Billy Kane put his hand to his forehead, and brought it away wringing
wet with great drops of sweat. It had come like a blow without warning
upon him, staggering him for an instant with horror—and then his brain
had cleared as if by magic. It was cruelly clear now.
The girl that they meant to murder was—the Woman in Black. He had had no
thought of that while they talked in there, not until Gypsy Joe had
mentioned the Rat. And then it had seemed as though the pieces of a
puzzle had been suddenly fitted together as by some unseen hand, and
bare to his brain, naked, an ugly picture stood out in hideous
perspective. He knew too well that the Rat had an incentive for getting
rid of her. And he knew why. And it was _she_ who had telephoned him,
Billy Kane, to watch Gypsy Joe and Clarkie Munn to-night. Who else would
know of anything afoot concerning those two except the “she” to whom
Shaky Liz had told her damnable Judas story?
And he saw now why, and understood her instructions to him to watch
Clarkie and Gypsy Joe. If she failed in her efforts through moral
persuasion to prevent the Cherub from committing what she believed was
to be a robbery, she still, through him, Billy Kane, could look for the
recovery of the cash, and still keep the young hound, that she believed
in and was trying to save, out of the hands of the police, and do it
with a clear conscience since she would be in a position to return the
proceeds of the theft. And then, too, perhaps, there had entered into
her calculations the element of self-protection. She expected the Cherub
to go alone, but if by any chance his pals went too, those pals were
Clarkie Munn and Gypsy Joe—and he, Billy Kane, in that case, would be on
their heels. And he understood, too, why she had not been more explicit
over the telephone. She had not actually anticipated trouble, and she
had respected her promise to the old hag to keep the Cherub’s name out
of it.
He was running now, making across town in the direction of the East
River. He did not know where Kegler’s dock or warehouse was, but Kegler
was evidently a rather large dealer in sand, and any directory in the
first drug store he passed would supply that information.
His mind worked on—curiously self-explanatory of his own actions. It had
seemed pure impulse at the time that had prompted him to retreat so
precipitately from the tenement; but he realized now that it was his
brain subconsciously, but logically, at work. He, as the Rat, could not
call in the police to raid that room where the inmates would denounce
him as the author and instigator of the very crime for which he demanded
their arrest; and to have gone into the room alone himself and have
attempted to hold them up at the point of his pistol, while it might
have been spectacular and dramatic, would have been little less than the
act of a fool. It was not so easy for one man to hold up three others,
to say nothing of a woman who was quite as abandoned, and certainly as
full of trickery, and cunning, and resource as her male companions.
There would have been, then, only one other alternative—to have gone in
there coolly as the Rat, and call off the game that he was supposed to
have started. But he had already learned that they had no love for the
Rat, even though he was their employer in the present instance, and that
secretly they were asking for nothing better than just such a favorable
chance as that would be to “get” him, and to get, too, the large amount
of cash that they credited him with having on his person.
His lips were tight, as he ran. He was conscious that he would not have
hesitated to take the risk, to take any risk, if there had been no other
way of saving her. But there was another way, a very much simpler, more
common sense and natural a way; the way he was taking now. He had only
to go to this Kegler’s dock where she would be waiting for the Cherub,
and warn her. That was all. He had ample time if he hurried, since
_they_ had not started yet.
Time! Yes, he had time enough. Cool, deliberate reason reassured on that
point, but the thought brought him a little panic-struck catch of
breath. It might have been better, perhaps, if he had gone to the
Bowery, or perhaps over into Lower Broadway, in the hope, say, of
getting a taxi that would have saved him many minutes. He shook his
head, and called himself a fool for allowing his mind to wander to
inconsequent things. There were not many taxis hunting fares on the
Bowery, and who ever heard of an empty taxi on Lower Broadway at this
hour of night! And, besides, it was not half past nine yet, and she was
not to be there until ten. And yet—time! He flirted the moisture from
his forehead again, as, reaching a small drug store on a corner, he
turned, and entered, and asked for the directory.
He was out again in scarcely a minute. He had found Kegler’s in the
directory without difficulty, but not without certain new misgivings.
Kegler’s was much farther along the East River than, somehow, and
entirely without reason, he had imagined it would be. He began to run
again, and again that twinge of panic seized him. True, he had a start
on the others; true, they had just as far to go as he had, but with the
distance that he knew now there was to cover, and the limit that existed
in the time in which to cover it, it became more than probable they
would have arranged for some special means of conveyance, whereas he had
none.
Billy Kane dropped suddenly from a run into a slow, even nonchalant
walk. A short distance ahead of him, a small, and apparently, an old and
second-hand car was coughing and chugging laboriously at the curb in
front of the lighted window of a little grocery store. A few steps more,
and he saw that the car was empty. Billy Kane’s lips broadened in a hard
smile. It might be reprehensible to steal a car for a few hours; but, as
between a car and a human life that he knew depended on him alone, he
experienced no pangs of conscience. It was the way out!
He edged over to the curb as he approached the machine, and, close to
the car now, glanced around. In through the store window he could see a
man, back turned, evidently the car’s owner, leaning over the counter,
talking to the proprietor of the store. Billy Kane, wary of attracting
premature notice from the pedestrians here and there along the street,
reached out calmly, opened the door without haste, and with a deliberate
air of proprietorship slipped into the driver’s seat—but in the next
instant he had thrown in the gears, and the machine shot from the curb
like a mad animal stung to frenzy.
A yell went up behind him; there came to him the glimpse of a man’s
figure rushing wildly out through the store door into the street; and
then another yell, that was echoed from different directions along the
street. The car took the first corner on little better than two wheels.
The yells died away behind. At the next intersecting street Billy Kane
turned again, and thereafter for a few blocks zigzagged his course,
until, satisfied that he had thrown any immediate pursuers off his
track, he headed again over toward the East River.
And now as he drove more quietly, confident that he need no longer fear
the element of time, his mind harked back again to that scene in the old
hag’s room, and there came a puzzled frown furrowing his forehead, and a
queer strained look into his face. It was not so clear after all! The
picture in the large was there. The patient, cold-blooded winning of her
confidence in order to lure her without suspicion or hesitation to her
death was clear enough, as was also the hideous betrayal of that
confidence, a betrayal that plumbed the depths of human infamy, and
whose unscrupulous ingenuity and vile cunning was so typical of the Rat;
but the details, examined more critically, seemed somehow foggy and
obscured, and seemed to hint at something he did not quite understand.
It was not that it was evidence of the Rat’s return. That thought did
not trouble him, for certainly he, of all others, who had so
unceremoniously possessed himself of the Rat’s den and all the Rat’s
belongings, should be the first to know of it if the other had put in an
appearance again; and the fact that the plot had reached its
consummation to-night he did not consider to have any bearing on that
point either. Many of the Rat’s plans, begun in the past, as he, Billy
Kane, had only too good reason to know, had reached their climax since
the Rat himself had been away. This was probably one of them. Certainly
it had been begun more than two weeks ago, as both Shaky Liz and the
Cherub had said, and that was before he, Billy Kane, had assumed the
Rat’s rôle, and, therefore, quite logically it seemed, before the Rat
had gone away. It was not that—once started, the unholy quartet to whom
the Rat had entrusted his dirty work was quite capable of carrying it
through to its detestable conclusion—but it seemed strange that,
adventurous as the Rat was and much as he undoubtedly desired to get the
Woman in Black out of his way, he would have dared to do this. What she
held over the Rat’s head, he, Billy Kane, did not know; but he knew the
Rat was well aware that, in event of her disappearance, certain evidence
would be forthcoming against him within twenty-four hours. That had been
her protection, a protection with which she had appeared to be
thoroughly satisfied, and she had taken occasion more than once to give
that warning to him, Billy Kane, in the belief that she was warning the
Rat himself. There seemed to be only one answer then to this move on the
Rat’s part. In some way, unknown to her, he must have come into
possession of that evidence, or in some way have rendered abortive the
means by which, in event of her disappearance, it would be brought to
light.
The car rattled and jangled along. It was a miserable contraption,
seedy, and badly down at the heels, but so that its engine functioned he
asked nothing better. He was near the river front now, and in the region
of warehouses and buildings that, remote from the bridges and the
regular trend of traffic, showed no lights at night, and where the
streets were utterly deserted, and where occasionally he caught glimpses
of the river itself like a silver thread under the moonlight. He ran
still more slowly now, studying his location with all possible care.
Kegler’s dock, according to the directory, was still farther on, of
course, but he realized that, well as he knew his New York, this was
somewhat out of the ordinary radius, and that it would be all too easy
to miss his way.
He shook his head a little in perplexity. There was another thing—one of
the little details. Shaky Liz, Gypsy Joe, Clarkie Munn and the Cherub
were not in the ranks of the Crime Trust as Red Vallon, and the Cadger,
and Vannet, for instance, were, and where the Rat might naturally be
expected to work upon a basis of mutual trust. It seemed strange that
the Rat, in executing a plan like this, would give, not one, but four
outsiders a hold on him, for if their tongues were ever loosened it
meant the death house in Sing Sing for the Rat to a certainty. Nor did
the fact that they themselves were accomplices wholly justify this
seeming lapse from cunning on the Rat’s part. Accomplices before now had
been known to turn State’s evidence! It was queer! The Rat probably had
a very good reason—only it seemed a little queer!
Billy Kane shrugged his shoulders. Enough of that! He was peering out of
the car now with growing anxiety, and with the realization forcing
itself upon him that, if he had not actually lost his way, he at best
had a very confused knowledge of his exact whereabouts. His lips
tightened. It was growing late, too; it must be getting perilously near
ten o’clock. He had had no doubt but that, from the address in the
directory, he could easily find the place, and he was still sure it was
farther on; but the quarter here was outrageously dark, and a plethora
of turnings, that seemed to be nothing more than private trafficways for
various wharfs and warehouses, made an exceedingly nasty complication.
He nosed the machine along, his face growing more set and anxious every
moment. It was black here—black—nothing but a cursed blackness. If there
were only someone about—someone from whom he could ask directions! But
there was nothing, no one, only the black, looming shapes of buildings,
and even these were becoming more scattered now; and the only signs of
life were the whistles and churnings of passing craft on the river.
The minutes passed. A sense of helplessness, of impotency, that brought
a cold chill to his heart, was upon him now. Down here on the river
front he was hopelessly lost. There was no light in the ramshackle car
that he had appropriated—it wasn’t equipped with anything that even
approached a modern device. He stopped the car, lighted a match, and
looked at his watch.
_Ten minutes of ten!_
Ten minutes! There were ten minutes left! He started the car again
mechanically. There were ten minutes between her and a trap-door that
opened into the silvery streak of water out there, whose shimmering now
had lost its beauty and seemed like the hideous, insinuating, silky
movement of some ghastly reptile. Ten minutes stood between her and that
trap-door; and he, fool that he was, had lost his way! And yet he could
hardly blame himself; the East River front at night was—but what did it
matter whether he blamed himself or not!
A low cry of bitter hurt came from his compressed lips. It wasn’t only
the Woman in Black! Her deadly peril now, the almost certainty of her
death, brought him, in an overwhelming surge of anguish and fear the
consciousness that it was the woman he loved. He remembered the
abhorrence and contempt she held for him in those steadfast, fearless
brown eyes of hers, and he loved her for that abhorrence and contempt.
It seemed to typify her, as somehow she seemed to typify a purity and a
courage that was soul deep—for that contempt and abhorrence was for the
man whom she believed to be the Rat, who in turn typified the dregs and
lees of all that was vile. But he, Billy Kane, was not the Rat, and some
day, as he was conscious now, he had hoped to stand before her in his
own person, and with his own name cleared. His hands gripped on the
steering wheel until it seemed as though the taut-drawn skin would burst
over the knuckles. He remembered the poise of that dainty head, the
curve of the full, white, rounded throat, and he saw her now in—— No! He
would not let his brain complete that thought. It would drive him mad.
He was already in a state bordering on frenzy, almost out of
self-control. Ten minutes! There could be very few of those ten minutes
left now!
A cry came from him again, but this time one of sudden hope. To his
right, from a large building at the head of one of those trafficways
that led to the river bank itself, he caught sight of a lighted window.
In an instant the machine was tearing forward in that direction; and in
a minute more he had leaped out, and was pounding frantically with his
fists at the door of the building. This wasn’t Kegler’s, he knew that;
but here was some sign of life at last in the deserted neighborhood.
A step sounded from within. It seemed to drag. It seemed as though it
were covering some interminable distance inside there. And then the door
opened, and an old, decrepit man, who perhaps held down a sort of
pensioned night watchman’s job, a lantern in hand, stuck out his head.
“I’ve lost my way,” said Billy Kane quickly. “Can you tell me where
Kegler’s place is?”
“You mean the sand docks?” inquired the other.
“Yes,” said Billy Kane.
The man stepped out from the doorway, and pointed back along the river.
“That’s it over there,” he said. “The one beyond our wharf down here.”
He glanced at the car. “But you can’t get through here with that car
because this bit of road don’t connect—see? You’ll have to go back a bit
the way you came.”
Billy Kane held his watch under the lantern’s light. There were neither
the five, nor the four, nor the three minutes that he had dared hope
might still remain. It was already after ten o’clock!
“Can I get down from here on foot—it’s shorter this way, isn’t it?”
asked Billy Kane between closed teeth.
“Yes, sure, you can,” said the man. “But you won’t find no one there.
They was expecting some barges in, but they haven’t come yet, and——”
Billy Kane had already swung away from the other, and was making for the
river.
“Thanks!” he called out over his shoulder, as he ran. “I’ll leave the
car here till I get back.”
He heard some reply from the other, but he could not make out the words.
Whatever they were, they were inconsequent now. He, Billy Kane, unless
by some miracle, was too late to warn her—and too late perhaps even to
save her. He knew fear now as he had never known it before, but it was
not fear for himself. And he knew a passion that seemed to find its
roots in the very soul of him. If he was too late—at least there would
be a reckoning, come what might! His lips twitched in a queer, distorted
smile. It was strange! This fear and this passion, though they were
supreme within him, seemed curiously under control, and he was
abnormally cool and calm now, and his brain, as though lashed into
virility by some powerful stimulant, was working swiftly, incisively,
leaping in flashes from premises to conclusions.
It was certain that they were already there, but there was still a
chance that they had not yet had time to do her any harm. And it must be
his wits, not blundering force, that would be its own undoing, that must
turn that chance to account. He must play the Rat now in exactly the
same way as, when back there in the tenement, the thought had flashed
across his mind that he might have played it in the old hag’s room. The
chances of success, it was true, were a hundredfold slimmer now than
they would have been then; but now it was forced upon him as the only
way, and then it had seemed an unnecessary and uncalled-for risk to
take. It was the one way now. It might fail, but it would gain him
access inside that dark, looming building across the open stretch of
brick-and-sand-strewn yard where he was running now; and once inside, if
it were not already too late, there must be some way out for her. And if
it were too late—well then, the Cherub, and Gypsy Joe, and Clarkie Munn
would not have to press the Rat for payment for their work!
Again the distorted smile flickered on his lips. He had his bearings
now, both literally and mentally. He ran without caution, making almost
unnecessary noise, and reached the door of the building; a building
that, he could discern now, made the shore end of a long dock, and
which, according to the old watchman’s directions, was obviously
Kegler’s place.
The building was in utter and complete darkness. He dismissed the
possibility that she was still anywhere without, still waiting for the
Cherub’s arrival, as too improbable to warrant the waste of even a
second, and making still more noise at the door now, he tried it, found
it unlocked, pushed it open, stepped inside and closed it behind him. A
quick, startled exclamation, from a long way off, it seemed, reached
him, and then a sibilant whisper:
“Who’s dat?”
“Clarkie—Gypsy!” Billy Kane called softly. “Are you there?”
“Gawd!” a voice ejaculated hoarsely.
A light went on somewhere over Billy Kane’s head. He was in a short
passage that was flanked on either side by what were evidently the
business offices of the concern, and at the end of this passage now a
door was suddenly swung open. Gypsy Joe was standing in the doorway.
“De Rat!” he exclaimed in heavy amazement, and mechanically fell back as
Billy Kane advanced.