, even if he could not discriminate between shadows and realities out there through the window! He had a definite plan worked out in his mind--including a visit to Square John Kelly's. He hadn't been to Square John's yet. To have gone there immediately on reaching San Francisco would have been a fool play. It would have been, not only risky for himself, but risky for Square John; and he had to protect Square John from the searching and pertinent questions that would then have certainly ensued. He was going there to-night, casually, as simply to one of many similar places--that was part of his plan!

And now he smiled in mingled bitterness and menace. The underworld had complimented him once on being the possessor of potentialities that could make of him the slickest crook in the United States. He had not forgotten that. The underworld, or at least a section of it in the persons of Baldy Vickers and his gang, was leagued against him now, as well as the police. He would strive to merit the underworld's encomium!

He turned suddenly away from the window, walked in the darkness to the table in the center of the room, and, groping for his hat, made his way to the door. He had not expected much from this vigil at the window, but there had always been the possibility that it would be productive, and the earlier hours of the evening could have been employed in no better way. It was dark enough now to begin his night's work in earnest. It must be between half-past nine and ten o'clock.

There was a dim light in the corridor, but, dim though it was, it did not hide the ragged, threadbare state of the carpet on the hallway and stairs, nor the lack of paint, or even of soap and water, on doors and woodwork. Pelatt's Hotel made no pretentious claims. It was as shabby as the shabby quarter in which it was located, and as shabby as the shabby patrons to whom it catered. But there were not many places where a man with close-cropped hair and wearing black clothes of blatant prison cut could go, and he had known Pelatt in the old days, and Pelatt, in lieu of baggage, hadn't demanded any cash in advance--he had even advanced Dave Henderson a little cash himself.

Dave Henderson reached the ground floor, and gained the street through a small, dingy office that was for the moment deserted. He paused here for an instant, the temptation strong upon him to cross the street and plunge into those shadows at the side of that porch just opposite to him. His lips grew tight. The temptation was strong, almost overpoweringly strong. He would much rather fight that way!

And then he shrugged his shoulders, and started along the street. Since he had left the penitentiary, he had not given the slightest sign that he had even a suspicion he was being watched; and, more than ever, he could not afford to do so now. There were two who could play at the game of laying traps! And, besides, the chances were a thousand to one that there were nothing but shadows over there; and there were the same odds that some one who was not a shadow would see him make the tell-tale investigation. He could not afford to take a chance. He could not afford to fail now. He had to identify beyond question of doubt the man, or men, who were on his trail, if there were any; or, with equal certainty, establish it as a fact that he was letting what he called his intuition run away with him.

There came a grim smile to his lips, as he went along. Intuition wasn't all he had to guide him, was it? Barjan had not minced words in making it clear that he would be watched; and Bookie Skarvan had made an even more ominous threat! Who was it tonight, then--the police, or the underworld, or both?

He had given no sign that he had any suspicions. He had gone to Pelatt's openly; after that, in an apparently aimless way, as a man almost childishly interested in the most trivial things after five years of imprisonment, he had roamed about the streets that afternoon.

But his wanderings had not been entirely aimless! He had located Nicolo Capriano's house--and, strangely enough, his wanderings had quite inadvertently taken him past that house several times! It was in a shabby quarter of the city, too. Also, it was a curious sort of house; that is, it was a curious sort of house when compared with its neighbors. It was one of a row of frame houses in none too good repair, and it was the second house from the corner--the directory had supplied him with the street and number. The front of the house differed in no respect from those on each side of it; it was the rear that had particularly excited his attention. He had not been able to investigate it closely, of course, but it bordered on a lane, and by walking down the cross street one could see it. It had an extension built on that reached almost to the high fence at the edge of the lane, and the extension, weather-beaten in appearance, looked to be almost as old as the house itself. Not so very curious, after all, except that no other house had that extension--and except that, in view of the fact that one Nicolo Capriano lived there, it was at least suggestive. Its back entrance was extremely easy of access!

Dave Henderson turned abruptly in through the door of a saloon, and, leaning against the bar--well down at the far end where he could both see and be seen every time the door was opened--ordered a drink.

He had thought a good deal about Nicolo Capriano in the two months since old Tony Lomazzi had ended his life sentence. He hadn't “got” it all at the moment when the old bomb-thrower had died. It had been mostly old Tony himself who was in his thoughts then, and the reference to Capriano had seemed no more than just a kindly thought on old Tony's part for a friend who had no other friend on earth. But afterwards, and not many hours afterwards, it had all taken on a vastly different perspective. The full significance of Tony's words had come to him, and this in turn had stirred his memories of earlier days in San Francisco; and he remembered Nicolo Capriano.

The barkeeper slid a bottle and whisky glass toward him. Dave Henderson half turned his back to the street door, resting his elbow negligently on the bar. He waited for a moment until the barkeeper's attention was somewhat diverted, then his fingers cupped around the small glass, completely hiding it; and the bottle, as he raised it in the other hand, was hidden from the door by the broad of his back. He poured out a few drops--sufficient to rob the glass of its cleanness. The barkeeper looked around. Dave Henderson hastily set the bottle down, like a child caught in a misdemeanor, hastily raised the glass to his lips, threw back his head, and gulped. The barkeeper scowled. It was the trick of the saloon vulture--not only a full glass, but a little over for good measure, when, through practice, the forefinger and thumb became a sort of annex to the rim. Dave Henderson stared back in sullen defiance, set the glass down on the bar, drew the back of his hand across his lips--and went out.

He hesitated a moment outside the saloon, as though undecided which way to go next, while his eyes, under the brim of his slouch hat, which was pulled forward almost to the bridge of his nose, scanned both sides of the street and in both directions. He moved on again along the block.

Yes, he remembered Nicolo Capriano. Capriano must be a pretty old man now--as old as Tony Lomazzi.

There had been a great deal of talk about a gang of Italian black-handers in those days, when he, Dave Henderson, was a boy, and Capriano had been a sort of hero-bandit, he remembered; and there had been a mysterious society, and bomb-throwing, and a reign of terror carried on that had paralyzed the police. They had never been able to convict Nicolo Capriano, though it was common knowledge that the police believed him to be the brains and front of the organization. Always something, or some one, had stood between Capriano and prison bars--like Tony Lomazzi, for instance!

He did not remember Lomazzi's trial, nor the details of the particular crime for which Lomazzi was convicted; but that, perhaps, had put an end to the gang's work. Certainly, Capriano's activities were a thing of the past; it was all a matter of years ago. Capriano was never heard of now; but even if the man through force of circumstances, was obliged to live a retired existence, that in no way robbed him of his cleverness, nor made him less valuable as a prospective ally.

Capriano was the one man who could help him. Capriano must still possess underground channels that would be of incalculable value in aiding him to track Millman down.

His fists, hidden in the side pockets of his coat, clenched fiercely. That was it--Millman! There wasn't a chance but that Millman had taken the money from the pigeon-cote. He would see, of course, before many more hours; but there wasn't a chance. It was Millman he wanted now. The possibility that had occurred to him in prison of Millman being a stool-pigeon, or even one of the police, no longer held water, for if the money had been recovered it would be publicly known. It hadn't been recovered. Therefore, it was Millman he must find, and it was Nicolo Capriano's help he wanted. But he must protect Capriano. He would owe Capriano that--that it should not be known there was anything between Nicolo Capriano and Dave Henderson. Well, he was doing that now, wasn't he? Neither Square John Kelly nor Nicolo Capriano would in any way be placed under suspicion through his visits to them to-night!

The saloons appeared to be Dave Henderson's sole attraction in life now. He went from one to another, and he passed none by, and he went nowhere else--and he left a trail of barkeepers' scowls behind him. One drink in each place, with five fingers curled around the glass, hiding the few drops the glass actually contained, while it proclaimed to the barkeeper the gluttonous and greedy imposition of the professional bum, wore out his welcome as a customer; and if the resultant scowl from behind the bar was not suggestive enough, it was augmented by an uncompromising request to “beat it!” He appeared to be possessed of an earnest determination to make a night of it--and also of an equally earnest determination to get as much liquor for as little money as possible. And the record he left behind him bore unimpeachable testimony to that purpose!

He appeared to grow a little unsteady on his feet; he was even lurching quite noticeably when, an hour later, the lighted windows of Square John Kelly's Pacific Coral Saloon, his first real objective, flung an inviting ray across his path. He stood still here full in the light, both of the window and a street lamp, and shook his head in well-simulated grave and dubious inebriety. He began to fumble in his pockets. He fished out a dime from one, and a nickel from another--a further and still more industrious search apparently proved abortive. For a long time he appeared to be absorbed in a lugubrious contemplation of the two coins that lay in the palm of his hand--but under his hat brim his eyes marked a man in a brown peaked cap who was approaching the door of the saloon. This was the second time in the course of the last half hour--since he had begun to show signs that the whisky was getting the better of him--that he had seen the man in the brown peaked cap!

There were swinging wicker doors to the saloon, and the man pushed these open, and went in--but he did not go far. Dave Henderson's lips thinned grimly. The bottom of the swinging doors was a good foot and a half above the level of the sidewalk--but, being so far gone in liquor, he would hardly be expected to notice the fact that the man's boots remained visible, and that the man was standing there motionless!

Dave Henderson took the street lamp into his confidence.

“Ol' Kelly,” said Dave Henderson thickly. “Uster know Kelly--Square John. Gotta have money. Whatsh matter with touching Kelly? Eh--whatsh matter with that?”

He lurched toward the swinging doors. The boots retreated suddenly. He pushed his way through, and stood surveying the old-time familiar surroundings owlishly. The man with the brown cap was leaning against the bar close to the door; a half dozen others were ranged farther down along its length; and at its lower end, lounging against the wall of the little private office, was a squat, paunchy man with a bald head, and florid face, and keen gray eyes under enormously bushy gray eyebrows. It was Kelly, just as Kelly used to be--even to the massive gold watch chain stretched across the vest, with the massive gold fraternity emblem dangling down from the center.

“'Ello, Kelly!” Dave Henderson called out effusively, and made rapid, though somewhat erratic progress across the room to Kelly's side. “Glad t'see you, ol' boy!” He gave Kelly no chance to say anything. He caught Kelly's hand, and pumped it up and down. “Sure, you know me! Dave Henderson--ol' days at the track, eh? Been away on a vacation. Come back--broke.” His voice took on a drunkenly confidential tone--that could be heard everywhere in the saloon, “Shay, could I see you a minute in private?”

A man at the bar laughed. Dave Henderson wheeled belligerently. Kelly intervened.

Perplexity, mingling with surprise and disapproval, stamped Kelly's florid face.

“Yes, I know you well enough; but I didn't expect to see you like this, Dave!” he said shortly. He jerked his hand toward the door of the private office. “I'll talk to you in there.”

Dave Henderson entered the office.

Kelly shut the door behind them.

“You're drunk!” he said sternly.

Dave Henderson shook his head.

“No,” he said quietly. “I'm followed. Do you think I'm a fool, John? Did you ever see me drunk? They're shadowing me, that's all; and I had to get my money from you, and keep your skirts clean, and spot the shadow, all at the same time.”

Kelly's jaw sagged helplessly.

“Good God!” he ejaculated heavily. “Dave, I------”

“Don't let's talk, John--now,” Dave Henderson interrupted. “There isn't time. It won't do for me to stay in here too long. 'You've got my money ready, haven't you?”

Kelly nodded--still a little helplessly.

“Yes,” he said; “it's ready. I've been looking for you all afternoon. I knew you were coming out today.” He went over to a safe in the corner, opened it, took out a long envelope, and handed the envelope to Dave Henderson. “It's all there, Dave--and five years' interest, compounded. A little over four thousand dollars--four thousand and fifteen, as near as I could figure it. It's all in five-hundreds and hundreds, except the fifteen; I didn't think you'd want to pack a big wad.”

“Good old Square John!” said Dave Henderson softly. He opened the envelope, took out the fifteen dollars, shoved the large bills into his pocket, tucked a five-dollar bill into another pocket, and held out the remaining ten to Kelly. “Go out there and get me ten dollars from the cash register, John, will you?” he said. “Let them see you doing it. Get the idea? I'd like them to know you came across, and that I've got something to spend.”

Kelly's eyes puckered in an anxious way, as they scrutinized Dave Henderson's face; but the anxiety, it was obvious enough, was all for Dave Henderson.

“You mean there's some one out there now?” he asked, as he moved toward the door.

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson, with a grim little smile. “See if you know that fellow with the brown peaked cap up at the front end of the bar.”

Kelly was gone a matter of two or three minutes. He came back and returned the ten dollars to Dave Henderson.

“Know the man?” asked Dave Henderson.

“Yes,” said Kelly. “His name's Speen--he's a plain-clothesman.” He shook his head in a troubled way, and suddenly laid both hands on Dave Henderson's shoulders. “Dave, what are you going to do?”

Dave Henderson laughed shortly.

“Do you want to know?” He flung out the words in a sort of bitter gibe. “Well, I'll tell you--in confidence. I'm going to blow the head off a _friend_ of mine.”

Dave Henderson felt the hands on his shoulders tighten.

“What's the use, Dave?” said Square John Kelly quietly. “I suppose it has something to do with that Tydeman wad; but what's the use? You've got four thousand dollars. Why not start clean again? The other don't pay, Dave, and----” He stopped.

Dave Henderson's face had hardened like flint.

“There's a good deal you don't know,” he said evenly. “And I guess the less you know the safer you'll be. I owe you a lot, John; and the only way I can square it now is to tell you to stand from under. What you say, though I know you mean it, doesn't make any dint in five years of hell. I've got a debt to pay, and I'm going to pay it. Maybe I'll see you again--maybe I won't. But even a prison bird can say God bless you, and mean it; and that's what I say to you. They won't have any suspicions that there's anything of any kind between you and me; but they'll naturally come here to see if they can get any information, when that fellow Speen out there turns in his report. You can tell them you advised me to start clean again, and you can tell them that I swear I don't know where that hundred thousand dollars is. They won't believe it, and you don't believe it. But let it go at that! I don't know what's going to break loose, but you stand from under, John. I'm going now--to get acquainted with Mr. Speen. It wouldn't look just right, in my supposed condition, for you to let me have another drink in your place, after having staked me; but I've got to make at least a bluff at it. You stay here for a few minutes--and then come out and chase me home.” He held out his hand, wrung Square John Kelly's in a hard grip, turned abruptly away--and staggered out into the barroom.

Clutching his ten dollars in his hand, and glancing furtively back over his shoulder every step or two, Dave Henderson neared the door. Here, apparently reassured that his benefactor was not watching him, and apparently succumbing to an irresistible temptation, he sidled up to the bar--beside the man with the brown peaked cap.

“Kelly's all right--s'il right,” he confided thickly to the other. “Ol' friend. Never turns down ol' friend in hard luck. Square John--betcher life! Have a drink?”

“Sure!” said the man in the brown peaked cap.

The drink was ordered, and as Dave Henderson, talking garrulously, poured out his whisky--a genuine glassful this time--he caught sight, in the mirror behind the bar, and out of the corner of his eye, of Kelly advancing down the room from the private office. And as he lifted his glass, Kelly's hand, reaching from behind, caught the glass, and set it back on the bar.

“You promised me you'd go home, and cut this out!” said Kelly in sharp reproof. “Now, go on!” He turned on the detective. “Yes, and you, too! Get out of here! You ought to know better! The man's had enough! Haven't you got anything else to do than hang around bumming drinks? I know you, and I've a mind to report you! Get out!”

Dave Henderson slunk out through the door without protest. On the sidewalk the man with the brown peaked cap joined him.

“Kelly's sore.” Dave Henderson's tones were heavy with tolerant pity and magnanimous forgiveness. “Ol' friend--be all right to-morrow. Letsh go somewhere else for a drink. Whatsher shay?”

“Sure!” said the man in the brown peaked cap.

The detective was complacently agreeable to all suggestions. It was Dave Henderson who acted as guide; and he began a circuit of saloons in a direction that brought him sensibly nearer at each visit to the street and house occupied by one Nicolo Capriano. In the same block with Capriano's house he had noticed that there was also a saloon, and if Capriano's house had an exit on the lane, so, likewise, it was logical to presume, had the saloon. And that saloon now, barring intermediate stops, was his objective. But he was in no hurry. There was one point on which he had still to satisfy himself before he gave this man Speen the slip in that saloon and, by the lane, gained the rear door of Nicolo Capriano's house. He knew now that he was dealing with the police; but was Speen detailed _alone_ to the case, or did Speen have assistance at hand in the background--assistance enough, say, to have scared off any move on the part of Bookie Skarvan's and Baldy Vickers' gang, of whom, certainly, he had seen nothing as yet?

A half hour passed. Several saloons were visited. Dave Henderson no longer cupped his hand around his glass. Having had nothing to start with, he could drink frankly, and a shaky hand could be trusted to spill any over-generous portions. They became confidential. He confided to Speen what Speen already knew--that he, Dave Henderson, _was_ Dave Henderson, and just out from the penitentiary. Speen, stating that his name was Monahan, reciprocated with mendacious confidences that implied he was puritanical in neither his mode of life nor his means of livelihood--and began to throw out hints that he was not averse to a share in any game that Dave Henderson might have on hand.

Dave Henderson got along very badly now between the various oases that quenched his raging thirst. He leaned heavily on Speen, he stumbled frequently, and, in stumbling, obtained equally frequent views of both sides of the street behind him. No one seemed to be paying any attention to his companion or himself, and yet once or twice he had caught sight of skulking figures that, momentarily at least, had aroused his suspicions. But in this neighborhood there were many skulking figures! Again he could not be sure; but the saloon in Capriano's block was the next one ahead now, and certainly nothing had transpired that would seem to necessitate any change being made in his plans.

Speen, too, was feigning now a certain degree of intoxication. They reached the saloon, reeled through the door arm in arm, and ranged up alongside the bar.

Dave Henderson's eyes swept his surroundings, critical of every detail. It was an unpleasant and dirty place; and the few loungers, some seated at little tables, some hanging over the bar itself, were a hard and ugly looking lot.

The clientele, however, interested Dave Henderson very little--at the rear of the room, and but a few yards from the end of the bar, there was an open door, disclosing a short passage beyond, that interested him a great deal more! Beyond that passage was undoubtedly the back yard, and beyond that again was the lane. He had no desire to harm Speen, none whatever; but if any one of a dozen pretexts, that he might make to elude the man for the moment or two that was necessary to gain the yard unobserved, did not succeed, and Speen persisted in following him out there into the yard--well, so much the worse for Speen, that was all!

He was arguing now with Speen, each claiming the right to pay for the drink--but his mind was sifting through those dozen pretexts for the most plausible one to employ. He kept on arguing. Customers slouched in and out of the place; some sat down at the tables, some came to the bar. One, a hulk of a man, unshaven, with bull-breadth shoulders, with nose flattened over on one side of his cheek, stepped up to the bar beside Speen. Speen's back was turned, but the man grinned hospitably at Dave Henderson over Speen's shoulder, as he listened to the argument for a moment.

“Put away your money, son, an' have a drink with me,” he invited.

Speen turned.

The grin on the battered face of the newcomer faded instantly, as he stared with apparently sudden recognition into Speen's face; and a black, ugly scowl spread over the already unhandsome features.

“Oh, it's _you_, is it?” he said hoarsely, and licked his lips. “By God, you got a nerve to come down here--you have! You dirty police spy!”

Speen was evidently not easily stampeded. He eyed the other levelly.

“I guess you've got the wrong man, haven't you?” he returned coolly enough. “My name's Monahan, and I don't know you.”

“You lie!” snarled the other viciously. “Your name's Speen! And you don't know me--_don't you?_”

“No!” said Speen.

“You don't, eh?” The man thrust his face almost into Speen's. “You don't remember a year ago gettin' me six months on a fake plant, either, I suppose!”

“No!” said Speen.

“You don't, eh?” snarled the man again. “A hell of a bad memory you've got, ain't you? Well, I'll fix it for you so's you won't forget me so easy next time, and-----”

It came quick, without warning--before Dave Henderson could move. He saw a great, grimy fist whip forward to the point of Speen's jaw, and he caught a tiny reflected gleam of light from an ugly brass knuckleduster on one of the fingers of the clenched fist; and Speen's knees seemed to crumple up under him, and he went down in a heap to the floor.

Dave Henderson straightened up from the bar, a hard, grim smile twisting across his lips. It had been a brutal act. Speen might be a policeman, and Speen, lying there senseless, solved a certain little difficulty without further effort on his, Dave Henderson's, part; but the brutality of the act had him in its grip. There was a curious itching at his finger tips for a clutch that would maul this already battered bruiser's face beyond recognition. His eyes circled the room. The men at the tables had risen to their feet; some were pushing forward, and one, he saw over his shoulder, ran around the far end of the bar and disappeared. Speen lay inert, a huddled thing on the floor, a crimson stream spilling its way down over the man's white collar.

The twisted smile on Dave Henderson's lips deepened. The bruiser was watching him like a cat, and there was a leer on the other's face that seemed to possess some hidden significance. Well, perhaps he would change that leer, with whatever its significance might be, into something still more unhappy! He moved a few inches out from the bar. He wanted room for arm-play now, and----

The street door opened. Four or five men were crowding in. He caught a glimpse of a face among them that he knew--a little wizened face, crowned with flaming red hair--Runty Mott.

And then the lights went out.

Quick as a lightning flash Dave Henderson dropped to his hands and knees. There was a grunt above him, as though from the swing of a terrific blow that, meeting with no resistance, had over-reached itself in midair--then the forward lunge of a heavy body, a snarl, an oath, as the bruiser stumbled over Dave Henderson's crouched form--and then a crash, as Dave Henderson grappled, low down at the other's knees, and the man went to the floor. But the other, for all his weight and bulk, was lithe and agile, and his arms, flung out, circled and locked around Dave Henderson's neck.

The place was in pandemonium. Feet scuffled; chairs and tables toppled over in the darkness. Shouts, yells and curses made a din infernal. Dave Henderson wrenched and tore at the arms around his neck. He saw it all now--all. The police had trailed him; Baldy Vickers' gang had trailed the police. The bruiser was one of the gang. They had to get rid of the police, in the person of Speen, to cover their own trail again before they got him, Dave Henderson. And they, too, had thought him drunk, and an easy prey. With Speen unconscious from a quarrel that even Speen, when he recovered, would never connect with its real purpose, they meant to kidnap him, Dave Henderson, and get him away in the confusion without any of the innocent bystanders in the place knowing what was going on. That was why the lights had gone off--that man he had seen running around the upper end of the room--he remembered now--the man had come in just behind the bruiser--that accounted for the lights--they wouldn't dare shoot--he had that advantage--dead, he wasn't any good to them--they wanted that--hundred--thousand--dollars.

He was choking. Instead of arms, steel fingers had sunk into his throat. He lunged out with all his strength. His fist met something that, though it yielded slightly, brought a brutal twinge of pain across his knuckles. His fist shot out again, whipped to its mark with everything that was in him behind the blow; and it was the bruiser's face he hit. He hit it again, and, over the mad fury that was upon him, he knew an unholy joy as his blows crashed home.

The steel fingers around his throat relaxed and fell away. He staggered to his feet.

A voice from somewhere close at hand spoke hoarsely:

“Scrag him, Mugsy! See that he's knocked cold before we carry him out!”

There was no answer from the floor.

Dave Henderson's lips were no longer twisted in a smile, they were thinned and straight; he knew why there was no answer from the floor! He crouched, gathering himself for a spring. Dark, shadowy forms were crowding in around him. There was only one chance--the door now, the rear door, and the lane! Voices growled and cursed, seemingly almost in his ears. They had him hemmed against the bar without knowing it, as they clustered around the spot where they expected he was being strangled into unconsciousness on the floor.

“Mugsy, d'ye hear! Damn you, d'ye hear! Why don't you----”

Dave Henderson launched himself forward. A wild yell went up. Hands clutched at him, and tore at his clothing, and struck at his face; forms flung themselves at his shoulders, and clung around his legs. He shook them off--and gained a few yards. He was fighting like a madman now--and now the darkness was in his favor.

They came on again in a blind rush. The door could not be far away! He stumbled over one of the small tables, recovered himself, and, snatching up the table, whirled it by one of its legs in a sweep around his head. There was a smash of impact that almost knocked the table from his grasp--and, coincidentally, a scream of pain. It cleared a space about him. He swung again, whirling the table around and around his head, gaining impetus--and suddenly sent it catapulting from him full into the shadowy forms in front of him, and, turning, made a dash for the end of the room.

He reached the wall, and groped along it for the door. The door! Where was it? He felt the warm, blood trickling down over his face. He did not remember when that had happened! He could not see--but they would turn on the lights surely now in an instant if they were not fools--and he must find the door first or he was trapped--that was his only chance--the place was a bedlam of hideous riot--curse the blood, it seemed to be running into his eyes now--Runty Mott--if only he could have settled with the skulking----

His fingers touched and felt around the jamb of the open door--and he surged, panting, through the doorway. The short passage ended in another door. He opened this, found the yard in front of him, dashed across it, and hurled himself over the fence into the lane.

The uproar, the yells, the furious shouts from behind him seemed suddenly to increase in volume. He ran the faster. They had turned the lights on--and found him gone! From somewhere in the direction of the street there came the shrill cheep-cheep of a patrolman's whistle. Yes, he quite understood that, too--there would be a riot call pulled in a minute, but that made little difference to him. It was the gangsters, who were now probably pouring out of the saloon's back door in pursuit of him, with whom he had to reckon. But he should be safe now--he was abreast of Capriano's house, which he could distinguish even in the darkness because the extension stuck out like some great, black looming shadow from the row of other houses.

There was a gate here somewhere, or a door in the fence, undoubtedly; but he had no time to hunt for gate or door, perhaps only to find it locked! The fence was quicker and easier. He swung himself up, and over--and, scarcely a yard away, found himself confronted with what looked like an enclosed porch or vestibule to the Italian's back door.

He was quick now, but equally silent in his movements. From the direction of the saloon, shouts reached him, the voices no longer muffled, but as though they were out in the open--in the back yard of the saloon perhaps, or perhaps by now in the lane itself. He stepped inside the porch, and knocked softly on the door. He knocked again and again. It seemed as though the seconds dragged themselves out into immeasureable periods of time. He swept the blood out of his eyes once more, and, his ears strained laneward, continued to knock insistently, louder and louder.

A light footstep, hurried, sounded from within. It halted on the other side of the closed door. He had a feeling that somehow, even through that closed door, and even in the darkness, he was under inspection. The next instant he was sure of it. Above his head a small incandescent bulb suddenly flooded the porch with light, and fell full upon him as he stood there, a ghastly object, he realized, with blood-stained face, and torn and dishevelled clothes.

From behind the closed door came a girl's startled gasp of dismay and alarm; from up the lane now unmistakably came the pound of racing feet.

“Quick!” whispered Dave Henderson hoarsely. “I'm from Tony Lomazzi. For God's sake, put out that light!”

II--SANCTUARY

THE light in the porch went out. From within, as though with slow, dubious hesitation, a key turned in the lock. The door opened slightly, and from a dark interior the girl's voice reached Dave Henderson again.

“Tony Lomazzi sent you, you say!” she exclaimed in a puzzled way; and then, a sudden apprehension in her voice: “You are all covered with blood--what is the matter? What do you want?”

From the lane, the sound of pounding, racing feet seemed almost opposite the Italian's porch now. Dave Henderson, without ceremony, pushed at the door. It yielded, as the girl evidently retreated backward abruptly, and he stepped inside, closed the door softly behind him, and, feeling for the key, turned it swiftly in the lock. He could see nothing, but out of the darkness near him came a sharp, quick-drawn intake of breath.

“I'm sorry!” said Dave Henderson quietly. “But it was a bit of a close call. I'm not quite sure whether they are running after me, or running from the police, but, either way, it would have been a little awkward if I had been seen.”

She seemed to have regained her composure, for her voice, as she spoke again, was as quiet and as evenly modulated as his own.

“What do you want?” she asked once more. “Why did Tony Lomazzi send you here?”

He did not answer at once. From somewhere in the front of the house, muffled, but still quite audible, there came the voices of two men--one high-pitched, querulous, curiously short-breathed, the other with a sort of monotonous, sullen whine in it. He listened automatically for an instant, as his eyes searched around him. It was almost black inside here as he stood with his back to the door, but, grown more accustomed to the darkness now, he could make out a faint, blurred form, obviously that of the girl, a few feet away from him.

“I want to see Nicolo Capriano,” he said.

It was her turn now to pause before she answered.

“Is it necessary?” she asked finally.

“To me--yes,” said Dave Henderson.

“My father has already had far too much excitement to-night,” she said in a low voice. “He is a very sick man. There is some one with him now. If you could give me the message it would be better. As for any help you need, for you appear to be hurt, I will gladly attend to that myself. You may be assured of that, if you come from Tony Lomazzi.”

She was Nicolo Capriano's daughter, then! It struck him as a passing thought, though of no particular consequence, that she spoke excellent English for an Italian girl.

“I'm afraid that won't do,” said Dave Henderson seriously. “It is practically a matter of life and death to me to see Nicolo Capriano, and----”

From the front of the house the querulous voice rose suddenly in a still higher pitch:

“Teresa! Teresa!”

“Yes, I am coming!” the girl cried out; and then, hurriedly, to Dave Henderson: “Wait here a moment. I will tell him. What is your name?”

Dave Henderson smiled a little queerly in the darkness.

“If he is alone when you tell him, it is Dave Henderson,” he said dryly. “Otherwise, it is Smith--John Smith.”

She was gone.

He listened as her footsteps died away in the darkness; and then he listened again at the door. There was still a great deal of commotion out there in the lane, but certainly there was nothing to indicate that he and Nicolo Capriano's back porch had in any way been suspected of having had anything in common; it was, rather, as though the entire saloon up there had emptied itself in haste into the lane, and was running pell-mell in an effort to be anywhere but in that vicinity when the police arrived. Well, so much the better! For the moment, at least, he had evaded the trap set for him both by Bookie Skarvan's pack and by the police--and the next move depended very largely upon Nicolo Capriano, or, perhaps even more, upon this daughter of his, since the old man, it seemed, was sick. The girl's name was apparently Teresa--which mattered very little. What mattered a great deal more was that she evidently had her wits about her--an inheritance possibly from the old man, whose reputation, in his day, as one of the coolest and shrewdest of those outside the pale of the law, was at least substantiated by the fact that he had been able to stand off the police for practically a lifetime.

Dave Henderson raised his hand, and felt gingerly over his right temple. The blood had stopped flowing, but there was a large and well-defined lump there. He did not remember at just what particular stage of the fight that had happened. From his head, his hand felt over his clothing. He nodded a little ruefully to himself. He had come off far from scathless--his coat had almost literally been torn from his back.

Voices reached him again from the front of the house; he heard the girl speaking quietly in Italian; he heard some response in the sullen whine that he had remarked before; and then the street door opened and closed. There was silence then for what seemed a long time, until finally he caught the sound of the girl's step coming toward him again.

“My father will see you,” she said. “But I want to warn you again that he is a very sick man--sicker than he imagines he is. It is his heart.”

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson.

“Come with me, then,” she said tersely. “There is a door here--the passage turns to the right. Can you see?”

It was a queer place--with its darkness, and its twisted passage! Quite queer for so small and ordinary a dwelling--but, if rumor were true, it had been queerer still in the years gone by! A grim smile crossed Dave Henderson's lips, as he followed the shadowy form of his conductor. It augured well, at all events! The surroundings at least bore out Nicolo Capriano's record, which was a record much to be desired by a man in his, Dave Henderson's, straits.

The light from an open door beyond the turn in the passage dispelled the darkness. The girl was standing there now, motioning him to enter--but suddenly, for a moment, he stood and stared at her. This was queer, too! Everything about the place was queer! Somehow he had pictured in the darkness an Italian girl, pretty enough perhaps in a purely physical way, with gold rings in her ears, perhaps, such as the men wore, and slatternly, with feet shod in coarse, thick boots; the only kind of an Italian girl he had ever remembered having seen--a girl that hauled at the straps of a hand-organ, while the man plodded along the streets between the shafts. She wasn't like that, though--and he stared at her; stared at the trim, lithe, daintily dressed little figure, stared at the oval face, and the dark, steady, self-reliant eyes, and the wealth of rich, black hair that crowned the broad, white forehead, and glinted like silken strands, as the light fell upon it.

The color mounted in her cheeks.

And then, with a start, he pushed his hand across his eyes, and bit his lips, and flushed a deeper red than hers.

Her eyes, that had begun to harden as they met his gaze, softened in an instant, and she smiled. His confusion had been his apology, his acquittal of any intended offense.

She motioned again to him to enter, and, as he stepped forward across the threshold, she reached in and rested her hand on the doorknob.

“You can call when you need me, father,” she said---and closed the door softly.

Dave Henderson's eyes swept the room with a swift, comprehensive glance; and then held steadily on a pair of jet-black eyes, so black that they seemed to possess no pupils, which were in turn fixed on him by a strange-looking figure, lying on a quaint, old-fashioned, four-poster bed across the room. He moved forward and took a chair at the bedside, as the other beckoned to him.

So this was Nicolo Capriano! The man was propped upright in bed by means of pillows that were supported by an inverted chair behind them; both hands, very white, very blue under the nails of the long, slender fingers, lay out-stretched before him on an immaculately white coverlet; the man's hair was silver, and a white beard and mustache but partially disguised the thin, emaciated condition of his face. But it was the eyes that above all else commanded attention. They were unnaturally bright, gleaming out from under enormously white, bushy eyebrows; and they were curiously inscrutable eyes. They seemed to hold great depths beneath which might smolder a passion that would leap without warning into flame; or to hold, as they did now, a strange introspective stare, making them like shuttered windows that gave no glimpse of the mind within.

“I am Nicolo Capriano,” said the man abruptly, and in perfect English. “My daughter tells me that you gave your name as Dave Henderson. The name seems familiar. I have heard it somewhere. I remember, it seems to me, a little matter of one hundred thousand dollars some five years ago, for which a man by that name went to the penitentiary.”

Dave Henderson's eyes wandered for a moment around the room again. He found himself wondering at the man's English--as he had at the girl's. Subconsciously he was aware that the furnishings, though plain and simple and lacking in anything ornate, were foreign and unusual, but that the outstanding feature of the room was a sort of refreshing and immaculate cleanliness--like the coverlet. He forced his mind back to what Nicolo Capriano had said.

Were all his cards to go face up on the table for Nicolo Capriano to see?

He had intended to make no more of a confidant of the other than was absolutely necessary; but, equally, he had not expected to find in Nicolo Capriano a physically helpless and bed-ridden man. It made a difference--a very great difference! If Millman, for instance, had been bed-ridden, it---- He caught himself smiling a little mirthlessly.

“That's me--Dave Henderson,” he said calmly.

The old Italian nodded his head.

“And the hundred thousand dollars has never been recovered,” he observed shrewdly. “The police are interested in your movements, eh? It is for that reason you have come to me, is it not so? And Tony Lomazzi foresaw all this--and he sent you here?”

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson--and frowned suddenly. It was bothering him again--the fact that this Italian and his daughter should speak English as though it were their own tongue.

Nicolo Capriano nodded his head again. And then, astutely:

“Something is disturbing you, my young friend,” he said. “What is it?”

Dave Henderson straightened in his chair with a little start--and laughed shortly. Very little, evidently, escaped Nicolo Capriano!

“It's not much,” he said. “Just that you and your daughter speak pretty good English for Italians.”

Nicolo Capriano smiled softly.

“I should speak pretty good English,” he said; “and Teresa should speak it even better. We both learned it as children. I, in a certain part of London, as a boy; and Teresa here in San Francisco, where she was born. Her mother was American, and, though I taught Teresa Italian, we always spoke English while her mother was alive, and afterwards my daughter seemed to think we should continue to do so.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But you came from Lomazzi,” he prompted. “Tell me about Lomazzi. He is well?”

“He is dead,” said Dave Henderson quietly.

The thin hands, outstretched before the other, closed with a quick twitching motion--then opened, and the fingers began to pluck abstractedly at the coverlet. There was no other sign of emotion, or movement from the figure on the bed, except that the keen, black eyes were veiled now by half closed lids.

“He died--fifteen years ago--when he went up there--for life”--the man seemed to be communing with himself. “Yes, yes; he is dead--he has been dead for fifteen years.” He looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes with a sharp, curiously appraising gaze on Dave Henderson. “You speak of actual death, of course,” he said, in a low tone. “Do you know anything of the circumstances?”

“It was two months ago,” Dave Henderson answered. “He was taken ill one night. His cell was next to mine. He was my friend. He asked for me, and the warden let me go to him. He died in a very few minutes. It was then, while I was in the cell, that he whispered to me that I would need help when I got out, and he told me to come to you, and to say that he sent me.”

“And to the warden, and whoever else was in the cell, he said--nothing?”

“Nothing,” said Dave Henderson.

Nicolo Capriano's eyes were hidden again; the long, slim fingers, with blue-tipped nails, plucked at the coverlet. It was a full minute before he spoke.

“I owe Tony Lomazzi a great debt,” he said slowly; “and I would like to repay it in a little way by helping you since he has asked it; but it is not to-day, young man, as it was in those days so long ago. For fifteen years I have not lifted my hand against the police. And it is obviously for help from the police that you come to me. You have served your term, and the police would not molest you further except for a good reason. Is it not so? And the reason is not far to seek, I think. It is the money which was never recovered that they are after. You have it hidden somewhere. You know where it is, and you wish to outwit the police while you secure it. Am I not right?”

Dave Henderson glanced at the impassive face propped up on the pillows. Old Nicolo Capriano in no way belied his reputation for shrewdness; the man's brain, however physically ill he might be otherwise, had at least not lost its cunning.

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson, with a short, sudden laugh, “you are right--but also you are wrong. It is the police that I want to get away from, and it is on account of that money, which, it is also true, I hid away before I went up; but it is not only the police, it is the gang of crooks who put me in wrong at the trial who are trying to grab it, too--only, as it stands now, I don't know where the money is myself. I trusted a fellow in the jug, who got out two months ahead of me--and he did me.”

The white bushy eyebrows went up.

“So!” ejaculated the old Italian. “Well, then, what is the use!”

“A whole lot!” returned Dave Henderson grimly. “To get the fellow if I can! And I can't do that with the police, and a gang of crooks besides, at my heels, can I?”

Nicolo Capriano shook his head meditatively.

“I have my daughter to think of,” he said. “Listen, young man, it has not been easy to stand square with the police during these years as it is, and that without any initiative act on my part that would stir them up against me again. Old associations and old records are not so easily got rid of. I will give you an example. There was a man here to-night--when you came. His name is Ignace Ferroni. He was one of us in the old days--do you understand? When the trouble came for which Tony Lomazzi suffered, Ignace managed to get away. I had not seen him from that day to this. He came back here to-night for help--for a very strange kind of help. He was one of us, I have said, and he had not forgotten his old ways. He had a bomb, a small bomb in his pocket, whose mechanism had gone wrong. He had already planted it once to-night, and finding it did not explode, he picked it up again, and brought it to me, and asked me to fix it for him. It was an old feud he had with some one, he would not tell me who, that he had been nursing all this time. I think his passion for vengeance had perhaps turned his head a little. I refused to have anything to do with his bomb, of course, and he left here in a rage, and in his condition he is as likely to turn on me as he is to carry out his original intention. But, that apart, what am I to do now? He was one of us, I cannot expose him to the police--he would be sentenced to a long term. And yet, if his bomb explodes, to whom will the police come first? To me!” Nicolo Capriano suddenly raised his hands, and they were clenched--and as suddenly caught his breath, and choked, and a spasm of pain crossed his face. The next instant he was smiling mirthlessly with twitching lips. “Yes, to me--to me, whom some fool amongst them once called the Dago Bomb King, which they will never forget! It is always to me they come! Any crime that seems to have the slightest Italian tinge--and they come to Nicolo Capriano!” He shrugged his shoulders. “You see, young man, it is not easy for me to steer my way unmolested even when I am wholly innocent. But I, too, do not forget! I do not forget Tony Lomazzi! Tell me exactly what you want me to do. You think you can find the man and the money if you can throw the police and the others off your trail?”

“Yes!” said Dave Henderson, with ominous quiet. “That's my job in life now! If I could disappear for three or four days, I guess that's all the start I'd need.” There was a tolerant smile now on the old bomb king's lips.

“Three or four days would be a very easy matter,” he answered. “But after that--what? It might do very well in respect to this gang of crooks; but it would be of very little avail where the police are concerned, for they would simply do what the crooks could not do--see that every plain-clothesman and officer on this continent was on the watch for you. Do you imagine that, believing you know where the money is, the police will forget all about you in three or four days?”

“No,” admitted Dave Henderson, with the same ominous quiet; “but all I ask is a fighting chance.” Nicolo Capriano stared in speculative silence for a moment.

“You have courage, my young friend!” he said softly. “I like that--also I do not like the police. But three or four days!” He shook his head. “You do not know the police as I know them! And this man you trusted, and who, as I understand, got away with the money, do you know where to find him?”

“I think he is in New York,” Dave Henderson answered.

“Ah! New York!” Nicolo Capriano nodded. “But New York is a world in itself. He did not give you his address, and then rob you, I suppose!”

Dave Henderson did not answer for a moment. What Nicolo Capriano said was very true! But the rendezvous that Millman had given was, on the face of it, a fake anyhow. That had been his own opinion from the start; but during the two years Millman and he had been together in prison there had been many little inadvertent remarks in conversation that had, beyond question of doubt, stamped Millman as a New Yorker. Perhaps Millman had remembered that when he had given the rendezvous in New York--to give color to its genuineness--because it was the only natural place he could propose if he was to carry out logically the stories he had told for two long years.

“You do not answer?” suggested Nicolo Capriano patiently.

It was on Dave Henderson's tongue to lay the whole story bare to the date, day and hour of that hotel rendezvous, but instead he shook his head. He was conscious of no distrust of the other. Why should he be distrustful! It was not that. It seemed more an innate caution, that was an absurd caution now because the rendezvous meant nothing anyhow, that had sprung up spontaneously within him. He felt that he was suddenly illogical. Fie found himself answering in a savage, dogged sort of way.

“That's all right!” he said. “I haven't got his address--but New York is good enough. He spilled too much in prison for me not to know that's where he hangs out. I'll get him--if I can only shake the police.”

Nicolo Capriano's blue-tipped fingers went straggling through the long white beard.

“The police!” He was whispering--seemingly to himself. “It is always the police--a lifetime of the cursed police--and I have my daughter to think of--but I do not forget Tony Lomazzi--Teresa would not have me forget.” He spoke abruptly to Dave Henderson. “Tell me about to-night. My daughter says you came here like a hunted thing, and it is very evident that you have been in a fight. I suppose it was with the police, or with this gang you speak of; but, in that case, you have ruined any chance of help from me if you have led them here--if, for instance, they are waiting now for you to come out again.”

“I do not think they are waiting!” said Dave Henderson, with a twisted smile. “And I think that the police end of to-night, and maybe some of the rest of it as well, is in the hospital by now! It's not much of a story--but unless that light in your back porch, which was on for about two seconds, could be seen up the lane, there's no one could know that I am here.”

The old Italian smiled curiously.

“I do not put lights where they act as beacons,” he said whimsically. “It does not show from the lane; it is for the benefit of those _inside_ the house. Tell me your story.”

“It's not much,” said Dave Henderson again. “The police shadowed me from the minute I left the penitentiary to-day. To-night I handed them a little come-on, that's all, so as to make sure that I had side-tracked them before coming here. And then the gang, Baldy Vickers' gang----”

“Vickers--Baldy Vickers! Yes, yes, I know; they hang out at Jake Morrissey's place!” exclaimed the old bomb king suddenly. “Runty Mott, and----”

“It was Runty Mott that butted in to-night,” said Dave Henderson, with a short laugh. “I had the fly-cop going, all right. I let him pick me up in a saloon over the bar. He thought I was pretty drunk even then. We started in to make a night of it--and the fly-cop was going to get a drunken man to spill all the history of his life, and incidentally get him to lead the way to where a certain little sum of money was! Understand? I kept heading in this direction, for I had looked the lay of the land over this afternoon. That saloon up the street was booked as my last stopping place. I was going to shake the fly-cop there, and----” Dave Henderson paused.

Nicolo Capriano was leaning forward in his bed, and there was a new, feverish light in the coal-black eyes--like some long-smoldering flame leaping suddenly into a blaze.

“Go on!” he breathed impatiently. “Go on! Ah! I can see it all!”

“Runty Mott and his crowd must have been trailing me.” Dave Henderson smiled grimly. “They thought both the fly-cop and myself were drunk. But to cover their own game and make their play at me they had to get the fly-cop out of the road first. One of the gang came into the saloon, faked a quarrel with the fly-cop, and knocked him out. I didn't know what was up until then, when I caught sight of Runty Mott and the rest of his crowd pushing in through the door.” Dave Henderson's smile grew a little grimmer. “That's all! They started something--but they didn't finish it! They had it all framed up well enough--the lights switched off, and all that, so as to lay me out and kidnap me, and then stow me away somewhere and make me talk.” He jerked his hand toward his torn garments. “There was a bit of a fight,” he said quietly. “I left them there pawing the air in the dark, and I was down here in your porch before any of them got out to the lane. I fancy there's some little row up there now on account of that fly-cop they put to sleep.”

Nicolo Capriano's hand reached out, and began to pat excitedly at Dave Henderson's sleeve.

“It is like the old days!” he said feverishly. “It is like the young blood warming up an old man's veins again. Yes, yes; it is like the old days back once more! Ah, my young friend, if I had had you on the night that Tony Lomazzi was trapped, instead of--but that is too late, eh? Yes--too late! But you are clever, and you use your head, and you have the courage. That is what I like! Yes, assuredly, I will help you, and not only for Tony Lomazzi's sake, but for your own. You shall have your chance, your fighting chance, my young friend, and you will run down your man”--his voice was rising in excitement--“and the money--eh! Yes, yes! And Nicolo Capriano will help you!” He raised his voice still higher. “Teresa! Here, Teresa!” he shouted.

The door opened; the girl stood on the threshold.

“Father,” she said reprovingly, “you are exciting yourself again.”

The old bomb king's voice was instantly subdued.

“No, I am not! You see--my little one! You see, I am quite calm. And now listen to me. This is Tony Lomazzi's friend, and he is therefore our friend. Is it not so? Well, then, listen! He is in need of help. The police must not get him. So, first, he must have some clothes instead of those torn ones. Get him some of mine. They will not fit very well--but they will do. Then you will telephone Emmanuel that I have a guest for him who does not like the police, a guest by the name of Smith--that is enough for him to know. And tell Emmanuel that he is to come with his car, and wait a block below the lane. And after that again you will go out, Teresa, and let us know if all is safe, and if there is still any police, or any one else, in the lane. Eh? Well, run then!”

“Yes,” she said. She was looking at Dave Henderson now, and there was a friendly smile in the dark, steady eyes, though she still addressed her father. “And what news does he bring us of Tony?”

“You will know by and by, when there is time,” her father answered with sudden brusqueness. “Run, now!”

She was back in a few moments with an armful of clothes; then once more left the room, this time closing the door behind her.

Nicolo Capriano pointed to a second door at the side of the room.

“There is the bathroom, my young friend,” he said crisply. “Go in there and wash the blood off your face, and change your clothes.”

Dave Henderson hesitated.

“Do you think it is safe for her, for your daughter, to go out there?” he demurred. “There was more of a row than perhaps I led you to imagine, and the police----”

“Safe!” The old Italian grinned suddenly in derision. “Listen, my young friend, you need have no fear. My daughter is a Capriano--eh? Yes, and like her father, she is more than a match for all the police in San Francisco. Go now, and change! It will not take Emmanuel long to get here.”

It took Dave Henderson perhaps ten minutes to wash and bathe his bruises, and change into the Italian's clothes. At the expiration of that time, he surveyed the result in a small mirror that hung on the wall. The clothes were ready-made, and far from new; they were ill-fitting, and they bulged badly in places. His appearance was not flattering! He might have passed for an Italian navvy in hard luck and---- He smiled queerly, as he turned from the mirror and transferred the money he had received from Square John Kelly, together with his few belongings, from the pockets of his discarded suit to those of the one he now had on. He stepped out into the bedroom.

Nicolo Capriano in turn surveyed the metamorphosis critically for a moment--and nodded his head in approval.

“Good!” ejaculated the old bomb king. “Excellent!” He rubbed his thin fingers together. “Yes, yes, it is like the old days again! Ha, ha, old Nicolo still plays a hand in the game, and old Nicolo's head is still on his shoulders. Three or four days! That would be easy even for a child! Emmanuel will take care of that. But we must do better than that--eh? And that is not so simple! To hide away from the police is one thing, and to outwit them completely is another! Is it not so? You must give the old man, whose brain has grown rusty because it has been so long idle, time to think, eh? It will do you no good if you always have to hide--eh? But, listen, you will hide while old Nicolo thinks--you understand? You can trust Emmanuel--but tell him nothing. He keeps a little restaurant, and he will give you a room upstairs. You must not leave that room, you must not show yourself, until you hear from me. You quite understand?”

“You need not worry on that score!” said Dave Henderson grimly.

“Good!” cried the old Italian again. “Only my daughter and myself will know that you are there. You can leave it to old Nicolo to find a way. Yes, yes”--excitement was growing upon the man again; he rocked his body to and fro--“old Nicolo and the police--ha, ha! Old Nicolo, who is dying in his bed--eh? And----” His voice was hushed abruptly; he lowered himself back on his pillows. “Here is Teresa!” he whispered. “She will say I am exciting myself again. Bah! I am strong again with the old wine in my veins!” His hands lay suddenly quiet and composed on the coverlet before him, as the door opened, and the girl stood again on the threshold. “Well, my little one?” he purred.

“Emmanuel has come,” she said. “There are some police up in Vinetto's saloon, but there is no one in the lane. It is quite safe.”

Nicolo Capriano nodded.

“And Emmanuel understands?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Go, then!” The old Italian was holding out his hand to Dave Henderson. “Go at once! My daughter will take you to Emmanuel.”

Dave Henderson caught the other's hand.

“Yes, but look here,” he said, a sudden huskiness in his voice, “I----”

“You want to thank me--eh?” said the old bomb king, shaking his head. “Well, my young friend, there will be time enough for that. You will see me again--eh? Yes! When old Nicolo sends for you, you will come. Until then--you will remember! Do not move from your room! Now, go!”

Teresa spoke from the doorway.

“Yes, hurry, please!” she said quietly. “The lane was empty a few minutes ago, but----” She shrugged her shoulders significantly.

Dave Henderson, with a final nod to the propped-up figure in the bed, turned and followed Teresa along the passage, and out into the porch. Here she bade him wait while she went out again into the lane; but in a minute more she called out to him in a whisper to join her.

They passed out of the lane, and into the cross street. A little ahead of them, Dave Henderson could see a small car, its hood up, standing by the curb.

She stopped suddenly.

“Emmanuel has seen me,” she said. “That is all that is necessary to identify you.” She held out her hand. “I--I hope you will get out of your danger safely.”

“If I do,” said Dave Henderson fervently, “I'll have you and your father to thank for it.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “You will have to thank Tony Lomazzi.”

He wanted to say something to detain her there for a moment or two longer, even under those most unauspicious of circumstances--but five years of prison had not made him glib of tongue, or quick of speech. She was very pretty--but it was not her prettiness alone that made her appeal. There was something of winsomeness about the lithe, graceful little figure, and something to admire in the quiet self-reliance, and the cool composure with which, for instance, she had just accepted the danger of possible, and decidedly unpleasant, interference by the police in the lane.

“But I can't thank Tony Lomazzi, since he is dead,” he blurted out--and the next instant cursed himself for a raw-tongued, blundering fool. In the rays of the street lamp a little way off, he saw her face go deathly white. Her hand that was in his closed with a quick, involuntary clutch, and fell away--and there came a little moan of pain.

“Dead!” she said. “Tony--dead!” And then she seemed to draw her little form erect--and smiled--but the great dark eyes were wet and full of tears.

“I----” Her voice broke. “Good-night!” she said hurriedly--and turned abruptly away.

He watched her, gnawing viciously at his lip, cursing at himself again for a blundering fool, until she disappeared in the lane; and then he, too, turned, and walked to the waiting car.

A man in the driver's seat reached out and opened the door of the tonneau.

“Me Emmanuel,” he said complacently, in broken English. “You no give-a da damn tor da police anymore. I gotta da room where you hide--safe. See? Over da restaurant. You eat, you sleep, you give-a da cops da laugh.”

Dave Henderson stepped into the car. His mind was in a chaotic whirl. A thousand diverse things seemed struggling for supremacy--the police and Runty Mott--Millman--Capriano, the queer, sick Capriano--the girl, the girl with the wondrous face, who cried because Tony Lomazzi was dead--a thousand things impinging in lightning flashes that made a vortex of his brain. They found expression in a sort of debonair facetiousness.

“Some boy, Emmanuel!” he said--and flung himself down on the seat. “Go to it!”

III--NICOLO CAPRIANO PLAYS HIS CARDS

NICOLO CAPRIANO'S eyes were closed; the propped-up form on the pillows was motionless--only the thin fingers plucking at the coverlet with curiously patient insistence bore evidence that the man was not asleep.

Suddenly he smiled; and his eyes opened, a dreamy, smoldering light in their depths. His hand reached out for the morning paper that lay on the bed beside him, and for the second time since Teresa had brought him the paper half an hour before, he pored for a long while over a leading “story” on the front page. It had nothing to do with the disturbance in Vinetto's saloon of the night before; it dealt with a strange and mysterious bomb explosion in a downtown park during the small morning hours, which, besides awakening and terrifying the immediate neighborhood, had, according to the newspaper account, literally blown a man, and, with the man, the bench on which he had evidently been sitting under an arc light, to pieces. The victim was mutilated beyond recognition; all that the police had been able to identify were fragments of a bomb, thus establishing the cause of the accident, or, more likely, as the paper hinted, murder.

“The fool!” Nicolo Capriano whispered. “It was Ignace Ferroni--the fool! And so he would not listen to old Nicolo--eh?” He cackled out suddenly, his laugh shrill and high echoing through the room. “Well, perhaps it is as well, eh, Ignace? Perhaps it is as well--perhaps you will be of some service, Ignace, now that you are dead, eh, Ignace--which is something that you never were when you were alive!”

He laid the paper down, and again his eyes closed, and again the blue-tipped fingers resumed their interminable plucking at the coverlet--but now he whispered constantly to himself.

“A hundred thousand dollars.... It is a great deal of money.... We worked for much less in the old days--for very much less.... I am old and sick, am I?... Ha, ha!... But for just once more, eh--just once more--to see if the old cunning is not still there.... And if the cards are thrust into one's hands, does it not make the fingers itch to play them!... Yes, yes, it makes young again the blood in the old veins.... And Tony is dead.... Yes, yes, the young fellow is clever, too--clever enough to find the money again if the police do not meddle with him.... And the gang, Baldy Vickers' gang--bah!--they are already no longer to be considered--they have not long arms, they do not reach far--they do not reach to New York--eh--where the police reach--and where old Nicolo Capriano reaches, too.... Ignace--the fool!.... So he would not listen, to me, eh--and he sat out there under the park light trying to fix his old bomb, and blew himself up.... The fool--but you have no reason to complain, eh, Nicolo?.... It will bring the police to the door, but for once they will be welcome, eh?.... They will not know it--but they will be welcome.... We will see if Nicolo Capriano is not still their match!”

Outside somewhere in the hall he could hear Teresa moving about, busy with her morning work. He listened intently--not to his daughter's movements, but for a footstep on the pavement that, instead of passing by, would climb the short flight of steps to the front door.

“Well, why do they not come--eh?” he muttered impatiently. “Why do they not come?”

He relapsed into silence, but he no longer lay there placidly with his eyes closed. A strange excitement seemed to be growing upon him. It tinged the skin under his beard with a hectic flush, and the black eyes glistened and glinted abnormally, as they kept darting objectiveless glances here and there around the room.

Perhaps half an hour passed, and then the sick man began to mutter again:

“Will they make me send for them--the fools!” He apostrophized the foot of the bed viciously. “No, no--it would not be as safe. If they do not come in another hour, there will be time enough then for that. You must wait, Nicolo. The police have always come before to Nicolo Capriano, if they thought old Nicolo could help them--and with a bomb--ha, ha--to whom else would they come--eh?--to whom-------”

He was instantly alert. Some one was outside there now. He heard the door bell ring, and presently he heard Teresa answer it. He caught a confused murmur of voices. The thin fingers were working with a quick, jubilant motion one over the other. The black eyes, half closed again, fixed expectantly on the door of the room opposite to the foot of the bed. It opened, and Teresa stepped into the room.

“It is Lieutenant Barjan, father,” she said, in a low tone. “He wants to talk to you about that bomb explosion in the park.”

“So!” A queer smile twitched at the old bomb king's lips. He beckoned to his daughter to approach the bed, and, as she obeyed, he pulled her head down to his lips. “You know nothing, Teresa--nothing! Understand? Nothing except to corroborate anything that I may say. You did not even know that there had been an explosion until he spoke of it. You know nothing about Ignace. You understand?”

“Yes,” she said composedly.

“Good!” he whispered. “Well, now, go and tell him that I do not want to see him. Tell him I said he was to go away. Tell him that I won't see him, that I won't be bothered with him and his cursed police spies! Tell him that”--he patted his daughter's head confidentially--“and leave the door open, Teresa, little one, so that I can hear.”

“What do you mean to do, father?” she asked quickly.

“Ha, ha--you will see, my little one--you will see!” Capriano patted her head again. “We do not forget our debt to Tony Lomazzi. No! Well, you will see! Tell the cunning, clever Barjan to go away!”

He watched as she left the room; and then, his head cocked on one side to listen, the blue-tipped fingers reached stealthily out and without a sound slid the newspaper that was lying in front of him under the bed covers.

“I am very sorry,” he heard Teresa announce crisply; “but my father positively refuses to see you.”

“Oh, he does--does he?” a voice returned in bland sarcasm. “Well, I'm very sorry myself then, but I guess he'll have to change his mind! Pardon me, Miss Capriano, if I----”

A quick, heavy step sounded in the hallway. Nicolo Capriano's alert and listening attitude was gone in a flash. He pushed himself up in the bed, and held himself there with one hand, and the other outflung, knotted into a fist, he shook violently in the direction of the door, as the figure of the plain-clothesman appeared on the threshold.

Old Nicolo Capriano was apparently in the throes of a towering passion.

“Get out of here!” he screamed. “Did my daughter not tell you to get out! Go away! I want nothing to do with you! Curse you--and all the rest of the police with you! Can you not leave old Nicolo Capriano to die in peace--eh?”

“That's all right!” said Barjan coolly. He glanced over his shoulder. Teresa was standing just outside in the hall behind him. “Pardon me,” he said again--and closed the door upon her. “Now then”--he faced Nicolo Capriano once more--“there's no use kicking up all this dust. It won't get you anywhere, Nicolo. There's a little matter that I want to talk to you about, and that I'm going to talk to you about whether you like it or not--that's all there is to it. And we'll get right to the point. What do you know about that affair in the park last night?”

Nicolo Capriano sank back on his pillows, with a furious snarl. He still shook his fist at the officer.

“What should I know about your miserable affairs!” he shouted. “I know nothing about any park! I know nothing at all! Why do you not leave me in peace--eh? For fifteen years this has gone on, always spying on Nicolo Capriano, and for fifteen years Nicolo Capriano has not lifted a finger against the law.”

“That is true--as far as we know,” said Barjan calmly. “But there's a little record that goes back beyond those fifteen years, Nicolo, that keeps us a little chummy with you--and you've been valuable at times, Nicolo.”

“Bah!” Nicolo Capriano spat the exclamation viciously at the other.

“About last night,” suggested Barjan patiently. “It's rather in your line. I thought perhaps you might be able to give us a little help that would put us on the right track.”

“I don't know what you're talking about!” snapped Nicolo Capriano.

“I'm talking about the man that was blown to pieces by a bomb.” Barjan was still patient.

Nicolo Capriano's eyes showed the first gleam of interest.

“I didn't know there was any man blown up.” His tone appeared to mingle the rage and antagonism that he had first exhibited with a new and suddenly awakened curiosity. “I didn't know there was any man blown up,” he repeated.

“That's too bad!” said Barjan with mock resignation--and settled himself deliberately in a chair at the bedside. “I guess, then, you're the only man in San Francisco who doesn't.”

“You fool!” Nicolo Capriano rasped in rage again. “I've been bed-ridden for three years--and I wish to God you had been, too!” He choked and coughed a little. He eyed Barjan malevolently. “I tell you this is the first I've heard of it. I don't hang about the street corners picking up the news! Don't sit there with your silly, smirking police face, trying to see how smart you can be! What information do you expect to get out of me like that? When I know nothing, I can tell nothing, can I? Who was the man?”

“That's what we want to know,” said Barjan pleasantly. “And, look here, Nicolo, I'm not here to rile you. All that was left was a few fragments of park bench, man, arc-light standard, and a piece or two of what was evidently a bomb.”

“What time was this?” Nicolo Capriano's eyes were on the foot of the bed.

“Three o'clock this morning,” Barjan answered.

The old bomb king's fingers began to pluck at the coverlet. A minute passed. His eyes, from the foot of the bed, fixed for an instant moodily on Barjan's face--and sought the foot of the bed again.

Barjan broke the silence.

“So you do know something about it, eh, Nicolo?” he prodded softly.

“I didn't know anything had happened until you said so,” returned Nicolo Capriano curtly. “But seeing it has happened, maybe I----” He cut his words off short, and eyed the plain-clothesman again. “Is the man dead?” he demanded, with well-simulated sudden suspicion. “You aren't lying to me--eh? I trust none of you!”

“Dead!” ejaculated Barjan almost hysterically. “Good God--dead! Didn't I tell you he was blown into unrecognizable atoms!”

The sharp, black eyes lingered a little longer on Barjan's face. The result appeared finally to allay Nicolo Capriano's suspicions.

“Well, all right, then, I'll tell you,” he said, but there was a grudging note still in the old bomb king's voice. “It can't do the man any harm if he's dead. I guess you'll know who it is. It's the fellow who pulled that hundred thousand dollar robbery about five years ago on old man Tydeman--the fellow that went by the name of Dave Henderson. I don't know whether that's his real name or not.”

“What!” shouted Barjan. He had lost his composure. He was up from his chair, and staring wildly at the old man on the bed. “You're crazy!” he jerked out suddenly. “Either you're lying to me, or you're off your nut! You----”

Nicolo Capriano was in a towering rage in an instant.

“You get out of here!” he screamed. “You get to hell out of here! I didn't ask you to come, and I don't give a damn whether it was Dave Henderson or a polecat! It's nothing to do with me! It's your hunt--so go and hunt somewhere else! I'm lying, or I'm off my nut, am I? Well, you get to hell out of here! Go on!” He shook a frantic fist at Barjan, and, choking, coughing, pulled himself up in bed again, and pointed to the door. “Do you hear? Get out!”

Barjan shifted uneasily in alarm. Nicolo Capriano's coughing spell had developed into a paroxysm that was genuine enough.

“Look here,” said Barjan, in a pacifying tone, “don't excite yourself like that. I take back what I said. You gave me a jolt for a minute, that's all. But you've got the wrong dope somehow, Nicolo. Whoever it was, it wasn't Dave Henderson. The man was too badly smashed up to be recognized, but there was at least some of his clothing left. Dave Henderson was followed all day yesterday by the police from the minute he left the penitentiary, and he didn't buy any clothes. Dave Henderson had on a black prison suit--and this man hadn't.”

Nicolo Capriano shrugged his shoulders in angry contempt.

“I'm satisfied, if you are!” he snarled. “Go on--get out!”

Barjan frowned a little helplessly now.

“But I'm not satisfied,” he admitted earnestly. “Look here, Nicolo, for the love of Mike, keep your temper, and let's get to the bottom of this. For some reason you seem to think it was Dave Henderson. I know it wasn't; but I've got to know what started you off on that track. Those clothes----”

“You're a damn fool!” Nicolo Capriano, apparently slightly mollified, was jeering now. “Those clothes--ha, ha! It is like the police! And so old Nicolo is off his nut--eh? Well, I will show you!” He raised his voice and called his daughter. “Teresa, my little one,” he said, as the door opened and she appeared, “bring me the clothes that young man had on last night.”

“What's that you say!” exclaimed Barjan in sudden excitement.

“Wait!” said Nicolo Capriano ungraciously.

Teresa was back in a moment with an armful of clothing, which, at her father's direction, she deposited on the foot of the bed.

Nicolo Capriano waved her from the room. He leered at Barjan.

“Well, are those the clothes there that you and your police are using to blindfold your eyes with, or are they not--eh? Are those Dave Henderson's clothes?”

Barjan had already pounced upon the clothing, and was pawing it over feverishly.

“Good God--yes!” he burst out sharply.

“And the clothes that the dead man had on--let me see”--Nicolo Capriano's voice was tauntingly triumphant, as, with eyes half closed, visualizing for himself the attire of one Ignace Ferroni, he slowly enumerated the various articles of dress worn by the actual victim of the explosion. He looked at Barjan maliciously, as he finished. “Well,” he demanded, “was there enough left of what the man had on to identify any of those things? If so----” Nicolo Capriano shrugged his shoulders by way of finality.

“Yes, yes!” Barjan's excitement was almost beyond his control. “Yes, that is what he wore, but--good Lord, Capriano!--what does this mean? I don't understand!”

“About the clothes?” inquired Nicolo Capriano caustically. “But I should know what he had on since they were _my_ clothes--eh? And you have only to look at the ones there on the bed to find out for yourself why I gave him some that, though I do not say they were new, for I have not bought any clothes in the three damnable and cursed years that I have lain here, were at least not all torn to pieces--eh?”

Barjan was pacing up and down the room now. When the other's back was turned, Nicolo Capriano permitted a sinister and mocking smile to hover on his lips; when Barjan faced the bed, Nicolo Capriano eyed the officer with a sour contempt into which he injected a sort of viciously triumphant self-vindication.

“Come across with the rest!” said Barjan abruptly. “How did Dave Henderson come here to you? And what about that bomb? Did you give it to him?” Nicolo Capriano's convenient irascibility was instantly at his command again. He scowled at Barjan, and his scranny fist was flourished under Barjan's nose.

“No, I didn't!” he snarled. “And you know well enough that I didn't. You will try to make me out the guilty man now--eh--just because I was fool enough to help you out of your muddle!”

Barjan became diplomatic again.

“Nothing of the kind!” he said appeasingly. “You're too touchy, Nicolo! I know that you're on the square all right, and that you have been ever since your gang was broken up and Tony Lomazzi was caught. That's good enough, isn't it? Now, come on! Give me the dope about Dave Henderson.”

Nicolo Capriano's fingers plucked sullenly at the coverlet. A minute passed.

“Bah!” he grunted finally. “A little honey--eh--when you want something from old Nicolo! Well, then, listen! Dave Henderson came here last night in those torn clothes, and with his face badly cut from a fight that he said he had been in. I don't know whether his story is true or not--you can find that out for yourself. I don't know anything about him, but this is what he told me. He said that his cell in the prison was next to Tony Lomazzi's; that he and Tony were friends; that Tony died a little while ago; and that on the night Tony died he told this fellow Henderson to come to me if he needed any help.”

“Yes!” Barjan's voice was eager. He dropped into the chair again, and leaned attentively over the bed toward Nicolo Capriano. “So he came to you through Tony Lomazzi, eh? Well, so far, I guess the story's straight. I happen to know that Henderson's cell was next to Lomazzi's. But where did he get the bomb? He certainly didn't have it when he left the prison, and he was shadowed----”

“So you said before!” interrupted Nicolo Capriano caustically. “Well, in that case, you ought to know whether the rest of the story is true, too, or not. He said he met a stranger in a saloon last night, and that they chummed up together, and started in to make a night of it. They went from one saloon to another. Their spree ended in a fight at Vinetto's place up the block here, where Henderson and his friend were attacked by some of Baldy Vickers' gang. Henderson said his friend was knocked out, and that he himself had a narrow squeak of it, and just managed to escape through the back door, and ran down the lane, and got in here. I asked him how he knew where I lived, and he said that during the afternoon he had located the house because he meant to come here last night anyway, only he was afraid the police might be watching him, and he had intended to wait until after dark.” Nicolo Capriano's eyelids drooped to hide a sudden cunning and mocking gleam that was creeping into them. “You ought to be able to trace this friend of Henderson's if the man was knocked out and unconscious at Vinetto's, as Henderson claimed--and if Henderson was telling the truth, the other would corroborate it.”

“We've already got him,” said Barjan, with a hint of savagery in his voice. The “friend,” alias a plain-clothesman, had proved anything but an inspiration from the standpoint of the police! “Go on! The story is still straight. You say that Dave Henderson said he intended to come here anyway, quite apart from making his escape from Vinetto's. What for?”

Nicolo Capriano shrugged his shoulders.

“Money, I dare say,” he said tersely. “The usual thing! At least, I suppose that's what he had originally intended to come for--but we didn't get as far as that. The fight at Vinetto's seemed to have left him with but one idea. When he got here he was in a devil's rage. The only thing that seemed to be in his mind was to get some clothes that wouldn't attract attention, instead of the torn ones he had on, and to get out again as soon as he could with the object of getting even with this gang of Baldy's. He said they were the ones that 'sent him up' on account of their evidence at his trial, and that they were after him again now because of the stolen money that they believed he had hidden somewhere. He was like a maniac. He said he'd see them and everybody else in hell before they got that money, and he swore he'd get every last one of that gang--and get them in a bunch. I didn't know what he meant then. I tried to quiet him down, but I might as well have talked to a wild beast. I tried to get him to stay here and go to bed--instead, he laughed at me in a queer sort of way, and said he'd wipe every one of that crowd off the face of the earth before morning. I began to think he was really crazy. He put on the clothes I gave him, and went out again.”

Barjan nodded.

“You don't know it,” he said quietly; “but that's where the police lost track of him--when he ran in here.”

“I didn't even know the police were after him,” said Nicolo Capriano indifferently. “He came back here again about two o'clock this morning, and he had a small clockwork bomb with him. The fool!” Nicolo Capriano cackled suddenly. “He had found Baldy's gang all together down in Jake Morrissey's, and he had thrown the thing against the building. The fool! Of course, it wouldn't go off! He thought it would by hitting it against something. The only way to make it any good was to open the casing and set the clockwork. When he found it didn't explode, he picked it up again, and brought it back here. He wanted me to fix it for him. I asked him where he got it. All I could get out of him was that Tony Lomazzi had told him where he had hidden some things. Ha, ha!” Nicolo Capriano cackled more shrilly still, and began to rock in bed with unseemly mirth. “One of Tony's old bombs! Tony left the young fool a legacy--a bomb, and maybe there was some money, too. I tried to find out about that, but all he said was to keep asking me to fix the bomb for him. I refused. I told him I was no longer in that business. That I went out of it when Tony Lomazzi did--fifteen years ago. He would listen to nothing. He cursed me. I did not think he could do any harm with the thing--and I guess he didn't! A young fool like that is best out of the way. He went away cursing me. I suppose he tried to fix it himself under that arc light on the park bench.” Nicolo Capriano shrugged his shoulders again. “I would not have cared to open the thing myself--it was made too long ago, eh? The clockwork might have played tricks even with me, who once was----”

“Yes,” said Barjan. He stood up. “I guess that's good enough, and I guess that's the end of Dave Henderson--and one hundred thousand dollars.” He frowned in a meditative sort of way. “I don't know whether I'm sorry, or not,” he said slowly. “We'd have got him sooner or later, of course, but----” He pointed abruptly to the prison clothes on the bed. “Hi, take those,” he announced briskly; “they'll need them at the inquest.”

“There's some paper in the bottom drawer of that wardrobe over there,” said Nicolo Capriano unconcernedly. “You can wrap them up.”

Barjan, with a nod of thanks, secured the paper, made a bundle of the clothes, and tucked the bundle under his arm.

“We won't forget this, Nicolo,” he said heartily, as he moved toward the door.

“Bah!” said Nicolo Capriano, with a scowl. “I know how much that is worth!”

He listened attentively as Teresa showed the plain-clothesman out through the front door. As the door closed again, he called his daughter.

“Listen, my little one,” he said, and his forefinger was laid against the side of his nose in a gesture of humorous confidence. “I will tell you something. Ignace Ferroni, who was fool enough to blow himself up, has become the young man whom our good friend Tony Lomazzi sent to us last night.”

“Father!” Her eyes widened in sudden amazement, not unmixed with alarm.

“You understand, my little one?” He wagged his head, and cackled softly. “Not a word! You understand?”

“Yes,” she said doubtfully.

“Good!” grunted the old bomb king. “I think Barjan has swallowed the hook. But I trust no one. I must be sure--you understand--_sure!_ Go and telephone Emmanuel, and tell him to find Little Peter, and send the scoundrel to me at once.”

“Yes, father,” she said; “but----”

“It is for Tony Lomazzi,” he said.

She went from the room.

Nicolo Capriano lay back on the pillows, and closed his eyes. He might have been asleep again, for the smile on his lips was as guileless as a child's; and it remained there until an hour later, when, after motioning Teresa, who had opened the door, away, he propped himself up on his elbow to greet a wizened, crafty-faced little rat of the underworld, who stood at the bedside.

“It is like the old days to see you here, Little Peter,” murmured Nicolo Capriano. “And I always paid well--eh? You have not forgotten that? Well, I will pay well again. Listen! I am sure that the man who was killed with the bomb in the park last night was a prison bird by the name of Dave Henderson; and I told the police so. But it is always possible that I have made a mistake. I do not think so--but it is always possible--eh? Well, I must know, Little Peter. The police will investigate further, and so will Baldy Vickers' gang--they had it in for the fellow. You are a clever little devil, Little Peter. Find out if the police have discovered anything that would indicate I am wrong, and do the same with Baldy Vickers' gang. You know them all, don't you?”

The wizened little rat grinned.

“Sure!” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Youse can leave it to me, Nicolo. I'm wise.”

Nicolo Capriano patted the other's arm approvingly, and smiled the man away.

“You have the whole day before you, Little Peter,” he said. “I am in no hurry.”

Once more Nicolo Capriano lay back on his pillows, and closed his eyes, and once more the guileless smile hovered over his lips.

At intervals through the day he murmured and communed with himself, and sometimes his cackling laugh brought Teresa to the door; but for the most part he lay there through the hours with the placid, cunning patience that the school of long experience had brought him.

It was dusk when Little Peter stood at the bedside again.

“Youse called de turn, Nicolo,” he said. “Dat was de guy, all right. I got next to some of de fly-cops, an' dey ain't got no doubt about it. Dey handed it out to de reporters.” He flipped a newspaper that he was carrying onto the bed. “Youse can read it for yerself. An' de gang sizes it up de same way. I pulled de window stunt on 'em down at Morrissey's about an hour ago. Dey was all dere--Baldy, an' Runty Mott, an' all de rest--an' another guy, too. Say, I didn't know dat Bookie Skarvan pulled in wid dat mob. Dey was fightin' like a lot of stray cats, an' dey was sore as pups, an' all blamin' de other one for losin' de money. De only guy in de lot dat kept his head was Bookie. He sat dere chewin' a big fat cigar, an' wigglin' it from one corner of his mouth to de other, an' he handed 'em some talk. He give 'em hell for muss-in' everything up. Say, Nicolo, take it from me, youse want to keep yer eye peeled for him. He says to de crowd: 'It's a cinch dat Dave Henderson's dead, thanks to de damned mess youse have made of everything,' he says; 'an' it's a cinch dat Capriano's story in de paper is straight--it's too full of de real dope to be anything else. But if Dave Henderson told old Ca-priano dat much, he may have told him more--see? Old Capriano's a wily bird, an' wid a hundred thousand in sight de old Dago wouldn't be asleep. Anyway, it's our last chance--dat Capriano got de hidin' place out of Dave Henderson. But here's where de rest of youse keeps yer mitts off. If it's de last chance, I'll see dat it ain't gummed up. I'll take care of Capriano myself.'”

Little Peter circled his lips with his tongue, as Nicolo Capriano extracted a banknote of generous denomination from under his pillow, and handed it to the other.

“Very good, Little Peter!” he said softly. “Yes, yes--very good! But you have already forgotten it all--eh? Is it not so, Little Peter?”

“Sure!” said Little Peter earnestly. “Sure--youse can bet yer life I have!”

“Good-by then, Little Peter,” said Nicolo Capriano softly again.

He stared for a long while at the door, as it closed behind the other--stared and smiled curiously, and plucked with his fingers at the coverlet.

“And so they would watch old bed-ridden Nicolo, would they--while Nicolo watches--eh--somewhere else!” he muttered. “Ha, ha! So they will watch old Nicolo--will they! Well, well, let them watch--eh?” He looked around the room, and raised himself up in bed. He began to rock to and fro. A red tinge crept into his cheeks, a gleam of fire lighted up the coal-black eyes. “Nicolo, Nicolo,” he whispered to himself, “it is like the old days back again, Nicolo--and it is like the old wine to make the blood run quick in the veins again.”

IV--THE MANTLE OF ONE IGNACE FERRONI

UP and down the small, ill-furnished room Dave Henderson paced back and forward, as, not so very long ago, he had paced by the hour from the rear wall of his cell to the barred door that opened on an iron gallery without. And he paced the distance now with the old nervous, pent-up energy that rebelled and mutinied and would not take passively to restraint, even when that restraint, as now, was self-imposed.

It had just grown dark. The window shade was tightly drawn. On the table, beside the remains of the supper that Emmanuel had brought him some little time before, a small lamp furnished a meager light, and threw the corners of the room into shadow.

He had seen no one save Emmanuel since last night, when he had left Nicolo Capriano's. He had not heard from Nicolo Capriano. It was the sense of personal impotency, the sense of personal inactivity that filled him with a sort of savage, tigerish impatience now. There were many things to do outside in that world beyond the drawn window shade--and he could only wait! There was the pigeon-cote in Tooler's shed, for instance. All during the day the pigeon-cote had been almost an obsession with him. There was a chance--one chance in perhaps a million--that for some reason or other Millman had not been able to get there. It was a gambling chance--no more, no less--with the odds so heavily against Millman permitting anything to keep him from getting his hands on a fortune in ready cash that, from a material standpoint, there was hardly any use in his, Dave Henderson, going there. But that did not remove the ever present, and, as opposed to the material, the intangible sense of uncertainty that possessed him. He expected to find the money gone; he would be a fool a thousand times over to expect anything else. But he had to satisfy himself, and he would--if that keen old brain of Nicolo Capriano only succeeded in devising some means of throwing the police definitely off the trail.

But it was not so easy to throw the police definitely off the trail, as Nicolo Capriano himself had said. He, Dave Henderson, was ready to agree in that with the crafty old Italian; and, even after these few hours, cooped up in here, he was even more ready to agree with the other that the mere hiding of himself away from the police was utterly abortive as far as the accomplishment of any conclusive end was concerned.

It was far from easy; though, acting somewhat as a panacea to his impatience, the old Italian had inspired him with faith as being more than a match for the police, and yet----

He gnawed at his lips. He, too, had not been idle through the day; he, too, had tried to find some way, some loophole that would enable him, once he went out into the open again, to throw Barjan, and all that Barjan stood for, conclusively and forever off his track. And the more he had thought of it, the more insurmountable the difficulty and seeming impossibility of doing so had become. It had even shaken his faith a little in Nicolo Capriano's fox-like cunning proving equal to the occasion. He couldn't, for instance, live all his life in disguise. That did very well perhaps as a piece of fiction, but practically it offered very little attraction!

He frowned--and laughed a little harshly at himself. He was illogical again. He had asked only for three or four days, for a fighting chance, just time enough to get on Millman's trail, hadn't he? And now he was greedy for a permanent and enduring safe-conduct from the police, and his brain mulled and toiled with that objective alone in view, and he stood here now employed in gnawing his lips because he could not see the way, or see how Nicolo Capriano could find it, either. He shrugged his shoulders. As well dismiss that! If he could but reach Millman--and, after Millman, Bookie Skarvan--just to pay the debts he owed, then----

His hand that had curled into a clenched fist, with knuckles showing like white knobs under the tight-stretched skin, relaxed, as, following a low, quick knock at the door, Emmanuel stepped into the room.

“I gotta da message for you from Nicolo,” Emmanuel announced; “an' I gotta da letter for you from Nicolo, too. You get-a damn sick staying in here, eh? Well, Nicolo say you go to his place see him tonight. We take-a da car by-an'-by, an' go.”

“That's the talk, Emmanuel!” said Dave Henderson, with terse heartiness. “You're all right, Emmanuel, and so is your room and your grub, but a little fresh air is what I am looking for, and the sooner the better!”

He took the envelope that Emmanuel extended, crossed over to the lamp, and turned his back on the other, as he ripped the envelope open. Nicolo Capriano's injunction had been to say nothing to Emmanuel, and---- He was staring blankly at the front page of the evening newspaper, all that the envelope contained, and which he had now unfolded before him. And then he caught his breath sharply. He was either crazy, or his eyes were playing him tricks. A thrill that he suppressed by an almost superhuman effort of will, a thrill that tore and fought at the restraint he put upon it, because he was afraid that the mad, insane uplift that it promised was but some fantastic hallucination, swept over him. There was a lead pencil circle drawn around the captions of one of the columns; and three written words, connected to the circle by another pencil stroke, leaped up at him from the margin of the paper:

“_You are dead_.”

He felt the blood surging upward in his veins to beat like the blows of a trip-hammer at his temples. The words were not blurred and running together any more, the captions, instead, inside that circle, seemed to stand out in such huge startling type that they dominated the entire page:

MAN BLOWN TO PIECES BY BOMB IDENTIFIED

MYSTERY IS EXPLAINED

DAVE HENDERSON, EX-CONVICT,

VICTIM OF HIS OWN MURDEROUS INTENTIONS

Dave Henderson glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, Emmanuel was clatteringly piling up the supper dishes on the tray. He turned again to the newspaper, and read Nicolo Capriano's story, all of it now--and laughed. He remembered the old Italian's tale of the man Ignace Ferroni and his bomb. Nicolo Capriano, for all his age and infirmity, was still without his peer in craft and cunning! The ingenious use of enough of what was true had stamped the utterly false as beyond the shadow of a suspicion that it, too, was not as genuine as the connecting links that held the fabric together. He warmed to the old Italian, an almost hysterical admiration upon him for Nicolo Capriano's guile. But transcending all other emotions was the sense of freedom. It surged upon him, possessing him; it brought exhilaration, and it brought a grim, unholy vista of things to come--a goal within possibility of reach now--Millman first, and then Bookie Skarvan. He was free--free as the air. He was dead. Dave Henderson had passed out of the jurisdiction of the police. To the police he was now but a memory--he was dead.

“You are dead.” A queer tight smile thinned his lips, as his eyes fell again upon the penciled words at the margin of the paper.

“It's no wonder they never got anything on old Capriano!” he muttered; and began to tear the paper into shreds.

He was free! He was dead! He was impatient now to exercise that freedom. He could walk out on the streets with no more disguise than these cast-off clothes he had on, plus the brim of his hat to shade his face--for Dave Henderson was dead. Neither Bookie Skarvan, nor Baldy Vickers would be searching for a dead man any more--nor would the police. He swung around, and faced Emmanuel.

“I am to go to Nicolo Capriano's, eh?” he said. “Well, then, let's go; I'm ready.”

“No make-a da rush,” smiled Emmanuel. “Capriano say you gotta da time, plenty time. Capriano say come over by-an'-by in da car.”

Dave Henderson shook his head impatiently.

“No; we'll go now,” he answered.

Emmanuel in turn shook his head.

“I gotta some peep' downstairs in da restaurant,” he said. “I gotta stay maybe an hour yet.”

Dave Henderson considered this for a moment. He could walk out on the streets now quite freely. It was no longer necessary that he should be hidden in a car. But Nicolo Capriano had told Emmanuel to use the car. Emmanuel would not understand, and he, Dave Henderson, had no intention of enlightening the other why a car was no longer necessary. Neither was Emmanuel himself necessary--there was Mrs. Tooler's pigeon-cote. If he went there before going to Nicolo Capriano! His brain was racing now. Yes, the car, _without Emmanuel_, would be a great convenience.

“All right!” he said crisply. “You stay here, and look after your restaurant. There's no need for you to come. I'll take the car myself.”

“You drive-a da car?” asked Emmanuel dubiously. Dave Henderson laughed quietly. The question awakened a certain and very pertinent memory. There were those who, if they chose to do so, could testify with some eloquence to his efficiency at the wheel of a car!

“Well, I have driven one,” he said. “I guess I can handle that old bus of yours.”

“But”--Emmanuel was still dubious--“Capriano say no take-a da risk of being seen on----”

“I'm not looking for any risk myself,” interposed Dave Henderson coolly. “It's dark now, and there's no chance of anybody recognizing me while I'm driving a car. Forget it, Emmanuel! Come on! I don't want to stick around here for another hour. Here!”--from his pocket he produced a banknote, and pushed it across the table to the other.

Emmanuel grinned. His doubts had vanished.

“Sure!” said Emmanuel. He tiptoed to the door, looked out, listened, and jerked his head reassuringly in Dave Henderson's direction. “Getta da move on, then! We go down by da back stairs. Come on!”

They gained the back yard, and the small shed that did duty for a garage--and in a few moments more Dave Henderson, at the wheel of the car, was out on the street.

He drove slowly at first. He had paid no attention to the route taken by Emmanuel when they had left Nicolo Capriano's the night before, and as a consequence he had little or no idea in what part of the city Emmanuel's restaurant was located; but at the expiration of a few minutes he got his bearings, and the speed of the car quickened instantly.

V--CON AMORE

TEN minutes later, the car left at the curb half a block away, Dave Henderson was crouched in the darkness at the door of old Tooler's shed that opened on the lane. There was a grim set to his lips. There seemed a curious analogy in all this--this tool even with which he worked upon the door to force it open, this chisel that he had taken from the kit under the seat of Emmanuel's car, as once before from under the seat of another car he had taken a chisel--with one hundred thousand dollars as his object in view. He had got the money then, and lost it, and had nearly lost his life as well, and now--------

He steeled himself, as the door opened silently under his hand; steeled himself against the hope, which somehow seemed to be growing upon him, that Millman might never have got here after all; steeled himself against disappointment where logic told him disappointment had no place at all, since he was but a fool to harbor any hope. And yet--and yet there were a thousand things, a thousand unforeseen contingencies which might have turned the tables upon Millman! The money _might_ still be here. And if it were! He was dead now--and free to use it! Free! His lips thinned into a straight line.

The door closed noiselessly behind him. The flashlight in his hand, also borrowed from Emmanuel's car, played around the shed. It was the same old place, perhaps a little more down-at-the-heels, perhaps a little dirtier, a little more cumbered up with odds and ends than it had been five years before, but there was no other change. And there was the door of the pigeon-cote above him, that he could just reach from the ground.

He moved toward it now with a swift, impulsive step, and snarled in sudden anger at himself, as he found his hand trembling with excitement, causing the flashlight to throw a jerky, wavering ray on the old pigeon-cote door. What was the use of that! He expected nothing, didn't he? The pigeon-cote would be empty; he knew that well enough. And yet he was playing the fool. He knew quite well it would be empty; he had prepared himself thoroughly to expect nothing else.

He reached up, opened the door, and felt inside. His hand encountered a moldy litter of chaff and straw. He reached further in, with quick eagerness, the full length of his arm. He remembered that he had pushed the package into the corner, and had covered it with straw.

For a minute, for two full minutes, his fingers, by the sense of touch, sifted through the chaff, first slowly, methodically, then with a sort of frantic abandon; and then, in another moment, he had stooped to the floor, seized an old box, and, standing upon it, had thrust head and shoulders into the old pigeon-cote, while the flashlight's ray swept every crevice of the interior, and he pawed and turned up the chaff and straw where even it lay but a bare inch deep and only one bereft of his senses could expect it to conceal anything.

He withdrew himself from the opening, and closed the pigeon-cote door again, and stood down on the floor. He laughed at himself in a low, bitter, merciless way. He had expected nothing, of course; he had expected only to find what he had found--nothing. He had told himself that, hadn't he? Quite convinced himself of it, hadn't he? Well, then, what did it matter? His hands, clenched, went suddenly above his head.

“I paid five years for that,” he whispered. “Do you hear, Millman--five years--five years! And I'll get you--Millman! I'll get you for this, Millman--are you listening?--whether you are in New York--or hell!”

He put the box upon which he had stood back in its place, went out of the shed, closed the door behind him, and made his way back to the car. He drove quickly now, himself driven by the feverish, intolerant passion that had him in its grip. He was satisfied now. There were not any more doubts. He knew! Well, he would go to Nicolo Capriano's, and then--his hands gripped fiercely on the steering wheel. He was dead! Ha, ha! Dave Henderson was dead--but Millman was still alive!

It was not far to Capriano's. He left the car where Emmanuel had awaited him the night before, and gained the back porch of Nicolo Capriano's house.

Teresa's voice from the other side of the closed door answered his knock.

“Who's there?” she asked.

He laughed low, half in facetiousness, half in grim humor. He was in a curious mood.

“The dead man,” he answered.

There was no light in the porch to-night. She opened the door, and, as he stepped inside, closed it behind him again. He could not see her in the darkness--and somehow, suddenly, quite unreasonably, he found the situation awkward, and his tongue, as it had been the night before, awkward, too.

“Say,” he blurted out, “your father's got some clever head, all right!”

“Has he?” Her voice seemed strangely quiet and subdued, a hint of listlessness and weariness in it.

“But you know about it, don't you?” he exclaimed. “You know what he did, don't you?”

“Yes; I know,” she answered. “But he has been waiting for you, and he is impatient, and we had better go at once.”

It was Tony Lomazzi! He remembered her grief when he had told her last night that Tony was dead. That was what was the matter with her, he decided, as he followed her along the passageway. She must have thought a good deal of Tony Lomazzi--more even than her father did. He wished again that he had not broken the news to her in the blunt, brutal way he had--only he had not known then, of course, that Tony had meant so much to her. He found himself wondering why now. She could not have had anything to do with Tony Lomazzi for fifteen years, and fifteen years ago she could have been little more than a child. True, she might perhaps have visited the prison, but----

“Well, my young friend--eh?” Nicolo Capriano's voice greeted him, as he followed Teresa into the old Italian's room. “So Ignace Ferroni has done you a good turn--eh? And old Nicolo! Eh--what have you to say about old Nicolo? Did I not tell you that you could leave it to old Nicolo to find a way?”

Dave Henderson caught the other's outstretched hand, and wrung it hard.

“I'll never forget this,” he said. “You've pulled the slickest thing I ever heard of, and I----”

“Bah!” Nicolo Capriano was chuckling delightedly.

“Never mind the thanks, my young friend. You owe me none. The old fingers had the itch in them to play the cards against the police once more. And the police--eh?--I do not like the police. Well, perhaps we are quits now! Ha, ha! Do you know Barjan? Barjan is a very clever little man, too--ha, ha!--Barjan and old Nicolo have known each other many years. And that is what Barjan said--just what you said--that he would not forget. Well, we are all pleased--eh? But we do not stop at that. Old Nicolo does not do things by halves. You will still need help, my young friend. You will go at once to New York--eh? That is what you intend to do?”

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson.

Nicolo Capriano nodded.

“And you will find your man--and the money?”

“Yes!” Dave Henderson's lips thinned suddenly. “If he is in New York, as I believe he is, I will find him; if not--then I will find him just the same.”

Again Nicolo Capriano nodded.

“Ah, my young friend, I like you!” he murmured. “If I had had you--eh?--fifteen years ago! We would have gone far--eh? And Tony went no farther than a prison cell. But we waste time--eh? Old Nicolo is not through yet--a Capriano does not do things by halves. You will need help and friends in New York. Nicolo Capriano will see to that. And money to get to New York--eh? You will need some ready money for that?”

Dave Henderson's eyes met Teresa's. She stood there, a slim, straight figure, just inside the door, the light glinting on her raven hair. She seemed somehow, with those wondrous eyes of hers, to be making an analysis of him, an analysis that went deeper than a mere appraisal of his features and his clothes--and a little frown came and puckered the white brow--and, quick in its wake, with a little start of confusion, there came a heightened tinge of color to her cheeks, and she lowered her eyes.

“Teresa, my little one,” said Nicolo Capriano softly, “go and get some paper and an envelope, and pen and ink.”

Dave Henderson watched her as she left the room.

Nicolo Capriano's fingers, from plucking at the counterpane, tapped gently on Dave Henderson's sleeve.

“We were speaking of money--for your immediate needs,” Nicolo Capriano suggested pleasantly.

Dave Henderson shook his head.

“I have enough to keep me going for a while,” he answered.

The old bomb king's eyebrows were slightly elevated.

“So! But you are just out of prison--and you said yourself that the police had followed you closely.”

Dave Henderson laughed shortly.

“That wasn't very difficult,” he said. “I had a friend who owed me some money before I went to the pen--some I had won on the race-track. I gave the police the slip without very much trouble last night in order to get here, and it was a good deal more of a cinch to put it over them long enough to get that money.”

“So!” said Nicolo Capriano again. “And this friend--what is his name?”

Dave Henderson hesitated. He had seen to it that Square John Kelly was clear of this, and he was reluctant now, even to this man here to whom he owed a debt beyond repayment, to bring Square John into the matter at all; yet, on the other hand, in this particular instance, it could make very little difference. If Square John was involved, Nicolo Capriano was involved a hundredfold deeper. And then, too, Nicolo Capriano might very well, and with very good reason, be curious to know how he, Dave Henderson, could, under the circumstances, have come into the possession of a sum of money adequate for his present needs.

“I'd rather keep his name out of it,” he said frankly; “but I guess you've got a right to ask about anything you like, and if you insist I'll tell you.”

Nicolo Capriano's eyes were half closed--and they were fixed on the foot of the bed.

“I think I would like to know,” he said, after a moment.

“All right! It was Square John Kelly,” said Dave Henderson quietly--and recounted briefly the details of his visit to the Pacific Coral Saloon the night before.

Nicolo Capriano had propped himself up in bed. He leaned over now as Dave Henderson finished, and patted Dave Henderson's shoulder in a sort of exultant excitement.

“Good! Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Ah, my young friend, I begin to love you! It brings back the years that are gone. But--bah!--I shall get well again--eh? And I am not yet too old--eh? Who can tell--eh?--who can tell! We would be invincible, you and I, and----” He checked himself, as Teresa reentered the room. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Well, then, as far as money is concerned, you are supplied; but friends--eh?--are sometimes more important than money. You have found that out already--eh? Listen, then, I will give you a letter to a friend in New York whom you can trust--and I promise you he will stop at nothing to carry out my orders. You understand? His name is Georges Vardi, but he is commonly known as Dago George; and he, too, was one of us in the old days. You will want somewhere to go. He keeps a little hotel, a very _quiet_ little hotel off the Bowery, not far from Chatham Square. Any one will tell you there where to find Dago George. You understand?”

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson.

Nicolo Capriano motioned his daughter abruptly to a small table on the opposite side of the bed.

“Teresa will write the letter, and put it in Italian,” he said, as she seated herself at the table. “I do not write as easily as I used to. They say old Nicolo is a sick man. Well, maybe that is so, but old Nicolo's brain is not sick, and old Nicolo's fingers can at least still sign his name--and that is enough. Ha, ha, it is good to be alive again! Well”--he waved his hand again toward his daughter--“are you ready, my little one?”

“Yes, father,” she answered.

“To Dago George, then,” he said. “First--my affectionate salutations.”

Her pen scratched rapidly over the paper. She looked up.

“Yes, father?”

Nicolo Capriano's fingers plucked at the coverlet.

“You will say that the bearer of this letter--ah! Yes!” He turned with a whimsical smile to Dave Henderson. “You must have a name, eh, my young friend--since Dave Henderson is dead! We shall not tell Dago George everything. Fools alone tell all they know! What shall it be?”

Dave Henderson shrugged his shoulders.

“Anything,” he said. “It doesn't matter. One is as good as another. Make it Barty Lynch.”

“Yes, that will do. Good!” Nicolo Capriano gestured with his hand in his daughter's direction again. “You will say that the bearer of this letter is Barty Lynch, and that he is to be treated as though he were Nicolo Capriano himself. You understand, my little one? Anything that he asks is his--and I, Nicolo Capriano, will be responsible. Tell him, my little one, that it is Nicolo Capriano's order--and that Nicolo Capriano has yet to be disobeyed. And particularly you will say that if our young friend here requires any help by those who know how to do what they are told and ask no questions, the men are to be supplied. You understand, Teresa?”

She did not look up this time.

“Yes, father.”

“Write it, then,” he said. “And see that Dago George is left with no doubt in his mind that he is at the command of our young friend here.”

Teresa's pen scratched rapidly again across the paper.

Nicolo Capriano was at his interminable occupation of plucking at the counterpane.

Dave Henderson pushed his hand through his hair in a curiously abstracted sort of way. There seemed to be something strangely and suddenly unreal about all this--about this man, with his cunning brain, who lay here in this queer four-poster bed; about that trim little figure, who bent over the table there, and whose profile only now was in view, the profile of a sweet, womanly face that somehow now seemed to be very earnest, for he could see the reflection of a puckered brow in the little nest of wrinkles at the corner of her eye.

No, there wasn't anything unreal about her. She was very real.

He remembered her as she had stood last night on the threshold there, and when in the lighted doorway he had seen her for the first time. He would never forget that--nor the smile that had followed the glorious flood of color in her cheeks, and that had lighted up her eyes, and that had forgiven him for his unconscious rudeness.

That wasn't what was unreal. All that would remain living and vibrant, a picture that would endure, and that the years would not dim. It was unreal that in the space of a few minutes more everything here would have vanished forever out of his existence--this room with its vaguely foreign air, this four-poster bed with its strange occupant, whose mental vitality seemed to thrive on his physical weakness, that slimmer figure there bending over the table, whose masses of silken hair seemed to curl and cluster in a sort of proudly intimate affection about the arched, shapely neck, whose shoulders were molded in soft yielding lines that somehow invited the lingering touch of a hand, if one but had the right.

His hand pushed its way again through his hair, and fumbled a little helplessly across his eyes. And, too, it was more than that that was unreal. A multitude of things seemed unreal--the years in the penitentiary during which he had racked his brain for a means of eluding the police, racked it until it had become a physical agony to think, were now dispelled by this man here, and with such ease that, as an accomplished, concrete fact, his mind somehow refused to accept it as such. He was dead. It was very strange, very curious! He sank back a little in his chair. There came a vista of New York--not as a tangible thing of great streets and vast edifices, but as a Mecca of his aspirations, now almost within his grasp, as an arena where he could stand unleashed, and where the iron of five years that had entered his soul should have a chance to vent itself. Millman was there! There seemed to come an unholy joy creeping upon him. Millman was there--and he, Dave Henderson, was dead, and in Dave Henderson's place would be a man in that arena who had friends now at his back, who could laugh at the police. Millman! He felt the blood sweep upward to his temples; he heard his knuckles crack, as his hand clenched in a fierce, sudden surge of fury. Millman! Yes, the way was clear to Millman--but there was another, too. Bookie Skarvan!

His hand unclenched. He was quite cool, quite unconcerned again. Teresa had finished the letter, and Nicolo Capriano was reading it now. He could afford to wait as far as Bookie Skarvan was concerned--he could not afford to wait where Millman was concerned. And, besides, there was his own safety. Bookie Skarvan was here in San Francisco, but the further he, Dave Henderson, got from San Francisco for the present now, and the sooner, the better it would be. In a little while, a few months, after he had paid his debt to Millman--he would pay his debt to Bookie Skarvan. He was not likely to forget Bookie Skarvan!

His eyes fell on Teresa. He might come back to San Francisco in a few months. With ordinary caution it ought to be quite safe then. Dave Henderson would have been dead quite long enough then to be utterly forgotten. They would not be talking on every street corner about him as they were to-night, and----

Nicolo Capriano was nodding his head approvingly over the letter.

“Yes, yes!” he said. “Excellent! With this, my young friend, you will be a far more important personage in New York than you imagine. Old Nicolo's arm still reaches far.” He stared for a moment musingly at Dave Henderson through half closed eyes. “You have money, and this letter. I do not think there is anything else that old Nicolo can do for you--eh?--except to give you a little advice. You will leave here shortly, and from that moment you must be very careful. Anywhere near San Francisco you might be recognized. Travel only by night at first--make of yourself a tramp and use the freight trains, and hide by day. After two or three days, which should have taken you a good many miles from here, you will be able to travel more comfortably. But still do not use the through express trains--the men on the dining and sleeping cars have all started from here, too, you must remember. You understand? Go slowly. Be very careful. You are not really safe until you are east of Chicago. I do not think there is anything else, unless--eh?--you are armed, my young friend?”

Dave Henderson shook his head.

“So!” ejaculated Nicolo Capriano, and pursed his lips. “And it would not be safe for you to buy a weapon to-night--eh?--and it might very well be that to-night you would need it badly. Well, it is easily remedied.” He turned to his daughter. “Teresa, my little one, I think we might let our young friend have that revolver upstairs in the bottom of the old box--and still not remain defenseless ourselves--eh? Yes, yes! Run and get it, Teresa.”

She rose from her seat obediently, and turned toward the door--but her father stopped her with a quick impulsive gesture.

“Wait!” he said. “Give me the pen before you go, and I will sign this letter. Dago George must be sure that it came from Nicolo Capriano--eh?”

She dipped the pen in the ink, and handed it to him. Nicolo Capriano propped the letter on his knees, as he motioned her away on her errand. His pen moved laboriously across the paper. He looked up then, and beckoned Dave Henderson to lean over the bed.

“See, my young friend,” he smiled--and pointed to his cramped writing. “Old Nicolo's fingers are old and stiff, and it is a long while since Dago George has seen that signature--but, though I am certain he would know it again, I have made assurance doubly sure. See, I have signed: '_Con Amore_, Nicolo Capriano.' You do not know Italian--eh? Well, it is a simple phrase, a very common phrase. It means--'with love.' But to Dago George it means something else. It was a secret signal in the old days. A letter signed in that way by any one of us meant--'trust to the death!' You understand, my young friend?” He smiled again, and patted Dave Henderson's arm. “Give me die envelope there on the table.”

He was inserting the letter in the envelope, as Teresa entered the room again. He sealed the envelope, reached out to her for the revolver which she carried, broke the revolver, nodded as he satisfied himself that it was loaded--and handed both envelope and weapon to Dave Henderson. He spread out his hands then, and lifted his shoulders in a whimsical gesture of finality.

“It is only left then to say good-by--eh?--my young friend--who was the friend of Tony Lomazzi. You will have good luck, and good fortune, and----”

Dave Henderson was on his feet. He had both of the old Italian's hands in his.

“I will never forget what you have done--and I will never forget Nicolo Capriano,” he said in a low tone, his voice suddenly choked.

The old bomb king's eyelids fluttered down. It was like a blind man whose face was turned to Dave Henderson.

“I am sure of that, my young friend,” he said softly. “I am sure that you will never forget Nicolo Capriano. I shall hear of you through Dago George.” He released his hands suddenly. His eyes opened--they were inscrutable, almost dead, without luster. “Go,” he said, “I know what you would say. But we are not children to sob on one another's neck. Nicolo is not dead yet. Perhaps we will meet again--eh? We will not make a scene--Teresa will tell you that it might bring on an attack. Eh? Well, then, go! You will need all the hours from now until daylight to get well away from the city.” He smiled again, and waved Dave Henderson from the bed.

In an uncertain, reluctant way, as though conscious that his farewell to the old Italian was entirely inadequate, that his gratitude had found no expression, and yet conscious, too, that any attempt to express his feelings would be genuinely unwelcome to the other, Dave Henderson moved toward the door. Teresa had already passed out of the room, and was standing in the hall. On the threshold Dave Henderson paused, and looked back.

“Good-by, Nicolo Capriano!” he called.

The old Italian had sunk back on the pillows, his fingers busy with the counterpane.

“The wine of life, my young friend”--it was almost as though he were talking to himself--“ha, ha!--the wine of life! The old days back again--the measured blades--the fight, and the rasp of steel! Ha, ha! Old Nicolo is not yet dead! Good-by--good-by, my young friend! It is old Nicolo who is in your debt; not you in his. Good-by, my young friend--good-by!”

Teresa's footsteps were already receding along the passageway toward the rear door. Dave Henderson, with a final wave of his hand to the old Italian, turned and walked slowly along the hall. He heard the porch door ahead of him being opened. He reached it, and halted, looking around him. It was dark, as it always was here, and he could see nothing--not even a faint, blurred outline of Teresa's form. Surprised, he called her name softly. There was no answer--only the door stood wide open.

He stepped out into the porch. There was still no sign of her. It was very strange! He called her again--he only wanted to say good-by, to thank her, to tell her, as he had told her father, that he would not forget. And, yes, to tell her, too, if he could find the words, that some day he hoped that he might see her again. But there was no answer.

He was frowning now, piqued, and a little angry. He did not understand--only that she had opened the door for him, and in some way had deliberately chosen to evade him. He did not know why--he could find no reason for it. He moved on through the porch. Perhaps she had preceded him as far as the lane.

At the lane, he halted again, and again looked around him--and stood there hesitant. And then there reached him the sound of the porch door being closed and locked.

He did not understand. It mystified him. It was not coquetry--there was no coquetry in those steady, self-reliant eyes, or in that strong, sweet face. And yet it had been deliberately done, and about it was something of finality--and his lips twisted in a hurt smile, as he turned and walked from the lane.

“Beat it!” said Dave Henderson to himself. “You're dead!”

VI--THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY DRAWS ITS BLINDS

TERESA'S fingers twisted the key in the lock of the porch door that she had closed on Dave Henderson. There was a queer, tight little smile quivering on her lips.

“There was no other way,” she whispered to herself. “What could I do? What could I say?”

Behind her, and at one side of the passage, was a small panel door, long out of use now, a relic of those days when Nicolo Capriano's dwelling had been a house of mystery. She had hidden there to let Dave Henderson pass by; she closed it now, as she retraced her steps slowly to her father's room. And here, on the threshold, she paused for a moment; then reached in quietly to close the door, and retire again. Her father lay back on the bed, his eyes closed, and his hands, outstretched on the coverlet, were quiet, the long, slim fingers motionless. He was asleep. It was not uncommon. He often did that. Sleep came at the oddest times with the old man, even if it did not last long, and----

“Teresa--eh--what are you doing?” Nicolo Capriano's eyes half opened, and fixed on his daughter. “Eh--what are you doing?”

“I thought you were asleep, father,” she murmured. “Asleep! Bah! I have been asleep for fifteen years--is that not long enough? Fifteen years! Ha, ha! But I am awake now! Yes, yes, old Nicolo has had enough of dreams! He is awake now! Come here, Teresa. Come here, and sit by the bed. Has our clever young friend gone?”

“Yes, father,” she told him, as she took the chair at the bedside.

Nicolo Capriano jerked his head around on his pillows, and studied her face for a moment, though his black eyes, with their smoldering, introspective expression, seemed not at all concerned with her.

“And what do you think of him--eh--Teresa, my little one--what do you think of him?”

She drew back in her chair with a little start.

“Why--what do you mean, father?” she asked quickly.

“Bah!” There was a caustic chuckle in the old bomb king's voice. “We do not speak of love--I suppose! I do not expect you to have fallen in love just because you have seen a man for a few minutes--eh? Bah! I mean just what I say. I called him clever. You are a Capriano, and you are clever; you are the cleverest woman in San Francisco, but you do not get it from your mother--you are a Capriano. Well, then, am I right? He is clever--a very clever fellow?”

Her voice was suddenly dull.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good!” ejaculated Nicolo Capriano. “He was caught five years ago, but it was not his fault. He was double-crossed, or he would never have seen the inside of a penitentiary. So you agree, then, that he is clever? Well, then, he has courage, too--eh? He was modest about his fight at Vinetto's--eh? You heard it all from Vinetto himself when you went there this morning. Our young friend was modest--eh?”

Teresa's eyes widened slightly in a puzzled way. She nodded her head.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good!” said Nicolo Capriano--and the long, slim fingers began to twine themselves together, and to untwine, and to twine together again. “Well, then, my little one, with his cleverness and his courage, he should succeed--eh--in New York? Old Nicolo does not often make a mistake--eh? Our young friend will find his money again in New York--eh?”

She pushed back her chair impulsively, and stood up.

“I hope not,” she answered in a low voice.

“Eh?” Nicolo Capriano jerked himself sharply up on his pillows, and his eyes narrowed. “Eh--what is that you say? What do you mean--you hope not!”

“It is not his money now any more than it was before he stole it,” she said in a dead tone. “It is stolen money.”

“Well, and what of it?” demanded Nicolo Capriano. “Am I a fool that I do not know that?” Sudden irascibility showed in the old Italian's face and manner; a flush swept his cheeks under the white beard, the black eyes grew lusterless and hard--and he coughed. “Well, am I a fool?” he shouted.

She looked at him in quick apprehension.

“Father, be careful!” she admonished. “You must not excite yourself.”

“Bah!” He flung out his hand in a violent gesture. “Excite myself! Bah! Always it is--'do not excite yourself!' Can you find nothing else to say? Now, you will explain--eh?--you will explain! What is it about this stolen money that Nicolo Capriano's daughter does not like? You hear--I call you Nicolo Capriano's daughter!”

It was a moment before she answered.

“I do not like it--because it has made my soul sick to-night.” She turned her head away. “I hid behind the old panel when he went out. I do not like it; I hate it. I hate it with all my soul! I did not understand at first, not until your talk with him to-night, that there was any money involved. I thought it was just to help him get away from the police who were hounding him even after his sentence had been served, and also to protect him from that gang who tried to get him in Vinetto's place--and that we were doing it for Tony's sake. And then it all seemed to come upon me in a flash, as I went toward the door to let him out to-night--that there was the stolen money, and that I was helping him, and had been helping him in everything that was done here, to steal it again. I know what I should have done. It would have done no good, it would have been utterly useless; I realized that--but I would have been honest with myself. I should have protested there and then. But I shrank from the position I was in. I shrank from having him ask me what I had to do with honesty, I, who--and you have said it yourself but a moment ago--I, who was Nicolo Capriano's daughter; I, who, even if I protested on one score, had knowingly and voluntarily done my share in hoodwinking the police on another. He would have had the right to think me mad, to think me irresponsible--and worse. I shrank from having him laugh in my face. And so I let him go, because I must say that to him or nothing; for I could not be hypocrite enough to wish him a smiling good-by, to wish him good fortune and success--I couldn't--I tell you, I couldn't--and so--and so I stepped behind the panel, and let him pass.”

Nicolo Capriano's two hands were outthrust and clenched, his lips had widened until the red gums showed above his teeth, and he glared at his daughter.

“By God!” he whispered hoarsely, “it is well for you, you kept your mouth shut! Do you hear, you--you-----” A paroxysm of coughing seized him, and he fell back upon the pillows.

In an instant, Teresa was bending over him anxiously.

He pushed her away, and struggled upward again, and for a moment he shook his fists again at his daughter--and then his eyes were half veiled, and his hands opened, and he began to pat the girl's arm, and his voice held a soft, purring note.

“Listen! You are not a fool, my little one. I have not brought you up to be a fool--eh? Well, then, listen! We have a little money, but it is not much. And he will get that hundred thousand dollars. Do you understand? He is clever, and he has the courage. Do you think that I would have tricked the police for him, otherwise? Eh--do you think old Nicolo Capriano does not know what he is about?”

She stared at him, a sort of dawning dismay in her eyes.

“You mean,” she said, and the words seemed to come in a hard, forced way from her lips, “you mean that if he gets that money again, you are to have a share?”

“A share! Ha, ha!” The old Italian was rocking backward and forward in glee. “No, my little one, not a share--Nicolo Capriano does not deal in shares any more. All--my little one--all! One hundred thousand dollars--all! And my little black-eyes will have such gowns as----”

“Father!” It came in a startled, broken cry of amazed and bitter expostulation.

Nicolo Capriano stopped his rocking, and looked at her. A sudden glint of fury leaped from the smoldering eyes.

“Bah!” he said angrily. “Am I mistaken after all? Is it that you are your mother--and not a Capriano! Perhaps I should not have told you; but now you will make the best of it, and behave yourself, and not play the child--eh? Do you think I risked myself with the police for nothing! Yes--all! All--except that I must pay that leech Dago George something for looking after our young friend--_con amore--con amore_, Nicolo Capriano--eh?--since I signed the letter so.”

She stood an instant, straight and tense, but a little backward on her heels, as though she had recoiled from a blow that had been struck her--and then she bent swiftly forward, and caught both her father's wrists in her strong young grasp, and looked into his eyes for a long minute, as though to read deep into his soul.

“You signed that letter _con amore!_” Her voice was colorless. “You signed it--_con amore_--the code word of the old, horrible, miserable days when this house was a den of outlaws, the code word that marked out the victim who was to be watched and hounded down!”

The old bomb king wrenched himself still further up in bed. He shook his wrists free.

“What is it to you!” he screamed in a blaze of fury--and fell into a second, and more violent paroxysm of coughing--and now caught at his breast with his thin, blue-tipped fingers, and now in unbridled passion waved his arms about like disjointed flails. “Yes--I signed it that--_con amore_. And it is the old signal! Yes, yes! And Dago George will obey. And he will watch our young friend--watch--watch--watch! And in the end--bah!--in the end our young friend will supply Nicolo Capriano with that hundred thousand dollars. Ha! And in the end we will see that our young friend does not become troublesome. He is a pawn--a pawn!” Old Nicolo's face, between rage and coughing, had grown a mottled purple. “A pawn! And when a pawn has lost its usefulness--eh?--it is swept from the board--eh? _Con amore!_ The old days again! The finger of Nicolo Capriano lifted--and the puppets jump! _Con amore!_ I will see that Dago George knows what to do with a young man who brings him Nicolo Capriano's letter! Ha, ha! Yes, yes; I will take care of that!”

She had not moved, except to grow a little straighter in her poise, and except that her hands now were clenched at her sides.

“I cannot believe it!” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. “I cannot believe it! I cannot believe that you would do this! It is monstrous, horrible!”

It seemed as though Nicolo Capriano could not get his breath, or at least one adequate enough to vent the access of fury that swept upon him. He choked, caught again at his breast, and hooked fingers ripped the nightdress loose from his throat.

“Out of the room!” he screamed at last. “Out of it! I will teach you a chit of a girl's place! Out of it!”

“No; I will not go out--not yet,” she said, and steadied her voice with an effort. “I will not go until you tell me that you will not do this thing. You can't do it, father--you can't--you can't!” Even the semblance of calmness was gone from her now, and, instead, there was a frantic, almost incoherent pleading in her tones. “He came--he came from Tony Lomazzi. Father, are you mad? Do you not understand? He came from Tony Lomazzi, I tell you!”

“And I tell you to get out of this room, and hold your tongue, you meddling little fool!” screamed Nicolo Capriano again. “Tony Lomazzi! He came from Tony Lomazzi, did he? Damn Tony Lomazzi--damn him--damn him! What do I owe Tony Lomazzi but the hell of hate in a man's soul that comes only in one way! You hear! It was the prison walls only that saved Lomazzi from my reach--from these fingers of mine that are strong, strong at the throat, and never let go! Do you think I was blind that I could not see, that I did not know--eh?--that I did not know what was between your mother and that accursed Lomazzi! But he died--eh?--he died like a rat gnawing, gnawing at walls that he could not bite through!”

Teresa's face had gone suddenly a deathly white, and the color seemed to have fled her lips and left them gray.

“It is a lie--a hideous lie!” she cried--and all the passion of her father's race was on the surface now. “It is a lie! And you know it is--you know it is! My mother loved you, always loved you, and only you--and you broke her heart--and killed her with the foul, horrible life of crime that seethed in this house! Oh, my God! Are you trying to make me hate you, hate _you_, my father! I have tried to be a good daughter to you since she died. She made me promise that I would, on that last night. I have tried to love you, and I have tried to understand why she should have loved you--but--but I do not know. It is true that Tony Lomazzi loved her, but, though he was one of you in your criminal work, his love was the love of a brave, honest man. It is true, perhaps, that it was for her, rather than for you, that it was because of his love, a great, strong, wonderful love, and to save her from horror and despair because she loved _you_, that he gave his life for you, that he went to prison in your stead, voluntarily, on his own confession, when he was less guilty than you, and when the police offered him his freedom if he would only turn evidence against you, the man they really wanted. But that is what he did, nevertheless. He kept you together.” She was leaning forward now, her eyes ablaze, burning. “That was his love! His love for my mother, and for me--yes, for me--for he loved me too, and I, though I, was only a little girl, I loved Tony Lomazzi. And he gave his life--and he died there in prison. And now--now--you mean to betray his trust--to betray his friend who believed in you because he believed in Tony, who trusted you and sent him here. And you tricked him, and tricked the police for your own ends! Well, you shall not do it! You shall not! Do you hear? You shall not!”

Nicolo Capriano's face was livid. A fury, greater than before, a fury that was unbalanced, like the fury of a maniac, seized upon him. He twisted his hands one around the other with swift insistence, his lips moved to form words--and he coughed instead, and a fleck of blood tinged the white beard.

“You dare!” he shrieked, catching for his breath. “You, a girl, dare talk to me like that, to me--Nicolo Capriano! I shall not--eh? You say that to me! I shall not! And who will stop me?”

“I will!” she said, through tight lips. “If you will not stop it yourself--then I will. No matter what it costs, no matter what it means--to you, or to me--I will!”

Nicolo Capriano laughed--and the room rang with the pealing laughter that was full of unhinged, crazy, shuddering mirth.

“Fool!” he cried. “You will stop it--eh? And how will you stop it? Will you tell the police? Ha, ha! Then you, too, would betray dear Tony's friend! You would tell the police what they want to know--that Dave Henderson can be found in New York, and that he has gone there to get the money back. Or perhaps you will write another letter--and tell Dago George to pay no attention to my orders? Ha, ha! And it is too bad that our young friend himself has gone, and left you no address so that you could intercept him!”

Teresa drew back a little, and into her eyes came trouble and dismay. And Nicolo Capriano's laugh rang out again--and was checked by a spasm of coughing--and rang out once more, ending in a sort of triumphant scream.

“Well, and what do you think now about stopping it--eh? Do you imagine that Nicolo Capriano sees no farther than his nose? Stop it! Bah! No one will stop it--and, least of all, you!”

She seemed to have overcome the dismay that had seized upon her, though her face had grown even whiter than before.

“It is true, what you say,” she said, in a low, strained voice. “But there is one way left, one way to find him, and warn him, and I will take that way.”

“Hah!” Nicolo Capriano glared at her. His voice dropped. “And what is that way, my little one?” he purred, through a fit of coughing. “Old Nicolo would like to know.”

“To go where Dave Henderson is going,” she answered. “To go where he can be found, to go to New York, to keep him from going to Dago George's, or, if I am too late for that, to warn him there before Dago George has had time to do him any harm, and----”

Her words ended in a startled cry. Nicolo Capriano's long, slim fingers, from the bed, had shot out, locked about her waist, and were wrenching at her in a mad-man's fury.

“You--you would do that!” the old Italian screamed. “By God! No! No! _No!_ Do you hear? No!” His hands had crept upward, and, with all his weight upon her, he was literally pulling himself out of the bed. “No!” he screamed again. “No! Do you hear? No!”

“Father!” she cried out frantically. “Father, what are you doing? You will kill yourself!”

The black eyes of the old man were gleaming with an insane light, his face was working in horrible contortions.

“Hah!” He was out of the bed now, struggling wildly with her. “Hah! Kill myself, will I? I would kill you--_you_--before I would let you meddle with my plans! It is the old Nicolo again--Nicolo Capriano of the years when----”

The room seemed to swirl around her. The clutching fingers had relaxed. It was she now who struggled and grasped at the man's body and shoulders--to hold him up. He was very heavy, too heavy for her. He seemed to be carrying her downward with him--until he fell back half across the bed. And she leaned over him then, and stared at him for a long time through her hands that were tightly held to her face--and horror, a great, blinding horror came, and fear, a fear that robbed her of her senses came, and she staggered backward, and stumbled over the chair at the bedside, and clutched at it for support.

She did not speak. Nicolo Capriano had left his bed for the first time in three years--to die.

Her father was dead. That was the theme of the overwhelming horror, and the paralyzing fear that obsessed her brain. It beat upon her in remorseless waves--horror--fear. Time did not exist; reality had passed away. She was in some great, soundless void--soundless, except for that strange ringing in her ears. And she put her hands up to her ears to shut out the sound. But it persisted. It became clearer. It became a tangible thing. It was the doorbell.

Habit seemed to impel her. She went automatically to the hall, and, in a numbed sort of consciousness, went along the hall, and opened the door, and stared at a short, fat man, who stood there and chewed on the butt of a cigar that dangled from one corner of his mouth.

“My name's MacBain,” said Bookie Skarvan glibly. “And I want to see Nicolo Capriano. Very important. You're his daughter, aren't you?”

She did not answer him. Her brain floundered in that pit of blackness into which it had been plunged. She was scarcely aware of the man's presence, scarcely aware that she was standing here in the doorway.

“Say, you look scared, you do; but there's nothing to be scared about,” said Bookie Skarvan ingratiatingly. “I just want to see Nicolo Capriano for a few minutes. You go and tell him a reporter wants to see him about that bomb explosion, and 'll give him a write-up that'll be worth while.”

She drew back a little, forcing herself to shake her head.

“Aw, say, go on now, there's a good girl!” wheedled Bookie Skarvan. “The paper sent me here, and I've got to see him. There's nothing for you to look so white about. I'm only a reporter. I ain't going to hurt him--see?”

Teresa shivered. How cold the night was! This man here--what was it he had said? That he wanted to see Nicolo Capriano? Strange that words came with such curious difficulty to her tongue--as though, somehow, she had been dumb all her life, and was speaking now for the first time.

“Nicolo Capriano is dead,” she said--and closed the door in Bookie Skarvan's face.