CHAPTER VII.

CHICK CARTER’S CUNNING.

Miss Janet Payson was seriously startled about ten o’clock the following morning, when a somewhat insistent knock sounded on the door of her apartments in the Shelby House.

The same was true of her companion, who had entered about half an hour before, after leaving his touring car in a neighboring street, in charge of a chauffeur and another man, as if their mission was one that required at least a moderate degree of caution.

Janet Payson’s companion was the man with a Vandyke beard—but he had removed it and slipped it into his pocket since entering.

The removal of the disguise did not improve him. It had served to hide a thin-lipped, sinister mouth, a bulldog jaw and chin, and the hard lines of a desperate and determined face.

That he was all that his face denoted, moreover, appeared in the celerity with which he whipped out a revolver from his hip pocket the instant the knock interrupted the subdued conversation with the woman. At the same time he muttered quickly:

“What’s that? Who the devil can that be?”

Janet Payson turned pale, or as pale as the tinge of rouge in her cheeks permitted, and she laid her finger on her lips, then pointed to the adjoining bedroom.

“Keep quiet, Jeff,” she whispered. “I’ll find out.”

The man, Jefferson Murdock by name, seized his hat and tiptoed into the bedroom and set the door ajar. Then he waited and listened, revolver in hand.

The knock sounded again on the hall door.

“Presently,” cried the woman. “Who’s there?”

She tore open the collar of her waist while speaking, receiving no reply, then stepped to the door and opened it.

“I had not finished dressing,” she said impatiently, hastening to rehook the collar. “What do you want?”

Chick Carter was the person who had knocked, and none would have recognized him. Though fairly well clad and somewhat flashily, he had the sinister aspect of an East Side tough, or a man capable of any covert knavery.

Chick removed his hat and smiled, nevertheless, replying as politely as one would have expected:

“I want to talk with you for half a minute, or mebbe longer, Miss Payson, if you’re alone here.”

“Talk with me?” said Janet, with brows knitting. “What about, and who are you?”

“My name is Kennedy, Jim Kennedy, and I live in Philadelphia,” said Chick, dropping his voice suggestively. “I happened to be on the train last night when——”

“Wait! Stop a moment,” Janet curtly interrupted, drawing back. “Step inside. I don’t care to be seen talking with you. Close the door.”

“Sure,” Chick vouchsafed, with sinister intonation. “That hits me all right. It’s just what I wanted. But none would think less of you for talking with me, as far as that goes—not much!”

There could be no mistaking such a beginning as this, and the woman’s white face lost much of its beauty under the vicious scowl that settled upon it.

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

“You ought to know,” said Chick.

“Well, I don’t know,” Janet retorted.

“Let it go at that, then. Take it for what it’s worth.”

“See here, you insolent——”

“Oh, cut that!” Chick interrupted, unruffled. “Don’t go into the air because I’m not handing you a pasteboard with my monaker on it. I don’t happen to have one. I ain’t a gink what carries his name pasted in his lid. My name is Kennedy, plain Jim Kennedy, and I’ve got a word to say to you on a little matter of business. That’s why I’m here, Miss Payson.”

Chick coolly took a chair while speaking, the same from which Murdock had just arisen. He noticed at once that both wooden arms of the chair were slightly warm, where the hands of some person had been recently resting on them. Though he already knew that the woman was not alone, having been watching her apartments since early morning, he looked up at her and quickly added:

“I’ve taken your chair, mebbe.”

“No,” she replied, pointing to one near her dressing stand. “I was sitting there. See here, Mr. Kennedy, what’s the meaning of this visit? Come to the point.”

She had appeared in doubt up to that time, uncertain what course to shape; but her voice and countenance now denoted that she anticipated what was coming, that she suspected the mission of her sinister visitor, and that she also felt fully equal to meeting the situation. She sat down quite abruptly and repeated:

“Come to the point. What do you want here?”

“That’s quickly told,” Chick replied. “It’s about the little job that was pulled off last night.”

“What job, Mr. Kennedy?”

“That train robbery. You know all about it.”

“All about it!” Janet exclaimed. “What do you mean by that? I know nothing about it—except that there was a robbery.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” Chick insisted. “Nix on that. I happened to be on the train, and I’m wise to something that no other gazabo noticed.”

“What was that?” she coldly questioned.

“There was a gink with you in the car who didn’t show up after the robbery.”

“What of that?”

“He quit you just before the trick was turned, and he didn’t come back to you. He was no come-back kid,” Chick declared. “He went through the smoker and uncoupled it from the express car. He was the gink who did the job, or one of the bunch—and you know it.”

The woman heard him with hardly a change of countenance.

“You are very much mistaken,” she said icily.

“About what?”

“My knowing anything about the robbery—or the man you mention.”

“He was with you, wasn’t he?”

“He sat with me, yes,” Janet coldly admitted. “But that signifies nothing. There was no other vacant seat when he entered the car, so he sat with me, and we entered into conversation that did not end until he left me and went into the smoker. That’s all I know about him, all I care about him. He was a total stranger to me.”

Chick grinned derisively and shook his head.

“Say, do I look as if I’d swallow that?” he asked, with sinister contempt.

“You may swallow it, or not, as you like,” Janet retorted, with apparent indifference.

“It might slip down the red lane of a country parson, but not down mine,” Chick went on. “You see, Miss Payson, I haven’t knocked round Quakertown all my life for nothing. I know all about you. I’ve seen you round town for years.”

“Suppose you have,” sneered Janet. “What of that?”

“Nothing of it, barring that I know all about you,” Chick informed her, more impressively. “Your name is Janet Payson, sometimes Jaunty Janet, and you live in a ground-floor flat in Martin Street. That’s what. You see, I am onto your curves, and I’m here to knock out a homer. That’s me!”

“See here——”

“Nix on the see-here gag!” Chick interrupted. “You wait till I’ve said my little verse. Then you can have your spiel and go as far as you like. You ain’t any main dame in the social game. You’re only the little casino in a soiled deck. Your word wouldn’t go in a Quaker meetinghouse, say nothing of a criminal court. I know! I’m wise! You can’t put nothing over on me.”

“Well, what are you coming to?” scowled Janet with the rouge glaring more vividly on her pale cheeks.

“That’s right. That’s more like it,” Chick went on, with a sinister nod. “Now we’re getting down to brass tacks. Pass up the grouch and let’s talk business.”

“Well?” snapped Janet.

“You know what I want. There was a slick job pulled off last night, and somebody has got sixty thousand bucks in his jeans. I want a bit of it.”

“You do!” Janet sneered. “You’ll take it out in wanting, then, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Mebbe so, though I have a hunch that you’ll change your mind,” Chick retorted. “If you don’t, it will be all over but the settling.”

“What do you mean by settling?”

“You know what I mean, all right. Mebbe, though, you don’t quite get me; I’ll make it so plain that a blind monkey could see it in the dark. I’m out for the coin myself, you know, when I see a chance to lift any. I’d be a bird if I let this chance slip by.”

“You mean——”

“I mean all I am saying,” Chick cut in, with ominous mien. “Understand, though, I’m not a gink who would betray a pal. I wouldn’t squeal on a friend if I was strung toes up. Not on your tintype. But I’m not a pal of yours, nor of any of the bunch. I wasn’t in this job, I’m only looking to get in.”

“You mean that you are here to blackmail me,” snapped Janet. “Is that it?”

“Blackmail be hanged!” growled Chick derisively. “You can’t blackmail an ink spot. You know what I want—and I’m going to have it.”

“I’ll know when you tell me,” frowned the woman. “Not till then.”

Chick jerked his chair nearer to that in which she was seated. There was, indeed, no mistaking his meaning, if one was to have judged from outward appearances. His hangdog face wore an expression that none could have misinterpreted.

“I’ll tell you what I mean, all right,” he replied, with more threatening intonation. “I want a bit of that coin and I’m going to have it. When I get it, I’ll go about my business and keep my trap closed. I’ll never squeal. I’ll never yip till the day of judgment. You can bank on that, and bank on it good and strong.”

“I can, eh?”

“That’s what.”

“And suppose you don’t get it?” questioned Janet, with lowering gaze at him. “What then?”

“You’ll get yours, instead.”

“You mean, I take it, that you’ll inform the police.”

“That’s just what I mean,” Chick nodded. “Unless some one comes across with the coin, it’s you for the caboose. I’ll have a bull after you inside of half a minute. I’ll tell all I know about the job and all I know about you. Your story wouldn’t stand washing in distilled water. The gink with the Vandyke whiskers did the job, and you know it. I’ll hand all this to the bulls, unless I get mine, and I’ll lose no time about it. That’s all. It’s up to you, now. What d’ye say?”

“I say that you may go to the devil, Kennedy, and do your worst,” snapped Janet, with eyes flashing. “I say——”

“Stop a moment! Stop a moment!” cried Murdock, stepping into the room. “I reckon it’s time for me to have my say—or this!”

Chick swung around in his chair and found himself gazing—into the black muzzle of a leveled revolver.