_A Bold Venture_
But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all,
to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith,
were problems which could not be solved in a moment.
Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. "We've waited a week to see
her; now that we've seen her let's keep on waiting," he said, and
Ronicky agreed.
They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a
length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had
been observed before. Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long
watching and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went
completely to pieces and in the early evening fell asleep. But Ronicky
Doone went out for a light dinner and came back after dark, refreshed
and eager for action, only to find that Bill Gregg was incapable of
being roused. He slept like a dead man.
Ronicky went to the window and sat alone. Few of the roomers were home
in the house opposite. They were out for the evening, or for dinner,
at least, and the face of the building was dark and cold, the light
from the street lamp glinting unevenly on the windowpanes. He had sat
there staring at the old house so many hours in the past that it was
beginning to be like a face to him, to be studied as one might study
a human being. And the people it sheltered, the old hag who kept the
door, the sneering man and Caroline Smith, were to the house like the
thoughts behind a man's face, an inscrutable face. But, if one cannot
pry behind the mask of the human, at least it is possible to enter a
house and find--
At this point in his thoughts Ronicky Doone rose with a quickening
pulse. Suppose he, alone, entered that house tonight by stealth, like
a burglar, and found what he could find?
He brushed the idea away. Instantly it returned to him. The danger of
the thing, and danger there certainly would be in the vicinity of
him of the sardonic profile, appealed to him more and more keenly.
Moreover, he must go alone. The heavy-footed Gregg would be a poor
helpmate on such an errand of stealth.
Ronicky turned away from the window, turned back to it and looked once
more at the tall front of the building opposite; then he started to
get ready for the expedition.
The preparations were simple. He put on a pair of low shoes, very
light and with rubber heels. In them he could move with the softness
and the speed of a cat. Next he dressed in a dark-gray suit, knowing
that this is the color hardest to see at night. His old felt hat he
had discarded long before in favor of the prevailing style of the
average New Yorker. For this night expedition he put on a cap which
drew easily over his ears and had a long visor, shadowing the upper
part of his face. Since it might be necessary to remain as invisible
as possible, he obscured the last bit of white that showed in his
costume, with a black neck scarf.
Then he looked in the glass. A lean face looked back at him, the eyes
obscured under the cap, a stern, resolute face, with a distinct threat
about it. He hardly recognized himself in the face in the glass.
He went to his suit case and brought out his favorite revolver. It was
a long and ponderous weapon to be hidden beneath his clothes, but to
Ronicky Doone that gun was a friend well tried in many an adventure.
His fingers went deftly over it. It literally fell to pieces at his
touch, and he examined it cautiously and carefully in all its parts,
looking to the cartridges before he assembled the weapon again. For,
if it became necessary to shoot this evening, it would be necessary to
shoot to kill.
He then strolled down the street, passing the house opposite, with a
close scrutiny. A narrow, paved sidewalk ran between it and the house
on its right, and all the windows opening on this small court were
dark. Moreover, the house which was his quarry was set back several
feet from the street, an indentation which would completely hide him
from anyone who looked from the street. Ronicky made up his mind at
once. He went to the end of the block, crossed over and, turning back
on the far side of the street, slipped into the opening between the
houses.
Instantly he was in a dense darkness. For five stories above him the
two buildings towered, shutting out the starlight. Looking straight up
he found only a faint reflection of the glow of the city lights in the
sky.
At last he found a cellar window. He tried it and found it locked, but
a little maneuvering with his knife enabled him to turn the catch at
the top of the lower sash. Then he raised it slowly and leaned into
the blackness. Something incredibly soft, tenuous, clinging, pressed
at once against his face. He started back with a shudder and brushed
away the remnants of a big spider web.
Then he leaned in again. It was an intense blackness. The moment his
head was in the opening the sense of listening, which is ever in a
house, came to him. There were the strange, musty, underground odors
which go with cellars and make men think of death.
However, he must not stay here indefinitely. To be seen leaning in at
this window was as bad as to be seen in the house itself. He slipped
through the opening at once, and beneath his feet there was a soft
crunching of coal. He had come directly into the bin. Turning, he
closed the window, for that would be a definite clue to any one who
might pass down the alley.
As he stood surrounded by that hostile silence, that evil darkness,
he grew somewhat accustomed to the dimness, and he could make out not
definite objects, but ghostly outlines. Presently he took out the
small electric torch which he carried and examined his surroundings.
The bin had not yet received the supply of winter coal and was almost
empty. He stepped out of it into a part of the basement which had been
used apparently for storing articles not worth keeping, but too good
to be thrown away--an American habit of thrift. Several decrepit
chairs and rickety cabinets and old console tables were piled together
in a tangled mass. Ronicky looked at them with an unaccountable
shudder, as if he read in them the history of the ruin and fall and
death of many an old inhabitant of this house. It seemed to his
excited imagination that the man with the sneer had been the cause of
all the destruction and would be the cause of more.
He passed back through the basement quickly, eager to be out of the
musty odors and his gloomy thoughts. He found the storerooms, reached
the kitchen stairs and ascended at once. Halfway up the stairs, the
door above him suddenly opened and light poured down at him. He saw
the flying figure of a cat, a broom behind it, a woman behind the
broom.
"Whisht! Out of here, dirty beast!"
The cat thudded against Ronicky's knee, screeched and disappeared
below; the woman of the broom shaded her eyes and peered down the
steps. "A queer cat!" she muttered, then slammed the door.
It seemed certain to Ronicky that she must have seen him, yet he
knew that the blackness of the cellar had probably half blinded her.
Besides, he had drawn as far as possible to one side of the steps, and
in this way she might easily have overlooked him.
In the meantime it seemed that this way of entering the house was
definitely blocked. He paused a moment to consider other plans, but,
while he stayed there in thought, he heard the rattle of pans. It
decided him to stay a while longer. Apparently she was washing the
cooking utensils, and that meant that she was near the close of her
work for the evening. In fact, the rim of light, which showed between
the door frame and the door, suddenly snapped out, and he heard her
footsteps retreating.
Still he delayed a moment or two, for fear she might return to take
something which she had forgotten. But the silence deepened above him,
and voices were faintly audible toward the front of the house.
That decided Ronicky. He opened the door, blessing the well-oiled
hinges which kept it from making any noise, and let a shaft from his
pocket lantern flicker across the kitchen floor. The light glimmered
on the newly scrubbed surface and showed him a door to his right,
opening into the main part of the house.
He passed through it at once and sighed with relief when his foot
touched the carpet on the hall beyond. He noted, too, that there was
no sign of a creak from the boards beneath his tread. However old
that house might be, he was a noble carpenter who laid the flooring,
Ronicky thought, as he slipped through the semi-gloom. For there was
a small hall light toward the front, and it gave him an uncertain
illumination, even at the rear of the passage.
Now that he was definitely committed to the adventure he wondered more
and more what he could possibly gain by it. But still he went on, and,
in spite of the danger, it is doubtful if Ronicky would have willingly
changed places with any man in the world at that moment.
At least there was not the slightest sense in remaining on the lower
floor of the house. He slipped down the shadow of the main stairs,
swiftly circled through the danger of the light of the lower hall lamp
and started his ascent. Still the carpet muffled every sound which
he made in climbing, and the solid construction of the house did not
betray him with a single creaking noise.
He reached the first hall. This, beyond doubt, was where he would find
the room of the man who sneered--the archenemy, as Ronicky Doone was
beginning to think of him. A shiver passed through his lithe, muscular
body at the thought of that meeting.
He opened the first door to his left. It was a small closet for brooms
and dust cloths and such things. Determining to be methodical he went
to the extreme end of the hall and tried that door. It was
locked, but, while his hand was still on the knob, turning it in
disappointment, a door, higher up in the house, opened and a hum
of voices passed out to him. They grew louder, they turned to the
staircase from the floor above and commenced to descend at a running
pace. Three or four men at least, there must be, by the sound, and
perhaps more!
Ronicky started for the head of the stairs to make his retreat,
but, just as he reached there, the party turned into the hall and
confronted him.