_Turned Tables._
Betty reached the house in safety but there an unforeseen difficulty
confronted her. In her haste to obey the summons, she had given no
thought as to how she might gain re-entrance, if Welch had made his
rounds and locked up for the night. She knew with what caution the
house was guarded and if she encountered one of the alarm wires all
would be lost. Even that would presuppose a window or door left
unfastened and that was a contingency too remote to be considered.
The lower floor was still lighted and moving shadows blurred against
the curtains of the windows as she skirted the side of the house on
which the music room was located. Betty had taken no account of time
but she felt that it must be very late and it was with a forlorn hope
that she tried the kitchen door.
To her surprise it yielded against her hand and she pushed it slowly
open, halting upon the threshold in sudden dread. A low light was still
burning in the room and she saw a man seated at the table. His head
rested upon his outflung arms and from where the girl stood she could
hear his heavy stertorous breathing. The face was turned sidewise
toward her and she had no difficulty in recognizing Welch, although
his expression was oddly distorted and his heavy jowls were tinged a
mottled purplish hue.
Betty tiptoed past him, scarcely daring to breathe, but he did not
awaken and his rasping snore followed her as she fled silently up
the stair. Her own room was reached at last and bolting the door she
removed her damp, chilling garments, heavy with the night's dew and
prepared for the task which remained to her when the household should
finally retire.
The slender chain clung reassuringly to her neck and she drew out
the little whistle and examined it. It was of silver, delicately
chased, and bore upon a plain oval shield the initials H. R. It seemed
incredible that so fragile and toylike an instrument could summon aid
and yet upon it might sometime depend life or death for her. It was
Ross's own that he had given to her, and she pressed it to her breast
fervently as though it were a talisman to keep all danger and evil from
her.
The hour dragged, but at length she heard the rustle of feet upon the
stair and a murmur of voices which grew less and less as doors closed
until silence fell once more.
Betty was in a fever of impatience, but she resolutely fixed her eyes
upon the tiny clock on the mantel and waited in an excess of caution
until the hands pointed to half-past one. Then with her dark robe
girded about her and her felt-covered feet making no sound, she opened
her door.
The next moment she started back in amazement. A chair had been placed
a short distance down the hall near the entrance to Mrs. Atterbury's
bedroom but it was empty and an oddly huddled figure lay beside it upon
the floor. It was a woman, collapsed as though she had been overcome by
slumber and slipped from her chair, but there was something about the
inert, helpless figure and hoarse stertorous breath not unlike that of
the other downstairs which warned Betty that this was no ordinary sleep.
Holding her breath she drew near the recumbent form and recognized
Caroline. The woman's face was empurpled like that of Welch and her
relaxed chin had fallen upon her breast giving her an expression of
repellant brutish vacuity. Betty had always considered her a stolid
unintelligent creature whose chief virtue was faithfulness, but now it
was as if something malevolent and bestial had made itself manifest,
betraying her real nature in her unconsciousness.
Hesitating no longer, Betty stole to the stairs and was descending as
on the previous night, when again a light in the music room warned
her of an alien presence. This time, however, it was not dim and
flickering but a slender, dazzlingly brilliant ray, like the dart of a
rapier, which swept the doorway in a flash and was gone, leaving behind
a shimmering hazy glow.
Betty crept down, her unlighted candle and box of matches clutched to
her breast. The glow still remained as that of a searchlight which has
been shifted in another direction and while she paused breathless, the
clink of metal and a low-muttered ejaculation in an unknown masculine
voice came to her ears.
Step by step, with her heart fluttering like a wild thing, the girl
advanced to the doorway and cautiously reconnoitred. The portrait of
Beethoven was in its place, but before it knelt a man in rough dark
clothes, the soles of his boots upturned and glistening with fresh
gobbets of mud. A canvas bag open on the floor beside him displayed
odd shapes of metal whose edges caught the light, and the bull's-eye
lantern in the intruder's hand cast a steady stream of radiance about
the benign pictured face above.
While his back was still turned, Betty slipped silently across the
doorsill and to her hiding place of the night before where she crouched
peering out from beneath the upraised piano top. The man was passing
his hands hurriedly over the lower part of the frame, grunting in his
impatience as the secret spring eluded his search. Once he turned his
head slightly and she caught a glimpse of a heavy, protruding, unshaven
jaw and flattened nose. The low visor of his cap concealed the forehead
and eyes, but the profile was startling in its ferocity and sullen
strength.
Although she realized that the clumsy fingers might at any moment touch
the knob and a shrill alarm peal through the house the girl lingered,
held by a slender thread of hope. Welch was sleeping, perhaps drugged,
and there was a chance that he might not have attached the alarm system
for the night before unconsciousness descended upon him. In that case,
if she could but remain undiscovered until the burglar had accomplished
his purpose and was gone, she could examine the rifled safe for herself.
"You're ahead of time, Mike. Admiring the portrait?" A low, sarcastic
drawl sounded from the doorway and the man turned with an oath, holding
something in his free hand which glittered ominously. Betty cowered
back, her fluttering heart still and cold within her breast.
Leaning nonchalantly against the wall by the door, his hands in the
pockets of his dressing gown and his dark face wreathed with a derisive
smile, stood Jack Wolvert.
The man before the picture swore again, but in a relieved fashion.
"You don't mind taking chances, do you?" he growled. "I might have
plugged you full of holes without lookin' first."
"Oh, no you wouldn't!" retorted Wolvert amiably. "If you'd been quick
on the trigger you wouldn't have done your stretch at St. Quentin.
Nifty portrait that, isn't it? Serves a two-fold purpose; immortalizes
the likeness of the gentleman who composed what may be your funeral
march, if you are lucky, and--"
"Say, cut the comedy, an' let's get down to business!" the other
interrupted gruffly. "You'll have Welch lumberin' in on us before you
know it."
"Not he!" Wolvert shrugged and strolled over to the picture. "He is
sleeping the sleep of one who finishes off the wine-glasses left from
dinner. I prepared one for his especial benefit."
"God!" The man called "Mike" recoiled. "You don't mean--"
"Of course not!" The languid tone was edged sharply. "I don't go in for
anything crude! Caroline, too, is _hors de combat_ or, as you would
express it, dead to the world. Her midnight cup of tea before she went
on guard outside Marcia's door was of specific brewing. Our beloved
Marcia, I may add, has resumed her Macbethan promenades."
"Walkin' again in her sleep?" Mike paused uneasily. "I don't like that!
It always means bad luck for some of us! I ain't stuck on this job
anyway; we could drop it now an' stick to the old game, fifty-fifty--"
"Forget it!" Wolvert snatched the lantern from the other's hand and
trained its single ray upon the right hand corner of the frame. "Watch
me, and duck when the big swing starts."
Betty watched also, her heart racing once more as Wolvert's facile
fingers found the spring and the portrait swung out in a mighty sweep,
revealing the square steel sheet built compactly into the wall. The
buzzer of the alarm whirred impotently and was still, and Mike dropped
to his knees before the aperture with a grunt of satisfaction, his
suddenly aroused scruples forgotten in professional interest.
His bullet-shaped head completely blocked Betty's view of the
combination, but she heard the clink of the knob as it whirled under
his hand. At length Mike sat back on his heels, swearing softly.
"It's no go!" he breathed. "Can't feel the drop of the tumblers. I'll
have to use the soup, after all."
"Go to it," responded Wolvert savagely. "It's a tough layer but thin;
look out she doesn't eat through."
Then followed an interminable age while Betty crouched, tense and
cramped, listening to the click of tools and pressing a fold of her
gown across her mouth and nostrils to keep out the pungent fumes which
stole upon the air. Would they penetrate the closed doors above and
give warning that treachery was afoot?
"Ha!" Wolvert's ejaculation of triumph broke the protracted tension,
just as the heavy door, with a grating jar, split like a crust before
their eyes and fell outward, yawning upon one hinge.
"Got it!" Mike pushed back his cap and wiped his brow. "Armor plate's
made of cheese compared to that! Now which is the pay dirt?"
Wolvert knelt beside him and threw the light upon the gaping cavity.
Betty's eyes were watering but the fumes were gradually passing away
and she could see that the interior of the safe was filled with packets
of paper, neatly pigeon-holed in rows.
"Three hundred thousand!" Wolvert crooned, gloatingly. "Three hundred
thousand and maybe more! God, what a haul! Think of it, Mike, the
pickings of five years, salted down and waiting for us, to say nothing
of rich veins that have scarcely been tapped yet!"
"I can lick my chops over 'em just as well when I've got 'em safe away
from here!" Mike glanced apprehensively over his shoulder and Betty
could see his eyes glistening like those of a cat in the shadow of his
visored cap. "Hurry up and pick out the live wires from the dead ones.
The old girl may take it into her head to walk again!"
"You can drop her with the blackjack if she does," Wolvert returned
carelessly. His long, slender hands were darting in and out among the
pigeonholes, sorting the various packets deftly and ranging them in two
piles. "Got the wallets?"
"Here!" Mike produced oblong leather folders from each of his breast
pockets. "Sure you don't overlook any good bets, Jack."
"No fear!" Wolvert passed over package after package of envelopes as he
talked. "Here's the dope on the Texas matter; that's good for thirty
or forty thousand to start with; this is the certificate for those two
hundred shares of copper you've heard about. To the right party they're
worth twenty thousand. These we might take on speculation; lumping
them together we may figure on realizing a hundred thousand from them,
roughly speaking."
"Some dough!" Mike chuckled, stowing away the packets as fast as they
were handed to him. "What's this bunch?"
"Can't stop now to go over them, Mike, but I know what they are and
I'll open your eyes when we sort them out over at your joint. Now, if
I can only lay my hands on that Crane contract; I wonder where our
careful Marcia cached it?"
"What's this, any good?" Mike had stuffed one bulging wallet back into
his pocket and drawn a long envelope from one of the upper pigeonholes.
Wolvert glanced over his shoulder at the label and shrugged.
"Small change, a thousand or so, but take it along if you want it. It's
easy money."
"A thousand cold iron men look good to me. I can feel 'em rolling into
my hand right now, but those big figures make me afraid the alarm
clock's liable to go off any minute an' wake me up. Say, get a move on,
Jack. I'm gettin' a cold chill like someone was watchin' me!"
Betty gasped inaudibly and shrank still further back in her retreat,
but Wolvert only shrugged in impatience.
"That Crane contract is the main thing; it's worth more than all the
rest put together, to us!" he grumbled. "Get your head out of the
light, Mike!"
"Is this it, in the long blue envelope?" The other had overcome his
momentary uneasiness and resumed his search. "Feels kinder thick."
"No, don't pay dividends any more. It's the West--what's that?"
Betty had caught at the leg of the piano as her cramped limbs wavered
beneath her and a little silver ring which she wore rapped smartly upon
the polished surface of the wood. For one thrilling moment she held her
breath, but the lantern swept around the opposite side of the room to
the door and then flashed back and Mike swore once more.
"I've had enough of this, I tell you! I don't feel right and I've got
a hunch that I'd better be movin'. Let the bloomin' contract go if you
can't find it; we've got enough as it is!"
"Nothing doing!" Wolvert spoke through set teeth in a tone which the
listening girl remembered with a shudder. "You don't beat it unless you
take that with you!"
"Oh, don't I?" snarled Mike, leaping to his feet in swift rage. "I'll
show you, my fine gentleman, that you ain't dealin' with a skirt now,
to bully or soft-soap as you feel like it! I wouldn't be here if I
wasn't through takin' orders from nobody--!"
"Easy there with the bluff!" Wolvert interrupted coolly. "You can't get
along without me, you know. What you've got there is just so much waste
paper to you, if I don't negotiate it for you. Don't be a quitter!"
"Nobody ain't ever called me that yet, but I'm hep that there's
somethin' wrong. Give it up, Jack, an' let's lay the plant--"
"Here it is!" Wolvert swooped down upon a single folded paper and waved
it exultantly. "Take it, Mike, and keep it well; it's a gold mine! Now
come on and set the stage."
Before Betty's amazed eyes a curious scene was enacted. Seizing one
after another of the heavy leather chairs which were grouped about
the room, Wolvert and his accomplice noiselessly overturned them,
easing them gently to the floor where they lay at grotesque angles.
Next they turned their attention to the smokers' stand, rolling the
smaller articles upon it in every direction until the rug was strewn
with cigarettes and matches. The stand itself they placed upon its side
against the wall as if it had been flung there with violence.
"How about the piano?" Mike's eyes travelled speculatively to the
shadowed corner and Betty's senses reeled. "Gonna bang it up a little?"
"No, don't overdo the wreckage. Just move the center table over against
it." Wolvert was busy scattering the remaining contents of the safe
about before it. "Too bad we can't smash that bit of crockery; it would
be the last finishing touch."
He gestured toward a priceless Royal Worcester vase which stood upon a
teakwood taboret near the portrait, and Mike grinned.
"That's easy! Watch me knock it to smithereens!"
"And have the house about our ears?" Wolvert sneered, but the other
paid no heed.
He had caught up a small silk prayer rug and, wrapping it about the
vase, laid it upon the floor. Then, raising a sausage-like roll of
cloth heavily weighed which he took from his bag, he struck it a blow
with all the force of his brawny arm behind it. There was a dull thud
and a soft, shivery tinkle, and when the rug was unwrapped a heap of
jagged, richly-colored fragments was revealed. It was, as Wolvert had
said, the finishing touch to a scene of havoc which seemingly only a
hand-to-hand struggle could have wrought.
"Now for the rough stuff." Wolvert rose from his knees and with one
quick, muscular jerk, ripped his dressing gown from thigh to shoulder,
tearing one sleeve loose. Then he coolly turned his back to Mike and
crossed his wrists behind him. "Tie them good and tight, Mike. We don't
want to fake this part of the game."
Mike obeyed with alacrity, twisting the cord until Betty could see the
slender wrists writhe.
"Now my ankles." Wolvert gritted his teeth, and in the light from the
lantern beads of perspiration glittered on his forehead. He knelt again
and then lay flat upon his back, facing the safe, his outstretched feet
almost within the aperture.
Mike lashed them firmly and turning to his bag, produced a sponge and a
small phial with which he approached his victim, grinning slyly.
"Easy on that!" warned Wolvert. "Don't put me out, Mike. Use just
enough to leave the scent on my hair and shirt."
"I hate to beat it without my kit." Mike cast a reluctant eye on the
bag at his feet. "Prettiest set of tools I ever had!"
"You won't need it again after we've turned this trick," responded his
co-conspirator. "It's got to look as though you were scared off, you
know. Don't forget to leave the chloroform too. Come on with it, I'm
ready."
"Remember, Two Forty-seven Porter Street. I'll wait till midnight
and if you don't show up by then I'll clear for the old hang-out in
Baltimore. Here goes, pleasant dreams!"
He pulled the cork from the phial and a cloying sweetish odor choked
the air. Producing a grimy handkerchief, Mike poured a few drops upon
it and applied it to the head and throat of the prostrate man.
"Not--too--much!" The smothered tones died away in a mumble, and
placing the phial upon the floor beside the recumbent figure Mike gave
one last sweeping glance about the room and slipped like an eel through
the door, the flash of his lantern vanishing with him into the gloom.
Waiting only until the rasp of a softly opening window had assured her
that the intruder was gone, Betty crept from her hiding place, her
pulses leaping madly. She had made a desperate resolve and realized
that she must put it into immediate execution, before the fumes of the
anæsthetic had cleared from the momentarily dulled brain of the man
lying before her.
Lighting her candle, she placed it upon the floor and crept on her
hands and knees toward the phial, keeping well out of the possible
upward range of Wolvert's vision.
The half-stupefied man stirred and muttered as her fingers closed about
the phial, but she dared not hesitate. With a shaking hand she poured
an ounce of the pungent liquid over the grimy handkerchief which lay
beneath her hand, and creeping to Wolvert, suddenly dropped it like a
cone down over his upturned face, holding the sides drawn tightly down.
His limbs twitched and his head moved feebly, but she did not
relinquish her pressure until the muscular action ceased and the body
lay limp and flaccid as that of the dead. Then, with a little sob
of exultation, she flung herself upon the safe and seizing the blue
envelope of which Mike had spoken, she tore it open.
A swift glance over the single folded sheet of letter paper and long
narrow slip, much creased and yellowed with age, which formed its
contents, and Betty clasped it convulsively to her breast. Her face
was transfigured as she crept to her candle and with it crossed to the
hearth.
A moment more and a clear flame sprang up, flaring fitfully in her
trembling hands, then died and only a tiny heap of fluffy black flakes
among the heavier wood ashes told of her desperate plan's consummation.
She turned to escape, but a glance at the motionless form halted her
in mid-flight. Suppose she had killed him!
Betty's heart contracted and fearfully she approached him once more.
The handkerchief had slipped from his face and its deathlike pallor
seemed to confirm her misgiving.
Kneeling beside him, she had placed her hand upon his breast, when a
lurching shuffle in the hall made her recoil.
Stumbling and clinging to the wall for support, Welch reeled in at
the doorway, and his drug-dulled eyes burst into sudden flame as they
lighted upon her.
"D---- you!" he bellowed. "Got you with the goods at last!"