Billy Kane lighted a cigarette. Red Vallon he already knew—Karlin he
was _supposed_ to know. “Let them in,” instructed Billy Kane.
He raised himself on his elbow.
“Hello, Karlin!” he greeted, as the two men stepped into the room.
“Red’s told you I was laid up—eh? Glad to see you! Shake!”
His eyes, half closed, fixed on the other in scrutiny, as the man
advanced toward the bed. Karlin was immaculately dressed—in sharp
contrast to the untidy and careless attire of the stocky, brutal-faced
gangster who followed close at his heels. The man was tall, slimly
built, and, save that the black eyes were too close together and too
small, had a pleasant and attractive face. It was a mask perhaps! The
smile was too engaging; and it was rather curious how small the ears
were, and how tightly they hugged the skull. He toyed with a little
black Vandyke beard, as he shook hands.
“Same to you, Bundy!” The voice was soft, silky, persuasive. “Glad
you’re back, too!” He made an almost imperceptible movement with his
head toward Whitie Jack, who still remained near the door.
Red Vallon was more blunt.
“What about _him_, Bundy?” he growled, and jerked a thumb in Whitie
Jack’s direction. “We got to mosey along as soon as we can. Savvy?”
“Sure!” said Billy Kane. “Whitie, you take a holiday for the night. Come
back in the morning. Beat it!”
The cigarette hanging on Whitie Jack’s lip drooped in sudden dejection;
but if he swallowed hard to choke back what was evidently a very
grievous disappointment, he made no demur.
“All right, Bundy, if youse says so,” he blurted out, and went from the
room, closing the door behind him.
The man’s footfalls mounting the cellar-like stairs to the street died
away, and for a moment there was no sound except for a faint, irregular
_tapping_ from the floor above.
“What’s that?” demanded Karlin sharply.
Billy Kane blew a ring of smoke ceilingward, and lazily watched it
dissolve into air. Whitie Jack, through judicious prodding, had served
him well that day.
“Old Ignace—keeps the cobbler’s shop above—half blind, and has to work
overtime—wife’s nearly seventy, and deaf.” Billy Kane was explaining
almost wearily. “What do you think I hang onto this hole for?”
“Sure!” grunted Red Vallon corroboratingly. “But Karlin’s never been
here before.” He pushed a chair with the toe of his boot across the
floor toward Karlin, and appropriated one beside the table for himself.
“Well, spill it, Bundy!” he invited. “We got to hurry! It’s too bad
you’re laid up an’ can’t sit in on the showdown, but Merxler’s plum’s
got ripe, an’ we got to pick it to-night. Savvy?”
Billy Kane duplicated the first smoke ring. Merxler! He had identified
Karlin now! Karlin and Merxler! That was where he had heard Karlin’s
name—in connection with Merxler—and it must, necessarily then be the
same Merxler. Was young Merxler, whom he had heard of and had even met
through David Ellsworth, more then than simply the notorious spendthrift
that he was credited with being? Karlin, it was obvious, was leading a
double life. Was Merxler another of the inner circle, another from the
higher ranks of society—and the greater criminal therefor!
“Piker stuff!” commented Billy Kane complacently.
Karlin leaned forward with a jerk in his chair.
“Piker stuff!” he ejaculated, and the little black eyes contracted and
fixed on Billy Kane in a puzzled glitter. “Piker stuff!” he echoed
challengingly.
Billy Kane nodded indifferently. He was skating on thin ice, on
perilously thin ice. Whatever the “Merxler plum” might be, it was
obviously far from the definition he had given it, and having apparently
displayed an intimacy with the affair, an intimacy that he was evidently
supposed to possess, it was decidedly best left alone!
“That’s what I said,” he drawled deliberately. “Piker stuff—compared
with what I’ve got. I told you I had something, Red—didn’t I?”
Red Vallon hitched sideways in his chair, his head thrust forward.
“Go to it, Bundy! Spill it!” He circled his lips with his tongue. “If
you say so, that goes! What’s the lay?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars—a half million—cold”—Billy Kane had
lowered his voice.
He did not look at either of the men, but he was watching them both
intently—his eyes were on the mirror, the mirror of the bureau at the
far end of the room, that bore testimony to the cunning of his unwitting
host. The mirror held the door and the upper part of the room in focus;
and, lying there on the bed, he had the profiles of the two men in
distinct outline. Karlin was fingering his Vandyke in a sort of hesitant
incredulity. Vallon’s face had suddenly blotched red with rapacious
excitement.
“Gawd!” Red Vallon spluttered out. “D’ye mean that, Bundy?”
“Sure, I mean it!” Billy Kane answered a little curtly. “What do you
think I told you to come here for? Sure, I mean it! It’s all there—right
on the table, hitting you between the eyes.”
Red Vallon jerked himself around; and, as though he had taken the words
literally, stared with a frown of bewilderment at the only thing in view
upon the table—the newspaper that Whitie Jack had dropped there when he
had answered the summons at the door.
Billy Kane laughed quietly.
“Get it, Red?” he inquired. “Five hundred thousand dollars—better than
diamonds—blood-red rubies—red with blood, the paper says. Can’t you
read?”
Karlin had forgotten his beard. His hands clenched on his knees.
“You mean the Ellsworth murder—the robbery?” He was whispering hoarsely.
“You win!” said Billy Kane.
“My God!” whispered Karlin. “Do you know where that stuff is?”
Billy Kane’s eyes had returned to the mirror, and now suddenly they
shifted a little to the wall at the side of the bureau. Something cold
and forbidding seemed to grip at him, numbing for an instant mental and
physical action—and then left him in a state of grim, unnatural
calmness. Was it imagination? He could have sworn that the wall _moved_
slightly. He swung over on his left side, as though to face Karlin and
Red Vallon more directly before he answered them—but his hand, slipping
into his coat pocket, closed over his revolver. It _might_ be
imagination, but the possibility remained that someone was on the other
side of that secret door, and, having pushed the door almost
imperceptibly open, was listening there. If that were so, he must get
rid of Red Vallon and Karlin before any dénouement came if possible, get
rid of them without an instant’s loss of time; but equally vital was the
necessity of setting in motion, and equally without loss of time, the
machinery of the underworld upon which now he was practically staking
his all.
“Pull your chair over here, closer to the bed, Red—and you, too,
Karlin,” he said coolly. “We aren’t likely to be heard from the street,
but that’s no reason for shouting. No; I don’t know where they are, I
haven’t got the rubies in my pocket—but I know how to get them there.
What?”
Red Vallon’s face was working in a sort of anticipatory and avaricious
ugliness; Karlin’s expression was scarcely less rapacious.
“Go on, Bundy!” Karlin said under his breath. “What do you know about
it?”
“What you could have read for yourself in the paper,” Billy Kane
answered tersely. “And it looks like a cinch. It’s just a case of
beating the police to it, and it sizes up as though we had the jump on
them.” He was speaking almost mechanically. His mind was on that section
of the wall that _might_ have moved; and through half-closed eyes, but
as though deep in thought and as though concentrated on what he was
saying, he was watching it narrowly. It had not moved a second time, of
that he was sure; perhaps it had not moved at all, it might be only
nerves on his part, nerves high strung, taut to the breaking point, but
his fingers were still rigid around the stock of his revolver, and, in
the pocket, the weapon, resting on his hip as he lay sideways, held a
bead on the panels of the secret door.
“I don’t quite get you,” muttered Karlin, with a frown.
Red Vallon swore roughly, intolerant in his eagerness.
“Aw, give him a chance!” he said impatiently. “If he says so, that’s
good enough for me. Bundy never pulled a steer in his life, an’ if he
says this is a cinch—that goes! Give him a chance!”
“It’s like this,” said Billy Kane. “It’s a thousand to one shot that
this secretary chap who croaked the old millionaire and got away with
the goods is still in New Work. Why? Well, I’ll tell you why. After
pulling the murder, according to the papers, he beat it out of the house
with the loot, and evidently hid the stuff somewhere. Then he came back
to the house again, and the footman, Jackson, grabbed him. But there was
a good half hour between the time the police found out about the murder
and before this guy Kane came back to the house. Get me? And during that
time the police got busy and shot flycops around all the stations and
ferries. It’s a cinch, the way I look at it, that after he crawled into
that lane and they lost him there, that he’s been crawling ever since
somewhere around New York. He never left the city—he never had a
chance.”
Red Vallon whistled low and complacently under his breath; Karlin,
fingering his Vandyke again, nodded sharply now in approval.
“Besides,” added Billy Kane, “he had sort of queered his own game. He’d
hidden the loot somewhere, and he couldn’t make a direct get-away then.
He had to get hold of the goods again before he went. All right! What I
want to know is who’s got the better chance of grabbing him—us or the
police? He isn’t one of us. He’s working on his own. Well, all right! If
we nip him, and he’s satisfied with a little rake-off, and is willing to
cough up the rest, that’ll be treating him fair. If he isn’t strong on
coughing up, we’ll find another way of making him come across that he
won’t like so well, and we’ll get the half million, and he’ll get——”
Billy Kane completed his sentence with a significant shrug of his
shoulder.
An oath, the more callous and brutal for the soft purring way in which
it fell from his lips, came from Red Vallon.
“What do you want done, Bundy?” Karlin was terse and to the point. “It
looks good to me, if you can pull it off.”
“It’s the biggest haul we’ll ever get our mitts on if we live a hundred
years!” Billy Kane’s eyes shifted for an instant from the wall to fix
themselves impressively on the two men. “I’ve been lying here all day
thinking it out. What do I want done? Well, I’ll tell you! I want every
string and every wire we’ve got pulled. Savvy? We’ve got to beat the
police to it. We’ve got to get Kane—_first_. I want all the boys that
the bulls think they’ve got sewed up as stool pigeons to stool-pigeon
the police and get all the inside dope. And then that fellow Jackson,
the footman, looks like a bet we can’t throw down. He’s dead—but he
looks like a good bet. He lived all through the night, but the papers
don’t say anything about the story he told. Perhaps he knew something
that will help, perhaps he didn’t; but he doesn’t go into the discard
yet. Find out who he was and all about him, and get next to his family
if he’s got one. If he told any story to the police, any of the family
that were clustering around the bedside will be wise to it. Get the
idea?”
“Birdie Rose is the boy for that!” Red Vallon’s bullet head was thrust
forward in vicious earnestness, his red-rimmed black eyes were
glittering with a feverish light.
“Let Birdie go to it, then!” said Billy Kane.
“Birdie was slated for the Merxler affair to-night.” Karlin spoke a
little dubiously.
“Shift him!” snapped Billy Kane curtly. “Red’s right! Birdie’s the boy
for this job.”
“All right!” agreed Karlin, and shrugged his shoulders. He turned to Red
Vallon. “Put Bull McCann in Birdie’s place, then. See that he gets to
Jerry’s back room before ten.”
“I’ll fix it!” grunted Red Vallon. “What’s next, Bundy? This goes—all
the boys’ll fall for it.”
“There’s only one thing more—until something begins to crack open.”
Billy Kane’s lips had tightened, his eyelids had drooped still lower. It
was only a bare fraction of an inch at most—if at all—but it seemed that
door had moved again. His words were coming barely above a whisper now.
“There’s only one way he can get anything out of those rubies, and
that’s through a ‘fence.’ They’re no good to him unless he can cash in.
He’ll try to get rid of some of them as soon as he can. How soon depends
on how well he knows his way about. But he’s probably slick enough to
have got a line on a blind uncle or two. All right! The police, of
course, have passed the word down the line, but here’s where we put one
over on the police. There’s some of the joints they don’t know—we know
them all. Kane might get away from the police there—but he can’t get
away from _us_ on that deal. I want every ‘fence’ in New York tipped off
that he’s to stall on the job the minute he gets his lamps on a ruby
that’s being shoved his way, and that instead of opening up to the
police he’s to wise us up on the hop. That’s all for a starter—and now
go to it!”
Red Vallon drew in his breath noisily, as though he were sucking at some
luscious and juicy fruit.
“Some head, Bundy!” he applauded with undisguised admiration, as he
pushed away his chair and stood up. “Sure, we’ll go to it! Karlin’s
running the Merxler game to-night; but I’ll start this other thing
bumping along on the high gear. What about the reports? Who’ll the boys
make ’em to? You? Here?”
It was a moment before Billy Kane answered. It was the one thing he must
have, the one thing upon which he was staking everything—an intimate
knowledge of the result of every move made in this game that he had
initiated, and, beyond that again, it was vital that he, and no one else
should control each successive move. But Whitie Jack was gone for the
night. In one way he deplored that fact, in another way he was relieved.
If it was only imagination, if there was no one crouching there now on
the other side of that secret door, Whitie Jack’s presence would not
matter, but otherwise—his mind leaped to that other point—if Whitie Jack
was not here to perform those very necessary introductions, and Red
Vallon’s messengers came, messengers that he would be supposed to know
but would not be able to recognize, it would spell almost certain
disaster, and——
“There isn’t anything likely to break to-night, Red,” he said
deliberately. “If there does you look after it; or if it’s anything very
important you come here yourself. I want to get a night’s sleep if I
can, I’m feeling pretty rocky. But I ought to be on my feet to-morrow,
and in the morning you can swing the whole business over to me, and I’ll
run it.”
“Attaboy!” said Red Vallon heartily. “See you in the morning, then.”
Karlin too had risen from his chair.
“Good-night, Bundy!” he said—and grinned. “I pay you the compliment of
being the trickiest crook unhung!”