It was the next evening—in the Rat’s den. Through half closed eyes, as
he lay stretched out on the bed, Billy Kane watched Whitie Jack across
the room. The man was tilted back in his chair, his legs were sprawled
across the table, and from his cigarette, which dangled from one corner
of his lower lip, a thread of blue smoke spiraled lazily upward. Whitie
Jack was not smoking; the cigarette simply hung forgotten on the man’s
lip. For the moment Whitie Jack with bated interest was poring over the
evening paper.
And then Whitie Jack looked up suddenly, and spoke—out of the unoccupied
corner of his mouth.
“Say, dat secretary guy dat croaked de old geezer last night was a
sweet, downy bird—nit! But believe me, he made some haul—_some_ haul!”
Billy Kane made no reply. Whitie Jack resumed his absorbing perusal of
the newspaper. Billy Kane’s eyes closed completely—but not in sleep. It
had been a day that, viewed in retrospect, made the brain whirl. It had
been a wild untrammelled phantasmagoria. That was it—phantasmagoria.
There was no other word. The day was expressed in shadows, moving
shadows, shadows that came and went, many of them, shadows that were
paradoxically real and concrete, and shadows that were the reflection of
things felt and sensed, but unseen. And these latter, the shadows of the
mind, were weird, uncanny things like denizens out of some black world
apart—ghoulish things. And the shadows that were real and concrete, that
spoke and whispered, seemed to take it for granted that he was and
always had been in their evil confidence, and so their words were not
rounded out, and there was only the hint of dark and hideous things in
which he was supposed to have his part. It had been a day of mutterings,
of whisperings, of skulking things that had fled the sunlight. The brain
and mind was in riot from it. It was evening now; it had been the
strangest day through which any man had ever lived.
He had held court that morning and through the day, here in the Rat’s
lair—a sort of grim, unholy court to which grim, unholy courtiers had
flocked to pay him homage. And these courtiers had been admitted to the
presence one by one, their names announced by Whitie Jack, who had
acted—quite innocently, quite free from any thought of connivance—as the
master of ceremonies. Billy Kane’s lips twisted in a mirthless smile. It
had been very simple, that part of it; much more simple than he had
dared to hope it would be. Bundy Morgan, alias the Rat, was supposed to
know all those who composed the élite of the underworld intimately and
well—but Billy Kane upon whom fate had thrust for the moment the
personality and entity of Bundy Morgan, alias the Rat, knew none of
them. And yet it had been simple—so simple that, against the peril, the
certain death that would follow fast on the heels of even a misplaced
word or an unguarded look, it had been even grotesquely absurd in its
simplicity. Through the dens and dives of the Bad Lands, spread by
Whitie Jack when he had gone away the night before, the whisper had
passed that the Rat had returned; and so, throughout the day, stealthy
footsteps had descended from the street to the basement door here, and
in response to the knock Whitie Jack had opened the door a cautious
inch, peering out; and then he, Billy Kane, from the bed, his voice
querulous for the occasion, had demanded who it was, and Whitie Jack had
answered—and the unsuspected introduction thus performed, he had bidden
Whitie Jack admit the visitor.
There had been many like that—very many. And he had learned many things.
His hands clenched suddenly at his sides. The rôle he played promised
well! Innuendoes, words toying with the fringe of things, had made it
only too glaringly clear that the Rat was enmeshed in devilishness that
ran the gamut of every crime in the decalogue. And for the moment he was
the Rat! There was some hell’s syndicate, whose scope and power he could
only dimly plumb though he was satisfied that its branches were rooted
in every nook and corner of the underworld. And of this syndicate he was
now, by proxy, a member; and he was not only a member, but he was one of
those magnates of crime who composed its inner council, its unhallowed
directorate.
He twisted a little on the bed—more in mental than in physical unrest.
His wounded shoulder was still far from healed of course, but it gave
him very little discomfort, and in no way interfered with his freedom of
action—but it had been the safer way, this accentuating of his hurt,
this pretended state of semi-helplessness. It had brought those he must
know _here_ to him; it had brought about those unsuspected introductions
without which, had he first left this lair of the Rat’s and attempted,
trusting to luck, to pick up the threads of the Rat’s life, would
inevitably have plunged him in his blind groping to certain destruction.
Also it had brought him a quite thorough understanding of Whitie
Jack—the man’s deference that had been almost cringing at their first
meeting, and then the man’s subsequent eagerness to serve.
Whitie Jack was one of the lesser breed that looked up to the heights
the Rat had attained with both awe and unbounded admiration. The man had
come like a dog to heel, but like a faithful dog. Whitie Jack was living
in a sort of reflected glory—he would be the envy of the proletariat of
the Bad Lands—he was associating now, was even on terms of certain
intimacy, with one of those in high places in that inglorious
commonwealth of crime to which, both by birth and inclination, he owed
allegiance. It opened a new prospect to Whitie Jack, one that was full
of dazzling possibilities—and it had made of the man an invaluable ally.
Whitie Jack had been at once valet, nurse, surgeon and attendant all
through the day. He had returned at daylight that morning, dressed the
wound, and thereafter had not left the place except to go out and buy
certain necessities, such as food—and a pocket flashlight, which Billy
Kane, mindful of his previous night’s experience in the underground
passage to the shed and lane, had ranked amongst those necessities as
the first on the list.
Billy Kane shifted his position restlessly on the bed again. His mind
was in a turmoil of feverish activity. It seemed as though a thousand
divergent thoughts fought with each other to obtain undivided attention
and recognition each for itself, and the battle went on incessantly. Who
was the woman who had crept in here in the darkness through that secret
door last night? What did it mean, that message she had written and left
on the table? “So you are back, are you? Well, so am I! _Remember!_”
There was something malignant, something ominous in that
word—“remember.” Remember what? Why? What sinister thing was it that lay
between her and the Rat—that he, Billy Kane, must now accept and stand
sponsor for—since he was now the Rat!
The Rat! The Rat! The Rat! His brain was off again at another tangent.
In Heaven’s name, who was the Rat? Where was the Rat at this moment?
When would the Rat return? Guarded questions all through the day helped
him little. The Rat’s absence had been accepted, that was all—none
seemed to know, or have any interest in the cause of it. One ray of
reassurance only had filtered through the murk. The Rat’s return in his,
Billy Kane’s, person, had seemingly been premature, the Rat had
seemingly not been expected; and he could argue from that, and with fair
logic, that he might for a little while at least be left undisturbed in
his possession of the Rat’s personality, and the Rat’s belongings—as far
as the Rat was concerned. The Rat! Those innuendoes, those whispers,
those shadows, that strange woman’s stranger message were back again,
seething and boiling in his brain. Naked ugliness! What mess of iniquity
was the Rat not mixed up in! And what mess of iniquity might not he,
Billy Kane, accepted without question as the Rat now, with the Rat’s
face and features, with the Rat’s satanic partnerships, be forced to
wallow in to save his life, and, more than life, to——
The paper rustled in Whitie Jack’s hand.
“Some haul!” Whitie Jack rolled the words on his tongue like some sweet
morsel. “S’help me! Five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of rubies! Dat
guy Kane is some slick gazabo! Say, d’youse get it, Bundy? Five hundred
thousand—an’ a bunch of de green stuff, too!” He licked his lips. “Some
haul!”
The paper had exaggerated. David Ellsworth’s rubies at the outside would
not exceed three hundred thousand dollars in value. Billy Kane found
himself curiously and querulously irritated at the inaccuracy. He opened
his eyes, nodded unconcernedly at Whitie Jack—and closed his eyes again.
His mind was suddenly alert and concentrated. In a few minutes now some
of those who composed that inner council of crime would be here. He had
arranged that this morning—with Red Vallon. Red Vallon was the biggest
gangster in New York. Whitie Jack had dropped that information in an
enthusiastic eulogy of Red Vallon. And Vallon had bent over the bed that
morning and whispered of a meeting to-night at the usual time and place.
But he, Billy Kane, was not ready for that yet. He knew too little, it
was too great a risk; and he knew too much—to escape alive, if a chance
word or act betrayed him. But there had come a thought, swift, in a
blinding flash, a staggering thing, a gambler’s stake, and he had
whispered back what was apparently the obvious reply—that he was too
badly hurt to go. And then: “One or two of you slip in here on your way
over,” he had said quickly. “Get me? I’ve got something!” And Red Vallon
had agreed—and with Red Vallon would come Karlin. Karlin! The name had
somehow seemed familiar; but though Whitie Jack had subsequently
furnished a partial clew by referring to Karlin as one of the high-brow
lawyers of the city, he could not definitely place the man.
Billy Kane turned on his side, with his face away from Whitie Jack. Red
Vallon and Karlin would be here in a few moments—and he must make no
mistake now. What he meant to do was an impudent thing—impudent with a
Titanic impudence. He meant to pit the underworld in a fight on the side
of justice against the police. He meant to use the craft, the cunning
and the stealth of the Bad Lands to establish his innocence. He too had
read the papers—the morning and the evening papers—and the headlines had
shrieked out at him the infamy of which he was accused. His name was a
by-word now from one end of the country to the other. A viper and a
degraded wretch, a thing inhuman and apart, the papers had called him.
He had read them all to the last word. Murderer of his benefactor! A
thief—an assassin thief, who had fled for his life with those blood-red
rubies! A bead of sweat came out on his forehead, and he raised his hand
and brushed it away. Yes, he had fled—to fight—to take the only chance
he had of bringing to justice the hell-hounds who had struck down his
old friend, the only chance he had of clearing his own name.
Well, he would fight! It was beginning now, that fight. But he was
between two fires that threatened him at any instant with destruction.
The police, not only in New York, but from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
would search ceaselessly for him, and if he were caught it was death.
Fate, that had made him the double of a character that ironically seemed
to measure up to everything the papers had said about himself, had
thrown in that way a temporary mantle of protection over him, but let
that mantle slip but ever so slightly and he would better a thousand
times hand himself over to the law and have done with it—the end would
be more merciful!
But fate, too, had given him a weapon with which to fight; and,
two-edged though it was, with a chance always that it might turn upon
himself, he meant to use it now—and that weapon was the underworld. He
did not know yet, he was not sure yet just how high he stood in that
unsavory command, but he had discounted rather than overrated his power,
and he believed he had power enough for his purpose—those whispers and
those shadows had seemed to assure him of that. The Rat seemed to be the
driving strategical force in this crime syndicate that appeared to
permeate the Bad Lands with its influence, and move and sway the
underworld at its own imperious pleasure—and for the moment he was the
Rat!
There was Jackson—and Jackson was dead. His mind had flown off at
another apparently irrelevant tangent. But it was not irrelevant. The
papers had said that Jackson, the footman, had died that morning after
lingering in a semi-conscious state through the night. Jackson was the
single clue in his possession. Jackson, he knew, was one of the
murderers, but Jackson was the _only_ man he knew who was concerned in
that devil’s work last night—and Jackson was dead. And now he, Billy
Kane, was “wanted” on a double charge of murder—for the murder of
Jackson, who had probably himself struck old David Ellsworth down, as
well as for the murderer of the old millionaire! Yet Jackson, even if
dead, must still have left some clue behind him, if only that clue could
be found. Who was Jackson? The man had already been in service at David
Ellsworth’s before he, Billy Kane, had gone there as the old
philanthropist’s secretary, and he had naturally had neither motive nor
interest then in any of the footman’s personal concerns. But those facts
were vital now. Who was Jackson? Where had the man come from? Who were——
Footsteps were descending from the street. There was a low knock, twice
repeated on the door. Whitie Jack was on his feet, and looking
inquiringly toward the bed.
“Watch yourself!” said Billy Kane gruffly. “I’m not entertaining
to-night, except——”
“Sure—I know!” said Whitie Jack. He crossed the room, and, opening the
door a crack, peered out. “Red and Karlin,” he informed Billy Kane in a
whisper.