The door closed behind Whitie Jack, the man’s footsteps echoed back as
he climbed to the street, echoed faintly again from the pavement, and
then died away.
Billy Kane got up from the bed, went to the door, locked it, and then
walked down the length of the room—and standing in front of the mirror
stared into the glass in a grimly impersonal way. It was himself—Billy
Kane. His face was in no whit changed, except perhaps that there was a
slight pallor there due to loss of blood, and that the lines were
sharper and harder, as though he were, as indeed he was, under a tense
and heavy strain; but, with his collarless shirt, his trousers covered
with mud and dirt, his whole appearance had taken on an aspect that was
at once sinister and forbidding.
He laughed shortly, and turning abruptly from the mirror, crossed the
room again, and pushed aside the cretonne hanging. There were some
clothes on the wall pegs here. He gathered them up, and took them nearer
to the light for an inspection. They were old, somewhat greasy, and
wholly disreputable. He laughed shortly again, as he changed into them.
As the Rat, he might venture out, though he would do well to take care
not to be recognized, since Whitie Jack would have spread the report
that he was wounded and in bed; but he could at least go out without
inviting instant pursuit as the “murderer” of David Ellsworth. He was
safe now for the moment, safe until morning anyhow—and he could even use
those hours, if he would, in an attempt to put as many miles as possible
between himself and New York! His hands clenched, and into the pallor of
his face the red came burning hot. But he wasn’t going to do that! That
“staggering possibility” was clear before his mind’s eye now. He wasn’t
going to do that; he was going, instead—to play the Rat—to play the
cards that fate, if one believed in fate, had thrust into his hands—to
take the chance, the one chance, _if the Rat did not come back too
soon_, of clearing his own name, and of bringing to justice the
hell-hounds, who had struck down that gentle gray-haired man who had
been his friend. His hands clenched harder, until, as they had done once
before that night, the nails bit into the palms. He, Billy Kane—the
murderer of his father’s friend, the murderer of the man who had trusted
him and loved him! It was getting him now with all its brutal and
remorseless force! Broadcast over the country, by morning his name would
have become the synonym of all that was vile and hideous, and Billy Kane
would be known as one of the most revolting characters in the annals of
crime—a foul and filthy thing who typified the dregs and lees of human
degradation—a thing from whom the friends of old would turn in horror
and in shame, and——
Slowly his hands unclenched. The surge of fury that had been almost
ungovernable passed, and he knew again that cold, unnatural, deadly
calm. If he lived, the guilty man, or men, would pay! If he were taking
a chance now, a desperate chance, he was taking a chance that no _man_
could do otherwise than take. It was the chance to live—for one might
better otherwise be dead! A chance! He had picked up Whitie Jack’s
revolver, and was twisting it in his fingers, and now he thrust it
suddenly into his pocket. A chance! He was taking no chance, indeed,
save with the stake that was already flung upon the table—his life. It
was the one way! As the Rat, doubtless well known to the authorities, he
could move under the very noses of the police at will without suspicion
arising that he was Billy Kane; and as the Rat, if Whitie Jack was to be
relied upon as a criterion, he would have the run of the underworld, and
in the underworld were many secrets, and amongst those secrets was
perhaps the one he sought—the clue to Jackson’s associates in the murder
of David Ellsworth. He was not blinded to the difficulties of this
picking up of the thread of another man’s life; nor blinded to what was
perhaps the greatest difficulty of all, the necessity of being able to
recognize those with whom he _should be_ acquainted, but even that was
not insurmountable. He could see a way, he believed, to accomplish even
that.
But all this was for to-morrow—and the to-morrows after that! To-night
he was going out again—to Marco’s. That was why he had changed his
clothes just now. A graver thing, the thought of merging his identity
with the Rat’s, had impinged, obtruded itself, as it were, upon his
mind. But he had not forgotten Marco’s.
He picked up his discarded vest, transferred the package of banknotes
and his watch to the pockets of the one he now wore, and as he did so,
he looked at the time. Laverto had said a quarter to eleven. It was
almost that now. Billy Kane’s eyes strayed over the table, and fell upon
the black mask. The mask, too, went into his pocket. It might prove a
most valuable discovery, that mask—under certain circumstances even the
_Rat’s_ identity was not lightly to be disclosed.
He collected the muddy garments he had taken off, and tucked them under
the mattress on the bed. It was not likely that anyone would come here,
much less attempt to enter, in his absence; but he was fully aware that
now, and from now on, his life depended upon his caution in every
detail. He extinguished the light, put on his hat, walked to the door,
unlocked it—and stood for a moment hesitant. Was he a fool to take this
added risk, when already his own back was against the wall, when already
he was in desperate case himself? He shook his head in a sort of
exasperated remonstrance with himself for even his momentary hesitation,
then opening the door, he locked it behind him, and crept cautiously up
the stairs to the street.
Whitie Jack had been only a tool used for the stage-setting of some
deviltry that was to follow—at a quarter of eleven. That was obvious.
He, Billy Kane, had intended that the police should be informed and
should deal with Laverto, and that he in person should give evidence
against Laverto; but he could no longer inform the police, no longer
give evidence. He was wanted now himself for _murder_, and so upon him
fell the moral obligation to prevent or render abortive, if he could, a
crime that he knew was pending. And besides—his face hardened suddenly,
as he moved swiftly along, evading the direct rays of the street lights,
and keeping in the shadows—he had a personal account to settle with
Antonio Laverto. If it had not been for the man’s damnable imposition
having succeeded to the extent that it had, he, Billy Kane, would not
have left the Ellsworth house to-night, and David Ellsworth would not
now——
Billy Kane’s hand, in his pocket, tightened over the butt of Whitie
Jack’s revolver. Unconsciously he quickened his stride.
Always hugging the shadows, his hat drawn far down over his face, giving
the passers-by he met as wide a berth as possible, Billy Kane covered
the short distance that separated the Rat’s den from Marco’s. He slipped
into the lane unobserved, and for the second time that night crouched
against the door with the broken lock. But now, mindful of the door’s
tendency to squeak, he pushed it open cautiously an inch at a time. And
then, with the door slightly open, he stood motionless, a puzzled and
amazed expression on his face. Just exactly what he had expected to find
here, he was not prepared to say—but certainly not this! A faint light
came through from the door of the back room into the hallway, and from
the room there came a woman’s voice that mingled a sort of pitiful
defiance with a sob.
“It’s not true! I tell you it’s not true! The boy never did it!”
“So!” It was a man’s voice now, caustic and unrelenting. “Well, where is
he now, then?”
“I don’t know,” the woman replied. “I haven’t seen him since supper. But
that’s got nothing to do with it. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“So!” It was the man again. “Well, maybe not! But I am not to be fooled!
I am a poor man. I cannot afford to lose my money. So, it has nothing to
do with it, eh? You say that because you are his mother, eh? But did he
tell you at supper that I had discharged him this afternoon? Eh? Answer
me that!”
“N-no.” The answer seemed to come reluctantly.
Billy Kane pushed the outer door a little wider open and slipped
through. Keeping close to the wall, he edged forward until he could see
into the back room through its open door. A frown came and knitted his
brows in hard furrows. He was frankly puzzled now. The woman, a tall,
powerful, muscular woman of middle age, but curiously frail now in
obvious fear and emotion, was Mrs. Clancy, who kept the little notion
shop next door on the corner; and the other, bent-shouldered, in long,
greasy black coat, with long, untrimmed and dirty white beard, whose
eyes were distorted behind the heavy lenses of his steel-bowed
spectacles, was Marco, the proprietor of the second-hand store. Marco
was apparently in a state of equal distress and excitement. He
alternatively wrung his hands together and gesticulated furiously.
“Eight hundred dollars!” he cried out wildly. “Do you hear, you, the
mother of that brat? Eight hundred dollars! All I have on earth! And it
is gone! Stolen by that cursed young prison bird of yours! So he did not
tell you, eh, that I discharged him this afternoon because I was sure he
was making little stealings from me all the time? But you are not
surprised, eh? Maybe he has stolen from you, too, eh?”
The woman did not answer. She seemed to shiver suddenly, and then sank
down heavily in the chair before the table, near which she had been
standing.
Marco paced up and down the room, back and forth, from the table to
where the floor was littered with the erstwhile contents of the rifled
safe.
Billy Kane’s puzzled frown grew deeper. Evidently there _had_ been money
in the safe, but in some way Laverto had got it before he had set Whitie
Jack at work upon a stall, and it was obvious that Laverto had
maneuvered to plant the crime on the shoulders of this woman’s son. But
what then had been Laverto’s object in bringing Whitie Jack into it at
all? It did not somehow seem to fit, or dovetail, or appear logical,
or—— And then, with a sudden start, Billy Kane leaned tensely forward,
his eyes fixed narrowly on Marco. Yes, it _did_ dovetail! He had it
now—all of it—all of the damnable, unscrupulous ingenuity of the plot
that had been hatched in Laverto’s cunning brain. The frown was hidden
now by the mask which Billy Kane slipped quickly over his face, but his
lips just showing beneath the edge of the mask were tight and hard.
“I was a fool—a fool!” Marco cried out sharply. “A fool, ever to have
taken him in here as my clerk! I might have known! He has already been
in jail!”
“It was only the reform school.” Mrs. Clancy was wringing her hands
piteously. “He is only a boy—only seventeen now. And he did not mean any
harm even then—and—and since then he has been a good boy.”
“Has he?” Marco flung out a clenched fist and shook it in the air. “He
has—eh? Well, then, where did he get this? Answer me that! Where did he
get this?” Marco’s closed hand opened, and he threw what looked to Billy
Kane like a little brooch, a miniature in a cheap setting, upon the
table. “That’s you, ain’t it? That’s his mother’s picture, ain’t it? Do
you think I do not recognize it? That’s you twenty years ago—eh? Did you
_give_ it to him—eh? Answer me that—did you _give_ it to him?”
The woman had risen from her chair, and was swaying upon her feet.
“Did you think I did not have reason to be pretty sure when I asked if
he had not stolen from you, too?” Marco, apparently beside himself with
rage, was gesticulating furiously again. “And you said I had no proof of
_this_—eh?” He shook his fist in the direction of the safe. “Well, I
found that brooch there on the floor where he must have dropped it out
of his pocket when he blew my safe open, and he didn’t know he’d dropped
it in the dark, and then some of the papers he pulled out covered it.
That’s where I found it—under the papers! That’s proof enough, ain’t it?
I guess with his record it will satisfy the police—no matter what his
mother thinks!”
A great sob came from the woman. The tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“My boy!” she faltered. “It’s true—I—I am afraid it’s true. Oh, my
boy—my boy—my fatherless boy!” She thrust out her hands in a sudden
imploring gesture toward the other. “Listen! I will tell you all I know.
I will show you that I am honest with you, and you will have mercy on
us. To-night, after supper, I found that the little chamois bag in which
I keep the few little things I have like that brooch, and the money I
take in from the store during the day, was gone. Yes, I was afraid then.
I was afraid. But he is all I have, and——”
“And my eight hundred dollars, that he came over here and stole
afterwards, was all _I_ had!” screamed Marco. “You tell me only what a
blind man could see for himself! Did I not put two and two together
myself? He has run away now—eh—with all he could get? That he stole from
you does not give me back my money. But the police will find him! Ha,
ha! The police will find him, and when they do they will remember the
reform school and he will get ten years—yes, yes, ten years—for this!”
“Listen!” Mrs. Clancy’s voice choked. She brushed the tears from her
cheeks with a trembling hand. “If—if I give you back the money, will you
let him go?”
“Ha!” Marco stood stock still, staring at her. “What is that you say?
You will give me back the money? You! Are you trying to make a fool of
me?”
“No, no!” she cried. “I’ve got that much—it is my savings—it is in the
bank. Listen! Oh, for God’s sake, be merciful! Give him a chance! You’ll
get your money back, you won’t lose anything, and—and you would the
other way, because—because before they caught him he would perhaps have
spent a lot of it.”
“That is true!” said Marco, in a milder tone; and then, a hint of
suspicion in his voice: “What bank is it in? The bank down the street?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“That is my bank, too,” said Marco. He stared at the woman for a moment
speculatively, then his eyes circled the room, and he stared at the
broken safe. “Will you pay for my safe?” he demanded abruptly.
“Yes,” she agreed eagerly.
“Fifty dollars,” said Marco. “It would be fifty dollars.”
“Yes—oh, thank God!” She was crying again.
“So!” Marco shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I will do it.” He walked back
toward the safe, picked up a check book from amongst the debris on the
floor, tore out a blank check, dropped the book on the floor again, and
returned to the table. He pushed the slip of paper toward Mrs. Clancy,
and pulled out a fountain pen from his pocket. “So! Well, make out a
check for eight hundred and fifty dollars.” He shrugged his shoulders
again.
It was slow work. Mrs. Clancy’s hand trembled, and she stopped at
intervals to wipe her eyes. Billy Kane edged closer to the door. It was
probably all she had, the savings of years from the little shop, but the
fear and strain was gone from her face, and her lips were quivering in a
smile, as she signed her name at last, and handed the check to Marco.
But now Billy Kane’s revolver was in his hand—and suddenly, as Marco
held the check close to his eyes to peer at it through his thick lenses,
Billy Kane stepped forward across the threshold. And then Billy Kane
spoke.
“Drop that, Marco!” he said quietly.
There was a cry of terror from the woman, as she whirled around,
white-faced, clutching at her breast; it was echoed by a frightened gasp
from Marco, and as though the slip of paper in his fingers had suddenly
turned to white hot iron, he snatched his hands back in a sort of
grotesque jerk, and the check fluttered to the table.
Billy Kane stepped toward the man.
“You’ve made a mistake, Marco, haven’t you?” he inquired coolly.
“Instead of this woman’s son being the robber, are you sure it
isn’t—yourself?”
The man shrank back.
“What do you mean—myself?” he stammered hoarsely. And then, recovering a
little of his self-control: “Who are you? And what are you butting in
here for? What’s your game to say I did that?” He jerked his hand toward
the safe. “You can’t bluff old Marco, whatever you’re up to! I was in
Morgenfeldt’s café all evening until half past ten, and I can prove it;
and ten minutes after that I was pulling her”—he jerked his hand toward
Mrs. Clancy now—“out of her shop next door to show her what I had found
here. She’ll tell you so, too! I couldn’t have come all the way from
Morgenfeldt’s, and done all that, and blown that safe open in ten
minutes, could I?”
Billy Kane’s smile was unpleasant.
“Don’t be in such a hurry to produce your alibi, Marco,” he said evenly.
“It sounds suspicious—and it also accounts for a good deal. I think
we’ll take a look through your pockets, Marco—not for the eight
hundred”—Billy Kane’s smile had grown still more uninviting—“but on the
chance that we may find something else. Put your hands up!”
The man hesitated.
Billy Kane’s revolver muzzle came to a level with the other’s eyes.
“Put them up!” he ordered curtly; and, as the man obeyed now, he felt
deftly over the other’s clothing, located a revolver, whipped it out,
and laid it on the table behind him. A moment later, also from the man’s
pocket, he took a chamois bag, which, too, he placed upon the table.
Mrs. Clancy, with a startled cry, snatched at it.
“Mary, Mother of Mercy, what does this mean!” she gasped out. “It’s—it’s
my bag!”
“It means that our friend Marco here is a very versatile rogue,” said
Billy Kane grimly. “You may put your hands down now, Marco, and”—he was
clipping off his words—“you won’t need that beard, or those glasses any
more! Take them off!”
The man had gone a sudden grayish white. Mechanically he obeyed—and
cowered back, his eyes in terror fixed on Billy Kane’s mask. _It was
Antonio Laverto._
With a scream of rage, Mrs. Clancy rushed at the man.
“You—you devil!” she shrilled. “You made me believe my boy was a
thief—God forgive me for it! And—ah, let me at him! I’m only a woman,
but——”
Billy Kane had stepped between them.
“Wait!” he said. “There’s a better way, Mrs. Clancy.” He swung on the
Italian. “If it hadn’t been for your voice, Laverto—you see, I know
you—you might have got away with it. I didn’t recognize you at first.
You’re clever, damnably clever, I’ll give you credit for that, if it’s
any satisfaction to you. You must be a busy man! Are there any more
rôles in your repertoire? Well, no matter! The Italian crippled beggar,
and Marco the second-hand clothing dealer are enough for now—and enough
to put you where you belong!” His voice rasped suddenly. “You blotch on
God’s earth!” he said between his teeth. “You knew Mrs. Clancy had a
little money, and you knew that her son had a reform school record
against him. And so, about two weeks ago, you rented this place next to
hers that was then vacant, and you stocked it with a few old clothes,
and you hired her son to act as clerk; and you hired him, not with an
idea of doing any business, but as a necessary part of your plan to
incriminate him in his mother’s eyes, and also to enable you, without
arousing suspicion by appearing to neglect business here, to attend to
other irons equally as despicable that you had in the fire at the same
time—playing the flopper, for instance, up on Fifth Avenue. The whole
outlay probably cost you but a few dollars—and in return you meant to
get all of this woman’s life savings. I say all, because you probably
found out how much she had, and if she had had much more than eight
hundred dollars you would have set your fake loss higher. And to-night
in some way—the details do not matter at this moment—you stole from her
that chamois bag, both to impress her with the belief that the boy had
stolen from her too, and also to secure spurious evidence to prove that
he had been guilty of what you claimed had happened here.”
Billy Kane paused. His eyes had travelled to the wrecked safe—and sharp
and quick had come the thought of Whitie Jack. He smiled grimly. He did
not want Whitie Jack to appear in this. He owed Whitie Jack a good deal
to-night—and the “Rat” never forgot! His eyes came back to Marco. The
man was circling his lips with the tip of his tongue.
“You’re going up for this, Marco,” Billy Kane said in level tones. “But
I’ll give you a friendly tip—for reasons of my own. Maybe you didn’t
pull this safe-cracking game yourself, maybe your alibi stands on that
count; but, if it does, you got some tool to pull it off for you just
for that reason, and possibly also because you didn’t know how to handle
the ‘soup’ yourself—and if it’s one of the boys it won’t help your case
any to snitch on him, for you’re caught open and shut in this anyhow,
and maybe, Laverto, some of his friends might remember it when you _got
out_ again! You get the idea, don’t you? Yes, I see you do! Well, then,
there’s just one thing more. If this little game of yours had broken
right for you, Mrs. Clancy’s son—to make it appear that he had run
away—would have had to disappear for several days, until you could have
pulled up stakes here without exciting suspicion, and have pretended to
move away. Therefore, where is he now—Laverto?”
There were beads of sweat on the man’s forehead. His lips moved
mumblingly.
“_Where?_” Billy Kane’s revolver edged viciously forward. “I didn’t hear
you!”
“Wong Yen’s,” the man whispered.
Billy Kane’s jaws snapped together. He had heard of Wong Yen’s! It was
one of the most infamous Chinese underground dives in the Bad Lands.
“Doped?” He bit off the word.
“Yes,” the man whispered again.
Billy Kane turned to Mrs. Clancy.
“He’s yours now, Mrs. Clancy. You know the story, and you know where to
send them for your boy. I guess I can leave him to you. They say the
female of the species is more deadly than the male! There’s his
revolver. Do you think you could march him out of the front door, and
hand him over to the first officer you see?”
There was a bitter, hard look on Mrs. Clancy’s face. Big and brawny, she
towered over the cringing figure of the Italian—and the Italian shrank
still farther away from her, as she snatched up the weapon.
“I can!” she said, and her short laugh was not a pleasant one. “And I
can shoot if I have to, and, faith, there’d be joy in the doin’ of it;
but you”—her voice broke suddenly—“I don’t know who you are, and I owe
you——”
Billy Kane was backing toward the rear door.
“You’ll pay it all, and more, Mrs. Clancy, when you hand him over to the
police,” he said quickly—and, stepping out into the passageway, he ran
down its length, whipping the mask from his face as he went; and in
another instant, from the lane, had gained the cross street.