Billy Kane had no means of knowing how long he had been, when he finally
leaped from the car at the corner of the lane on the street at the rear
of the den. He knew only that, beyond any question of doubt or
uncertainty, he had outdistanced her. With a quick glance around him to
make sure that he was not observed, he slipped into the lane; and in an
instant more, through the shed, and the underground tunnel, and the
secret door that so craftily opened on the board joints of the rough
panelling, he had gained the interior of the den. He ran across it,
turned on the dangling incandescent over the rickety table, and running
to the street door made sure that it was locked.
He turned then, pushed the bed aside, and pulled up the plank in the
flooring that he had loosened once in his search for the secret hiding
places of the room, and that had since served him in that capacity as a
private depository of his own. From the aperture he lifted out the hand
bag containing the banknotes stolen from the Ellsworth vault, and the
red flannel sack containing the rubies, which he had torn from around
the neck of the Man with the Crutch last night, replaced the plank, set
the bed back in its original position, and carried the hand bag and sack
to the table. He opened the bag, tossed in the red flannel sack—and
stood for an instant eyeing the bag with a frown of distrust. He
remembered that it did not close very well, that he had bent the catches
with his steel jimmy that night when he had forced the bag open in the
room of the Man with the Crutch, and that it was now quite liable to
gape apart without warning—in which case, should the contents be seen by
anyone, and they could not help but be seen if such an accident should
occur in the presence of anyone within eyeshot, it would be likely to
prove, not only awkward, but disastrous for the possessor of the bag.
His frown cleared. There was still room in the bag for, say, a shirt;
and, than a shirt there was nothing better to disguise the contents
underneath.
He walked over to the old bureau, that was flanked on one side by the
secret door to the den, and on the other by the cretonne hanging that,
stretched diagonally across the corner of the room, served the Rat as a
wardrobe. There was the shirt that he had worn on the night when he had
first come here, the night he had been wounded by the police. Whitie
Jack had washed the blood stains out, and had shoved it in the top
bureau drawer.
He pulled the drawer open, bent over it, reached in for the shirt,
straightened up—and the shirt dropped from his fingers. He did not move.
Something cold, and round, and hard was pressed none too gently against
the nape of his neck. His eyes had lifted to the mirror in front of him
mechanically, and he stood there staring into it now like a man dazed
and numbed. An arm was stretched out from behind the cretonne curtains,
and a hand held a revolver against his head. It was like some uncanny
moving picture that he was watching. For now the cretonne hanging moved;
and now a figure moved out from behind the hanging, and stood behind
him, Billy Kane, and stared, too, into the mirror, over his, Billy
Kane’s, shoulder. There were two faces in the glass now, two faces that
in form and features seemed identical—or else it was some strange mirage
that caused a double reflection of his own face. And then one of the
faces smiled malevolently, leeringly. It wasn’t his own face that
smiled. He wasn’t smiling—though his lips moved.
“The Rat!” he said, below his breath.
He felt a hand slip into his pocket, and remove his automatic. And then
the other spoke:
“Remarkable resemblance, isn’t it—Billy Kane? And the recognition
appears to be mutual—Billy Kane! I’ve been waiting here quite a while
for you this evening.”
Billy Kane did not answer. The Rat! The Rat was back! It was the moment,
arrived at last, that had haunted him from the moment he had taken upon
himself the other’s personality here in the underworld; but though he
was more at the other’s mercy with that revolver muzzle boring into his
neck, more helpless than he had thought to be when this time should
arrive, more powerless where, instead, he had told himself a hundred
times that at the worst it could be but a fight man to man, he found
himself far more unmoved now than he had anticipated he would be. He
found himself curiously composed. There seemed even a grim, sardonic
humor stirring in his soul. What did it matter now? To-night he had no
further use for the Rat’s mantle—she had seen to that by now. To-night
the whole house of cards had toppled anyway, and the ultimate worst had
happened, save only that the police had not yet got their steel
bracelets around his wrists. And yet there was a significance in the
cold menace of the other’s tone, and a still deeper significance, that
he did not like, in the other’s ostentatious repetition of his, Billy
Kane’s, name. It was obvious that Billy Kane was no stranger to the Rat!
“Get back to that table, and sit down there!” ordered the Rat curtly.
Billy Kane, because he had no choice, obeyed. It was like some weird,
extravagant hallucination of the brain. He was looking up from his chair
into what seemed to be his own face—only as he studied it now,
fascinated by it, he saw what no mirror had ever shown him was a part of
his own identity. The face was a little older, a little more drawn, and
there was an expression in the eyes, a smoldering something, a devil’s
malignity that burned out through the half-closed lids, leaving the
pupils like fever spots behind. And he remembered now that she had
commented upon the freshness of his face on that first night when they
had met.
“You fool!” sneered the Rat suddenly. “So you played the Rat, did you?
And did you think I didn’t know? Well, you seem to have liked it—Billy
Kane—and so I guess you’d better finish out the act, and play it until
the end. You can manage that, can’t you—say, for another ten
minutes—until the Rat is dead!”
Billy Kane’s hands tightened on the table edge. It was not only the
words, it was the eyes, and the face that were working now, that seemed
to possess some deadly eloquence.
“What do you mean?” Billy Kane steadied his voice.
“It won’t take long to tell you,” said the Rat roughly. “You’ve been
here long enough to know that apart from the old cobbler and his wife
upstairs, who mind their own business and are always deaf when they
don’t want to hear, this place is sound-proof to revolver shots. Well,
the game is up to-night. Your game—and my game! I’ve got one or two
little things to do here, and then I’m going; but I’m going to leave the
Rat behind—dead.”
Billy Kane’s fingers began to drum a light tattoo on the table. It was
strange that he could force his fingers to do that with an air of such
apparent unconcern. He was laboring under no delusions. He was fully
conscious that there was no bluff in the other’s words, that he was
actually sitting there and facing death in the most literal sense of the
term. The Rat’s reputation was quite enough in itself to make it certain
that the man would not hesitate in putting his threat into execution.
And then, besides, there were strange stirrings in his mind now that
were not comforting things. The Rat, cognizant of it all the time, had
deliberately let him, Billy Kane, play the role—and the drama was to end
with the Rat’s death. It seemed horribly logical. It would let the Rat
out of _her_ clutches to-night, for instance, and leave only a dead Rat
as prey for the police. He started involuntarily. Was that it? His
fingers stopped their movements. Suppose he warned the Rat that the
police were coming now? No! That would only cause the Rat to hurry—and
to shoot the sooner. Well then, suppose the police found _two_ Rats
here? It would not save Billy Kane, but it would end the career of one
of the most infamous scoundrels in the United States—and it would pay
his debt to her! If he could only stave the man off a little, fence for
time!
He could have laughed out wildly at the mocking irony of it. He was
praying now for the police to come! She would lead them, or some of
them, through that secret door, wouldn’t she?—though they would guard
both doors, take no chances, even while they would hardly expect to find
anyone here. The Rat was standing with his back to the secret door, and
Billy Kane’s eyes swept past the other now in a well-simulated vacant,
wavering way—and fell again upon the Rat.
The man was leaning a little farther over the table now, his lips parted
in a vicious smile. It was as though, innate in the other, was an unholy
joy to be derived from a victim’s plight, a joy that he sought to
augment by making his victim writhe the more if he could.
“And so you played the Rat, did you?” The Rat was sneering again. “Well,
you found out a lot more than was good for you, didn’t you? There was a
woman, wasn’t there? Maybe she didn’t introduce herself because she
thought you knew her well enough; but maybe you’re entitled to know
something about her, because she’s one of the reasons why you’re going
to snuff out in a few minutes.” His voice rose suddenly in a furious
burst of blasphemy. “Blast her!” he snarled. “She went too far! She
thought she could make me dance every time she cracked her little whip,
did she? She’ll wish now, if there’s any wishing where she’s gone, that
she’d stayed up on the Avenue with the rest of the swells where she
belongs, and left her infernal, nosey charities on the East Side alone.
Margaret Blaine—the banker’s daughter! Ha, ha! She had it in for me
because a girl she was interested in down here went and jumped in the
river. See? She swore she’d put me through one way or another for that.
And then she stumbled on a pal of mine the night he croaked off, and
found some papers on him that put me to the bad for fair. And that wised
her up to a lot more. And then, curse her, she tumbled to the game here,
and—well, I guess you know the hand she played.” He laughed raucously.
“I guess you’d ought to! But you needn’t worry about it any more! She’s
gone out—Billy Kane—understand? She went out—for keeps—at ten o’clock
to-night.”
Billy Kane’s eyes stole to the secret door again. He remembered the
fascination with which he had watched it slowly open on the night he had
lain there on the bed, and Karlin, in the hands of the police now, had
sat at the bedside, and Red Vallon had been here at the table. And it
seemed now as though the door moved again as it had moved that night.
But he could not be sure. Perhaps it was his imagination that was father
to the wish—and he dared not look steadily, or too long in that
direction.
He brushed his hand across his eyes. He understood well enough now why
the Rat had been indifferent to what Shaky Liz, or the Cherub, or any of
them, might hold over him—there would be no Rat, if he, Billy Kane, in
the Rat’s stead, were murdered. And the Rat believed, of course, that
she—her name was Margaret—Margaret Blaine—that she was dead. But he,
Billy Kane, was playing for time, wasn’t he? And the Rat, in his hideous
propensity for a cat-and-mouse game, seemed quite willing to talk.
“You killed her!” Billy Kane’s ejaculation was one of stunned
incredulity. “But—but she threatened me, when she thought I was you, by
saying that if anything happened to her the evidence against you would
be produced just the same.”
“Sure, she did!” leered the Rat. “In twenty-four hours after her
disappearance. And it’ll be twenty-four hours all right before they have
any proof of that. It wasn’t pulled off where a howl would go up ten
minutes after she snuffed out! Sure, in twenty-four hours! Well, I’m in
no hurry, am I? In twenty-four _minutes_ the Rat—that’s you—won’t need
to care what busts loose! It’ll save _me_ a lot of trouble if they find
the Rat sprawled out on the floor with a bullet through him, won’t it?”
The door! Had it moved inward a bare fraction of an inch, as it had that
other night? There would have been time by now, just time, for her and
the police to have got here. Was that a widening crack along that panel
there—or only a shadow flung with taunting malice by the murky light?
No—it moved now! He was sure of it. It moved!
He forced himself to laugh in a short, nervous way.
“I don’t see how that lets you out,” he mumbled. “What’s to become of
you if the Rat’s found dead?”
The Rat was moving back from the table to the side wall of the den.
“I’ll show you,” said the Rat, with an ugly grin. “And don’t move—you
understand? I’m a dead shot, and I’m not risking anything by being a few
feet farther away. You’d only go out a little sooner, and miss something
that’ll maybe sweeten your last moments—see?” His revolver still
covering Billy Kane, he raised his left hand and pressed against the
wall. A small panel door swung outward. “There’s nothing in there!”
mocked the Rat. “That’s the secret she was forever talking about having
discovered, and that’s the place she looted all right, and where she got
the dope about a lot of our plans, and kept me from wising up the crowd
about it in order to save my own skin. But there’s a thing or two she
didn’t know.” His hand crept farther along the wall, and pressed
suddenly against it again, and now a full board-length of the panelling
slid away. Something metallic fell with a thud to the floor—and then
Billy Kane was on his feet, clinging with a fierce, unconscious grip to
the table.
He had forgotten the police and that secret door at the far end of the
room, forgotten the peril in which he stood, forgotten that ugly black
muzzle of a revolver in the other’s hand. His mind and brain seemed to
be reeling. Some inhuman devil’s trick was being played upon him. That
was one of those iron crutch shafts, painted to resemble grained wood,
that the Rat was picking up—yes, and fitting it now with deft,
accustomed fingers to the armpiece! The Rat—the Man with the Crutch—the
murderer of David Ellsworth—the man whose very rôle he had taken upon
himself and played!
“You!” he cried, and swayed at the table. And then passion seized him.
“You hound of hell!” he shouted hoarsely. “The Man with the Crutch—it
was you who killed David Ellsworth!”
“Sit down!” The Rat’s lips were thinned, merciless; the revolver edged
forward. “Well, what about it! Why don’t you say Peters, too? You stuck
your nose pretty deep into that!”
Billy Kane mechanically sank back in his chair.
“So you’ve got it, have you?” jeered the Rat. “Sure, the Man with the
Crutch was me! And you, you fool, through your cursed interference with
Red Vallon, put the police on my trail for Peters’ murder. Well, I’m
going to let you be the Man with the Crutch too—as well as the Rat.
That’ll let me out on both counts!” He stood the crutch up against the
wall, and from the opening drew forth some clothes and flung them down
beside the crutch. “Get the idea? This is the costume that goes with the
crutch—sort of reserve stock. Understand? It wasn’t always convenient to
come here as the Rat, or leave here as the Man with the Crutch—or the
other way around, if you like. I’ll leave the stuff there where it’ll
show up, and the police can put two and two together the same as you
have. And that answers your question as to what is to become of me. I am
a gentleman of several parts, and I can spare _two_ of them. What’s left
is none of your business, and anyway I’m getting tired of this, and I’m
pretty near ready to go. But there’s one thing more—there were some
rubies you were looking for, weren’t there, besides the ones you’ve been
taking charge of and so kindly placed in that bag there a few minutes
ago without giving me the trouble of making you hand them over?” Again
his left hand, thrust back of him, sought the interior of the opening,
and came out with a number of small plush trays piled one on top of
another, the topmost flashing and scintillating now with its score of
fiery, blood-red stones. “You were looking for these, weren’t you?”
prodded the Rat, with a chuckle. “Well, you had ’em here with you all
the time!”
Billy Kane was fighting desperately for self-control. Could they hear
outside there? The man was condemning himself out of his own mouth! God,
could they _hear_ out there—did they understand that this man had
murdered David Ellsworth, and that Billy Kane was clear! He met the
Rat’s eyes with deliberate defiance now. More! Everything! The man must
be led into telling everything—he had not told enough yet to make it
sure—and perhaps they had not heard it all.
“And Peters,” he rasped out. “You killed Peters, too—Peters, who helped
you kill David Ellsworth! Weren’t you satisfied with your share, that
you had to steal his?”
The Rat had advanced to the table, and, setting down the trays, always
with his revolver covering Billy Kane, had begun to pour the contents of
one tray at a time into the open hand bag. He stopped now, and stared at
Billy Kane in a sort of contemptuous surprise.
“So that’s the way you doped it out, is it?” he said, and laughed
raucously. “And you’re kind to Peters, aren’t you? Peters, who wouldn’t
harm a fly! I killed Peters because his evidence at the inquest finished
Billy Kane for fair, and I didn’t want that evidence changed. It was
_me_ Peters saw coming down the back stairs and entering the library
that night—only he thought it was you. Do you take me for a fool? I knew
you’d see the report in the papers, and that, knowing there was
something wrong about Peters’ story, you’d hunt Peters out and have a
show-down, and that between you there was a chance of you getting at
more of the truth than I wanted, and that Peters would then retract his
evidence. Get me?
“I wasn’t for letting you out. I’d been banking on you to do a lot for
me. The only guy that was in with me on that deal was Jackson—and he’s
dead—just as the Rat is going to be. I spotted you long ago when you
used to nose around here for that old fool who pitched his money away. I
watched you quite a while before I was dead sure I could pass for
you—and then I warmed up to Jackson. The rest was easy. We croaked old
Ellsworth, and planted you. That gave me the coin I wanted to do what I
was getting ready for—to pull out of this Rat’s game forever. It was
getting too fierce with that cursed woman on my heels. So before I
pulled the Ellsworth trick, I set things going to get her too, and
passed the word around that I was going away for a while, so’s there’d
be no chance of her tumbling to anything—and I stood pat as the Man with
the Crutch. And then you acted like a Christmas tree shaking itself in
my lap. There were a lot of things coming along with certain friends of
mine, and with you playing the Rat and getting away with it, and with
you there to stand for it if anything broke wrong, it looked like a
cinch to nose them out at the tape on the little deals I’d started for
them, and that would let me get away with the whole wad myself. See?”
The Rat was pouring the rubies from the trays into the hand bag again,
his eyes glinting with a curious rapacious craftiness; and then, coming
to one of the trays whose corner had been cut off, he laughed outright
in a sort of self-complacent mirth.
“Do you remember this?” he taunted. “The night I croaked old Ellsworth I
beat it for here on the quiet the minute I left the house, and I put the
trays and half of the stones into that hiding place there, and then I
changed my clothes and wore my crutch over to where I lived when I
wasn’t at home here, and hid the rest of the stuff there. You know that,
all right! Blast you, you got it, and you nearly queered me! The Rat was
supposed to be away then—see? Well, that night when I was limping around
with my crutch, I was told the Rat was back—and it didn’t take me long
to find out your game. It looked like a piece of luck that was too good
to be true! It suited me—I was for it hard. The only thing I was afraid
of was that you might quit, so I left that ruby and the piece of tray
for you on the table. I thought I knew you. It would give you a start,
all right—but it would look as though this was where you were going to
get the clue you needed, and you’d stick for fair.”
The Rat attempted to close the bag, and snarled at the bent catches. He
finally fastened one of them partially, tossed the bag on the floor
behind him, and, his face suddenly working again, flung his revolver arm
out toward Billy Kane.
“If you’ve got anything to say before you go out—say it!” He was biting
off his words. “Don’t think that because I’ve been talking a lot to you
that I’m bluffing. I wouldn’t have opened up if I’d been bluffing, would
I? And, besides, there’s another count on which you’re due to snuff out.
The game’s up all around. I stalled on ringing down the curtain on the
girl and on you as long as I thought there was a chance of my getting
something out of those schemes that you kept butting in on. But you
queered that, too, away back on the night you put Karlin in bad, and the
police got him. Karlin’s begun to weaken and talk a little. That’s the
finish of the gang, and any more pickings for me. Sooner or later
Karlin’ll spill everything he knows, and he knows a lot, to save
himself; and then they’ll be looking for the Rat on several other
counts. So I passed the word to put the game with the girl through for
to-night—while I took care of you.”
Billy Kane felt his face whiten. He knew that round, black muzzle would
spit its tongue-flame in a moment. With the Rat’s hand around it, it
seemed curiously like the head of a snake that was coiled to strike. Had
they heard out there? Here was the bag that contained everything, all
that had been taken from David Ellsworth’s vault, and here was the
murderer, self-confessed. Had they heard? Had she heard? Would they
remember, would _she_ remember that Billy Kane’s name was cleared? And
if they were out there, why didn’t they come in? Were they going to
stand there and see him shot down—see another murder committed? No! He
understood. The slightest sound from the direction of that secret door
would be but the signal for the Rat to fire. It was up to
him—somehow—some way—to give them a chance to act. It was up to him in
some way to beat the Rat to that first shot, that would not be delayed
many seconds now.
He eyed the Rat for a moment steadily; appraised again the cold-blooded,
callous implacability in the other’s face—and then Billy Kane squared
his shoulders, and his hands on the table slid back a little until the
thumbs extended over the edge, and he laughed coolly.
“It’s the limit, is it, Bundy?” he said quietly. “Well, then, I’ll take
it standing up, you cur, if you don’t mind.”
The Rat nodded indifferently.
It seemed as though Billy Kane, for all his apparent coolness and
composure, was not equal to his self-appointed task. He half rose to his
feet, and sank back heavily in his chair again, and his hands, as though
to steady himself, clutched with seemingly desperate energy farther over
the table’s edge—and then, in a flash, the table was in mid-air between
the two men, and, as it hurtled forward, Billy Kane, crouched low,
leaped for the other, as the Rat, with an oath, sprang to one side to
avoid the table.
A red flame blinded Billy Kane’s eyes, an acrid smell filled his
nostrils, and seemed to stifle him, and make his head swim dizzily, and
his left side seemed curiously numb and dead, but his hands had reached
their mark, and had closed like steel vises around the Rat’s throat. And
he hung there, hung there because a fury and a seething passion gave him
superhuman strength—hung there as cries resounded through the room, and
there came the rush of feet—hung there as he crashed downward to the
floor dragging the Rat with him—hung there as an utter blackness came
and settled upon him.
――――
It was strange and very curious. He opened his eyes. He was in bed, and
someone was sitting there very quietly, with head bent over and resting
on the back of his outstretched hand. He tried to remember. He should
have been on the floor in the den, shouldn’t he? And where was the Rat?
Had they got the Rat? His eyes opened a little wider. That dark head
there seemed strangely familiar. His side hurt him brutally. He
remembered that shot now. A sort of grim humor came upon him. He was
back where he had started from on that first night in the underworld—in
bed with a pistol-shot wound. The Rat must have got him after all. But
the Rat—the Rat! He started up in bed involuntarily.
There came a little cry. The dark head was raised. It was the Woman in
Black. No, that wasn’t her name. It was Margaret—Margaret Blaine. He
wanted to call her that. He tried to speak. He was very weak.
“You mustn’t try to move,” she said softly. “You have been very badly
hurt, though, thank God, not dangerously so. And it’s all right—I know
you want to know that. They’ve got the Rat—for the murder of David
Ellsworth. We heard it all last night, and did not dare to move while he
kept that revolver on you, and I was mad with fear.”
“Yes,” said Billy Kane weakly. “It’s morning now, isn’t it?”
Cool fingers closed his lips.
“Yes, but don’t talk,” she said, with a sudden attempt at severity—and,
as suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, I did not know last
night—I did not understand—and you risked your life to save mine.”
Her life! He was not so weak but that he could understand that. His hand
groped out for hers. It seemed as though he had always loved her—only
those strange doors of the night had stood between. But now—now there
was something in her eyes, behind that film of tears and those wet
lashes, that made him dare.
“Your life! Would you trust me with it again—for always?” he whispered.
Again the cool fingers closed his lips.
“Billy, you are to be absolutely quiet,” she said. “Those are the very
strictest orders.”
But her head was nestling on the pillow against his cheek, and there was
a great gladness in his heart.