to hold himself up as an example to be followed--eh? Well, that was
Millman's privilege, wasn't it? And, after all, how honest was Millman?
Was there anybody who was intrinsically honest? If there were, it might
be different--it might be worth while then to be honest. But Millman
could afford that hundred thousand, Millman had said so himself; it
didn't mean anything to Millman. If, for instance, it took the last
penny Millman had to make good that money there might be something in
honesty to talk about--but that sort of honesty didn't exist, either in
Millman, or in any other human being. He, Dave Henderson, had yet to see
any one who would sacrifice all and everything in an absolutely literal
way upon the altar of honesty as a principle. Every one had his price.
His, Dave Henderson's, price had been one hundred thousand dollars; he,
Dave Henderson, wouldn't steal, say, a hundred dollars--and a hundred
dollars was probably an even greater matter to him than a hundred
thousand was to Millman, and--
He brought his mental soliloquy roughly to an end, with a low, half
angry, half perturbed exclamation. What had brought him to weigh the
pros and cons of honesty, anyway! He had never been disturbed on that
score in those five years behind prison bars! Why now? It wasn't that
that concerned him, that held him now in the throes of a bitter mental
conflict, that dismayed him, that tormented him, that mocked at the hell
of torture he would--if he yielded--have endured in vain, that grinned
at him out of the darkness sardonically, and awaited with biting irony
his decision. It didn't matter what degree of honesty Millman possessed;
it was Millman's act, in its most material and tangible sense, that
threatened now to crush him.
Both hands, like gnarled knobs, went above his head. He was a thief;
but, by God, he was a man! If he kept that money there, he became a
puling, whining beggar, sneaking and crawling his way through life
on--_charity!_ Charity! Oh, yes, he might find a softer name for it;
but, by any name, he would none the less feed to the day he died, like
a parasite and a damned puny, pitiful whelp and cur, on another
man's--charity!
“Give it back--no!” he whispered fiercely through set lips. “I've paid
too much--it's mine--I've paid for it with the sweat of hell! It's mine!
I will not give it back!”
“Are you sure?” whispered that inner voice. “It begins to look as though
there were something in life, say, an _honest_ pride, that was worth
more than money--even to you, Dave.”
He sprang restively from the bed to the floor, and groped his way across
the room to the light. He was in for a night of it--subconsciously he
realized that, subconsciously he realized that he would not sleep,
but subconsciously he was prompted to get his clothes off and obtain,
lacking mental ease, what physical comfort he could.
He turned on the light, and the act diverted his thoughts momentarily.
He did not seem to remember that he had ever turned off that light--but
rather, in fact, that the light had been on when Dago George had left
the room, and he, Dave Henderson, had flung himself down on the bed.
It was rather strange! His eyes circled the room curiously, narrowed
suddenly as they fell upon the dress-suit case, and upon one of the
catches that appeared to have become unfastened--and with a bound he
reached the dress-suit case, and flung up the lid.
The money was gone.
VI--HALF AN ALLEY
MOTIONLESS, save that his lips twitched queerly, Dave Henderson stood
erect, and stared down into the pillaged dress-suit case. And then his
hands clenched slowly--tightened--and grew white across the knuckles.
The money was gone! The agony of those days and nights, when, wounded,
he had fled from the police, the five years of prison torment which he
had endured, seemed to pass with lightning swiftness in review before
him--and to mock him, and to become a ghastly travesty. The money was
gone!
The pillaged dress-suit case seemed to leer and mock at him, too. He
might have saved himself that little debate, which he had not settled,
and which was based upon a certain element of ethics that involved the
suggestion of charity. It was settled for him now. He _owed_ Millman now
one hundred thousand dollars, only the choice as to whether he would pay
it or not was no longer his, and----
Damn it! _The money was gone!_ Could he not grasp that one, single,
concrete, vital fact, and act upon it, without standing here, with his
brain, like some hapless yokel's, agog and maundering? The money was
gone! Gone! Where? When? How? He could only have been asleep for a short
time, surely. He wrenched his watch suddenly from his pocket. Three
o'clock! It was three o'clock in the morning! Five hours! He had been
asleep five hours, then! He must have slept very soundly that any one
could have entered the room without arousing him!
His lips hardened. He was alert enough now, both mentally and
physically. He stepped over to the door. It was still locked. His eyes
swept around the room. The window, then! What about the window?
He felt suddenly for his money-belt beneath his underclothing, as he
started across the room. The belt was there. That, at least, was safe. A
twisted smile came to his lips. Naturally! His brain was exhibiting some
glimmer of sense and cohesion now! It was evident enough that no one,
since no one knew anything about it, had been specifically after that
package of banknotes. It could only have been the work of a sneak
thief--who had probably stumbled upon the greatest stroke of luck in his
whole abandoned career. It was undoubtedly a quarter of the city wherein
sneak thieves were bred! The man would obviously not have been fool
enough, with a fortune already in his possession, to have risked the
frisking of his, Dave Henderson's, sleeping person! Was the man, then,
an inmate of The Iron Tavern, say, that greasy waiter, for instance;
or had he gained entrance from outside; or, since the theft might have
taken place hours ago, was it a predatory hanger-on at the bar who had
sneaked his way upstairs, and----
The window, too, was locked! It was queer! Both window and door locked!
How had the man got in--and got out again?
Mechanically, he unlocked and raised the window--and with a quick jerk
of his body forward leaned out excitedly. Was this the answer--this
platform of a fire escape that ran between his window and the next? But
his window had been _locked!_
He stood there hesitant. Should he arouse Dago George? He could depend
upon and trust Dago George, thanks to Nicolo Capriano; but to go to Dago
George meant that confidences must be led up to which he desired to give
to no man. His brain seemed suddenly to become frantic. The money was
gone--his, or Millman's, or the devil's, it didn't matter which now--the
money was gone, swallowed up in the black of that night out there,
without a clue that offered him a suggestion even on which to act. But
he couldn't stand here inactive like a fool, could he? Nor--his brain
jeered at him now--could he go out and prowl around the city streets,
and ask each passer-by if he or she had seen a package of banknotes
whose sum was one hundred thousand dollars! What else was there, then,
to do, except to arouse Dago George? Dago George, from what Nicolo
Capriano had said, would have many strings to pull--underground strings.
That was it--_underground strings!_ It wasn't a _police_ job!
He turned from the window, took a step back across the room, and halted
again abruptly. _What was that?_ It came again--a faint, low, rustling
sound, and it seemed to come from the direction of the fire escape.
In an instant he was back at the window, but this time he crouched down
at the sill. A second passed while he listened, and from the edge of the
sash strained his eyes out into the darkness, and then his hand crept
into his side pocket and came out with his revolver. Some one, a dark
form, blacker than the night shadows out there, was crawling from the
next window to the fire escape.
Dave Henderson's lips thinned. Just a second more until that “some one”
was half-way out and half-way in, and at a disadvantage and--_now!_
With a spring, lithe and quick as a cat, Dave Henderson was through the
window, and the dark form was wriggling and squirming in his grasp, and
a low cry came--and Dave Henderson swore sharply under his breath.
It was a woman! A woman! Well, that didn't matter! One hundred thousand
dollars was gone from his dress-suit case, and this woman was
crawling to the fire escape from the next room at three o'clock in the
morning--that was what mattered!
They were on the iron platform now, and he pushed her none too gently
along it toward the window of his own room--into the light. And then
his hands dropped from her as though suddenly bereft of power, and as
suddenly lifted again, and, almost fierce in their intensity, gripped at
her shoulders, and forced her face more fully into the light.
“Teresa!” he whispered hoarsely. “You--Teresa!”
She was trying to smile, but it was a tremulous effort. The great, dark
eyes, out of a face that was ivory white, lifted to his, and faltered,
and dropped again.
“It's you, Teresa--isn't it?” His voice, his face, his eyes, were full
of incredulous wonder.
Her lips were still quivering in their smile. She nodded her head in a
sort of quaint, wistful way.
The blood was pounding and surging in his veins. Teresa! Teresa was
here, standing here before him! Not that phantom picture that had
come to him so often in the days and nights since he had left San
Francisco--the glorious eyes, half veiled by the long lashes, though
they would not look at him, were real; this touch of his hands upon her
shoulders, this touch that thrilled him, was real, and----
Slowly his hands fell away from her; and as though to kill and stifle
joy, and mock at gladness, and make sorry sport of ecstasy, there came
creeping upon him doubt, black, ugly, and bitter as gall.
Yes, it was Teresa! And at sight of her there had come suddenly and
fully, irrefutably, the knowledge that he cared for her; that love,
which comes at no man's bidding, had come to him for her. Yes, it was
Teresa! But what was she doing here? In view of that money, gone in the
last few hours from his dress-suit case, what _could_ Teresa Capriano be
doing here in the next room to his?
He laughed a little, low, sharply--and turned his head away. Love! How
could he love--and doubt! How could he love--and condemn the one he
loved unheard! He looked at her again now; and the blood in his veins,
as though over-riding now some obstacle that had dammed its flow, grew
swifter, and his pulse quickened. How could he doubt--Teresa!
But it was Teresa who spoke.
“We are standing here in the light, and we can be seen from everywhere
around,” she said in a low tone. “You--there is danger. Turn the light
off in your room.”
“Yes,” he said mechanically, and stepping back into his room, turned off
the light. He was beside her again the next instant. Danger! His mind
was mulling over that. What danger? Why had she said that? What was
its significance in respect of her presence here? The questions came
crowding to his lips. “Danger? What do you mean?” he asked tensely. “And
how did you get here, Teresa? And why? Was it your father who sent you?
There is something that has gone wrong? The police----”
She shook her head.
“My father died the night you went away,” she said.
He drew back, startled. Nicolo Capriano--dead!
Her father--dead! He could not seem somehow to visualize Nicolo Capriano
as one dead. The man's mentality had so seemed to triumph over his
physical ills, that, sick though he had been, Nicolo Capriano had seemed
to personify and embody vitality and life itself. Dead! He drew in his
breath sharply. Then she was alone, this little figure standing here in
the darkness beside him, high up here in the world of night, with a
void beneath and around them, strangely, curiously cut off, even in a
physical sense, from any other human touch or sympathy--but his.
He reached out and found her hand, and laid it between both his own.
“I--I'm no good at words,” he fumbled. “They--they won't come. But he
was the best friend I ever, had in life, too. And so I----”
“Don't say that! Don't! You mustn't! Do you hear, you mustn't!” Her
hand, that lay in his, was suddenly clenched, and she was striving to
draw it away. “It isn't true! I--that is why I came--I came to tell you.
He was not your friend. He--he betrayed you.”
He held her hand tighter--in a grip that made her efforts to escape
pitifully impotent. And, almost fiercely, he drew her closer, trying to
read her face in the darkness.
“He betrayed me! Nicolo Capriano _betrayed_ me!” His mind was suddenly
a riot. Incredulity and amazement mingled with a sickening fear that her
words were literally true--the money was gone! And yet--and yet--Nicolo
Capriano--a traitor! His words rasped now. “Do you know what you are
saying, Teresa? Quick! Answer me! Do you know what you are saying?”
“I know only too well.” Her voice had broken a little now. “I know that
the money was taken from your room to-night. Please let my hand
go. I--you will hate me in, a moment--for--for, after all, I am his
daughter. Will you please let me go, and I will tell you.”
Mechanically he released her.
She turned half away from him, and leaned on the iron hand-rail of the
platform, staring down into the blackness beneath her.
“Dago George took it--an hour ago,” she said.
“Dago George!” Dave Henderson straightened. “Ah, so it was Dago George,
was it!” He laughed with sudden menace, and turned impulsively toward
the window of his room.
“Wait!” she said, and laid a hand detainingly upon his sleeve. “The
money, I am sure, is safe where it is until daylight, anyway. I--I have
more to tell you. It--it is not easy to tell. I--I am his daughter.
Dago George was one of my father's accomplices in the old days in San
Francisco. That letter which I wrote for my father meant nothing that
it said, it contained a secret code that made you a marked man from the
moment you delivered it here, and----”
“You, too!” There was bitter hurt in Dave Henderson's voice. And then
suddenly he threw his shoulders back. “I don't believe you!” he flung
out fiercely. “I don't understand how you got here, or what you are
doing here, but you _wrote_ that letter--and I don't believe it was a
trap. Do you understand, Teresa--I don't believe you!”
She raised her head--and it seemed that even in the darkness he caught
the sudden film of tears in her eyes, and saw the lips part in a
quivering smile. She shook her head slowly then.
“It was not what I wrote,” she said. “It was what my--what he added
afterwards when he signed it. _Con amore_--that was the secret code,
and----”
“But you did not know that, then--Teresa!” There was a strange,
triumphant uplift in his voice. “I remember! It was while you were out
of the room. Did I not say I did not believe you!”
Her lips were still quivering, but the smile was gone. “No, I did not
know then,” she said. “But his shame is my shame, nothing can alter
that--I am his daughter. I did not know it until after you had gone--and
then--my father had a--a sudden attack--and that night he died. I--there
was only one thing that I could do. I had no way of warning you except
to try and get here before you did, or at least to get here before Dago
George had gone too far. There--there were things I had to do in San
Francisco--and then I came as quickly as I could. I got here to-night.
I found that you were already here--just a little ahead of me, and that
you had given Dago George the letter. I had only one chance then--to
make Dago George believe that I had come, since my father was dead, to
carry on the plot against you where my father had left off. Dago George
had no suspicions. He knew me.” Her voice held a sudden merciless note.
“I was a Capriano. He told me that you were upstairs here, drugged, and
he gave me the room next to yours.”
“Drugged!” Dave Henderson passed his hand across his eyes. That
accounted for a great deal! He remembered the slight headache with which
he had awakened; he was suddenly conscious of it now. “Drugged!” he
repeated.
“In a way,” she said, “I was too late. But Dago George, of course, did
not know any details, and he had not gone any further than that. He had
just left you in your room when I came. He had not, of course, heard
from my father, since my father was dead, and he drugged you so that,
during the night, he could have free access to your room and your
belongings and find out what he could about you. I--I thought to turn
him from that purpose by telling him enough of the truth to make him
content to wait patiently and watch your movements until you had the
money in your possession. Do--do you understand? He said the effects of
the drug would wear off in a few hours, and I meant to warn you then,
and--and we would both make our escape from here. I--that is why I told
you there was danger. Dago George would stop at nothing. He has a band
of men here in New York that I know are as unscrupulous as he is; and
this place here, I am only too sure, has been the trap for more than one
of his victims.”
She paused. Her voice, though guarded, had grown excited, and a little
breathless.
It was a moment before Dave Henderson spoke.
“And you?” His voice was hoarse. “If Dago George had found you out you
wouldn't have had a chance for your life! And you knew that?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I knew that. But that has no place here. There
was no other way.”
“And you did this for me?” His hands reached out, and fell upon
the girl's slight shoulders, and tightened there. “You did this for
me--Teresa?”
“I did it because there was no other thing to do, because--because”--her
voice lost its steadiness---“it was my father's guilt.”
He drew her closer, with a strange, gentle, remorseless strength.
“And for no other reason--Teresa?” he whispered. “For only that? If it
had not been your father? If he had had nothing to do with it? If it
had been only me?” Her face was very close to his now, so close that the
quick, sudden panting of her breath was upon his cheek, so close that
her lips were almost warm upon his own.
She put out her hands, and pressed them with a curious gentleness
against his face to ward him off.
“Don't!” Her voice was very low. “Have you forgotten that I am the
daughter of the man who meant--who meant perhaps to take your life; that
I am the daughter of a criminal?”
“And I”--he had her wrists now, and was holding the soft, trembling
hands against his cheeks--“I am a thief.”
“Oh, don't!” She was almost crying now. “You--you don't understand.
There is more. I meant, if I could, to take that money from you myself.”
In sheer astonishment he let her go, and drew back a step. She seemed to
waver unsteadily on her feet there in the darkness for an instant,
and her hand groped out to the platform railing for support; and then
suddenly she stood erect, her face full toward him, her head thrown back
a little on her shoulders.
“I meant to get it, if I could--to give it back to those to whom it
belongs. And I still mean to.” Her voice was quiet now, quivering a
little, but bravely under control, “All my life has been a lie. I lived
a lie the night I let you go away without a word of protest about what
you were going to do. I do not mean to throw the blame upon my father,
but with his death all those old ties were broken. Will you try to
understand me? I must either now go on in the old way, or go straight
with my conscience and with God. I could not bargain with God or my
conscience. It was all or nothing. I had a share in enabling you to
hoodwink the police. Therefore if you came into possession of that money
again, I was as much a thief as you were, and as guilty. But I owed it
to you, above all other things, to warn you of your danger; and so I
came here--to warn you first--and afterwards, when you were safe from
Dago George's reach, to watch you, and get the money myself if I could.
Do you understand?
“When I came here to-night, I did not think that you had yet got the
money; but something that Dago George said made me think that perhaps
you had, and that perhaps he thought so, too. And so I sat there in my
room in the darkness waiting until all was quiet in the house, and I
could steal into your room and search, if I could get in through either
door or window; and then, whether I got in or not, or whether the search
was successful or not, I meant to wait until the drug had worn itself
off sufficiently to enable me to arouse you, and tell you to get away.
“And then, I do not know what time it was, I heard some one steal up the
stairs and go to the door of your room, and work at the lock very,
very quietly, and go into your room, and move around in there. I was
listening then with my ear to the partition, and I could just make
out the sounds, no more. I should never have heard anything had I been
asleep; there was never enough noise to have awakened me.
“The footsteps went downstairs, then, and I opened my door and waited
until I heard them, louder, as though caution were no longer necessary,
on the second landing; and then I stole downstairs myself. There was a
light in Dago George's room. It came through the fanlight. The door was
closed. But by leaning over the banister of the lower flight of stairs,
I could see into the far end of the room through the fanlight. He had a
package in his hand. It was torn at one corner, and from this he pulled
out what I could see were a number of yellow-back banknotes. He looked
at these for a moment, then replaced them in the package, and went to
his safe. He knelt down in front of it, laid the package on the floor
beside him, and began to open the safe. I heard some one moving above
then, and I tiptoed back, and hid in what seemed to be a small private
dining room on the second floor. I heard some one go quietly down the
stairs, and then I came back here to my room to wait until I could
arouse you. The money was in Dago George's safe. It would be there until
morning at least, and on that account it no longer concerned me for the
moment. And then after a long time I heard you move in your room. It was
safer to come this way than to go out into the hall, for I did not know
what Dago George might intend to do with you, or with me either, now
that he had the money. He would not hesitate to get rid of us both if
his cunning prompted him to believe that was his safest course. And I
was afraid of that. Only you and I, besides himself, knew anything about
that money--and he had got it into his possession. Do you understand?
When I heard you move, I started through the window to go to you,
and--and you saw me.”
Dave Henderson had sunk his elbows on the iron railing, his chin resting
in his hands, and was staring at the strange, fluted sky-line where the
buildings jabbed their queer, uneven points up into the night. It was a
long time before he spoke.
“It's kind of queer, Teresa,” he said slowly. “It's kind of queer.
You're something like a friend of--like a man I know. It's kind of
queer. Well, you've given me my chance, you've risked your life to give
me my chance, you've played as square as any woman God ever made--and
now what are you going to do?”
She drew in her breath sharply, audibly, as though startled, as
though his words were foreign, startlingly foreign to anything she had
expected.
“I--have I any choice?” she answered. “I know where the money is, and I
must notify the authorities. I must tell the police so that they can get
it.”
Dave Henderson's eyes, a curious smile in them that the darkness hid,
shifted from the sky-line to the little dark figure before him.
“And do you think I will let you tell the police where that money is?”
He laughed quietly. “Do you? Did you think you could come and tell me
just where it was, and then calmly leave me, and walk into the police
station with the news--and get away with it?”
She shook her head.
“I know!” she said. “You think it's a woman's inconsistency. It isn't!
I didn't know what you would do, I don't know now. But I have told you
all. I have told you what I intend to do, if I possibly can. I had to
tell you first. If I was to be honest all the way with myself, I had
first of all to be honest with you. After that I was free. I don't know
what you will do. I don't see what you can do now. But if you keep me
from notifying the police to-night--there is to-morrow--and after that
another to-morrow. No matter what happens, to you, or to me, I am going
through with this. I”--her voice choked suddenly--“I have to.”
Dave Henderson straightened up.
“I believe you!” he said under his breath. “After what you've done, I'd
be a fool if I didn't. And you're offering me a square fight, aren't
you, Teresa?” He was laughing in that quiet, curious way again. “Well,
I'm not sure I want to fight. Just before I found out that money was
gone, I was wondering if I wouldn't give it back myself.”
“_Dave!_” It was the first time she had ever called him by his name, and
it came now from her lips in a quick, glad cry. Her hands caught at both
his arms. “Dave, do you mean that? Do you? Dave, it _is_ true! You're
honest, after all!”
He turned his head away, a sudden hard and bitter smile on his lips.
“No,” he said. “And I haven't made up my mind yet about giving it back,
anyway. But maybe I had other reasons for even getting as far as I did.
Not honesty. I can't kid, myself on that. I am a thief.”
Her fingers were gripping at his arms with all their strength, as though
she were afraid that somehow he would elude and escape her.
“You _were_ a thief”--it seemed as though her soul were in the
passionate entreaty in her voice now--“and I was the daughter of a
criminal, with all the hideous memories of crime and evil that stretch
back to childhood. But that is in the past, Dave, if we will only leave
it there, isn't it? It--it doesn't have to be that way in all the years
that are coming. God gives us both a chance to--to make good. I'm going
to take mine. Won't you take yours, Dave? You were a thief, but how
about from now on?”
He stood rigid, motionless; and again his face was turned away from her
out into the darkness.
“From now on.” He repeated the words in a low, wondering way.
“Yes!” she cried eagerly. “From now on, Dave. Let us get away from
here, and go and notify the police that Dago George has that money,
and--and--and then, you see, the police will come and get it, and return
it where it belongs, and that will end it all.”
It was a moment before he turned toward her again, and then his face was
white, and drawn, and haggard. He shook his head.
“I can't do that,” he said hoarsely. “There are more reasons than one
why I can't do that.” Her hands were clasping his arms. He forced them
gently from their hold now, and took them in his own, and drew her
closer to him, and held her there. “And one of those reasons is you,
Teresa. You've played fair with me, and I'll play fair with you. I--I
can't buy you with a fake. I----”
“Dave!” She struggled to free herself. “Dave,
“Wait!” His voice was rough with emotion. “We'll talk straight--there
isn't any other way. I--I think I loved you, Teresa, that night, the
first time I saw you, when you stood on the threshold of your father's
room. To-night I know that I love you, and-------”
“Dave!”
His hold had brought her very close again to him. He could see a great
crimson tide flood and sweep the white and suddenly averted face.
“Wait!” he said again. “I think I have learned other things as well
to-night--that you care, Teresa, too, but that the stolen money stands
between you and me. That is what I mean by buying you, and your love,
with a fake. If I returned the money on that account it would not be
because I had suddenly become honest--which is the one thing above all
else that you ask for. It would not be for honesty's sake, but because
I was a hypocrite and dishonest with you, and was letting the money go
because I was getting something for it that was worth more to me than
the money--because I was making a good _bargain_ that was cheap at a
hundred thousand dollars. I can't make myself believe that I feel a
sense of honesty any more to-night than I did the night I first took
that money, and I would be a cur to try to make you think I did.”
He could feel her hands tremble in his; he could see the sweet face, the
crimson gone from it, deathly pale again. Her lips seemed quivering for
words, but she did not speak. And suddenly he dropped her hands; and his
own hands clenched, and clenched again, at his sides. There was biting
mockery at himself stirring and moiling in his brain. “You fool! You
fool!” a voice cried out. “She's yours! Take her! All you've got to do
is change your tune; she'll believe you--so if you're not honest, why
don't you _steal_ her?”
“Listen!” It seemed as though he were forcing himself to speak against
his will. “There is another reason; but, first, so that you will
understand, there is Millman. It is too long a story to tell you all of
it. Millman is the man I spoke of--who is honest--like you. I told
him when I was in prison where the money was, and I thought he had
double-crossed me. Instead, he gave it back to me to-night--that is how
I got it so soon.” He laughed out sharply, harshly. “But Millman said if
I didn't give it back to the estate of the man from whom I took it,
he would pay it out of his own pocket, because, for me, he had been a
thief, too. Do you understand? That's why I said I didn't know what I
was going to do. My God--I--I don't know yet. I know well enough that if
the police were tipped off to-night, and got the money, that would let
Millman out of paying it; but that's not the point. I can't squeal now,
can I? I can't go sneaking to the police, and say: 'There it is in
Dago George's safe; I can't get my own paws on it again, so I've turned
honest, and you can go and take it!' I wouldn't like to face Millman
and tell him the money had gone back _that_ way--because I couldn't help
it--because it had been taken from me, and I was doing the smug act in a
piker play!”
She stepped toward him quickly.
“Dave,” she whispered tremulously, “what do you mean? What are you going
to do?”
“I'm going to get that money--from Dago George,” he said in a flat
voice. “I'll get that money if I go through hell again for it, as I've
been through hell for it already. Then maybe it'll go back where it came
from, and maybe it won't; but if it does go back, it'll go back from
_Dave Henderson_--not Dago George!”
She clutched frantically at his arm.
“No, no!” she cried out.
“Listen!” he said. “You have said you meant that money should be
returned if it were within your power to accomplish it. I understand
that. Well, no matter what the result, to Dago George or to me, I am
going down there to get that money--if I can. But if I get it, I do not
promise to return it. Remember that! I promise nothing. So you are free
to leave here; and if you think, and perhaps you will be right, that
the surest way to get the money back is to go instantly to the police,
I shall not blame you. If the police can beat me to it before I settle
with Dago George, they win--that's all. But in any case, it is not safe
for you stay in this place, and so----”
“I was not thinking of that!” she said in a low voice. “Nor shall I
leave this house--until you do. I--I am afraid--for you. You do not know
Dago George.”
He did not stir for a moment; and then, with some great, overwhelming
impulse upon him, he took her face in both his hands, and held it there
upturned to his, and looked into the great dark eyes until the lashes
dropped and hid them from his gaze.
“Teresa,” he whispered low, “there are some things that are worse than
being a thief. I couldn't lay down my hand now, if I wanted to, could
I? I can't quit now, can I? I can't _crawl. I_ took that money; and,
whether I mean to give it back myself, or keep it, I'd rather go out for
good than tell the police it's there, and see the sneer for an honest
man--turned honest because he had lost his nerve, and didn't dare go
after the money and face the risk of a showdown with Dago George, which
was the only way in which he could stay _dishonest_. Teresa, you
see, don't you?” His voice was passionate, hungry in its earnestness.
“Teresa, what would you do--play the game, or quit?”
The lashes lifted, and for a moment the dark eyes looked steadily into
his, and then they were veiled again.
“I will wait here for you,” she said.
VII--THE MAN WITH THE FLASHLIGHT
THE silence seemed like some uncanny, living, breathing thing. It
seemed to beat, and pulsate, until the ear-drums throbbed with it.
It seemed to become some mad, discordant chorus, in which every human
emotion vied with every other one that it might prevail over all the
rest: a savage fury, and a triumphant love; a mighty hope, and a cruel
dismay; joy, and a chill, ugly fear. And the chorus rose and clashed,
and it seemed as though some wild, incoherent battle was joined, until
first one strain after another was beaten down and submerged, and put to
rout, until out of the chaos and turmoil, dominant, supreme, arose fury,
merciless and cold.
Dave Henderson crept along the upper hall. The pocket flashlight in
his hand, one of his purchases on the way East, winked through the
blackness, the round, white ray disclosing for a second's space the head
of the stairs; and blackness fell again.
He began to descend the stairs cautiously. Yes, that was it--fury. Out
of that wild riot in his brain that was what remained now. It drew his
face into hard, pitiless lines, but it left him most strangely cool and
deliberate--and the more pitiless. It was Dago George who was the object
of that fury, not Nicolo Capriano. That was strange, too, in a way! It
was Nicolo Capriano who had done him the greater wrong, for Dago George
was no more than the other's satellite; but Nicolo Capriano's treachery
seemed tempered somehow--by death perhaps--by that slim figure that he
had left standing out there in the darkness perhaps; his brain refused
to reason it out to a logical conclusion; it held tenaciously to Dago
George. It seemed as though there were a literal physical itch at his
finger-tips to reach a throat-hold and choke the oily, lying smile from
the suave, smug face of that hypocritical bowing figure that had offered
him a glass of wine, and, like a damnable hound, had drugged him,
and----
Was that a sound, a sound of movement, of some one stirring below there,
that he heard--or only an exaggerated imagination? He was half-way down
the upper flight of stairs now, and he stopped to listen. No, there
seemed to be nothing--only that silence that palpitated and made noises
of its own; and yet, he was not satisfied; he could have sworn that he
had heard some one moving about.
He went on down the stairs again, but still more cautiously now. There
was no reason why there _shouldn't_ be some one moving about, even at
this hour. It might be Dago George himself. Dago George might not have
gone to bed again yet. It was only an hour, Teresa had said, since
the man had come upstairs and stolen the money. Or it might be some
accomplice who was with Dago George. He remembered Teresa's reference
to the band of blacklegs over whom Dago George was in command; and he
remembered that some one had come down the stairs behind her and Dago
George. But Teresa herself had evidently been unseen, for there had
been no attempt to find or interfere with her. It had probably therefore
been--well, any one!
It presented possibilities.
It might have been an accomplice; or a prowling guest, if there were
other guests in this unsavory hostelry; or a servant, for some unknown
reason nosing about, if any of the disreputable staff slept in the place
at night--the cook, or the greasy waiter, or the bartender, or any of
the rest of them; though, in a place like this, functionaries of that
sort were much more likely to go back to their own homes after their
work was over. It would not be at all unlikely that Dago George, in view
of his outside pernicious activities, kept none of the staff about the
place at night.
Dave Henderson's jaws closed with a vicious snap. Useless speculation of
this sort got him nowhere! He would find out soon enough! If Dago George
were not alone, there were still several hours till daylight; and he
could wait his chance with grim patience. He was concerned with only
one thing--to square accounts with Dago George in a way that would both
satiate his fury, and force the man to disgorge the contents of his
safe.
His jaws tightened. There was but one, single, disturbing factor. If
anything went wrong, Teresa was still upstairs there. In every other
respect the stage was set--for any eventuality. He had even taken the
precaution, before doing anything else, to get their valises, hers and
his, out of the place, since in any case they meant to steal away from
this accursed trap-house of Dago George. It had been simple enough to
dispose of the baggage via the fire escape, and through the yard, and
down the lane, where the valises had found a temporary hiding place in
a shed, whose door, opening on the lane, he had discovered ajar, and
simple enough, with Teresa's help in regaining the fire escape from the
ground, to return in the same way; but he had been actuated by more
than the mere idea of being unimpeded in flight if a critical situation
subsequently arose--though in this, his ulterior motive, he had failed
utterly of success. Teresa had agreed thoroughly in the wisdom of first
removing their belongings; but she had refused positively to accompany
and remain with the baggage herself, as he had hoped he might induce her
to do. “I wouldn't be of any use there, if--if anything happened,”
she had said; “I--I might be of some use here.” Neither argument nor
expostulation had been of any avail. She was still above there--waiting.
He had reached the head of the lower flight of stairs, and now he
halted, and stood motionless. There _was_ a sound from below. It was
neither imagination nor fancy; it was distinct and unmistakable--a low,
rasping, metallic sound.
For an interval of seconds he stood there listening; then he shifted
the flashlight, switched off now, to his left hand, and his right
hand slipped into his pocket for his revolver. He moved forward then
silently, noiselessly, and, as he descended the stairway, paused at
every step to listen intently again. The sound, with short, almost
negligible interruptions, persisted; and, with if now, it seemed as
though he could distinguish the sound of heavy breathing. And now it
seemed, too, as though the blackness were less opaque, as though, while
there was still no object discernible, the hallway below was in a sort
of murk, and as though, from somewhere, light rays, that were either
carefully guarded or had expended, through distance, almost all their
energy, were still striving to pierce the darkness.
Tight-lipped now, a few steps farther down, Dave Henderson leaned out
over the bannister--and hung there tensely, rigidly.
It was like looking upon some weird, uncannily clever effect that had
been thrown upon a moving picture screen. The door of Dago George's room
was wide open, and through this he could see a white circle of light,
the rays thrown away from and in the opposite direction to the door.
They flooded the face of a safe; and, darkly, behind the light itself,
two figures were faintly outlined, one kneeling at the safe, the other
holding a flashlight and standing over the kneeling man's shoulder. And
now the nature of the sounds that he had not been able to define
was obvious--it was the click of a ratchet, the rasp of a bit eating
voraciously into steel, as the kneeling man worked at the face of the
safe.
For a moment, his eyes narrowed, half in sudden, angry menace, half in
perplexity, he hung there gazing on the scene; and then, with all the
caution that he knew, his weight thrown gradually on each separate tread
to guard against a protesting creak, he went on down the stairs.
It was strange--damnably and most curiously strange! Was one of those
figures in there Dago George? If so, it would account for the presence
of a second man--the one Teresa had heard coming down stairs. But, if
so, what was Dago George's game? Was the man going to put up the bluff
that he had been robbed, and was therefore wrecking his own safe? That
was an old gag! But what purpose could it serve Dago George in the
present instance? It wasn't as though he, Dave Henderson, had _confided_
the package to Dago George's keeping, and Dago George could take this
means of cunningly securing it for himself. Dago George had stolen
it--and, logically, the last thing Dago George would do would be to
admit any knowledge of it, let alone flaunt it openly!
At the foot of the stairs, Dave Henderson discarded that theory as
untenable. But if, then, neither one of the two in there was Dago
George--_where was Dago George?_ It was a little beyond attributing
to mere coincidence, the fact that a couple of marauding safe-breakers
should have _happened_ to select Dago George's safe to-night in the
ordinary routine of their nefarious vocation. Coincidence, as an
explanation, wasn't good enough! It looked queer--extremely queer!
Where he had thought that no one, save Millman and himself, had known
anything about the presence of that money in New York to-night, it
appeared that a most amazing number were not only aware of it, but were
intimately interested in that fact!
He smiled a little in the darkness, not pleasantly, as he crept
now, inch by inch, along the hall toward the open door. He, too, was
_interested_ in that package of banknotes in the safe! And, Dago George
or the devil, it mattered very little which, there would be a showdown,
very likely now a grim and very pretty little showdown, before the money
left that room in any one's possession save his own!
From ahead, inside the room, there came a slight clatter, as though
a tool of some sort had been dropped or tossed on the floor. It was
followed by a muttered exclamation, and then a sort of breathless, but
triumphant grunt. And then a voice, in a guttural undertone:
“Dere youse are, sport! Help yerself!”
Dave Henderson crouched back against the wall. He was well along the
hall now, and quite close enough to the doorway of Dago George's private
domain to enable him, given the necessary light, to see the whole
interior quite freely. The door of the safe, in a dismantled condition,
was swung open; strewn on the floor lay the kit of tools through whose
instrumentality the job had been accomplished; and the man with the
flashlight was bending forward, the white ray flooding the inside of the
safe.
There came suddenly now a queer twitching to Dave Henderson's lips, and
it came coincidentally with a sharp exclamation of delight from the
man with the flashlight. In the man's hand was the original package of
banknotes, its torn corner identifying it instantly to Dave Henderson,
and evidencing with equal certainty to its immediate possessor that it
was the object, presumably, which was sought.
And now the man with the flashlight, without turning, reached out and
laid the package on the desk beside the safe. The movement, however,
sent the flashlight's ray in a jerky half circle around the room,
and mechanically Dave Henderson raised his hand and brushed it across
his eyes. Was _that_ fancy--what he had seen? It was gone now, it was
dark in there now, for the flashlight was boring into the safe again,
and the man with the flashlight seemed intent on the balance of the
safe's contents. It had been only a glimpse, a glimpse that had lasted
no longer than the time it takes a watch to tick, but it seemed to have
mirrored itself upon Dave Henderson's brain so that he could still see
it even in the darkness: It was a huddled form on the floor, close by
the bed, just as though it had pitched itself convulsively out of the
bed, and it lay there sprawled grotesquely, and the white face had
seemed to grin at him in a horrid and contorted way--and it was the face
of Dago George.
The man with the flashlight spoke suddenly over his shoulder to his
companion:
“You've pulled a good job, Maggot!” he said approvingly. “Better than
either Cunny or me was looking for, I guess. And so much so that I guess
Cunny had better horn in himself before we close up for the night. You
beat it over to the joint and bring him back. Tell him there's some
queer stuff in this safe besides what we were after and what we
got--some gang stuff that'll mabbe interest him, 'cause he said he
wasn't very fond of Dago George. I don't know whether he'll want to take
any of it or not, or whether he'd rather let the police have it when
they wise up to this in the morning. He can look it over for himself.
Tell him I want him to see it before I monkey with it myself. You can
leave your watchmaker's tools there. You ought to be back in a little
better than ten minutes if you hurry. We got a good hour and more yet
before daylight, and before any of the crowd that work here gets back
on the job, and until then we got the house to ourselves, but that's no
reason for wasting any fleeting moments, so get a move on! See?”
“Sure!” grunted the other.
“Well, then, beat it!”
Footsteps sounded from the room, coming in the direction of the doorway,
and Dave Henderson slipped instantly across the hall, and edged in
behind the door,-that, opening back into the hall, afforded him both a
convenient and secure retreat. The smile on his lips was more pleasant
now. It was very thoughtful of the man with the flashlight--very! He
cared nothing about the other man, who was now walking stealthily down
the hall toward the front door; the _money_ was still in that room
in there! Also, he was glad to have had confirmed what he had already
surmised--that Dago George slept alone in The Iron Tavern.
The front door opened and closed again softly. Dave Henderson stole
silently across the hall again, and crouched against the opposite wall
once more, but this time almost at the door jamb itself.
The flashlight, full on, lay on the desk. It played over the package
of banknotes, and sent back a reflected gleam from the nickel-work of a
telephone instrument that stood a few inches further along on the desk.
The man's form, his back to the door, and back of the light, was like a
silhouetted shadow. It was quiet, silent now in the house. Perhaps five
seconds passed, and then the man chuckled low and wheezingly.
Dave Henderson grew suddenly rigid. It startled him. Somewhere he had
heard that chuckle before--somewhere. It seemed striving to stir and
awaken memory. There was something strangely familiar about it, and----
The man, still chuckling, was muttering audibly to himself now.
“Sure, that's the dope! The Scorpion--eh? Cunny the Scorpion! Nice name!
Well, we'll see who gets _stung!_ I guess ten minutes' start ain't good
enough; but if some one's chasing the Scorpion, he won't have so much
time to chase me. Yes, I guess this is where I fade away--with the
goods. By the time there's been anything straightened out, and even
if he squeals if he's caught, I guess I'll be far enough away to
worry--not!”
Dave Henderson's face had grown as white and set as chiselled marble;
but he did not move.
The man leaned abruptly forward over the desk, picked up the telephone,
chuckled again, and then snatched the receiver from the hook. And the
next instant, his voice full of well-simulated terror, he was calling
wildly, frantically, into the transmitter:
“Central!... Central!... For God's sake!... Quick!... Help!... I'm
Dago George.... The Iron Tavern.... They're murdering me.... Get the
police!... For God's sake!... Get the police.... Tell them Cunny Smeeks is murdering me.... Hurry!... Quick!... For God's----”
The man allowed the telephone and the unhooked receiver to crash
abruptly to the floor. The cord, catching the flashlight, carried the
flashlight with it, and the light went out.
And then Dave Henderson moved. With a spring, he was half-way across
the room--and his own flashlight stabbed a lane of light through the
blackness, and struck, as the other whirled with a startled cry, full on
the man's face.
It was Bookie Skarvan.
VIII--BOOKIE SKARVAN PAYS HIS ACCOUNT
THE little red-rimmed eyes blinked into the glare--it was the only
color left in the white, flabby face--the red rims of the furtive little
eyes. Bookie Skarvan's fat hand lifted and tugged at his collar, as
though the collar choked him. He fell back a step and his heel crunched
upon the telephone transmitter, and smashed it. And then Bookie Skarvan
licked his lips--and attempted a smile.
“I,” mumbled Bookie Skarvan, “I--I can't see your face. Who--who are
you?” The sound of his own voice, husky and shaken as it was, seemed
to bring him a certain reassurance. “What do you want? Eh--what do you
want?” he demanded.
Dave Henderson made no reply. It seemed as though his mind and soul and
body were engulfed in some primal, savage ecstasy. Years swept their
lightning sequence through his brain; hours, with the prison walls and
iron bars around him, in which he had promised himself this moment,
seemed to live their life and existence over again. He said no word; he
made no sound--but, with the flashlight still playing without a flicker
of movement upon the other, he felt, with the back of his revolver hand,
over Bookie Skarvan's clothing, located in one of the pockets Bookie
Skarvan's revolver, and, with utter contempt for any move the man might
make through the opening thus given him, hooked the guard of his own
revolver on the little finger of the hand that held the flashlight, and
unceremoniously jerked the other's weapon out from the pocket and tossed
it to the far end of the desk. The flashlight lifted then, and circled
the walls of the room. Bookie Skarvan's complaint had not gone unheeded.
Bookie Skarvan would have ample opportunity to see whose face it was!
The flashlight found and held on the electric-light switch. It was on
the opposite wall behind Bookie Skarvan. Dave Henderson shoved the man
roughly out of the way, stepped quickly forward to the wall, switched on
the light--and swung around to face Bookie Skarvan.
For an instant Bookie Skarvan stood there without movement, the little
eyes dilating, the white face turning ashen and gray, and then great
beads of sweat sprang out upon the forehead--and a scream of abject
terror pealed through the room.
“Go away!” screamed Bookie Skarvan. “You're dead! Go away! Go back to
hell where you belong!” His hands clawed out in front of him. “Do you
hear? You're dead--dead! Go away! Curse you, damn you--go away!”
Dave Henderson spoke through closed teeth:
“You ought to be satisfied then--Bookie. You've wanted me dead for quite
a while--for _five years_, haven't you?”
There was no answer.
Dave Henderson's eyes automatically swept around the now lighted room.
Yes, that was Dago George there on the floor near the bed, lying on the
side of his face, with a hideous gash across his head. The man was dead,
of course; he couldn't be anything else. But anyway, Dago George was as
something apart, an extraneous thing. There was only _one_ thing in the
world, one thing that held mind and soul and body in a thrall of wild,
seething, remorseless passion--that maudlin, grovelling thing there,
whose clawing hands had found the end of the desk, and who hung there
with curious limpness, as though, because the knees sagged, the weight
of his body was supported by his arms alone--that thing whose lips,
evidently trying to form words, jerked up and down like flaps of flesh
from which all nerve control had gone.
“Maybe you didn't know that I knew it was you who were back of that
attempt to murder me that night--five years ago.” Dave Henderson thrust
the flashlight into his pocket, and took a step forward. “Well, you know
it now!”
A sweat bead trickled down the fat, working face--and lost itself in a
fold of flabby flesh.
“No!” Bookie Skarvan found his tongue. “No! Honest to God, Dave!” he
whined. “It was Baldy.”
“Don't lie! I _know!_” There was a cold deadliness in Dave Henderson's
tones. “Stand away from the desk a little, so that I can get a look at
that telephone on the floor! I don't want any witness to what's going to
happen here, and a telephone with the receiver off----”
“My God!” Bookie Skarvan cried out wildly. “What are you going to do?”
“Yes, I guess it's out of commission.” Dave Henderson's voice seemed
utterly detached; he seemed utterly to ignore the other for a moment, as
he looked at the broken instrument.
Bookie Skarvan, in an access of fear, mopped at his wet face, and his
little red-rimmed eyes, like the eyes of a cornered rat, darted swift,
frantic glances in all directions around the room.
“Dave, do you hear!” Bookie Skarvan's voice rose thin and squealing.
“Why don't you answer? Do you hear! What--what are you going to do?”
“It's queer, kind of queer, to find you here, Bookie,” said Dave
Henderson evenly. “I guess there's a God--Bookie. How did you get
here--from San Francisco?”
Bookie Skarvan licked at his dry lips, and cowered back from the
revolver that was suddenly outflung in Dave Henderson's hand.
“I--I followed the girl. I thought you'd opened up to the old man, and
he'd bumped you off with that bomb to get the stuff for himself. I was
sure of it when he died, and she beat it for here.”
“And to-night?” Dave Henderson's voice was rasping now.
“I got the room opposite hers.” Bookie Skarvan gulped heavily; his eyes
were fixed, staring now, as though fascinated by the revolver muzzle.
“She came downstairs. I followed her, but I don't know where she went
to. I saw the package go into the safe. I could see through the fanlight
over the door. I saw him”--Bookie Skarvan's hand jerked out toward the
huddled form on the floor--“I saw him put it there.” Mechanically, Dave
Henderson's eyes followed the gesture--and narrowed for an instant in a
puzzled, startled way. Had that dead man there _moved?_ The body seemed
slightly nearer to the head of the bed!' Fancy! Imagination! He hadn't
marked the exact position of the body to begin with, and it was still
huddled, still inert, still in the same sprawled, contorted position.
His eyes reverted to Bookie Skarvan.
“You had a man in here with you at work on that safe, a man you called
Maggot, and you sent him, with that dirty brand of trickery of yours,
to bring back some one you called Cunny the Scorpion, with the idea that
instead of finding you and the money here--they would find the police.”
There was a twisted, merciless smile on Dave Henderson's lips. “Where
did you get into touch with your _friends?_”
Bookie Skarvan's eyes were roving again, seeking some avenue of escape,
it seemed. Dave Henderson laughed shortly, unpleasantly, as he watched
the other. There was only the door and the window. But he, Dave
Henderson, blocked the way to the door; and the window, as he knew
through the not-too-cursory examination he had made of it when he had
come down the fire escape with the valises, was equally impassable. It
had been in his mind then that perhaps he, himself, might gain entrance
to Dago George's room through the window--only the old-fashioned iron
shutters, carefully closed and fastened, had barred the way.
“Well?” He flung the word sharply at Bookie Skarvan.
“I--Baldy knew the Scorpion.” Bookie Skarvan's fingers wriggled between
his collar and his fat neck. “Baldy gave me a letter to him, and the
Scorpion put one over on--on that fellow on the floor, and got me a room
here upstairs. And when I saw the money going into the safe I beat it
for the Scorpion, and got him to give me a box-worker, so he got Maggot
for me, and----”
“You hadn't the nerve, of course, when you saw Dago George putting the
money in the safe, to tackle the job alone before the safe was locked!”
There was grim, contemptuous irony in Dave Henderson's voice. “You're
the same old Bookie, aren't you--yellow as the sulphur pit of hell!” His
face hardened. “Ten minutes, you said it would take them to get back.
It's not very long, Bookie. And say two or three minutes longer, or
perhaps a little more, for the police, allowing for the time it would
take central to get her breath after that nerve racking cry for help you
sent her. Or maybe the police would even get here first--depending on
how far away the station is. I'm a stranger here, and I don't know. In
that case, there wouldn't be even ten minutes--and part of that is gone
now. There isn't much time, Bookie. But there's time enough for you and
me to settle our little account. I used to think of what I'd do to you
when I got out on the other side of those iron bars. I used to think of
it when I couldn't sleep at night in my cell. I kept thinking of it for
_five years_, Bookie--and here we are to-night at last, the two of us,
you and me, Bookie. I overheard Runty Mott explain the whole plant you
had put up to murder me, so there's no use of you lying, there's no use
of you starting that--that's _one_ thing you haven't got time to do.
You'd better clean house, Bookie, for there isn't room enough in this
world for the two of us--one of us has got to go.”
Bookie Skarvan had crouched against the end of the desk again. He
cringed now, one arm upraised as though to ward off a blow.
“What--what are you going to do?” The words came thick and miserably.
Their repetition seemed all that his tongue was capable of. “What--what
are you going to do?”
“I can't _murder_ you!” Dave Henderson's face had grown set and
colorless--as colorless as his tone. “I wish to God I could! It's coming
to you! But I can't! There's your revolver on the end of the desk. Take
it!”
Again and again, Bookie Skarvan's tongue licked at his lips.
“What do you mean?” he whispered.
“You know what I mean!” Dave Henderson answered levelly. “Take it!”
“My God!” screamed Bookie Skarvan. “No! My God--no! Not that!”
“Yes--_that!_ You're getting what I swore I'd never give you--a chance.
Either you or I are going out. Take that revolver, and for the first
time in your life try and be a man; or else I'll fix you, and I'll fix
it so that you won't move from here until your friend the Scorpion gets
his chance at you for the pleasant little surprise you had arranged for
him with your telephone trick, or until the police carry you out with
a through ticket to the electric chair for what looks like murder over
there on the floor. You understand--Bookie? I'll make you fight, you
cur! It's the only chance you've got for your life. Now--take it!”
Bookie Skarvan wrung his hands together. A queer crooning sound came
from his lips. He was trembling violently.
“There aren't very many of those ten minutes left, Bookie,” said Dave
Henderson coldly. “But if you got in a lucky shot--Bookie--you'd still
have time to get away, from here. And there's the money there, too--you
could take that with you.”
The man seemed near collapse. Great beads from his forehead ran down and
over the sagging jowls. He moaned a little, and stared at the revolver
that lay upon the desk, and reached out his hand toward the weapon, and
drew his hand back again. He looked again at Dave Henderson, and at the
muzzle of the revolver that covered him. He seemed to read something
irrevocable and remorseless in both. Slowly, his mouth working, his face
muscles twitching, he reached again to the desk, and pulled the revolver
to him; and then, his arm falling nervelessly, he held the weapon
dangling at his side.
Dave Henderson's revolver was lowered until it pointed to the floor.
“When you lift your hand, Bookie, it's the signal,” he said in a
monotone.
Bookie Skarvan's knees seemed to bend and sag a little more--there was
no other movement.
“I'm waiting,” said Dave Henderson--and pulled the trigger of his
revolver to put a shot into the floor.
There was the click of the falling hammer--no more. A grim smile played
across Dave Henderson's lips. It was as well, perhaps, that he had tried
in that way to startle, to _frighten_, this terrified, spineless cur who
stood there into action! The cartridge that he had depended upon for his
life had missed fire! He pulled the trigger again. The hammer clicked.
He pulled again--his eyes never leaving Bookie Skarvan's face. The
hammer clicked.
For the fraction of a second the room seemed blurred to Dave Henderson.
_The chambers of his revolver were empty!_ His brain seemed to sicken,
and then to recover itself, and leap into fierce, virile activity. He
was at the mercy of that cringing hound there--if the other but knew
it. It seemed as though all the devils of hell shrieked at him in unholy
mirth. If he moved a step forward to rush, to close with the other, the
very paroxysm of fear that possessed Bookie Skarvan would instinctively
incite the man to fire. There was one way, only one way--the electric
light switch behind him. If he could reach that without Bookie Skarvan
realizing the truth, there would be the darkness--and his bare hands.
Well, he asked no more than that--only that Bookie Skarvan did not get
away. His bare hands were enough.
He moved back a single step, as though shifting his position, his face
impassive, watching the dangling weapon in the other's shaky hand,
watching the other's working lips. The chamber of his revolver was
empty! How? When? It had been fully loaded when he lay down on the bed.
Yes! He remembered! It was queer that it had twisted like that in his
sleep. Dago George! It came in a lightning flash of intuition. Dago
George, cautious to excite no suspicion, had been equally cautious to
draw, his, Dave Henderson's, teeth!
He edged back another step--and stopped, as though rooted to the spot.
Bookie Skarvan, that dangling revolver in the other's hand, his own
peril, all, everything that but an instant before had obsessed his mind,
was blotted out from his consciousness as though it had never existed.
That huddled form, that murdered man on the floor behind Bookie Skarvan,
that he could see over Bookie Skarvan's shoulder, had raised his hand
in a swift, sudden movement, and had thrust it under the mattress at the
head of the bed, and had snatched out a revolver.
It was quick, quick as thought, quick as the winking of an eye. A shout
of warning rose to Dave Henderson's lips--and was drowned in the report
of the revolver shot, deafening, racketing, in the confined space. And,
as though thrown into relief by the flash and the tongue flame of the
revolver, a picture seemed to sear itself into Dave Henderson's brain:
The up-flung arms of Bookie Skarvan, the ghastly surprise on the
sweat-beaded face, the fat body spinning grotesquely like a run-down
top--and pitching forward to the floor. And through the lifting smoke,
another face--Dago George's face, working, livid, blood-smirched, full
of demoniacal triumph. And then a gurgling peal of laughter.
“Yes, and you, too! _Con Amore!_” gurgled Dago George. “You, too!”
The man was on his knees now, lurching there, the revolver swaying
weakly, trying to draw its bead now on him, Dave Henderson. He moved
with a spring to one side toward the door. The revolver, as though
jerked desperately in the weak hand, followed him. He flung himself to
the floor. A shot rang out. And then, as though through the flash again,
another picture lived: The revolver dropping from a hand that could no
longer hold it, a graying face that swayed on shoulders which in turn
rocked to and fro--and then a lurch--a thud--and, the face was hidden
between out-sprawled arms--and Dago George did not move any more.
IX--THE ENDING OF THE NIGHT
MECHANICALLY, Dave Henderson rose to his feet, and for an instant stood
as though, his mental faculties numbed, he were striving to grasp as a
concrete thing some stark and horribly naked tragedy that his eyes told
him was real, but which his brain denied and refused to accept. Thin
layers of smoke, suspended, sinuous, floated in hideous little gray
clouds about the room--like palls that sought to hide what lay upon the
floor from sight, and, failing in their object, but added another grim
and significant detail to the scene.
And then his brain cleared, and he jumped forward to bend first over
Bookie Skarvan and then over Dago George; and, where his mind had been
unreceptive and numbed but an instant before, it was keen, swift and
incisive now--the police who had been summoned--the Scorpion and his
parasite yegg who were on the way back--there was no time to lose! There
was no one in the house to have heard the shots--Bookie Skarvan had
settled that point--no one except Teresa upstairs. But the shots might
have been heard _outside_.
His ears throbbed with strange noises; those shots seemed still to be
reverberating and beating at his eardrums. Yes, the shots might have
been heard outside on the street, or by some one in the next house. Was
that some one at the front door now? He held his breath, as he rose from
Dago George's side. No, just the ringing in his ears; there wasn't any
other, sound. But there wasn't an instant to lose; both Bookie Skarvan
and Dago George were dead. There wasn't an instant to lose--only the
instant he _must_ take to make sure he made no false move here before he
snatched up that package on the desk there, and ran upstairs, and, with
Teresa, made his way out by the fire escape.
He stooped, and stretched out his hand to exchange his own empty
revolver for the one that lay on the floor where it had fallen from
Dago George's lifeless fingers--and, instead, drew his hand sharply back
again. Fool! The police would investigate this, wouldn't they? Bookie
Skarvan couldn't have been shot by an _empty_ revolver! Well--he was
moving toward the desk and back toward where Bookie Skarvan lay--suppose
he took Bookie's revolver then? He shook his head. He did not need one
bad enough for that. It was better to let things remain as they were and
let the police draw their own conclusions, conclusions which, if nothing
was interfered with, and he got away with the package of banknotes,
would point no inference that, by hook or crook, would afford a clew
which might lead to him. Was he so sure of that? Suppose the Scorpion
had been let into Bookie's confidence, and that the Scorpion when he
got here should happen to be caught by the police--and _talked_ to save
himself?
A grim smile settled on Dave Henderson's lips, as he thrust his useless
revolver into his pocket, and, reaching out to the desk, picked up
the package of banknotes. Well, if anything came of the Scorpion, it
couldn't be helped! And, after all, did it matter very much? It wasn't
only Dago George and Bookie Skarvan who were dead--Dave Henderson was
dead, too!
It had been scarcely a minute since he had first risen: to his feet; it
was his mind, sifting, weighing, arguing with itself, that had seemed to
use up priceless time, whereas, in reality, in its swift working, it
had kept pace with, and had even prodded him into speed in his physical
movements. He was running now, the package of banknotes in his hand, for
the door. Dago George was dead. Bookie Skarvan was dead. And if----
He staggered suddenly back, and reeled from the impact, as a man from
just outside in the hallway launched himself ferociously forward across
the threshold. The package spun from his hand to the floor. Half flung
to his knees, Dave Henderson's arms shot out instinctively and wrapped
themselves around his assailant's body.
Came a snarl and an oath, and Dave Henderson's head rocked back on his
shoulders from a vicious short-arm jab that caught him on the point of
the jaw. It dazed him; he was conscious only that he had not let go his
hold, that his hands, like feeling tentacles, were creeping further
up the man's body toward throat and shoulders, drawing his own body up
after them into a more upright position. His head sang with the blow. A
voice seemed to float from somewhere out of the air:
“That's the stuff, Maggot! Soak him!”
Dave Henderson's arms had locked now like steel bands around his
assailant and were tightening, as the other's were tightening around
him in turn. The dizziness was leaving him. They swung, rocking, to the
strain. The man was strong! A face, a repellent, unshaven face, leered
into his. Twice they swirled around, and then seemed to hang for an
instant motionless, as though the strength of one exerted to its utmost
was exactly counterbalanced by the strength of the other; and over the
other's shoulder Dave Henderson could see another man, a man who laughed
with ugly coolness, and who had flaming red hair, and eyes of a blue so
faded that they looked repulsive because they looked as though they were
white.
Maggott and Cunny the Scorpion! There _had_ been some one there in the
front of the house--it had been Maggot and Cunny the Scorpion. And at
any moment now there would be some one else--the police!
That nicety of balance was gone. They were struggling, lurching,
staggering in each other's embrace again--he, and this Maggot, who
snarled and cursed with panting breath. Their heads were almost on each
other's shoulders. He could see the straining muscles in the other's
neck standing out like great, purple, swollen cords. And as he whirled
now this way and that, he caught glimpses of the red-headed man. The
red-headed man seemed to be quite unconcerned for the moment with his
companion's struggle. He picked up the package of banknotes from the
floor, examined it, dropped it again, and ran to Bookie Skarvan's side.
A queer, hard smile came to Dave Henderson's lips. This panting thing
with arms locked like a gorilla's around him seemed to be weakening a
little--or was it a trick? He tightened his own hold, and edged his own
hands a little higher up--and still a little higher. If he could only
tear himself loose for the fraction of a second, and get his fingers on
that panting throat! No, the man wasn't weakening so much after all!
The man seemed to sense his intention; and with a sudden twist, each
endeavoring to out-maneuver the other, they spun in a wider circle, like
drunken dancers in some mad revel, and crashed against the wall, and
rebounded from it, and hung again, swaying like crazy pendulums, in the
middle of the floor.
The red-headed man's voice came suddenly from across the room:
“Soak him, Maggot!”
That was the Scorpion. The Scorpion seemed to be taking some interest at
last in something besides Bookie Skarvan and the package of money.
A grunted oath from Dave Henderson's antagonist answered.
“Damn it, I can't! Curse youse, why don't youse lend a hand!”
With a quick, sudden wrench, Dave Henderson tried to free himself. It
resulted only in a wild swirl in a half circle that almost pitched him,
and with him the other, to the floor. But he saw the Scorpion now.
The Scorpion had risen to his feet from Bookie Skarvan's side, and was
balancing a revolver in his hand; and now the Scorpion's voice seemed to
hold a sort of purring note, velvet in its softness.
“All right, then, Maggot! We might as well have a clean-up here, since
he's started it. I guess we came just about in time, or he'd have had
the money as well as our fat friend there--that he _got_. It looks
as though we ought to even up the score.” The revolver lifted in the
Scorpion's hand. “Jump away, Maggot--I'm going to lead the ace of
trumps!”
The eyes were white--not blue; there was no blue in them; they were
white--two little white spots across the room. They held a devil's
menace in them--like the voice--like the purring voice that was hideous
because it was so soft. God, could he hold this Maggot now--not wrench
himself free, but hold the man here in his arms--keep Maggot between him
and those white eyes, that looked like wicked little plague spots which
had eaten into that grotesquely red-thatched face.
Maggot was fighting like a demon now to tear himself free. A sweat bead
spurted out on Dave Henderson's forehead and rolled down his face. The
white eyes came dancing nearer--nearer. They circled and circled, as
he circled--Maggot was the shield. He whirled this way and that. The
muscles of his arms cracked, as they swung and whipped Maggot around in
furious gyrations.
A shot rang out. Something sang with an angry hum and hot breath past
Dave Henderson's cheek. The velvet voice laughed. Maggot screamed in a
mixture of rage and fear.
“Curse youse, youse fool! Youse'll hit me!”
“I'll get him next time, Maggot,” purred the velvet voice.
The white eyes kept too far away--that was what was the matter--too far
away. If they would only come near--near enough so that of a sudden he
could let go his grip and launch this squirming human shield full, like
a battering ram, into those white eyes. That was the only chance there
was. Only the Scorpion was too cunning for that--he kept too far away.
Dave Henderson swung madly around again, interposing Maggot's body as
the Scorpion darted to one side; and then suddenly, and for the first
time, there came a sound from Dave Henderson's lips--a low cry of pain.
_Teresa!_
It was only a glimpse he got--perhaps it wasn't real! Just a glimpse
into the hallway where the light from the room streamed out--just a
glimpse of a figure on the stairs who leaned out over the banister, and
whose face was white as death itself, and whose hands seemed to grip and
cling to the banister rail as though they were welded there.
Teresa! He grew sick at heart as he struggled now. Teresa! If he could
only have kept her out of this; if only, at least, she were not there to
_see!_ It couldn't last much longer! True, Maggot, beyond doubt, beyond
shadow of trickery now, had had his fill of fighting, and there was fear
upon the man, the fear of an unlucky shot from the Scorpion, and he
was whimpering now, and he struggled only apathetically, but it took
strength to drag even a dead weight around and around and that strength
would not last forever. Teresa! She had heard those shots from up
above--she had _seen_ the Scorpion fire once, and miss, and she----
The Scorpion laughed out. It looked like a sure shot now! Dave Henderson
jerked Maggot in front of him, but his swirling, mad gyrations had
brought him into the angle that the desk made with the wall, and, turn
as he would now, the Scorpion could reach in around the end of the desk,
and almost touch him with the revolver muzzle itself.
“I got him, Maggot!” purred the Scorpion. “I got him now, the----”
The man's voice ended in a startled cry. The sweat was running into
Dave Henderson's eyes, he could scarcely see--just a blurred vision over
Maggot's shoulder, a blurred vision of a slim figure running like the
wind into the room, and stooping to the floor where the package of
banknotes lay, and snatching it up, and starting for the door again.
And then the Scorpion fired--but the revolver was pointed now across
the room, and the slight, fleeing figure swayed, and staggered, and
recovered herself, and went on, and over her shoulder her voice, though
it faltered, rang bravely through the room:
“I--I thought he'd rather have this than you, Dave. It was the only
chance. Don't mind me, Dave. He won't get me.”
The whimpering thing in Dave Henderson's arms was flung from him, and it
crashed to the floor. It wasn't his own strength, it was the strength
of one demented, and of a maddened brain, that possessed Dave Henderson
now. And he leaped forward, running like a hare. Teresa had already
gained the stairs--the Scorpion in pursuit was half-way along the
hall. And now he saw nothing else--just that red-haired figure running,
running, running. There was neither house, nor hall, nor stairs, nor any
other thing--only that red-haired figure that the soul of him craved,
for whom there was no mercy, that with his hands he would tear to pieces
in insensate fury.
A flash came, blinding his eyes; a report roared in his ears--and then
his hands snatched at and caught a wriggling thing. And for the first
time he realized that he had reached the head of the stairs, realized it
because, pitched forward over the landing, lay a woman's form that was
still and motionless. And he laughed like the maniac he was now, and the
wriggling thing screamed in his grasp, screamed as it went up above his
head--and then Dave Henderson hurled it from him to the bottom of the
stairs.
He turned, and flung himself on his knees beside Teresa. He called her
name again and again--and there was no answer. She lay there, half
on her face on the floor, her arms wound around a torn package of
banknotes. He rose, and rocked on his feet, and his knotted fists went
up above his head. And then he laughed again, as though his reason
were gone--laughed as his eyes fixed on a red-headed thing that made
an unshapely heap at the foot of the stairs; and laughed at a slinking
shadow that went along the hall, and scurried out through the front
door. That was Maggot--like a rat leaving a sinking ship--Maggot who----
Then reason came again. The police! At any moment now--the police. In an
instant he had caught Teresa up in his arms. She wasn't dead--he could
hear her breathing--only it was weak--pitifully weak. There should be an
exit to the fire escape from this floor--but it was dark and he had no
time to search--it was quicker to go up the stairs--where he knew the
way--and out through his own room.
Stumbling, staggering in the darkness, holding Teresa in his arms, he
made his way upstairs. The police--his mind centered on that again. If
she and he were caught here, his identification as Dave Henderson,
which would ultimately ensue, would damn her; this money, wrapped so
tenaciously in her arms, would damn her; and, on top of that old score
of the police in San Francisco, there had been ugly work here in this
house to-night. If it were not for the money, the criminal hoax played
upon the police in the disappearance of Dave Henderson would not be so
serious--but the money was here, and in that hoax she had had a part,
and the shadow of Nicolo Capriano still lay across her shoulders.
The night air came gratefully cool upon his face. He drew it in in
great, gasping breaths, greedily, hungrily. He had gained the fire
escape through the window now, and now he paused for the first time to
listen. There was no sound. Back there inside the house it was as still
as death. Death! Well, why shouldn't it be, there _was_ death there,
and----
His arms tightened suddenly in a great, overwhelming paroxysm of fear
around Teresa, and he bent his head, bent it lower, lower still, until
his face was close to that white face he held, and through the darkness
his eyes searched it in an agony of apprehension.
And then he started forward again, and began to descend the fire escape;
and now he groped uneasily for foothold as he went. It seemed rickety
and unstable, this spidery thing that sprawled against the side of the
wall, and it was dark, and without care the foot would slip through the
openings between the treads. It had not seemed that way when he had gone
up and down when disposing of the valises. Only now it was a priceless
burden that he carried--this form that lay close-pressed against his
breast, whose touch, alternately now, brought him a sickening sense of
dread, and a surging hope that sent the blood leaping like a mill-race
through his veins.
He went down, step after step, his mind and brain shrieking at him to
hurry because there was not a single second to lose--but it was slow,
maddeningly slow. He could not see the treads, not only because it was
dark, but because Teresa's form was in his arms. He could only feel with
his feet--and now and then his body swayed to preserve his balance.
Was there no end to the thing! It seemed like some bottomless pit of
blackness into which he was descending. And it seemed as though this
pit held an abominable signification in its blackness and its depth, as
though it beckoned him on to engulf them; it seemed--it seemed---- God,
if she would only move, if she would not lie so still, so terribly still
in his arms!
Another step--another--and then his foot, searching out, found only
space beneath it. He must free one arm now, so that he could cling to
the bottom tread and lower himself to the ground. It was only a short
drop, he knew, for the lower section of the fire escape was one of those
that swung on hinges, and when, previously, coming up, Teresa had held
it down for him, he had been able to reach it readily with a spring
from the ground. But he dared not jump even that short distance now with
Teresa, wounded, in his arms.
He changed her position now to throw her weight into the hollow of his
left arm, lifting her head so that it lay high upon his shoulder--and
with the movement her hair brushed his lips. It brought a sudden,
choking sob from Dave Henderson, and in a great, yearning impulse he
let his head sink down until his cheek for an instant was laid against
hers--and then, the muscles of his right arm straining until they
cracked, he lowered himself down and dropped to the ground.
He ran now, lurching, across the yard, and out into the lane, and here
he paused again to listen. But he heard nothing. He was clear of that
cursed trap-house now--if he could only keep clear. He ran on again,
stumbling again, with his burden. And now, though he did not pause to
listen any more, it seemed as though his throbbing eardrums caught the
sounds at last that they had been straining to hear. Wasn't that the
police behind there now--on the street in front of The Iron Tavern? It
sounded like it--like the arrival of a police patrol.
He reached the shed where he had hidden the valises, entered, and laid
Teresa tenderly on the floor. He used his flashlight then--and a low
moan came from his lips. The bullet had cut across the side of her neck
just above the shoulder; the wound was bleeding profusely, and over the
package of banknotes, around which her arms were still tightly clasped,
there had spread a crimson stain. He drew her arms gently apart, laid
the package on the floor, and then, wrenching one of the valises open,
snatched at the first article of linen that came to hand.
His lips trembled, as he did his best to staunch the flow of blood and
bind the wound.
“Teresa! Teresa!” Dave Henderson whispered.
Her eyes opened--and smiled.
She made an effort to speak. He bent his head to catch the words.
“Dave--where--where are we? Still in the house?”
“No!” he told her feverishly. “No! We're clear of that. We're in the
shed here in the lane where I took the valises.”
She made a slight affirmative movement of her head.
“Then go--go at once--Dave--for help--I----”
Her eyes had closed again.
“Yes!” he said. His voice was choking. He called her name. “Teresa!”
There was no answer. She had lapsed back into unconsciousness. And
then the soul of him spoke its agony. “Oh, my God, Teresa!” he cried
brokenly, and swayed to his feet.
An instant he stood there, then stooped, picked up the package of
banknotes, thrust it into the open valise, closed the valise, carried it
into a darker corner of the shed, and went to the door.
He looked out. There was no one in sight in the darkness. But then, what
interest would the police have in this section of the lane? There was
nothing to connect it with The Iron Tavern! He stepped outside, and
broke into a run down the lane, heading for the intersecting street in
the opposite direction from The Iron Tavern. He must get help! A queer,
mirthless laugh was on his lips. A wounded woman in the lane was _the_
connecting link with The Iron Tavern. And yet he must get help.
Well, there was only one source from which he dared ask help--only
one--Millman.
He ran on. Millman! Something within him rebelled at that. But Teresa
was perhaps--was---- No, he would not let his mind even frame the word.
Only one thing was paramount now--she must have help at once. Well, God
knew, he could _trust_ Millman! Only there seemed some strange irony
here that chastened him. And yet---- Yes, this was strange, too!
Suddenly he became strangely content that it should be Millman.
He reached the street, and looked up and down. It was four o'clock in
the morning, and the street was dark and deserted except for a single
lighted window that shone out half-way down the block. He ran toward it.
It proved to be an all-night restaurant, and he entered it, and asked
for the telephone, and shut himself up in the booth.
A moment more and he had the St. Lucian Hotel on the wire.
“Give me Mr. Millman--Mr. Charles Millman,” he requested hurriedly.
The hotel operator answered him. It was impossible. A guest could not be
disturbed at that hour. It was against the rules, and Dave Henderson was
pleading hoarsely into the phone.
“Give me Millman! Let me speak to him! It's life and death!”
“I--I can't.” The operator's voice, a girl's, was hesitant, less
assured.
“For God's sake, give me Millman--there's a life at stake!” Dave
Henderson cried frantically. “Quick! For God's sake, quick!”
“Wait!” she said.
It seemed a time interminable, and then a drowsy voice called:
“Hello! What's wanted?”
“Is that you, Millman?” Dave Henderson asked wildly. “Millman, is that
you?”
“Yes,” the voice answered.
“It's Dave speaking. Dave--do you understand? I--there's some one badly
hurt. I can't tell you any more over the phone; but, in Heaven's name,
get a doctor that you can trust, and come!”
“I'll come, Dave,” said Millman quietly. “Where?”
Dave Henderson turned from the telephone, and thrust his head out of the
booth. He had no idea where he was in New York, save that he was near
The Iron Tavern. He dared not mention that. Before many hours the papers
would be full of The Iron Tavern--and the telephone operator might hear.
“What's this address?” he called out to a man behind the counter.
The man told him.
Dave Henderson repeated the address into the phone.
“All right, Dave,” Millman's voice came quickly; “I'll be there as soon
as I can get my car, and pick up the doctor.”
Dave Henderson stepped out into the night, and pulled off his hat. His
forehead was dripping wet. He walked back to the lane, listened, heard
nothing, and stole along it, and entered the shed again, and knelt by
Teresa's side. She was unconscious.
He bent over her with the flashlight. His bandage was crude and clumsy;
but it brought him a little measure of relief to see that at least it
had been effective in the sense that the bleeding had been arrested.
And then his eyes went to the white face again. It seemed as though his
mental faculties were blunted, that they were sensible only of a gnawing
at his brain that was almost physical in its acute pain. Instinctively,
from time to time, he looked at his watch.
At last he got up, and went out into the lane again, and from there to
the street. It was too soon. He could only pace up and down. It was
too soon, but he could not have afforded to keep the doctor waiting if
Millman arrived, and he, Dave Henderson, was not there--otherwise he
would have stayed longer in the shed. It would be daylight before they
came, wouldn't it? It was an hour now, a thousand years, wasn't it,
since he had telephoned?
A big touring car rolled down the street. He ran toward it.
Millman--yes, it was Millman! The car stopped.
“Quick!” he urged, and sprang on the footboard. “Go to the corner of the
lane there!”
And then, as the car stopped again, and Millman, from the wheel, and a
man with a little black bag in his hand, sprang out, Dave Henderson led
the way down the lane, running, without a word, and pushed open the door
of the shed. He held the flashlight steadily for the doctor, though he
turned now to Millman.
“You've got a right to know,” he said in an undertone, as the
doctor bent, absorbed, over Teresa. “Hell's broken loose to-night,
Millman--there's been murder further up the lane there in a place they
call The Iron Tavern. Do you understand? That's why I didn't dare go
anywhere for help. Listen! I'll tell you.” And, speaking rapidly, he
sketched the details of the night for Millman. “Do you understand,
Millman?” he said at the end. “Do you understand why I didn't dare go
anywhere for help?”
Millman did not answer. He was looking questioningly at the doctor, as
the latter suddenly rose.
“We must get her to the hospital at once,” said the doctor crisply.
“The hospital!” Dave Henderson echoed the word. It seemed to jeer at
him. He could have summoned an ambulance himself! As well throw the
cards upon the table! His eyes involuntarily sought that darker corner
of the shed where the package of banknotes, bloodstained now, was hidden
in the valise. The hospital, or the police station--in that respect, for
Teresa as well as himself, it was all the same!
It was Millman who spoke.
“Wait!” he said, and touched Dave Henderson's arm; then turned to the
doctor. “Can we move her in my car?” he asked.
“Yes; I guess we can manage it,” the doctor answered.
Millman drew the doctor a little to one side. He whispered earnestly.
Dave Henderson caught a phrase about “getting a nurse”--and then he felt
Millman's hand press his arm again.
“It's all right, Dave. I guess I'll open that town house after all
this summer--to a select few,” said Millman quietly. His hand tightened
eloquently in its pressure. “We'll take her there, Dave.”
X--GOD'S CHANCE
IT was a big house--like some vast, cavernous, deserted place.
Footsteps, when there were footsteps, and voices, when there were
voices, seemed to echo with strange loneliness through the great halls,
and up and down the wide staircase. And in the dawn, as the light came
gray, the pieces of furniture, swathed in their summer coverings of
sheets, had seemed like weird and ghostlike specters inhabiting the
place.
But the dawn had come hours ago.
Dave Henderson raised his head from his cupped hands. Was that the nurse
now, or the doctor--that footstep up above? He listened a moment, and
then his chin dropped back into his hands.
Black hours they had been--black hours for his soul, and hours full of
the torment and agony of fear for Teresa.
From somewhere, almost coincident with their arrival at the house, a
nurse had come. From some restaurant, a man had brought breakfast
for the doctor, for the nurse, for Millman--and for him. He had
eaten something--what, he did not know. The doctor had gone, and come
again--the doctor was upstairs there now. Perhaps, when the doctor came
down again, the doctor would allow him to see Teresa. Half an hour ago
they had told him that she would get well. There was strange chaos in
his mind. That agony of fear for her, that cold, icy thing that had held
a clutch upon his heart, was gone; but in its place had come another
agony--an agony of yearning--and now he was afraid--for himself.
Millman had tried to make him go to bed and sleep. Sleep! He could not
have slept! He could not even have remained still for five minutes at a
stretch! He had been half mad with his anxiety for Teresa. He had wanted
to be somewhere where his restless movements would not reach Teresa in
her room, and yet somewhere where he could intercept every coming and
going of the doctor. And so for hours he had alternately paced up and
down this lower hall here, and thrown himself upon this great, wide,
sheet-covered divan where he sat now. And in those hours his mind, it
seemed, had run the gamut of every emotion a human soul could know. It
ached now--physically. His temples throbbed and hurt.
His eyes strayed around the hall, and held on a large sheet-draped piece
of furniture over beyond the foot of the staircase. They had served
other purposes, these coverings, than to make spectral illusions in the
gray of dawn! Beneath that sheet lay the package of banknotes. It made a
good hiding place. He had extracted the package from the valise, and had
secreted it there during the confusion as they had entered the house.
But it seemed to take form through that sheet now, as it had done a
score of times since he had put it there, and always it seemed as though
a crimson stain that was on the wrapper would spread and spread until it
covered the entire package.
That package--and the crimson stain! It seemed to make of itself a
curiously appropriate foreground for a picture that spread away into a
vista of limitless years: An orphan school, with its cracked walls, and
the painted mottoes whose scrolls gaped where the cracks were; a swirl
of horses reaching madly down the stretch, a roar of hoarse, delirious
shouts, elated oaths around the bookmaker's paying-stand, pinched faces
on the outer fringes of this ring; a thirst intolerable, stark pain,
the brutal jolting of a boxcar through the nights, hours upon hours of a
horror that ended only with the loss of consciousness; walls that reared
themselves so high that they seemed to stand sentinels against the
invasion of even a ray of sunlight, steel bars, and doors, and bolts
that clanged, and clanged, until the sound ate like some cancerous thing
into the soul itself; and then wolves, human wolves, ravenous wolves,
between two packs of them, the police on the one hand, the underworld
on the other, that snarled and tore at him, while he fought them for his
life.
All that! That was the price he had paid for that package there--that,
and that crimson stain.
He swept his hand across his eyes. His face grew set, and his jaws
locked hard together. No, he wasn't sure yet that even that was
all--that the package there was even yet finally and irrevocably
_his_--to do with as he liked. There was last night--The Iron
Tavern--the police again. _Was_ there a connecting link trailing behind
him? What had become of the Scorpion? What story had the man perhaps
told? Were the police looking for an unknown man--who was Dave
Henderson; and looking for an unknown woman--who was Teresa?
Well, before long now, surely, he would know--when Millman got back.
Millman, who had intimated that he had an inside pull somewhere that
would get the straight police version of the affair, had gone out
immediately after breakfast for that purpose.
That was what counted, the only thing that counted--to know where the
police stood. Millman ought to be back now. He had been gone for hours.
It was taking him an unaccountably long time!
Millman! He had called Millman a straight crook. He had tried to call
Millman something else this morning--for what Millman had done for
Teresa and himself last night. Only he wasn't any good at words. But
Millman had seemed to understand, though Millman had not said much,
either--just a smile in the gray eyes, and a long, steady clasp of both
hands on his, Dave Henderson's, shoulders.
There was a footstep on the stairs now. He looked up. It was the doctor
coming down. He jumped to his feet, and went eagerly to the foot of the
stairs.
“Better!” said the doctor cheerily.
“I--I want to see her,” said Dave Henderson.
The doctor smiled, as he moved across the hall toward the front door.
“In a few minutes,” he said. “I've told the nurse to let you know when
she's ready.”
The doctor went out.
He heard the doctor begin to descend the outer steps, and then pause,
and then another footstep ascending; and then he caught the sound of
voices. And then, after a little while, the front door opened, and
Millman came into the reception hall.
Dave Henderson's lips tightened, as he stepped toward the other.
“What”--he found his voice strangely hoarse, and he cleared his
throat--“what did you find out?”
Millman motioned toward the divan.
“Everything, I guess, Dave,” he answered, as he sat down.
“And----?” Dave Henderson flung himself down beside the other.
Millman shook his head.
“Better hear the whole story, Dave. You can size it up then for
yourself.”
Dave Henderson nodded.
“Go on, then!” he said.
“I told you,” said Millman, “that I thought I could get inside
information--the way the police looked at it. Well, I have. And I have
got it from a source that is absolutely dependable. Understand, Dave?”
Dave Henderson nodded again.
“The police start with that telephone message,” said Millman. “They
believe that it was authentic, and that it was Dago George who sent it.
In fact, without it they wouldn't have known where to turn; while with
it the whole affair appears to be simplicity itself.” He smiled a
little whimsically. “They used it as the key to unlock the door. It's no
discredit to their astuteness. With nothing to refute it, it is not only
the obvious, but the logical solution. Bookie budded a great deal better
than he knew--for Dave Henderson--when he used that telephone for his
own dirty ends. It wouldn't have been so easy for the police to account
for the death of three men in The Iron----”
“_Three!_” Dave Henderson strained suddenly forward. Three! There
were--two; only two--Dago George and Bookie Skarvan. Only two dead--and
a red-headed thing huddled at the foot of the stairs. Was that it? Was
that the third one--Cunny the Scorpion? Had it ended with that? Had
he _killed_ a man? Last night he would have torn the fellow limb
from limb--yes, and under the same circumstances, he would do it
again--Teresa upstairs, who had been so close to death, justified that a
thousand times over.
But------ “You mean Cunny the Scorpion--Cunny Smeeks?” he demanded
tensely.
“Yes,” said Millman. And then, with a quick, comprehensive glance at
Dave Henderson's face: “But you didn't do it, Dave.”
Dave Henderson's hands were clenched between his knees. They relaxed
slowly.
“I'm glad of that,” he said in a low tone. “Go on, Millman.”
“The man had evidently revived just before the police got there,”
Millman explained. “He was shot and killed instantly by the police while
trying to escape. He had bruises on his head which the police attributed
to a fight with Dago George. Dago George, the police assume, woke up to
discover the men breaking into his room. They attacked him. He managed
to shoot Bookie Skarvan, and grappled with Cunny the Scorpion--the
Scorpion's clothing, somewhat torn, and the Scorpion's bruises, bear
this out. But in order to account for the time it would have taken to
crack the safe, the police believe that the Scorpion at this time only
knocked Dago George out temporarily. Then, later, while the Scorpion
worked at the safe, Dago George recovered sufficiently to rush and
snatch at the phone, and shout his appeal for help into it; and then
the Scorpion laid Dago George's head open with the blow that killed him,
using one of the burglar's tools as the weapon. And then the Scorpion,
staying to put the finishing touches on his work to get the safe open,
and over-estimating the time it would take the police to get there, was
finally unable to make his escape.”
“My God!” muttered Dave Henderson under his breath.
“That's not all,” said Millman, with a faint smile. “There was known
enmity between Dago George and the Scorpion. The Scorpion had come to
The Iron Tavern earlier in the evening, one of the waiters testified,
and had brought the fat man with him. The fat man was given a room by
Dago George. The waiter identified the fat man, an obvious accomplice
therefore of the Scorpion, as the man who was shot. It dovetailed
irrefutably--even the Scorpion's prior intentions of harm to Dago George
being established. There was some money in the safe, quite a little, but
the police are more inclined to attribute the motive to the settling of
a gang feud, with the breaking of the safe more or less as a blind.”
Dave Henderson was staring across the hall. His lips were tight.
“That waiter!” he exclaimed abruptly. “Didn't the waiter say anything
about anybody else who got rooms there last night?”
“I am coming to that,” Millman replied. “The police questioned the man,
of course. He said that last night, at separate times, a man and a woman
came there, presumably to get rooms since they had valises with them,
and that they saw Dago George. He did not know whether Dago George had
accommodated them or not. He thought not, both because he had neither
carried nor seen the valises taken upstairs, and because Dago George
invariably refused to give any rooms to strangers. Lots of people came
there, imagining The Iron Tavern to be a hotel where they could get
cheap accommodations, and were always turned away. Dago George had gone
out of that end of the business. The waiter inclined to the belief that
the man and woman in question had met the same fate; certainly, he had
seen or heard nothing of them since.” Millman shrugged his shoulders.
“The police searched the rooms upstairs, found no trace of occupancy
except the hand-bag of the fat man, identified again by the waiter--and
agreed with the waiter.”
“There was Maggot.” Dave Henderson seemed to be speaking almost to
himself. “But Maggot was only a tool. All Maggot knew was that he was
to get the safe open--for some money. I guess Maggot, when he finds out
that the police don't know anything about him, will think he's lucky. I
guess if there's any man in the world who'll keep his mouth shut for the
sake of his own hide, it's Maggot. Maggot isn't going to run his head
into a noose.” He turned sharply to Millman. “But there's still some one
else--the doctor.”
“We have been friends, intimate friends, all our lives,” said Millman
simply. “I have given him my word of honor that you had no hand in the
death of any one of those three men, and that is sufficient.”
And then Dave Henderson laughed a little, a queer, strange, mirthless
laugh, and stood up from the divan.
“Then I'm clear--eh--Millman?” he shot out.
“Yes,” said Millman slowly, “as far as I can see, Dave, you're clear.”
“And free?” There was fierce assertiveness, rather than interrogation,
in Dave Henderson's voice. “It's taken five years, but I've got that
money now. I guess I've paid for it; and I guess there's no one now
to put a crimp in it any more, not even Bookie Skarvan--providing that
little proposition of yours, Millman, that month, still stands.”
Millman's face, and Millman's eyes, sobered.
“It stands, Dave,” he said gravely.
“In a month,” said Dave Henderson, “even a fool could get far enough
away to cover his trail--couldn't he, Millman? Well, then, there's only
Teresa left. She's something like you, Millman. She's for sending that
money back, but she's sort of put out of the running--for about a month,
too!”
Millman made no answer.
“Five years,” said Dave Henderson, with a hard smile. “Well, it's _mine_
now. Those years were a hell, Millman--a hell--do you understand? But
they would only be a little hell compared with the hell to-day if
I couldn't get away with that package now without, say, a policeman
standing there in the doorway waiting for me.”
“Dave,” said Millman sharply, “what do you mean? What are you going to
do?”
There was some one on the stairs again--some one all in white. Dave
Henderson stared. The figure was beckoning to him. Yes, of course, it
was the nurse.
“Dave,” Millman repeated, “what are you going to do?”
Dave Henderson laughed again--queerly.
“I'm going upstairs--to see Teresa,” he said.
“And then?” Millman asked.
But Dave Henderson scarcely heard him. He was walking now towards the
stairs. The nurse's voice reached him.
“Just a few minutes,” warned the nurse. “And she must not be excited.”
He gained the landing, and looked back over the balustrade down into the
great hall below. Millman had come to the foot of the staircase, and
was leaning on the newel-post. And Dave Henderson looked, more closely.
Millman's gray eyes were blurred, and, though they smiled, the smile
came through a mist that had gathered in them. And then Millman's voice
came softly.
“I get you, as we used to say 'out there,'” said Millman. “I get you,
Dave. Thank God! It's two straight crooks--isn't it, Dave--two of us?”
Millman's face was blotted out--there was another face that Dave
Henderson saw now through an open doorway, a face that lay upon the
pillows, and that was very white. It must be the great, truant masses of
black hair, which crowned the face, that made it look as white as that.
And they said she was getting better! They must have lied to him--the
face was so white.
He didn't see the face any more now, because he was kneeling down beside
the bed, and because his own face was buried in the counterpane.
And then the great shoulders of the man shook.
His life! That was what she had bought--and that was what she had paid
for almost with her own. That was why she lay here, and that was why her
face was so white. Teresa! This was Teresa here.
He raised his head at last. Her dark eyes were fixed on him--and they
smiled.
She was holding out her hand.
“Dave,” she said brightly, “the nurse told me she was going to let
you see me for a few minutes--to cheer me up. And here I've been
waiting--oh, ever so long. And you haven't spoken a word. Haven't you
anything to say”--she was smiling teasingly with her lips now--“Dave?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes”--his voice choked--“more than I can ever say. Last
night, Teresa, if it had not been for you, I---”
Her finger tips could just reach his lips, and they pressed suddenly
against them, and sealed them.
“Don't you know that we are not to talk about that, Dave--ever,” she
said quickly. “If I did anything, then, oh, I am so glad--so glad.
You're not to say another word.”
“But, I _must_,” he said hoarsely. “Do you think I----”
“Dave, I'll call the nurse!” she said in a low voice. “You'll--you'll
make me cry.”
It was true. The dark eyes were swimming, full of tears. She hid them
now suddenly with their long lashes.
Neither spoke for a moment.
“There's something else, then, Teresa,” he said at last. “I'm going to
give that money back.”
There was no answer--only he felt her hand touch his head, and her
fingers play gently through his hair.
“I knew it,” she told him.
“But do you know why?” he asked.
Again there was no answer.
Dave Henderson spoke again.
“I remember what I said last night--that I couldn't buy you that way.
And--and I'm not trying to now. It's going back because I haven't any
choice. A man can't take his life from a woman's hand, and from the hand
of a friend take the life of the woman who has saved him--and throw
them both down--and play the cur. I haven't any choice.” His voice broke
suddenly. “It's going back, Teresa, whether it means you or not. Do you
understand, Teresa? It's going back--either way.”
Her fingers had ceased their movements, and were quiet now.
“Yes,” she said.
Dave Henderson raised his bowed head. The dark eyes were closed. His
shoulders squared a little.
“That--that puts it straight, then, Teresa,” he said. “That lets me
say what I want to say now. I've done a lot of thinking in the last
few hours when I thought that perhaps you weren't--weren't going to get
better. I thought about what you said last night--about God giving one
another chance if one wanted to take it. Teresa, would you believe me if
I told you that I was going to take that chance--from now on?”
The dark eyes opened now.
“I don't think God ever meant that you would do anything else, Dave,”
she said. “If He had, you would never have been caught and put in
prison, and been through everything else that has happened to you,
because it's just those things, Dave, that have made you say what you
have just said. If you had succeeded in getting away with that money
five years ago, you would have been living as a thief to-day, and--and
you would have stolen more, perhaps, and--and at last you wouldn't even
have been a man.” She turned her face away on the pillow, and fumbled
for his hand. “But it isn't just you, Dave. I didn't say that last
night. I said God offered us both a chance. It's not only you,
Dave--both of us are going to take that chance.”
He leaned forward--his face tense, white almost as the white face on the
bed.
“Together, Teresa?”
She did not answer--only her hand closed in a tighter clasp on his.
“Teresa!” He was bending over her now, smoothing back the hair from
her forehead. The blood pounded in a mighty tide through his veins.
“Teresa!”
She spoke then, as the wet lashes lifted for an instant and fell again.
“It's wonderful,” she whispered. “God's chance, Dave--together--from now
on.”
Into his face came a great new light. Self-questioning and self-debate
were gone. Teresa _trusted_ him. He knew himself before God and
his fellows henceforth an honest man. And he was rich--rich with a
boundless, priceless love that would endure while life endured. Teresa!
His lips pressed the white forehead, and the closed eyelids, and then
her lips were warm upon his own--and then he was kneeling again, but now
his arms were around her, folding her to him, and his head lay upon the
pillow, and his cheek touched hers.
And presently Millman, coming up the stairs, paused abruptly on the
landing, as, through the open doorway of the room that was just in front
of him, his eyes fell upon Dave Henderson's kneeling figure. And he
stood there. And Teresa's voice, very low, and as though she were
repeating something, reached him. And creeping into Millman's gray eyes
there came a light of understanding as tender as a woman's, and for a
moment more he lingered there, and then he tiptoed softly away. And the
words that he had heard seemed to have graven themselves deep into the
great heart of the man, for, as he went slowly on down the hall, he said
them over and over again to himself:
“From now on.... From now on....”
THE END