Viner still lived in the same disreputable tenement in which he had
lived on the night of that murder two years ago, and she could not ward
off the thought that it had been--yes, and was--an ideal place for a
murder, from the murderer's standpoint! The neighborhood was one of the
toughest in New York, and the tenement itself was frankly nothing more
than a den of crooks. True, she had visited there more than once, had
visited Nicky Viner there; but she had gone there then as the White
Moll, to whom even the most abandoned would have touched his cap.
To-night it was very different--she went there as a woman. And
yet, after all--she amended her own thoughts, smiling a little
seriously--surely she could disclose herself as the White Moll there
again to-night if the actual necessity arose, for surely crooks,
pokegetters, shillabers and lags though they were, and though the place
teemed with the dregs of the underworld, no one of them, even for the
reward that might be offered, would inform against her to the police!
And yet--again the mental pendulum swung the other way--she was not so
confident of that as she would like to be. In a general way there could
be no question but that she could count on the loyalty of those who
lived there; but there were always those upon whom one could never
count, those who were dead to all sense of loyalty, and alive only to
selfish gain and interest--a human trait that, all too unfortunately,
was not confined to those alone who lived in that shadowland outside
the law. Her face, beneath the thick veil, relaxed a little. Well, she
certainly did not intend to make a test case of it and disclose herself
there as the White Moll, if she could help it! She would enter the
tenement unnoticed if she could, and make her way to Nicky Viner's two
miserable rooms on the second floor as secretively as she could. And,
knowing the place as she did, she was quite satisfied that, if she
were careful enough and cautious enough, she could both enter and leave
without being seen by any one except, of course, Nicky Viner.
She walked on quickly. Five minutes, ten minutes passed; and now, in a
narrow street, lighted mostly by the dull, yellow glow that seeped
up from the sidewalk through basement entrances, queer and forbidding
portals to sinister interiors, or filtered through the dirty windows
of uninviting little shops that ran the gamut from Chinese laundries
to oyster dens, she halted, drawn back in the shadows of a doorway, and
studied a tenement building that was just ahead of her. That was where
old Nicky Viner lived. A smile of grim whimsicality touched her lips.
Not a light showed in the place from top to bottom. From its exterior it
might have been uninhabited, even long deserted. But to one who knew, it
was quite the normal condition, quite what one would expect. Those who
lived there confined their activities mostly to the night; and their
exodus to their labors began when the labors of the world at large
ended--with the fall of darkness.
For a little while she watched the place, and kept glancing up and down
the street; and then, seizing her opportunity when for half a block or
more the street was free of pedestrians, she stole forward and reached
the tenement door. It was half open, and she slipped quickly inside into
the hall.
She stood here for a moment motionless; listening, striving to
accommodate her eyes to the darkness, and instinctively her hand went to
her pocket for the reassuring touch of her revolver. It was black back
there in the hallway of Gypsy Nan's lodging; she had not thought that
any greater degree of blackness could exist; but it was blacker here.
Only the sense of touch promised to be of any avail. If one could have
moved as noiselessly as a shadow moves, one could have passed another
within arm's-length unseen. And so she listened, listened intently.
And there was very little sound. Once she detected a footstep from the
interior of some room as it moved across a bare floor; once she heard
a door creak somewhere upstairs; and once, from some indeterminate
direction, she thought she heard voices whispering together for a
moment.
She moved suddenly then, abruptly, almost impulsively, but careful
not to make the slightest noise. She dared not remain another instant
inactive. It was what she had expected, what she had counted upon as an
ally, this darkness, but she was not one who laughed, even in daylight,
at its psychology. It was beginning to attack her now; her imagination
to magnify even the actual dangers that she knew to be around her. And
she must fight it off before it got a hold upon her, and before panic
voices out of the blackness began to shriek and clamor in her ears, as
she knew they would do with pitifully little provocation, urging her to
turn and flee incontinently.
The staircase, she remembered, was at her right; and feeling out before
her with her hands, she reached the stairs, and began to mount them.
She went slowly, very slowly. They were bare, the stairs, and unless one
were extremely careful they would creak out through the silence with a
noise that could be heard from top to bottom of the tenement. But she
was not making any noise; she dared not make any noise.
Halfway up she halted and pressed her body close against the wall. Was
that somebody coming? She held her breath in expectation. There wasn't
a sound now, but she could have sworn she had heard a footstep on the
hallway above, or on the upper stairs. She bit her lips in vexation.
Panic noises! That's what they were! That, and the thumping of her
heart! Why was it that alarms and exaggerated fancies came and tried to
unnerve her? What, after all, was there really to be afraid of? She
had almost a clear two hours before she need even anticipate any actual
danger here, and, if Nicky Viner were in, she would be away from the
tenement again in another fifteen minutes at the latest.
Rhoda Gray went on again, and gaining the landing, halted once more.
And here she smiled at herself with the tolerant chiding she would have
accorded a child that was frightened without warrant. She could account
for those whisperings and that footstep now. The door to the left, the
one next to Nicky Viner's squalid, two-room apartment, was evidently
partially open, and occasionally some one moved within; and the voices
came from there too, and, low-toned to begin with, were naturally
muffled into whispers by the time they reached her.
She had only, then, to step the five or six feet across the narrow hall
in order to reach Nicky Viner's door, and unless by some unfortunate
chance whoever was in that room happened to come out into the hall at
the same moment, she would--Yes, it was all right! She was trying Nicky
Viner's door now. It was unlocked, and as she opened it for the space of
a crack, there showed a tiny chink of light, so faint and meager that
it seemed to shrink timorously back again as though put to rout by the
massed blackness--but it was enough to evidence the fact that Nicky
Viner was at home. It was all simple enough now. Old Viner would
undoubtedly make some exclamation at her sudden and stealthy entrance,
but once she was inside without those in the next room either having
heard or seen her, it would not matter.
Another inch she pushed the door open, another--and then another. And
then quickly, silently, she tip-toed over the threshold and closed the
door softly behind her. The light came from the inner room and shone
through the connecting door, which was open, and there was movement from
within, and a low, growling voice, petulant, whining, as though an old
man were mumbling complainingly to himself. She smiled coldly. It was
very like Nicky Viner--it was a habit of his to talk to himself, she
remembered. And, also, she had never heard Nicky Viner do anything else
but grumble and complain.
But she could not see fully into the other room, only into a corner of
it, for the two doors were located diagonally across from one another,
and her hand, in a startled way, went suddenly to her lips, as though
mechanically to help choke back and stifle the almost overpowering
impulse to cry out that arose within her. Nicky Viner was not alone in
there! A figure had come into her line of vision in that other room,
not Nicky Viner, not any of the gang--and she stared now in incredulous
amazement, scarcely able to believe her eyes. And then, suddenly cool
and self-possessed again, relieved in a curious way because the element
of personal danger was as a consequence eliminated, she began to
understand why she had been forestalled in her efforts at Perlmer's
office when she had been so sure that she would be first upon the scene.
It was not Danglar, or the Cricket, or Skeeny, or any of the band who
had forestalled her--it was the Adventurer. That was the Adventurer
standing in there now, side face to her, in Nicky Viner's inner room!
X. ON THE BRINK
Rhoda Gray moved quietly, inch by inch, along the side of the wall to
gain a point of vantage more nearly opposite the lighted doorway. And
then she stopped again. She could see quite clearly now--that is, there
was nothing now to obstruct her view; but the light was miserable and
poor, and the single gas-jet that wheezed and flickered did little more
than disperse the shadows from its immediate neighborhood in that inner
room. But she could see enough--she could see the bent and ill-clad
figure of Nicky Viner, as she remembered him, an old, gray-bearded man,
wringing his hands in groveling misery, while the mumbling voice, now
whining and pleading, now servile, now plucking up courage to indulge
in abuse, kept on without even, it seemed, a pause for breath. And she
could see the Adventurer, quite unmoved, quite debonair, a curiously
patient smile on his face, standing there, much nearer to her, his right
hand in the side pocket of his coat, a somewhat significant habit of
his, his left hand holding a sheaf of folded, legal-looking documents.
And then she heard the Adventurer speak.
“What a flow of words!” said the Adventurer, in a bored voice. “You will
forgive me, my dear Mr. Viner, if I appear to be facetious, which I am
not--but money talks.”
“You are a thief, a robber!” The old gray-bearded figure rocked on its
feet and kept wringing its hands. “Get out of here! Get out! Do you
hear? Get out! You come to steal from a poor old man, and--”
“Must we go all over that again?” interrupted the Adventurer wearily.
“I have not come to steal anything; I have simply come to sell you these
papers, which I am quite sure, once you control yourself and give the
matter a little calm consideration, you are really most anxious to
buy--at any price.
“It's a lie!” the other croaked hoarsely. “Those papers are a lie! I
am innocent. And I haven't got any money. None! I haven't any. I am
poor--an old man--and poor.”
Rhoda Gray felt the blood flush hotly to her cheeks. Somehow she could
feel no sympathy for that cringing figure in there; but she felt a hot
resentment toward that dapper, immaculately dressed and self-possessed
young man, who stood there, silently now, tapping the papers with
provoking coolness against the edge of the plain deal table in front of
him. And somehow the resentment seemed to take a most peculiar phase.
She resented the fact that she should feel resentment, no matter what
the man did or said. It was as though, instead of anger, impersonal
anger, at this low, miserable act of his, she felt ashamed of him. Her
hand clenched fiercely as she crouched there against the wall. It wasn't
true! She felt nothing of the sort! Why should she be ashamed of him?
What was he to her? He was frankly a thief, wasn't he? And he was at his
pitiful calling now--down to the lowest dregs of it. What else did she
expect? Because he had the appearance of a gentleman, was it that her
sense of gratitude for what she owed him had made her, deep down in her
soul, actually cherish the belief that he really was one--made her hope
it, and nourish that hope into belief? Tighter her hand clenched. Her
lips parted, and her breath came in short, hard inhalations. Was it
true? Was it all only an added misery, where it had seemed there could
be none to add to her life in these last few days? Was it true that
there was no price she would not have paid to have found him in any role
but this abased one that he was playing now?
The Adventurer broke the silence.
“Quite so, my dear Mr. Viner!” he agreed smoothly. “It would appear,
then, from what you say that I have been mistaken--even stupidly so, I
am afraid. And in that case, I can only apologize for my intrusion, and,
as you so delicately put it, get out.” He slipped the papers, with a
philosophic shrug of his shoulders, into his inside coat pocket, and
took a backward step toward the door. “I bid you good-night, then, Mr.
Viner. The papers, as you state, are doubtless of no value to you, so
you can, of course, have no objection to my handing them over to the
police, who--”
“No, no! Wait! Wait!” the other whispered wildly. “Wait!”
“Ah!” murmured the Adventurer.
“I--I'll”--the bent old figure was clawing at his beard--“I'll--”
“Buy them?” suggested the Adventurer pleasantly.
“Yes, I'll--I'll buy them. I--I've got a little money, only a little,
all I've been able to save in years, a--a hundred dollars.
“How much did you say?” inquired the Adventurer coldly.
“Two hundred.” The voice was a maudlin whine.
The Adventurer took another backward step toward the door.
“Three hundred!”
Another step.
“Five--a thousand!”
The Adventurer laughed suddenly.
“That's better!” he said. “Where you keep a thousand, you keep the rest.
Where is the thousand, Mr. Viner?”
The bent figure hesitated a moment; and then, with what sounded like a
despairing cry, pointed to the table.
“It's there,” he whimpered. “God's curses on you, for the thief you
are.”
Rhoda Gray found her eyes fixed in sudden, strained fascination on the
table--as, she imagined, the Adventurer's were too. It was bare of any
covering, nor were there any articles on its surface, nor, as far as she
could see, was there any drawer. And now the Adventurer, his right hand
still in his coat pocket, and bulging there where she knew quite well
it grasped his revolver, stepped abruptly to the table, facing the other
with the table between them.
The bent old figure still hesitated, and then, with the despairing cry
again, grasped at the top of the table, and jerked it toward him. The
surface seemed to slide sideways a little way, a matter of two or three
inches, and then stick there; but the Adventurer, in an instant, had
thrust the fingers of his left hand into the crevice. He drew out a
number of loose banknotes, and thrust his fingers in again for a further
supply.
“Open it wider!” he commanded curtly.
“I--I'm trying to,” the other mumbled, and bent down to peer under the
table. “It's stuck. The catch is underneath, and--”
It seemed to Rhoda Gray, gazing into that dimly lighted room, as though
she were suddenly held spellbound as in some horrible and amazing
trance. Like a hideous jack-in-the-box the gray head popped above the
level of the table again, and quick as a flash, a revolver was
thrust into the Adventurer's face; and the Adventurer, caught at
a disadvantage, since his hand in his coat pocket was below the
intervening table top, stood there as though instantaneously transformed
into some motionless, inanimate thing, his fingers still gripping at
another sheaf of banknotes that he had been in the act of scooping out
from the narrow aperture.
And then again Rhoda Gray stared, and stared now as though bereft of her
senses; and upon her crept, cold and deadly, a fear and a terror that
seemed to engulf her very soul itself. That head that looked like a
jack-in-the-box was gone; the gray beard seemed suddenly to be shorn
away, and the gray hair too, and to fall and flutter to the table, and
the bent shoulders were not bent any more, and it wasn't Nicky Viner at
all--only a clever, a wonderfully clever, impersonation that had been
helped out by the poor and meager light. And terror gripped at her
again, for it wasn't Nicky Viner. Those narrowed eyes, that leering,
gloating face, those working lips were Danglar's.
And, as from some far distance, dulled because her consciousness was
dulled, she heard Danglar speak.
“Perhaps you'll take your hand out of that right-hand coat pocket of
yours now!” sneered Danglar. “And take it out--empty!”
The Adventurer's face, as nearly as Rhoda Gray could see, had not moved
a muscle. He obeyed now, coolly, with a shrug of his shoulders.
Danglar appeared to experience no further trouble with the surface of
the table now. He suddenly jerked it almost off, displaying what Rhoda
Gray now knew to be the remainder of the large package of banknotes he
had taken from the garret earlier in the evening.
“Help yourself to the rest!” he invited caustically. “There isn't fifty
thousand there, but you are quite welcome to all there is--in return for
those papers.”
The Adventurer was apparently obsessed with an inspection of his finger
nails; he began to polish those of one hand with the palm of the other.
“Quite so, Danglar!” he said coolly. “I admit it--I am ashamed of
myself. I hate to think that I could be caught by you; but I suppose I
can find some self-extenuating circumstances. You seem to have risen to
an amazingly higher order of intelligence. In fact, for you, Danglar,
it is not at all bad!” He went on polishing his nails. “Would you mind
taking that thing out of my face? Even you ought to be able to handle it
effectively a few inches farther away.”
Under the studied insult Danglar's face had grown a mottled red.
“Damn you!” he snarled. “I'll take it away when I get good and ready;
and by that time I'll have you talking out of the other side of your
mouth! See? Do you know what you're up against, you slick dude?”
“I have a fairly good imagination,” replied the Adventurer smoothly.
“You have, eh?” mimicked Danglar wickedly. “Well, you don't need to
imagine anything! I'll give you the straight goods so's there won't
be any chance of a mistake. And never mind about the higher order of
intelligence! It was high enough, and a little to spare, to make you
walk into the trap! I hoped I'd get you both, you and your she-pal, the
White Moll; that you'd come here together--but I'm not kicking. It's a
pretty good start to get you!”
“Is it necessary to make a speech?” complained the Adventurer
monotonously. “I can't help listening, of course.”
“You can make up your mind for yourself when I'm through--whether
it's necessary or not!” retorted Danglar viciously. “I've got a little
proposition to put up to you, and maybe it'll help you to add two and
two together if I let you see all the cards. Understand? You've had your
run of luck lately, quite a bit of it, haven't you, you and the White
Moll? Well, it's my turn now! You've been queering our game to the
limit, curse you!” Danglar thrust his working face a little farther over
the table, and nearer to the Adventurer. “Well, what was the answer?
Where did you get the dope you made your plays with? It was a cinch,
wasn't it, that there was a leak somewhere in our own crowd?” He laughed
out suddenly. “You poor fool! Did you think you could pull that sort of
stuff forever? Did you? Well, then, how do you like the 'leak' to-night?
You get the idea, don't you? Everybody, every last soul that is in
with us, got the details of what they thought was a straight play
to-night--and it leaked to you, as I knew it would; and you walked into
the trap, as I knew you would, because the bait was good and juicy, and
looked the easiest thing to annex that ever happened. Fifty thousand
dollars! Fifty thousand--nothing! All you had to do was to get a few
papers that it wouldn't bother any crook to get, even a near--crook like
you, and then come here and screw the money out of a helpless old man,
who was supposed to have been discovered to be a miser. Easy, wasn't it?
Only Nicky Viner wasn't a miser! We chose Nicky because of what happened
two years ago. It made things look pretty near right, didn't it? Looked
straight, that part about Perlmer, too, didn't it? That was the come-on.
Perlmer never saw those papers you've got there in your pocket. I doped
them out, and we planted them nice and handy where you could get them
without much trouble in the drawer of Perlmer's desk, and--”
“It's a long story,” interrupted the Adventurer, with quiet insolence.
“It's got a short ending,” said Danglar, with an ugly leer. “We could
have bumped you off when you went for those papers, but if you went
that far you'd come farther, and that wasn't the place to do it, and we
couldn't cover ourselves there the way we could here. This is the place.
We brought that trick table here a while ago, as soon as we had got rid
of Nicky Viner. That was the only bit of stage setting we had to do
to make the story ring true right up to the curtain, in case it was
necessary. It wouldn't have been necessary if you and the White Moll
had both come together, for then you would neither of you have got any
further than that other room. It would have ended there. But we weren't
taking any chances. I'll pay you the compliment of admitting that we
weren't counting on getting you off your guard any too easily if, as
it happened, you came alone, for, being alone, or if either of you were
alone, there was that little proposition that had to be settled, instead
of just knocking you on the head out there in the dark in that other
room; and so, as I say, we weren't overlooking any bets on account of
the little trouble it took to plant that table and the money. We
tried to think of everything!” Danglar paused for a moment to mock the
Adventurer with narrowed eyes. “That's the story; here's the end. I
hoped I'd get you both together, you and the White Moll. I didn't. But
I've got you. I didn't get you both--and that's what gives you a chance
for your life, because she's worth more to us than you are. If you'd
been together, you would have gone out-together. As it is, I'll see that
you don't do any more harm anyway, but you get one chance. Where is she?
If you answer that, you will, of course, answer a minor question and
locate that 'leak', for me, that I was speaking about a moment ago. But
we'll take the main thing first. And you can take your choice between a
bullet and a straight answer. Where is the White Moll?”
Rhoda Gray's hand felt Out along the wall for support. Was this a dream,
some ghastly, soul-terrifying nightmare! Danglar! Those working lips!
That callous viciousness, that leer in the degenerate face. It seemed
to bring a weakness to her limbs, and seek to rob her of the strength to
stand. She could not even hope against hope; she knew that Danglar was
in deadly earnest. Danglar would not have the slightest compunction, let
alone hesitation, in carrying out his threat. Terrified now, her eyes
sought the Adventurer. Didn't the Adventurer know Danglar as she
knew him, didn't he realize that there was deadly earnestness behind
Danglar's words? Was the man mad, that he stood there utterly unmoved,
as though he had no consideration on earth other than those carefully
manicured finger nails of his!
And then Danglar spoke again.
“Do you notice anything special about this gun I'm holding on you?” he
demanded, in low menace.
The Adventurer did not even look up.
“Oh, yes,” he said indifferently. “I fancy you got it out of a dime
novel, didn't you? One of those silencer things.”
“Yes,” said Danglar grimly; “one of those silencer things. Where is
she?”
The Adventurer made no answer.
The color in Danglar's face deepened.
“I'll make things even a little plainer to you,” he said with brutal
coolness. “There are two men in our organization from whom it is
absolutely impossible that that leak could have come. Those two men
followed you from Perlmer's office to this place. They are in the next
room now waiting for me to get through with you, and ready for anything
if they are needed. But they won't be needed. That's not the way it
works out. This gun won't make much noise, and it isn't likely to arouse
the inmates of this dive, but even if it does, it doesn't matter very
much--we aren't going out by the front door. The two of them, the minute
they hear the shot, slip in here, and lock the door--you see it's got a
good, husky bolt on it--and then we beat it by the fire escape that
runs past that window there. Get the idea? And don't kid yourself into
thinking that I am taking any risk with the consequences on account of
the coroner having got busy because a man was found here dead on the
floor. Nicky Viner stands for that. It isn't the first time he's been
suspected of murder. See? Nicky was easy. He'd crawl on his hands and
knees from the Battery to Harlem any time if you held a little money
in front of his nose. He's been fooled up to the eyes with a faked-up
message that he's to deliver secretly to some faked-up crooks out West.
He's just about starting away on the train now. And that's where the
police nab him--running away from the murder he's pulled in his room
here to-night. Looks kind of bad for Nicky Viner--eh? We should worry!
It cost a hundred dollars and his ticket. Cheap, wasn't it? I guess
you're worth that much to us.”
A dull horror seized upon Rhoda Gray. It seemed to clog and confuse
her mind. She fought it frantically, striving to think, and to think
clearly. Every detail seemed to have been planned with Satanic foresight
and ingenuity, and yet--and yet--Yes, in one little thing, Danglar had
made a mistake. That was why she was here now; that was why those men in
that next room had not been out in the hall on guard, or even out in the
street on watch for her. Danglar had naturally gone upon the supposition
that the Adventurer and herself worked hand in glove; whereas they were
as much in the dark concerning each other's movements as Danglar himself
was. Therefore Danglar, and logically enough from his viewpoint, had
jumped to the conclusion that, since they had not come together,
only one of them, the Adventurer, was acting in the affair to-night,
and--Danglar's voice was rasping in her ears.