BOOK IV: THE IRON TAVERN

I--THE RENDEZVOUS

THE metamorphosis in Dave Henderson's appearance since the night, nine days ago, when he had left San Francisco and Nicolo Capriano's house, had been, by necessity, gradual; it had attained its finished state now, as he stepped from a train to one of the sub-level station platforms in the City of New York. Then, he had been attired in one of the old Italian's cast-off and ill-fitting suits, an object neither too respectable nor presentable; now, the wide-brimmed soft hat was new and good, and the dark tweed suit, of expensive material, was that of a well-groomed man.

It had taken time--all this. Nor had it been entirely simple of accomplishment, in spite of the ample funds received from Square John Kelly, funds that now, wary of unsavory corners into which a certain business that he had on hand might lead him here in New York, he had taken the precaution to secrete about his person in a money belt beneath his underclothing.

He had scarcely needed old Nicolo Capriano's warning to be careful. Dave Henderson had not changed so much in five years in prison that he could take liberties with the risk of recognition in that section of the country where, in the days before, he had been so familiar a figure on the local race-tracks. He had made his way out of California, and considerably beyond California, in the same way that, once before, he had attempted to elude the police--and on which former occasion would have succeeded, he was quite satisfied, had it not been for the wound that had finally robbed him of consciousness and placed him at their mercy.

He had traveled during three nights, and only at night, in boxcars, and on freight trains, stealing his way. But there had been no hurry. The night of the twenty-fourth of June, the date of the rendezvous that Millman had given him, had not been very far off, and though it had always obtruded itself upon him and never allowed itself to be forgotten from the moment he had heard it from Millman's lips, he had consistently told himself that the twenty-fourth of June was a consideration to be entirely disregarded. Since Millman was a thief and had double-crossed him, the rendezvous was blatantly a fake. It existed only as a sort of jeering, ironical barb with which Millman at times, out of the nowhere, like a specter, grinning maliciously, prodded and made devil's sport of him. He had no concern with Millman's twenty-fourth of June! He would meet Millman in due time--two hemispheres were not big enough, or wide enough apart, to prevent that--but the meeting would be by his, not Millman's, appointment.

And then he had passed out of the more critical danger zone, and got further east. But, even then, he had taken no chances. Dave Henderson was dead--the creation of one Barty Lynch was not a matter to be trifled with. He had taken no chances; if anything, he had erred on the side of extreme caution. The abrupt transition into respectability by one in misfitting, threadbare garments, and who looked, moreover, a disreputable tramp from his nights in the boxcars, was only to invite suspicion at any ordinary store where he might attempt to buy clothes. A second-hand suit, therefore, of fairly creditable appearance, first replaced Nicolo Capriano's discarded garments; later, at a more exclusive establishment still further east, in Chicago, to be exact, this was exchanged for the attire he now wore--while, here and there, he had stocked a dress-suit case with needed requirements. He had been deliberately leisurely in his progress east once he had felt it safe to dispense with his boxcar mode of travel--and this, actually, as a sort of defiance and challenge flung down by his common sense to that jeering prod with which Millman, and Millman's cynical rendezvous, plagued him in spite of himself. The evening of June twenty-fourth at the St. Lucian Hotel in New York was of no particular interest to him! It had taken him a week to reach Chicago. It was nine days now since he had left Nicolo Capriano's house. Nine days! He was now in New York, standing here on one of the station platforms--and it was the evening of the twenty-fourth of June!

He looked at his watch, as he made his way to the main section of the station. It was seven-thirty. He deposited his dress-suit case in the parcel-room, and went out to the street. Here, he asked a policeman to direct him to the St. Lucian Hotel.

He smiled a little grimly as he walked along. The much vaunted challenge of his common sense had gone down to rout and defeat, it seemed! He was on his way now to the St. Lucian Hotel--and he would be there at eight o'clock on the evening of June twenty-fourth. He laughed outright at himself, suddenly, mirthlessly.

Well, why not! And why not be entirely honest with himself? Despite self-argument to the contrary, he knew all along that he would be at the rendezvous at the appointed time. He was a fool--undoubtedly a fool. Nothing could come of it except, possibly, to afford Millman, if Millman had elected to watch from some safe vantage point in hiding, an amusing spectacle.

He was a fool--he offered nothing in defense of himself on that score. But, too, as far as any results had been obtained, he had been a fool to go searching the old pigeon-cote for the money, when he had beforehand already persuaded himself in his own mind that the money was gone! It was the same thing over again now--the elimination of doubt, that would always have crept insidiously into his mind; the substitution of doubt, however ill-founded, for an established certainty. He had felt better for that visit to the old pigeon-cote; he would feel better, even at the expense of pampering again to fantastic doubts, for his visit to the St. Lucian Hotel to-night. Millman would not be there, any more than the money had been in the pigeon-cote; but, equally, he, Dave Henderson, would have established that fact beyond the reach of any brain quibbling which, of late, had been, it seemed, so prone to affect him.

He stopped again to ask directions from an officer, and to ask this time another question as well--a question prompted by a somewhat unpleasant possibility which, having once decided to keep the rendezvous, he could not now ignore. What kind of a place _was_ this St. Lucian Hotel?

“One of the best,” the officer answered. “There you are--two blocks ahead, and one to the left.”

Dave Henderson smiled with a sort of patient tolerance at himself. The locality alone should have been sufficient answer to his question. It was not the setting, very far from it, for a trap! His hand, that had un consciously closed around the stock of his revolver in the side pocket of his coat, was withdrawn and swung now at his side, as he walked along again.

He looked at his watch once more, as he turned the corner indicated. It was five minutes to eight. A half block ahead of him he saw the hotel. He walked slowly now, the short distance remaining. “The St. Lucian Hotel. Eight o'clock in the evening. June twenty-fourth.” The words seemed to mock at him now, and the gibe to sting. He had fallen for it, after all! He could call himself a fool again if he wished, but what was the use of that? It was obvious that he was a fool! He _felt_ like one, as he passed a much bedecked functionary at the doorway, and found himself standing a moment later in the huge, luxuriously appointed rotunda of the hotel. He was not even recompensed by novelty, as he stared aimlessly about him. It was just the usual thing--the rug-strewn, tiled floor; the blaze of lights; the hum of talk; the hurry of movement; the wide, palm-dotted corridors, whose tables were crowded with men and women in evening dress at after-dinner coffee; the deep lounging chairs in his more immediate vicinity; the strains of an orchestra trying to make itself heard above the general hubbub.

A clock from the hotel desk behind him began to chime the hour. He turned mechanically in that direction, his eyes seeking the timepiece--and whirled suddenly around again, as a hand fell upon his shoulder. The police! The thought flashed swift as a lightning stroke through his mind. Somewhere, somehow he had failed, and they had found him out, and----

The rotunda, the lights, seemed to swirl before him, and then to vanish utterly, and leave only a single figure to fill all the space, a figure in immaculate evening clothes, a figure whose hand tightened its shoulder-grip upon him, a figure whose clear, gray eyes stared into his and smiled.

He touched his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“Millman!” he said hoarsely. “You!”

“Well,” said Millman easily, “this is the St. Lucian Hotel; it's eight o'clock, and June twenty-fourth--who did you expect to meet here?”

“You,” said Dave Henderson--and laughed unnaturally.

Millman's gray eyes narrowed, and his face clouded suddenly.

“What's the matter with you, Dave?” he demanded sharply.

Dave Henderson's hands, at his sides, were clenched. Millman--this was Millman! Millman, whom he hadn't expected to meet here! Millman, whom he had promised himself he would track down if it took a lifetime, and, once found, would settle with as he would settle with a mad dog! And Millman was here, smiling into his face! His mind groped out through a haze of bewilderment that robbed him of the power to reason; his tongue groped for words. It was as though he were dazed and groggy from a blow that had sent him mentally to his knees. He did not understand.

“There's nothing the matter with me,” he said mechanically.

He felt Millman's hand close on his arm.

“Come on up to my rooms,” said Millman quietly. “It's a little public here, isn't it?”

Dave Henderson did not disengage his arm from the other's hold, but his hand slipped unostentatiously into his coat pocket. A rift seemed to come breaking through that brain fog, as he silently accompanied Millman to the elevator. He had dismissed the probability of such a thing but a few minutes before, had even jeered at himself for considering it, but, in spite of the eminent respectability of the St. Lucian Hotel, in spite of its fashion-crowded corridors and lobby, the thought was back now with redoubled force--and it came through the process of elimination. If Millman was a crook, as he undoubtedly was, and had secured the money, as he undoubtedly had, why else should Millman be here? There seemed to be no other way to account for Millman having kept the rendezvous. Strange things, queer things, had happened in hotels that were quite as enviable of reputation as the St. Lucian--perhaps it was even the _safest_ place for such things to happen, from the perpetrator's standpoint! His lips were tight now. Well, at least, he was not walking blindfold into--a trap!

They had ascended in silence. He eyed Millman now in cool appraisal, as the elevator stopped, and the other led the way and threw open the door to a suite of rooms. There was quite a difference between the prison stripes of a bare few months ago and the expensive and fashionably tailored evening clothes of to-night! Well, Millman had always claimed he was a gentleman, hadn't he? And he, Dave Henderson, had believed him--once! But that did not change anything. Millman was no less a crook for that! From the moment Millman had gone to that pigeon-cote and had taken that money, he stood out foursquare as a crook, and---- Dave Henderson felt his muscles tauten, and a chill sense of dismay seize suddenly upon him. There was still another supposition--one that swept upon him now in a disconcerting flash. Suppose Millman had _not_ gone to that pigeon-cote, suppose it was _not_ Millman who had taken the money, suppose that, after all, it had been found by some one else, that Tooler, for instance, had stumbled upon it by chance! And, instead of Millman having it, suppose that it was gone forever, without clue to its whereabouts, beyond his, Dave Henderson's, reach! It was not impossible--it was not even improbable. His brain was suddenly in turmoil--he scarcely heard Millman's words, as the other closed the door of the suite behind them.

“The family is in the country for the summer months,” said Millman with a smile, as he waved his hand around the apartment; “and I have gone back to my old habit--since I have been free to indulge my habits--of living here during that time, instead of keeping a town house open, too. Sit down there, Dave, by the table, and make yourself comfortable.”

It sounded plausible--most plausible! Dave Henderson scowled. Across his mind flashed that scene in the prison library when Millman had been plausible before--damnably plausible! His mind was in a sort of riot now; but, through the maze of doubt and chaos, there stood out clearly enough the memory of the hours, and days, and weeks of bitter resolve to “get” this man who now, offensively at his ease, and smiling, was standing here before him.

And then Dave Henderson laughed a little--not pleasantly.

Well, he was face to face with Millman now. It would be a showdown anyhow. Trap, or no trap, Millman would show his hand. He would know whether Millman had got that money, or whether somebody else had! He would know whether Millman was straight--or whether Millman was a crook!

He jerked his shoulders back sharply; his fingers closed a little more ominously on the revolver in his coat pocket. Was he quite crazy? Had he lost all sense of proportion? The chances were a thousand to one that it _was_ Millman who had looted the pigeon-cote; the chances were one in a thousand that it could have been any one else.

“Yes,” he said coolly. “Nice rooms you've got here, and a bit of a change from--out West!” He jerked his head abruptly toward a door across the room. “I notice you've got a closed door there. I hope I'm not butting in, if you're entertaining friends, or anything like that!” He laughed again--raucously now. His nerves seemed suddenly to be raw and on edge. Millman was favoring him with what, whether it was genuine or not, was meant for a blank stare.

“Friends?” said Millman questioningly. And then his gray eyes softened. “Oh, I see!” he exclaimed. “It's hard to get over the habit, isn't it? No; there's no one there. But perhaps you'd feel better satisfied to look for yourself.”

“I would!” said Dave Henderson bluntly.

“Go ahead, then!” invited Millman readily, and waved his hand toward the door.

“I'll follow _you_,” said Dave Henderson curtly.

Millman turned toward the door, hesitated, and stopped.

“Dave, what's the matter with you?” he demanded for the second time.

“Nothing much!” replied Dave Henderson. “But we'll get this over first, eh? Go on, let's see the rest' of this suite of yours. It's good to know that an old pal is enjoying such pleasant surroundings.”

Without a word, Millman stepped across the room, and opened the door in question. It led into a bedroom, and from there to a bathroom; there was nothing else. Dave Henderson inspected these in silence. He eyed Millman, frowning in a renewed perplexity, as they returned to the outer room.

“All right!” he said gruffly. “You win the first trick. But how about a certain little package now? I'll trouble you to hand that over, Millman!”

Millman shook his head in a sort of tolerant expostulation.

“As we used to say 'out there,' I don't get you, Dave!” he said slowly. “You are acting very strangely. I've been looking forward to this meeting--and you haven't even a handshake for an old friend. I don't understand.”

“I don't myself!” returned Dave Henderson evenly. “There's a whole lot of things that don't fit. But it's five years since I've seen that package, and maybe I'm a trifle over-anxious about it. Suppose you come across with it!”

Millman shrugged his shoulders a little helplessly.

“You're a queer card, Dave,” he said. “Of course, I'll come across with it! What else in the world are we here for to-night?” He stepped to the table, pulled a drawer open, and produced a neatly tied parcel, which he laid on the table. “I took it out of the vault to-day, so as to have it ready for you to-night.”

From the package, Dave Henderson's eyes lifted, and held Millman's in a long stare. It was as though, somehow, the ground had been swept from under his feet. He had expected anything but the package. Logically, from every conclusion based on logic, Millman should not be handing over that package now. And this act now was so illogical that he could account for it on no other basis than one of trickery of some sort. He tried to read the riddle in the other's eyes; he read only a cool, imperturbable composure. His hand still toyed with the revolver in his pocket.

“There's an outside wrapper on it, I see,” he said in a low voice. “Take it off, Millman.”

Millman's brows knitted in a sort of amused perplexity.

“You're beyond me to-night, Dave,” he said, as he stripped off the outer covering. “Utterly beyond me! Well, there you are!”

The package lay there now on the table, intact, as it had been on the night it had found a hiding-place in the old pigeon-cote. The original brown-paper wrapper was still tied and sealed with its several bank seals in red wax; the corner, torn open in that quick, hasty examination in Martin K. Tydeman's library, still gaped apart, disclosing the edges of the banknotes within. It was the package containing one hundred thousand dollars, intact, untouched, undisturbed.

Dave Henderson sat down mechanically in the chair behind him that was drawn up close to the table. His hand came from his pocket, and, joined by the other, cupped his chin, his elbows resting on the table's edge, as he stared at the package.

“I'm damned!” said Dave Henderson heavily.

His mind refused to point the way. It left him hung up in midair. It still persisted in picturing the vengeance he had sworn against this man here, in picturing every stake he owned flung into the ring to square accounts with this man here--and the picture took on the guise now of grotesque and gigantic irony. But still he did not understand. That picture had had its inception in a logical, incontrovertible and true perspective. It was strange! He looked up now from the package to Millman, as he felt Millman's hand fall and press gently upon his shoulder. Millman was leaning toward him over the table.

“Well, Dave,” said Millman, and his smile disarmed his words, “you've treated me as though I were a thug up to the moment I opened that package, and now you act as though the sight of it had floored you. Perhaps you'll tell me now, if I ask you again, what's the matter?”

Dave Henderson did not answer for a moment. His hand went into his pocket and came out again--with his revolver balanced in its palm.

“I guess I made a mistake,” he said at last, with a queer smile. “Thug is right! I was figuring on pulling this on you--in another way.”

Millman drew a chair deliberately up to the opposite side of the table, and sat down.

“Go on, Dave,” he prompted quietly. “I'm listening.”

Dave Henderson restored the weapon to his pocket, and shrugged his shoulders in a way that was eloquent of his own perturbed state of mind.

“I guess you'll get the point in a word or two,” he said slowly. “The story you told me in the pen, and the way you acted for two years made me believe you, and made me think you were straight. Understand? And then that afternoon before you were going out, and I was up against it hard--you know--I told you where this money was. Understand? Well, I had hardly got back to my cell when I figured you had trapped me. If you were straight you wouldn't touch that money, unless to do me in by handing it back to the police, for it would be the same thing as stealing it again, and that would make a crook of you; if you were a crook then you weren't playing straight with me to begin with, since the story you told me was a lie, and the only reason I could see for that lie was to work me up to spilling the beans so that you could cop the loot and give me the slip. Either way, it looked raw for me, didn't it? Well, when I got out, the money _hadn't_ gone back to the police, but it _had_ gone! I swore I'd get you. Don't make any mistake about that, Millman--I swore I'd get you. I didn't expect to meet you here to-night. I called myself a fool even for coming. You were either straight or a crook, and there wasn't much room left for doubt as to which it was. See, Millman?”

Millman nodded his head gravely.

“I see,” he said, in the same quiet tones. “And now?”

Dave Henderson jerked his hand toward the package of banknotes that lay on the table before him.

“I guess that's the answer, isn't it?” he said, with a twisted smile. “There's the hundred thousand dollars there that you pinched from the old pigeon-cote.” He shoved out his hand impulsively to Millman. “I'm sorry, Millman. Shake! I've been in wrong all the time. But I never seemed to get that slant on it before; that you were--a straight crook.”

Millman's gray eyes, half amused, half serious, studied Dave Henderson for a long minute, as their hands clasped.

“A straight crook, eh?” he said finally, leaning back again in his chair. “Well, the deduction is fairly logical, Dave, I'll have to admit. And what's the answer to that?”

Dave Henderson jerked his hand toward the package of banknotes again.

“There's only one, isn't there?” he returned. “You've got a stake in that coin now. A fair share of it is yours, and I'll leave it to you to say what you want.”

Millman lighted a cigarette before he answered.

“All right!” he said, with a curious smile, as his eyes through the spiral of blue smoke from the tip of his cigarette fixed on Dave Henderson again. “All right! I'll accept that offer, Dave. And I'll take--all, or none.”

Dave Henderson drew sharply back in his chair. There was something in Millman's voice, a significance that he did not like, or quite understand, save that it denied any jocularity on Millman's part, or that the other was making a renunciation of his claim through pure generosity. His eyes narrowed. The money was here. Millman had come across with it. Those facts were not to be gainsaid; but they were facts so utterly at variance with what months of brooding over the matter had led him to expect they should be, that he had accepted them in a sort of stunned surprise. And now this! Was he right, after all--that there was some trickery here?

“What do you mean--all, or none?” he said, a hint of menace creeping into his voice.

“Just that,” said Millman, and his tones were low and serious now. “Just what I said--all, or none.”

Dave Henderson laughed shortly.

“Then I guess it'll be--none!” he said coolly.

“Perhaps,” admitted Millman slowly. “But I hope not.” He leaned forward now, earnestly, over the table. “Dave,” he said steadily, “let us get back to the old pal days again when we believed in each other, just man to man, Dave; because now you've got a chip on your shoulder. I don't want to knock that chip off; I want to talk to you. I want to tell you why I committed what you have rightly called theft in going to that pigeon-cote and taking that money. And I want to try and make you understand that my life in prison and the story that I told you there, in spite of the fact that I have 'stolen' the money now, was not a lie. There is not a soul on this wide earth, Dave, except yourself, who knows that Charles Millman served two years in the penitentiary with prison stripes on his back. If it were known I think it would mean ruin to me, certainly in a social sense, very probably in a commercial sense as well. And yet, Dave, I would rather you knew it than that you didn't. Does that sound strange? Well, somehow, I've never pictured the flaring headlines that would be in every paper in this city if I were exposed--because, well, because I couldn't picture it--not through you, Dave--and that's the only way it could come about. And so you see, Dave, I did not ask you for faith in me without reposing my own faith in you in the same full measure.”

Dave Henderson's brows gathered. He stared at the other. It was like the Charlie Millman of old talking now. But the whole business was queer--except that the money lay here now within reach of his hand after five years of hell and torture. He made no comment.

“And so, Dave, what could I do?” Millman went on. “As far as I could see then, and as far as I can see now, I had no choice but to offer to get that money from its hiding-place. I knew you meant literally what you said when you swore you'd fight for it if all the police in America were blocking your way, and that you'd either get it or go down and out. I knew you'd do that; I knew the police _would_ watch you, and I feared for you either physical harm or another long prison sentence. And so I took the money and shared your guilt. But, Dave, once I was committed to that act, I was committed to another as well--I hadn't any choice there, either--I mean, Dave, the return of the money to the estate where it belongs.”

Dave Henderson was on his feet. His face, that had softened and relaxed as Millman was speaking, was suddenly hard and set again, and now a red, angry flush was dyeing his cheeks. He choked for his words.

“What's that you say!” he rasped out. “Return it!” He laughed raucously. “Have you been drinking, Millman--or are you just crazy?”

A strange, whimsical smile crept to Millman's lips. “No,” he said. “I guess I'm what you called me--just a straight crook. I can't see any other way out, Dave. I've stolen the money too, and it's up to me as well as you. It's got to go back.”

“By God--no!” said Dave Henderson through his teeth. “No! You understand--no!”

Millman shook his head slowly.

“Dave, it's no good,” he said quietly. “Apart from every other consideration, it won't get you anywhere. Listen, Dave, I----”

“No!” Dave Henderson interrupted savagely. “You can cut that out! You're going to preach; but that's no good, either! You're going to pull the goody-goody stuff, and then you're going to tell me that sooner or later I'll be caught, anyhow. Well, you can forget it--the preaching, because I don't want to listen to you; and the other, because there's nothing to it now.” He leaned across the table, and laughed raucously again, and stared with cynical humor at the other. “I'm dead--see? Dave Henderson is dead. A friend of mine pulled the trick on them in 'Frisco. They think Dave Henderson is dead. The book is closed, slammed shut forever--understand? I'm dead--but I've got this money now that I've fought for, and paid for with the sweat of hell, and it's going to pay me back now, Millman! Understand? It's going to pay the dividends now that I've earned--and that, by God, no man is going to take away from me!”

“Good old Dave!” said Millman softly. “That's what's the matter with you--you'd drop in your tracks before you'd let go. If only you weren't looking through the wrong glasses, Dave, you'd fight just as hard the other way. No, I don't want to preach to you, and I'm not going to preach; but there's a great big bond, two years of prison together, between you and me, and I want you to listen to me. You were never meant for a crook, Dave. There's not a crooked thing in the world about you, except this one distorted brain kink that's got hold of you. And now you're in wrong. Look at it from any angle that you like, and it doesn't pay. It hasn't paid you so far--and it never will.”

“Hasn't it!” snapped Dave Henderson. “Well, maybe not! But that's because it hasn't had the chance. But the chance is here now, and it's all bust wide open. You can forget everything else, Millman, except just this, and then you'll understand once for all where I stand: Here's the money--and I'm dead!”

“Your soul isn't,” said Millman bluntly.

Dave Henderson's jaws set.

“That's enough!” he flung out curtly. “Once for all--no!”

Millman did not answer for a moment, nor did he look at Dave Henderson--his eyes, through the curling cigarette smoke, were fixed on the package of banknotes.

“I'm sorry, Dave,” he said at last, in a low, strained way. “I'm sorry you won't take the biggest chance you'll ever have in your life, the chance you've got right now, of coming across a white man clean through. I thought perhaps you would. I hoped you would, Dave--and so I'm sorry. But that doesn't alter my position any. The money has got to go back to the estate, and it is going back.”

For an instant Dave Henderson did not move, then he thrust his head sharply forward over the table. The red had flooded into his face again, and his eyes were hard and full of menace.

“That's better!” he said through tight lips. “You're talking a language now that I understand! So that money is going back, is it? Well, you've talked a lot, and I've listened. Now you listen to me, and listen hard! I don't want to hurt you, Millman, as God is my judge, I don't want to hurt you, but it will be one or the other of us. Understand, Millman? One or the other of us, if you start anything like that! You get me, Millman? You've called a showdown, and that goes; but, by God, unless you've got a better hand than I have, you'll never send that money back!”

Millman's hand was resting on the package of banknotes. He pushed it now quietly across the table to Dave Henderson.

“Not this, Dave,” he said simply. “You settled that when I asked for all or none. This is yours--to do with as you like. Don't misunderstand me, Dave; don't make any mistake. You can put that package under your arm and leave here this minute, and I'll not lift a finger to stop you, or, after you are gone, say a word, or make any move to discredit your assumed death, or bring the police upon your heels. I told you once, Dave--do you remember?--that you could trust me. But, Dave, if you won't return the stolen money, then I will. I haven't any choice, have I? I stole it, too.”

Dave Henderson stared, frowning, into the steel-gray eyes across the table.

“I don't get you!” he said shortly. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I say, Dave,” Millman answered. “That if you won't return it yourself, I will pay it back out of my own pocket.”

For a minute Dave Henderson eyed the other incredulously, then he threw back his head and laughed, but it was not a pleasant laugh.

“You will, eh!” he said. “Well, if you feel that way about it, go to it! Maybe you can afford it; I can't!”

“Yes,” said Millman soberly, “as far as that goes, I am a rich man, and I can afford it. But, Dave, I want to say this to you”--he was standing up now--“the richest man in the world couldn't afford to part with a nickel as well as you could afford to part with that hundred thousand dollars there. It isn't money that you've got at stake, Dave. Well, that's all. Either you pay--or I do. It's up to you, Dave.”

Dave Henderson's hands were clenching and unclenching, as he gripped at the edge of the table. Vaguely, dimly, he sensed an awakening something within him which seemed to be striving to give birth to some discordant element that sought to undermine and shake his resolution. It was not tangible yet, it was confused; his mind groped out in an effort to grasp it in a concrete way so that he might smother it, repudiate it, beat it down.

“No!” he shot out.

Millman shook his head.

“I don't ask you for an answer to-night,” he said gravely. “I don't think you're ready to give an answer now, and be fair to yourself. It's a pretty big stake, Dave. You'll never play for a bigger--and neither will I. I'm staking a hundred thousand dollars on the Dave Henderson I know--the chap that's dead for a while. It doesn't matter much now whether the money is back in the hands of the estate in a day, or a week, or a month from now. Take a month, Dave. If at the end of a month the estate has not received the money from you--and I shall know whether it has or not--it will receive a hundred thousand dollars in cash from me, anonymously, with the statement that it is to square the account for which Dave Henderson was convicted.”

Dave Henderson raised a clenched hand, and swept it, clenched, across his eyes. He had it now! He understood that thing within him that seemed quite as eager to offer battle as he was to give it. And it was strong, and insidious, and crafty. He cursed at it. It took him at a disadvantage. It placed him suddenly on the defensive--and it angered him. It placed him in a position that was not a nice one to defend. He cursed at it; and blind fury came as his defense. And the red that had surged into his face left it, and a whiteness came, and his lips thinned into a straight line.

“Damn you, Millman!” he whispered hoarsely. “I get you now! Damn you, you've no right to put the screws on me like this! Who asked you to offer your money as a sacrifice for me--to make me out a white-livered cur if I turned you down! But it doesn't go, understand? It's blackmail, that's what it is! It may be whitewashed with holiness, but it's blackmail just the same--and you can go to hell with it!”

He snatched up the package of banknotes, whipped the outer wrapping around it, and tucked it under his arm--and paused, as though awaiting or inviting some action on Millman's part. But Millman neither moved nor spoke. And then Dave Henderson, with a short laugh, crossed to the door, wrenched it open, stepped out of the room, and slammed the door behind him.

II--THE FIRST GUEST

BLIND to his surroundings, mechanically retracing his steps to the railway station, Dave Henderson swung along the street. He walked as though he would outwalk his thoughts--fast, indifferent to all about him. He clung stubbornly to the fury in which he had sought refuge, and which he had aroused within himself against Millman. He clung to this tenaciously now, because he sensed a persistent attempt on the part of some unwelcome and unfamiliar other-self to argue the pros and cons, both of Millman's motives and Millman's acts; an attempt, that sought to introduce a wedge doubt into his mind, that sought to bring about a wavering of purpose with the insidious intent of robbing him, if it could, of the reward that was now within his grasp.

Within his grasp! He laughed out sharply, as he hurried along. It was _literally_ within his grasp! The reward was his now--his absolutely, concretely, tangibly--the hundred thousand dollars was in this innocent-looking parcel that was at this precise moment tucked under his arm. He laughed out again. There was enough in that one fact to occupy his mind and attention, and to put to utter rout and confusion those other thoughts that endeavored to make cunning and tricky inroads upon him. It shattered and swept aside, as though by the waving of some magical wand, every mental picture he had drawn of himself in New York, every plan that he had made for his sojourn here.

He had been prepared to spend weeks and months of unceasing effort to run Millman to earth; he had planned to rake the dens and dives of the underworld, to live as one of its sordid and outlawed inhabitants, if necessary, in order to get upon Millman's track; he had meant to play Millman at his own game until he had trapped Millman and the final showdown came. And, instead, he had scarcely been in New York an hour, and he was walking now along the street with the hundred thousand dollars under his arm, with Millman no longer a vicious and stealthy antagonist to be foiled and fought wherever he might be found--with nothing to do now but spend or employ this money under his arm as his fancy or his judgment dictated, free of all hindrance or restraint, for Millman was no longer a source of danger or concern, and Dave Henderson was dead to the world in general and to the police in particular, and that left Barty Lynch as the unfettered possessor of one hundred thousand dollars!

Millman had given him a month, and--ah! he was back on that tack, was he? He clenched his hand. No! A month represented time, and it was time in a purely abstract way that he was considering now; it had nothing to do with Millman, or Millman's “month,” It would take time to make new plans and new arrangements. He did not intend to act hastily.

He had come by that money by too brutally hard a road not to realize the worth of every cent of it. He needed time now to think out the future carefully. He was not a fool--to scatter that money to the winds. A thousand times in prison he had buoyed himself up with the knowledge that in the returns from that sum of money lay independence for life. That was what he had taken it for in the first place! It meant, safely invested, a minimum of five thousand dollars a year. He could get along very well, even luxuriously, on five thousand a year! He had only now to decide where and how he should invest that money; and he needed only now the time to arrive at that decision without any undue haste that might afterwards be bitterly regretted. Would he go to Australia, or to South America, for example, and begin life anew there as a gentleman of independent means? Or somewhere in Europe, perhaps? It needed time now to make this decision, and, as a natural corollary, a temporary abode was required, an abode where he could feel quite secure, both as regards his money, and as against any eleventh-hour trick of fate that might disclose his identity and spill the fat into the fire.

Well, he had had that latter problem solved for him from the first, hadn't he? There was Dago George's; and in his pocket was Nicolo Capriano's letter that was an “open sesame” to Dago George's hospitality, and, more vital still, to Dago George's fidelity. He was going there now, as soon as he got his dress-suit case again from the station which now loomed ahead of him down the block.

His thoughts reverted to Nicolo Capriano, and, from the old Italian, to the old Italian's daughter. Teresa! He had not forgotten Teresa! Again and again, in those jolting boxcars, and during his flight from San Francisco, there had come a mental picture in which those fearless eyes had met his, and he had seen her smile, and watched the color mount and crimson her face as it had done on that occasion when he had first seen her.

He had not forgotten Teresa, he had not tried to; he had even invited those mental pictures of her. It was like some fragrant and alluring memory that had seemed to ding to him, and he had dung to it. Some day he wanted to see Teresa again--and she was the only woman toward whom he had ever felt that way. He wasn't in love with her, that was ridiculous, unless he had fallen in love with her since he had left her! But of one thing he was distinctly conscious, and that was that her attitude on that last night, when she had let him go in so strange a way, still plagued and tormented him. It was as though she had slammed the door of her presence in his face, and he wanted to see her again--some time--and----

Queer fancies crept into his brain. The old Italian said he was getting better. Perhaps Nicolo Capriano would like Australia, or South America--or perhaps Europe!

Dave Henderson shrugged his shoulders a little helplessly, and smiled ironically at himself, as he reached and entered the station. It was Nicolo Capriano alone, of course, of whom he was thinking! But--he shrugged his shoulders again--his immediate business now was to get to this Dago George!

He secured his dress-suit case from the parcel-room, deposited the package of banknotes in the dress-suit case, and sought a taxi. That was the easiest and most convenient way of reaching Dago George's. He did not know either in what direction or how far he had to go, and somehow, both physically and mentally, he suddenly, and for the first time, realized that he was tired.

“Chatham Square,” he told the starter, as he climbed into the taxi; and then, as the car moved forward, he leaned over and spoke to the chauffeur: “There's a fellow called Dago George who keeps a place right near there,” he said. “I don't know exactly where it is; but I guess you can find it, can't you?”

“Sure!” said the chauffeur heartily, with an extra tip in sight, “Sure! Leave it to me!”

Dave Henderson settled himself comfortably back on the seat, and relaxed. The strain of the days since he had left San Francisco, the strain of the days since the prison doors had opened and let him free, the strain of the five years behind those pitiless walls of stone and those bars of steel was gone now. The money was his, in his sole possession, here in the dress-suit case at his feet. It was the end of the bitter struggle. It was finished. He could let go now, and relax luxuriously. And, besides, he was tired.

He refused to think of Millman, because it irritated him. He refused to think of anything now, because his brain was like some weary thing, which, with a sigh of relief, stretched itself out and revelled in idleness. His future, Nicolo Capriano, Teresa--all these could wait until to-morrow, until a night's sleep, the first he would have known for many nights that was not haunted by distracting doubts and problems, should bring him fresh to the consideration of his new plans.

He lighted a cigarette and smoked, and watched the passing crowds and traffic through the window. He had only to present his letter to Dago George, and turn in for the night, with the feeling, also for the first time in many nights, of absolute security.

Dave Henderson continued to gaze out of the window. The localities through which he passed did not seem to improve. He smiled a little. He knew nothing about New York, but this was about what he had expected. Dago George was not likely either to reside or conduct his business in a very exclusive neighborhood!

Finally the taxi stopped, but only to permit the chauffeur to ask directions from a passer-by on the sidewalk. They went on again then, turned a corner, and a moment later drew up at the curb.

“I guess this is the place all right,” announced the chauffeur.

A glance confirmed the chauffeur's statement. Across the somewhat dingy window of a barroom, as he looked out, Dave Henderson read in large, white, painted letters, the legend:

THE IRON TAVERN

GEORGES VARDI, PROP.

That was Dago George's name, he remembered Nicolo Capriano had told him--Georges Vardi. He alighted, paid and dismissed the chauffeur, and stood for an instant on the sidewalk surveying the place.

It was a small and old three-story frame building. The barroom, to which there was a separate entrance, bordered on a lane at his right; while, almost bisecting the building, another door, wide open, gave on a narrow hall--and this, in turn, as he could see through the end window at his left, gave access to the restaurant, such as it was, for at several small tables here the occupants were engaged in making a belated dinner. Above, there was a light or two in the second story windows, the third story was in complete darkness.

It was certainly not over-prepossessing, and he shrugged his shoulders, half in a sort of philosophical recognition of a fact that was to be accepted whether or no, and half in a sort of acquiescent complacence. It was the sort of a place he wanted for the present anyhow!

Dave Henderson chose the restaurant entrance. An Italian waiter, in soiled and spotted apron, was passing along the hall. Dave Henderson hailed the man.

“I want to see Dago George,” he said.

The waiter nodded.

“I tell-a da boss,” he said.

Again Dave Henderson surveyed the place--what he could see of the interior now. It had evidently been, in past ages, an ordinary dwelling house. The stairs, set back a little from the entrance, came down at his right, and at the foot of these there was a doorway into the barroom. At his left was the restaurant which he had already seen through the window. Facing him was the narrow hall, quite long, which ended in a closed door that boasted a fanlight; also there appeared to be some other mysterious means of egress under the stairs from the hall, an entrance to the kitchen perhaps, which might be in the cellar, for the waiter had disappeared in that direction.

The door with the fanlight at the rear of the hall opened now, and a tall, angular man, thin-faced and swarthy, thrust out his head. His glance fell upon Dave Henderson.

“I'm Dago George--you want to see me?” His voice, with scarcely a trace of accent, was suave and polite--the hotel-keeper's voice of diplomacy, tentatively gracious pending the establishment of an intruder's identity and business, even though the intrusion upon his privacy might be unwelcome.

Dave Henderson smiled, as he picked up his dress-suit case and stepped forward. He quite understood. The proprietor of The Iron Tavern, though he remained uninvitingly upon the threshold of the door, was not without tact!

“Yes,” said Dave Henderson; and smiled again, as he set down his dress-suit case in front of the blocked doorway, and noted an almost imperceptible frown cross Dago George's face as the other's eyes rested on that article. His hand went into his pocket for Nicolo Capriano's letter--but remained there. He was curious now to see, or, rather, to compare the reception of a stranger with the reception accorded to one vouched for by the old bomb king in San Francisco. “Yes,” he said; “I'd like to get a room here for a few days.”

“Ah!” Dago George's features suddenly expressed pain and polite regret. “I am so sorry--yes! I do not any longer keep a hotel. In the years ago--yes. But not now. It did not pay. The restaurant pays much better, and the rooms above for private dining parties bring the money much faster. I am desolated to turn you away; but since I have no rooms, I have no rooms, eh? So what can I do?”

Dave Henderson studied the other's face complacently. The man was not as old as Nicolo Capriano; the man's hair was still black and shone with oil, and in features he was not Nicolo Capriano at all; but somehow it _was_ Nicolo Capriano, only in another incarnation perhaps. He nodded his head. He was not sorry to learn that The Iron Tavern was ultraexclusive!

“That's too bad,” he said quietly. “I've come a long way--from a friend of yours. Perhaps that may make some difference?”

“A friend?” Dago George was discreetly interested.

“Nicolo Capriano,” said Dave Henderson.

Dago George leaned suddenly forward, staring into Dave Henderson's eyes.

“What!” he exclaimed. “What is that you say? Nicolo Capriano!” He caught up the dress-suit case from the floor, and caught Dave Henderson's arm, and pulled him forward into the room, and closed the door behind them. “You come from Nicolo Ca-priano, you say? Ah, yes, my friend, that is different; that is _very_ different. There may still be some rooms here, eh? Ha, ha! Yes, yes!”

“You may possibly already have heard something from him about me,” said Dave Henderson. “Barty Lynch is the name.”

Dago George shook his head.

“Not a word. It is long, very long, since I have heard from Nicolo Capriano. But I do not forget him--no one forgets Nicolo Capriano. And you have come from Nicolo, eh? You have some message then--eh, my friend?”

Dave Henderson extended the old bomb king's letter.

Dago George motioned to a chair, as he ripped the envelope open.

“You will excuse, while I read it--yes?” he murmured, already engrossed in its contents.

Dave Henderson, from the proffered chair, looked around the room. It was blatantly a combination of sleeping room and office. In one corner was a bed; against the wall facing the door there was a safe; and an old roll-top desk flanked the safe on the other side of the only window that the room possessed. His eyes, from their cursory survey of his surroundings, reverted to Dago George. The man had folded up the letter, and was stretching out his hands effusively.

“Ah, it is good!” Dago George ejaculated. “Yes, yes! Anything--anything that I can do for you is already as good as done. I say that from my heart. You are Barty Lynch--yes? And you come from the old master? Well, that is enough. A room! You may be sure there is a room! And now--eh-- you have not perhaps dined yet? And what else is there? It is long, very long! You may be sure there is a room! And now--eh--you have not perhaps dined yet? And what else is there? It is long, very long, since I have heard from the old master the old master? Well, that is enough. A room! You may be sure there is a room! ”

Dave Henderson laughed.

“There is nothing else--and not even that,” he said. “There was a dining-car on the train to-night. There's not a thing, except to show me my room and let me turn in.”

“But, yes!” exclaimed Dago George. “Yes, that, of course! But wait! The old master! It is long since I have heard from him. He says great things of you; and so you, too, are a friend of Nicolo Capriano. Well, then, it is an occasion, this meeting! We will celebrate it! A little bottle of wine, eh? A little bottle of wine!”

Dave Henderson shook his head.

“No,” he said, and smiled. “As a matter of fact, I'm rather all in; and, if you don't mind, I'll hit the hay to-night pronto.”

Dago George raised his hands protestingly.

“But what would Nicolo Capriano say to me for such hospitality as that!” he cried. “So, if not a bottle, then at least a little glass, eh? You will not refuse! We will drink his health--the health of Nicolo Capriano! Eh? Wait! Wait!” And he rushed pell-mell from the room, as though his life depended upon his errand.

Dave Henderson laughed again. The man with his volubility and effervescence amused him.

Dago George was back in a few minutes with a tray and two glasses of wine. He offered one of the glasses with an elaborate bow to Dave Henderson.

“It is the best in my poor house,” he said, and held the other glass aloft to the light. “To Nicolo Capriano! To the old master! To the master of them all!” he cried--and drank, rolling his wine on his tongue like a connoisseur.

Dave Henderson drained his glass.

“To Nicolo Capriano!” he echoed heartily.

“Good!” said Dago George brightly. “One more little glass? No? You are sure? Well, you have said that you are tired--eh? Well, then, to make you comfortable! Come along with me!” He picked up the dress-suit case, opened the door, and led the way into the hall He was still talking as he mounted the stairs. “There will be many things for us to speak about, eh? But that will be for to-morrow. We are perhaps all birds of a feather--eh--or Nicolo Capriano perhaps would not have sent you here? Well, well--to-morrow, my friend, if you care to. But I ask nothing, you understand? You come and you go, and you talk, or you remain silent, as you wish. Is it not so? That is what Nicolo Capriano writes--and it is enough.” He paused at the second-story landing. “You see,” he said, waving his hand around the dimly lighted passage. “Little private dining-rooms! But there is no business to-night. Another flight, my friend, and perhaps we shall find better accommodations there.”

It was as the other had said. Partially opened doors showed the three or four small rooms, that opened off the hall, to be fitted up as dining-rooms. Dave Henderson made no comment, as he followed the other up the next flight of stairs. He was tired. He had been telling himself lazily so from the moment he had taken the taxi. He was acutely aware of it now. It was the relaxation, of course--but he had become of a sudden infernally sleepy.

Dago George unlocked a door at the head of the third floor landing, entered, deposited the dress-suit case on the floor, and turned on the light. He handed the key of the room to Dave Henderson.

“It is plain, it is not rich,” he said apologetically; “but the bed is good, and you will be quiet here, my friend, very _quiet_--eh?--you can take my word for that.”

“It looks good to me, all right!” said Dave Henderson, and stifled a yawn. “I certainly owe you my best thanks.”

Dago George shrugged his shoulders in expostulation.

“But it is nothing!” he protested. “Do you not come from Nicolo Capriano? Well, that is enough. But--you yawn! No, no; do not try to hide it! It is I who am to blame. I talk--and you would rest. But, one thing, my friend, before I go. It is my curiosity. The letter--it is signed by Nicolo Capriano, and I know the signature well--but it is written by a woman, is it not? How is that? I am curious. But perhaps you do not know?”

“Yes,” Dave Henderson answered, and yawned frankly this time, and smiled by way of apology. “It was his daughter who wrote it. Nicolo Capriano is sick.”

“Sick!” repeated Dago George. “I did not know! But it is so long since I have heard from him--yes? He is not very sick, perhaps?”

“I don't know,” replied Dave Henderson sleepily. “He's been laid up in bed for three years now, I think.”

“Godam!” ejaculated the Italian. “Is that so! But to-morrow--eh?--we will talk to-morrow. Goodnight, my friend! Good-night--and sleep well!”

“Good-night!” responded Dave Henderson.

He closed and locked the door as Dago George went out, and, sitting down on the edge of the bed, looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten.

“I'll stretch out for ten minutes before I turn in,” said Dave Henderson to himself--but at the end of ten minutes Dave Henderson was asleep.

III--THE SECOND GUEST

IN the hallway of The Iron Tavern, as Dago George descended the stairs from Dave Henderson's room, a slim little figure in black, heavily veiled, stood waiting. Beside her, the greasy waiter, who had previously conveyed Dave Henderson's message to the proprietor, bowed and scraped and wiped his hands on his spotted apron, and pointed to Dago George on the stairs.

“Dat-a da boss,” he announced.

A taxi chauffeur had already deposited two valises in the hall, and had retired. Outside, as the taxi moved away, another taxi, a short, but discreet, distance up the block, started suddenly out from the curb, as its fare, a fat man who chewed upon the butt of a cigar, dug with pudgy fingers into his vest pocket, and handed his chauffeur an address.

“Baggage and all--that's good enough!” said the fat man to himself; and to the chauffeur: “Beat it--and beat it fast!”

The waiter retired from the hall. The almost imperceptible frown on Dago George's face at sight of the valises, was hidden by an ingratiating smile as he hurried forward.

“Madam,” he inquired, “you desire to see me?” The little figure in black nodded her head.

“Yes--in private,” she answered quietly.

“Ah!” Dago George bowed profoundly. “But, yes--certainly! This way, then, if you please, madam.”

He led the way into the rear room, and closed the door.

The little figure in black raised her veil.

“Do you not know me?” she asked.

Dago George stared for a long minute into her face. He shook his head.

“I am desolated!” he murmured apologetically. “It is my memory that is unbelievably stupid, madam.”

“I am Teresa Capriano,” she said.

Dago George moved closer. He stared again into her face, and suddenly into his own there came the light of recognition.

“You--the so-little Teresa--the little bambino!” he cried. “But, yes--yes, it is true!” He caught both her hands, and began to pat them effusively. “Is it possible? Yes, yes! I begin to see again the little girl of the so-many years ago! Ah, no; Dago George has not forgotten, after all! The little Teresa! The little bandit queen! Eh? And you--do you remember that we called you that?” He led her to a chair, and seated her. “Well, well, the little Teresa! And your father, my good friend Nicolo--I had heard that he was sick. He is better--yes? And he is perhaps here, too, in New York?”

“My father is dead,” Teresa answered in a low voice.

“Dead!” Dago George drew back, and stared again, but in a curiously bewildered way now. “Dead!” he repeated. “You say that Nicolo Capriano is--dead?”

“Yes,” she said, and turned her face away from his gaze--only to raise her eyes again, and watch the man covertly, narrowly, as he now began to walk rapidly up and down the room with quick, nervous strides. Her hands tightened a little on the arms of her chair. Here was the end of that long race across the continent, the goal of those fearsome, harried days of haste in San Francisco while her father lay dead. Was she first or last in that frantic race? What did Dago George know? A thousand times she had pictured this scene, and planned for it every word and act that was to be hers--but it was actuality now, and the room for an instant seemed to swirl around her. _She_ remembered Dago George--as one of the most crafty, callous and unscrupulous of the lawless band over whom the man who had been her father had reigned as king. The letter! Had Dago George received it--yes or no? Had Dave Henderson reached here before her? Was he already in danger; or did it require but just a simple bit of acting on her part to undo the treachery of which her father had been guilty--a simple story, for instance, that she was on her way to her father's people in Italy, which would enable her to stay here in this place unsuspected until Dave Henderson came, and she could intercept him, and warn him before any harm was done? Which was it? She dared not ask. If Dago George knew nothing, he must at all costs continue to know nothing. A hint, and Dago George, if he were the Dago George of old, would be like a bloodhound on the scent, and, exactly as though Dago George had actually received her father's letter, Dave Henderson would be the quarry. But if, on the other hand, the letter had already been delivered, well, then--then there was another rôle to play. She dared not ask; not until Dago George had shown his hand, not until she was sure of her own ground. She turned her head away again; Dago George had halted abruptly in front of her chair.

“Dead!” he said uneasily. “You say that Nicolo Capriano, that your father, is dead?”

Teresa nodded without looking up.

Dago George, as abruptly as he had halted, turned and paced the length of the room and back again, and abruptly halted once more in front of her. He leaned toward her, one hand now laid over his heart.

“I am unpardonable!” he said softly. “I say nothing to you of your so-great grief. I do not sympathize. I am heartless! But you will forgive! It is the shock of my own grief for the loss of my friend from which I have not recovered. I bleed for you in your deep sorrow. My poor little bambino! But you understand--yes--do you not?”

Teresa's hands, in her lap now, toyed with one of her gloves which she had taken off. She did not look up.

“Yes, yes,” murmured Dago George. “You understand! But we will speak no more of that now--it is but to depress us both. There are other things--that you have come all this way from San Francisco, and that you have come immediately to me, for you have but just arrived in New York to-night, is it not so?”

“Yes,” Teresa answered. “The train was very late. I came here at once from the station.”

“Then, thanks to your train being late,” said Dago George, with a significant lowering of his voice, “I think I can tell you why you came. If you had been an hour earlier, it would have been you who would have had to tell me. Eh? Is it not so? There was a letter--eh? A letter which you wrote for Nicolo Capriano, for your father--is it not so?”

The blood seemed suddenly to Teresa to grow hot, and as suddenly to grow chill and cold in her veins. Dago George had answered her question. Dave Henderson had already delivered the letter! It brought fear; but it brought, too, a sense of relief. The road was clear now before her. It was her wits against Dago George--to draw, and win, and hold the other's full and unreserved confidence, to make herself appear essential to Dago George--for an hour--a week--a month--until she could reach Dave Henderson, wherever he might be, and meanwhile checkmate any move that this man here might make. She glanced furtively, with well simulated caution, around her.

“Yes,” she said, in a guarded voice. “You are right. It is the letter that brought me. What else? My father died the night it was written. He had no time to communicate with you. I do not know all, but I know enough, I think, to make the matter sure. There is a great deal of money at stake, and so I came.”

“Ah!” Dago George was whispering excitedly now. “Wait! Wait a minute, my little bambino!” He ran to the door, opened it, looked out, closed and locked it again, and, crossing the room, pulled the half drawn roller shade down to the window sill. He drew a chair close up to Teresa's, and sat down. “It is better to be sure, is it not? Yes, yes! And we will continue to speak English, eh? It is less understood here. Ah, my little bambino! You are your father's daughter! Yes, yes! Nicolo Capriano is not dead! Well, the letter, eh? There is money in it, much money in it, you say?”

“Yes,” she replied. Her voice sharpened, and became a little imperious. “Yes, there is money in it, provided you have not lost sight of the man who brought the letter to you.”

Dago George rubbed his hands together softly.

“Have no fear of that!” he whispered eagerly. “Dago George did not serve under Nicolo Capriano for nothing! The young man is upstairs, and safely asleep. He came perhaps a little more than half an hour ago. We had a little glass of wine together, and--” He shrugged his shoulders, and made a significant little circling motion with his thumb and forefinger.

Teresa's eyebrows lifted in frank impatience.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked sharply.

Again Dago George shrugged his shoulders.

“Have I not said that he is--asleep?” he smiled.

“Drugged!” exclaimed Teresa.

“But, yes--naturally! What would you have?” smiled Dago George.

Teresa's glove slipped from her lap to the floor. She was deliberate and long in picking it up.

“But why?” There was irritation and censure in her voice now, as she looked up at him and frowned.

“I don't see why! You know nothing of the reasons that prompted my father to write that letter. Why should you drug him? What could you expect to accomplish by that, except to excite his suspicions when he wakes up?”

“Ah, but you do me an injustice, my little bambino!” said Dago George smoothly. “It was but a pinch of the drug, a drug that I know very well, and that never plays tricks on me. He has had but enough to last for four or five hours, and he will experience no ill effects when he wakes up. You can trust Dago George for that. And as for why--what else could I do? It was precisely because I had had no word from Nicolo Capriano, and because it was all a mystery to me, except that the letter was signed _con amore_. Eh? You know well enough what that means, and that it was not to be disobeyed. The man must never leave my sight or hands until the little game, whatever it was, was played out. Is it not so? It was also necessary that, having nothing further from the old master to guide me, I should look this Signor Barty Lynch over for myself--yes? Is it not so, my little bambino?”

Teresa preserved her frown.

“Perhaps,” she admitted, with well assumed unwillingness. “Well?”

Dago George drew a little closer.

“Well, he is safe upstairs, then. You see that Dago George had his head about him, after all, eh? And now--the letter! What is it that the old master was about to do?”

Teresa's mind was working swiftly. Dave Henderson was upstairs, drugged, but safe so far. It might be hours before he could make any move; but by morning surely, by morning before daylight, he could get away, and until then she must stay here. There was only one way she could do that without arousing suspicion, and at the same time have freedom of action--as an ally, an indispensable ally, of this man here. There was only one dominating consideration, therefore, to guide her in what, or how much, she told Dago George, for once Dave Henderson had slipped away that was the last Dago George would ever see of him, or her; and the consideration involved was, that, while she knew Dago George too well to trust him in the smallest degree, Dago George must be made to trust _her_ in the fullest measure, and from the strongest of all reasons from Dago George's standpoint--that of self-interest. And the surest way to accomplish that was to tell Dago George enough of the truth to, at one and the same time, arouse his cupidity and leave him in a sense dependent upon her cooperation for his future activities.

“I can only tell you what I heard them saying to each other that night when I wrote that letter for my father,” she said deliberately. “But that is enough, I think; anyway, it was enough to decide me to come here to you. My father, of course, intended to communicate with you--in just what way, I do not know--but he died that same night. The only thing, then, that I could see to do was to get here without a moment's delay, and I left San Francisco immediately after my father's burial. You understand?”

“Yes, yes!” Dago George nodded his head vigorously in assent. “But, of course! Yes, yes, my little bambino! Well--and then?”

She leaned forward impressively toward Dago George.

“This Barty Lynch stole some money,” she said, in a quick, eager voice; “a great deal of money, thousands; I heard them speak of a hundred thousand. My father had helped him to get away from the police; that is why he trusted my father. But this money was stolen again from Barty Lynch by a man who Barty Lynch said had run here to New York for cover. That is what has brought Barty Lynch here--to find that man, and get the money back. You see? Once Barty Lynch gets hold of the money again, he--but that is why my father gave him a letter to you, and-----”

“Signed it _con amore_ broke in Dago George,” whispering feverishly, and almost as though speaking to himself. “Yes, yes! I see! It is the hand of the old master, and it has lost none of its cunning! Yes, yes! I see! There is no risk! It is stolen money to begin with! Signor Barty Lynch has no recourse to the law! And even if Signor Barty Lynch _disappeared_--eh?--who is to know the difference, since he has already arranged things so nicely in hiding himself away from the police! Eh? Yes! It is excellent, superb! Is it not so?”

Teresa's face was impassive.

“Yes, except that we have not got that money yet!” she said curtly. “It may not be as easy as it looks. That is why I am here--to help; and also”--she stared Dago George levelly in the face--“to see that Dago George does not get more than his share.”

The Italian's hands were raised instantly in protestation.

“But, my little bambino--that you should say that!” He shook his head in an aggrieved way. “I am hurt that you should think I forget Nicolo Capriano, though he is dead, or that you should think I would do anything like that.”

“Nor do I think so,” she answered steadily. “I warn you, that is all. We shall work all the better together if we understand to begin with that Nicolo Capriano's daughter, though Nicolo Capriano is dead, has still some power; and if we understand that this is Nicolo Capriano's plan, and not yours, and that the division will be made on the same basis that Nicolo Capriano would have made it.”

“It is Nicolo himself speaking,” murmured Dago George. He was smiling now. “I had no thought of anything but that. It is understood. I could ask for nothing better.”

“Very well!” she said. “There is nothing to be done at first then, but to watch him in everything he does here in New York. You have plenty of men you can depend upon--I know that; but I think I can do more, or at least as much, as they can, and certainly with all of us working together we should succeed. He is in a room upstairs, you say. You have another one next to his that is empty, perhaps? Yes? Well, that is good. I will take it. He will be surprised to see me here, but he will not be suspicious. He believes that you were a very intimate friend of my father. Naturally, then, it would be at the house of that intimate friend that I would come to stay when, owing to my father's death, I am making arrangements to sail to my father's people back in Italy. Barty Lynch trusted my father absolutely. That is plain. He therefore trusts me equally. It may not even be necessary to watch him; he is even more likely than not--if he is played right--to make a confident of me.”

Dago George rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Yes,” he cried. “It is superb! I salute you. You do credit to Nicolo Capriano! Ah, my little bambino, you have your father's brains!”

Teresa, with a prettily imperious nod of her head, rose from her chair.

“It is getting late,” she said. “It must be nearly eleven o'clock, and I have had a long journey. Since he is drugged, he is safe for the time being, and there is nothing more to be done to-night. To-morrow we can begin our work. Take me to my room.”

“Yes--it is superb!” Dago George repeated exultantly. He bowed Teresa to the door, and, picking up the valises, led the way upstairs. He chuckled with perverted humor, as they passed Dave Henderson's door. “He is in there,” he said; “but we must not disturb his rest, eh? He said he was very tired!” He ushered Teresa into the next room, and turned on the light. “If there is anything that the little bambino requires?”--his head and hands gestured eloquently.

Teresa was looking around the none too clean, and none too well furnished, room.

“Nothing!” she said.

Dago George Retreated to the door. He cleared his throat, and hesitated, and shuffled a little awkwardly with his feet.

“It is that the little bambino will know that I am thinking of her great sorrow, though I have said little, that I speak of it again,” he said softly. “The master has been long dead? It is true you have told me he died on the night you wrote that letter for him, but the letter”--he produced it from his pocket, and scanned it earnestly--“yes, I am right--it bears no date.”

“My father died nine days ago,” Teresa answered tersely, and half turned away her head.

“Ah, yes! Nine days ago!” Dago George shook his head sorrowfully, as he backed across the threshold. “The old master! It is very sad! Nine days ago! It is very sad! I wish you repose, my little bambino. Good-night!”

Teresa closed and locked the door behind Dago George--and stood still for an instant listening. Dago George's footsteps died away on the stairs below. She moved a little then, and stood with her ear pressed against the partition of the next room. There was no sound. And then she began to walk slowly about the room, and a few minutes later, the time that it would ordinarily have taken her to prepare for bed, she turned out the light--and sat down in a chair, fully dressed, and stared into the blackness.

She pressed her hand a little wearily across her eyes. She was here now at the end of those thousands of miles, every one of which had seemed to yawn as some impassable gulf between her and her goal; she was here now, and, in spite of her fears, she had reached that goal--in time. She had even outwitted--for the moment anyhow--Dago George. True, Dave Henderson lay there in that next room drugged, but she was not too late. She smiled a little ironically. In a purely literal sense she was too early! She dared not make a move now for perhaps hours yet, not until she was sure the house was closed for the night, and that Dago George--she did not trust Dago George--had gone to bed.

And so she must sit here and stare into the blackness. She would not fall asleep; there was no fear of that. She could not sleep. Already thoughts and memories, as myriad in divergence as they were in numbers, were crowding upon her, and goading her brain into an abnormal and restless activity.

She twisted her hands together now in her lap. She remembered, and she could not forget, the horror and the fear of that night when her father had died, and of the days thereafter when she had performed--alone--the last duties that had devolved upon her. Yes, it had been alone. She had lied to Dago George. It had been alone! If Nicolo Capriano had had friends and been powerful in life, Nicolo Capriano had been alone in death. She had lied to Dago George; there had been no heritage of power. She had lied--but then her whole life was a lie!

A low sound, a bitter moan, came suddenly from her lips. It was not the Teresa now who had faced Dago George with cool complacence in the room below. She slipped from the chair to her knees, and buried her face in her hands. It was the black hour, of which she had known so many since that fearful night, that surged and swept upon her now again. It whirled scenes and thoughts of the past, and pictures of the future, before her like some bewildering and tormenting kaleidoscope. She could not define to herself her feelings relative to her father's death; grief seemed to mingle indissolubly with bitter abhorrence at his act of treachery. But in another way her father's death meant something to her that she was coming to grasp more clearly. It seemed to release her from something, from--from a tangled life.

All her life had been a lie. She was the daughter of a criminal, and all her life had been a lie; her environment had been a lie. In big things, in little things, it had been a lie. She had lied to herself that night when she had let this man in the next room here go without a word of protest from her lips to carry out a criminal act. She had been a coward that night, and it had shamed her. She had owed something to her father, a loyalty to her father; perhaps, fundamentally, that was the basis for her refusal to face the issue squarely that night; perhaps it was because the habit of years, the lies, and only lies, that had been lived around her, had strangled her and weakened her. Perhaps it was that; but if so, and if she had owed and given loyalty to her father, then she had given more than loyalty--she had given her soul. And her soul turned miserably away from this pitiful landscape of life upon which now she was forcing it to gaze.

But this was a picture of the past, for if it were true, or in any degree true, her father's death had brought her release--her father was dead. And so she faced the future--alone. In so many a different sense--alone. She was alone now, a free agent to mold her own life, and the test was before her; whether the lie, for example, she had acted that night when she had sent Dave Henderson away, was the outcome of things extraneous to her soul, or inherent in that soul itself. Her hands, that clasped her face, tightened. Thank God, she knew! Thank God, that from the moment her brain had staggered out of its blind pit of horror and darkness on that night, she had seen the way clearly lighted before her! Her first duty was to save the man in the next room from her father's treachery, and she was here now to do that; but she was here, too, to do something else. She could, and would, stand between Dave Henderson and the personal harm that threatened him through the trust he had reposed in Nicolo Capriano, and she would do this at any cost and at any sacrifice to herself; but she could not, and she would not, connive at anything that would tend to keep the stolen money from the possession of its rightful owners.

Her hands lifted now and pressed hard against her temples, which had begun to throb. Yes, and she must do even more than that. There had been not only treachery on her father's part toward Dave Henderson, there had been treachery and trickery toward the police in an effort to cover up the stolen money; and, tacitly at least, she had been an accomplice in that, and therefore morally she was as much a thief as that man next door, as much a thief as her father had intended to be--unless now, with all her strength, with all her might, she strove to undo and make restitution for a crime in which she had had a part. If it lay within her power, not adventitiously, not through haphazard, but through the employment toward that end of every faculty of brain and wit and courage she possessed, she had no choice now but to get possession of that money and return it to the authorities. Her conscience was brutally frank on that point, and brutally direct; there was no room to temporize, no halfway course--and here was the final, ultimate and supreme test.

Her face in the darkness whitened. Her lips moved silently. It was strength and help she asked now. Her mind was already made up. She would fight for, and, in any way or by any means that offered, get that money, and return it. And that meant that _she_ must watch Dave Henderson, too. There was no other way of getting it. He alone knew where it was, and since it was not to be expected that he would voluntarily give it up, there seemed left but one alternative--to _take_ it from him.

Her mind was almost overpoweringly swift now in its flow of tormenting thoughts. It seemed an impossible situation that she should warn him of danger from one source, only to do to him again what--no! His life was not in danger with her; that was the difference. But--but it was not easy to bring herself to this. She was alone now, with no bonds between herself and any living soul, except those strange, incongruous bonds between herself and that man in the next room whom she was, in the same breath, both trying to save and trying to outwit. Why was it that he was a thief? They could have been friends if he were not a thief; and she would have been so glad of a friend now, and she had liked him, and he did not look like a thief. Perhaps her mother had liked Nicolo Capriano in the early days, and perhaps Nicolo Capriano then had not looked like a thief, and perhaps her mother had counted on turning Nicolo Capriano into an honest man, and----

Teresa rose abruptly to her feet. She felt the hot color flood her face. She saw the man as he had stood that first night on the threshold of her father's room, and he had looked at her so long and steadily--and there had been no offence in his look. She caught her breath sharply. Her mind was running riot! It must not do that! She had many things to accomplish tonight, and she would need all her wits.

She forced her thoughts violently into another channel. How long would it be before this Iron Tavern closed for the night, and Dago George was in bed and asleep? She did not trust Dago George! She knew him as one utterly without scruples, and one who was insidiously crafty and dangerously cunning. She began to rehearse again the scene that she had had with him--and suddenly drew herself up tensely. Why, at the last moment as he had left the room, had he reverted to her father's death, and why had he waited until then, when it should naturally have been one of his first questions, to inquire--so plausibly--when her father's death had taken place?

Her lips grew suddenly hard. Nine days! She had told him nine days. Was there any significance in that--to Dago George, or to herself? She had been delayed in leaving San Francisco by her father's funeral. Dave Henderson had left there several days earlier, but he had only arrived here at Dago George's to-night. True, the difference in time might be accounted for through Dave Henderson's presumed necessity of travelling under cover; but, equally, it might not. Had Dago George thought of that--as she was thinking of it now? Was it possible that Dave Henderson had _already_ got that money, and had come here for refuge with it; that it was now, at this moment, in that next room there, and that, below stairs, Dago George, too, was sitting, waiting for the hours to pass, and sleep to come to all but himself!

She went mechanically to the window, and stood for a moment staring out upon a vista of dark, shadowy buildings that made jagged, ill-defined points against the sky-line--and then, with a sudden start, she raised the window cautiously, soundlessly, inch by inch, and leaned out. Yes, she was right! The iron platform of a fire-escape was common to her room and to the room next door.

For another moment she stood there, and then returned softly across the room to her chair.

“It is too early yet!” she whispered--and, with her chin in her hands, settled back in her chair, and stared into the blackness.

IV--THE THIRD GUEST

BOOKIE SKARVAN, alias the fat man in the taxicab who chewed on the butt of his cigar, leaned back in his seat, and nibbed his pudgy hands together in a sort of gratified self-applause.

“Baggage and all,” repeated Bookie Skarvan to himself. “I guess that's good enough--what? I guess that's where she's going to hang out, all right. And I guess the place looks the part! The Iron Tavern--eh?” He read the window sign, as his taxi rolled by. “Well, leave it to Bookie! I guess I'll blow back there by-and-by and register--if the rates ain't too high! But there ain't no hurry! I've been sticking around now for five years, and I guess I can take a few minutes longer just to make sure the numbers go up right on the board this time!”

Bookie Skarvan, with the adroit assistance of his tongue, shifted the cigar butt to the other corner of his mouth. He expectorated on the floor of the taxi--and suddenly frowned uneasily. He had had uneasy moments more than once on his late trip across the continent, but they were due, not so much to the fear that anything was wrong with his “dope-sheet,” as they were to the element of superstition which was inherent in him as a gambler--so far he had not had any luck with that hundred thousand dollars, in the theft of which he had been forestalled by Dave Henderson five years ago. That was what was the matter. He was leery of his luck.

He chewed savagely. He had an attack of that superstition now--but at least he knew the panacea to be employed. At times such as these he communed and reasoned patiently with himself. He communed with himself now.

“Sure, she knows where the money is! She's the dark horse, and the long shot--and I got the tip and the inside dope, ain't I? Sure, she's the play!” he reassured himself. “She hustled that funeral along something fierce. And she went tearing around like a wet hen raising money, letting things go and grabbing at any old price until she'd got enough to see her through, and then she suddenly locks the house up and beats it like hell. 'Twasn't natural, was it? She was in _some hurry_--believe me! What did she do it for--eh? Well, I'll tell you, Bookie--on the quiet. What Nicolo Capriano knew, she knew. And Nicolo Capriano wasn't the bird to let one hundred thousand dollars get as close to his claws as it did without him taking a crack at it. If you ask me, Nicolo pulled Dave Henderson's leg for the dope; and if you ask me, Nicolo was the guy who handed out that bomb, and he did it to bump Dave Henderson off--same as I figured to do once--and cop the loot for himself. Mabbe I'm wrong--but I guess I'm not. And I guess the odds weren't too rotten to stake a ride on across the country, I guess they weren't!”

Bookie lifted a fat hand, pushed back his hat, and scratched ruminatively at the hair over his right temple.

“Dave must have had a pal, or he must have slipped it to some one that time Baldy chased him in the car. It must have been that--he slipped it to some one during them days the bulls was chasing him, and whoever it was mabbe has been keeping it for him here in New York. So she beats it for New York--what? It don't figure out any other way. He didn't go nowhere and get it after he got out of prison, _I_ know that. And he got killed the same night, and he didn't have it then. Sure, Capriano bumped him off! Sure, my hunch is good for the limit! Dave fell for the Lomazzi talk, and goes and puts his head on Nicolo's bosom so's to give the police the go-by, and Nicolo sucks the orange dry and heaves away the pip! And then the old geezer cashes in himself, and the girl flies the coop. Mabbe she don't know nothing about it”--Bookie Skarvan stuck his tongue in his cheek, and grinned ironically--“oh, no, mabbe she don't! And I guess there ain't any family resemblance between the old man and the girl, neither--eh?--oh, no, mabbe not!”

The taxi stopped abruptly. The chauffeur reached around and dexterously opened the door.

“Here you are!” he announced briefly.

Bookie Skarvan looked out--upon a very shabby perspective. With the sole exception of a frankly dirty and disreputable saloon, designated as “O'Shea's,” which faced him across the sidewalk, the neighborhood appeared to consist of nothing but Chinese tea-shops, laundries, restaurants, and the like; while the whole street, gloomy and ill-lighted, was strewn with unprepossessing basement entrances where one descended directly from the sidewalk to the cellar level below.

Bookie Skarvan picked up his hand-bag, descended to the sidewalk, paid and dismissed the chauffeur, and pushed his way in through the swinging doors of the saloon.

“I guess I ain't drinking--not here!” confided Bookie Skarvan to himself, as he surveyed the unkempt, sawdust-strewn floor and dirty furnishings, and a group of equally unkempt and hard-looking loungers that lined the near end of the bar. “No, I guess not,” said Bookie to himself; “but I guess it's the place, all right.”

He made his way to the unoccupied end of the bar. The single barkeeper that the place evidently boasted disengaged himself from the group of loungers, and approached Bookie Skarvan.

“Wot's yours?” he inquired indifferently.

Bookie Skarvan leaned confidentially over the rail, “I'm looking for a gentleman by the name of Smeeks,” he said, and his left eyelid drooped, “Cunny Smeeks.”

The barkeeper's restless black eyes, out of an unamiable and unshaven face, appraised Bookie Skarvan, and Bookie Skarvan's well-to-do appearance furtively.

“It's a new one on me!” he observed blandly. “Never heard of him!”

Bookie Skarvan shifted his cigar butt--with his tongue.

“That's too bad!” he said--and leaned a little further over the bar. “I've come a long way to see him. I'm a stranger here, and mabbe I've got the wrong place. Mabbe I've got the wrong name too”--Bookie Skarvan's left eyelid twitched again--“mabbe you'd know him better as the Scorpion?”

“Mabbe I would--if I knew him at all,” said the barkeeper non-committally. “Wot's your lay? Fly-cop?”

“You're talking now!” said Bookie Skarvan, with a grin. He pulled a letter from his pocket, and pushed it across the bar. “You can let the Scorpion figure out for himself how much of a fly-cop I am when he gets his lamps on that. And it's kind of important! Get me--friend?”

The barkeeper picked up the plain, sealed envelope--and twirled it meditatively in his hands for a moment, while his eyes again searched Bookie Skarvan's face.

“Youse seem to know yer way about!” he admitted finally, as though not unfavorably impressed by this later inspection.

Bookie Skarvan shoved a cigar across the bar.

“It's straight goods, colonel,” he said. “I'm all the way from 'Frisco, and everything's on the level. I didn't blow in here on a guess. Start the letter on its way, and let the Scorpion call the turn. If he don't want to see me, he don't have to. See?”

“All right!” said the barkeeper abruptly. “But I'm tellin' youse straight I ain't seen him to-night, an' I ain't sayin' he's to be found, or that he's stickin' around here anywhere.”

“I'll wait,” said Bookie Skarvan pleasantly.

The barkeeper walked down the length of the bar, disappeared through a door at the rear for a moment, and, returning, rejoined the group at the upper end of the room.

Bookie Skarvan waited.

Perhaps five minutes passed. The door at the rear of the bar opened slightly, the barkeeper sauntered down in that direction, and an instant later nodded his head over his shoulder to Bookie Skarvan, motioning him to come around the end of the bar.

“Cunny'll see youse,” he announced, stepping aside from the doorway to allow Bookie Skarvan to pass. “De Chink'll show youse de way.” He grinned suddenly. “I guess youse are on de level all right, or youse wouldn't be goin' where youse are!”

The door closed behind him, and Bookie Skarvan found himself in a narrow, dimly-lighted passage. A small, wizened Chinaman, in a white blouse, standing in front of him, smiled blandly.

“You fliend of Scorpy's--that allee same belly glood. You come,” invited the man, and scuffled off along the had.

Bookie Skarvan followed--and smiled to himself in complacent satisfaction. Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion, was, if surroundings were any criterion, living up to his reputation--which was a not insignificant item on Bookie Skarvan's “dope-sheet”--as one of the “safest,” as well as one of the most powerful criminal leaders in the underworld of New York.

“Sure!” said Bookie Skarvan to himself. “That's the way I got the dope--and it's right!”

The passage swerved suddenly, and became almost black. Bookie Skarvan could just barely make out the flutter of the white blouse in front of him. And then the guide's voice floated back:

“Allee same stlairs here--you look out!”

Cautioned, Bookie Skarvan descended a steep flight of stairs warily into what was obviously, though it was too dark to see, a cellar. Ahead of him, however, there appeared, as through an opening of some sort, a faint glow of light again, and toward this the white blouse fluttered its way. And then Bookie Skarvan found himself in another passage; and a strange, sweetish odor came to his nostrils; and strange sounds, subdued whisperings, rustlings, the dull ring of metal like coin thrown upon a table, reached his ears. And there seemed to be doors now on either side, and curtained hangings, and it was soft and silent underfoot.

“I dunno,” observed Bookie Skarvan to himself. “I dunno--it ain't got much on 'Frisco, at that!”

The guide halted, and opened a door. A soft, mellow light shone out. Bookie Skarvan smiled knowingly. He was not altogether unsophisticated! A group of richly dressed Chinamen were absorbed in cards. Scarcely one of them looked up. Bookie Skarvan's eyes passed over the group almost contemptuously, and fixed on the only man in the room who was not playing, and, likewise, the only man present who was not an Oriental, and who, with hands in his pockets, and slouch hat pushed back from his forehead, stood watching the game--a man who was abnormally short in stature, and enormously broad in shoulder, who had hair of a violently aggressive red, and whose eyes, as he turned now to look toward the door, were of a blue so faded as to make them unpleasantly colorless.

Bookie Skarvan remained tentatively on the threshold. He needed no further introduction--no one to whom the man had been previously described could mistake Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion.

The other came quickly forward now with outstretched hand.

“Any friend of Baldy Vickers is a friend of mine,” he said heartily. “You want to see me---eh? Well, come along, cull, where we can talk.”

He led the way a little further down the passage, and into another room, and closed the door. The furnishings here were meager, and evidently restricted entirely to the votaries of poppy. There was a couch, and beside it a small tabouret for the opium smoker's paraphernalia.

The Scorpion pointed to the couch; and possessed himself of the tabouret, which he straddled.

“Sit down,” he invited. “Have a drink?”

“No,” said Bookie Skarvan. “Thanks just the same. I guess I won't take anything to-night.” He grinned significantly. “I'm likely to be busy.”

The Scorpion nodded.

“Sure--all right!” he agreed. “Well, we'll get to cases, then. Baldy says in his letter that you and him are in on a deal, and that you may want a card or two slipped you to fill your hand. What's the lay, and what can I do for you?”

“It's a bit of a long story.” Bookie Skarvan removed the cigar butt from his lips, eyed it contemplatively for a moment, finally flung it away, fished another cigar from his pocket, and, without lighting it, settled it firmly between his back teeth. “I got to be fair with you,” he said. “Baldy said he handed it to you straight in the letter, but I got to make sure you understand. We think we got a good thing, and, if it is, anything you do ain't going for nothing; but there's always the chance that it's a bubble, and that there's a hole gets kicked in it.”

“That's all right!” said Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion, easily. “If there's anything coming I'll get mine--and I'm satisfied with any division that Baldy puts across. Baldy and me know each other pretty well. You can forget all that end of it--Baldy's the whitest boy I ever met, and what Baldy says goes with me all the way. Go ahead with the story--spill it!”

“The details don't count with you,” said Bookie Skarvan slowly; “and there's no use gumming up the time with them. The bet is that a nice, sweet, little Italian girl, that's just piked faster'n hell across the continent, knows where there's a hundred thousand dollars in cold cash, that was pinched and hidden five years ago by a fellow named Dave Henderson--see? Dave served his spaces, and got out a few days ago--and croaked--got blown up with a Dago bomb--get me? He didn't have no time to enjoy his wealth--kind of tough, eh? Well he stood in with this Italian girl's father, an old crook named Nicolo Capriano, and he went there the night he got out of prison. The way we got it doped out is that the old Italian, after getting next to where the money was, bumped off Dave Henderson himself--see? Then Nicolo dies of heart disease, and the girl hardly waits to bury the old man decently, and beats it for here--me trailing her on the same train. Well, I guess that's all--you can figure for yourself why we're interested in the girl.”

“I get you!” said the Scorpion, with a sinister grin. “It don't look very hard bucking up against a lone female, and I guess you can telegraph Baldy that he don't need to worry. What do you want--a bunch to pinch the girl, or a box-worker to crack a safe? You can have anything that's on tap--and I guess that ain't passing up many bets.”

Bookie Skarvan shook his head.

“I don't want either--not yet,” he said. “The girl ain't got the money yet, and there ain't anything to do but just watch her and keep her from getting scared until she either grabs it, or lets out where it is.” He leaned forward toward the Scorpion. “D'ye know a place, not far from here, that's called The Iron Tavern?” he demanded abruptly.

The Scorpion shrugged his shoulders.

“Everybody knows it!” he said caustically. “It's a dump! It's the rendezvous of the worst outfit of black-handers in America; and the guy that runs it, a fellow named Dago George, runs the gang, too--and he's _some_ guy. But what's that got to do with it?”

“The girl's there,” said Bookie Skarvan tersely. “Oh, she is, eh?” There was a new and sudden interest in the Scorpion's voice.

“She went there from the train with her grips.” Bookie Skarvan's cigar grew restive in his mouth.

“Well, me, too, I'm for the same joint, only I don't want to take any chances of spilling the beans.”

“You mean you're afraid she'll pipe you off?”

“No,” said Bookie Skarvan. “No, I ain't afraid of that. She never got a peep at me on the train, and she only saw me once before in her life, and that time, besides it being dark and me being outside on the front doorstep, she was so scared I might have been a lamppost, for all she'd know me again. It was the night her old man croaked--see? No, I ain't afraid of her--but I couldn't afford to take any chances by blowing in there right after her. I wasn't afraid of her, but I had my fingers crossed on whoever ran the place, and I guess, after what you've said, that my hunch was right. It was a queer place for her to go right off the bat the minute she landed in New York, and she didn't go there instead of to a decent hotel just by luck--get me? I figured she might stand in there pretty thick--and if she did, and I blew in right on top of her, the betting odds were about one million dollars to a peanut that I'd be a sucker. I'm sure of it now that you say the fellow who runs it is a Dago in the same old line of business that her father was in. What?”

The Scorpion's pale blue eyes scrutinized Bookie Skarvan's face--and lighted with a curious benignity.

“You and Baldy make a pretty good combination, I guess!” he observed with dry admiration.

Bookie Skarvan indulged in his wheezy chuckle. “We've had a little luck together once in a while,” he admitted modestly. “Well, you get me, don't you? I've got to get into that Iron Tavern joint just the same. That's the first card we play. I figured that mabbe this Dago George would know you by reputation anyhow, and that you could fix it for me without it looking as though it were anything more than a friend of yours, say, who'd got into a little temporary difficulty with the police down in Baltimore, say, and was keeping quiet and retired for a few days till the worst of it blew over--and that you'd picked out his joint as the best bet for me.”

The Scorpion got up from his seat abruptly.

“Say,” he said cordially, “I'm glad I met you! That listens good! Sure! I guess I can fix that! Dago George and me ain't exactly pals, and we don't love each other any more than you'd notice--but he knows where he gets off with Cunny Smeeks! You wait a minute, and I'll get him on the phone.”

Cunny Smeeks, alias the Scorpion, of the élite of the New York underworld, left the room. Bookie Skarvan sprawled negligently back on the couch. He smiled softly--and chewed contentedly on his cigar. Things were working well.

“There's nothing like credit in this wicked world,” Bookie Skarvan confided sapiently to himself. “I may have to run up quite a bill with Mr. Cunny Smeeks before I'm through, mabbe quite a fat little bill--but he can always send it to Baldy--if I'm not here! What? It's beginning to look good again. Five years I've been trying to get the grappling hook on that coin. It looks pretty good now, and I guess I can see it coming--and I guess I won't have to wait as long as Baldy will!” He wagged his head pleasantly. “I never was fond of San Francisco--and I always wanted to travel! Perhaps Baldy and Mr. Cunny Smeeks won't be such good friends by-and-by. I dunno! I only know that Bookie Skarvan won't be sticking around to see them go into mourning for their share of that hundred thousand that they think they're going to get--not so's you'd observe it!”

Bookie Skarvan's eyes swept the den indifferently and without interest. They fastened finally on the toe of his own boot. The minutes passed, and as they passed a scowl came gradually to Bookie Skarvan's face, and a fat hand in a sudden nervous gesture went to his forehead and brushed across his eyes. His thoughts seemed to have veered into a less pleasant channel.

“Yes,” he muttered, “you can take it from me that I ain't sorry Dave Henderson's dead--not very! He never saw all my cards, and that's the one hold Baldy had on me.” The room was apparently over-heated--for a fat man. A bead of sweat came out on Bookie Skarvan's forehead. He swore savagely. “You damn fool, can't you forget it! You're not afraid of a dead man now, are you!”

The Scorpion came back.

“Come on!” he said, from the doorway. “It's fixed! He put up a howl and wouldn't stand for it at first, and he kicked so hard that I guess he's in with the girl all right. He said he had no place to put anybody; but he came across all right--with a twist of the screws. You're a friend of mine, and your Baltimore spiel goes--see?” The pale blue eyes darkened suddenly. “You get what I've done, don't you? Dago George don't forgive easily, and if this thing busts open and Dago George tumbles to what I've handed him, I'm mabbe going to have a little gang war on my hands.”

“I get you!” said Bookie Skarvan earnestly, as he joined the other in the doorway. “And that goes into the bill at a hundred cents on the dollar--and you know Baldy well enough to know what that means.” The Scorpion laughed.

“Oh, well, it's nothing to worry about! As I told you, I've never been very fond of Dago anyhow, and I guess I can take care of anything he wants to start. There'd be only one of us in at the finish--and it wouldn't be Dago George! You can go the limit, and you'll find you've got the biggest backing--on any count--in little old New York! Well, come on over, and I'll introduce you.”

“Sure! That's the stuff!” said Bookie Skarvan, as he accompanied the other to the street. “Baldy said you were the real goods--and I guess I got to hand it to Baldy!” He chuckled suddenly and wheezingly, as they went down the block. “The Baltimore crook--eh? Me and Dago George! Leave it to me! I guess I can handle Dago George!”

And twenty minutes later, in a room on the third floor of The Iron Tavern, Bookie Skarvan, “handling” Dago George, laid a detaining hand on the proprietor's arm, as the latter was bidding him good-night.

“Look here,” whispered Bookie Skarvan. “I know you're on the level because Cunny Smeeks says so; but I got to lay low, damned low--savvy? I ain't for meeting people--not even for passing 'em out in the hall there. So how about it? Have I got neighbors? I ain't taking any chances.”

Dago George laid his forefinger along his nose--and smiled reassuringly.

“Ah, yes!” he said. “Yes, yes, I understand--eh? But you need have no fear. I do not take guests, except”--he shrugged his shoulders--“except--you understand, eh?--to oblige a friend like Cunny Smeeks. Otherwise”--again the shoulders lifted--“I would not have the so-great honor of offering you a room. Is it not so? Well, then, there is no one here, except”--he jerked his thumb toward the opposite door across the hall--“my niece, who will not trouble you; and in the next room to hers a friend of mine, who will not trouble you either. There is no one else. You need have no fear. I assure you, you need have no fear.”

Bookie Skarvan nodded.

“That's all right, then,” he said in a cordial and relieved tone.

“It's only that I got to be careful.”

He shook hands with Dago George, as the latter again bade him good-night. He closed his door, and sat down. The bulge of the protruding cigar butt metamorphosed what was intended for an amiable smile into an unlovely grimace.

“Niece--eh?” murmured Bookie Skarvan to himself. “Well, well--and in the room across the hall! I guess I won't go to bed just yet, not just yet--but I guess I'll put out the light.”

V--THE ROOM ON THE THIRD FLOOR

IT was pitch black. Dave Henderson opened his eyes drowsily. He lay for a moment puzzled and bewildered as to where he was. And then consciousness returned in fuller measure, and he remembered that he had thrown himself down on the bed fully dressed--and must have fallen asleep.

He stirred now uneasily. He was most uncomfortable. Something brutally hard and unyielding seemed to be prodding and boring into his side. He felt down under him with his hand--and smiled quizzically. It was his revolver. He would probably, otherwise, have slept straight through the night. The revolver, as he had turned over in his sleep undoubtedly, had twisted in his pocket, and had resolved itself into a sort of skewer, muzzle end up, that dug ungraciously and painfully into his ribs.

He straightened the revolver in his pocket--and the touch of the weapon seemed to clear his faculties and fling him with a sudden jolt from the borderland of sleepy, mental indolence into a whirl of mental activity. He remembered Millman. Millman and the revolver were indissolubly associated. Only Millman had returned the money. That was the strangest part of it. Millman had returned the money. It was over there now on the floor in the dress-suit case. He remembered his scene with Millman. He remembered that he had deliberately fanned his passion into a white heat. He should therefore be in an unbridled rage with Millman now--only he wasn't. Nor would that anger seemingly return--even at his bidding. Instead, there seemed to be a cold, deliberate, reasoned self-condemnation creeping upon him. It was not pleasant. He tried to fight it off. It persisted. He was conscious of a slight headache. He stirred uneasily again upon the bed. Facts, however he might wish to avoid them, were cold-blooded, stubborn things. They began to assert themselves here in the quiet and the darkness.

Where was that sporting instinct of fair play of his of which he was so proud! Millman had _not_ gone to that pigeon-cote with any treacherous motive. Millman had _not_ played the traitor, either for his own ends or at the instigation of the police. Millman, in blunt language, knowingly accepting the risk of being caught, when, already known as a prison bird, no possible explanation could avail him if he were found with the money in his possession, had gone in order to save a friend--and that friend was Dave Henderson.

Dave Henderson shook his head. No--he would not accept that--not so meekly as all that! Millman hadn't saved him from anything. He could have got the money himself all right when he got out, and the police would have been none the wiser.

He clenched his hands. A voice within him suddenly called him--_coward!_ In that day in the prison library when he had felt himself cornered, he had been desperately eager enough for help. It was true, that as things had turned out, he could have gone safely to the pigeon-cote himself, as he actually had done, but he had not foreseen the craft of Nicolo Capriano then, and his back had been to the wall then, and the odds had seemingly piled to an insurmountable height against him--and Millman, shifting the danger and the risk to his own shoulders, had stepped into the breach. Millman had done that. There was no gainsaying it. Well, he admitted it, didn't he? He had no quarrel with Millman on that score now, had he? He scowled savagely in the darkness. It was Millman with his infernal, quixotic and overweening honesty that was the matter. That was what it was! His quarrel with Millman lay in the fact that Millman was--_an honest man_.

He sat bolt upright on the bed, his hands clenched suddenly again. Why hadn't Millman kept his honesty where it belonged! If Millman felt the way he did after going to the pigeon-cote and getting that money, why hadn't Millman stuck to his guns the way any ordinary man would, instead of laying down like a lamb--why hadn't he fought it out man to man, until the better man won--and that money went back, or it didn't! Fight! That was it--fight! If Millman had only fought it out--like an ordinary man--and----

“Be _honest_--at least with yourself!” whispered that inner voice quietly. “Millman was just as honest with you as he was with his own soul. He kept faith with you in the only way he could--and still keep faith with himself. Did he throw you down--Dave?”

For a moment Dave Henderson did not stir; he seemed mentally and physically in a strange and singular state of suspended animation. And then a queer and twisted smile flickered across his lips.

“Yes, he's white!” he muttered. “By God, the whitest man on earth--that's Millman! Only--damn him! Damn him, for the hole he's put me in!”

Yes, that was it! He had it at last, and exactly now! Over there on the floor in the dress-suit case was the money; but it wasn't the money that he, Dave Henderson, had taken a gambler's risk and a sporting chance to get, it wasn't the money he had fought like a wildcat for--it was Millman's money. It wasn't the money he had staked his all to win--he staked nothing here. It was another man's stake. Over there was the money, and he was free to use it--if he chose to take it as the price of another man's loyalty, the price that another man paid for having taken upon himself the risk of prison bars and stone walls again because that other man believed his _risk_ was substituted for the _certainty_ that Dave Henderson would otherwise incur that fate!

The inner voice came quietly again--but it held a bitter gibe.

“What is the matter? Are you in doubt about anything? Why don't you get up, and undress, and go to bed, and sleep quietly? You've got the money now, you're fixed for all your life, and nothing to worry you--Millman pays the bills.”

“Five years!” Dave Henderson muttered. “Five years of hell--for nothing?”

His face hardened. That was Nicolo Capriano lying over there on his bed, wasn't it?--and plucking with thin, blue-tipped fingers at the coverlet--and eyeing him with those black eyes that glittered virulently--and twisting bloodless lips into a sardonic and contemptuous sneer. And why was that barbed tongue of Nicolo Capriano pouring out such a furious and vicious flood of vituperation?

Another vision came--an oval face of great beauty, but whose expression was inscrutable; whose dark eyes met his in a long and steady gaze; and from a full, white, ivory throat, mounting upward until it touched the wealth of hair that crowned the forehead, a tinge of color brought a more radiant life. What would Teresa say?

His hands swept again and again, nervously, fiercely, across his eyes. In the years of his vaunted boast that neither hell nor the devil would hold him back, he had not dreamed of this. A thief! Yes, he had been a thief--but he had never been a piker! He wasn't a vulture, was he, to feed and gorge on a friend's loyalty!

He snarled suddenly. Honesty! What was honesty? Millman was trying to hold himself up as an example to be followed--eh? Well, that was Millman's privilege, wasn't it? And, after all, how honest was Millman? Was there anybody who was intrinsically honest? If there were, it might be different--it might be worth while then to be honest. But Millman could afford that hundred thousand, Millman had said so himself; it didn't mean anything to Millman. If, for instance, it took the last penny Millman had to make good that money there might be something in honesty to talk about--but that sort of honesty didn't exist, either in Millman, or in any other human being. He, Dave Henderson, had yet to see any one who would sacrifice all and everything in an absolutely literal way upon the altar of honesty as a principle. Every one had his price. His, Dave Henderson's, price had been one hundred thousand dollars; he, Dave Henderson, wouldn't steal, say, a hundred dollars--and a hundred dollars was probably an even greater matter to him than a hundred thousand was to Millman, and--

He brought his mental soliloquy roughly to an end, with a low, half angry, half perturbed exclamation. What had brought him to weigh the pros and cons of honesty, anyway! He had never been disturbed on that score in those five years behind prison bars! Why now? It wasn't that that concerned him, that held him now in the throes of a bitter mental conflict, that dismayed him, that tormented him, that mocked at the hell of torture he would--if he yielded--have endured in vain, that grinned at him out of the darkness sardonically, and awaited with biting irony his decision. It didn't matter what degree of honesty Millman possessed; it was Millman's act, in its most material and tangible sense, that threatened now to crush him.

Both hands, like gnarled knobs, went above his head. He was a thief; but, by God, he was a man! If he kept that money there, he became a puling, whining beggar, sneaking and crawling his way through life on--_charity!_ Charity! Oh, yes, he might find a softer name for it; but, by any name, he would none the less feed to the day he died, like a parasite and a damned puny, pitiful whelp and cur, on another man's--charity!

“Give it back--no!” he whispered fiercely through set lips. “I've paid too much--it's mine--I've paid for it with the sweat of hell! It's mine! I will not give it back!”

“Are you sure?” whispered that inner voice. “It begins to look as though there were something in life, say, an _honest_ pride, that was worth more than money--even to you, Dave.”

He sprang restively from the bed to the floor, and groped his way across the room to the light. He was in for a night of it--subconsciously he realized that, subconsciously he realized that he would not sleep, but subconsciously he was prompted to get his clothes off and obtain, lacking mental ease, what physical comfort he could.

He turned on the light, and the act diverted his thoughts momentarily. He did not seem to remember that he had ever turned off that light--but rather, in fact, that the light had been on when Dago George had left the room, and he, Dave Henderson, had flung himself down on the bed. It was rather strange! His eyes circled the room curiously, narrowed suddenly as they fell upon the dress-suit case, and upon one of the catches that appeared to have become unfastened--and with a bound he reached the dress-suit case, and flung up the lid.

The money was gone.

VI--HALF AN ALLEY

MOTIONLESS, save that his lips twitched queerly, Dave Henderson stood erect, and stared down into the pillaged dress-suit case. And then his hands clenched slowly--tightened--and grew white across the knuckles.

The money was gone! The agony of those days and nights, when, wounded, he had fled from the police, the five years of prison torment which he had endured, seemed to pass with lightning swiftness in review before him--and to mock him, and to become a ghastly travesty. The money was gone!

The pillaged dress-suit case seemed to leer and mock at him, too. He might have saved himself that little debate, which he had not settled, and which was based upon a certain element of ethics that involved the suggestion of charity. It was settled for him now. He _owed_ Millman now one hundred thousand dollars, only the choice as to whether he would pay it or not was no longer his, and----

Damn it! _The money was gone!_ Could he not grasp that one, single, concrete, vital fact, and act upon it, without standing here, with his brain, like some hapless yokel's, agog and maundering? The money was gone! Gone! Where? When? How? He could only have been asleep for a short time, surely. He wrenched his watch suddenly from his pocket. Three o'clock! It was three o'clock in the morning! Five hours! He had been asleep five hours, then! He must have slept very soundly that any one could have entered the room without arousing him!

His lips hardened. He was alert enough now, both mentally and physically. He stepped over to the door. It was still locked. His eyes swept around the room. The window, then! What about the window?

He felt suddenly for his money-belt beneath his underclothing, as he started across the room. The belt was there. That, at least, was safe. A twisted smile came to his lips. Naturally! His brain was exhibiting some glimmer of sense and cohesion now! It was evident enough that no one, since no one knew anything about it, had been specifically after that package of banknotes. It could only have been the work of a sneak thief--who had probably stumbled upon the greatest stroke of luck in his whole abandoned career. It was undoubtedly a quarter of the city wherein sneak thieves were bred! The man would obviously not have been fool enough, with a fortune already in his possession, to have risked the frisking of his, Dave Henderson's, sleeping person! Was the man, then, an inmate of The Iron Tavern, say, that greasy waiter, for instance; or had he gained entrance from outside; or, since the theft might have taken place hours ago, was it a predatory hanger-on at the bar who had sneaked his way upstairs, and----

The window, too, was locked! It was queer! Both window and door locked! How had the man got in--and got out again?

Mechanically, he unlocked and raised the window--and with a quick jerk of his body forward leaned out excitedly. Was this the answer--this platform of a fire escape that ran between his window and the next? But his window had been _locked!_

He stood there hesitant. Should he arouse Dago George? He could depend upon and trust Dago George, thanks to Nicolo Capriano; but to go to Dago George meant that confidences must be led up to which he desired to give to no man. His brain seemed suddenly to become frantic. The money was gone--his, or Millman's, or the devil's, it didn't matter which now--the money was gone, swallowed up in the black of that night out there, without a clue that offered him a suggestion even on which to act. But he couldn't stand here inactive like a fool, could he? Nor--his brain jeered at him now--could he go out and prowl around the city streets, and ask each passer-by if he or she had seen a package of banknotes whose sum was one hundred thousand dollars! What else was there, then, to do, except to arouse Dago George? Dago George, from what Nicolo Capriano had said, would have many strings to pull--underground strings. That was it--_underground strings!_ It wasn't a _police_ job!

He turned from the window, took a step back across the room, and halted again abruptly. _What was that?_ It came again--a faint, low, rustling sound, and it seemed to come from the direction of the fire escape.

In an instant he was back at the window, but this time he crouched down at the sill. A second passed while he listened, and from the edge of the sash strained his eyes out into the darkness, and then his hand crept into his side pocket and came out with his revolver. Some one, a dark form, blacker than the night shadows out there, was crawling from the next window to the fire escape.

Dave Henderson's lips thinned. Just a second more until that “some one” was half-way out and half-way in, and at a disadvantage and--_now!_

With a spring, lithe and quick as a cat, Dave Henderson was through the window, and the dark form was wriggling and squirming in his grasp, and a low cry came--and Dave Henderson swore sharply under his breath.

It was a woman! A woman! Well, that didn't matter! One hundred thousand dollars was gone from his dress-suit case, and this woman was crawling to the fire escape from the next room at three o'clock in the morning--that was what mattered!

They were on the iron platform now, and he pushed her none too gently along it toward the window of his own room--into the light. And then his hands dropped from her as though suddenly bereft of power, and as suddenly lifted again, and, almost fierce in their intensity, gripped at her shoulders, and forced her face more fully into the light.

“Teresa!” he whispered hoarsely. “You--Teresa!”

She was trying to smile, but it was a tremulous effort. The great, dark eyes, out of a face that was ivory white, lifted to his, and faltered, and dropped again.

“It's you, Teresa--isn't it?” His voice, his face, his eyes, were full of incredulous wonder.

Her lips were still quivering in their smile. She nodded her head in a sort of quaint, wistful way.

The blood was pounding and surging in his veins. Teresa! Teresa was here, standing here before him! Not that phantom picture that had come to him so often in the days and nights since he had left San Francisco--the glorious eyes, half veiled by the long lashes, though they would not look at him, were real; this touch of his hands upon her shoulders, this touch that thrilled him, was real, and----

Slowly his hands fell away from her; and as though to kill and stifle joy, and mock at gladness, and make sorry sport of ecstasy, there came creeping upon him doubt, black, ugly, and bitter as gall.

Yes, it was Teresa! And at sight of her there had come suddenly and fully, irrefutably, the knowledge that he cared for her; that love, which comes at no man's bidding, had come to him for her. Yes, it was Teresa! But what was she doing here? In view of that money, gone in the last few hours from his dress-suit case, what _could_ Teresa Capriano be doing here in the next room to his?

He laughed a little, low, sharply--and turned his head away. Love! How could he love--and doubt! How could he love--and condemn the one he loved unheard! He looked at her again now; and the blood in his veins, as though over-riding now some obstacle that had dammed its flow, grew swifter, and his pulse quickened. How could he doubt--Teresa!

But it was Teresa who spoke.

“We are standing here in the light, and we can be seen from everywhere around,” she said in a low tone. “You--there is danger. Turn the light off in your room.”

“Yes,” he said mechanically, and stepping back into his room, turned off the light. He was beside her again the next instant. Danger! His mind was mulling over that. What danger? Why had she said that? What was its significance in respect of her presence here? The questions came crowding to his lips. “Danger? What do you mean?” he asked tensely. “And how did you get here, Teresa? And why? Was it your father who sent you? There is something that has gone wrong? The police----”

She shook her head.

“My father died the night you went away,” she said.

He drew back, startled. Nicolo Capriano--dead!

Her father--dead! He could not seem somehow to visualize Nicolo Capriano as one dead. The man's mentality had so seemed to triumph over his physical ills, that, sick though he had been, Nicolo Capriano had seemed to personify and embody vitality and life itself. Dead! He drew in his breath sharply. Then she was alone, this little figure standing here in the darkness beside him, high up here in the world of night, with a void beneath and around them, strangely, curiously cut off, even in a physical sense, from any other human touch or sympathy--but his.

He reached out and found her hand, and laid it between both his own.

“I--I'm no good at words,” he fumbled. “They--they won't come. But he was the best friend I ever, had in life, too. And so I----”

“Don't say that! Don't! You mustn't! Do you hear, you mustn't!” Her hand, that lay in his, was suddenly clenched, and she was striving to draw it away. “It isn't true! I--that is why I came--I came to tell you. He was not your friend. He--he betrayed you.”

He held her hand tighter--in a grip that made her efforts to escape pitifully impotent. And, almost fiercely, he drew her closer, trying to read her face in the darkness.

“He betrayed me! Nicolo Capriano _betrayed_ me!” His mind was suddenly a riot. Incredulity and amazement mingled with a sickening fear that her words were literally true--the money was gone! And yet--and yet--Nicolo Capriano--a traitor! His words rasped now. “Do you know what you are saying, Teresa? Quick! Answer me! Do you know what you are saying?”

“I know only too well.” Her voice had broken a little now. “I know that the money was taken from your room to-night. Please let my hand go. I--you will hate me in, a moment--for--for, after all, I am his daughter. Will you please let me go, and I will tell you.”

Mechanically he released her.

She turned half away from him, and leaned on the iron hand-rail of the platform, staring down into the blackness beneath her.

“Dago George took it--an hour ago,” she said.

“Dago George!” Dave Henderson straightened. “Ah, so it was Dago George, was it!” He laughed with sudden menace, and turned impulsively toward the window of his room.

“Wait!” she said, and laid a hand detainingly upon his sleeve. “The money, I am sure, is safe where it is until daylight, anyway. I--I have more to tell you. It--it is not easy to tell. I--I am his daughter. Dago George was one of my father's accomplices in the old days in San Francisco. That letter which I wrote for my father meant nothing that it said, it contained a secret code that made you a marked man from the moment you delivered it here, and----”

“You, too!” There was bitter hurt in Dave Henderson's voice. And then suddenly he threw his shoulders back. “I don't believe you!” he flung out fiercely. “I don't understand how you got here, or what you are doing here, but you _wrote_ that letter--and I don't believe it was a trap. Do you understand, Teresa--I don't believe you!”

She raised her head--and it seemed that even in the darkness he caught the sudden film of tears in her eyes, and saw the lips part in a quivering smile. She shook her head slowly then.

“It was not what I wrote,” she said. “It was what my--what he added afterwards when he signed it. _Con amore_--that was the secret code, and----”

“But you did not know that, then--Teresa!” There was a strange, triumphant uplift in his voice. “I remember! It was while you were out of the room. Did I not say I did not believe you!”

Her lips were still quivering, but the smile was gone. “No, I did not know then,” she said. “But his shame is my shame, nothing can alter that--I am his daughter. I did not know it until after you had gone--and then--my father had a--a sudden attack--and that night he died. I--there was only one thing that I could do. I had no way of warning you except to try and get here before you did, or at least to get here before Dago George had gone too far. There--there were things I had to do in San Francisco--and then I came as quickly as I could. I got here to-night. I found that you were already here--just a little ahead of me, and that you had given Dago George the letter. I had only one chance then--to make Dago George believe that I had come, since my father was dead, to carry on the plot against you where my father had left off. Dago George had no suspicions. He knew me.” Her voice held a sudden merciless note. “I was a Capriano. He told me that you were upstairs here, drugged, and he gave me the room next to yours.”

“Drugged!” Dave Henderson passed his hand across his eyes. That accounted for a great deal! He remembered the slight headache with which he had awakened; he was suddenly conscious of it now. “Drugged!” he repeated.

“In a way,” she said, “I was too late. But Dago George, of course, did not know any details, and he had not gone any further than that. He had just left you in your room when I came. He had not, of course, heard from my father, since my father was dead, and he drugged you so that, during the night, he could have free access to your room and your belongings and find out what he could about you. I--I thought to turn him from that purpose by telling him enough of the truth to make him content to wait patiently and watch your movements until you had the money in your possession. Do--do you understand? He said the effects of the drug would wear off in a few hours, and I meant to warn you then, and--and we would both make our escape from here. I--that is why I told you there was danger. Dago George would stop at nothing. He has a band of men here in New York that I know are as unscrupulous as he is; and this place here, I am only too sure, has been the trap for more than one of his victims.”

She paused. Her voice, though guarded, had grown excited, and a little breathless.

It was a moment before Dave Henderson spoke.

“And you?” His voice was hoarse. “If Dago George had found you out you wouldn't have had a chance for your life! And you knew that?”

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I knew that. But that has no place here. There was no other way.”

“And you did this for me?” His hands reached out, and fell upon the girl's slight shoulders, and tightened there. “You did this for me--Teresa?”

“I did it because there was no other thing to do, because--because”--her voice lost its steadiness---“it was my father's guilt.”

He drew her closer, with a strange, gentle, remorseless strength.

“And for no other reason--Teresa?” he whispered. “For only that? If it had not been your father? If he had had nothing to do with it? If it had been only me?” Her face was very close to his now, so close that the quick, sudden panting of her breath was upon his cheek, so close that her lips were almost warm upon his own.

She put out her hands, and pressed them with a curious gentleness against his face to ward him off.

“Don't!” Her voice was very low. “Have you forgotten that I am the daughter of the man who meant--who meant perhaps to take your life; that I am the daughter of a criminal?”

“And I”--he had her wrists now, and was holding the soft, trembling hands against his cheeks--“I am a thief.”

“Oh, don't!” She was almost crying now. “You--you don't understand. There is more. I meant, if I could, to take that money from you myself.”

In sheer astonishment he let her go, and drew back a step. She seemed to waver unsteadily on her feet there in the darkness for an instant, and her hand groped out to the platform railing for support; and then suddenly she stood erect, her face full toward him, her head thrown back a little on her shoulders.

“I meant to get it, if I could--to give it back to those to whom it belongs. And I still mean to.” Her voice was quiet now, quivering a little, but bravely under control, “All my life has been a lie. I lived a lie the night I let you go away without a word of protest about what you were going to do. I do not mean to throw the blame upon my father, but with his death all those old ties were broken. Will you try to understand me? I must either now go on in the old way, or go straight with my conscience and with God. I could not bargain with God or my conscience. It was all or nothing. I had a share in enabling you to hoodwink the police. Therefore if you came into possession of that money again, I was as much a thief as you were, and as guilty. But I owed it to you, above all other things, to warn you of your danger; and so I came here--to warn you first--and afterwards, when you were safe from Dago George's reach, to watch you, and get the money myself if I could. Do you understand?

“When I came here to-night, I did not think that you had yet got the money; but something that Dago George said made me think that perhaps you had, and that perhaps he thought so, too. And so I sat there in my room in the darkness waiting until all was quiet in the house, and I could steal into your room and search, if I could get in through either door or window; and then, whether I got in or not, or whether the search was successful or not, I meant to wait until the drug had worn itself off sufficiently to enable me to arouse you, and tell you to get away.

“And then, I do not know what time it was, I heard some one steal up the stairs and go to the door of your room, and work at the lock very, very quietly, and go into your room, and move around in there. I was listening then with my ear to the partition, and I could just make out the sounds, no more. I should never have heard anything had I been asleep; there was never enough noise to have awakened me.

“The footsteps went downstairs, then, and I opened my door and waited until I heard them, louder, as though caution were no longer necessary, on the second landing; and then I stole downstairs myself. There was a light in Dago George's room. It came through the fanlight. The door was closed. But by leaning over the banister of the lower flight of stairs, I could see into the far end of the room through the fanlight. He had a package in his hand. It was torn at one corner, and from this he pulled out what I could see were a number of yellow-back banknotes. He looked at these for a moment, then replaced them in the package, and went to his safe. He knelt down in front of it, laid the package on the floor beside him, and began to open the safe. I heard some one moving above then, and I tiptoed back, and hid in what seemed to be a small private dining room on the second floor. I heard some one go quietly down the stairs, and then I came back here to my room to wait until I could arouse you. The money was in Dago George's safe. It would be there until morning at least, and on that account it no longer concerned me for the moment. And then after a long time I heard you move in your room. It was safer to come this way than to go out into the hall, for I did not know what Dago George might intend to do with you, or with me either, now that he had the money. He would not hesitate to get rid of us both if his cunning prompted him to believe that was his safest course. And I was afraid of that. Only you and I, besides himself, knew anything about that money--and he had got it into his possession. Do you understand? When I heard you move, I started through the window to go to you, and--and you saw me.”

Dave Henderson had sunk his elbows on the iron railing, his chin resting in his hands, and was staring at the strange, fluted sky-line where the buildings jabbed their queer, uneven points up into the night. It was a long time before he spoke.

“It's kind of queer, Teresa,” he said slowly. “It's kind of queer. You're something like a friend of--like a man I know. It's kind of queer. Well, you've given me my chance, you've risked your life to give me my chance, you've played as square as any woman God ever made--and now what are you going to do?”

She drew in her breath sharply, audibly, as though startled, as though his words were foreign, startlingly foreign to anything she had expected.

“I--have I any choice?” she answered. “I know where the money is, and I must notify the authorities. I must tell the police so that they can get it.”

Dave Henderson's eyes, a curious smile in them that the darkness hid, shifted from the sky-line to the little dark figure before him.

“And do you think I will let you tell the police where that money is?” He laughed quietly. “Do you? Did you think you could come and tell me just where it was, and then calmly leave me, and walk into the police station with the news--and get away with it?”

She shook her head.

“I know!” she said. “You think it's a woman's inconsistency. It isn't! I didn't know what you would do, I don't know now. But I have told you all. I have told you what I intend to do, if I possibly can. I had to tell you first. If I was to be honest all the way with myself, I had first of all to be honest with you. After that I was free. I don't know what you will do. I don't see what you can do now. But if you keep me from notifying the police to-night--there is to-morrow--and after that another to-morrow. No matter what happens, to you, or to me, I am going through with this. I”--her voice choked suddenly--“I have to.”

Dave Henderson straightened up.

“I believe you!” he said under his breath. “After what you've done, I'd be a fool if I didn't. And you're offering me a square fight, aren't you, Teresa?” He was laughing in that quiet, curious way again. “Well, I'm not sure I want to fight. Just before I found out that money was gone, I was wondering if I wouldn't give it back myself.”

“_Dave!_” It was the first time she had ever called him by his name, and it came now from her lips in a quick, glad cry. Her hands caught at both his arms. “Dave, do you mean that? Do you? Dave, it _is_ true! You're honest, after all!”

He turned his head away, a sudden hard and bitter smile on his lips.

“No,” he said. “And I haven't made up my mind yet about giving it back, anyway. But maybe I had other reasons for even getting as far as I did. Not honesty. I can't kid, myself on that. I am a thief.”

Her fingers were gripping at his arms with all their strength, as though she were afraid that somehow he would elude and escape her.

“You _were_ a thief”--it seemed as though her soul were in the passionate entreaty in her voice now--“and I was the daughter of a criminal, with all the hideous memories of crime and evil that stretch back to childhood. But that is in the past, Dave, if we will only leave it there, isn't it? It--it doesn't have to be that way in all the years that are coming. God gives us both a chance to--to make good. I'm going to take mine. Won't you take yours, Dave? You were a thief, but how about from now on?”

He stood rigid, motionless; and again his face was turned away from her out into the darkness.

“From now on.” He repeated the words in a low, wondering way.

“Yes!” she cried eagerly. “From now on, Dave. Let us get away from here, and go and notify the police that Dago George has that money, and--and--and then, you see, the police will come and get it, and return it where it belongs, and that will end it all.”

It was a moment before he turned toward her again, and then his face was white, and drawn, and haggard. He shook his head.

“I can't do that,” he said hoarsely. “There are more reasons than one why I can't do that.” Her hands were clasping his arms. He forced them gently from their hold now, and took them in his own, and drew her closer to him, and held her there. “And one of those reasons is you, Teresa. You've played fair with me, and I'll play fair with you. I--I can't buy you with a fake. I----”

“Dave!” She struggled to free herself. “Dave,

“Wait!” His voice was rough with emotion. “We'll talk straight--there isn't any other way. I--I think I loved you, Teresa, that night, the first time I saw you, when you stood on the threshold of your father's room. To-night I know that I love you, and-------”

“Dave!”

His hold had brought her very close again to him. He could see a great crimson tide flood and sweep the white and suddenly averted face.

“Wait!” he said again. “I think I have learned other things as well to-night--that you care, Teresa, too, but that the stolen money stands between you and me. That is what I mean by buying you, and your love, with a fake. If I returned the money on that account it would not be because I had suddenly become honest--which is the one thing above all else that you ask for. It would not be for honesty's sake, but because I was a hypocrite and dishonest with you, and was letting the money go because I was getting something for it that was worth more to me than the money--because I was making a good _bargain_ that was cheap at a hundred thousand dollars. I can't make myself believe that I feel a sense of honesty any more to-night than I did the night I first took that money, and I would be a cur to try to make you think I did.”

He could feel her hands tremble in his; he could see the sweet face, the crimson gone from it, deathly pale again. Her lips seemed quivering for words, but she did not speak. And suddenly he dropped her hands; and his own hands clenched, and clenched again, at his sides. There was biting mockery at himself stirring and moiling in his brain. “You fool! You fool!” a voice cried out. “She's yours! Take her! All you've got to do is change your tune; she'll believe you--so if you're not honest, why don't you _steal_ her?”

“Listen!” It seemed as though he were forcing himself to speak against his will. “There is another reason; but, first, so that you will understand, there is Millman. It is too long a story to tell you all of it. Millman is the man I spoke of--who is honest--like you. I told him when I was in prison where the money was, and I thought he had double-crossed me. Instead, he gave it back to me to-night--that is how I got it so soon.” He laughed out sharply, harshly. “But Millman said if I didn't give it back to the estate of the man from whom I took it, he would pay it out of his own pocket, because, for me, he had been a thief, too. Do you understand? That's why I said I didn't know what I was going to do. My God--I--I don't know yet. I know well enough that if the police were tipped off to-night, and got the money, that would let Millman out of paying it; but that's not the point. I can't squeal now, can I? I can't go sneaking to the police, and say: 'There it is in Dago George's safe; I can't get my own paws on it again, so I've turned honest, and you can go and take it!' I wouldn't like to face Millman and tell him the money had gone back _that_ way--because I couldn't help it--because it had been taken from me, and I was doing the smug act in a piker play!”

She stepped toward him quickly.

“Dave,” she whispered tremulously, “what do you mean? What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to get that money--from Dago George,” he said in a flat voice. “I'll get that money if I go through hell again for it, as I've been through hell for it already. Then maybe it'll go back where it came from, and maybe it won't; but if it does go back, it'll go back from _Dave Henderson_--not Dago George!”

She clutched frantically at his arm.

“No, no!” she cried out.

“Listen!” he said. “You have said you meant that money should be returned if it were within your power to accomplish it. I understand that. Well, no matter what the result, to Dago George or to me, I am going down there to get that money--if I can. But if I get it, I do not promise to return it. Remember that! I promise nothing. So you are free to leave here; and if you think, and perhaps you will be right, that the surest way to get the money back is to go instantly to the police, I shall not blame you. If the police can beat me to it before I settle with Dago George, they win--that's all. But in any case, it is not safe for you stay in this place, and so----”

“I was not thinking of that!” she said in a low voice. “Nor shall I leave this house--until you do. I--I am afraid--for you. You do not know Dago George.”

He did not stir for a moment; and then, with some great, overwhelming impulse upon him, he took her face in both his hands, and held it there upturned to his, and looked into the great dark eyes until the lashes dropped and hid them from his gaze.

“Teresa,” he whispered low, “there are some things that are worse than being a thief. I couldn't lay down my hand now, if I wanted to, could I? I can't quit now, can I? I can't _crawl. I_ took that money; and, whether I mean to give it back myself, or keep it, I'd rather go out for good than tell the police it's there, and see the sneer for an honest man--turned honest because he had lost his nerve, and didn't dare go after the money and face the risk of a showdown with Dago George, which was the only way in which he could stay _dishonest_. Teresa, you see, don't you?” His voice was passionate, hungry in its earnestness. “Teresa, what would you do--play the game, or quit?”

The lashes lifted, and for a moment the dark eyes looked steadily into his, and then they were veiled again.

“I will wait here for you,” she said.

VII--THE MAN WITH THE FLASHLIGHT

THE silence seemed like some uncanny, living, breathing thing. It seemed to beat, and pulsate, until the ear-drums throbbed with it. It seemed to become some mad, discordant chorus, in which every human emotion vied with every other one that it might prevail over all the rest: a savage fury, and a triumphant love; a mighty hope, and a cruel dismay; joy, and a chill, ugly fear. And the chorus rose and clashed, and it seemed as though some wild, incoherent battle was joined, until first one strain after another was beaten down and submerged, and put to rout, until out of the chaos and turmoil, dominant, supreme, arose fury, merciless and cold.

Dave Henderson crept along the upper hall. The pocket flashlight in his hand, one of his purchases on the way East, winked through the blackness, the round, white ray disclosing for a second's space the head of the stairs; and blackness fell again.

He began to descend the stairs cautiously. Yes, that was it--fury. Out of that wild riot in his brain that was what remained now. It drew his face into hard, pitiless lines, but it left him most strangely cool and deliberate--and the more pitiless. It was Dago George who was the object of that fury, not Nicolo Capriano. That was strange, too, in a way! It was Nicolo Capriano who had done him the greater wrong, for Dago George was no more than the other's satellite; but Nicolo Capriano's treachery seemed tempered somehow--by death perhaps--by that slim figure that he had left standing out there in the darkness perhaps; his brain refused to reason it out to a logical conclusion; it held tenaciously to Dago George. It seemed as though there were a literal physical itch at his finger-tips to reach a throat-hold and choke the oily, lying smile from the suave, smug face of that hypocritical bowing figure that had offered him a glass of wine, and, like a damnable hound, had drugged him, and----

Was that a sound, a sound of movement, of some one stirring below there, that he heard--or only an exaggerated imagination? He was half-way down the upper flight of stairs now, and he stopped to listen. No, there seemed to be nothing--only that silence that palpitated and made noises of its own; and yet, he was not satisfied; he could have sworn that he had heard some one moving about.

He went on down the stairs again, but still more cautiously now. There was no reason why there _shouldn't_ be some one moving about, even at this hour. It might be Dago George himself. Dago George might not have gone to bed again yet. It was only an hour, Teresa had said, since the man had come upstairs and stolen the money. Or it might be some accomplice who was with Dago George. He remembered Teresa's reference to the band of blacklegs over whom Dago George was in command; and he remembered that some one had come down the stairs behind her and Dago George. But Teresa herself had evidently been unseen, for there had been no attempt to find or interfere with her. It had probably therefore been--well, any one!

It presented possibilities.

It might have been an accomplice; or a prowling guest, if there were other guests in this unsavory hostelry; or a servant, for some unknown reason nosing about, if any of the disreputable staff slept in the place at night--the cook, or the greasy waiter, or the bartender, or any of the rest of them; though, in a place like this, functionaries of that sort were much more likely to go back to their own homes after their work was over. It would not be at all unlikely that Dago George, in view of his outside pernicious activities, kept none of the staff about the place at night.

Dave Henderson's jaws closed with a vicious snap. Useless speculation of this sort got him nowhere! He would find out soon enough! If Dago George were not alone, there were still several hours till daylight; and he could wait his chance with grim patience. He was concerned with only one thing--to square accounts with Dago George in a way that would both satiate his fury, and force the man to disgorge the contents of his safe.

His jaws tightened. There was but one, single, disturbing factor. If anything went wrong, Teresa was still upstairs there. In every other respect the stage was set--for any eventuality. He had even taken the precaution, before doing anything else, to get their valises, hers and his, out of the place, since in any case they meant to steal away from this accursed trap-house of Dago George. It had been simple enough to dispose of the baggage via the fire escape, and through the yard, and down the lane, where the valises had found a temporary hiding place in a shed, whose door, opening on the lane, he had discovered ajar, and simple enough, with Teresa's help in regaining the fire escape from the ground, to return in the same way; but he had been actuated by more than the mere idea of being unimpeded in flight if a critical situation subsequently arose--though in this, his ulterior motive, he had failed utterly of success. Teresa had agreed thoroughly in the wisdom of first removing their belongings; but she had refused positively to accompany and remain with the baggage herself, as he had hoped he might induce her to do. “I wouldn't be of any use there, if--if anything happened,” she had said; “I--I might be of some use here.” Neither argument nor expostulation had been of any avail. She was still above there--waiting.

He had reached the head of the lower flight of stairs, and now he halted, and stood motionless. There _was_ a sound from below. It was neither imagination nor fancy; it was distinct and unmistakable--a low, rasping, metallic sound.

For an interval of seconds he stood there listening; then he shifted the flashlight, switched off now, to his left hand, and his right hand slipped into his pocket for his revolver. He moved forward then silently, noiselessly, and, as he descended the stairway, paused at every step to listen intently again. The sound, with short, almost negligible interruptions, persisted; and, with if now, it seemed as though he could distinguish the sound of heavy breathing. And now it seemed, too, as though the blackness were less opaque, as though, while there was still no object discernible, the hallway below was in a sort of murk, and as though, from somewhere, light rays, that were either carefully guarded or had expended, through distance, almost all their energy, were still striving to pierce the darkness.

Tight-lipped now, a few steps farther down, Dave Henderson leaned out over the bannister--and hung there tensely, rigidly.

It was like looking upon some weird, uncannily clever effect that had been thrown upon a moving picture screen. The door of Dago George's room was wide open, and through this he could see a white circle of light, the rays thrown away from and in the opposite direction to the door. They flooded the face of a safe; and, darkly, behind the light itself, two figures were faintly outlined, one kneeling at the safe, the other holding a flashlight and standing over the kneeling man's shoulder. And now the nature of the sounds that he had not been able to define was obvious--it was the click of a ratchet, the rasp of a bit eating voraciously into steel, as the kneeling man worked at the face of the safe.

For a moment, his eyes narrowed, half in sudden, angry menace, half in perplexity, he hung there gazing on the scene; and then, with all the caution that he knew, his weight thrown gradually on each separate tread to guard against a protesting creak, he went on down the stairs.

It was strange--damnably and most curiously strange! Was one of those figures in there Dago George? If so, it would account for the presence of a second man--the one Teresa had heard coming down stairs. But, if so, what was Dago George's game? Was the man going to put up the bluff that he had been robbed, and was therefore wrecking his own safe? That was an old gag! But what purpose could it serve Dago George in the present instance? It wasn't as though he, Dave Henderson, had _confided_ the package to Dago George's keeping, and Dago George could take this means of cunningly securing it for himself. Dago George had stolen it--and, logically, the last thing Dago George would do would be to admit any knowledge of it, let alone flaunt it openly!

At the foot of the stairs, Dave Henderson discarded that theory as untenable. But if, then, neither one of the two in there was Dago George--_where was Dago George?_ It was a little beyond attributing to mere coincidence, the fact that a couple of marauding safe-breakers should have _happened_ to select Dago George's safe to-night in the ordinary routine of their nefarious vocation. Coincidence, as an explanation, wasn't good enough! It looked queer--extremely queer! Where he had thought that no one, save Millman and himself, had known anything about the presence of that money in New York to-night, it appeared that a most amazing number were not only aware of it, but were intimately interested in that fact!

He smiled a little in the darkness, not pleasantly, as he crept now, inch by inch, along the hall toward the open door. He, too, was _interested_ in that package of banknotes in the safe! And, Dago George or the devil, it mattered very little which, there would be a showdown, very likely now a grim and very pretty little showdown, before the money left that room in any one's possession save his own!

From ahead, inside the room, there came a slight clatter, as though a tool of some sort had been dropped or tossed on the floor. It was followed by a muttered exclamation, and then a sort of breathless, but triumphant grunt. And then a voice, in a guttural undertone:

“Dere youse are, sport! Help yerself!”

Dave Henderson crouched back against the wall. He was well along the hall now, and quite close enough to the doorway of Dago George's private domain to enable him, given the necessary light, to see the whole interior quite freely. The door of the safe, in a dismantled condition, was swung open; strewn on the floor lay the kit of tools through whose instrumentality the job had been accomplished; and the man with the flashlight was bending forward, the white ray flooding the inside of the safe.

There came suddenly now a queer twitching to Dave Henderson's lips, and it came coincidentally with a sharp exclamation of delight from the man with the flashlight. In the man's hand was the original package of banknotes, its torn corner identifying it instantly to Dave Henderson, and evidencing with equal certainty to its immediate possessor that it was the object, presumably, which was sought.

And now the man with the flashlight, without turning, reached out and laid the package on the desk beside the safe. The movement, however, sent the flashlight's ray in a jerky half circle around the room, and mechanically Dave Henderson raised his hand and brushed it across his eyes. Was _that_ fancy--what he had seen? It was gone now, it was dark in there now, for the flashlight was boring into the safe again, and the man with the flashlight seemed intent on the balance of the safe's contents. It had been only a glimpse, a glimpse that had lasted no longer than the time it takes a watch to tick, but it seemed to have mirrored itself upon Dave Henderson's brain so that he could still see it even in the darkness: It was a huddled form on the floor, close by the bed, just as though it had pitched itself convulsively out of the bed, and it lay there sprawled grotesquely, and the white face had seemed to grin at him in a horrid and contorted way--and it was the face of Dago George.

The man with the flashlight spoke suddenly over his shoulder to his companion:

“You've pulled a good job, Maggot!” he said approvingly. “Better than either Cunny or me was looking for, I guess. And so much so that I guess Cunny had better horn in himself before we close up for the night. You beat it over to the joint and bring him back. Tell him there's some queer stuff in this safe besides what we were after and what we got--some gang stuff that'll mabbe interest him, 'cause he said he wasn't very fond of Dago George. I don't know whether he'll want to take any of it or not, or whether he'd rather let the police have it when they wise up to this in the morning. He can look it over for himself. Tell him I want him to see it before I monkey with it myself. You can leave your watchmaker's tools there. You ought to be back in a little better than ten minutes if you hurry. We got a good hour and more yet before daylight, and before any of the crowd that work here gets back on the job, and until then we got the house to ourselves, but that's no reason for wasting any fleeting moments, so get a move on! See?”

“Sure!” grunted the other.

“Well, then, beat it!”

Footsteps sounded from the room, coming in the direction of the doorway, and Dave Henderson slipped instantly across the hall, and edged in behind the door,-that, opening back into the hall, afforded him both a convenient and secure retreat. The smile on his lips was more pleasant now. It was very thoughtful of the man with the flashlight--very! He cared nothing about the other man, who was now walking stealthily down the hall toward the front door; the _money_ was still in that room in there! Also, he was glad to have had confirmed what he had already surmised--that Dago George slept alone in The Iron Tavern.

The front door opened and closed again softly. Dave Henderson stole silently across the hall again, and crouched against the opposite wall once more, but this time almost at the door jamb itself.

The flashlight, full on, lay on the desk. It played over the package of banknotes, and sent back a reflected gleam from the nickel-work of a telephone instrument that stood a few inches further along on the desk. The man's form, his back to the door, and back of the light, was like a silhouetted shadow. It was quiet, silent now in the house. Perhaps five seconds passed, and then the man chuckled low and wheezingly.

Dave Henderson grew suddenly rigid. It startled him. Somewhere he had heard that chuckle before--somewhere. It seemed striving to stir and awaken memory. There was something strangely familiar about it, and----

The man, still chuckling, was muttering audibly to himself now.

“Sure, that's the dope! The Scorpion--eh? Cunny the Scorpion! Nice name! Well, we'll see who gets _stung!_ I guess ten minutes' start ain't good enough; but if some one's chasing the Scorpion, he won't have so much time to chase me. Yes, I guess this is where I fade away--with the goods. By the time there's been anything straightened out, and even if he squeals if he's caught, I guess I'll be far enough away to worry--not!”

Dave Henderson's face had grown as white and set as chiselled marble; but he did not move.

The man leaned abruptly forward over the desk, picked up the telephone, chuckled again, and then snatched the receiver from the hook. And the next instant, his voice full of well-simulated terror, he was calling wildly, frantically, into the transmitter:

“Central!... Central!... For God's sake!... Quick!... Help!... I'm Dago George.... The Iron Tavern.... They're murdering me.... Get the police!... For God's sake!... Get the police.... Tell them Cunny Smeeks is murdering me.... Hurry!... Quick!... For God's----”

The man allowed the telephone and the unhooked receiver to crash abruptly to the floor. The cord, catching the flashlight, carried the flashlight with it, and the light went out.

And then Dave Henderson moved. With a spring, he was half-way across the room--and his own flashlight stabbed a lane of light through the blackness, and struck, as the other whirled with a startled cry, full on the man's face.

It was Bookie Skarvan.

VIII--BOOKIE SKARVAN PAYS HIS ACCOUNT

THE little red-rimmed eyes blinked into the glare--it was the only color left in the white, flabby face--the red rims of the furtive little eyes. Bookie Skarvan's fat hand lifted and tugged at his collar, as though the collar choked him. He fell back a step and his heel crunched upon the telephone transmitter, and smashed it. And then Bookie Skarvan licked his lips--and attempted a smile.

“I,” mumbled Bookie Skarvan, “I--I can't see your face. Who--who are you?” The sound of his own voice, husky and shaken as it was, seemed to bring him a certain reassurance. “What do you want? Eh--what do you want?” he demanded.

Dave Henderson made no reply. It seemed as though his mind and soul and body were engulfed in some primal, savage ecstasy. Years swept their lightning sequence through his brain; hours, with the prison walls and iron bars around him, in which he had promised himself this moment, seemed to live their life and existence over again. He said no word; he made no sound--but, with the flashlight still playing without a flicker of movement upon the other, he felt, with the back of his revolver hand, over Bookie Skarvan's clothing, located in one of the pockets Bookie Skarvan's revolver, and, with utter contempt for any move the man might make through the opening thus given him, hooked the guard of his own revolver on the little finger of the hand that held the flashlight, and unceremoniously jerked the other's weapon out from the pocket and tossed it to the far end of the desk. The flashlight lifted then, and circled the walls of the room. Bookie Skarvan's complaint had not gone unheeded. Bookie Skarvan would have ample opportunity to see whose face it was! The flashlight found and held on the electric-light switch. It was on the opposite wall behind Bookie Skarvan. Dave Henderson shoved the man roughly out of the way, stepped quickly forward to the wall, switched on the light--and swung around to face Bookie Skarvan.

For an instant Bookie Skarvan stood there without movement, the little eyes dilating, the white face turning ashen and gray, and then great beads of sweat sprang out upon the forehead--and a scream of abject terror pealed through the room.

“Go away!” screamed Bookie Skarvan. “You're dead! Go away! Go back to hell where you belong!” His hands clawed out in front of him. “Do you hear? You're dead--dead! Go away! Curse you, damn you--go away!”

Dave Henderson spoke through closed teeth:

“You ought to be satisfied then--Bookie. You've wanted me dead for quite a while--for _five years_, haven't you?”

There was no answer.

Dave Henderson's eyes automatically swept around the now lighted room. Yes, that was Dago George there on the floor near the bed, lying on the side of his face, with a hideous gash across his head. The man was dead, of course; he couldn't be anything else. But anyway, Dago George was as something apart, an extraneous thing. There was only _one_ thing in the world, one thing that held mind and soul and body in a thrall of wild, seething, remorseless passion--that maudlin, grovelling thing there, whose clawing hands had found the end of the desk, and who hung there with curious limpness, as though, because the knees sagged, the weight of his body was supported by his arms alone--that thing whose lips, evidently trying to form words, jerked up and down like flaps of flesh from which all nerve control had gone.

“Maybe you didn't know that I knew it was you who were back of that attempt to murder me that night--five years ago.” Dave Henderson thrust the flashlight into his pocket, and took a step forward. “Well, you know it now!”

A sweat bead trickled down the fat, working face--and lost itself in a fold of flabby flesh.

“No!” Bookie Skarvan found his tongue. “No! Honest to God, Dave!” he whined. “It was Baldy.”

“Don't lie! I _know!_” There was a cold deadliness in Dave Henderson's tones. “Stand away from the desk a little, so that I can get a look at that telephone on the floor! I don't want any witness to what's going to happen here, and a telephone with the receiver off----”

“My God!” Bookie Skarvan cried out wildly. “What are you going to do?”

“Yes, I guess it's out of commission.” Dave Henderson's voice seemed utterly detached; he seemed utterly to ignore the other for a moment, as he looked at the broken instrument.

Bookie Skarvan, in an access of fear, mopped at his wet face, and his little red-rimmed eyes, like the eyes of a cornered rat, darted swift, frantic glances in all directions around the room.

“Dave, do you hear!” Bookie Skarvan's voice rose thin and squealing. “Why don't you answer? Do you hear! What--what are you going to do?”

“It's queer, kind of queer, to find you here, Bookie,” said Dave Henderson evenly. “I guess there's a God--Bookie. How did you get here--from San Francisco?”

Bookie Skarvan licked at his dry lips, and cowered back from the revolver that was suddenly outflung in Dave Henderson's hand.

“I--I followed the girl. I thought you'd opened up to the old man, and he'd bumped you off with that bomb to get the stuff for himself. I was sure of it when he died, and she beat it for here.”

“And to-night?” Dave Henderson's voice was rasping now.

“I got the room opposite hers.” Bookie Skarvan gulped heavily; his eyes were fixed, staring now, as though fascinated by the revolver muzzle. “She came downstairs. I followed her, but I don't know where she went to. I saw the package go into the safe. I could see through the fanlight over the door. I saw him”--Bookie Skarvan's hand jerked out toward the huddled form on the floor--“I saw him put it there.” Mechanically, Dave Henderson's eyes followed the gesture--and narrowed for an instant in a puzzled, startled way. Had that dead man there _moved?_ The body seemed slightly nearer to the head of the bed!' Fancy! Imagination! He hadn't marked the exact position of the body to begin with, and it was still huddled, still inert, still in the same sprawled, contorted position. His eyes reverted to Bookie Skarvan.

“You had a man in here with you at work on that safe, a man you called Maggot, and you sent him, with that dirty brand of trickery of yours, to bring back some one you called Cunny the Scorpion, with the idea that instead of finding you and the money here--they would find the police.” There was a twisted, merciless smile on Dave Henderson's lips. “Where did you get into touch with your _friends?_”

Bookie Skarvan's eyes were roving again, seeking some avenue of escape, it seemed. Dave Henderson laughed shortly, unpleasantly, as he watched the other. There was only the door and the window. But he, Dave Henderson, blocked the way to the door; and the window, as he knew through the not-too-cursory examination he had made of it when he had come down the fire escape with the valises, was equally impassable. It had been in his mind then that perhaps he, himself, might gain entrance to Dago George's room through the window--only the old-fashioned iron shutters, carefully closed and fastened, had barred the way.

“Well?” He flung the word sharply at Bookie Skarvan.

“I--Baldy knew the Scorpion.” Bookie Skarvan's fingers wriggled between his collar and his fat neck. “Baldy gave me a letter to him, and the Scorpion put one over on--on that fellow on the floor, and got me a room here upstairs. And when I saw the money going into the safe I beat it for the Scorpion, and got him to give me a box-worker, so he got Maggot for me, and----”

“You hadn't the nerve, of course, when you saw Dago George putting the money in the safe, to tackle the job alone before the safe was locked!” There was grim, contemptuous irony in Dave Henderson's voice. “You're the same old Bookie, aren't you--yellow as the sulphur pit of hell!” His face hardened. “Ten minutes, you said it would take them to get back. It's not very long, Bookie. And say two or three minutes longer, or perhaps a little more, for the police, allowing for the time it would take central to get her breath after that nerve racking cry for help you sent her. Or maybe the police would even get here first--depending on how far away the station is. I'm a stranger here, and I don't know. In that case, there wouldn't be even ten minutes--and part of that is gone now. There isn't much time, Bookie. But there's time enough for you and me to settle our little account. I used to think of what I'd do to you when I got out on the other side of those iron bars. I used to think of it when I couldn't sleep at night in my cell. I kept thinking of it for _five years_, Bookie--and here we are to-night at last, the two of us, you and me, Bookie. I overheard Runty Mott explain the whole plant you had put up to murder me, so there's no use of you lying, there's no use of you starting that--that's _one_ thing you haven't got time to do. You'd better clean house, Bookie, for there isn't room enough in this world for the two of us--one of us has got to go.”

Bookie Skarvan had crouched against the end of the desk again. He cringed now, one arm upraised as though to ward off a blow.

“What--what are you going to do?” The words came thick and miserably. Their repetition seemed all that his tongue was capable of. “What--what are you going to do?”

“I can't _murder_ you!” Dave Henderson's face had grown set and colorless--as colorless as his tone. “I wish to God I could! It's coming to you! But I can't! There's your revolver on the end of the desk. Take it!”

Again and again, Bookie Skarvan's tongue licked at his lips.

“What do you mean?” he whispered.

“You know what I mean!” Dave Henderson answered levelly. “Take it!”

“My God!” screamed Bookie Skarvan. “No! My God--no! Not that!”

“Yes--_that!_ You're getting what I swore I'd never give you--a chance. Either you or I are going out. Take that revolver, and for the first time in your life try and be a man; or else I'll fix you, and I'll fix it so that you won't move from here until your friend the Scorpion gets his chance at you for the pleasant little surprise you had arranged for him with your telephone trick, or until the police carry you out with a through ticket to the electric chair for what looks like murder over there on the floor. You understand--Bookie? I'll make you fight, you cur! It's the only chance you've got for your life. Now--take it!”

Bookie Skarvan wrung his hands together. A queer crooning sound came from his lips. He was trembling violently.

“There aren't very many of those ten minutes left, Bookie,” said Dave Henderson coldly. “But if you got in a lucky shot--Bookie--you'd still have time to get away, from here. And there's the money there, too--you could take that with you.”

The man seemed near collapse. Great beads from his forehead ran down and over the sagging jowls. He moaned a little, and stared at the revolver that lay upon the desk, and reached out his hand toward the weapon, and drew his hand back again. He looked again at Dave Henderson, and at the muzzle of the revolver that covered him. He seemed to read something irrevocable and remorseless in both. Slowly, his mouth working, his face muscles twitching, he reached again to the desk, and pulled the revolver to him; and then, his arm falling nervelessly, he held the weapon dangling at his side.

Dave Henderson's revolver was lowered until it pointed to the floor.

“When you lift your hand, Bookie, it's the signal,” he said in a monotone.

Bookie Skarvan's knees seemed to bend and sag a little more--there was no other movement.

“I'm waiting,” said Dave Henderson--and pulled the trigger of his revolver to put a shot into the floor.

There was the click of the falling hammer--no more. A grim smile played across Dave Henderson's lips. It was as well, perhaps, that he had tried in that way to startle, to _frighten_, this terrified, spineless cur who stood there into action! The cartridge that he had depended upon for his life had missed fire! He pulled the trigger again. The hammer clicked. He pulled again--his eyes never leaving Bookie Skarvan's face. The hammer clicked.

For the fraction of a second the room seemed blurred to Dave Henderson. _The chambers of his revolver were empty!_ His brain seemed to sicken, and then to recover itself, and leap into fierce, virile activity. He was at the mercy of that cringing hound there--if the other but knew it. It seemed as though all the devils of hell shrieked at him in unholy mirth. If he moved a step forward to rush, to close with the other, the very paroxysm of fear that possessed Bookie Skarvan would instinctively incite the man to fire. There was one way, only one way--the electric light switch behind him. If he could reach that without Bookie Skarvan realizing the truth, there would be the darkness--and his bare hands. Well, he asked no more than that--only that Bookie Skarvan did not get away. His bare hands were enough.

He moved back a single step, as though shifting his position, his face impassive, watching the dangling weapon in the other's shaky hand, watching the other's working lips. The chamber of his revolver was empty! How? When? It had been fully loaded when he lay down on the bed. Yes! He remembered! It was queer that it had twisted like that in his sleep. Dago George! It came in a lightning flash of intuition. Dago George, cautious to excite no suspicion, had been equally cautious to draw, his, Dave Henderson's, teeth!

He edged back another step--and stopped, as though rooted to the spot. Bookie Skarvan, that dangling revolver in the other's hand, his own peril, all, everything that but an instant before had obsessed his mind, was blotted out from his consciousness as though it had never existed. That huddled form, that murdered man on the floor behind Bookie Skarvan, that he could see over Bookie Skarvan's shoulder, had raised his hand in a swift, sudden movement, and had thrust it under the mattress at the head of the bed, and had snatched out a revolver.

It was quick, quick as thought, quick as the winking of an eye. A shout of warning rose to Dave Henderson's lips--and was drowned in the report of the revolver shot, deafening, racketing, in the confined space. And, as though thrown into relief by the flash and the tongue flame of the revolver, a picture seemed to sear itself into Dave Henderson's brain: The up-flung arms of Bookie Skarvan, the ghastly surprise on the sweat-beaded face, the fat body spinning grotesquely like a run-down top--and pitching forward to the floor. And through the lifting smoke, another face--Dago George's face, working, livid, blood-smirched, full of demoniacal triumph. And then a gurgling peal of laughter.

“Yes, and you, too! _Con Amore!_” gurgled Dago George. “You, too!”

The man was on his knees now, lurching there, the revolver swaying weakly, trying to draw its bead now on him, Dave Henderson. He moved with a spring to one side toward the door. The revolver, as though jerked desperately in the weak hand, followed him. He flung himself to the floor. A shot rang out. And then, as though through the flash again, another picture lived: The revolver dropping from a hand that could no longer hold it, a graying face that swayed on shoulders which in turn rocked to and fro--and then a lurch--a thud--and, the face was hidden between out-sprawled arms--and Dago George did not move any more.

IX--THE ENDING OF THE NIGHT

MECHANICALLY, Dave Henderson rose to his feet, and for an instant stood as though, his mental faculties numbed, he were striving to grasp as a concrete thing some stark and horribly naked tragedy that his eyes told him was real, but which his brain denied and refused to accept. Thin layers of smoke, suspended, sinuous, floated in hideous little gray clouds about the room--like palls that sought to hide what lay upon the floor from sight, and, failing in their object, but added another grim and significant detail to the scene.

And then his brain cleared, and he jumped forward to bend first over Bookie Skarvan and then over Dago George; and, where his mind had been unreceptive and numbed but an instant before, it was keen, swift and incisive now--the police who had been summoned--the Scorpion and his parasite yegg who were on the way back--there was no time to lose! There was no one in the house to have heard the shots--Bookie Skarvan had settled that point--no one except Teresa upstairs. But the shots might have been heard _outside_.

His ears throbbed with strange noises; those shots seemed still to be reverberating and beating at his eardrums. Yes, the shots might have been heard outside on the street, or by some one in the next house. Was that some one at the front door now? He held his breath, as he rose from Dago George's side. No, just the ringing in his ears; there wasn't any other, sound. But there wasn't an instant to lose; both Bookie Skarvan and Dago George were dead. There wasn't an instant to lose--only the instant he _must_ take to make sure he made no false move here before he snatched up that package on the desk there, and ran upstairs, and, with Teresa, made his way out by the fire escape.

He stooped, and stretched out his hand to exchange his own empty revolver for the one that lay on the floor where it had fallen from Dago George's lifeless fingers--and, instead, drew his hand sharply back again. Fool! The police would investigate this, wouldn't they? Bookie Skarvan couldn't have been shot by an _empty_ revolver! Well--he was moving toward the desk and back toward where Bookie Skarvan lay--suppose he took Bookie's revolver then? He shook his head. He did not need one bad enough for that. It was better to let things remain as they were and let the police draw their own conclusions, conclusions which, if nothing was interfered with, and he got away with the package of banknotes, would point no inference that, by hook or crook, would afford a clew which might lead to him. Was he so sure of that? Suppose the Scorpion had been let into Bookie's confidence, and that the Scorpion when he got here should happen to be caught by the police--and _talked_ to save himself?

A grim smile settled on Dave Henderson's lips, as he thrust his useless revolver into his pocket, and, reaching out to the desk, picked up the package of banknotes. Well, if anything came of the Scorpion, it couldn't be helped! And, after all, did it matter very much? It wasn't only Dago George and Bookie Skarvan who were dead--Dave Henderson was dead, too!

It had been scarcely a minute since he had first risen: to his feet; it was his mind, sifting, weighing, arguing with itself, that had seemed to use up priceless time, whereas, in reality, in its swift working, it had kept pace with, and had even prodded him into speed in his physical movements. He was running now, the package of banknotes in his hand, for the door. Dago George was dead. Bookie Skarvan was dead. And if----

He staggered suddenly back, and reeled from the impact, as a man from just outside in the hallway launched himself ferociously forward across the threshold. The package spun from his hand to the floor. Half flung to his knees, Dave Henderson's arms shot out instinctively and wrapped themselves around his assailant's body.

Came a snarl and an oath, and Dave Henderson's head rocked back on his shoulders from a vicious short-arm jab that caught him on the point of the jaw. It dazed him; he was conscious only that he had not let go his hold, that his hands, like feeling tentacles, were creeping further up the man's body toward throat and shoulders, drawing his own body up after them into a more upright position. His head sang with the blow. A voice seemed to float from somewhere out of the air:

“That's the stuff, Maggot! Soak him!”

Dave Henderson's arms had locked now like steel bands around his assailant and were tightening, as the other's were tightening around him in turn. The dizziness was leaving him. They swung, rocking, to the strain. The man was strong! A face, a repellent, unshaven face, leered into his. Twice they swirled around, and then seemed to hang for an instant motionless, as though the strength of one exerted to its utmost was exactly counterbalanced by the strength of the other; and over the other's shoulder Dave Henderson could see another man, a man who laughed with ugly coolness, and who had flaming red hair, and eyes of a blue so faded that they looked repulsive because they looked as though they were white.

Maggott and Cunny the Scorpion! There _had_ been some one there in the front of the house--it had been Maggot and Cunny the Scorpion. And at any moment now there would be some one else--the police!

That nicety of balance was gone. They were struggling, lurching, staggering in each other's embrace again--he, and this Maggot, who snarled and cursed with panting breath. Their heads were almost on each other's shoulders. He could see the straining muscles in the other's neck standing out like great, purple, swollen cords. And as he whirled now this way and that, he caught glimpses of the red-headed man. The red-headed man seemed to be quite unconcerned for the moment with his companion's struggle. He picked up the package of banknotes from the floor, examined it, dropped it again, and ran to Bookie Skarvan's side.

A queer, hard smile came to Dave Henderson's lips. This panting thing with arms locked like a gorilla's around him seemed to be weakening a little--or was it a trick? He tightened his own hold, and edged his own hands a little higher up--and still a little higher. If he could only tear himself loose for the fraction of a second, and get his fingers on that panting throat! No, the man wasn't weakening so much after all! The man seemed to sense his intention; and with a sudden twist, each endeavoring to out-maneuver the other, they spun in a wider circle, like drunken dancers in some mad revel, and crashed against the wall, and rebounded from it, and hung again, swaying like crazy pendulums, in the middle of the floor.

The red-headed man's voice came suddenly from across the room:

“Soak him, Maggot!”

That was the Scorpion. The Scorpion seemed to be taking some interest at last in something besides Bookie Skarvan and the package of money.

A grunted oath from Dave Henderson's antagonist answered.

“Damn it, I can't! Curse youse, why don't youse lend a hand!”

With a quick, sudden wrench, Dave Henderson tried to free himself. It resulted only in a wild swirl in a half circle that almost pitched him, and with him the other, to the floor. But he saw the Scorpion now. The Scorpion had risen to his feet from Bookie Skarvan's side, and was balancing a revolver in his hand; and now the Scorpion's voice seemed to hold a sort of purring note, velvet in its softness.

“All right, then, Maggot! We might as well have a clean-up here, since he's started it. I guess we came just about in time, or he'd have had the money as well as our fat friend there--that he _got_. It looks as though we ought to even up the score.” The revolver lifted in the Scorpion's hand. “Jump away, Maggot--I'm going to lead the ace of trumps!”

The eyes were white--not blue; there was no blue in them; they were white--two little white spots across the room. They held a devil's menace in them--like the voice--like the purring voice that was hideous because it was so soft. God, could he hold this Maggot now--not wrench himself free, but hold the man here in his arms--keep Maggot between him and those white eyes, that looked like wicked little plague spots which had eaten into that grotesquely red-thatched face.

Maggot was fighting like a demon now to tear himself free. A sweat bead spurted out on Dave Henderson's forehead and rolled down his face. The white eyes came dancing nearer--nearer. They circled and circled, as he circled--Maggot was the shield. He whirled this way and that. The muscles of his arms cracked, as they swung and whipped Maggot around in furious gyrations.

A shot rang out. Something sang with an angry hum and hot breath past Dave Henderson's cheek. The velvet voice laughed. Maggot screamed in a mixture of rage and fear.

“Curse youse, youse fool! Youse'll hit me!”

“I'll get him next time, Maggot,” purred the velvet voice.

The white eyes kept too far away--that was what was the matter--too far away. If they would only come near--near enough so that of a sudden he could let go his grip and launch this squirming human shield full, like a battering ram, into those white eyes. That was the only chance there was. Only the Scorpion was too cunning for that--he kept too far away.

Dave Henderson swung madly around again, interposing Maggot's body as the Scorpion darted to one side; and then suddenly, and for the first time, there came a sound from Dave Henderson's lips--a low cry of pain. _Teresa!_

It was only a glimpse he got--perhaps it wasn't real! Just a glimpse into the hallway where the light from the room streamed out--just a glimpse of a figure on the stairs who leaned out over the banister, and whose face was white as death itself, and whose hands seemed to grip and cling to the banister rail as though they were welded there.

Teresa! He grew sick at heart as he struggled now. Teresa! If he could only have kept her out of this; if only, at least, she were not there to _see!_ It couldn't last much longer! True, Maggot, beyond doubt, beyond shadow of trickery now, had had his fill of fighting, and there was fear upon the man, the fear of an unlucky shot from the Scorpion, and he was whimpering now, and he struggled only apathetically, but it took strength to drag even a dead weight around and around and that strength would not last forever. Teresa! She had heard those shots from up above--she had _seen_ the Scorpion fire once, and miss, and she----

The Scorpion laughed out. It looked like a sure shot now! Dave Henderson jerked Maggot in front of him, but his swirling, mad gyrations had brought him into the angle that the desk made with the wall, and, turn as he would now, the Scorpion could reach in around the end of the desk, and almost touch him with the revolver muzzle itself.

“I got him, Maggot!” purred the Scorpion. “I got him now, the----”

The man's voice ended in a startled cry. The sweat was running into Dave Henderson's eyes, he could scarcely see--just a blurred vision over Maggot's shoulder, a blurred vision of a slim figure running like the wind into the room, and stooping to the floor where the package of banknotes lay, and snatching it up, and starting for the door again.

And then the Scorpion fired--but the revolver was pointed now across the room, and the slight, fleeing figure swayed, and staggered, and recovered herself, and went on, and over her shoulder her voice, though it faltered, rang bravely through the room:

“I--I thought he'd rather have this than you, Dave. It was the only chance. Don't mind me, Dave. He won't get me.”

The whimpering thing in Dave Henderson's arms was flung from him, and it crashed to the floor. It wasn't his own strength, it was the strength of one demented, and of a maddened brain, that possessed Dave Henderson now. And he leaped forward, running like a hare. Teresa had already gained the stairs--the Scorpion in pursuit was half-way along the hall. And now he saw nothing else--just that red-haired figure running, running, running. There was neither house, nor hall, nor stairs, nor any other thing--only that red-haired figure that the soul of him craved, for whom there was no mercy, that with his hands he would tear to pieces in insensate fury.

A flash came, blinding his eyes; a report roared in his ears--and then his hands snatched at and caught a wriggling thing. And for the first time he realized that he had reached the head of the stairs, realized it because, pitched forward over the landing, lay a woman's form that was still and motionless. And he laughed like the maniac he was now, and the wriggling thing screamed in his grasp, screamed as it went up above his head--and then Dave Henderson hurled it from him to the bottom of the stairs.

He turned, and flung himself on his knees beside Teresa. He called her name again and again--and there was no answer. She lay there, half on her face on the floor, her arms wound around a torn package of banknotes. He rose, and rocked on his feet, and his knotted fists went up above his head. And then he laughed again, as though his reason were gone--laughed as his eyes fixed on a red-headed thing that made an unshapely heap at the foot of the stairs; and laughed at a slinking shadow that went along the hall, and scurried out through the front door. That was Maggot--like a rat leaving a sinking ship--Maggot who----

Then reason came again. The police! At any moment now--the police. In an instant he had caught Teresa up in his arms. She wasn't dead--he could hear her breathing--only it was weak--pitifully weak. There should be an exit to the fire escape from this floor--but it was dark and he had no time to search--it was quicker to go up the stairs--where he knew the way--and out through his own room.

Stumbling, staggering in the darkness, holding Teresa in his arms, he made his way upstairs. The police--his mind centered on that again. If she and he were caught here, his identification as Dave Henderson, which would ultimately ensue, would damn her; this money, wrapped so tenaciously in her arms, would damn her; and, on top of that old score of the police in San Francisco, there had been ugly work here in this house to-night. If it were not for the money, the criminal hoax played upon the police in the disappearance of Dave Henderson would not be so serious--but the money was here, and in that hoax she had had a part, and the shadow of Nicolo Capriano still lay across her shoulders.

The night air came gratefully cool upon his face. He drew it in in great, gasping breaths, greedily, hungrily. He had gained the fire escape through the window now, and now he paused for the first time to listen. There was no sound. Back there inside the house it was as still as death. Death! Well, why shouldn't it be, there _was_ death there, and----

His arms tightened suddenly in a great, overwhelming paroxysm of fear around Teresa, and he bent his head, bent it lower, lower still, until his face was close to that white face he held, and through the darkness his eyes searched it in an agony of apprehension.

And then he started forward again, and began to descend the fire escape; and now he groped uneasily for foothold as he went. It seemed rickety and unstable, this spidery thing that sprawled against the side of the wall, and it was dark, and without care the foot would slip through the openings between the treads. It had not seemed that way when he had gone up and down when disposing of the valises. Only now it was a priceless burden that he carried--this form that lay close-pressed against his breast, whose touch, alternately now, brought him a sickening sense of dread, and a surging hope that sent the blood leaping like a mill-race through his veins.

He went down, step after step, his mind and brain shrieking at him to hurry because there was not a single second to lose--but it was slow, maddeningly slow. He could not see the treads, not only because it was dark, but because Teresa's form was in his arms. He could only feel with his feet--and now and then his body swayed to preserve his balance.

Was there no end to the thing! It seemed like some bottomless pit of blackness into which he was descending. And it seemed as though this pit held an abominable signification in its blackness and its depth, as though it beckoned him on to engulf them; it seemed--it seemed---- God, if she would only move, if she would not lie so still, so terribly still in his arms!

Another step--another--and then his foot, searching out, found only space beneath it. He must free one arm now, so that he could cling to the bottom tread and lower himself to the ground. It was only a short drop, he knew, for the lower section of the fire escape was one of those that swung on hinges, and when, previously, coming up, Teresa had held it down for him, he had been able to reach it readily with a spring from the ground. But he dared not jump even that short distance now with Teresa, wounded, in his arms.

He changed her position now to throw her weight into the hollow of his left arm, lifting her head so that it lay high upon his shoulder--and with the movement her hair brushed his lips. It brought a sudden, choking sob from Dave Henderson, and in a great, yearning impulse he let his head sink down until his cheek for an instant was laid against hers--and then, the muscles of his right arm straining until they cracked, he lowered himself down and dropped to the ground.

He ran now, lurching, across the yard, and out into the lane, and here he paused again to listen. But he heard nothing. He was clear of that cursed trap-house now--if he could only keep clear. He ran on again, stumbling again, with his burden. And now, though he did not pause to listen any more, it seemed as though his throbbing eardrums caught the sounds at last that they had been straining to hear. Wasn't that the police behind there now--on the street in front of The Iron Tavern? It sounded like it--like the arrival of a police patrol.

He reached the shed where he had hidden the valises, entered, and laid Teresa tenderly on the floor. He used his flashlight then--and a low moan came from his lips. The bullet had cut across the side of her neck just above the shoulder; the wound was bleeding profusely, and over the package of banknotes, around which her arms were still tightly clasped, there had spread a crimson stain. He drew her arms gently apart, laid the package on the floor, and then, wrenching one of the valises open, snatched at the first article of linen that came to hand.

His lips trembled, as he did his best to staunch the flow of blood and bind the wound.

“Teresa! Teresa!” Dave Henderson whispered.

Her eyes opened--and smiled.

She made an effort to speak. He bent his head to catch the words.

“Dave--where--where are we? Still in the house?”

“No!” he told her feverishly. “No! We're clear of that. We're in the shed here in the lane where I took the valises.”

She made a slight affirmative movement of her head.

“Then go--go at once--Dave--for help--I----”

Her eyes had closed again.

“Yes!” he said. His voice was choking. He called her name. “Teresa!” There was no answer. She had lapsed back into unconsciousness. And then the soul of him spoke its agony. “Oh, my God, Teresa!” he cried brokenly, and swayed to his feet.

An instant he stood there, then stooped, picked up the package of banknotes, thrust it into the open valise, closed the valise, carried it into a darker corner of the shed, and went to the door.

He looked out. There was no one in sight in the darkness. But then, what interest would the police have in this section of the lane? There was nothing to connect it with The Iron Tavern! He stepped outside, and broke into a run down the lane, heading for the intersecting street in the opposite direction from The Iron Tavern. He must get help! A queer, mirthless laugh was on his lips. A wounded woman in the lane was _the_ connecting link with The Iron Tavern. And yet he must get help. Well, there was only one source from which he dared ask help--only one--Millman.

He ran on. Millman! Something within him rebelled at that. But Teresa was perhaps--was---- No, he would not let his mind even frame the word. Only one thing was paramount now--she must have help at once. Well, God knew, he could _trust_ Millman! Only there seemed some strange irony here that chastened him. And yet---- Yes, this was strange, too! Suddenly he became strangely content that it should be Millman.

He reached the street, and looked up and down. It was four o'clock in the morning, and the street was dark and deserted except for a single lighted window that shone out half-way down the block. He ran toward it. It proved to be an all-night restaurant, and he entered it, and asked for the telephone, and shut himself up in the booth.

A moment more and he had the St. Lucian Hotel on the wire.

“Give me Mr. Millman--Mr. Charles Millman,” he requested hurriedly.

The hotel operator answered him. It was impossible. A guest could not be disturbed at that hour. It was against the rules, and Dave Henderson was pleading hoarsely into the phone.

“Give me Millman! Let me speak to him! It's life and death!”

“I--I can't.” The operator's voice, a girl's, was hesitant, less assured.

“For God's sake, give me Millman--there's a life at stake!” Dave Henderson cried frantically. “Quick! For God's sake, quick!”

“Wait!” she said.

It seemed a time interminable, and then a drowsy voice called:

“Hello! What's wanted?”

“Is that you, Millman?” Dave Henderson asked wildly. “Millman, is that you?”

“Yes,” the voice answered.

“It's Dave speaking. Dave--do you understand? I--there's some one badly hurt. I can't tell you any more over the phone; but, in Heaven's name, get a doctor that you can trust, and come!”

“I'll come, Dave,” said Millman quietly. “Where?”

Dave Henderson turned from the telephone, and thrust his head out of the booth. He had no idea where he was in New York, save that he was near The Iron Tavern. He dared not mention that. Before many hours the papers would be full of The Iron Tavern--and the telephone operator might hear.

“What's this address?” he called out to a man behind the counter.

The man told him.

Dave Henderson repeated the address into the phone.

“All right, Dave,” Millman's voice came quickly; “I'll be there as soon as I can get my car, and pick up the doctor.”

Dave Henderson stepped out into the night, and pulled off his hat. His forehead was dripping wet. He walked back to the lane, listened, heard nothing, and stole along it, and entered the shed again, and knelt by Teresa's side. She was unconscious.

He bent over her with the flashlight. His bandage was crude and clumsy; but it brought him a little measure of relief to see that at least it had been effective in the sense that the bleeding had been arrested. And then his eyes went to the white face again. It seemed as though his mental faculties were blunted, that they were sensible only of a gnawing at his brain that was almost physical in its acute pain. Instinctively, from time to time, he looked at his watch.

At last he got up, and went out into the lane again, and from there to the street. It was too soon. He could only pace up and down. It was too soon, but he could not have afforded to keep the doctor waiting if Millman arrived, and he, Dave Henderson, was not there--otherwise he would have stayed longer in the shed. It would be daylight before they came, wouldn't it? It was an hour now, a thousand years, wasn't it, since he had telephoned?

A big touring car rolled down the street. He ran toward it. Millman--yes, it was Millman! The car stopped.

“Quick!” he urged, and sprang on the footboard. “Go to the corner of the lane there!”

And then, as the car stopped again, and Millman, from the wheel, and a man with a little black bag in his hand, sprang out, Dave Henderson led the way down the lane, running, without a word, and pushed open the door of the shed. He held the flashlight steadily for the doctor, though he turned now to Millman.

“You've got a right to know,” he said in an undertone, as the doctor bent, absorbed, over Teresa. “Hell's broken loose to-night, Millman--there's been murder further up the lane there in a place they call The Iron Tavern. Do you understand? That's why I didn't dare go anywhere for help. Listen! I'll tell you.” And, speaking rapidly, he sketched the details of the night for Millman. “Do you understand, Millman?” he said at the end. “Do you understand why I didn't dare go anywhere for help?”

Millman did not answer. He was looking questioningly at the doctor, as the latter suddenly rose.

“We must get her to the hospital at once,” said the doctor crisply.

“The hospital!” Dave Henderson echoed the word. It seemed to jeer at him. He could have summoned an ambulance himself! As well throw the cards upon the table! His eyes involuntarily sought that darker corner of the shed where the package of banknotes, bloodstained now, was hidden in the valise. The hospital, or the police station--in that respect, for Teresa as well as himself, it was all the same!

It was Millman who spoke.

“Wait!” he said, and touched Dave Henderson's arm; then turned to the doctor. “Can we move her in my car?” he asked.

“Yes; I guess we can manage it,” the doctor answered.

Millman drew the doctor a little to one side. He whispered earnestly. Dave Henderson caught a phrase about “getting a nurse”--and then he felt Millman's hand press his arm again.

“It's all right, Dave. I guess I'll open that town house after all this summer--to a select few,” said Millman quietly. His hand tightened eloquently in its pressure. “We'll take her there, Dave.”

X--GOD'S CHANCE

IT was a big house--like some vast, cavernous, deserted place. Footsteps, when there were footsteps, and voices, when there were voices, seemed to echo with strange loneliness through the great halls, and up and down the wide staircase. And in the dawn, as the light came gray, the pieces of furniture, swathed in their summer coverings of sheets, had seemed like weird and ghostlike specters inhabiting the place.

But the dawn had come hours ago.

Dave Henderson raised his head from his cupped hands. Was that the nurse now, or the doctor--that footstep up above? He listened a moment, and then his chin dropped back into his hands.

Black hours they had been--black hours for his soul, and hours full of the torment and agony of fear for Teresa.

From somewhere, almost coincident with their arrival at the house, a nurse had come. From some restaurant, a man had brought breakfast for the doctor, for the nurse, for Millman--and for him. He had eaten something--what, he did not know. The doctor had gone, and come again--the doctor was upstairs there now. Perhaps, when the doctor came down again, the doctor would allow him to see Teresa. Half an hour ago they had told him that she would get well. There was strange chaos in his mind. That agony of fear for her, that cold, icy thing that had held a clutch upon his heart, was gone; but in its place had come another agony--an agony of yearning--and now he was afraid--for himself.

Millman had tried to make him go to bed and sleep. Sleep! He could not have slept! He could not even have remained still for five minutes at a stretch! He had been half mad with his anxiety for Teresa. He had wanted to be somewhere where his restless movements would not reach Teresa in her room, and yet somewhere where he could intercept every coming and going of the doctor. And so for hours he had alternately paced up and down this lower hall here, and thrown himself upon this great, wide, sheet-covered divan where he sat now. And in those hours his mind, it seemed, had run the gamut of every emotion a human soul could know. It ached now--physically. His temples throbbed and hurt.

His eyes strayed around the hall, and held on a large sheet-draped piece of furniture over beyond the foot of the staircase. They had served other purposes, these coverings, than to make spectral illusions in the gray of dawn! Beneath that sheet lay the package of banknotes. It made a good hiding place. He had extracted the package from the valise, and had secreted it there during the confusion as they had entered the house. But it seemed to take form through that sheet now, as it had done a score of times since he had put it there, and always it seemed as though a crimson stain that was on the wrapper would spread and spread until it covered the entire package.

That package--and the crimson stain! It seemed to make of itself a curiously appropriate foreground for a picture that spread away into a vista of limitless years: An orphan school, with its cracked walls, and the painted mottoes whose scrolls gaped where the cracks were; a swirl of horses reaching madly down the stretch, a roar of hoarse, delirious shouts, elated oaths around the bookmaker's paying-stand, pinched faces on the outer fringes of this ring; a thirst intolerable, stark pain, the brutal jolting of a boxcar through the nights, hours upon hours of a horror that ended only with the loss of consciousness; walls that reared themselves so high that they seemed to stand sentinels against the invasion of even a ray of sunlight, steel bars, and doors, and bolts that clanged, and clanged, until the sound ate like some cancerous thing into the soul itself; and then wolves, human wolves, ravenous wolves, between two packs of them, the police on the one hand, the underworld on the other, that snarled and tore at him, while he fought them for his life.

All that! That was the price he had paid for that package there--that, and that crimson stain.

He swept his hand across his eyes. His face grew set, and his jaws locked hard together. No, he wasn't sure yet that even that was all--that the package there was even yet finally and irrevocably _his_--to do with as he liked. There was last night--The Iron Tavern--the police again. _Was_ there a connecting link trailing behind him? What had become of the Scorpion? What story had the man perhaps told? Were the police looking for an unknown man--who was Dave Henderson; and looking for an unknown woman--who was Teresa?

Well, before long now, surely, he would know--when Millman got back. Millman, who had intimated that he had an inside pull somewhere that would get the straight police version of the affair, had gone out immediately after breakfast for that purpose.

That was what counted, the only thing that counted--to know where the police stood. Millman ought to be back now. He had been gone for hours. It was taking him an unaccountably long time!

Millman! He had called Millman a straight crook. He had tried to call Millman something else this morning--for what Millman had done for Teresa and himself last night. Only he wasn't any good at words. But Millman had seemed to understand, though Millman had not said much, either--just a smile in the gray eyes, and a long, steady clasp of both hands on his, Dave Henderson's, shoulders.

There was a footstep on the stairs now. He looked up. It was the doctor coming down. He jumped to his feet, and went eagerly to the foot of the stairs.

“Better!” said the doctor cheerily.

“I--I want to see her,” said Dave Henderson.

The doctor smiled, as he moved across the hall toward the front door.

“In a few minutes,” he said. “I've told the nurse to let you know when she's ready.”

The doctor went out.

He heard the doctor begin to descend the outer steps, and then pause, and then another footstep ascending; and then he caught the sound of voices. And then, after a little while, the front door opened, and Millman came into the reception hall.

Dave Henderson's lips tightened, as he stepped toward the other.

“What”--he found his voice strangely hoarse, and he cleared his throat--“what did you find out?”

Millman motioned toward the divan.

“Everything, I guess, Dave,” he answered, as he sat down.

“And----?” Dave Henderson flung himself down beside the other.

Millman shook his head.

“Better hear the whole story, Dave. You can size it up then for yourself.”

Dave Henderson nodded.

“Go on, then!” he said.

“I told you,” said Millman, “that I thought I could get inside information--the way the police looked at it. Well, I have. And I have got it from a source that is absolutely dependable. Understand, Dave?”

Dave Henderson nodded again.

“The police start with that telephone message,” said Millman. “They believe that it was authentic, and that it was Dago George who sent it. In fact, without it they wouldn't have known where to turn; while with it the whole affair appears to be simplicity itself.” He smiled a little whimsically. “They used it as the key to unlock the door. It's no discredit to their astuteness. With nothing to refute it, it is not only the obvious, but the logical solution. Bookie budded a great deal better than he knew--for Dave Henderson--when he used that telephone for his own dirty ends. It wouldn't have been so easy for the police to account for the death of three men in The Iron----”

“_Three!_” Dave Henderson strained suddenly forward. Three! There were--two; only two--Dago George and Bookie Skarvan. Only two dead--and a red-headed thing huddled at the foot of the stairs. Was that it? Was that the third one--Cunny the Scorpion? Had it ended with that? Had he _killed_ a man? Last night he would have torn the fellow limb from limb--yes, and under the same circumstances, he would do it again--Teresa upstairs, who had been so close to death, justified that a thousand times over.

But------ “You mean Cunny the Scorpion--Cunny Smeeks?” he demanded tensely.

“Yes,” said Millman. And then, with a quick, comprehensive glance at Dave Henderson's face: “But you didn't do it, Dave.”

Dave Henderson's hands were clenched between his knees. They relaxed slowly.

“I'm glad of that,” he said in a low tone. “Go on, Millman.”

“The man had evidently revived just before the police got there,” Millman explained. “He was shot and killed instantly by the police while trying to escape. He had bruises on his head which the police attributed to a fight with Dago George. Dago George, the police assume, woke up to discover the men breaking into his room. They attacked him. He managed to shoot Bookie Skarvan, and grappled with Cunny the Scorpion--the Scorpion's clothing, somewhat torn, and the Scorpion's bruises, bear this out. But in order to account for the time it would have taken to crack the safe, the police believe that the Scorpion at this time only knocked Dago George out temporarily. Then, later, while the Scorpion worked at the safe, Dago George recovered sufficiently to rush and snatch at the phone, and shout his appeal for help into it; and then the Scorpion laid Dago George's head open with the blow that killed him, using one of the burglar's tools as the weapon. And then the Scorpion, staying to put the finishing touches on his work to get the safe open, and over-estimating the time it would take the police to get there, was finally unable to make his escape.”

“My God!” muttered Dave Henderson under his breath.

“That's not all,” said Millman, with a faint smile. “There was known enmity between Dago George and the Scorpion. The Scorpion had come to The Iron Tavern earlier in the evening, one of the waiters testified, and had brought the fat man with him. The fat man was given a room by Dago George. The waiter identified the fat man, an obvious accomplice therefore of the Scorpion, as the man who was shot. It dovetailed irrefutably--even the Scorpion's prior intentions of harm to Dago George being established. There was some money in the safe, quite a little, but the police are more inclined to attribute the motive to the settling of a gang feud, with the breaking of the safe more or less as a blind.”

Dave Henderson was staring across the hall. His lips were tight.

“That waiter!” he exclaimed abruptly. “Didn't the waiter say anything about anybody else who got rooms there last night?”

“I am coming to that,” Millman replied. “The police questioned the man, of course. He said that last night, at separate times, a man and a woman came there, presumably to get rooms since they had valises with them, and that they saw Dago George. He did not know whether Dago George had accommodated them or not. He thought not, both because he had neither carried nor seen the valises taken upstairs, and because Dago George invariably refused to give any rooms to strangers. Lots of people came there, imagining The Iron Tavern to be a hotel where they could get cheap accommodations, and were always turned away. Dago George had gone out of that end of the business. The waiter inclined to the belief that the man and woman in question had met the same fate; certainly, he had seen or heard nothing of them since.” Millman shrugged his shoulders. “The police searched the rooms upstairs, found no trace of occupancy except the hand-bag of the fat man, identified again by the waiter--and agreed with the waiter.”

“There was Maggot.” Dave Henderson seemed to be speaking almost to himself. “But Maggot was only a tool. All Maggot knew was that he was to get the safe open--for some money. I guess Maggot, when he finds out that the police don't know anything about him, will think he's lucky. I guess if there's any man in the world who'll keep his mouth shut for the sake of his own hide, it's Maggot. Maggot isn't going to run his head into a noose.” He turned sharply to Millman. “But there's still some one else--the doctor.”

“We have been friends, intimate friends, all our lives,” said Millman simply. “I have given him my word of honor that you had no hand in the death of any one of those three men, and that is sufficient.”

And then Dave Henderson laughed a little, a queer, strange, mirthless laugh, and stood up from the divan.

“Then I'm clear--eh--Millman?” he shot out.

“Yes,” said Millman slowly, “as far as I can see, Dave, you're clear.”

“And free?” There was fierce assertiveness, rather than interrogation, in Dave Henderson's voice. “It's taken five years, but I've got that money now. I guess I've paid for it; and I guess there's no one now to put a crimp in it any more, not even Bookie Skarvan--providing that little proposition of yours, Millman, that month, still stands.”

Millman's face, and Millman's eyes, sobered.

“It stands, Dave,” he said gravely.

“In a month,” said Dave Henderson, “even a fool could get far enough away to cover his trail--couldn't he, Millman? Well, then, there's only Teresa left. She's something like you, Millman. She's for sending that money back, but she's sort of put out of the running--for about a month, too!”

Millman made no answer.

“Five years,” said Dave Henderson, with a hard smile. “Well, it's _mine_ now. Those years were a hell, Millman--a hell--do you understand? But they would only be a little hell compared with the hell to-day if I couldn't get away with that package now without, say, a policeman standing there in the doorway waiting for me.”

“Dave,” said Millman sharply, “what do you mean? What are you going to do?”

There was some one on the stairs again--some one all in white. Dave Henderson stared. The figure was beckoning to him. Yes, of course, it was the nurse.

“Dave,” Millman repeated, “what are you going to do?”

Dave Henderson laughed again--queerly.

“I'm going upstairs--to see Teresa,” he said.

“And then?” Millman asked.

But Dave Henderson scarcely heard him. He was walking now towards the stairs. The nurse's voice reached him.

“Just a few minutes,” warned the nurse. “And she must not be excited.”

He gained the landing, and looked back over the balustrade down into the great hall below. Millman had come to the foot of the staircase, and was leaning on the newel-post. And Dave Henderson looked, more closely. Millman's gray eyes were blurred, and, though they smiled, the smile came through a mist that had gathered in them. And then Millman's voice came softly.

“I get you, as we used to say 'out there,'” said Millman. “I get you, Dave. Thank God! It's two straight crooks--isn't it, Dave--two of us?”

Millman's face was blotted out--there was another face that Dave Henderson saw now through an open doorway, a face that lay upon the pillows, and that was very white. It must be the great, truant masses of black hair, which crowned the face, that made it look as white as that. And they said she was getting better! They must have lied to him--the face was so white.

He didn't see the face any more now, because he was kneeling down beside the bed, and because his own face was buried in the counterpane.

And then the great shoulders of the man shook.

His life! That was what she had bought--and that was what she had paid for almost with her own. That was why she lay here, and that was why her face was so white. Teresa! This was Teresa here.

He raised his head at last. Her dark eyes were fixed on him--and they smiled.

She was holding out her hand.

“Dave,” she said brightly, “the nurse told me she was going to let you see me for a few minutes--to cheer me up. And here I've been waiting--oh, ever so long. And you haven't spoken a word. Haven't you anything to say”--she was smiling teasingly with her lips now--“Dave?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes”--his voice choked--“more than I can ever say. Last night, Teresa, if it had not been for you, I---”

Her finger tips could just reach his lips, and they pressed suddenly against them, and sealed them.

“Don't you know that we are not to talk about that, Dave--ever,” she said quickly. “If I did anything, then, oh, I am so glad--so glad. You're not to say another word.”

“But, I _must_,” he said hoarsely. “Do you think I----”

“Dave, I'll call the nurse!” she said in a low voice. “You'll--you'll make me cry.”

It was true. The dark eyes were swimming, full of tears. She hid them now suddenly with their long lashes.

Neither spoke for a moment.

“There's something else, then, Teresa,” he said at last. “I'm going to give that money back.”

There was no answer--only he felt her hand touch his head, and her fingers play gently through his hair.

“I knew it,” she told him.

“But do you know why?” he asked.

Again there was no answer.

Dave Henderson spoke again.

“I remember what I said last night--that I couldn't buy you that way. And--and I'm not trying to now. It's going back because I haven't any choice. A man can't take his life from a woman's hand, and from the hand of a friend take the life of the woman who has saved him--and throw them both down--and play the cur. I haven't any choice.” His voice broke suddenly. “It's going back, Teresa, whether it means you or not. Do you understand, Teresa? It's going back--either way.”

Her fingers had ceased their movements, and were quiet now.

“Yes,” she said.

Dave Henderson raised his bowed head. The dark eyes were closed. His shoulders squared a little.

“That--that puts it straight, then, Teresa,” he said. “That lets me say what I want to say now. I've done a lot of thinking in the last few hours when I thought that perhaps you weren't--weren't going to get better. I thought about what you said last night--about God giving one another chance if one wanted to take it. Teresa, would you believe me if I told you that I was going to take that chance--from now on?”

The dark eyes opened now.

“I don't think God ever meant that you would do anything else, Dave,” she said. “If He had, you would never have been caught and put in prison, and been through everything else that has happened to you, because it's just those things, Dave, that have made you say what you have just said. If you had succeeded in getting away with that money five years ago, you would have been living as a thief to-day, and--and you would have stolen more, perhaps, and--and at last you wouldn't even have been a man.” She turned her face away on the pillow, and fumbled for his hand. “But it isn't just you, Dave. I didn't say that last night. I said God offered us both a chance. It's not only you, Dave--both of us are going to take that chance.”

He leaned forward--his face tense, white almost as the white face on the bed.

“Together, Teresa?”

She did not answer--only her hand closed in a tighter clasp on his.

“Teresa!” He was bending over her now, smoothing back the hair from her forehead. The blood pounded in a mighty tide through his veins. “Teresa!”

She spoke then, as the wet lashes lifted for an instant and fell again.

“It's wonderful,” she whispered. “God's chance, Dave--together--from now on.”

Into his face came a great new light. Self-questioning and self-debate were gone. Teresa _trusted_ him. He knew himself before God and his fellows henceforth an honest man. And he was rich--rich with a boundless, priceless love that would endure while life endured. Teresa! His lips pressed the white forehead, and the closed eyelids, and then her lips were warm upon his own--and then he was kneeling again, but now his arms were around her, folding her to him, and his head lay upon the pillow, and his cheek touched hers.

And presently Millman, coming up the stairs, paused abruptly on the landing, as, through the open doorway of the room that was just in front of him, his eyes fell upon Dave Henderson's kneeling figure. And he stood there. And Teresa's voice, very low, and as though she were repeating something, reached him. And creeping into Millman's gray eyes there came a light of understanding as tender as a woman's, and for a moment more he lingered there, and then he tiptoed softly away. And the words that he had heard seemed to have graven themselves deep into the great heart of the man, for, as he went slowly on down the hall, he said them over and over again to himself:

“From now on.... From now on....”

THE END