Chapter VII: Part 7

It had been a matter of seconds, no more; but seconds that had seemed of interminable duration. He was at the foot of the stairs now. Came the pound of approaching feet from below. Red Vallon, whether because he had not had time, or because he was wary of a trap, had not opened the door into the hall above yet. Billy Kane, cautious of any sound, slipped through the door into Peters’ flat, half drew back in sudden dismay—then grimly closed the door behind him softly, and, working with desperate haste now, and still silently, took out his skeleton keys and locked it. He turned, then, with his automatic flung out in front of him—and faced toward the door that opened on his left. He knew it, of course! But it had been too late to turn back. He was doubly trapped! His lips, thinned, curved in a bitter smile. If there was any murder to be done here in this flat to-night, it was likely now to be his own—not Peters’! _There was a light in that room!_ Peters must have come in while he, Billy Kane, was upstairs. He was between two fires. A cry, any alarm given by Peters, would bring Red Vallon and his blood-fanged pack bursting through that door behind him. Was Peters deaf? True, he, Billy Kane, had slipped as silently through the door as he could, and had locked it as silently as he could, but he must have made some noise!

Feet raced by in the hall, and went thumping up the stairs. It was strange that Peters had not heard him! It was stranger still that Peters did not hear the commotion now that Red Vallon’s pack was making!

Billy Kane moved forward stealthily until he could see into the lighted room—and stood suddenly still. He felt the blood leave his face. He lifted his hand to his eyes in a queer, jerky, horrified motion; and then, with a low cry, he ran forward into the other room. The place was in confusion. It was a bedroom, and bureau drawers had been wrenched out and thrown around; every possible receptacle that might have concealed the smallest object had been ransacked and looted, and the contents strewn in wild disorder everywhere about—and on the floor a man lay sprawled, dead, murdered, a brutal wound in the side of his head from a blow that had apparently fractured the skull.

He knelt for a moment over the man. It was Peters. He rose, then, and stood there, fighting to rouse his brain from blunted torpor, to force it to resume its normal functions. Peters had been lying here dead, all the time that he, Billy Kane, had been waiting outside there in the hall! It must have taken quite a little while to have accomplished this murder and ransack the room. Peters, therefore, must have left the Ellsworth house earlier than usual, since the murderer, allowing for the length of time he would have required for his work, must have completed it and made his escape before he, Billy Kane, had arrived here at nine o’clock. It was very strange, horribly strange—to _find_ Peters murdered! Who was it, who had done it? Who was it, other than himself, who could have had any motive? What did it mean? What was it that Peters had had here, that had been the object of such a frantic search? Billy Kane drew his breath in suddenly, sharply. What could it be save _one_ thing! The Ellsworth rubies! That was it, wasn’t it—_rubies_!

A sound from somewhere out in the hall brought surging back upon him a realization of his own imminent peril. There must be some way out, he must find a way. If he knew Red Vallon at all, he knew that he, Billy Kane, would never leave by the door! Well, a fire escape then, perhaps!

Quick now, every faculty alert, he ran noiselessly from room to room, and from window to window. He returned a moment later to the hall door, his face a little harder set and strained. There was no escape by the windows. There was nothing, except an increasing sound of disturbance that seemed to be affecting all parts of the house. Nothing, save Red Vallon’s voice just outside the door, talking, evidently, to some of his men:

“He _ain’t_ got out—and he ain’t going to get out till we’ve searched every flat in the place! He’s most likely on this floor, and Birdie and me’ll tackle this door here first; but you go down there and tell those people below to shut up their row, and some of you look through their rooms. Beat it!”

Footsteps scurried away. The doorknob was tried. Billy Kane’s lips were a thin line. There was no physical way of escape. Was there a way of wits? His wits against Red Vallon’s! He stood there motionless, a queer, grim look creeping into his face, as the door now was shaken violently. And then, suddenly, he jerked his mask from his face, and thrust it into his pocket. Yes, there was a way, but a way that held a something of ghastly, abysmal irony in it. He could prove an alibi—he had a witness to it.

The door quivered, but held, under a crashing blow. Then Red Vallon’s growling voice:

“Get out of the road, Birdie, and let me at it! I’ll bust it in!”

And then Billy Kane spoke.

“Is that you, Red?” he demanded harshly.

There was a surprised gasp from the hall without, a second’s tense silence, and then Red Vallon’s voice again, heavy with perplexity and amazement:

“Who in hell are you?”

Billy Kane unlocked the door, flung it open, and stepped back. The hall had been lighted now, evidently to facilitate Red Vallon’s search, and the light fell full upon Billy Kane through the doorway.

“The Rat!” The gangster’s little red-rimmed eyes blinked helplessly—then suddenly narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

“You fool!” snarled Billy Kane angrily. “I thought I recognized your voice! You gave me a scare! What are you doing here? What’s all this cursed noise about?”

“What’s it about?” repeated Red Vallon mechanically. He spoke automatically, as though through force of habit at the Rat’s command. “The Mole lives upstairs. He got those diamonds from Vetter; then Birdie and me took ’em from him, and not five minutes ago that blasted man in the mask turned the trick on us, and”—his voice changed with a jerk, and became suddenly truculent—“it’s _damned_ funny where he got to!”

“Come in here, both of you!” ordered Billy Kane peremptorily. “Come in here, and shut that door! Now”—as they obeyed him—“that’s the story, is it, Red? Well, listen to mine!” His voice grew raucous, menacing, unpleasant. “This is the second time to-night you’ve run foul of my plans with your infernal diamonds and your piker hunts, and if trouble comes from this, look out for yourself! Five minutes ago, you said. Well, I wish he’d beaned you while he was at it! You’ve put an _hour’s_ work of mine to the bad! How long do you think this disturbance is going on, before the police butt in? Take a look in that room, there!”

The two men took a step forward, and shrank suddenly back. Birdie Rose’s face had gone gray. He looked wildly at Billy Kane.

“My Gawd!” whispered Red Vallon.

“I said something to you to-night about needing an object lesson, so that it would sink into you that when I said the limit I meant it,” said Billy Kane evenly. “Well, you’ve got it now! Do you know who that man is?”

Red Vallon shook his head. Birdie Rose was nervously plucking at a package of cigarette papers that he had drawn from his pocket.

“His name is Peters,” said Billy Kane curtly. “Peters was the butler at Ellsworth’s. Jackson’s pal. Get me? I found this”—the ruby, from his vest pocket, was lying now in the open palm of Billy Kane’s hand. “Do you understand what ‘limit’ means now, Red? I found this. He wouldn’t talk, and so——” Billy Kane shrugged his shoulders coolly, and his hand jerked forward, pointing to the disordered room. “I hadn’t found any more of them when you messed it up with your noise.”

Red Vallon circled his lips with his tongue.

“Let’s get out of here!” he said hoarsely.

“We’ll have to now, thanks to you!” snapped Billy Kane shortly. “That’s the only room that’s been searched, and you’ve queered any chance of doing anything more now.” He whirled impetuously on Red Vallon, and shook his fist in the gangster’s face. “You see what you’ve done! Even if the police haven’t got wise to the row, those people in the apartments downstairs will call them in the minute they get a chance. Yes, we’ve got to beat it! You and your diamonds are likely to give us a ride by the juice route up in that little armchair in Sing Sing. If your man gets away it’s a small matter now. Anybody that’s caught here will have to stand for—_this_. You go first, Birdie, and call the crowd off, and _scatter_ the minute you’re outside the house. I don’t want it published in the papers that I was with Peters in his expiring moments! Tumble? I can trust you two, because”—Billy Kane’s smile was unhappy—“if anything leaks, I’ll know _where_ it leaked from! Get the idea? Now, beat it, Birdie! We’ll give you a couple of minutes ahead of us.”

The man went out. Billy Kane walked coolly to the door, took the skeleton key from the inside of the lock, and fitted it again to the outside.

“Come on, Red!” he said.

He locked the door, and put the bunch of keys in his pocket. It was comparatively quiet in the house now. A door of one of the lower apartments opened cautiously, but closed instantly again, as Billy Kane, with the gangster beside him, went down the stairs. In another moment they were out on the street, and had turned the first corner.

The gangster was muttering to himself:

“There’s Birdie and me. But Savnak won’t dare let a peep out of him, ’cause he was in on the diamond pinch himself. I’ll get that guy with the mask yet, if I swing for it. Spilled every blasted bean in the bag—that’s me!” His voice took on a sudden, half cringing, half deferential note. “It wasn’t my fault, Bundy—honest! You know that! You ain’t sore, are you, Bundy?”

Billy Kane pushed his hat to the back of his head. The night air was cool, even crisp, but his hatband was wringing wet. He brushed his damp hair back from his forehead. It was strange that he should have murdered Peters, after all!

He answered gruffly.

“Forget it!” said Billy Kane, alias the Rat.

XVI—TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER

From above, faintly, through the flooring, came the tap-tap, tap-tap of the old Italian cobbler’s hammer. Billy Kane, from his hands and knees, straightened up, easing his body from the discomfort of his cramped position; and, as he listened, he toyed now with the steel jimmy, commandeered from Whitie Jack, that was in his hand. He had been even more assiduous in his own tapping, at least for the last hour or more, than was the old fellow above there. The old fellow seemed to work all day—and all night. It was night now—or, rather, evening. If there was any sound heard from the street it would be attributed to the old cobbler, of course, which was just as well.

The murky light from the single incandescent across the room threw the sparse furnishings of the Rat’s den into uncouth shadows on the walls, and threw his own shadow into a grotesque, shapeless blotch upon the floor. From the street level, down through the cellar-like stairway to this underground abode, seeping in through the closed door, came the muffled roll of traffic, and a footstep now and then on the pavement like the echo of some sound that was detached, far distant.

He resumed his work, tapping with infinite pains with the butt of his steel jimmy on board after board of the flooring. And now this board or that seemed to give back a more resonant sound than its fellows, and he tapped it again, and still again, only to shake his head finally, and pass on to the next board.

There were other secrets in this crime hole besides that ingenious door and its tunnel to the shed and lane behind; secrets that _she_ had plainly stated existed, and had as plainly stated were no secrets to her; secrets that she wielded in such a manner as to complicate a situation that was already one of extreme peril and desperate enough. They were the Rat’s secrets; and for the moment he was the Rat, and self-preservation made the possession of those secrets vitally essential to him.

The net seemed to be drawing closer around him; at moments it seemed to be strangling him. He had built so heavily on Peters. And Peters was dead. And he, Billy Kane, was still the Rat. It was difficult enough to carry out the rôle, as it was—but if the Rat should unexpectedly return! Where was the Rat? If he could glean a hint of when the Rat might probably return, or of the Rat’s whereabouts! Surely those secrets hidden here somewhere would answer, in a measure at least, those questions. Or, if not, then the fuller and more intimate knowledge they must give him of the Rat would make his assumed rôle more secure, safer as long as he was forced to play it, since they would place in his hands the trumps that would enable him to preserve this character he had usurped as he came more and more into direct contact with that malignant Crime Trust of which the legitimate Rat was obviously one of the leading spirits. And she, that strange, mysterious being, whom he had come to call the Woman in Black, whose hatred, a hatred that was boundless, more bitter, more deliberate, more merciless than, it seemed, any human could hold for another, he had acquired through this abhorrent proxy that fate had thrust upon him—surely these things hidden here, if he could but find them, must too, in a measure at least, explain what lay between her and the devil in human guise whose part he, Billy Kane, was compelled to play.

He worked on, his ear attuned to the sound as the steel jimmy tapped the flooring, his mind feverishly, insistently active. He had counted on forcing the truth from Peters last night. Instead, he had found the old butler murdered, and had only managed to escape destruction himself at the hands of Red Vallon and the underworld through a spurious alibi that was in itself a ghastly thing. He, as the Rat, stood now the self-confessed murderer of Peters! Yes, the net seemed to be drawing its strands so tightly about him sometimes that they strangled him, and strangled his soul, and made his courage falter.

Peters was dead, murdered—and to have made the man talk he would have gone the limit himself. He had meant to wring the truth from Peters’ lips at any cost. But a dead man couldn’t talk!

It was not warm in the room, nor was he overheated by his exertions, but Billy Kane, with the back of his hand, swept away a bead of moisture that had oozed out upon his forehead. Who was it who had murdered Peters? And why? His brain had wrestled with that problem since last night. There seemed to be but one answer, one solution. Peters’ connection with the Ellsworth murder, the search that had been made in Peters’ bedroom, and carried no further than that single room, indicating that what had been sought had been found, seemed to be proof positive that the author of the crime was at least conversant with the details of David Ellsworth’s murder, if he were not, indeed, as seemed even more likely, one of those who had actually participated in that murder himself. And with this as a premise the motive behind Peters’ murder was apparently clear enough. Nearly fifteen thousand dollars and a fortune in rubies had been taken from the steel vault in the Ellsworth home. Peters might have been the temporary custodian, in whole or in part, of the proceeds of the robbery, or he might only have been in possession of his share. In either case it was enough to account for his having been double-crossed and murdered by one of his own accomplices, or else by some one sufficiently well informed about the Ellsworth murder to know that Peters had at least a tempting enough portion of the “goods” in his flat to make a visit there very much worth while.

Billy Kane smiled a little grimly now, as, moving forward, he pushed the bed to one side in order to continue his examination of the flooring. That had been his solution; but, strangely enough, the newspapers for once had had no solution to offer. The known presence of so many men—when Red Vallon’s gang had invaded the house—indicated quite clearly, the papers said, that it was the work of an organized band; but, apart from that, they were frankly mystified. But because Peters had been the butler of David Ellsworth, and had been murdered just three nights after his master had been murdered, the morning papers had flung clamorous headlines across their front pages, and had filled their columns with every detail that had even the remotest bearing upon the affair. They, however, scarcely hinted at even a possible connection between the two crimes, for the very simple reason that Peters had obviously been attacked by a gang, whereas, in the case of David Ellsworth, they _knew_ that the old millionaire had been done to death by his private secretary, Billy Kane!

He had read the papers, all of them. But out of the welter of words there had been only one thing that had possessed any value for him in the shape of information, and even that had been of a negative character. Some reporter had unearthed the fact that a stranger, whose description answered in a general way to Whitie Jack, had been seen loitering around the neighborhood of Peters’ apartment during a good part of the previous day. The description was not accurate enough to identify Whitie Jack positively; but as Whitie Jack _had_ been there, and there on his, Billy Kane’s instructions, he had immediately sent the man away that morning, and had told him to keep under cover until further orders.

The steel jimmy tapped with persistent inquisitiveness along another board. Billy Kane’s lips were tight now. Peters’ death had seemed at first to have robbed him of all he had been building upon; and during the hours alone here in this den last night, facing what looked like the ruin of the final chance and hope of establishing his own innocence, of clearing his own name, of bringing to justice the wantons who had struck down old David Ellsworth, he had known those bitterest of hours where the will weakens, and courage seems a useless thing and a mockery. But he had fought through those hours, and the morning had brought its reward. Peters’ murder had broken the thread of evidence, but equally, it seemed, after all, it had knitted it together again—there was the Man with the Crutch.

His lips relaxed a little in an ironical smile. The papers had overlooked the Man with the Crutch! It was Red Vallon who, all unconsciously, had joined together the broken thread. The gangster had come here to the den that noon. There had been a marked increase of deference in the man’s attitude and manner, a sort of unholy admiration, awe, respect and fear. The man, hardened though he was himself, was still visibly affected by the fact that he stood in the presence of the Rat, alias Bundy Morgan, who, as he believed, had coolly and imperturbably given gruesome evidence that, to gain his ends, he would neither hesitate nor stop at murder. Red Vallon had not forgotten, and was not likely to forget, his “object lesson!”

Red Vallon had told his story furtively, leaning across the table, talking in a guarded whisper. He had got it straight enough from one of his own men, who the police in turn believed was one of their own stool pigeons. Shortly before the confusion incident to the exit of Red Vallon’s men on the previous night, the exact hour not positively established, a man with a crutch, and carrying a small hand bag, was known to have crept cautiously out of the apartment house where Peters had his flat. After that the man had disappeared. “The police have elected the cripple as the guy that waltzed off with the swag while the rest of the bunch made a noise to smear up his tracks,” Red Vallon had said, with a malicious grin. “What’s the matter with pushing a good thing along, Bundy? What’s the matter with pushing out a few feelers, and trying to spot this crutch gazabo? The Pippin’s the one that put me wise, and the Pippin can make good nosing him out if any one can.”

There had come upon Billy Kane an overwhelming surge of relief. More than anything else on earth that he had suddenly wanted at that moment was—the Man with the Crutch.

“Yes!” he had answered gruffly, afraid almost to trust his voice.

“Sure!” Red Vallon had responded. “I thought you’d be strong for it! Mabbe it won’t last long, ’cause the guy ought to be able to clear himself unless we can hitch it onto him for keeps, but there’s nothing like heaving a little dirt in the eyes of the bulls, and shooting ’em off on the wrong lay. It’ll keep ’em guessing for a while anyhow. You leave it to me, Bundy. I owe you something for queering your game last night, though I guess there wasn’t any more of them rubies there besides the one you found, for the Pippin says the bulls didn’t get anything, and I owe you something for the lemon I’ve handed you so far in falling down on spotting the ruby collection in any of the speak-easy joints; but I won’t fall down here. You leave it to me! I’ll pull some slick stuff this time!”

The steel jimmy tapped on. Billy Kane’s face was set. The Man with the Crutch! Was there any doubt but that the Man with the Crutch was not only Peters’ murderer, but, more vital still, one who, in Peters’ stead now, embodied the clue to the hell-hatched plot that had cost David Ellsworth his life, and had craftily woven the evidence of murder around him, Billy Kane? The Man with the Crutch! If only Red Vallon and the Pippin did not fail, then— The steel jimmy, almost perfunctorily, tapped over the same board again; and then Billy Kane suddenly bent lower, his ear close to the floor. He tapped once more. There was no doubt of it! The sound was unquestionably and distinctly _hollow_. He felt his pulse quicken. Off and on during the day he had covered almost the entire flooring of the room. He had started with the flooring. Only the flooring and the walls could contain any hidden recess. He had not touched the walls yet, and it might not be necessary now!

He was examining the board critically. It was a short board, rough and uneven, about ten inches wide, that ran to the edge of the wall. There seemed to be no sign of any secret spring, either on the adjacent flooring or on the wall, nor did the board itself appear to be in any way loose or show any evidence of ever having been removed before. He frowned as he tapped it again and found that, quite as unmistakably as before, the hollow sound came back to him; and then, inserting the point of the jimmy in the joint at the end of the board, he gave the board a sharp wrench. It came away readily, but with it came a weary smile to Billy Kane’s lips. Nothing! The under flooring had rotted away, which accounted for the hollow sound, and he was rewarded with nothing more than a hole bounded both in depth and width by the floor joists which rested on the ground. Half angry, half ironically amused, he reached forward to replace the board—and, straightening up suddenly, listened.

Someone was coming down the steps from the street.

In an instant he had the board and bed back in place, and the steel jimmy in his pocket. And now a cigarette was drooping languidly from his lips, as, in answer to a low knock, he crossed the room, and halted in front of the door.

“Who’s there?” he demanded.

“It’s de Cadger,” a voice answered.

Billy Kane opened the door. The Cadger, unknown to him personally, was known to him by reputation. As one of those details vital to the preservation of the rôle he played, he had stored up in his memory during the past few days the name of every one connected with the Crime Trust that he had heard mentioned either by Red Vallon or others. The Cadger was one of the lesser breed; a stage hand, in the expressive vernacular of the underworld.

The Cadger, a shrivelled, unkempt figure, his coat collar turned up over a collarless shirt, an aggressively checkered peak cap pulled far down over his eyes, thrust an envelope unceremoniously into Billy Kane’s hand.

“Dis is fer youse, Bundy,” he said hurriedly, already turning and making his way up the steps to the street again. “See youse later! I gotta go to Gannet’s joint fer his kit.”

Billy Kane closed the door, and locked it. He had not heard from Red Vallon since noon, nothing in reference to the Pippin’s quest for the Man with the Crutch. He tore the envelope open eagerly, the thought uppermost in his mind that this was a message from Red Vallon now; and then, staring at the sheet of paper which he had extracted from the envelope, he dropped, suddenly tight-lipped, into the chair by the table under the light.

It wasn’t from Red Vallon. It was a message like the one Red Vallon had showed him the night before, a message in the Crime Trust’s cipher. He turned instinctively in his chair, glancing toward the secret door at the rear of the room, as though he half expected to see it open, and see that slim little figure in black enter, as though he half expected to hear her cool, softly modulated voice that veiled, even as did the clear ripple in her laugh, menace and contempt. And then he laughed aloud in a short, hard way. A fool! Was he? Well, she had come in through that door before, hadn’t she, when something was in the wind?

His eyes reverted to the sheet of paper. He knew what it was! The headquarters of the Crime Trust had been broken up, and some of the leaders had even taken to cover since the night Karlin had been arrested by the police; but all the cogs in that Machiavellian machinery had not stopped, and plans formulated and set in motion in the past were still to be carried to their ultimate conclusions as they matured day by day. There was not the slightest doubt but that this was one of their devil’s schemes. Red Vallon—or was it the owner of those great, dark, steady eyes?—had said enough to make him understand that, when temporarily scattered, temporarily wary of the police, some unhallowed “managing director” carried on their work, and communicated with the different members of the gang by means of these cipher messages.

And now as he stared at the missive in his hand, angry flush rose slowly to his cheeks, and he half made as though to tear the paper into shreds. God knew, he had enough to do to keep his own life in his own body without this; there was scarcely a moment of the day or night when he was not battling with all the wits he possessed to save himself from discovery—from the police as Billy Kane, from the underworld as the spurious Rat—and his brain was already sick and tormented beyond endurance with the struggle. Why, then, should he decipher this? If he did, he could not sit idly by and, in the possession of the details of some purposed crime, permit that crime to be enacted! It was the moral obligation flung in his face again, just as it had been on the night he had trapped Karlin, just as it had been last night when he had snatched Vetter’s diamonds from Red Vallon’s maw, and not through any threat of _hers_ held over his head, as she so thoroughly believed! She wasn’t here now—was she?

He laid the paper down upon the table, and smoothed it out. Tear it up! His short laugh was a jeer flung at himself. Certainly, he could tear it up, and he would know nothing about it, except that he had shirked and turned his back like a coward upon the responsibility that was already his! He _could_ read the cipher, if he wanted to; he had seen her work one out the night before.

“I thought I’d settled this sort of thing with myself before!” he muttered grimly, and taking a pencil from his pocket he began to work out the cipher.

It took some time, perhaps twenty minutes; and then he was studying a second sheet of paper upon which he had written the decoded message:

The Cadger and Gannet will report to you at nine o’clock. The
Ninth Street house will be empty. Dayler and servants out this
evening. Secure sealed manila envelope in wall safe, left of
mantel, in library. Combination: Two right, eighteen; one left,
eight; one right, twenty-eight. Police on trail to-morrow.

The Cadger’s “see youse later,” then, was to be taken literally, and not, as he had supposed, as simply a common and slang expression of adieu! Billy Kane looked at his watch. It was not quite eight o’clock. There was an hour, then, before the Cadger and this Gannet, another of the Cadger’s ilk, would report here ready to follow his leadership in a burglarious raid. Billy Kane stood up; and, in a sort of mechanical and reassuring inventory, his hands felt over the outside of his pockets, over the skeleton keys they contained, the steel jimmy, the flashlight, the automatic, and the soft, slight bulge made by the neatly folded mask—and, too, over another bulge that was made by a certain chamois pocketbook. This latter brought a frown. He had not found a way yet to return Vetter’s diamonds. It wasn’t so easy a thing to do when, if the Rat’s hand showed in the matter, it was certain destruction for the Rat, alias Bundy Morgan, and, for the moment, alias Billy Kane! But Vetter and Vetter’s diamonds were extraneous things just now, weren’t they?

He extinguished the light, crossed to the door, unlocked it, stepped out, locked the door behind him, made his way up the steps, and started briskly off along the street. He did not know what the contents of that “manila envelope” were, nor who Dayler was, nor the Crime Trust’s motive—he was _supposed_ to know all that—he knew only that there was some devil’s scheme on foot that would be worthy of the Crime Trust in its scope and proportions. And the Crime Trust did not interest itself in _little_ things!

XVII—THE MAN WITH THE CRUTCH

Billy Kane smiled with grim irony, as he walked rapidly down the block. She was not here to-night with her cool, contemptuous voice bidding him to do this thing. It was evident, therefore, that she was not quite as infallible as she apparently believed herself to be! For once, she was not acquainted beforehand with the Crime Trust’s movements, it seemed! Perhaps it was because, for once, the Rat might not have had anything to do with originating the plan that was afoot to-night, for she had certainly always appeared to be thoroughly informed where the Rat was concerned!

He shrugged his shoulders suddenly, dismissing her from his thoughts. He would better concentrate his mind on the work in hand! The secret lay in the manila envelope. That the envelope contained something of great value, or was of great value to someone, was obvious; to Dayler, probably, since it was in Dayler’s carefully guarded possession. He shrugged his shoulders again. He could tell better about that in the course of another hour—when the envelope was in his pocket instead of Dayler’s safe! To balk this organized gang of super-criminals was sufficient for the moment! Once more his shoulders lifted. He perhaps was not even entitled to any great credit to-night in fulfilling his “moral obligations!” For once, there appeared to be neither any great danger, nor any great difficulty. The house was empty; it was not very far away; he had an hour in which to work undisturbed; and at the expiration of that time he should be back in his room, and ready to set out with the Cadger and Gannet to rob an _empty_ safe. If he with the two men then entered the house, and, for their pains, found the manila envelope already gone, certainly there could be no suspicion to rest upon him!

Billy Kane had reached the Bowery now. He went in through the side entrance of a corner saloon. Here, a minute’s search in the telephone directory supplied him with the number of Dayler’s house on Ninth Street. After that, he made his way over to Washington Square, crossed the Square, gained the lower end of Fifth Avenue, practically deserted now at this hour, and, a moment later, turning into Ninth Street, headed down the block in the direction of Sixth Avenue.

It was one of the old aristocratic neighborhoods of New York, but changed now a great deal with the changing years. What had once been classed as mansions had in many cases been metamorphosed into lodging and boarding houses; but the “mansions” were still here, big, substantial, commodious stone dwellings. Nor had the boarding houses entirely ousted a certain unobtrusive type of wealth and means from their midst, and it argued not at all that this Dayler, for instance, because he had his residence here, was not well to do, even exceedingly well to do.

The street was quiet. Billy Kane located the house he sought. He passed by it, noting that it had a basement entrance, a flight of stone steps to the front door, that it was entirely in darkness, and, returning, he mounted the steps quietly and without any attempt at concealment, found the outer vestibule door unlocked, opened it—after making pretense of ringing the doorbell for the benefit of anyone on the street who might have paid him any notice—stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. The inner door was locked. His skeleton keys came into play. Still far from an adept in their use, he was several minutes at this work. Then he stepped forward into the hall of the house itself.

His flashlight stabbed a lane of light through the darkness. The stairs leading to the upper floors of the house were ahead of him and on his right; on his left, opening off the hall, which seemed to run almost the depth of the house, were several doors, all of which were closed. The house was empty, the cipher message had assured him of that, but nevertheless he moved now with extreme caution to the first door on his left. He knew nothing of the plan of the house, but it was at least logical to assume that the library was on this floor, and the library was the objective of his search.

He opened the door slightly, quietly, then drew sharply back, and stood tense and motionless, listening. There was a dull, faint glow of light in there, not as though the room itself were illuminated, but as though the light came from, perhaps, another room beyond. But there was no sound. A minute passed, and still he stood there, alert, his ears strained to catch the slightest noise. And then, reassured, he pushed the door wider open, and stepped over the threshold. That a light might have been left burning, either intentionally or inadvertently, presented in itself nothing of the unusual, or——

He was drawing his hand across his eyes like a man dazed from a blow. The light had gone in the winking of an eye. It was pitch black. He was still involuntarily staring, through darkness now, toward the front end of the room. The light had not come from that direction, it had come through a portièred archway in quite the opposite direction, but for the moment his mind was chaotic, out of control. The room was a drawing-room, a large, stately sort of a drawing-room, and there had been a huge pier glass, gilt-framed, between the heavily curtained front windows. What he had seen could not have been a fantasy, nor due to disordered imagination. His eyes, the instant he had entered the room, had gone straight to that glass because it reflected the light from the other room. The surface of the glass had been blank as his eyes had first fallen upon it, and then, like a flash, enduring for but the minutest fraction of a second, the reflection of a figure, a man’s figure, a man’s figure _with a crutch_, had swept across it—and the light in the other room had gone out.

And now Billy Kane acted quickly. The time that he had stood there, inert, mentally stunned, had been but a matter of seconds exaggerated into seemingly interminable, measureless hours. Swiftly, silently, he reached the archway, and, sheltering himself behind the folds of the portières, but in a position to command the other room with his automatic, which he had whipped from his pocket, he stood still and listened. There was only the quick, fierce pounding in his own eardrums, in tempo with the mad race of blood through his veins. The Man with the Crutch!

How or why the man came to be here, or what the other had to do with what was afoot to-night, scarcely entered his mind. It did not matter! Nothing mattered—save to get the Man with the Crutch. Everything else paled into insignificance. It was the _same_ man that had murdered Peters; there would not be _two_ men with crutches who prowled stealthily at night in other people’s houses! But that it was Peters’ murderer was significant now only because it identified the man as one who held the secret of David Ellsworth’s murder; the man who, if he, Billy Kane, could but get to grips with him, would tell what he knew to the last word, or one or the other of them would never leave this house alive. It was the man who could end this hideous masquerade that he, Billy Kane, was forced to assume; the man who could clear his name of the foul blot that had cost him friends, the companionship of honest men, and that was like at any instant to cost him his life.

There was no sound.

And then Billy Kane’s voice rang suddenly, imperatively through the silence:

“Hands up!”

His flashlight bored through the darkness, circling the room in front of him. The room—it was the library beyond doubt—was empty. His jaws locked. He had taken a chance. It had failed. But now his glance fell upon the door, diagonally across the library from him, that, from its position, obviously opened on the hall. He could have sworn that the doors opening on the hall were all closed when he had entered the house. This one was ajar now!

He crossed the library with a bound, swung the door wide, and peered out into the hall. He could see nothing; but now, from somewhere below, he caught a sound as of a boot heel thudding on a bare floor—or, perhaps, the tap of a crutch!

Along at the rear of the hall his flashlight focused on the head of a basement stairway. He ran for this now; and then, with more caution, wary of offering himself as a target for a shot that would put an end to any hope of getting within reach of the other, his flashlight out, he began to pick his way downstairs. Halfway down, he caught another sound. From the front of the house, softly and cautiously though it was done, there came the unmistakable opening and closing of the basement door.

Billy Kane took the remaining stairs in a leap, and, his flashlight pointing the way, dashed along the hallway below. He reached the door, and pulled at it. Then, with an angry, muttered exclamation, he stood there for an instant hesitant. The man had managed to lock the door behind him! Mechanically his hand went toward his pocket for his skeleton keys, but stopped halfway as, turning suddenly, he raced back upstairs. It would take too long to try out key after key. There was a better way. There was the front door. He had left that unlocked when he came in. He gained this now, jerked it open, lunged through the little vestibule, snatched at the knob of the outer door—and wrenched at it viciously like a madman in mingled rage and chagrin. It was locked! It had not been locked even when he had come in!

Calmer in an instant, he took his keys from his pocket and worked with feverish haste at the lock. It would possibly take less time to run into the drawing-room, get a window open, and jump to the ground, but he did not dare do that. He had to come back here with the Cadger and Gannet in a little while, and he dared not risk anything that would imperil his rôle in the eyes of the underworld. Even a number of people coming and going from the house, if they acted naturally, entering by the door as though they had a right to enter, would never attract the slightest notice from either neighbors or passers-by. That was what doors were for! But a man leaping out through one of the front windows would invite certain attention, suspicion, and instant investigation.

Another key! Would he never get one that would fit! This wasn’t the door he had opened before. A minute, perhaps two, perhaps even three, must have gone by! God, how clumsy his fingers were! The man must have had amazing agility for a cripple, and the craft and cunning of a devil to come up here instantly on leaving the basement and lock this door! Would he never get the—yes, he had it now! He swung the door open, and from the top step his glance swept the street in both directions. And then there came a sort of bitter philosophical acceptance of a situation that he had already more than half expected. The Man with the Crutch had had too much time. There was no sign of him now.

But there was still a chance! Billy Kane closed the door behind him, went quietly down the steps to the pavement—there was still the inviolability of the house to be preserved—walked along without undue haste until far enough away to preclude the chance of any connection being established between himself and the house he had just left, and then broke into a run. There was still a chance. But it was a slim one. He knew that. The man must have gone toward either Sixth Avenue or Fifth Avenue. It was more likely Sixth Avenue; there would be more people there, more traffic, more opportunity to “lose himself.” It was the logical thing to do. Lower Fifth Avenue at night was almost as deserted as a tomb; the man could have been seen there blocks away.

Perhaps fifteen minutes passed. At the expiration of that period Billy Kane returned to the Dayler residence, and for the second time that night coolly and quite casually mounted the steps, and again entered the house. His search had been futile. He had circuited the blocks in the neighborhood, and hunted up and down the adjacent section of Sixth Avenue; and the more he had hunted the more he had realized the futility of what he was doing, though, at that, he had even, as a last hope, returned by Fifth Avenue. And now he was back in the house again, and quite conscious that this, too, was likely now to prove as barren of results as his search had been. The man had got away, and with the man in all likelihood had gone, too, the manila envelope from the wall safe in the library! What else had the other been in the library for?

Billy Kane shrugged his shoulders, as, using his flashlight again, he stepped from the hall into the drawing-room, and from there through the archway into the library. There was the one possibility that he had come upon the Man with the Crutch and interrupted the other in his work _before_ the envelope had been secured. That was the one possibility that remained, and that was the one possibility that had prompted him to come back.

He stood for a moment now beside the table that occupied the center of the room, his flashlight creeping in a slow, inquisitive circle around the walls. And now the round white ray, arrested, held on the mantel opposite the archway. On either side of the mantel, shoulder high, and projecting out a little from the wall, were what appeared to be bric-a-brac, or, perhaps, liqueur cupboards, with leaded glass doors. “Wall safe, left of mantel,” the message had said. He smiled a little grimly in appreciation and understanding, as he moved over and halted before the left-hand cupboard. It was a rather neat ambush for a wall safe, this idea of Dayler’s—whoever Dayler might be!

The leaded glass door opened readily. The ray of the flashlight flooded the interior. Billy Kane’s smile was gone. He was quite sure now that he was too late. The cupboard was used for liqueurs, but the liqueurs in turn were evidently used for the purpose of veiling the little nickel dial of a safe that protruded from the wall at the rear of the cupboard, for the bottles were all pushed now to one side, and the dial, with a sort of diabolical mockery, it seemed, winked back reflected rays from the glare of the flashlight. It was blatantly apparent now that this had been the object of the other’s visit to the house, and it was almost as equally apparent that the man had got what he had come for. And yet——

“Two right, eighteen; one left”—almost perfunctorily, muttering the combination, Billy Kane had reached in and was twirling the knob of the dial—“eight; one right, twenty-eight.”

The little steel door swung noiselessly open. Billy Kane stared into the miniature safe, bewildered. And then he laughed a little. A minute before and he would not have given a penny for his chances! The other had got only so far as to move the bottles to one side. He had beaten the Man with the Crutch by the very narrow margin of time it would have taken to manipulate the combination! Perhaps, though, the other hadn’t known the combination, and was just about to set to work to force the safe! Well, it didn’t matter! The manila envelope lay there, sealed, intact.

He took the envelope from the safe, closed the door, and locked it—and whirled suddenly around from his position in front of the mantel. His flashlight, jerked upward, played full upon the archway. A cool, disdainful laugh rippled low through the room—a woman’s laugh. Billy Kane did not move. The chill that had clutched at his heart, the fear of discovery, was gone almost as quickly as it had come. He had nothing to dread on that score from—the Woman in Black! And it was not the first time she had come upon him unexpectedly! And it was she who stood there now; and she still stood full in the glare of his flashlight, a bewitching, entrancing, mysterious little figure, whose great dark eyes were fixed on him, half in a deliberate, speculative way, and half in a sort of contemptuous mockery.

It was she who broke the silence.

“I wonder if it’s true, Bundy?” she said softly.

He felt the blood surge hot into his cheeks. He knew a sudden bitter rebellion at the contempt in those steady eyes, the same bitter rebellion he had known last night in her presence, a rebellion against the fate that caused him, through reason of being the counterpart of some incarnate fiend, to stand in her eyes as that actual fiend himself, as the one who in some way had done her, or hers, irreparable wrong, as the embodiment of all that was loathsome and hideous to her. He was the Rat to her, as to everybody else. The envelope crackled in his fingers, as he clenched his hand. Would he always have to play the Rat—to her! What would that perfect oval face, beautiful even now in its fearless contempt, look like in softer mood?

“Is what true?” he demanded gruffly.

She came toward him across the room.

“That you are really playing the game,” she said slowly. “It’s not much credit to you, of course, since you are doing it through fear, but still——” She shrugged her shoulders daintily, as she stood beside him. “Do you know, Bundy, that lately you seem to have changed somehow. I do not know just how, and I cannot account for it. It puzzles me.”

“Forget it!” growled Billy Kane, alias the Rat. “And I don’t know what game you’re talking about, either!”

“Oh, yes, you do!” she answered. “I told you that I would hold you responsible for any crime committed by your accomplices that it lay within your power to circumvent. That was the chance I gave you, and you seem to be taking it. I thought I would test you out to-night when you might imagine that I was ignorant of what was going on, and that you might, therefore, count on escaping the consequences as far as I was concerned. You were to come here with the Cadger and Gannet at nine o’clock to rob that safe. You are here alone long before that hour, and you have robbed the safe. I presume, at least I am going to give you credit for it, that it is because you are playing the game I referred to, and are checkmating your partners, and preventing the crime from being carried any further.”

There was silence for a moment.

“I think you had better put out that flashlight,” she said.

He must play the Rat. His soul jeered at him ironically. He snapped off the light.

“How did you get wise to this?” he flung out.

“About to-night? Why, it was one of your own pet schemes, wasn’t it, Bundy—all worked out quite a while ago? That’s how I knew! Well, am I right about the reason for you being here alone? And, if so, how did you propose to square yourself with your cronies of the underworld?”

“By coming back here with the Cadger and Gannet, of course,” he replied curtly, “and letting them fall for the idea that someone had beaten us all to it.”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “Well, I quite approve, Bundy. And I’ll take that envelope now, please! You won’t have any further use for it, and I’ll attend to the rest of this affair.”

He handed her the envelope. He asked nothing better than that she should assume any further responsibility that might be connected with its contents. As far as he was concerned there were matters of far greater moment now. There was the Man with the Crutch! And that was a matter in which he had very cogent reasons for desiring to play a lone hand. His lips tightened. It was fairly evident that she had not been in the house the first time he had entered but he wanted to be sure.

“When did you get in here?” he snapped. “Followed me, I suppose!”

“About five minutes ago,” she said quietly. “And you left the door unlocked—though I had a key. No, I didn’t follow you! Why should I? I knew that you would be here at nine o’clock anyway, and I simply came a little ahead of time. I really hoped, you see, that you would do the same—and for more reasons than the one I have just mentioned.”

“What do you mean?” he grunted.

“I haven’t seen you since last night, you know,” she said deliberately. “What about the diamonds that were stolen from Vetter?”

“I’ve got them,” he answered shortly.

“_Vetter_ hasn’t!” There was a cold, unpleasant inflection in her voice.