MECHANICALLY, Dave Henderson rose to his feet, and for an instant stood as though, his mental faculties numbed, he were striving to grasp as a concrete thing some stark and horribly naked tragedy that his eyes told him was real, but which his brain denied and refused to accept. Thin layers of smoke, suspended, sinuous, floated in hideous little gray clouds about the room—like palls that sought to hide what lay upon the floor from sight, and, failing in their object, but added another grim and significant detail to the scene.
And then his brain cleared, and he jumped forward to bend first over Bookie Skarvan and then over Dago George; and, where his mind had been unreceptive and numbed but an instant before, it was keen, swift and incisive now—the police who had been summoned—the Scorpion and his parasite yegg who were on the way back—there was no time to lose! There was no one in the house to have heard the shots—Bookie Skarvan had settled that point—no one except Teresa upstairs. But the shots might have been heard outside.
His ears throbbed with strange noises; those shots seemed still to be reverberating and beating at his eardrums. Yes, the shots might have been heard outside on the street, or by some one in the next house. Was that some one at the front door now? He held his breath, as he rose from Dago George's side. No, just the ringing in his ears; there wasn't any other, sound. But there wasn't an instant to lose; both Bookie Skarvan and Dago George were dead. There wasn't an instant to lose—only the instant he must take to make sure he made no false move here before he snatched up that package on the desk there, and ran upstairs, and, with Teresa, made his way out by the fire escape.
He stooped, and stretched out his hand to exchange his own empty revolver for the one that lay on the floor where it had fallen from Dago George's lifeless fingers—and, instead, drew his hand sharply back again. Fool! The police would investigate this, wouldn't they? Bookie Skarvan couldn't have been shot by an empty revolver! Well—he was moving toward the desk and back toward where Bookie Skarvan lay—suppose he took Bookie's revolver then? He shook his head. He did not need one bad enough for that. It was better to let things remain as they were and let the police draw their own conclusions, conclusions which, if nothing was interfered with, and he got away with the package of banknotes, would point no inference that, by hook or crook, would afford a clew which might lead to him. Was he so sure of that? Suppose the Scorpion had been let into Bookie's confidence, and that the Scorpion when he got here should happen to be caught by the police—and talked to save himself?
A grim smile settled on Dave Henderson's lips, as he thrust his useless revolver into his pocket, and, reaching out to the desk, picked up the package of banknotes. Well, if anything came of the Scorpion, it couldn't be helped! And, after all, did it matter very much? It wasn't only Dago George and Bookie Skarvan who were dead—Dave Henderson was dead, too!
It had been scarcely a minute since he had first risen: to his feet; it was his mind, sifting, weighing, arguing with itself, that had seemed to use up priceless time, whereas, in reality, in its swift working, it had kept pace with, and had even prodded him into speed in his physical movements. He was running now, the package of banknotes in his hand, for the door. Dago George was dead. Bookie Skarvan was dead. And if——
He staggered suddenly back, and reeled from the impact, as a man from just outside in the hallway launched himself ferociously forward across the threshold. The package spun from his hand to the floor. Half flung to his knees, Dave Henderson's arms shot out instinctively and wrapped themselves around his assailant's body.
Came a snarl and an oath, and Dave Henderson's head rocked back on his shoulders from a vicious short-arm jab that caught him on the point of the jaw. It dazed him; he was conscious only that he had not let go his hold, that his hands, like feeling tentacles, were creeping further up the man's body toward throat and shoulders, drawing his own body up after them into a more upright position. His head sang with the blow. A voice seemed to float from somewhere out of the air:
“That's the stuff, Maggot! Soak him!”
Dave Henderson's arms had locked now like steel bands around his assailant and were tightening, as the other's were tightening around him in turn. The dizziness was leaving him. They swung, rocking, to the strain. The man was strong! A face, a repellent, unshaven face, leered into his. Twice they swirled around, and then seemed to hang for an instant motionless, as though the strength of one exerted to its utmost was exactly counterbalanced by the strength of the other; and over the other's shoulder Dave Henderson could see another man, a man who laughed with ugly coolness, and who had flaming red hair, and eyes of a blue so faded that they looked repulsive because they looked as though they were white.
Maggott and Cunny the Scorpion! There had been some one there in the front of the house—it had been Maggot and Cunny the Scorpion. And at any moment now there would be some one else—the police!
That nicety of balance was gone. They were struggling, lurching, staggering in each other's embrace again—he, and this Maggot, who snarled and cursed with panting breath. Their heads were almost on each other's shoulders. He could see the straining muscles in the other's neck standing out like great, purple, swollen cords. And as he whirled now this way and that, he caught glimpses of the red-headed man. The red-headed man seemed to be quite unconcerned for the moment with his companion's struggle. He picked up the package of banknotes from the floor, examined it, dropped it again, and ran to Bookie Skarvan's side.
A queer, hard smile came to Dave Henderson's lips. This panting thing with arms locked like a gorilla's around him seemed to be weakening a little—or was it a trick? He tightened his own hold, and edged his own hands a little higher up—and still a little higher. If he could only tear himself loose for the fraction of a second, and get his fingers on that panting throat! No, the man wasn't weakening so much after all! The man seemed to sense his intention; and with a sudden twist, each endeavoring to out-maneuver the other, they spun in a wider circle, like drunken dancers in some mad revel, and crashed against the wall, and rebounded from it, and hung again, swaying like crazy pendulums, in the middle of the floor.
The red-headed man's voice came suddenly from across the room:
“Soak him, Maggot!”
That was the Scorpion. The Scorpion seemed to be taking some interest at last in something besides Bookie Skarvan and the package of money.
A grunted oath from Dave Henderson's antagonist answered.
“Damn it, I can't! Curse youse, why don't youse lend a hand!”
With a quick, sudden wrench, Dave Henderson tried to free himself. It resulted only in a wild swirl in a half circle that almost pitched him, and with him the other, to the floor. But he saw the Scorpion now. The Scorpion had risen to his feet from Bookie Skarvan's side, and was balancing a revolver in his hand; and now the Scorpion's voice seemed to hold a sort of purring note, velvet in its softness.
“All right, then, Maggot! We might as well have a clean-up here, since he's started it. I guess we came just about in time, or he'd have had the money as well as our fat friend there—that he got. It looks as though we ought to even up the score.” The revolver lifted in the Scorpion's hand. “Jump away, Maggot—I'm going to lead the ace of trumps!”
The eyes were white—not blue; there was no blue in them; they were white—two little white spots across the room. They held a devil's menace in them—like the voice—like the purring voice that was hideous because it was so soft. God, could he hold this Maggot now—not wrench himself free, but hold the man here in his arms—keep Maggot between him and those white eyes, that looked like wicked little plague spots which had eaten into that grotesquely red-thatched face.
Maggot was fighting like a demon now to tear himself free. A sweat bead spurted out on Dave Henderson's forehead and rolled down his face. The white eyes came dancing nearer—nearer. They circled and circled, as he circled—Maggot was the shield. He whirled this way and that. The muscles of his arms cracked, as they swung and whipped Maggot around in furious gyrations.
A shot rang out. Something sang with an angry hum and hot breath past Dave Henderson's cheek. The velvet voice laughed. Maggot screamed in a mixture of rage and fear.
“Curse youse, youse fool! Youse'll hit me!”
“I'll get him next time, Maggot,” purred the velvet voice.
The white eyes kept too far away—that was what was the matter—too far away. If they would only come near—near enough so that of a sudden he could let go his grip and launch this squirming human shield full, like a battering ram, into those white eyes. That was the only chance there was. Only the Scorpion was too cunning for that—he kept too far away.
Dave Henderson swung madly around again, interposing Maggot's body as the Scorpion darted to one side; and then suddenly, and for the first time, there came a sound from Dave Henderson's lips—a low cry of pain. Teresa!
It was only a glimpse he got—perhaps it wasn't real! Just a glimpse into the hallway where the light from the room streamed out—just a glimpse of a figure on the stairs who leaned out over the banister, and whose face was white as death itself, and whose hands seemed to grip and cling to the banister rail as though they were welded there.
Teresa! He grew sick at heart as he struggled now. Teresa! If he could only have kept her out of this; if only, at least, she were not there to see! It couldn't last much longer! True, Maggot, beyond doubt, beyond shadow of trickery now, had had his fill of fighting, and there was fear upon the man, the fear of an unlucky shot from the Scorpion, and he was whimpering now, and he struggled only apathetically, but it took strength to drag even a dead weight around and around and that strength would not last forever. Teresa! She had heard those shots from up above—she had seen the Scorpion fire once, and miss, and she——
The Scorpion laughed out. It looked like a sure shot now! Dave Henderson jerked Maggot in front of him, but his swirling, mad gyrations had brought him into the angle that the desk made with the wall, and, turn as he would now, the Scorpion could reach in around the end of the desk, and almost touch him with the revolver muzzle itself.
“I got him, Maggot!” purred the Scorpion. “I got him now, the——”
The man's voice ended in a startled cry. The sweat was running into Dave Henderson's eyes, he could scarcely see—just a blurred vision over Maggot's shoulder, a blurred vision of a slim figure running like the wind into the room, and stooping to the floor where the package of banknotes lay, and snatching it up, and starting for the door again.
And then the Scorpion fired—but the revolver was pointed now across the room, and the slight, fleeing figure swayed, and staggered, and recovered herself, and went on, and over her shoulder her voice, though it faltered, rang bravely through the room:
“I—I thought he'd rather have this than you, Dave. It was the only chance. Don't mind me, Dave. He won't get me.”
The whimpering thing in Dave Henderson's arms was flung from him, and it crashed to the floor. It wasn't his own strength, it was the strength of one demented, and of a maddened brain, that possessed Dave Henderson now. And he leaped forward, running like a hare. Teresa had already gained the stairs—the Scorpion in pursuit was half-way along the hall. And now he saw nothing else—just that red-haired figure running, running, running. There was neither house, nor hall, nor stairs, nor any other thing—only that red-haired figure that the soul of him craved, for whom there was no mercy, that with his hands he would tear to pieces in insensate fury.
A flash came, blinding his eyes; a report roared in his ears—and then his hands snatched at and caught a wriggling thing. And for the first time he realized that he had reached the head of the stairs, realized it because, pitched forward over the landing, lay a woman's form that was still and motionless. And he laughed like the maniac he was now, and the wriggling thing screamed in his grasp, screamed as it went up above his head—and then Dave Henderson hurled it from him to the bottom of the stairs.
He turned, and flung himself on his knees beside Teresa. He called her name again and again—and there was no answer. She lay there, half on her face on the floor, her arms wound around a torn package of banknotes. He rose, and rocked on his feet, and his knotted fists went up above his head. And then he laughed again, as though his reason were gone—laughed as his eyes fixed on a red-headed thing that made an unshapely heap at the foot of the stairs; and laughed at a slinking shadow that went along the hall, and scurried out through the front door. That was Maggot—like a rat leaving a sinking ship—Maggot who——
Then reason came again. The police! At any moment now—the police. In an instant he had caught Teresa up in his arms. She wasn't dead—he could hear her breathing—only it was weak—pitifully weak. There should be an exit to the fire escape from this floor—but it was dark and he had no time to search—it was quicker to go up the stairs—where he knew the way—and out through his own room.
Stumbling, staggering in the darkness, holding Teresa in his arms, he made his way upstairs. The police—his mind centered on that again. If she and he were caught here, his identification as Dave Henderson, which would ultimately ensue, would damn her; this money, wrapped so tenaciously in her arms, would damn her; and, on top of that old score of the police in San Francisco, there had been ugly work here in this house to-night. If it were not for the money, the criminal hoax played upon the police in the disappearance of Dave Henderson would not be so serious—but the money was here, and in that hoax she had had a part, and the shadow of Nicolo Capriano still lay across her shoulders.
The night air came gratefully cool upon his face. He drew it in in great, gasping breaths, greedily, hungrily. He had gained the fire escape through the window now, and now he paused for the first time to listen. There was no sound. Back there inside the house it was as still as death. Death! Well, why shouldn't it be, there was death there, and——
His arms tightened suddenly in a great, overwhelming paroxysm of fear around Teresa, and he bent his head, bent it lower, lower still, until his face was close to that white face he held, and through the darkness his eyes searched it in an agony of apprehension.
And then he started forward again, and began to descend the fire escape; and now he groped uneasily for foothold as he went. It seemed rickety and unstable, this spidery thing that sprawled against the side of the wall, and it was dark, and without care the foot would slip through the openings between the treads. It had not seemed that way when he had gone up and down when disposing of the valises. Only now it was a priceless burden that he carried—this form that lay close-pressed against his breast, whose touch, alternately now, brought him a sickening sense of dread, and a surging hope that sent the blood leaping like a mill-race through his veins.
He went down, step after step, his mind and brain shrieking at him to hurry because there was not a single second to lose—but it was slow, maddeningly slow. He could not see the treads, not only because it was dark, but because Teresa's form was in his arms. He could only feel with his feet—and now and then his body swayed to preserve his balance.
Was there no end to the thing! It seemed like some bottomless pit of blackness into which he was descending. And it seemed as though this pit held an abominable signification in its blackness and its depth, as though it beckoned him on to engulf them; it seemed—it seemed—— God, if she would only move, if she would not lie so still, so terribly still in his arms!
Another step—another—and then his foot, searching out, found only space beneath it. He must free one arm now, so that he could cling to the bottom tread and lower himself to the ground. It was only a short drop, he knew, for the lower section of the fire escape was one of those that swung on hinges, and when, previously, coming up, Teresa had held it down for him, he had been able to reach it readily with a spring from the ground. But he dared not jump even that short distance now with Teresa, wounded, in his arms.
He changed her position now to throw her weight into the hollow of his left arm, lifting her head so that it lay high upon his shoulder—and with the movement her hair brushed his lips. It brought a sudden, choking sob from Dave Henderson, and in a great, yearning impulse he let his head sink down until his cheek for an instant was laid against hers—and then, the muscles of his right arm straining until they cracked, he lowered himself down and dropped to the ground.
He ran now, lurching, across the yard, and out into the lane, and here he paused again to listen. But he heard nothing. He was clear of that cursed trap-house now—if he could only keep clear. He ran on again, stumbling again, with his burden. And now, though he did not pause to listen any more, it seemed as though his throbbing eardrums caught the sounds at last that they had been straining to hear. Wasn't that the police behind there now—on the street in front of The Iron Tavern? It sounded like it—like the arrival of a police patrol.
He reached the shed where he had hidden the valises, entered, and laid Teresa tenderly on the floor. He used his flashlight then—and a low moan came from his lips. The bullet had cut across the side of her neck just above the shoulder; the wound was bleeding profusely, and over the package of banknotes, around which her arms were still tightly clasped, there had spread a crimson stain. He drew her arms gently apart, laid the package on the floor, and then, wrenching one of the valises open, snatched at the first article of linen that came to hand.
His lips trembled, as he did his best to staunch the flow of blood and bind the wound.
“Teresa! Teresa!” Dave Henderson whispered.
Her eyes opened—and smiled.
She made an effort to speak. He bent his head to catch the words.
“Dave—where—where are we? Still in the house?”
“No!” he told her feverishly. “No! We're clear of that. We're in the shed here in the lane where I took the valises.”
She made a slight affirmative movement of her head.
“Then go—go at once—Dave—for help—I——”
Her eyes had closed again.
“Yes!” he said. His voice was choking. He called her name. “Teresa!” There was no answer. She had lapsed back into unconsciousness. And then the soul of him spoke its agony. “Oh, my God, Teresa!” he cried brokenly, and swayed to his feet.
An instant he stood there, then stooped, picked up the package of banknotes, thrust it into the open valise, closed the valise, carried it into a darker corner of the shed, and went to the door.
He looked out. There was no one in sight in the darkness. But then, what interest would the police have in this section of the lane? There was nothing to connect it with The Iron Tavern! He stepped outside, and broke into a run down the lane, heading for the intersecting street in the opposite direction from The Iron Tavern. He must get help! A queer, mirthless laugh was on his lips. A wounded woman in the lane was the connecting link with The Iron Tavern. And yet he must get help. Well, there was only one source from which he dared ask help—only one—Millman.
He ran on. Millman! Something within him rebelled at that. But Teresa was perhaps—was—— No, he would not let his mind even frame the word. Only one thing was paramount now—she must have help at once. Well, God knew, he could trust Millman! Only there seemed some strange irony here that chastened him. And yet—— Yes, this was strange, too! Suddenly he became strangely content that it should be Millman.
He reached the street, and looked up and down. It was four o'clock in the morning, and the street was dark and deserted except for a single lighted window that shone out half-way down the block. He ran toward it. It proved to be an all-night restaurant, and he entered it, and asked for the telephone, and shut himself up in the booth.
A moment more and he had the St. Lucian Hotel on the wire.
“Give me Mr. Millman—Mr. Charles Millman,” he requested hurriedly.
The hotel operator answered him. It was impossible. A guest could not be disturbed at that hour. It was against the rules, and Dave Henderson was pleading hoarsely into the phone.
“Give me Millman! Let me speak to him! It's life and death!”
“I—I can't.” The operator's voice, a girl's, was hesitant, less assured.
“For God's sake, give me Millman—there's a life at stake!” Dave Henderson cried frantically. “Quick! For God's sake, quick!”
“Wait!” she said.
It seemed a time interminable, and then a drowsy voice called:
“Hello! What's wanted?”
“Is that you, Millman?” Dave Henderson asked wildly. “Millman, is that you?”
“Yes,” the voice answered.
“It's Dave speaking. Dave—do you understand? I—there's some one badly hurt. I can't tell you any more over the phone; but, in Heaven's name, get a doctor that you can trust, and come!”
“I'll come, Dave,” said Millman quietly. “Where?”
Dave Henderson turned from the telephone, and thrust his head out of the booth. He had no idea where he was in New York, save that he was near The Iron Tavern. He dared not mention that. Before many hours the papers would be full of The Iron Tavern—and the telephone operator might hear.
“What's this address?” he called out to a man behind the counter.
The man told him.
Dave Henderson repeated the address into the phone.
“All right, Dave,” Millman's voice came quickly; “I'll be there as soon as I can get my car, and pick up the doctor.”
Dave Henderson stepped out into the night, and pulled off his hat. His forehead was dripping wet. He walked back to the lane, listened, heard nothing, and stole along it, and entered the shed again, and knelt by Teresa's side. She was unconscious.
He bent over her with the flashlight. His bandage was crude and clumsy; but it brought him a little measure of relief to see that at least it had been effective in the sense that the bleeding had been arrested. And then his eyes went to the white face again. It seemed as though his mental faculties were blunted, that they were sensible only of a gnawing at his brain that was almost physical in its acute pain. Instinctively, from time to time, he looked at his watch.
At last he got up, and went out into the lane again, and from there to the street. It was too soon. He could only pace up and down. It was too soon, but he could not have afforded to keep the doctor waiting if Millman arrived, and he, Dave Henderson, was not there—otherwise he would have stayed longer in the shed. It would be daylight before they came, wouldn't it? It was an hour now, a thousand years, wasn't it, since he had telephoned?
A big touring car rolled down the street. He ran toward it. Millman—yes, it was Millman! The car stopped.
“Quick!” he urged, and sprang on the footboard. “Go to the corner of the lane there!”
And then, as the car stopped again, and Millman, from the wheel, and a man with a little black bag in his hand, sprang out, Dave Henderson led the way down the lane, running, without a word, and pushed open the door of the shed. He held the flashlight steadily for the doctor, though he turned now to Millman.
“You've got a right to know,” he said in an undertone, as the doctor bent, absorbed, over Teresa. “Hell's broken loose to-night, Millman—there's been murder further up the lane there in a place they call The Iron Tavern. Do you understand? That's why I didn't dare go anywhere for help. Listen! I'll tell you.” And, speaking rapidly, he sketched the details of the night for Millman. “Do you understand, Millman?” he said at the end. “Do you understand why I didn't dare go anywhere for help?”
Millman did not answer. He was looking questioningly at the doctor, as the latter suddenly rose.
“We must get her to the hospital at once,” said the doctor crisply.
“The hospital!” Dave Henderson echoed the word. It seemed to jeer at him. He could have summoned an ambulance himself! As well throw the cards upon the table! His eyes involuntarily sought that darker corner of the shed where the package of banknotes, bloodstained now, was hidden in the valise. The hospital, or the police station—in that respect, for Teresa as well as himself, it was all the same!
It was Millman who spoke.
“Wait!” he said, and touched Dave Henderson's arm; then turned to the doctor. “Can we move her in my car?” he asked.
“Yes; I guess we can manage it,” the doctor answered.
Millman drew the doctor a little to one side. He whispered earnestly. Dave Henderson caught a phrase about “getting a nurse”—and then he felt Millman's hand press his arm again.
“It's all right, Dave. I guess I'll open that town house after all this summer—to a select few,” said Millman quietly. His hand tightened eloquently in its pressure. “We'll take her there, Dave.”
IT was a big house—like some vast, cavernous, deserted place. Footsteps, when there were footsteps, and voices, when there were voices, seemed to echo with strange loneliness through the great halls, and up and down the wide staircase. And in the dawn, as the light came gray, the pieces of furniture, swathed in their summer coverings of sheets, had seemed like weird and ghostlike specters inhabiting the place.
But the dawn had come hours ago.
Dave Henderson raised his head from his cupped hands. Was that the nurse now, or the doctor—that footstep up above? He listened a moment, and then his chin dropped back into his hands.
Black hours they had been—black hours for his soul, and hours full of the torment and agony of fear for Teresa.
From somewhere, almost coincident with their arrival at the house, a nurse had come. From some restaurant, a man had brought breakfast for the doctor, for the nurse, for Millman—and for him. He had eaten something—what, he did not know. The doctor had gone, and come again—the doctor was upstairs there now. Perhaps, when the doctor came down again, the doctor would allow him to see Teresa. Half an hour ago they had told him that she would get well. There was strange chaos in his mind. That agony of fear for her, that cold, icy thing that had held a clutch upon his heart, was gone; but in its place had come another agony—an agony of yearning—and now he was afraid—for himself.
Millman had tried to make him go to bed and sleep. Sleep! He could not have slept! He could not even have remained still for five minutes at a stretch! He had been half mad with his anxiety for Teresa. He had wanted to be somewhere where his restless movements would not reach Teresa in her room, and yet somewhere where he could intercept every coming and going of the doctor. And so for hours he had alternately paced up and down this lower hall here, and thrown himself upon this great, wide, sheet-covered divan where he sat now. And in those hours his mind, it seemed, had run the gamut of every emotion a human soul could know. It ached now—physically. His temples throbbed and hurt.
His eyes strayed around the hall, and held on a large sheet-draped piece of furniture over beyond the foot of the staircase. They had served other purposes, these coverings, than to make spectral illusions in the gray of dawn! Beneath that sheet lay the package of banknotes. It made a good hiding place. He had extracted the package from the valise, and had secreted it there during the confusion as they had entered the house. But it seemed to take form through that sheet now, as it had done a score of times since he had put it there, and always it seemed as though a crimson stain that was on the wrapper would spread and spread until it covered the entire package.
That package—and the crimson stain! It seemed to make of itself a curiously appropriate foreground for a picture that spread away into a vista of limitless years: An orphan school, with its cracked walls, and the painted mottoes whose scrolls gaped where the cracks were; a swirl of horses reaching madly down the stretch, a roar of hoarse, delirious shouts, elated oaths around the bookmaker's paying-stand, pinched faces on the outer fringes of this ring; a thirst intolerable, stark pain, the brutal jolting of a boxcar through the nights, hours upon hours of a horror that ended only with the loss of consciousness; walls that reared themselves so high that they seemed to stand sentinels against the invasion of even a ray of sunlight, steel bars, and doors, and bolts that clanged, and clanged, until the sound ate like some cancerous thing into the soul itself; and then wolves, human wolves, ravenous wolves, between two packs of them, the police on the one hand, the underworld on the other, that snarled and tore at him, while he fought them for his life.
All that! That was the price he had paid for that package there—that, and that crimson stain.
He swept his hand across his eyes. His face grew set, and his jaws locked hard together. No, he wasn't sure yet that even that was all—that the package there was even yet finally and irrevocably his—to do with as he liked. There was last night—The Iron Tavern—the police again. Was there a connecting link trailing behind him? What had become of the Scorpion? What story had the man perhaps told? Were the police looking for an unknown man—who was Dave Henderson; and looking for an unknown woman—who was Teresa?
Well, before long now, surely, he would know—when Millman got back. Millman, who had intimated that he had an inside pull somewhere that would get the straight police version of the affair, had gone out immediately after breakfast for that purpose.
That was what counted, the only thing that counted—to know where the police stood. Millman ought to be back now. He had been gone for hours. It was taking him an unaccountably long time!
Millman! He had called Millman a straight crook. He had tried to call Millman something else this morning—for what Millman had done for Teresa and himself last night. Only he wasn't any good at words. But Millman had seemed to understand, though Millman had not said much, either—just a smile in the gray eyes, and a long, steady clasp of both hands on his, Dave Henderson's, shoulders.
There was a footstep on the stairs now. He looked up. It was the doctor coming down. He jumped to his feet, and went eagerly to the foot of the stairs.
“Better!” said the doctor cheerily.
“I—I want to see her,” said Dave Henderson.
The doctor smiled, as he moved across the hall toward the front door.
“In a few minutes,” he said. “I've told the nurse to let you know when she's ready.”
The doctor went out.
He heard the doctor begin to descend the outer steps, and then pause, and then another footstep ascending; and then he caught the sound of voices. And then, after a little while, the front door opened, and Millman came into the reception hall.
Dave Henderson's lips tightened, as he stepped toward the other.
“What”—he found his voice strangely hoarse, and he cleared his throat—“what did you find out?”
Millman motioned toward the divan.
“Everything, I guess, Dave,” he answered, as he sat down.
“And——?” Dave Henderson flung himself down beside the other.
Millman shook his head.
“Better hear the whole story, Dave. You can size it up then for yourself.”
Dave Henderson nodded.
“Go on, then!” he said.
“I told you,” said Millman, “that I thought I could get inside information—the way the police looked at it. Well, I have. And I have got it from a source that is absolutely dependable. Understand, Dave?”
Dave Henderson nodded again.
“The police start with that telephone message,” said Millman. “They believe that it was authentic, and that it was Dago George who sent it. In fact, without it they wouldn't have known where to turn; while with it the whole affair appears to be simplicity itself.” He smiled a little whimsically. “They used it as the key to unlock the door. It's no discredit to their astuteness. With nothing to refute it, it is not only the obvious, but the logical solution. Bookie budded a great deal better than he knew—for Dave Henderson—when he used that telephone for his own dirty ends. It wouldn't have been so easy for the police to account for the death of three men in The Iron——”
“Three!” Dave Henderson strained suddenly forward. Three! There were—two; only two—Dago George and Bookie Skarvan. Only two dead—and a red-headed thing huddled at the foot of the stairs. Was that it? Was that the third one—Cunny the Scorpion? Had it ended with that? Had he killed a man? Last night he would have torn the fellow limb from limb—yes, and under the same circumstances, he would do it again—Teresa upstairs, who had been so close to death, justified that a thousand times over.
But——— “You mean Cunny the Scorpion—Cunny Smeeks?” he demanded tensely.
“Yes,” said Millman. And then, with a quick, comprehensive glance at Dave Henderson's face: “But you didn't do it, Dave.”
Dave Henderson's hands were clenched between his knees. They relaxed slowly.
“I'm glad of that,” he said in a low tone. “Go on, Millman.”
“The man had evidently revived just before the police got there,” Millman explained. “He was shot and killed instantly by the police while trying to escape. He had bruises on his head which the police attributed to a fight with Dago George. Dago George, the police assume, woke up to discover the men breaking into his room. They attacked him. He managed to shoot Bookie Skarvan, and grappled with Cunny the Scorpion—the Scorpion's clothing, somewhat torn, and the Scorpion's bruises, bear this out. But in order to account for the time it would have taken to crack the safe, the police believe that the Scorpion at this time only knocked Dago George out temporarily. Then, later, while the Scorpion worked at the safe, Dago George recovered sufficiently to rush and snatch at the phone, and shout his appeal for help into it; and then the Scorpion laid Dago George's head open with the blow that killed him, using one of the burglar's tools as the weapon. And then the Scorpion, staying to put the finishing touches on his work to get the safe open, and over-estimating the time it would take the police to get there, was finally unable to make his escape.”
“My God!” muttered Dave Henderson under his breath.
“That's not all,” said Millman, with a faint smile. “There was known enmity between Dago George and the Scorpion. The Scorpion had come to The Iron Tavern earlier in the evening, one of the waiters testified, and had brought the fat man with him. The fat man was given a room by Dago George. The waiter identified the fat man, an obvious accomplice therefore of the Scorpion, as the man who was shot. It dovetailed irrefutably—even the Scorpion's prior intentions of harm to Dago George being established. There was some money in the safe, quite a little, but the police are more inclined to attribute the motive to the settling of a gang feud, with the breaking of the safe more or less as a blind.”
Dave Henderson was staring across the hall. His lips were tight.
“That waiter!” he exclaimed abruptly. “Didn't the waiter say anything about anybody else who got rooms there last night?”
“I am coming to that,” Millman replied. “The police questioned the man, of course. He said that last night, at separate times, a man and a woman came there, presumably to get rooms since they had valises with them, and that they saw Dago George. He did not know whether Dago George had accommodated them or not. He thought not, both because he had neither carried nor seen the valises taken upstairs, and because Dago George invariably refused to give any rooms to strangers. Lots of people came there, imagining The Iron Tavern to be a hotel where they could get cheap accommodations, and were always turned away. Dago George had gone out of that end of the business. The waiter inclined to the belief that the man and woman in question had met the same fate; certainly, he had seen or heard nothing of them since.” Millman shrugged his shoulders. “The police searched the rooms upstairs, found no trace of occupancy except the hand-bag of the fat man, identified again by the waiter—and agreed with the waiter.”
“There was Maggot.” Dave Henderson seemed to be speaking almost to himself. “But Maggot was only a tool. All Maggot knew was that he was to get the safe open—for some money. I guess Maggot, when he finds out that the police don't know anything about him, will think he's lucky. I guess if there's any man in the world who'll keep his mouth shut for the sake of his own hide, it's Maggot. Maggot isn't going to run his head into a noose.” He turned sharply to Millman. “But there's still some one else—the doctor.”
“We have been friends, intimate friends, all our lives,” said Millman simply. “I have given him my word of honor that you had no hand in the death of any one of those three men, and that is sufficient.”
And then Dave Henderson laughed a little, a queer, strange, mirthless laugh, and stood up from the divan.
“Then I'm clear—eh—Millman?” he shot out.
“Yes,” said Millman slowly, “as far as I can see, Dave, you're clear.”
“And free?” There was fierce assertiveness, rather than interrogation, in Dave Henderson's voice. “It's taken five years, but I've got that money now. I guess I've paid for it; and I guess there's no one now to put a crimp in it any more, not even Bookie Skarvan—providing that little proposition of yours, Millman, that month, still stands.”
Millman's face, and Millman's eyes, sobered.
“It stands, Dave,” he said gravely.
“In a month,” said Dave Henderson, “even a fool could get far enough away to cover his trail—couldn't he, Millman? Well, then, there's only Teresa left. She's something like you, Millman. She's for sending that money back, but she's sort of put out of the running—for about a month, too!”
Millman made no answer.
“Five years,” said Dave Henderson, with a hard smile. “Well, it's mine now. Those years were a hell, Millman—a hell—do you understand? But they would only be a little hell compared with the hell to-day if I couldn't get away with that package now without, say, a policeman standing there in the doorway waiting for me.”
“Dave,” said Millman sharply, “what do you mean? What are you going to do?”
There was some one on the stairs again—some one all in white. Dave Henderson stared. The figure was beckoning to him. Yes, of course, it was the nurse.
“Dave,” Millman repeated, “what are you going to do?”
Dave Henderson laughed again—queerly.
“I'm going upstairs—to see Teresa,” he said.
“And then?” Millman asked.
But Dave Henderson scarcely heard him. He was walking now towards the stairs. The nurse's voice reached him.
“Just a few minutes,” warned the nurse. “And she must not be excited.”
He gained the landing, and looked back over the balustrade down into the great hall below. Millman had come to the foot of the staircase, and was leaning on the newel-post. And Dave Henderson looked, more closely. Millman's gray eyes were blurred, and, though they smiled, the smile came through a mist that had gathered in them. And then Millman's voice came softly.
“I get you, as we used to say 'out there,'” said Millman. “I get you, Dave. Thank God! It's two straight crooks—isn't it, Dave—two of us?”
Millman's face was blotted out—there was another face that Dave Henderson saw now through an open doorway, a face that lay upon the pillows, and that was very white. It must be the great, truant masses of black hair, which crowned the face, that made it look as white as that. And they said she was getting better! They must have lied to him—the face was so white.
He didn't see the face any more now, because he was kneeling down beside the bed, and because his own face was buried in the counterpane.
And then the great shoulders of the man shook.
His life! That was what she had bought—and that was what she had paid for almost with her own. That was why she lay here, and that was why her face was so white. Teresa! This was Teresa here.
He raised his head at last. Her dark eyes were fixed on him—and they smiled.
She was holding out her hand.
“Dave,” she said brightly, “the nurse told me she was going to let you see me for a few minutes—to cheer me up. And here I've been waiting—oh, ever so long. And you haven't spoken a word. Haven't you anything to say”—she was smiling teasingly with her lips now—“Dave?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes”—his voice choked—“more than I can ever say. Last night, Teresa, if it had not been for you, I—-”
Her finger tips could just reach his lips, and they pressed suddenly against them, and sealed them.
“Don't you know that we are not to talk about that, Dave—ever,” she said quickly. “If I did anything, then, oh, I am so glad—so glad. You're not to say another word.”
“But, I must,” he said hoarsely. “Do you think I——”
“Dave, I'll call the nurse!” she said in a low voice. “You'll—you'll make me cry.”
It was true. The dark eyes were swimming, full of tears. She hid them now suddenly with their long lashes.
Neither spoke for a moment.
“There's something else, then, Teresa,” he said at last. “I'm going to give that money back.”
There was no answer—only he felt her hand touch his head, and her fingers play gently through his hair.
“I knew it,” she told him.
“But do you know why?” he asked.
Again there was no answer.
Dave Henderson spoke again.
“I remember what I said last night—that I couldn't buy you that way. And—and I'm not trying to now. It's going back because I haven't any choice. A man can't take his life from a woman's hand, and from the hand of a friend take the life of the woman who has saved him—and throw them both down—and play the cur. I haven't any choice.” His voice broke suddenly. “It's going back, Teresa, whether it means you or not. Do you understand, Teresa? It's going back—either way.”
Her fingers had ceased their movements, and were quiet now.
“Yes,” she said.
Dave Henderson raised his bowed head. The dark eyes were closed. His shoulders squared a little.
“That—that puts it straight, then, Teresa,” he said. “That lets me say what I want to say now. I've done a lot of thinking in the last few hours when I thought that perhaps you weren't—weren't going to get better. I thought about what you said last night—about God giving one another chance if one wanted to take it. Teresa, would you believe me if I told you that I was going to take that chance—from now on?”
The dark eyes opened now.
“I don't think God ever meant that you would do anything else, Dave,” she said. “If He had, you would never have been caught and put in prison, and been through everything else that has happened to you, because it's just those things, Dave, that have made you say what you have just said. If you had succeeded in getting away with that money five years ago, you would have been living as a thief to-day, and—and you would have stolen more, perhaps, and—and at last you wouldn't even have been a man.” She turned her face away on the pillow, and fumbled for his hand. “But it isn't just you, Dave. I didn't say that last night. I said God offered us both a chance. It's not only you, Dave—both of us are going to take that chance.”
He leaned forward—his face tense, white almost as the white face on the bed.
“Together, Teresa?”
She did not answer—only her hand closed in a tighter clasp on his.
“Teresa!” He was bending over her now, smoothing back the hair from her forehead. The blood pounded in a mighty tide through his veins. “Teresa!”
She spoke then, as the wet lashes lifted for an instant and fell again.
“It's wonderful,” she whispered. “God's chance, Dave—together—from now on.”
Into his face came a great new light. Self-questioning and self-debate were gone. Teresa trusted him. He knew himself before God and his fellows henceforth an honest man. And he was rich—rich with a boundless, priceless love that would endure while life endured. Teresa! His lips pressed the white forehead, and the closed eyelids, and then her lips were warm upon his own—and then he was kneeling again, but now his arms were around her, folding her to him, and his head lay upon the pillow, and his cheek touched hers.
And presently Millman, coming up the stairs, paused abruptly on the landing, as, through the open doorway of the room that was just in front of him, his eyes fell upon Dave Henderson's kneeling figure. And he stood there. And Teresa's voice, very low, and as though she were repeating something, reached him. And creeping into Millman's gray eyes there came a light of understanding as tender as a woman's, and for a moment more he lingered there, and then he tiptoed softly away. And the words that he had heard seemed to have graven themselves deep into the great heart of the man, for, as he went slowly on down the hall, he said them over and over again to himself:
“From now on.... From now on....”