|JOHN BRUCE stared for a moment longer at the revolver that held a
steady bead between his eyes, and at the evil face of Crang that leered
at him from the opposite seat; then he deliberately turned his head and
stared at the face of still another occupant of the car--a man who sat
on the seat beside him. He was trapped--and well trapped! He recognized
the other to be the man known as Birdie, who had participated on a
certain night in the robbery of Paul Veniza's safe. It was quite plain.
The third man in that robbery, whose face he had not seen at the time,
was undoubtedly the man who had brought the “message” a few minutes ago,
and who was now, with almost equal certainty, engaged in driving the
car. Thieving, at least, was in the trio's line! They must somehow or
other have stolen the traveling pawn-shop from Hawkins!
He smiled grimly. If it had been Birdie now who had brought the message
he would never have fallen into the trap! Crang had played in luck and
won by a very narrow margin, for Crang was naturally in ignorance that
he, John Bruce, had ever seen either of the men before. And then John
Bruce thought of the bulky roll of bills which by an equally narrow
margin was _not_ in his pocket at that moment, and his smile deepened.
Crang spoke for the first time.
“Take his gun away from him, if he's got one!” he gnarled tersely.
“It's in the breast pocket of my coat,” said John Bruce imperturbably.
Birdie, beside John Bruce, reached over and secured the weapon.
John Bruce leaned back in his seat. The car was speeding rapidly along
now.
The minutes passed. None of the three men spoke. Crang sat like some
repulsive gargoyle, leering maliciously.
John Bruce half closed his eyes against the uncanny fascination of that
round black muzzle which never wavered in its direction, and which was
causing him to strain too intently upon it. What was the game? How far
did Crang intend to go with his insane jealousy? How far would Crang
dare to go? The man wasn't doped to-night. Perhaps he was even the
more dangerous on that account. Instead of mouthing threats, there was
something ominous now, it seemed, in the man's silence. John Bruce's
lips drew together. He remembered Claire's insistence that Crang had
meant what he said literally--and Claire had repeated that warning over
the telephone. Well, if she were right, it meant--_murder_.
From under his half closed lids, John Bruce looked around the car. The
curtains, as they always were, were closely drawn. The interior was
lighted by that same soft central light, only the light was high up now
near the roof of the car. Well, if it was to be murder, why not _now?_
The little velvet-topped table was not in place, and there was nothing
between himself and that sneering, sallow face. Yes, why not now--and
settle it!
He straightened almost imperceptibly in his seat, as impulse suddenly
bade him fling himself forward upon Crang. Why not? The sound of a
revolver shot would be heard in the street, and Crang might not even
dare to fire at all. And then John Bruce's glance rested on the man
beside him--and impulse gave way to common sense. He had no intention of
submitting tamely and without a struggle to any fate, no matter what it
might be, that Crang proposed for him, but that struggle would better
come when there was at least a chance. There was no chance here. Birdie,
on the seat beside him, held a deadlier and even more effective weapon
than was Crang's revolver, a silent thing--a black-jack.
“Wait! Don't play the fool! You'll get a better chance than this!” the
voice of what he took to be common sense whispered to him.
The car began to go slower. It swerved twice as though making sharp
turns; and then, running still more slowly, began to bump over rough
ground.
Crang spoke again.
“You can make all the noise you want to, if you think it will do you any
good,” he said viciously; “but if you make a move you are not told to
make you'll be _carried_ the rest of the way! Understand?”
John Bruce did not answer.
The car stopped. Birdie opened the door on his side, and stepped to the
ground. He was joined by the man who had driven the car, and who, as
John Bruce now found he had correctly assumed, had acted as the decoy at
the gambling house.
“Get out!” ordered Doctor Crang curtly.
John Bruce followed Birdie from the car. It was dark out here,
exceedingly dark, but he could make out that the car had been driven
into a narrow lane, and that they were close to the wall of a building
of some sort. The two men gripped him by his arms. He felt the muzzle of
Crang's revolver pressed into the small of his back.
“Mind your step!” cautioned Birdie gruffly.
It was evidently the entrance to a cellar. John Bruce found himself
descending a few short steps; and then, on the level again, he was
guided forward through what was now pitch blackness. A moment more and
they had halted, but not before John Bruce's foot had come into contact
with a wall or partition of some kind in front of him. One of the
men who gripped his arms knocked twice with three short raps in quick
succession.
A door opened in front of them, and for an instant John Bruce was
blinded by a sudden glare of light; but the next instant, his eyes grown
accustomed to the transition, he saw before him a large basement room,
disreputable and filthy in appearance, where half a dozen men sat at
tables drinking and playing cards.
A shove from the muzzle of Crang's revolver urged John Bruce forward
into an atmosphere that was foul, hot and fetid, and thick with tobacco
smoke that floated in heavy, sinuous layers in mid-air. He was led down
the length of the room toward another door at the opposite end. The men
at the tables, as he passed them, paid him little attention other than
to leer curiously at him. They greeted Birdie and his companion with
blasphemous familiarity; but their attitude toward Crang, it seemed to
John Bruce, was one of cowed and abject respect.
John Bruce's teeth closed hard together. This was a nice place, an
ominously nice place--a hidden den of the rats of the underworld,
where Crang was obviously the leader. He was not so sure now that the
promptings of so-called common sense had been common sense at all! His
chances of escaping, practically hopeless as they had been in the car,
would certainly have been worth trying in view of this! He began to
regret his “common sense” bitterly now.
He was in front of the door toward which they had been heading now.
It was opened by Birdie, and John Bruce was pushed into a small,
dimly-lighted, cave-like place. Crang said something in a low voice to
the two men, and, leaving them outside, entered himself, closing the
door only partially behind him.
For a moment they faced each other, and then Crang laughed--tauntingly,
in menace.
John Bruce's eyes, from Crang's sallow face, and from Crang's revolver,
swept coolly over his surroundings. A mattress, a foul thing, lay on the
ground in one corner. There was no flooring here in the cellar. A small
incandescent bulb hung from the roof. There was one chair and a battered
table--nothing else; not even a window.
“It was like stealing from a child!” sneered Crang suddenly. “You poor
mark!”
“Quite so!” said John Bruce calmly. “And the more so since I was warned
that you were quite capable of--murder. I suppose that is what I am here
for.”
“Oh, you were warned, were you?” Crang took an abrupt step forward, his
lips working. An angry purple clouded the pallor of his face. “More of
that love stuff, eh? Well, by God, here's the end of it! I'll teach you
with your damned sanctimonious airs to fool around the girl I'm going to
marry! You snivelling hypocrite, you didn't tell her who _you_ were, did
you?”
John Bruce stared blankly.
“Who I am?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
Crang for the moment was silent. He seemed to be waging a battle with
himself to control his passion.
“I'm too clever a man to lose my temper, now I've got you!” he rasped
finally. “That's about the size of your mentality! The sweet, naïve,
innocent rôle! Yes, I said a snivelling hypocrite! You don't eat dope,
but perhaps you've heard of a man named Larmon--Mr. Gilbert Larmon, of
San Francisco!”
To John Bruce it seemed as though Crang's words in their effect were
something like one of those blows the same man had dealt him on his
wounded side in that fight of the other night. They seemed to jar him,
and rob his mind of quick thinking and virility--and yet he was quite
sure that not a muscle of his face had moved.
“You needn't answer,” Crang grinned mockingly. “If you haven't met him,
you'll have the opportunity of doing so in a few hours. Mr. Larmon will
arrive in New York to-night in response to the telegram you sent him.”
“I know you said you were clever,” said John Bruce shortly, “and I have
no doubt this is the proof of it! But what is the idea? I did not send a
telegram to any one.
“Oh, yes, you did!” Crang was chuckling evilly.
“It was something to the effect that Mr. Larmon's immediate presence in
New York was imperative; that you were in serious difficulties. And in
order that Mr. Larmon might have no suspicions or anxiety aroused as to
his own personal safety, he was to go on his arrival to the Bayne-Miloy
Hotel; but was, at the same time, to register under the name of R. L.
Peters, and to make no effort to communicate with you until you gave
him the cue. The answer to the telegram was to be sent to a--er--quite
different address. And here's the answer.”
His revolver levelled, Crang laid a telegram on the table, and then
backed away a few steps.
John Bruce picked up the message. It was dated from San Francisco
several days before, and was authentic beyond question. It was addressed
to John Bruce in the care of one William Anderson, at an address which
he took to be somewhere over on the East Side. He read it quickly:
Leaving at once and will follow instructions. Arrive Wednesday night. Am
exceedingly anxious.
Gilbert Larmon.
“This is Wednesday night,” sneered Crang.
John Bruce laid down the telegram. That Crang in some way had discovered
his, John Bruce's connection with Larmon, was obvious. But how--and what
did it mean? He smiled coldly. There was no use in playing the fool by
denying any knowledge of Larmon. It was simply a question of exactly how
_much_ Crang knew.
“Well?” he inquired indifferently.
The door was pushed open, and Birdie came in. He carried pen and ink, a
large sheet of paper, and an envelope.
Crang motioned toward the table.
“Put them down there--and get out!” he ordered curtly; and then as the
man obeyed, he stared for an instant in malicious silence at John Bruce.
“I guess we're wasting time!” he snapped. “I sent the telegram to Larmon
a few days ago, and I know all about you and Larmon, and his ring
of gambling houses. You talked your fool head off when you were
delirious--understand? And----”
John Bruce, his face suddenly white, took a step forward--and stopped,
and shrugged his shoulders. Crang's outflung revolver was on a level
with his eyes. And then John Bruce turned his back deliberately, and
walked to the far end of the little room.
Crang laughed wickedly.
“I am afraid I committed a breach of medical étiquette,” he said. “I
sent to San Francisco and got the dope on the quiet about this Mr.
Larmon. I found out that he is an enormously wealthy man; and I also
found out that he poses as an immaculate pillar of society. It looks
pretty good, doesn't it, Bruce--for me? Two birds with one stone; you
for trying to get between me and Claire; and Larmon coughing up the
dough to save your hide and save himself from being exposed for what he
is!”
John Bruce made no answer. They were not so fanciful now, not so unreal
and wandering, those dreams when he had been ill, those dreams in
which there had been a man with a quill toothpick, and another with a
sinister, loathsome face, whose head was always cocked in a listening
attitude.
“Well, I guess you've got it now, all of it, haven't you?” Crang
snarled. “It's lucky for you Larmon's got the coin, or I'd pass you
out for what you did the other night. As it is you're getting out of it
light. There's paper on the table. You write him a letter that will get
him down here with a blank check in his pocket. I'll help you to word
it.” Crang smiled unpleasantly. “He will be quite comfortable here while
the check is going through the bank; for it would be most unfortunate,
you know, if he had a chance to stop payment on it. And I might say that
I am not worrying at all about any reprisals through the tracing of the
check afterward, for if Mr. Larmon is paying me to keep my mouth shut
there is no fear of his opening his own.”
John Bruce turned slowly around.
“And if I don't?” he asked quietly.
Crang studied the revolver in his hand for a moment. He looked up
finally with a smile that was hideous in its malignancy.
“I'm not sure that I particularly care,” he said. “You are going to get
out of my path in any case, though my personal inclination is to snuff
you out, and”--his voice rose suddenly--“damn you, I'd like to see you
dead; but on the other hand, my business sense tells me that I'd be
better off with, say, a hundred thousand dollars in my pocket. Do you
get the idea, my dear Mr. Bruce? I am sure you do. And as your medical
advisor, for your health is still very much involved, I would strongly
urge you to write the letter. But at the same time I want to be
perfectly frank with you. There is a tail to it as far as you are
concerned. I have a passage in my pocket--a first-class passage, in fact
a stateroom where you can be secured so that I may make certain you
do not leave the ship prematurely at the dock--for South America, on a
steamer sailing to-morrow afternoon. The passage is made out in the name
of John Bruce.”
“You seem to have taken it for granted that I would agree to your
proposal,” said John Bruce pleasantly.
“I have,” Crang answered shortly. “I give you credit in some respects
for not being altogether a fool.”
“In other words,” said John Bruce, still pleasantly, “if I will trap Mr.
Larmon into coming here so that you will have him in your power, and can
hold him until you have squeezed out of him what you consider the fair
amount he should pay as blackmail, or do away with him perhaps, if he
is obstinate, I am to go free and sail for South America to-morrow
afternoon; failing this, I am to snuff out--I think you called it--at
the hands of either yourself or this gentlemanly looking band of apaches
you have gathered around you.”
“You haven't made any mistake so far!” said Crang evenly. He jerked his
hand toward the table. “It's that piece of paper there, or your hide.”
“Yes,” said John Bruce slowly. He stared for an instant, set-faced, into
Crang's eyes. “Well, then, go ahead!”
Crang's eyes narrowed.
“You mean,” his voice was hoarse with menace, “you mean----”
“Yes!” said John Bruce tersely. “My hide!”
Crang did not answer for a moment. The revolver in his hand seemed to
edge a little nearer to John Bruce as though to make more certain of its
aim. Crang's eyes were alight with passion.
John Bruce did not move. It was over--this second--or the next. Crang's
threats were _literal_. Claire had said so. He knew it. It was in
Crang's eyes--a sort of unholy joy, a madman's frenzy. Well, why didn't
the man fire and have done with it?
And then suddenly Crang's shoulders lifted in a mocking shrug.
“Maybe you haven't got this--_straight_,” he said between closed teeth.
“I guess I've paid you the compliment of crediting you with a quicker
intelligence than you possess! I'll give you thirty minutes alone to
think it over and figure out where you stand.”
Crang backed to the door.
The door closed. John Bruce heard the key turn in the lock. He stared
about him at the miserable surroundings. Thirty minutes! He did not need
thirty minutes, or thirty seconds, to realize his position. He was not
even sure that he was thankful for the reprieve. It meant half an hour
more of life, but----
Cornered like a rat! To go out at the hands of a degenerate dope
fiend... the man had been cunning enough... Hawkins!
John Bruce paced his little section of the cellar. His footsteps made
no sound on the soft earth. This was his condemned cell; his warders a
batch of gunmen whose trade was murder.
Larmon! They had not been able to trick Larmon into their power so
easily, because there wasn't any Hawkins. No, there was--John Bruce.
John Bruce was the bait. Queer! Queer that he had ever met Larmon, and
queer that the end should come like this.
Faustus hadn't had his fling yet. That quill toothpick with which he had
signed----
John Bruce stood stock still--his eyes suddenly fastened on the piece of
paper on the table.
“My God!” John Bruce whispered hoarsely.
He ran silently to the door and listened. He could hear nothing. He ran
back to the table, threw himself into the chair, and snatching the sheet
of paper toward him, took out a fountain pen from his pocket. Near the
lower edge of the paper, and in a minutely small hand, he began to write
rapidly.
At the end of a few minutes John Bruce stood up. There was neither sign
nor mark upon the paper, save an almost invisible impression made by
his thumb nail, which he had set as a sign post, as it were, to indicate
where he had begun to write. It was a large sheet of unruled paper,
foolscap in size, and there was but little likelihood of reaching so far
down with the letter that Crang was so insistent upon having, but he did
not propose in any event to superimpose anything over what he had just
written. He could always turn the sheet and begin at the top on the
other side! Again he began to pace up and down across the soft floor,
but now there was a grim smile on his face. Behind Larmon and his
enormous wealth lay Larmon's secret organization, that, once set in
motion, would have little difficulty in laying a dozen Crangs, by the
heels. And Crang was yellow. Let Crang but for an instant realize that
his own skin was at stake, and he would squeal without hesitation--and
what had narrowly escaped being tragedy would dissolve into opera
bouffe. Also, it was very nice indeed of Crang to see that the message
reached Larmon's hands!
And it was the way out for Claire, too! It was Crang who had mentioned
something about two birds with one stone, wasn't it? Claire! John
Bruce frowned. Was he so sure after all? There seemed to be something
unfathomable between Claire and Crang; the bond between them one that no
ordinary means would break.
His brain seemed to go around in cycles now--Claire, Larmon, Crang;
Claire, Larmon, Crang.... He lost track of time--until suddenly he heard
a key rattle in the lock. And then, quick and silent as a cat in his
movements, he slipped across the earthen floor, and flung himself face
down upon the mattress.
A moment more, and some one prodded him roughly. His hair was rumpled,
his face anxious and dejected, as he raised himself on his elbow. Crang
and two of his apaches were standing over him. One of the latter held an
ugly looking stiletto.
“Stand him up!” ordered Crang.
John Bruce made no resistance as the two men jerked him unceremoniously
to his feet.
Crang came and stared into his face.
“I guess from the look of you,” Crang leered, “you've put in those
thirty minutes to good advantage. You're about ready to write that
letter, aren't you?”
John Bruce looked around him miserably. He shook his head.
“No--no; I--I can't,” he said weakly. “For God's sake, Crang, you--you
know I can't.”
“Sure--I know!” said Crang imperturbably. He nodded to the man with the
stiletto. “He's more used to steel than bullets, and he likes it better.
Don't keep him waiting.”
John Bruce felt the sudden prick of the weapon on his flesh--it went a
little deeper.
“Wait! Stop!” he screamed out in a well-simulated paroxysm of terror.
“I--I'll write it.”
“I thought so!” said Crang coolly. “Well, go over there to the
table then, and sit down.” He turned to the two men. “Beat it!” he
snapped--and the room empty again, save for himself and John Bruce,
he tapped the sheet of paper with the muzzle of his revolver. “I'll
dictate. Pick up that pen!”
John Bruce obeyed. He circled his lips with his tongue.
“You--you won't do Larmon any harm, will you?” he questioned abjectly.
“I--my life's worth more than a little money, if it's only that,
and--and, if that's all, I--I'm sure he'd rather pay.”
“Don't apologize!” sneered Crang. “Go on now, and write. Address him as
you always do.”
John Bruce dipped the pen in the ink, and wrote in a small hand:
“Dear Mr. Larmon:--”
He looked up in a cowed way.
“All right!” grunted Crang. “I guess we'll kill another bird, too, while
we're at it.” He smiled cryptically. “Go on again, and write!”
And John Bruce wrote as Crang dictated:
“I'm here in my rooms in the same hotel with you, but am closely
watched. Our compact is known. I asked a girl to marry me, and in doing
so felt she had the right to my full confidence. She did me in. She----”
John Bruce's pen had halted.
“Go on!” prompted Crang sharply. “It's got to sound right for Larmon--so
that he will believe it. He's not a fool, is he?”
“No,” said John Bruce.
“Well, go on then!”
And John Bruce wrote:
“She was all the time engaged to the head of a gang of crooks.” Crang's
malicious chuckle interrupted his dictation.
“I'm not sparing myself, you see. Go on!”
John Bruce continued his writing:
“They are after blackmail now, and threaten to expose you. I telegraphed
you to come under an alias because we are up against it and you should
be on the spot; but if they knew you were here they would only attach
the more importance to it, and the price would go up. They believe you
are still in San Francisco, and that I am communicating with you by
mail. They are growing impatient. You can trust the bearer of this
letter absolutely. Go with him. He will take you where we can meet
without arousing any suspicion. I am leaving the hotel now. If possible
we should not risk more than one conference together, so bring a blank
check with you. There is no other way out. It is simply a question of
the amount. I am bitterly sorry that this has happened through me. John
Bruce.”
Crang, with his revolver pressed into the back of John Bruce's neck,
leaned over John Bruce's shoulder and read the letter carefully.
“Fold it, and put it in that envelope without sealing it, and address
the envelope to Mr. R. L. Peters at the Bayne-Miloy Hotel!” he
instructed.
John Bruce folded the letter. As he did so, he noted that his signature
was a good two or three inches above the thumb nail mark. He placed the
letter in the envelope, and addressed the latter as Crang had directed.
Crang moved around to the other side of the table, tucked the envelope
into his pocket, and grinned mockingly.
And then without a word John Bruce got up from his chair, and flung
himself face down on the mattress again.