A PLACE OF FEAR
Big Slim lived at Bohlmier's. This was a little hotel in a huddled
section of the city, and had the Swiss coat of arms on a sign at the
door.
"I always pick out little islands where I'll be quiet, and where no one
comes poking around," said the lank burglar. "The swift places are the
kind to pass up."
There was a little sanded office, with prints of the Rhine Castles, of
the Alps, of mountain folk with their goats. Old Bohlmier with his bald
head and big spectacles sat behind a high desk peering at a much thumbed
scrap of music, and blowing the notes upon a flute.
"Friend of mine," announced Big Slim, indicating Scanlon. "Wants a
room."
"So!" Bohlmier put down the flute and looked at the big athlete over the
rims of his spectacles. "Yah, I suppose I haf one yet." He arose and
opened a small register. "Your name you will put inside here," he
directed.
Scanlon did as requested; then the proprietor toiled, in a
short-breathed fashion, up the stairs before them, unlocked a door and
stood aside for Scanlon to enter. The room was small and slimly
furnished; but it was clean and had two windows peering upon what
looked, in the dimness, like a courtyard.
"If you do not der stable mind," suggested Bohlmier, "der ventilation is
goot, by der windows."
"Nice," said Bat "This will do me--great."
When the proprietor had gone, Big Slim shuffled about the room, his
hands in his pockets.
"The Dutchman's real," said he, to Bat. "I've known him for some time,
and he's in on more than anybody would think."
The athlete threw some cigarettes upon the table and drew up two chairs.
"Sit down," said he, with a ready air of ownership. "Let's get better
acquainted."
"Not now," replied Big Slim. "Some other time, maybe, I'll open a can of
experience with you; but to-night," and he leered knowingly, "I've got a
little business."
"All right," said Bat. "I'll see you to-morrow, then."
"Sure," said the lank burglar. "I don't want to lose sight of you, pal,
for I owe you one."
"Oh, that's all right," said Scanlon, as he shook hands with the other
at the room door. "It was only a little try-out for a freight car like
me."
Scanlon stood in the doorway and watched the angular, stoop-shouldered
figure go down the hall; there was something so slinking, so furtively
deadly in the burglar's motions that Bat felt a prickly sensation run up
and down his spine.
"That's the kind of a fellow that would snuff out your light and never
lose an hour's sleep over it," said the big athlete to himself. "A wolf!
A prowling wolf! But, just as Kirk thought, he's got something inside
that lean head of his that I ought to know about, and I mean to know
it."
Big Slim turned a sharp angle and disappeared from view; but Scanlon
stood looking down the hall, and thinking. The corridor was low
ceilinged and narrow; the lights were dim and the doors ran in an
unbroken line on either side, each with a black number upon it.
"Nice," pronounced Bat, "every thing clean and orderly. The old Swiss is
there with the soap and dust brush. I'll hand it to him for that.
But----"
He paused and a wrinkle appeared between his eyes. Yes, the place was
much better than he had expected--that is, as far as he could see. But
sometimes there were things not to be seen; if you were aware of them at
all, you _felt_ them. And as Bat Scanlon stood looking down the dim hall
with its two rows of expressionless doors, he was aware of a peculiar
something from which his mind drew back. Rising from an invisible
source, much as a miasma arises from a marsh, there came a subtle
quality--an impression of evil; it seemed to creep by and around him;
silently, insidiously, poisonously.
The big man stepped into his room and quietly closed the door. Then,
grimly, he slipped a huge Colt's revolver from a holster hooked under
the left armhole of his vest; with a snap he threw it open, and the
ejector threw the black, oily, murderous looking cartridges upon the
table with a rattle. Bat inspected and tested the working parts of the
weapon; satisfied that all was right, he replaced the cartridges with
practiced fingers.
"I only had that feeling once before in my life," said he, "and that was
the night in Dacy's place at Holdover when the four 'breeds' were
waiting for me in the dark room." He put the Colt back in its holster,
and stood ruminating. "What was it the burglar fellow said about the
skipper of this outfit? 'He's in on more than anybody would think.'
Well, I'd better watch myself," and Bat smiled, though his eyes narrowed
at the same time; "for when a bald-headed old simp with a flute is on
the cross, he's sure to be the limit. The surprise kind of crook always
is."
He walked the floor for a few moments, then he shot the bolt on the door
and stretched himself across the low iron cot, with the light turned
off. Bat Scanlon's mind was not a particularly imaginative one; but at
the same time it possessed one of the attributes of the imaginative
type: and that was the mental antennae which felt things while they were
still in the distance. As he lay there upon the hard bed in the
closet-like room, he kept sensing something, but could get no clear idea
of its shape.
"That's where Kirk pins on the medal," spoke Bat. "These things never
come to him done up in fogs; they are always pretty clear pictures and
have a definite meaning."
However, vague as the premonition was, Bat was confident of one thing;
that was: whatever shape the thing took, it would have something to do
with the affair at Stanwick.
"Maybe I believe it because I've got a mind full of the Stanwick thing,"
Scanlon told himself; "a fellow does fool himself that way sometimes.
But this time ain't one of them. Before I get out of this phony hotel
I'm going to get another little jolt."
Another jolt! Bat whistled between his teeth in dismay. Were there not
jolts enough in the thing already? One by one, as he lay there, he
marshaled his impressions in his mind, in the order in which they had
occurred. When Nora first called him on the telephone there had
unquestionably been a note of fear in her voice. In her dread of the
police, as afterward shown, he fancied he recalled something more than
the shrinking of a sensitive nature. And her eagerness to know what was
going forward at Stanwick was--well, it was curious.
And to Stanwick he had gone. He saw the ugly evidence of a brutal crime;
he saw a sick girl, very much attached to her brother, who quivered with
dread at what had happened, and who, so he fancied, was even in a deeper
state of fear at what might yet come to pass. Also he had watched and
listened to a harassed young man who seemed to be groping his way amidst
the bitter resentments of years, the frightful actualities of the
moment, and a disconcerting sense of impending disaster.
"And that same young fellow's in bad," said the big man, to the darkness
of the little room. "The cops always make it tough for the man they pick
out to bear the weight of a crime. They try and twist everything to
point his way."
And after this came the evident interest of Ashton-Kirk in the matter.
"I don't know but what he was interested even before that," thought Bat.
"He saw something I didn't see--which ain't hard to do, for I'm a dub at
that kind of a thing."
He remembered that Nora was even more agitated when he saw her again
than she had been the first time. Young Burton was innocent! He must be
freed! She _knew_ he didn't do it! She _knew_!
"How did she?" Bat asked himself. "That's strong talk."
And, then, there was the bruise upon her forehead. Nora had deceived
them about that. There were the footprints behind the rose arbor, there
was the small revolver, there were the marks of the "creepers" in the
yard at Stanwick and upon the scaffold outside Nora's window. And, then,
there was also the apparently sudden resolution upon the girl's part to
place her jewels in a place of security.
"People don't get these sudden notions for no reason at all," mused Bat.
"And Nora had her own reasons for doing that. But," and there was a
little tightening of his mind, an unpleasant straining which made him
want to draw back from the thought, "she didn't want to tell anything
about it. I believe in Nora. Nothing could drive me from that; but she
is holding back on us; she knows things that she won't tell."
At some of these things Bat could guess; some others Ashton-Kirk's hints
had partly covered. But the background, the reason for it all, puzzled
him. He pondered deeply for a long time, but not a ray of light appeared
through the mists that obscured the matter.
"But this burglar fellow's got something I want to know!" Bat sat up,
and his forceful hands shut tightly. "And maybe it's just the thing we
need. Maybe it's just the----"
He stopped. When he had turned off his single gas jet a half hour
before, all had been dark outside. Now there was a flare of light from
below. He arose and looked out. A wall loomed across the courtyard; and
in the previous darkness he had thought it blank. But now he saw there
were windows in it; and two of them, on the ground floor, were
illuminated.
"Huh!" said Bat, as he stood looking down. "There's old Bohlmier, and
exercising his old flute again."
The bald dome of the old Swiss shone under the gas light; the scrap of
thumbed music was propped up against a bottle, and he was blowing
gravely into his instrument, his fingers moving up and down and along
the keys with methodical precision.
"Just like an old-fashioned picture," said Bat, the quaint
characteristics of the composition in the frame of the window appealing
to him. "I wonder if I've not been a little hasty with these notions of
mine about this place. That old lad looks as harmless as----"
But he stopped! For the composition below had suddenly changed. Some one
had evidently knocked at the door of the room in which old Bohlmier
sat. One hand had reached, in a clawing motion, at the music; the flute
was held pinned to the table in a bony, convulsive grip by the other;
the bald head was thrust forward and seemed to wave gently to and fro
like that of a snake. The big athlete drew in his breath, hissingly.
"The bets are off!" said he, between his teeth. "That old rat's got it
in him! I'll bet his veins run ice water; and if you gave him the chance
to knife a man, you'd be doing him a favor."
The Swiss had apparently spoken to whomever had knocked, and now,
although still invisible to Bat, had entered the room. Bohlmier leaned
back in his chair, his hands clasped before him; but from the motions of
the shiny poll, Bat knew he was speaking.
"That room must be somewhere behind the office," Bat told himself.
"Maybe a private den of the old fellow's."
Here Bohlmier suddenly pushed back his chair and stood up. With head
thrust forward once more he seemed to stab a question at his visitor, a
question apparently of vast importance. Evidently this was answered to
the liking of the Swiss; eagerly, triumphantly, inquiringly, one hand
went up and hung pointing across the room to a point behind the other.
"The door's there," said Bat, intuitively getting the meaning of the
gesture. "And on the other side of it is some one, or something the old
man's been expecting to see."
Then there followed a period of earnest talk between the hotel-keeper
and the unseen visitor. It was carried on in a low tone; Bat recognized
this fact by the attitudes and gestures of the old Swiss who finally,
with almost trembling hands, pulled open a drawer in the table at which
he had been seated. From this he took something which he patted, almost
fondly. But a hand came across the table--the hand of the unknown--a big
bony hand, and pushed it aside.
"It's Big Slim!" exclaimed Bat, with fresh interest. "And old smooth top
is up to something he don't like."
The tall burglar now came into view; he sat upon the corner of the table
and bent his head toward the Swiss, gesturing angularly. With no good
humor, the hotel-keeper pulled open the table drawer once more and
replaced the thing he had taken out; the bald head wagged in protest;
every motion he made suggested a man convinced against his will. Deep in
his inner consciousness, Bat Scanlon had a stirring of unrest. He
recalled the words of Big Slim while they were still at Sheehan's:
"'I lost out on that deal, bo; but that's not all. More's to follow;
and this time I'll get mine.'"
And then the business of which he had spoken when he left Bat in the
hall only a short time before.
"I wonder if it could have anything to do with the other matter," Bat
questioned himself. "I wonder if what they are talking about is----" He
stopped. At the window next that through which he saw the men, he caught
a stir. A shadow--a woman's shadow--moved stealthily across the wall
toward the two, whose backs were turned; the hands were outstretched as
though reaching for something. Then the woman herself appeared in the
full flare of the light, and paused at a small stand; a revolver lay
there, and it was for this she was reaching. As she took it up, she
turned her head; and for the first time Bat had a full view of her face.
It was Nora Cavanaugh!