A feeble moan came from the throat of the hotel keeper. He cast one frantic glance toward the door and a still more frantic appeal centered on Ronicky Doone, but the face of the latter was as cold as stone.
"Then take your own glasses, boys," he said, striving to smile, as he picked up his own drink.
"You drink first, and you drink alone," declared Ronicky. "Now!"
The movement of his hand was as ominous as if he had whipped out a revolver. The fat man tossed off the glass of whisky and then stood with a pudgy hand pressed against his breast and the upward glance of one who awaits a calamity. Under the astonished eyes of Bill Gregg he turned pale, a sickly greenish pallor. His eyes rolled, and his hand on the table shook, and the arm that supported him sagged.
"Open the window," he said. "The air—there ain't no air. I'm choking—and—"
"Get him some water," cried Bill Gregg, "while I open the window."
"Stay where you are, Bill."
"But he looks like he's dying!"
"Then he's killed himself."
"Gents," began the fat man feebly and made a short step toward them. The step was uncompleted. In the middle of it he wavered, put out his arms and slumped upon his side on the floor.
Bill Gregg cried out softly in astonishment and horror, but Ronicky Doone knelt calmly beside the fallen bulk and felt the beating of his heart.
"He ain't dead," he said quietly, "but he'll be tolerably sick for a while. Now come along with me."
"But what's all this mean?" asked Bill Gregg in a whisper, as he picked up his suit case and hurried after Ronicky.
"Doped booze," said Ronicky curtly.
They hurried down the stairs and came out onto the dark street. There Ronicky Doone dropped his suit case and dived into a dark nook beside the entrance. There was a brief struggle. He came out again, pushing a skulking figure before him, with the man's arm twisted behind his back.
"Take off this gent's hat, will you?" asked Ronicky.
Bill Gregg obeyed, too dumb with astonishment to think. "It's the taxi driver!" he exclaimed.
"I thought so!" muttered Ronicky. "The skunk came back here to wait till we were fixed right now. What'll we do with him?"
"I begin to see what's come off" said Bill Gregg, frowning into the white, scowling face of the taxi driver. The man was like a rat, but, in spite of his fear, he did not make a sound.
"Over there!" said Bill Gregg, nodding toward a flight of cellar steps.
They caught the man between them, rushed him to the steps and flung him headlong down. There was a crashing fall, groans and then silence.
"He'll have a broken bone or two, maybe," said Ronicky, peering calmly into the darkness, "but he'll live to trap somebody else, curse him!" And, picking up their suit cases again, they started to retrace their steps.
Chapter Seven
The First Clue
They did not refer to the incidents of that odd reception in New York until they had located a small hotel for themselves, not three blocks away. It was no cheaper, but they found a pleasant room, clean and with electric lights. It was not until they had bathed and were propped up in their beds for a good-night smoke, which cow-punchers love, that Bill Gregg asked: "And what gave you the tip, Ronicky?"
"I dunno. In my business you got to learn to watch faces, Bill. Suppose you sit in at a five-handed game of poker. One gent says everything with his face, while he's picking up his cards. Another gent don't say a thing, but he shows what he's got by the way he moves in his chair, or the way he opens and shuts his hands. When you said something about our wad I seen the taxi driver blink. Right after that he got terrible friendly and said he could steer us to a friend of his that could put us up for the night pretty comfortable. Well, it wasn't hard to put two and two together. Not that I figured anything out. Just was walking on my toes, ready to jump in any direction."
As for Bill Gregg, he brooded for a time on what he had heard, then he shook his head and sighed. "I'd be a mighty helpless kid in this here town if I didn't have you along, Ronicky," he said.
"Nope," insisted Ronicky. "Long as you use another gent for a sort of guide you feel kind of helpless. But, when you step off for yourself, everything is pretty easy. You just were waiting for me to take the lead, or you'd have done just as much by yourself."
Again Bill Gregg sighed, as he shook his head. "If this is what New York is like," he said, "we're in for a pretty bad time. And this is what they call a civilized town? Great guns, they need martial law and a thousand policemen to the block to keep a gent's life and pocketbook safe in this town! First gent we meet tries to bump us off or get our wad. Don't look like we're going to have much luck, Ronicky."
"We saved our hides, I guess."
"That's about all."
"And we learned something."
"Sure."
"Then I figure it was a pretty good night.
"Another thing, Bill. I got an idea from that taxi gent. I figure that whole gang of taxi men are pretty sharp in the eye. What I mean is that we can tramp up and down along this here East River, and now and then we'll talk to some taxi men that do most of their work from stands in them parts of the town. Maybe we can get on her trail that way. Anyways, it's an opening."
"Maybe," said Bill Gregg dubiously. He reached under his pillow. "But I'm sure going to sleep with a gun under my head in this town!" With this remark he settled himself for repose and presently was snoring loudly.
Ronicky presented a brave face to the morning and at once started with Bill Gregg to tour along the East River. That first day Ronicky insisted that they simply walk over the whole ground, so as to become fairly familiar with the scale of their task. They managed to make the trip before night and returned to the hotel, footsore from the hard, hot pavements. There was something unkindly and ungenerous in those pavements, it seemed to Ronicky. He was discovering to his great amazement that the loneliness of the mountain desert is nothing at all compared to the loneliness of the Manhattan crowd.
Two very gloomy and silent cow-punchers ate their dinner that night and went to bed early. But in the morning they began the actual work of their campaign. It was an arduous labor. It meant interviewing in every district one or two storekeepers, and asking the mail carriers for "Caroline Smith," and showing the picture to taxi drivers. These latter were the men, insisted Ronicky, who would eventually bring them to Caroline Smith. "Because, if they've ever drove a girl as pretty as that, they'll remember for quite a while."
"But half of these gents ain't going to talk to us, even if they know," Bill Gregg protested, after he had been gruffly refused an answer a dozen times in the first morning.
"Some of 'em won't talk," admitted Ronicky, "but that's probably because they don't know. Take 'em by and large, most gents like to tell everything they know, and then some!"
As a matter of fact they met with rather more help than they wanted. In spite of all their efforts to appear casual there was something too romantic in this search for a girl to remain entirely unnoticed. People whom they asked became excited and offered them a thousand suggestions. Everybody, it seemed, had, somewhere, somehow, heard of a Caroline Smith living in his own block, and every one remembered dimly having passed a girl on the street who looked exactly like Caroline Smith. But they went resolutely on, running down a thousand false clues and finding at the end of each something more ludicrous than what had gone before. Maiden ladies with many teeth and big glasses they found; and they discovered, at the ends of the trails on which they were advised to go, young women and old, ugly girls and pretty ones, but never any one who in the slightest degree resembled Caroline Smith.
In the meantime they were working back and forth, in their progress along the East River, from the slums to the better residence districts. They bought newspapers at little stationery stores and worked up chance conversations with the clerks, particularly girl clerks, whenever they could find them.
"Because women have the eye for faces," Ronicky would say, "and, if a girl like Caroline Smith came into the shop, she'd be remembered for a while."
But for ten days they labored without a ghost of a success. Then they noticed the taxi stands along the East Side and worked them as carefully as they could, and it was on the evening of the eleventh day of the search that they reached the first clue.
They had found a taxi drawn up before a saloon, converted into an eating place, and when they went inside they found the driver alone in the restaurant. They worked up the conversation, as they had done a hundred times before. Gregg produced the picture and began showing it to Ronicky.
"Maybe the lady's around here," said Ronicky, "but I'm new in this
part of town." He took the picture and turned to the taxi driver.
"Maybe you've been around this part of town and know the folks here.
Ever see this girl around?" And he passed the picture to the other.
The taxi driver bowed his head over it in a close scrutiny. When he looked up his face was a blank.
"I don't know. Lemme see. I think I seen a girl like her the other day, waiting for the traffic to pass at Seventy-second and Broadway. Yep, she sure was a ringer for this picture." He passed the picture back, and a moment later he finished his meal, paid his check and went sauntering through the door.
"Quick!" said Ronicky, the moment the chauffeur had disappeared. "Pay the check and come along. That fellow knows something."
Bill Gregg, greatly excited, obeyed, and they hurried to the door of the place. They were in time to see the taxicab lurch away from the curb and go humming down the street, while the driver leaned out to the side and looked back.
"He didn't see us," said Ronicky confidently.
"But what did he leave for?"
"He's gone to tell somebody, somewhere, that we're looking for Caroline Smith. Come on!" He stepped out to the curb and stopped a passing taxi. "Follow that machine and keep a block away from it," he ordered.
"Bootlegger?" asked the taxi driver cheerily.
"I don't know, but just drift along behind him till he stops. Can you do that?"
"Watch me!"
And, with Ronicky and Bill Gregg installed in his machine, he started smoothly on the trail.
Straight down the cross street, under the roaring elevated tracks of Second and Third Avenues, they passed, and on First Avenue they turned and darted sharply south for a round dozen blocks, then went due east and came, to a halt after a brief run.
"He's stopped in Beekman Place," said the driver, jerking open the door. "If I run in there he'll see me."
Ronicky stepped from the machine, paid him and dismissed him with a word of praise for his fine trailing. Then he stepped around the corner.
What he saw was a little street closed at both ends and only two or three blocks long. It had the serene, detached air of a village a thousand miles from any great city, with its grave rows of homely houses standing solemnly face to face. Well to the left, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge swung its great arch across the river, and it led, Ronicky knew, to Long Island City beyond, but here everything was cupped in the village quiet.
The machine which they had been pursuing was drawn up on the right-hand side of the street, looking south, and, even as Ronicky glanced around the corner, he saw the driver leave his seat, dart up a flight of steps and ring the bell.
Ronicky could not see who opened the door, but, after a moment of talk, the chauffeur from the car they had pursued was allowed to enter. And, as he stepped across the threshold, he drew off his cap with a touch of reverence which seemed totally out of keeping with his character as Ronicky had seen it.
"Bill," he said to Gregg, "we've got something. You seen him go up those steps to that house?"
"Sure."
Bill Gregg's eyes were flashing with the excitement. "That house has somebody in it who knows Caroline Smith, and that somebody is excited because we're hunting for her," said Bill. "Maybe it holds Caroline herself. Who can tell that? Let's go see."
"Wait till that taxi driver goes. If he'd wanted us to know about Caroline he'd of told us. He doesn't want us to know and he'd maybe take it pretty much to heart if he knew we'd followed him."
"What he thinks don't worry me none. I can tend to three like him."
"Maybe, but you couldn't handle thirty, and coyotes like him hunt in packs, always. The best fighting pair of coyotes that ever stepped wouldn't have no chance against a lofer wolf, but no lofer wolf could stand off a dozen or so of the little devils. So keep clear of these little rat-faced gents, Bill. They hunt in crowds."
Presently they saw the chauffeur coming down the steps. Even at that distance it could be seen that he was smiling broadly, and that he was intensely pleased with himself and the rest of the world.
Starting up his machine, he swung it around dexterously, as only New York taxi drivers can, and sped down the street by the way he had come, passing Gregg and Ronicky, who had flattened themselves against the fence to keep from being seen. They observed that, while he controlled the car with one hand, with the other he was examining the contents of his wallet.
"Money for him!" exclaimed Ronicky, as soon as the car was out of sight around the corner. "This begins to look pretty thick, Bill. Because he goes and tells them that he's taken us off the trail they not only thank him, but they pay him for it. And, by the face of him, as he went by, they pay him pretty high. Bill, it's easy to figure that they don't want any friend near Caroline Smith, and most like they don't even want us near that house."
"I only want to go near once," said Bill Gregg. "I just want to find out if the girl is there."
"Go break in on 'em?"
"Break in! Ronicky, that's burglary!"
"Sure it is."
"Ill just ask for Caroline Smith at the door."
"Try it."
The irony made Bill Gregg stop in the very act of leaving and glance back. But he went on again resolutely and stamped up the steps to the front door of the house.
It was opened to him almost at once by a woman, for Bill's hat come off. For a moment he was explaining. Then there was a pause in his gestures, as she made the reply. Finally he spoke again, but was cut short by the loud banging of the door.
Bill Gregg drew himself up rigidly and slowly replaced the hat on his head. If a man had turned that trick on him, a .45-caliber slug would have gone crashing through the door in search of him to teach him a Westerner's opinion of such manners.
Ronicky Doone could not help smiling to himself, as he saw Bill Gregg stump stiffly down the stairs, limping a little on his wounded leg, and come back with a grave dignity to the starting point. He was still crimson to the roots of his hair.
"Let's start," he said. "If that happens again I'll be doing a couple of murders in this here little town and getting myself hung."
"What happened?"
"An old hag jerked open the door after I rang the bell. I asked her nice and polite if a lady named Caroline Smith was in the house? 'No,' says she, 'and if she was, what's that to you?' I told her I'd come a long ways to see Caroline. 'Then go a long ways back without seeing Caroline,' says this withered old witch, and she banged the door right in my face. Man, I'm still seeing red. Them words of the old woman were whips, and every one of them sure took off the hide. I used to think that old lady Moore in Martindale was a pretty nasty talker, but this one laid over her a mile. But we're beat, Ronicky. You couldn't get by that old woman with a thousand men."
"Maybe not," said Ronicky Doone, "but we're going to try. Did you look across the street and see a sign a while ago?"
"Which side?"
"Side right opposite Caroline's house."
"Sure. 'Room To Rent.'"
"I thought so. Then that's our room."
"Eh?"
"That's our room, partner, and right at the front window over the street one of us is going to keep watch day and night, till we make sure that Caroline Smith don't live in that house. Is that right?"
"That's a great idea!" He started away from the fence.
"Wait!" Ronicky caught him by the shoulder and held him back. "We'll wait till night and then go and get that room. If Caroline is in the house yonder, and they know we're looking for her, it's easy that she won't be allowed to come out the front of the house so long as we're perched up at the window, waiting to see her. We'll come back tonight and start waiting."
Chapter Eight
Two Apparitions
They found that the room in the house on Beekman Place, opposite that which they felt covered their quarry, could be secured, and they were shown to it by a quiet old gentlewoman, found a big double room that ran across the whole length of the house. From the back it looked down on the lights glimmering on the black East River and across to the flare of Brooklyn; to the left the whole arc of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge was exposed. In front the windows overlooked Beekman Place and were directly opposite, the front of the house to which the taxi driver had gone that afternoon.
Here they took up the vigil. For four hours one of the two sat with eyes never moving from the street and the windows of the house across the street; and then he left the post, and the other took it.
It was vastly wearying work. Very few vehicles came into the light of the street lamp beneath them, and every person who dismounted from one of them had to be scrutinized with painful diligence.
Once a girl, young and slender and sprightly, stepped out of a taxi, about ten o'clock at night, and ran lightly up the steps of the house. Ronicky caught his friend by the shoulders and dragged him to the window. "There she is now!" he exclaimed.
But the eye of the lover, even though the girl was in a dim light, could not he deceived. The moment he caught her profile, as she turned in opening the door, Bill Gregg shook his head. "That's not the one. She's all different, a pile different, Ronicky."
Ronicky sighed. "I thought we had her," he said. "Go on back to sleep.
I'll call you again if anything happens."
But nothing more happened that night, though even in the dull, ghost hours of the early morning they did not relax their vigil. But all the next day there was still no sign of Caroline Smith in the house across the street; no face like hers ever appeared at the windows. Apparently the place was a harmless rooming house of fairly good quality. Not a sign of Caroline Smith appeared even during the second day. By this time the nerves of the two watchers were shattered by the constant strain, and the monotonous view from the front window was beginning to madden them.
"It's proof that she ain't yonder," said Bill Gregg. "Here's two days gone, and not a sign of her yet. It sure means that she ain't in that house, unless she's sick in bed." And he grew pale at the thought.
"Partner," said Ronicky Doone, "if they are trying to keep her away from us they sure have the sense to keep her under cover for as long as two days. Ain't that right? It looks pretty bad for us, but I'm staying here for one solid week, anyway. It's just about our last chance, Bill. We've done our hunting pretty near as well as we could. If we don't land her this trip, I'm about ready to give up."
Bill Gregg sadly agreed that this was their last chance and they must play it to the limit. One week was decided on as a fair test. If, at the end of that time, Caroline Smith did not come out of the house across the street they could conclude that she did not stay there. And then there would be nothing for it but to take the first train back West.
The third day passed and the fourth, dreary, dreary days of unfaltering vigilance on the part of the two watchers. And on the fifth morning even Ronicky Doone sat with his head in his hands at the window, peering through the slit between the drawn curtains which sheltered him from being observed at his spying. When he called out softly, the sound brought Gregg, with one long leap out of the chair where he was sleeping, to the window. There could be no shadow of a doubt about it. There stood Caroline Smith in the door of the house!
She closed the door behind her and, walking to the top of the steps, paused there and looked up and down the street.
Bill Gregg groaned, snatched his hat and plunged through the door, and Ronicky heard the brief thunder of his feet down the first flight of stairs, then the heavy thumps, as he raced around the landing. He was able to trace him down all the three flights of steps to the bottom.
And so swift was that descent that, when the girl, idling down the steps across the street, came onto the sidewalk, Bill Gregg rushed out from the other side and ran toward her.
They made a strange picture as they came to a halt at the same instant, the girl shrinking back in apparent fear of the man, and Bill Gregg stopping by that same show of fear, as though by a blow in the face. There was such a contrast between the two figures that Ronicky Doone might have laughed, had he not been shaking his head with sympathy for Bill Gregg.
For never had the miner seemed so clumsily big and gaunt, never had his clothes seemed so unpressed and shapeless, while his soft gray hat, to which he still clung religiously, appeared hopelessly out of place in contrast with the slim prettiness of the girl. She wore a black straw hat, turned back from her face, with a single big red flower at the side of it; her dress was a tailored gray tweed. The same distinction between their clothes was in their faces, the finely modeled prettiness of her features and the big, careless chiseling of the features of Bill Gregg.
Ronicky Doone did not wonder that, after her first fear, her gesture was one of disdain and surprise.
Bill Gregg had dragged the hat from his head, and the wind lifted his long black hair and made it wild. He went a long, slow step closer to her, with both his hands outstretched.
A strange scene for a street, and Ronicky Doone saw the girl flash a glance over her shoulder and back to the house from which she had just come. Ronicky Doone followed that glance, and he saw, all hidden save the profile of the face, a man standing at an opposite window and smiling scornfully down at that picture in the street.
What a face it was! Never in his life had Ronicky Doone seen a man who, in one instant, filled him with such fear and hatred, such loathing and such dread, such scorn and such terror. The nose was hooked like the nose of a bird of prey; the eyes were long and slanting like those of an Oriental. The face was thin, almost fleshless, so that the bony jaw stood out like the jaw of a death's-head.
As for the girl, the sight of that onlooker seemed to fill her with a new terror. She shrank back from Bill Gregg until her shoulders were almost pressed against the wall of the house. And Ronicky saw her head shake, as she denied Bill the right of advancing farther. Still he pleaded, and still she ordered him away. Finally Bill Gregg drew himself up and bowed to her and turned on his heel.
The girl hesitated a moment. It seemed to Ronicky, in spite of the fact that she had just driven Bill Gregg away, as if she were on the verge of following him to bring him back. For she made a slight outward gesture with one hand.
If this were in her mind, however, it vanished instantly. She turned with a shudder and hurried away down the street.
As for Bill Gregg he bore himself straight as a soldier and came back across the pavement, but it was the erectness of a soldier who has met with a crushing defeat and only preserves an outward resolution, while all the spirit within is crushed.
Ronicky Doone turned gloomily away from the window and listened to the progress of Gregg up the stairs. What a contrast between the ascent and the descent! He had literally flown down. Now his heels clumped out a slow and regular death march, as he came back to the room.
When Gregg opened the door Ronicky Doone blinked and drew in a deep breath at the sight of the poor fellow's face. Gregg had known before that he truly loved this girl whom he had never seen, but he had never dreamed what the strength of that love was. Now, in the very moment of seeing his dream of the girl turned into flesh and blood, he had lost her, and there was something like death in the face of the big miner as he dropped his hat on the floor and sank into a chair.
After that he did not move so much as a finger from the position into which he had fallen limply. His legs were twisted awkwardly, sprawling across the floor in front of him; one long arm dragged down toward the floor, as if there was no strength in it to support the weight of the labor-hardened hands; his chin was fallen against his breast.
When Ronicky Doone crossed to him and laid a kind hand on his shoulder he did not look up. "It's ended," said Bill Gregg faintly. "Now we hit the back trail and forget all about this." He added with a faint attempt at cynicism: "I've just wasted a pile of good money-making time from the mine, that's all."
"H'm!" said Ronicky Doone. "Bill, look me in the eye and tell me, man to man, that you're a liar!" He added: "Can you ever be happy without her, man?"
The cruelty of that speech made Gregg flush and look up sharply. This was exactly what Ronicky Doone wanted.
"I guess they ain't any use talking about that part of it," said Gregg huskily.
"Ain't there? That's where you and me don't agree! Why, Bill, look at the way things have gone! You start out with a photograph of a girl. Now you've followed her, found her name, tracked her clear across the continent and know her street address, and you've given her a chance to see your own face. Ain't that something done? After you've done all that are you going to give up now? Not you, Bill! You're going to buck up and go ahead full steam. Eh?"
Bill Gregg smiled sourly. "D'you know what she said when I come rushing up and saying: 'I'm Bill Gregg!' D'you know what she said?"
"Well?"
"'Bill Gregg?' she says. 'I don't remember any such name!'
"That took the wind out of me. I only had enough left to say: 'The gent that was writing those papers to the correspondence school to you from the West, the one you sent your picture to and—'
"'Sent my picture to!' she says and looks as if the ground had opened under her feet. 'You're mad!' she says. And then she looks back over her shoulder as much as to wish she was safe back in her house!"
"D'you know why she looked back over her shoulder?"
"Just for the reason I told you."
"No, Bill. There was a gent standing up there at a window watching her and how she acted. He's the gent that kept her from writing to you and signing her name. He's the one who's kept her in that house. He's the one that knew we were here watching all the time, that sent out the girl with exact orders how she should act if you was to come out and speak to her when you seen her! Bill, what that girl told you didn't come out of her own head. It come out of the head of the gent across the way. When you turned your back on her she looked like she'd run after you and try to explain. But the fear of that fellow up in the window was too much for her, and she didn't dare. Bill, to get at the girl you got to get that gent I seen grinning from the window."
"Grinning?" asked Bill Gregg, grinding his teeth and starting from his chair. "Was the skunk laughing at me?"
"Sure! Every minute."
Bill Gregg groaned. "I'll smash every bone in his ugly head."
"Shake!" said Ronicky Doone. "That's the sort of talk I wanted to hear, and I'll help, Bill. Unless I'm away wrong, it'll take the best that you and me can do, working together, to put that gent down!"
Chapter Nine
A Bold Venture
But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all, to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith, were problems which could not be solved in a moment.
Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. "We've waited a week to see her; now that we've seen her let's keep on waiting," he said, and Ronicky agreed.
They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had been observed before. Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long watching and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went completely to pieces and in the early evening fell asleep. But Ronicky Doone went out for a light dinner and came back after dark, refreshed and eager for action, only to find that Bill Gregg was incapable of being roused. He slept like a dead man.
Ronicky went to the window and sat alone. Few of the roomers were home in the house opposite. They were out for the evening, or for dinner, at least, and the face of the building was dark and cold, the light from the street lamp glinting unevenly on the windowpanes. He had sat there staring at the old house so many hours in the past that it was beginning to be like a face to him, to be studied as one might study a human being. And the people it sheltered, the old hag who kept the door, the sneering man and Caroline Smith, were to the house like the thoughts behind a man's face, an inscrutable face. But, if one cannot pry behind the mask of the human, at least it is possible to enter a house and find—
At this point in his thoughts Ronicky Doone rose with a quickening pulse. Suppose he, alone, entered that house tonight by stealth, like a burglar, and found what he could find?
He brushed the idea away. Instantly it returned to him. The danger of the thing, and danger there certainly would be in the vicinity of him of the sardonic profile, appealed to him more and more keenly. Moreover, he must go alone. The heavy-footed Gregg would be a poor helpmate on such an errand of stealth.
Ronicky turned away from the window, turned back to it and looked once more at the tall front of the building opposite; then he started to get ready for the expedition.
The preparations were simple. He put on a pair of low shoes, very light and with rubber heels. In them he could move with the softness and the speed of a cat. Next he dressed in a dark-gray suit, knowing that this is the color hardest to see at night. His old felt hat he had discarded long before in favor of the prevailing style of the average New Yorker. For this night expedition he put on a cap which drew easily over his ears and had a long visor, shadowing the upper part of his face. Since it might be necessary to remain as invisible as possible, he obscured the last bit of white that showed in his costume, with a black neck scarf.
Then he looked in the glass. A lean face looked back at him, the eyes obscured under the cap, a stern, resolute face, with a distinct threat about it. He hardly recognized himself in the face in the glass.
He went to his suit case and brought out his favorite revolver. It was a long and ponderous weapon to be hidden beneath his clothes, but to Ronicky Doone that gun was a friend well tried in many an adventure. His fingers went deftly over it. It literally fell to pieces at his touch, and he examined it cautiously and carefully in all its parts, looking to the cartridges before he assembled the weapon again. For, if it became necessary to shoot this evening, it would be necessary to shoot to kill.
He then strolled down the street, passing the house opposite, with a close scrutiny. A narrow, paved sidewalk ran between it and the house on its right, and all the windows opening on this small court were dark. Moreover, the house which was his quarry was set back several feet from the street, an indentation which would completely hide him from anyone who looked from the street. Ronicky made up his mind at once. He went to the end of the block, crossed over and, turning back on the far side of the street, slipped into the opening between the houses.
Instantly he was in a dense darkness. For five stories above him the two buildings towered, shutting out the starlight. Looking straight up he found only a faint reflection of the glow of the city lights in the sky.
At last he found a cellar window. He tried it and found it locked, but a little maneuvering with his knife enabled him to turn the catch at the top of the lower sash. Then he raised it slowly and leaned into the blackness. Something incredibly soft, tenuous, clinging, pressed at once against his face. He started back with a shudder and brushed away the remnants of a big spider web.
Then he leaned in again. It was an intense blackness. The moment his head was in the opening the sense of listening, which is ever in a house, came to him. There were the strange, musty, underground odors which go with cellars and make men think of death.
However, he must not stay here indefinitely. To be seen leaning in at this window was as bad as to be seen in the house itself. He slipped through the opening at once, and beneath his feet there was a soft crunching of coal. He had come directly into the bin. Turning, he closed the window, for that would be a definite clue to any one who might pass down the alley.
As he stood surrounded by that hostile silence, that evil darkness, he grew somewhat accustomed to the dimness, and he could make out not definite objects, but ghostly outlines. Presently he took out the small electric torch which he carried and examined his surroundings.
The bin had not yet received the supply of winter coal and was almost empty. He stepped out of it into a part of the basement which had been used apparently for storing articles not worth keeping, but too good to be thrown away—an American habit of thrift. Several decrepit chairs and rickety cabinets and old console tables were piled together in a tangled mass. Ronicky looked at them with an unaccountable shudder, as if he read in them the history of the ruin and fall and death of many an old inhabitant of this house. It seemed to his excited imagination that the man with the sneer had been the cause of all the destruction and would be the cause of more.
He passed back through the basement quickly, eager to be out of the musty odors and his gloomy thoughts. He found the storerooms, reached the kitchen stairs and ascended at once. Halfway up the stairs, the door above him suddenly opened and light poured down at him. He saw the flying figure of a cat, a broom behind it, a woman behind the broom.
"Whisht! Out of here, dirty beast!"
The cat thudded against Ronicky's knee, screeched and disappeared below; the woman of the broom shaded her eyes and peered down the steps. "A queer cat!" she muttered, then slammed the door.
It seemed certain to Ronicky that she must have seen him, yet he knew that the blackness of the cellar had probably half blinded her. Besides, he had drawn as far as possible to one side of the steps, and in this way she might easily have overlooked him.
In the meantime it seemed that this way of entering the house was definitely blocked. He paused a moment to consider other plans, but, while he stayed there in thought, he heard the rattle of pans. It decided him to stay a while longer. Apparently she was washing the cooking utensils, and that meant that she was near the close of her work for the evening. In fact, the rim of light, which showed between the door frame and the door, suddenly snapped out, and he heard her footsteps retreating.
Still he delayed a moment or two, for fear she might return to take something which she had forgotten. But the silence deepened above him, and voices were faintly audible toward the front of the house.
That decided Ronicky. He opened the door, blessing the well-oiled hinges which kept it from making any noise, and let a shaft from his pocket lantern flicker across the kitchen floor. The light glimmered on the newly scrubbed surface and showed him a door to his right, opening into the main part of the house.
He passed through it at once and sighed with relief when his foot touched the carpet on the hall beyond. He noted, too, that there was no sign of a creak from the boards beneath his tread. However old that house might be, he was a noble carpenter who laid the flooring, Ronicky thought, as he slipped through the semi-gloom. For there was a small hall light toward the front, and it gave him an uncertain illumination, even at the rear of the passage.
Now that he was definitely committed to the adventure he wondered more and more what he could possibly gain by it. But still he went on, and, in spite of the danger, it is doubtful if Ronicky would have willingly changed places with any man in the world at that moment.
At least there was not the slightest sense in remaining on the lower floor of the house. He slipped down the shadow of the main stairs, swiftly circled through the danger of the light of the lower hall lamp and started his ascent. Still the carpet muffled every sound which he made in climbing, and the solid construction of the house did not betray him with a single creaking noise.
He reached the first hall. This, beyond doubt, was where he would find the room of the man who sneered—the archenemy, as Ronicky Doone was beginning to think of him. A shiver passed through his lithe, muscular body at the thought of that meeting.
He opened the first door to his left. It was a small closet for brooms and dust cloths and such things. Determining to be methodical he went to the extreme end of the hall and tried that door. It was locked, but, while his hand was still on the knob, turning it in disappointment, a door, higher up in the house, opened and a hum of voices passed out to him. They grew louder, they turned to the staircase from the floor above and commenced to descend at a running pace. Three or four men at least, there must be, by the sound, and perhaps more!
Ronicky started for the head of the stairs to make his retreat, but, just as he reached there, the party turned into the hall and confronted him.
Chapter Ten
Mistaken Identity
To flee down the stairs now would be rank folly. If there happened to be among these fellows a man of the type of him who sneered, a bullet would catch the fugitive long before he reached the bottom of the staircase. And, since he could not retreat, Ronicky went slowly and steadily ahead, for, certainly, if he stood still, he would be spoken to. He would have to rely now on the very dim light in this hall and the shadow of his cap obscuring his face. If these were roomers, perhaps he would be taken for some newcomer.
But he was hailed at once, and a hand was laid on his shoulder.
"Hello, Pete. What's the dope?"
Ronicky shrugged the hand away and went on.
"Won't talk, curse him. That's because the plant went fluey."
"Maybe not; Pete don't talk much, except to the old man."
"Lemme get at him," said a third voice. "Beat it down to Rooney's. I'm going up with Pete and get what he knows."
And, as Ronicky turned onto the next flight of the stairway, he was overtaken by hurrying feet. The other two had already scurried down toward the front door of the house.
"I got some stuff in my room, Pete," said the friendly fellow who had overtaken him. "Come up and have a jolt, and we can have a talk. 'Lefty' and Monahan think you went flop on the job, but I know better, eh? The old man always picks you for these singles; he never gives me a shot at 'em." Then he added: "Here we are!" And, opening a door in the first hall, he stepped to the center of the room and fumbled at a chain that broke loose and tinkled against glass; eventually he snapped on an electric light. Ronicky Doone saw a powerfully built, bull-necked man, with a soft hat pulled far down on his head. Then the man turned.
It was much against the grain for Ronicky Doone to attack a man by surprise, but necessity is a stern ruler. And the necessity which made him strike made him hit with the speed of a snapping whiplash and the weight of a sledge hammer. Before the other was fully turned that iron-hard set of knuckles crashed against the base of his jaw.
He fell without a murmur, without a struggle, Ronicky catching him in his arms to break the weight of the fall. It was a complete knock-out. The dull eyes, which looked up from the floor, saw nothing. The square, rather brutal, face was relaxed as if in sleep, but here was the type of man who would recuperate with great speed.
Ronicky set about the obvious task which lay before him, as fast as he could. In the man's coat pocket he found a handkerchief which, hard knotted, would serve as a gag. The window curtain was drawn with a stout, thick cord. Ronicky slashed off a convenient length of it and secured the hands and feet of his victim, before he turned the fellow on his face.
Next he went through the pockets of the unconscious man who was only now beginning to stir slightly, as life returned after that stunning blow.
It was beginning to come to Ronicky that there was a strange relation between the men of this house. Here were three who apparently started out to work at night, and yet they were certainly not at all the type of night clerks or night-shift engineers or mechanics. He turned over the hand of the man he had struck down. The palm was as soft as his own.
No, certainly not a laborer. But they were all employed by "the old man." Who was he? And was there some relation between all of these and the man who sneered?
At least Ronicky determined to learn all that could be read in the pockets of his victim. There was only one thing. That was a stub-nosed, heavy automatic.
It was enough to make Ronicky Doone sigh with relief. At least he had not struck some peaceful, law-abiding fellow. Any man might carry a gun—Ronicky himself would have been uncomfortable without some sort of weapon about him but there are guns and guns. This big, ugly automatic seemed specially designed to kill swiftly and surely.
He was considering these deductions when a tap came on the door. Ronicky groaned. Had they come already to find out what kept the senseless victim so long?
"Morgan, oh, Harry Morgan!" called a girl's voice.
Ronicky Doone started. Perhaps—who could tell—this might be Caroline Smith herself, come to tap at the door when he was on the very verge of abandoning the adventure. Suppose it were someone else?
If he ventured out expecting to find Gregg's lady and found instead quite another person—well, women screamed at the slightest provocation, and, if a woman screamed in this house, it seemed exceedingly likely that she would rouse a number of men carrying just such short-nosed, ugly automatics as that which he had just taken from the pocket of Harry Morgan.
In the meantime he must answer something. He could not pretend that the room was empty, for the light must be showing around the door.
"Harry!" called the voice of the girl again. "Do you hear me? Come out! The chief wants you!" And she rattled the door.
Fear that she might open it and, stepping in, see the senseless figure on the floor, alarmed Ronicky. He came close to the door.
"Well?" he demanded, keeping his voice deep, like the voice of Harry
Morgan, as well as he could remember it.
"Hurry! The chief, I tell you!"
He snapped out the light and turned resolutely to the door. He felt his faithful Colt, and the feel of the butt was like the touch of a friendly hand before he opened the door.
She was dressed in white and made a glimmering figure in the darkness of the hall, and her hair glimmered, also, almost as if it possessed a light and a life of its own. Ronicky Doone saw that she was a very pretty girl, indeed. Yes, it must be Caroline Smith. The very perfume of young girlhood breathed from her, and very sharply and suddenly he wondered why he should be here to fight the battle of Bill Gregg in this matter—Bill Gregg who slept peacefully and stupidly in the room across the street!
She had turned away, giving him only a side glance, as he came out. "I don't know what's on, something big. The chief's going to give you your big chance—with me."
Ronicky Doone grunted.
"Don't do that," exclaimed the girl impatiently. "I know you think
Pete is the top of the world, but that doesn't mean that you can make
a good imitation of him. Don't do it, Harry. You'll pass by yourself.
You don't need a make-up, and not Pete's on a bet."
They reached the head of the stairs, and Ronicky Doone paused. To go down was to face the mysterious chief whom he had no doubt was the old man to whom Harry Morgan had already referred. In the meantime the conviction grew that this was indeed Caroline Smith. Her free-and-easy way of talk was exactly that of a girl who might become interested in a man whom she had never seen, merely by letters.
"I want to talk to you," said Ronicky, muffling his voice. "I want to talk to you alone."
"To me?" asked the girl, turning toward him. The light from the hall lamp below gave Ronicky the faintest hint of her profile.
"Yes."
"But the chief?"
"He can wait."
She hesitated, apparently drawn by curiosity in one direction, but stopped by another thought. "I suppose he can wait, but, if he gets stirred up about it—oh, we'll, I'll talk to you—but nothing foolish, Harry. Promise me that?"
"Yes."
"Slip into my room for a minute." She led the way a few steps down the hall, and he followed her through the door, working his mind frantically in an effort to find words with which to open his speech before she should see that he was not Harry Morgan and cry out to alarm the house. What should he say? Something about Bill Gregg at once, of course. That was the thing.
The electric light snapped on at the far side of the room. He saw a dressing table, an Empire bed covered with green-figured silk, a pleasant rug on the floor, and, just as he had gathered an impression of delightful femininity from these furnishings, the girl turned from the lamp on the dressing table, and he saw—not Caroline Smith, but a bronze-haired beauty, as different from Bill Gregg's lady as day is from night.
Chapter Eleven
A Cross-Examination
He was conscious then only of green-blue eyes, very wide, very bright, and lips that parted on a word and froze there in silence. The heart of Ronicky Doone leaped with joy; he had passed the crisis in safety. She had not cried out.
"You're not—" he had said in the first moment.
"I am not who?" asked the girl with amazing steadiness. But he saw her hand go back to the dressing table and open, with incredible deftness and speed, the little top drawer behind her.
"Don't do that!" said Ronicky softly, but sharply. "Keep your hand off that table, lady, if you don't mind."
She hesitated a fraction of a second. In that moment she seemed to see that he was in earnest, and that it would be foolish to tamper with him.
"Stand away from that table; sit down yonder."
Again she obeyed without a word. Her eyes, to be sure, flickered here and there about the room, as though they sought some means of sending a warning to her friends, or finding some escape for herself. Then her glance returned to Ronicky Doone.
"Well," she said, as she settled in the chair. "Well?"
A world of meaning in those two small words—a world of dread controlled. He merely stared at her thoughtfully.
"I hit the wrong trail, lady," he said quietly. "I was looking for somebody else."
She started. "You were after—" She stopped.
"That's right, I guess," he admitted.
"How many of you are there?" she asked curiously, so curiously that she seemed to be forgetting the danger. "Poor Carry Smith with a mob—" She stopped suddenly again. "What did you do to Harry Morgan?"
"I left him safe and quiet," said Ronicky Doone.
The girl's face hardened strangely. "What you are, and what your game is I don't know," she said. "But I'll tell you this: I'm letting you play as if you had all the cards in the deck. But you haven't. I've got one ace that'll take all your trumps. Suppose I call once what'll happen to you, pal?"
"You don't dare call," he said.
"Don't dare me," said the girl angrily. "I hate a dare worse than anything in the world, almost." For a moment her green-blue eyes were pools of light flashing angrily at him.
Into the hand of Ronicky Doone, with that magic speed and grace for which his fame was growing so great in the mountain desert, came the long, glimmering body of the revolver, and, holding it at the hip, he threatened her.
She shrank back at that, gasping. For there was an utter surety about this man's handling of the weapon. The heavy gun balanced and steadied in his slim fingers, as if it were no more than a feather's weight.
"I'm talking straight, lady," said Ronicky Doone. "Sit down—pronto!"
In the very act of obedience she straightened again. "It's bluff," she said. "I'm going through that door!" Straight for the door she went, and Ronicky Doone set his teeth.
"Go back!" he commanded. He glided to the door and blocked her way, but the gun hung futile in his hand.
"It's easy to pull a gun, eh?" said the girl, with something of a sneer. "But it takes nerve to use it. Let me through this door!"
"Not in a thousand years," said Ronicky.
She laid her hand on the door and drew it back—it struck his shoulder—and Ronicky gave way with a groan and stood with his head bowed. Inwardly he cursed himself. Doubtless she was used to men who bullied her, as if she were another man of an inferior sort. Doubtless she despised him for his weakness. But, though he gritted his teeth, he could not make himself firm. Those old lessons which sink into a man's soul in the West came back to him and held him. In the helpless rage which possessed him he wanted battle above all things in the world. If half a dozen men had poured through the doorway he would have rejoiced. But this one girl was enough to make him helpless.
He looked up in amazement. She had not gone; in fact, she had closed the door slowly and stood with her back against it, staring at him in a speechless bewilderment.
"What sort of a man are you?" asked the girl at last.
"A fool," said Ronicky slowly. "Go out and round up your friends; I can't stop you."
"No," said the girl thoughtfully, "but that was a poor bluff at stopping me."
He nodded. And she hesitated still, watching his face closely.
"Listen to me," she said suddenly. "I have two minutes to talk to you, and I'll give you those two minutes. You can use them in getting out of the house—I'll show you a way—or you can use them to tell me just why you've come."
In spite of himself Ronicky smiled. "Lady," he said, "if a rat was in a trap d'you think he'd stop very long between a chance of getting clear and a chance to tell how he come to get into the place?"
"I have a perfectly good reason for asking," she answered. "Even if you now get out of the house safely you'll try to come back later on."
"Lady," said Ronicky, "do I look as plumb foolish as that?"
"You're from the West," she said in answer to his slang.
"Yes."
She considered the straight-looking honesty of his eyes. "Out West," she said, "I know you men are different. Not one of the men I know here would take another chance as risky as this, once they were out of it. But out there in the mountains you follow long trails, trails that haven't anything but a hope to lead you along them? Isn't that so?"
"Maybe," admitted Ronicky. "It's the fever out of the gold days, lady. You start out chipping rocks to find the right color; maybe you never find the right color; maybe you never find a streak of pay stuff, but you keep on trying. You're always just sort of around the corner from making a big strike."
She nodded, smiling again, and the smiles changed her pleasantly, it seemed to Ronicky Doone. At first she had impressed him almost as a man, with her cold, steady eyes, but now she was all woman, indeed.
"That's why I say that you'll come back. You won't give up with one failure. Am I right?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno. If the trail fever hits me again—maybe I would come back."
"You started to tell me. It's because of Caroline Smith?"
"Yes."
"You don't have to talk to me," said the girl. "As a matter of fact I shouldn't be here listening to you. But, I don't know why, I want to help you. You—you are in love with Caroline?"
"No," said Ronicky.
Her expression grew grave and cold again. "Then why are you here hunting for her? What do you want with her?"
"Lady," said Ronicky, "I'm going to show you the whole layout of the cards. Maybe you'll take what I say right to headquarters—the man that smiles—and block my game."
"You know him?" she asked sharply.
Apparently that phrase, "the man who smiles," was enough to identify him.
"I've seen him. I dunno what he is, I dunno what you are, lady, but I figure that you and Caroline Smith and everybody else in this house is under the thumb of the gent that smiles."
Her eyes darkened with a shadow of alarm. "Go on," she said curtly.
"I'm not going on to guess about what you all are. All I know is what I'm here trying to do. I'm not working for myself. I'm working for a partner."
She started. "That's the second man, the one who stopped her on the street today?"
"You're pretty well posted," replied Ronicky. "Yes, that's the one. He started after Caroline Smith, not even knowing her name—with just a picture of her. We found out that she lived in sight of the East River, and pretty soon we located her here."
"And what are you hoping to do?"
"To find her and talk to her straight from the shoulder and tell her what a pile Bill has done to get to her—and a lot of other things."
"Can't he find her and tell her those things for himself?"
"He can't talk," said Ronicky. "Not that I'm a pile better, but I could talk better for a friend than he could talk for himself, I figure. If things don't go right then I'll know that the trouble is with the gent with the smile."
"And then?" asked the girl, very excited and grave.
"I'll find him," said Ronicky Doone.
"And—"
"Lady," he replied obliquely, "because I couldn't use a gun on a girl ain't no sign that I can't use it on a gent!"
"I've one thing to tell you," she said, breaking in swiftly on him. "Do what you want—take all the chances you care to—but, if you value your life and the life of your friend, keep away from the man who smiles."
"I'll have a fighting chance, I guess," said Ronicky quietly."
"You'll have no chance at all. The moment he knows your hand is against him, I don't care how brave or how clever you are, you're doomed!"
She spoke with such a passion of conviction that she flushed, and a moment later she was shivering. It might have been the draft from the window which made her gather the hazy-green mantle closer about her and glance over her shoulder; but a grim feeling came to Ronicky Doone that the reason why the girl trembled and her eyes grew wide, was that the mention of "the man who smiles" had brought the thought of him into the room like a breath of cold wind.
"Don't you see," she went on gently, "that I like you? It's the first and the last time that I'm going to see you, so I can talk. I know you're honest, and I know you're brave. Why, I can see your whole character in the way you've stayed by your friend; and, if there's a possible way of helping you, I'll do it. But you must promise me first that you'll never cross the man with the sneer, as you call him."
"There's a sort of a fate in it," said Ronicky slowly. "I don't think I could promise. There's a chill in my bones that tells me I'm going to meet up with him one of these days."
She gasped at that, and, stepping back from him, she appeared to be searching her mind to discover something which would finally and completely convince him. At length she found it.
"Do I look to you like a coward?" she said. "Do I seem to be weak-kneed?"
He shook his head.
"And what will a woman fight hardest for?"
"For the youngsters she's got," said Ronicky after a moment's thought. "And, outside of that, I suppose a girl will fight the hardest to marry the gent she loves."
"And to keep from marrying a man she doesn't love, as she'd try to keep from death?"
"Sure," said Ronicky. "But these days a girl don't have to marry that way."
"I am going to marry the man with the sneer," she said simply enough, and with dull, patient eyes she watched the face of Ronicky wrinkle and grow pale, as if a heavy fist had struck him.
"You?" he asked. "You marry him?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"And you hate the thought of him!"
"I—I don't know. He's kind—"
"You hate him," insisted Ronicky. "And he's to have you, that cold-eyed snake, that devil of a man?" He moved a little, and she turned toward him, smiling faintly and allowing the light to come more clearly and fully on her face. "You're meant for a king o' men, lady; you got the queen in you—it's in the lift of your head. When you find the gent you can love, why, lady, he'll be pretty near the richest man in the world!"
The ghost of a flush bloomed in her cheeks, but her faint smile did not alter, and she seemed to be hearing him from far away. "The man with the sneer," she said at length, "will never talk to me like that, and still—I shall marry him."
"Tell me your name," said Ronicky Doone bluntly.
"My name is Ruth Tolliver."
"Listen to me, Ruth Tolliver: If you was to live a thousand years, and the gent with the smile was to keep going for two thousand, it'd never come about that he could ever marry you."
She shook her head, still watching him as from a distance.
"If I've crossed the country and followed a hard trail and come here tonight and stuck my head in a trap, as you might say, for the sake of a gent like Bill Gregg—fine fellow though he is—what d'you think I would do to keep a girl like you from life-long misery?"
And he dwelt on the last word until the girl shivered.
"It's what it means," said Ronicky Doone, "life-long misery for you.
And it won't happen—it can't happen."
"Are you mad—are you quite mad?" asked the girl. "What on earth have
I and my affairs got to do with you? Who are you?"
"I dunno," said Ronicky Doone. "I suppose you might say I'm a champion of lost causes, lady. Why have I got something to do with you? I'll tell you why: Because, when a girl gets past being just pretty and starts in being plumb beautiful, she lays off being the business of any one gent—her father or her brother—she starts being the business of the whole world. You see? They come like that about one in ten million, and I figure you're that one, lady."
The far away smile went out. She was looking at him now with a sort of sad wonder. "Do you know what I am?" she said gravely.
"I dunno," said Ronicky, "and I don't care. What you do don't count.
It's the inside that matters, and the inside of you is all right.
Lady, so long as I can sling a gun, and so long as my name is Ronicky
Doone, you ain't going to marry the gent with the smile."
If he expected an outbreak of protest from her he was mistaken. For what she said was: "Ronicky Doone! Is that the name? Ronicky Doone!" Then she smiled up at him. "I'm within one ace of being foolish and saying—But I won't."
She made a gesture of brushing a mist away from her and then stepped back a little. "I'm going down to see the man with the smile, and I'm going to tell him that Harry Morgan is not in his room, that he didn't answer my knock, and then that I looked around through the house and didn't find him. After that I'm coming back here, Ronicky Doone, and I'm going to try to get an opportunity for you to talk to Caroline Smith."
"I knew you'd change your mind," said Ronicky Doone.
"I'll even tell you why," she said. "It isn't for your friend who's asleep, but it's to give you a chance to finish this business and come to the end of this trail and go back to your own country. Because, if you stay around here long, there'll be trouble, a lot of trouble, Ronicky Doone. Now stay here and wait for me. If anyone taps at the door, you'd better slip into that closet in the corner. Will you wait?"
"Yes."
"And you'll trust me?"
"To the end of the trail, lady."
She smiled at him again and was gone.
Now the house was perfectly hushed. He went to the window and looked down to the quiet street with all its atmosphere of some old New England village and eternal peace. It seemed impossible that in the house behind him there were—
He caught his breath. Somewhere in the house the muffled sound of a struggle rose. He ran to the door, thinking of Ruth Tolliver at once, and then he shrank back again, for a door was slammed open, and a voice shouted—the voice of a man: "Help! Harrison! Lefty! Jerry!"
Other voices answered far away; footfalls began to sound. Ronicky Doone knew that Harry Morgan, his victim, had at last recovered and managed to work the cords off his feet or hands, or both.
Ronicky stepped back close to the door of the closet and waited. It would mean a search, probably, this discovery that Morgan had been struck down in his own room by an unknown intruder. And a search certainly would be started at once. First there was confusion, and then a clear, musical man's voice began to give orders: "Harrison, take the cellar. Lefty, go up to the roof. The rest of you take the rooms one by one."
The search was on.
"Don't ask questions," was the last instruction. "When you see someone you don't know, shoot on sight, and shoot to kill. I'll do the explaining to the police—you know that. Now scatter, and the man who brings him down I'll remember. Quick!"
There was a new scurry of footfalls. Ronicky Doone heard them approach the door of the girl's room, and he slipped into the closet. At once a cloud of soft, cool silks brushed about him, and he worked back until his shoulders had touched the wall at the back of the closet. Luckily the enclosure was deep, and the clothes were hanging thickly from the racks. It was sufficient to conceal him from any careless searcher, but it would do no good if any one probed; and certainly these men were not the ones to search carelessly.
In the meantime it was a position which made Ronicky grind his teeth. To be found skulking among woman's clothes in a closet—to be dragged out and stuck in the back, no doubt, like a rat, and thrown into the river, that was an end for Ronicky Doone indeed!
He was on the verge of slipping out and making a mad break for the door of the house and trying to escape by taking the men by surprise, when he heard the door of the girl's room open.
"Some ex-pugilist," he heard a man's voice saying, and he recognized it at once as belonging to him who had given the orders. He recognized, also, that it must be the man with the sneer.