Chapter XI: Part 11

A yell went up behind him; there came to him the glimpse of a man’s figure rushing wildly out through the store door into the street; and then another yell, that was echoed from different directions along the street. The car took the first corner on little better than two wheels. The yells died away behind. At the next intersecting street Billy Kane turned again, and thereafter for a few blocks zigzagged his course, until, satisfied that he had thrown any immediate pursuers off his track, he headed again over toward the East River.

And now as he drove more quietly, confident that he need no longer fear the element of time, his mind harked back again to that scene in the old hag’s room, and there came a puzzled frown furrowing his forehead, and a queer strained look into his face. It was not so clear after all! The picture in the large was there. The patient, cold-blooded winning of her confidence in order to lure her without suspicion or hesitation to her death was clear enough, as was also the hideous betrayal of that confidence, a betrayal that plumbed the depths of human infamy, and whose unscrupulous ingenuity and vile cunning was so typical of the Rat; but the details, examined more critically, seemed somehow foggy and obscured, and seemed to hint at something he did not quite understand. It was not that it was evidence of the Rat’s return. That thought did not trouble him, for certainly he, of all others, who had so unceremoniously possessed himself of the Rat’s den and all the Rat’s belongings, should be the first to know of it if the other had put in an appearance again; and the fact that the plot had reached its consummation to-night he did not consider to have any bearing on that point either. Many of the Rat’s plans, begun in the past, as he, Billy Kane, had only too good reason to know, had reached their climax since the Rat himself had been away. This was probably one of them. Certainly it had been begun more than two weeks ago, as both Shaky Liz and the Cherub had said, and that was before he, Billy Kane, had assumed the Rat’s rôle, and, therefore, quite logically it seemed, before the Rat had gone away. It was not that—once started, the unholy quartet to whom the Rat had entrusted his dirty work was quite capable of carrying it through to its detestable conclusion—but it seemed strange that, adventurous as the Rat was and much as he undoubtedly desired to get the Woman in Black out of his way, he would have dared to do this. What she held over the Rat’s head, he, Billy Kane, did not know; but he knew the Rat was well aware that, in event of her disappearance, certain evidence would be forthcoming against him within twenty-four hours. That had been her protection, a protection with which she had appeared to be thoroughly satisfied, and she had taken occasion more than once to give that warning to him, Billy Kane, in the belief that she was warning the Rat himself. There seemed to be only one answer then to this move on the Rat’s part. In some way, unknown to her, he must have come into possession of that evidence, or in some way have rendered abortive the means by which, in event of her disappearance, it would be brought to light.

The car rattled and jangled along. It was a miserable contraption, seedy, and badly down at the heels, but so that its engine functioned he asked nothing better. He was near the river front now, and in the region of warehouses and buildings that, remote from the bridges and the regular trend of traffic, showed no lights at night, and where the streets were utterly deserted, and where occasionally he caught glimpses of the river itself like a silver thread under the moonlight. He ran still more slowly now, studying his location with all possible care. Kegler’s dock, according to the directory, was still farther on, of course, but he realized that, well as he knew his New York, this was somewhat out of the ordinary radius, and that it would be all too easy to miss his way.

He shook his head a little in perplexity. There was another thing—one of the little details. Shaky Liz, Gypsy Joe, Clarkie Munn and the Cherub were not in the ranks of the Crime Trust as Red Vallon, and the Cadger, and Vannet, for instance, were, and where the Rat might naturally be expected to work upon a basis of mutual trust. It seemed strange that the Rat, in executing a plan like this, would give, not one, but four outsiders a hold on him, for if their tongues were ever loosened it meant the death house in Sing Sing for the Rat to a certainty. Nor did the fact that they themselves were accomplices wholly justify this seeming lapse from cunning on the Rat’s part. Accomplices before now had been known to turn State’s evidence! It was queer! The Rat probably had a very good reason—only it seemed a little queer!

Billy Kane shrugged his shoulders. Enough of that! He was peering out of the car now with growing anxiety, and with the realization forcing itself upon him that, if he had not actually lost his way, he at best had a very confused knowledge of his exact whereabouts. His lips tightened. It was growing late, too; it must be getting perilously near ten o’clock. He had had no doubt but that, from the address in the directory, he could easily find the place, and he was still sure it was farther on; but the quarter here was outrageously dark, and a plethora of turnings, that seemed to be nothing more than private trafficways for various wharfs and warehouses, made an exceedingly nasty complication. He nosed the machine along, his face growing more set and anxious every moment. It was black here—black—nothing but a cursed blackness. If there were only someone about—someone from whom he could ask directions! But there was nothing, no one, only the black, looming shapes of buildings, and even these were becoming more scattered now; and the only signs of life were the whistles and churnings of passing craft on the river.

The minutes passed. A sense of helplessness, of impotency, that brought a cold chill to his heart, was upon him now. Down here on the river front he was hopelessly lost. There was no light in the ramshackle car that he had appropriated—it wasn’t equipped with anything that even approached a modern device. He stopped the car, lighted a match, and looked at his watch.

_Ten minutes of ten!_

Ten minutes! There were ten minutes left! He started the car again mechanically. There were ten minutes between her and a trap-door that opened into the silvery streak of water out there, whose shimmering now had lost its beauty and seemed like the hideous, insinuating, silky movement of some ghastly reptile. Ten minutes stood between her and that trap-door; and he, fool that he was, had lost his way! And yet he could hardly blame himself; the East River front at night was—but what did it matter whether he blamed himself or not!

A low cry of bitter hurt came from his compressed lips. It wasn’t only the Woman in Black! Her deadly peril now, the almost certainty of her death, brought him, in an overwhelming surge of anguish and fear the consciousness that it was the woman he loved. He remembered the abhorrence and contempt she held for him in those steadfast, fearless brown eyes of hers, and he loved her for that abhorrence and contempt. It seemed to typify her, as somehow she seemed to typify a purity and a courage that was soul deep—for that contempt and abhorrence was for the man whom she believed to be the Rat, who in turn typified the dregs and lees of all that was vile. But he, Billy Kane, was not the Rat, and some day, as he was conscious now, he had hoped to stand before her in his own person, and with his own name cleared. His hands gripped on the steering wheel until it seemed as though the taut-drawn skin would burst over the knuckles. He remembered the poise of that dainty head, the curve of the full, white, rounded throat, and he saw her now in—— No! He would not let his brain complete that thought. It would drive him mad. He was already in a state bordering on frenzy, almost out of self-control. Ten minutes! There could be very few of those ten minutes left now!

A cry came from him again, but this time one of sudden hope. To his right, from a large building at the head of one of those trafficways that led to the river bank itself, he caught sight of a lighted window. In an instant the machine was tearing forward in that direction; and in a minute more he had leaped out, and was pounding frantically with his fists at the door of the building. This wasn’t Kegler’s, he knew that; but here was some sign of life at last in the deserted neighborhood.

A step sounded from within. It seemed to drag. It seemed as though it were covering some interminable distance inside there. And then the door opened, and an old, decrepit man, who perhaps held down a sort of pensioned night watchman’s job, a lantern in hand, stuck out his head.

“I’ve lost my way,” said Billy Kane quickly. “Can you tell me where Kegler’s place is?”

“You mean the sand docks?” inquired the other.

“Yes,” said Billy Kane.

The man stepped out from the doorway, and pointed back along the river.

“That’s it over there,” he said. “The one beyond our wharf down here.” He glanced at the car. “But you can’t get through here with that car because this bit of road don’t connect—see? You’ll have to go back a bit the way you came.”

Billy Kane held his watch under the lantern’s light. There were neither the five, nor the four, nor the three minutes that he had dared hope might still remain. It was already after ten o’clock!

“Can I get down from here on foot—it’s shorter this way, isn’t it?” asked Billy Kane between closed teeth.

“Yes, sure, you can,” said the man. “But you won’t find no one there. They was expecting some barges in, but they haven’t come yet, and——”

Billy Kane had already swung away from the other, and was making for the river.

“Thanks!” he called out over his shoulder, as he ran. “I’ll leave the car here till I get back.”

He heard some reply from the other, but he could not make out the words. Whatever they were, they were inconsequent now. He, Billy Kane, unless by some miracle, was too late to warn her—and too late perhaps even to save her. He knew fear now as he had never known it before, but it was not fear for himself. And he knew a passion that seemed to find its roots in the very soul of him. If he was too late—at least there would be a reckoning, come what might! His lips twitched in a queer, distorted smile. It was strange! This fear and this passion, though they were supreme within him, seemed curiously under control, and he was abnormally cool and calm now, and his brain, as though lashed into virility by some powerful stimulant, was working swiftly, incisively, leaping in flashes from premises to conclusions.

It was certain that they were already there, but there was still a chance that they had not yet had time to do her any harm. And it must be his wits, not blundering force, that would be its own undoing, that must turn that chance to account. He must play the Rat now in exactly the same way as, when back there in the tenement, the thought had flashed across his mind that he might have played it in the old hag’s room. The chances of success, it was true, were a hundredfold slimmer now than they would have been then; but now it was forced upon him as the only way, and then it had seemed an unnecessary and uncalled-for risk to take. It was the one way now. It might fail, but it would gain him access inside that dark, looming building across the open stretch of brick-and-sand-strewn yard where he was running now; and once inside, if it were not already too late, there must be some way out for her. And if it were too late—well then, the Cherub, and Gypsy Joe, and Clarkie Munn would not have to press the Rat for payment for their work!

Again the distorted smile flickered on his lips. He had his bearings now, both literally and mentally. He ran without caution, making almost unnecessary noise, and reached the door of the building; a building that, he could discern now, made the shore end of a long dock, and which, according to the old watchman’s directions, was obviously Kegler’s place.

The building was in utter and complete darkness. He dismissed the possibility that she was still anywhere without, still waiting for the Cherub’s arrival, as too improbable to warrant the waste of even a second, and making still more noise at the door now, he tried it, found it unlocked, pushed it open, stepped inside and closed it behind him. A quick, startled exclamation, from a long way off, it seemed, reached him, and then a sibilant whisper:

“Who’s dat?”

“Clarkie—Gypsy!” Billy Kane called softly. “Are you there?”

“Gawd!” a voice ejaculated hoarsely.

A light went on somewhere over Billy Kane’s head. He was in a short passage that was flanked on either side by what were evidently the business offices of the concern, and at the end of this passage now a door was suddenly swung open. Gypsy Joe was standing in the doorway.

“De Rat!” he exclaimed in heavy amazement, and mechanically fell back as Billy Kane advanced.

XXV—THE OLD WAREHOUSE

Billy Kane’s eyes were apparently blinking in the abrupt transition from darkness to the glare of light; but with the knowledge that it might literally mean the difference between life and death to him—and her—no single detail of his surroundings was escaping him. The door ahead of him, a heavy, cumbersome affair, opened inwards toward him, and was now swung full back against the wall, but if the evidence of that iron loop on the door jamb could be trusted, the door was equipped with a massive bolt. Gypsy Joe was still to a large extent blocking the doorway, but he could see that the huge, lighted space beyond was a sort of storage warehouse, windowless, of course, or else he would have seen a light from outside. And the switches, the electric-light switches—the one for the bulb over his head in this passage here, and the one for the light in that room ahead of him! They were vital too! He could not see any in the position where he might naturally expect to find them—by the door where Gypsy Joe stood. He glanced back over his shoulder. Yes, there was one there at the side of the front door, a switch for the passage light undoubtedly; but Gypsy Joe had certainly not used that one, so there must be another then, as well, inside the storage room.

He had been perhaps the matter of a bare few seconds in traversing the length of the passage, and now as he stepped across the threshold into the warehouse itself, the Cherub and Clarkie Munn had joined Gypsy Joe, and were staring at him with scowling, startled, uncertain faces—but Billy Kane’s eyes were not on the three men. The blood seemed to leap through his veins in a great surging tide, and upon him was the sense of a mighty uplift. It was not too late! It was not too late! His brain seemed to seize upon those words and reiterate them in a sing-song way. A woman’s form lay upon the floor, and she was bound and gagged; but dark eyes met his, and in the eyes was a softer light than he had ever seen there before when they had been fixed on him. “For once,” they seemed to say, “you have not failed. I told you to watch Gypsy Joe and Clarkie Munn, and you are just in time.”

The Cherub laughed suddenly and a little noisily, as from unstrung nerves.

“Say, youse gave us a jolt!” he said. “Wot’s de idea? I suppose youse came along to make sure dat we earned yer money, eh, an’ dat dere wouldn’t be no fluke about her bein’ bumped off fer keeps? Well, if youse had been about a minute an’ a half later youse’d have missed de trap-door scene, ’cause it’d have been all over.”

Billy Kane’s eyes had met the girl’s again. The soft light in them had gone, and in its place had come a horror, and sudden accusation, and a bitter misery; and her face, already deathly white as she lay there, seemed now to tinge with gray.

Billy Kane shook his head in response to the Cherub, as he turned and faced the three men. They were edging a little closer to him. He caught a surreptitious nudge that passed between Gypsy Joe and Clarkie Munn. He moved back a step—but it was a step that brought him nearer to the girl. If he could hold them in a state of puzzled suspense with its consequent indecision for a moment, that was all he asked. And he was counting on a sort of frank audaciousness for that.

“Well?” prompted the Cherub, a sudden, curious silkiness in his tones. “Did I call de turn?”

“Maybe he’s come down to pay us off,” suggested Gypsy Joe smoothly. “Dere’s nothin’ slow about de Rat.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Billy Kane quietly. He took his knife from his pocket, and coolly opened it; then nonchalantly, but with a swift, lithe movement, stooped and cut the cords that bound the girl’s wrists. He pressed the knife into her hand—she needed no further hint that she could free her own ankles—and, as he straightened up again, his eyes swept the wall by the door. Yes, they were there—two electric-light switches. He faced the trio again.

“Well, wot do youse know about dat!” observed Clarkie Munn, with an unpleasant grin.

“I’ll tell you, Clarkie,” Billy Kane lied calmly. “I’m leery that somebody’s split, and I’m afraid the police know too much. Understand? I’m not taking any chances, and the game’s off—that’s all.”

The Cherub’s bland, blue eyes seemed to shade a darker hue.

“Dat’s all right, den,” said the Cherub sweetly. “But wot about us? Mabbe youse can call de game off if youse likes, ’cause it’s yer game, but where does we come in? ’Tain’t our fault de job’s crimped—dat’s up to youse. Does we get paid or not?”

“Dat’s de talk, Cherub!” applauded Clarkie Munn, an undisguised snarl in his voice.

Billy Kane shrugged his shoulders.

“Who said you wouldn’t get paid?” he demanded roughly. “We’ll attend to that when we get out of here. Do you want to hang around and get pinched?”

“No,” said the Cherub, and smiled. “No, we don’t want to get pinched—an’ we ain’t worryin’ none about it either, not about gettin’ pinched down here. It’s a cinch youse wouldn’t have risked comin’ here if de bulls had been followin’ a yard behind. We knows youse too well fer dat, Bundy! Get me? An’ youse ain’t comin’ across when youse gets out of here, youse are comin’ across right now! An’ youse”—he whirled suddenly on the girl, who had risen to her feet and was backing toward the door—“youse stand where youse are! I ain’t sure we are through wid youse yet, no matter wot Bundy says—see?” He jerked his head at his two companions, though his eyes never for an instant left Billy Kane’s face. “Wot about it, fellers? If she gets out of here she knows too much, an’ we got to fade away outer New York anyway, whether de bulls are on now or not. An’ dat takes de coin—all de coin we can get. Well, de Rat always carries a wad, but if we pinches it an’ lets de Rat loose afterwards he’s got a bunch behind him dat’ll nose us out where de bulls couldn’t, an’ we’ll get ours. Dat’s de size of it. Do we play fer table stakes, or hedge de bets?”

It was coming now, as Billy Kane had known inevitably that it would come. There was no answer needed from either Clarkie Munn or Gypsy Joe. It was written in the ugly menace in their faces, and had been from the moment they had recovered their startled surprise at his entry into the place.

Billy Kane flung a quick glance around him. The girl was a little behind him, close to those electric-light switches, her way clear to the front door, save for the peril of that lighted passage down which she must run. In front of him, just out of arm’s reach, the Cherub’s bland eyes smiled into his with a sort of hideous serenity; while over the Cherub’s shoulders, one on each side, showed the vicious faces of the other two—and, under cover of the Cherub’s body, Clarkie Munn’s hand seemed to be stealing in the direction of his hip pocket.

Billy Kane seemed suddenly to go to pieces and to lose his nerve. His tongue circled his lips with nervous repetition. He put out his hands in an imploring attitude, and stumbled a step forward toward the Cherub, and caught a glint of light on a revolver barrel in Clarkie Munn’s hand, as it came stealing now from the latter’s pocket.

“Wait—wait a minute, Cherub!” Billy Kane whispered thickly, and licked at his lips again, and stumbled forward another step. “Wait!” he whispered—and then, swift as the winking of an eye, Billy Kane flung his body forward with all his weight upon the Cherub, hurling the Cherub back upon Clarkie Munn, and whirling, whipped a lightning left full into Gypsy Joe’s face on the other side. There was a flash, the deafening roar of a report, as the Cherub reeled into Clarkie Munn’s revolver; then a scream of agony, and the Cherub, grasping at his leg with both hands, went to the floor.

“The switches there—beside you!” Billy Kane shouted at the girl. “Put out the lights—both switches! Quick! Run for it!”

Gypsy Joe, recovering his balance, and with a bellow like a maddened bull was charging forward; Clarkie Munn’s hand had swung upward again—and then the place was in darkness. A second late, Clarkie Munn’s revolver cut a vicious flame-tongue through the black, but Billy Kane had flattened himself out on the floor, and was wriggling rapidly backward toward the door and the now dark passageway.

There was a moan, then a shrill scream in the Cherub’s voice, and coincidentally a torrent of blasphemy from Gypsy Joe, as the latter, quite obviously, in his rush and in the blackness now, had stumbled none too gently into the wounded man.

“Youse fool! Curse youse, youse fool!” shrieked the Cherub. “Ain’t youse got a pocket torch? Ain’t either of youse got a torch? Flash a torch on him, an’——”

Billy Kane was across the threshold now; and now, rising to his knees, he groped out for the edge of the door, found it, and, as he slammed it shut, it seemed to cut in two, as a knife might cut it, the sudden, white, piercing ray of a flashlight that leaped out from the interior of the warehouse. And then in another second he had shot the bolt home in its grooves, and, in the darkness, leaning heavily for an instant against the door to recover himself, he stared down the black passage for the girl, and could see nothing.

There came an abortive rush against the door; snarls and oaths came muffled from within. He moved a step forward along the passage. They were a negligible quantity in there now. The door would hold, and when they succeeded in getting out and making their way along the side of the dock perhaps, they would be more concerned in getting to cover themselves than anything else; and besides they would have a wounded man to hamper their movements. It was she now, the Woman in Black, that concerned him.

“Where are you?” he called quickly. “Where are you?”

A draft of air touched his face. The front door at the farther end of the passage was being opened.

“I am here, Bundy.”

It was her voice, but there was something of cold, merciless forbidding in it. He halted instinctively. He did not quite understand.

“Bundy, are you listening?” came the level tones again. “This is the end, absolutely and finally the end to-night. You have saved my life, but I owe you no thanks for that. You saved it, after hiring thugs to take it, you thing of loathing, because you dared do nothing else, since you say you believe the police got wind enough of this thing tonight to scare you off. Very well, Bundy—but there is more, isn’t there, that the police do not know? Well, they will know it, and certain secrets in that den of yours, the moment I can reach them. I have warned you often enough. I am through, Bundy, this is the end of the Rat to-night, nothing shall stop that—but I am still a fool. I am still giving you warning of what I mean to do now. I am still giving you a chance to save yourself if you can; the rather slim chance that the police will not be able to run the man who was known as the Rat to earth! And I am giving you that chance because—well because, even in spite of yourself, I am still alive.”

“No!” he cried. “You do not understand. Wait!” He was groping down the black passage, as he heard the front door shut quickly, and heard a footstep running, receding, outside. “Wait!” he cried again. “For God’s sake, wait!”

There was no answer. He knew there would be none. He had heard her running away out there, hadn’t he? He reached the door, and looked out—and hung there hesitant—and called again—and there was no answer. He listened. He could not hear her footsteps any more. There was no sound from anywhere, not even from that warehouse door behind him. They weren’t hammering on that any more.

And then Billy Kane laughed in a short, bitter, mirthless way, and started, running at top speed, in the direction in which he had left his purloined and dilapidated car. The end! The end of the Rat! He laughed again in the same bitter mirth, as he ran. It was the end of more than that! It was the end of hope—of her—of that love that had come to him upon the thresholds of these strange doors of the night. It was the end of Billy Kane! And whether as the Rat now, or as Billy Kane, the police would be equally hard upon his trail. He stood in far worse case now than on the night of David Ellsworth’s murder, for now the underworld, that would be combed for the Rat, and where the Rat was too well known to have it offer the slightest hope of escaping detection, was closed to him as a refuge. He knew what she meant to do—to tell her story to the police, to expose all the criminal acts and affiliations of the bona fide Rat, and to lead them to the Rat’s den, and expose the secrets that she had so often hinted were hidden there.

He clenched his hands as he ran. The end! No! Not yet! Not until they had him, and they had not got him yet! He did not know which way to turn; but while he still had his freedom there was still the hope of running down the murderer of David Ellsworth—and there were the proceeds of that robbery now, most of them, in the Rat’s den. That was what seemed to stand out as immediately vital now—to get those things—that money and those rubies. He had staked everything on the hope that some day he could hand over to justice both the proceeds of that crime and the murderer as well—hand them over _together_, as a complete vindication of his own name—and even now, in this hour that seemed blackest of all, he still dared to cling to that hope. He knew who the murderer was, and he had already recovered a large share of what had been stolen. He still hoped to find the murderer, and he still hoped to find the remainder of those rubies, and so carry out his original plan. His jaws locked. His mind was made up. He would go! And, yes, he had far better than an even chance of getting there in time. She would take longer to reach the police and lead them to the den than it would take him to reach it—thanks to the car that, grim irony! he had stolen on her account. Afterward his position would be desperate enough; but now, without an instant’s loss of time, he had to gain the den and get away again before they trapped him there.

He reached the car. The old night watchman had evidently retired inside the building again, for there was no sign of the man. He experienced a certain sense of relief at this, as he cranked the obsolete machine; and then he was in the driver’s seat again, and the car was roaring along the road. He drove fast, with mad haste, with reckless disregard for the ill-lighted road. There could be no accident comparable in disaster to his failure to put the miles behind him swiftly enough to insure him the few minutes leeway he asked for in the den.

He bent over the wheel, tense, rigid, strained. The minutes sped away. A glimmer of hope came to him for that “afterward.” He could use the car again; get out of the city again before the chase got too hot. He could certainly hide in that way during the night, and that would give him the night in which to think. He had not time to think now—only that as he drew in toward the centre of the city he must keep as much as possible to the unfrequented streets, both because he must ignore such a thing as speed laws, and because he was driving a stolen car.

XXVI—THE LAST PORTAL

Billy Kane had no means of knowing how long he had been, when he finally leaped from the car at the corner of the lane on the street at the rear of the den. He knew only that, beyond any question of doubt or uncertainty, he had outdistanced her. With a quick glance around him to make sure that he was not observed, he slipped into the lane; and in an instant more, through the shed, and the underground tunnel, and the secret door that so craftily opened on the board joints of the rough panelling, he had gained the interior of the den. He ran across it, turned on the dangling incandescent over the rickety table, and running to the street door made sure that it was locked.

He turned then, pushed the bed aside, and pulled up the plank in the flooring that he had loosened once in his search for the secret hiding places of the room, and that had since served him in that capacity as a private depository of his own. From the aperture he lifted out the hand bag containing the banknotes stolen from the Ellsworth vault, and the red flannel sack containing the rubies, which he had torn from around the neck of the Man with the Crutch last night, replaced the plank, set the bed back in its original position, and carried the hand bag and sack to the table. He opened the bag, tossed in the red flannel sack—and stood for an instant eyeing the bag with a frown of distrust. He remembered that it did not close very well, that he had bent the catches with his steel jimmy that night when he had forced the bag open in the room of the Man with the Crutch, and that it was now quite liable to gape apart without warning—in which case, should the contents be seen by anyone, and they could not help but be seen if such an accident should occur in the presence of anyone within eyeshot, it would be likely to prove, not only awkward, but disastrous for the possessor of the bag. His frown cleared. There was still room in the bag for, say, a shirt; and, than a shirt there was nothing better to disguise the contents underneath.

He walked over to the old bureau, that was flanked on one side by the secret door to the den, and on the other by the cretonne hanging that, stretched diagonally across the corner of the room, served the Rat as a wardrobe. There was the shirt that he had worn on the night when he had first come here, the night he had been wounded by the police. Whitie Jack had washed the blood stains out, and had shoved it in the top bureau drawer.

He pulled the drawer open, bent over it, reached in for the shirt, straightened up—and the shirt dropped from his fingers. He did not move. Something cold, and round, and hard was pressed none too gently against the nape of his neck. His eyes had lifted to the mirror in front of him mechanically, and he stood there staring into it now like a man dazed and numbed. An arm was stretched out from behind the cretonne curtains, and a hand held a revolver against his head. It was like some uncanny moving picture that he was watching. For now the cretonne hanging moved; and now a figure moved out from behind the hanging, and stood behind him, Billy Kane, and stared, too, into the mirror, over his, Billy Kane’s, shoulder. There were two faces in the glass now, two faces that in form and features seemed identical—or else it was some strange mirage that caused a double reflection of his own face. And then one of the faces smiled malevolently, leeringly. It wasn’t his own face that smiled. He wasn’t smiling—though his lips moved.

“The Rat!” he said, below his breath.

He felt a hand slip into his pocket, and remove his automatic. And then the other spoke:

“Remarkable resemblance, isn’t it—Billy Kane? And the recognition appears to be mutual—Billy Kane! I’ve been waiting here quite a while for you this evening.”

Billy Kane did not answer. The Rat! The Rat was back! It was the moment, arrived at last, that had haunted him from the moment he had taken upon himself the other’s personality here in the underworld; but though he was more at the other’s mercy with that revolver muzzle boring into his neck, more helpless than he had thought to be when this time should arrive, more powerless where, instead, he had told himself a hundred times that at the worst it could be but a fight man to man, he found himself far more unmoved now than he had anticipated he would be. He found himself curiously composed. There seemed even a grim, sardonic humor stirring in his soul. What did it matter now? To-night he had no further use for the Rat’s mantle—she had seen to that by now. To-night the whole house of cards had toppled anyway, and the ultimate worst had happened, save only that the police had not yet got their steel bracelets around his wrists. And yet there was a significance in the cold menace of the other’s tone, and a still deeper significance, that he did not like, in the other’s ostentatious repetition of his, Billy Kane’s, name. It was obvious that Billy Kane was no stranger to the Rat!

“Get back to that table, and sit down there!” ordered the Rat curtly.

Billy Kane, because he had no choice, obeyed. It was like some weird, extravagant hallucination of the brain. He was looking up from his chair into what seemed to be his own face—only as he studied it now, fascinated by it, he saw what no mirror had ever shown him was a part of his own identity. The face was a little older, a little more drawn, and there was an expression in the eyes, a smoldering something, a devil’s malignity that burned out through the half-closed lids, leaving the pupils like fever spots behind. And he remembered now that she had commented upon the freshness of his face on that first night when they had met.

“You fool!” sneered the Rat suddenly. “So you played the Rat, did you? And did you think I didn’t know? Well, you seem to have liked it—Billy Kane—and so I guess you’d better finish out the act, and play it until the end. You can manage that, can’t you—say, for another ten minutes—until the Rat is dead!”

Billy Kane’s hands tightened on the table edge. It was not only the words, it was the eyes, and the face that were working now, that seemed to possess some deadly eloquence.

“What do you mean?” Billy Kane steadied his voice.

“It won’t take long to tell you,” said the Rat roughly. “You’ve been here long enough to know that apart from the old cobbler and his wife upstairs, who mind their own business and are always deaf when they don’t want to hear, this place is sound-proof to revolver shots. Well, the game is up to-night. Your game—and my game! I’ve got one or two little things to do here, and then I’m going; but I’m going to leave the Rat behind—dead.”

Billy Kane’s fingers began to drum a light tattoo on the table. It was strange that he could force his fingers to do that with an air of such apparent unconcern. He was laboring under no delusions. He was fully conscious that there was no bluff in the other’s words, that he was actually sitting there and facing death in the most literal sense of the term. The Rat’s reputation was quite enough in itself to make it certain that the man would not hesitate in putting his threat into execution. And then, besides, there were strange stirrings in his mind now that were not comforting things. The Rat, cognizant of it all the time, had deliberately let him, Billy Kane, play the role—and the drama was to end with the Rat’s death. It seemed horribly logical. It would let the Rat out of _her_ clutches to-night, for instance, and leave only a dead Rat as prey for the police. He started involuntarily. Was that it? His fingers stopped their movements. Suppose he warned the Rat that the police were coming now? No! That would only cause the Rat to hurry—and to shoot the sooner. Well then, suppose the police found _two_ Rats here? It would not save Billy Kane, but it would end the career of one of the most infamous scoundrels in the United States—and it would pay his debt to her! If he could only stave the man off a little, fence for time!

He could have laughed out wildly at the mocking irony of it. He was praying now for the police to come! She would lead them, or some of them, through that secret door, wouldn’t she?—though they would guard both doors, take no chances, even while they would hardly expect to find anyone here. The Rat was standing with his back to the secret door, and Billy Kane’s eyes swept past the other now in a well-simulated vacant, wavering way—and fell again upon the Rat.

The man was leaning a little farther over the table now, his lips parted in a vicious smile. It was as though, innate in the other, was an unholy joy to be derived from a victim’s plight, a joy that he sought to augment by making his victim writhe the more if he could.

“And so you played the Rat, did you?” The Rat was sneering again. “Well, you found out a lot more than was good for you, didn’t you? There was a woman, wasn’t there? Maybe she didn’t introduce herself because she thought you knew her well enough; but maybe you’re entitled to know something about her, because she’s one of the reasons why you’re going to snuff out in a few minutes.” His voice rose suddenly in a furious burst of blasphemy. “Blast her!” he snarled. “She went too far! She thought she could make me dance every time she cracked her little whip, did she? She’ll wish now, if there’s any wishing where she’s gone, that she’d stayed up on the Avenue with the rest of the swells where she belongs, and left her infernal, nosey charities on the East Side alone. Margaret Blaine—the banker’s daughter! Ha, ha! She had it in for me because a girl she was interested in down here went and jumped in the river. See? She swore she’d put me through one way or another for that. And then she stumbled on a pal of mine the night he croaked off, and found some papers on him that put me to the bad for fair. And that wised her up to a lot more. And then, curse her, she tumbled to the game here, and—well, I guess you know the hand she played.” He laughed raucously. “I guess you’d ought to! But you needn’t worry about it any more! She’s gone out—Billy Kane—understand? She went out—for keeps—at ten o’clock to-night.”

Billy Kane’s eyes stole to the secret door again. He remembered the fascination with which he had watched it slowly open on the night he had lain there on the bed, and Karlin, in the hands of the police now, had sat at the bedside, and Red Vallon had been here at the table. And it seemed now as though the door moved again as it had moved that night. But he could not be sure. Perhaps it was his imagination that was father to the wish—and he dared not look steadily, or too long in that direction.

He brushed his hand across his eyes. He understood well enough now why the Rat had been indifferent to what Shaky Liz, or the Cherub, or any of them, might hold over him—there would be no Rat, if he, Billy Kane, in the Rat’s stead, were murdered. And the Rat believed, of course, that she—her name was Margaret—Margaret Blaine—that she was dead. But he, Billy Kane, was playing for time, wasn’t he? And the Rat, in his hideous propensity for a cat-and-mouse game, seemed quite willing to talk.

“You killed her!” Billy Kane’s ejaculation was one of stunned incredulity. “But—but she threatened me, when she thought I was you, by saying that if anything happened to her the evidence against you would be produced just the same.”

“Sure, she did!” leered the Rat. “In twenty-four hours after her disappearance. And it’ll be twenty-four hours all right before they have any proof of that. It wasn’t pulled off where a howl would go up ten minutes after she snuffed out! Sure, in twenty-four hours! Well, I’m in no hurry, am I? In twenty-four _minutes_ the Rat—that’s you—won’t need to care what busts loose! It’ll save _me_ a lot of trouble if they find the Rat sprawled out on the floor with a bullet through him, won’t it?”

The door! Had it moved inward a bare fraction of an inch, as it had that other night? There would have been time by now, just time, for her and the police to have got here. Was that a widening crack along that panel there—or only a shadow flung with taunting malice by the murky light? No—it moved now! He was sure of it. It moved!

He forced himself to laugh in a short, nervous way.

“I don’t see how that lets you out,” he mumbled. “What’s to become of you if the Rat’s found dead?”

The Rat was moving back from the table to the side wall of the den.

“I’ll show you,” said the Rat, with an ugly grin. “And don’t move—you understand? I’m a dead shot, and I’m not risking anything by being a few feet farther away. You’d only go out a little sooner, and miss something that’ll maybe sweeten your last moments—see?” His revolver still covering Billy Kane, he raised his left hand and pressed against the wall. A small panel door swung outward. “There’s nothing in there!” mocked the Rat. “That’s the secret she was forever talking about having discovered, and that’s the place she looted all right, and where she got the dope about a lot of our plans, and kept me from wising up the crowd about it in order to save my own skin. But there’s a thing or two she didn’t know.” His hand crept farther along the wall, and pressed suddenly against it again, and now a full board-length of the panelling slid away. Something metallic fell with a thud to the floor—and then Billy Kane was on his feet, clinging with a fierce, unconscious grip to the table.

He had forgotten the police and that secret door at the far end of the room, forgotten the peril in which he stood, forgotten that ugly black muzzle of a revolver in the other’s hand. His mind and brain seemed to be reeling. Some inhuman devil’s trick was being played upon him. That was one of those iron crutch shafts, painted to resemble grained wood, that the Rat was picking up—yes, and fitting it now with deft, accustomed fingers to the armpiece! The Rat—the Man with the Crutch—the murderer of David Ellsworth—the man whose very rôle he had taken upon himself and played!

“You!” he cried, and swayed at the table. And then passion seized him. “You hound of hell!” he shouted hoarsely. “The Man with the Crutch—it was you who killed David Ellsworth!”

“Sit down!” The Rat’s lips were thinned, merciless; the revolver edged forward. “Well, what about it! Why don’t you say Peters, too? You stuck your nose pretty deep into that!”

Billy Kane mechanically sank back in his chair.

“So you’ve got it, have you?” jeered the Rat. “Sure, the Man with the Crutch was me! And you, you fool, through your cursed interference with Red Vallon, put the police on my trail for Peters’ murder. Well, I’m going to let you be the Man with the Crutch too—as well as the Rat. That’ll let me out on both counts!” He stood the crutch up against the wall, and from the opening drew forth some clothes and flung them down beside the crutch. “Get the idea? This is the costume that goes with the crutch—sort of reserve stock. Understand? It wasn’t always convenient to come here as the Rat, or leave here as the Man with the Crutch—or the other way around, if you like. I’ll leave the stuff there where it’ll show up, and the police can put two and two together the same as you have. And that answers your question as to what is to become of me. I am a gentleman of several parts, and I can spare _two_ of them. What’s left is none of your business, and anyway I’m getting tired of this, and I’m pretty near ready to go. But there’s one thing more—there were some rubies you were looking for, weren’t there, besides the ones you’ve been taking charge of and so kindly placed in that bag there a few minutes ago without giving me the trouble of making you hand them over?” Again his left hand, thrust back of him, sought the interior of the opening, and came out with a number of small plush trays piled one on top of another, the topmost flashing and scintillating now with its score of fiery, blood-red stones. “You were looking for these, weren’t you?” prodded the Rat, with a chuckle. “Well, you had ’em here with you all the time!”

Billy Kane was fighting desperately for self-control. Could they hear outside there? The man was condemning himself out of his own mouth! God, could they _hear_ out there—did they understand that this man had murdered David Ellsworth, and that Billy Kane was clear! He met the Rat’s eyes with deliberate defiance now. More! Everything! The man must be led into telling everything—he had not told enough yet to make it sure—and perhaps they had not heard it all.

“And Peters,” he rasped out. “You killed Peters, too—Peters, who helped you kill David Ellsworth! Weren’t you satisfied with your share, that you had to steal his?”

The Rat had advanced to the table, and, setting down the trays, always with his revolver covering Billy Kane, had begun to pour the contents of one tray at a time into the open hand bag. He stopped now, and stared at Billy Kane in a sort of contemptuous surprise.

“So that’s the way you doped it out, is it?” he said, and laughed raucously. “And you’re kind to Peters, aren’t you? Peters, who wouldn’t harm a fly! I killed Peters because his evidence at the inquest finished Billy Kane for fair, and I didn’t want that evidence changed. It was _me_ Peters saw coming down the back stairs and entering the library that night—only he thought it was you. Do you take me for a fool? I knew you’d see the report in the papers, and that, knowing there was something wrong about Peters’ story, you’d hunt Peters out and have a show-down, and that between you there was a chance of you getting at more of the truth than I wanted, and that Peters would then retract his evidence. Get me?

“I wasn’t for letting you out. I’d been banking on you to do a lot for me. The only guy that was in with me on that deal was Jackson—and he’s dead—just as the Rat is going to be. I spotted you long ago when you used to nose around here for that old fool who pitched his money away. I watched you quite a while before I was dead sure I could pass for you—and then I warmed up to Jackson. The rest was easy. We croaked old Ellsworth, and planted you. That gave me the coin I wanted to do what I was getting ready for—to pull out of this Rat’s game forever. It was getting too fierce with that cursed woman on my heels. So before I pulled the Ellsworth trick, I set things going to get her too, and passed the word around that I was going away for a while, so’s there’d be no chance of her tumbling to anything—and I stood pat as the Man with the Crutch. And then you acted like a Christmas tree shaking itself in my lap. There were a lot of things coming along with certain friends of mine, and with you playing the Rat and getting away with it, and with you there to stand for it if anything broke wrong, it looked like a cinch to nose them out at the tape on the little deals I’d started for them, and that would let me get away with the whole wad myself. See?”

The Rat was pouring the rubies from the trays into the hand bag again, his eyes glinting with a curious rapacious craftiness; and then, coming to one of the trays whose corner had been cut off, he laughed outright in a sort of self-complacent mirth.

“Do you remember this?” he taunted. “The night I croaked old Ellsworth I beat it for here on the quiet the minute I left the house, and I put the trays and half of the stones into that hiding place there, and then I changed my clothes and wore my crutch over to where I lived when I wasn’t at home here, and hid the rest of the stuff there. You know that, all right! Blast you, you got it, and you nearly queered me! The Rat was supposed to be away then—see? Well, that night when I was limping around with my crutch, I was told the Rat was back—and it didn’t take me long to find out your game. It looked like a piece of luck that was too good to be true! It suited me—I was for it hard. The only thing I was afraid of was that you might quit, so I left that ruby and the piece of tray for you on the table. I thought I knew you. It would give you a start, all right—but it would look as though this was where you were going to get the clue you needed, and you’d stick for fair.”

The Rat attempted to close the bag, and snarled at the bent catches. He finally fastened one of them partially, tossed the bag on the floor behind him, and, his face suddenly working again, flung his revolver arm out toward Billy Kane.